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have sick sister, Sahib, please, Sahib."
    Sam took out another coin and placed it next to the one in his hand. "Here."
    "More for three arenas, Sahib. Whatever you want. I touch, two arenas. You touch, anywhere, three arenas."
    Sam's stomach turned. Shit, he thought, oh, bloody shit. Why.
    Just then, the birthing sun sent a shaft of sunshine ducking under the platform's roof and over Sam's shoulder to light up the child's face. The wall behind the boy was red-streaked with paan juice and tumultuous blossoms of urine that spat out a stench. Newspapers flapped on their racks, spilling out their surfeit of war news, so many killed, Burma fallen, deaths and destruction, a damnable party at some club in Calcutta, the music accompanied by the bawling of blackout sirens. The boy waited. Something, tiny, countless, moved in his dirty hair, lifting strands of it in the sunlight.
    Sam recoiled and the boy's brown eyes flickered with fear, but he retained his smile. Long moments passed and Sam felt sweat pool within his palm, the coins clammy against his skin. Who in hell was he to stand in judgement on this boy? Men wanted this, they paid the boy well for it; he had it to offer he had little else to offer. Perhaps he really had a sick sister at home. Perhaps his mother and his father did not know, or did not care where he was now. Perhaps he had no mother or father. Oh, shit. Sam reached into his pocket and took out another coin. He set the three of them down on the ground in front of him, and then turned and walked away quickly. The boy whimpered, but Sam did not look back again.
    Outside the platform, after having surrendered his ticket stub at the gate, Sam hired a rickshaw and dumped his holdall onto the seat. He was in a bazaar of some sort, foul, disorganized, with overflowing gutters on either side of the muddy tarred road, cows lounging in the center, whipping at flies with their long tails. Something nudged at his shoulder and Sam swung around rapidly, his left arm protecting his right. In front of him, at his very nose, was an enormous head with big, gentle eyes, long lashes, and a thick-lipped mouth that moved in gum-chewing fashion. The camel sniffed at Sam, blew its stinking breath into his face, and then righted itself to its full height. The camel driver, seated in the cart yoked to the beast's back, laughed. "He is curious, Sahib. He has not seen American sahib before, only British. Many British here."
    So much for being invisible at Rudrakot, Sam thought with disgust. It was as though he was carrying a banner proclaiming that he was foreign, that he was American. How did everyone know even before he opened his mouth?
    "The Victoria Club, Sahib?" the rickshaw puller asked.
    "No, I'm not staying at the club."
    An enormous and stately Daimler Double Six honked. Sam saw Mrs. Stanton, gracefully and joyously upright, in the backseat. A Union Jack fluttered on the bonnet. As the limousine went by, Mr. Abdullah raised his hand in salute to Sam from the front seat, next to the chauffeur. Sam stared at the squat backside of the brown car. The same car had come to pick them up? They knew each other, then. Why that performance on the train?
    When he was climbing onto the rickshaw, a man came running out o f t he station, dragging the tearful boy behind him, the wet cutting twin rivers through the dirt on his face down to his chin.
    "Sahib," the man shouted,paan-colored saliva staining one side of his mouth, as though he had been bloodied in a fight. "You don't like this one? He is stupid. Another one? Younger? Older? Or you want girl?" He cuffed the boy on the head; the boy ducked and cried out, trying to yank his thin arm away from the man's grip.
    Sam whipped his head away and said to the rickshaw puller, "Take me to the political agent's house. jaldi."

    Chapter Two.
    I had just returned from a ride and went into Father's study to greet him He had been talking to a wealthy landowner who was very old-fashioned and did not