Word is to the office gone

And word is round the town

And word is to the stock exchange

That our great scheme is down

Steve Dixie 1968 “Live in the trench” album

CHAPTER 56 INDIA

The air conditioned limo slowed for yet another sacred cow. Joe Hebron glanced up from his laptop at the row of big aluminium roofs shimmering in the heat. They drove on past rows of pedestrians, women in saris, men on fuel cell motorbikes. Children dangling their legs over the side of old diesel trucks. Then the row of factories ended and they drove through park gates towards the Champs HQ.

The road circled around the building, obviously so visitors could get a good impressive look at it. Hebron was pleased to see the park admitted the public, so there was a van selling sweets and lemonade. The building was almost a cube, seven floors high with towers at each corner topped by domes. Then rising from the buildings centre was another enormous dome adding half dozen floors to the height. All the domes were black. The balcony running round the top floor was black. The balconies round each floor of the four towers were black. It was a masculine version of the Taj Mahal. It was massive dark and brooding, where the Taj was like frozen sunlight.

The limo stopped at the end of a gravel path. It looked like people had to walk to the office across parched yellow grass poking from the hard earth.

“Welcome Mr Hebron. The Champ is looking forwards to meeting you.”

“I’m pleased to be here. It’s a very impressive building.”

“It is a copy of the tomb of Muhammad Adil Shah of Bijapur.”

“I see.” Building an office to copy a tomb seemed odd, but then there was the Taj Mahal, and it would look a bit obvious if he’d copied that. But why not a palace? Perhaps because Indian Palaces were confections of spun sugar and pink icing, even ones carved from solid rock. This office was awe inspiring, not pretty. It was meant to be taken seriously.

Glass doors opened into a blessedly cool reception area with girls in saris manning desks, taking packages from messengers. A model of an early Chandrayaan capsule was in the centre, with a notice saying it was actually a real Chandrayaan, brought back from the moon as an exhibit. Would NASA ever do that with the Apollo?

“This way Sir.”

Hebron followed into a lift to the top floor and along into an outer office where more secretaries smiled and waved him through.

Mr Champakalakshmi, the Champ, smiled and said “Welcome to my office.” In a very cultured English Accent.

“Thank you.” They shook hands.

“Though I admit I am a little surprised to see you here.”

“Surprised?”

“Please sit down. Would you care for a real cigar?” He offered a tooled leather box of Trichies, Joe declined “Yes, surprised. I thought my people had made it clear. Your proposal is a good one, but we would want it here in India, near to the equator. It does not seem a good idea to build it in Britain. We would be happy to construct components to your designs, but we do not have funds for inwestment. Not our own funds. You see the cranes, there in the distance.” Mr Champakalakshmi pointed out of a picture window over the balcony. “That is my hospital. It is swallowing all my priwate resources at the moment. And when that is complete, I have another project. Some friends and I we wish to build an institute of Lunar Studies. Right here. We even have backing from Singapore, and the Centre for Exobiology¹ at the University of London. But as for the rest? I have nothing left over. In space I depend on Gowernment for ewerything.”

“I was hoping you could persuade the Indian Government to….”

“That is as yet impossible. It is very expensive to launch these ball swarms. We have to do that for surwiwal. There is much to do before we can cool down the equator with them. We need to drop temperature by a further degree to get better Monsoons. We have now embarked on our own moon rockets. A huge programme. Our Antarikshyatri and Gaganaut must ensure China does not have the Moon to itself. If there are riches there then we want them, and the Indian Army will guard them. It is either India or China who will own the Moon. So I do not believe Britain can enter the race this late. You know I have much sympathy for the English. They made India what it is today. Of course they

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