Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) by Eric Brown

matter – by annihilating that smallest particle!”
    She shook her head, frightened now for her father’s sanity. What he said made no sense at all.
    He went on, “Annapurnite is simply an umbrella term for all the wonders discovered in the foothills of the Himalayas. Annapurnite is a word used to convince the gullible and to confuse our enemies.”
    “ All the wonders?” she echoed. “There is more than one...?”
    “Jani-ji, how do you think it is that we keep the Chinese and the Russians at bay along the long length of our borders?”
    She was about to quip that, just the other day, the Empire had been unable to stop the Russians from crossing the border into India and striking a fatal blow to the airship. She held her tongue and said, “Tell me.”
    “We have super-weapons that make us almost invincible,” he said.
    “Yes, Annapurnite-cannons,” she said.
    He gave a feeble laugh. “A crude term, devised by politicians for public consumption. No, these weapons are lances of light that melt our enemies and their armaments. And we have more! Devices that render people and things invisible, devices that allow us to read the thoughts of selected subjects, and many, many more...”
    Shaking her head, and wondering what to believe, she asked, “So where did all these wonders come from, if not from Annapurnite?”
    He licked his cracked lips. She took a glass of water from the bedside table and raised it to his mouth. He drank gratefully and sank back onto the pillow.
    “They come from far, far away, Jani-ji. So far away...”
    He seemed to find the concept amusing, and laughed to himself, then closed his eyes and fell into an exhausted sleep.
    Jani clutched his hand. “Oh, papa-ji...”
    A little later his breathing became ragged and, alarmed, Jani called out for Mr Vikram. Instantly he pulled the curtain aside, took one look at her father and hurried from the room.
    Over the course of the next ten minutes Dr Hammond and three nurses came and went from the room, consulted with Mr Vikram, and at last administered an injection to her father’s stomach. Dr Hammond placed the oxygen mask over her father’s thin lips and in due course his breathing grew easier.
    Alone with him in the curtained area, Jani clutched his hand and eventually, despite her best efforts, slipped into a fitful sleep.
    When she woke much later she checked her watch and saw that it was almost four o’clock.
    Her father’s breathing was shallow now, and something told her that he would not live to see the dawn.
    She held his hand and quietly sobbed.
    “Jani-ji,” her father whispered.
    “Papa!” She leaned over and kissed his papery cheek, shocked at how cold it was.
    “Brigadier Cartwright phoned me yesterday,” he murmured.
    “Cartwright?” She had trouble recollecting the name, out of context. Then she remembered and her blood ran cold.
    “He told me that he had interviewed you.”
    “That’s right.”
    “And... and he was concerned.”
    “Concerned?” Jani felt her pulse quicken. “About what?”
    “About you. About what happened to you. About what you told him had happened to you. You see, he did not believe you.”
    Jani swallowed. “He did not believe me about what, exactly?”
    “About you not witnessing... what happened to the Russians. He said that three dead Russian soldiers were found very close to you. He said it would have been impossible for you not to have witnessed what fate befell them.”
    She stroked her father’s hand. “Papa-ji, I saw something terrible in the debris of the airship – and I mean apart from all the death and destruction. I saw someone who had been imprisoned and tortured by the Russians.”
    Her father tried to raise his head from the pillow, his eyes wide as he stared at her. “A pale creature, hardly a man at all?”
    “That describes the poor creature I saw,” she said. “You know about him?” She shook her head. “But why was he imprisoned aboard the airship?”
    He squeezed