“Major Raju,” said the visitor in English. “I’d get up, but it’s hard to clamber out of this thing once one is settled in.” His accent was spiffy. “Do I have the honor of addressing Big Fish?”
“Huh?”
“You may know yourself as Laks, or Deep Singh. Big Fish is what you’re called now. On the Internet. Someone took the liberty of translating your nickname into a proper nom de guerre. All the cool kids have them. The man you absolutely destroyed yesterday? That was Thunder Stick. Can’t remember how to say it in Mandarin. Not his real name, I’d imagine.” Major Raju, gripping the bowl of his pipe in one hand, used its stem to point at features in what must have been an imaginary spreadsheet hanging in space. “Thunder Stick’s fall in the MRLB has been . . . precipitous.”
“MRLB?”
“Oh, Meta-Ranking Leader Board. Many who drafted Thunder Stick into their fantasy squads are gnashing their teeth this morning!” Major Raju sipped from his thermos and added, “I expect you need to urinate! Don’t let me stop you.”
Laks needed to do more than just that. When he got back some little while later, he found that Pippa had emerged from the ladies’ tent. She, Bella, and Sue, who had been so chatty when Laks had awakened, had all suddenly gone silent when they’d heard the voice of Major Raju. By the time Laks got back, though, Pippa was squatting comfortably on her haunches, long shanks doubled in front of her face, drinking tea and having what sounded like a very professional sort of conversation with the major. She probably was not one who needed to have MRLB spelled out for her. Laks had been puzzled by the lavish expenditure of firewood, but he now saw that Major Raju had been conveyed here in an army truck. He’d actually brought his own firewood with him. His driver was awaiting the major’s return in the comfort of its heated cab.
As he neared, Pippa turned to look at him with a bemused smile. “Big Fish!”
“So I’m told.”
“You’re number one on the Force To Be Reckoned With metapoll, and you’ve broken the top 25 overall.”
“Vegas is going bananas,” Major Raju put in. “Macao less so, but what would you expect from those people?”
“Oh, because . . . China?”
“Have you signed anything yet?” the major inquired.
Laks’s confusion must have been obvious because Pippa said, “He means deals with sponsors or agents.”
“While I was taking a shit in the rocks? No.”
“Good. Don’t. Sign anything, I mean,” Raju said. “Classic mistake for one in your position.”
“Sir, why are you . . . here?” Laks asked.
“What you did yesterday added five point seven hectares of territory to India and subtracted an equal amount from China. It was the largest single shift that has occurred on this front in the last
three weeks. If bookies in Vegas are interested in you, why, you can assume that the Indian Army is much more so. I work for the Indian Army.”
“And when you say interested, that means . . .”
“He knows you’re Canadian,” Pippa said.
“It will hardly surprise you to know that the volunteer units on both sides of the Line are supported, under a thin veneer of plausible deniability, by their respective military establishments,” Major Raju said, with a glance down at the generous stack of firewood. “Thunder Stick didn’t bring his now world-famous oxygen tank with him from Hebei; it was supplied when he got up here and discovered he couldn’t breathe. Any crew on our side that can turn in your kind of results with no support at all . . . well, it merits . . . some support. So I am here to ask you, Big Fish, what you need? Other than an agent, a manager, and a lawyer, that is.”
“Rock throwers who can take orders.”
“Done.”
“And—I hate to say uniforms, but—”
“A look?” Pippa suggested.
“We understand each other,” Major Raju said.
THE HAGUE
A curious thing about Frederika Mathilde Louisa Saskia was that, once she had got accustomed to being in a new setting—which never took more than a couple of hours—it was as if she’d never been anywhere else. When she’d been in Texas, answering to “Saskia” and floating down the Brazos, or tucking into some brisket at T.R.’s mega gas station in the suburbs of Houston, it had taken mere moments for her to forget about the fact that she was the scion of a royal family that went back many generations and lived in palaces in a faraway country. She was fully immersed in the moment of chopping the celery with Mary Boskey or screwing Rufus on the train, and that was that. She could have kept riding that train forever.