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“All the same, it’s going,” interrupted Salar the bicycle repairman. “We should find out more.”

“You’re right, Salar,” the sorcerer Nilamber agreed, fiddling nervously with his goatee.

A voice then rose up from the ground. Rahul had just arrived on his wheeled board. He had taken the time to arrange his bun and put on his necklaces. “Look here, my friends, why does that siren frighten you?” he asked. “We hear it nearly every day!”

“Yes, but tonight it’s sounding without stopping,” interjected Sheela, Padmini’s mother, visibly disturbed.

The crowd was growing by the minute. Tousle-haired and barefoot, people who had been rudely awoken were arriving from Chola and Jai Prakash. Old Prema Bai’s cry had spread from alley to alley.

Ratna Nadar, Padmini’s father, bent down to Rahul. “Do you know what they make in that factory of Carbide’s?” he inquired.

Rahul appeared surprised by the question. “We should be asking you. You’ve been working there every day for two years.”

The little man appeared to think, then shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. “No, I’ve no idea. No one’s ever told us.”

Rahul moved his plank forward into the middle of the assembly. His reputation as the best informed man in the bustee commanded attention.

“Well, I’m going to be the one to tell you what Carbide is making on the Kali Grounds,” he declared. “I’ve asked some big shots and I can assure you there’s nothing to be afraid of. Carbide makes medicine for sick plants. Small white granules to get rid of the insects that attack them and steal the harvest off the poor bastards who planted them. And little white granules aren’t dangerous to anybody. Except the blasted little creatures in the plants.”

Ratna Nadar could still see the hordes of black aphids that had devoured his field in Mudilapa. “You mean to say that all those pipes, all that machinery, all those sacks of powder that go off on trucks, are just to kill those bloody little …” His throat constricted with emotion.

“You’ve got it, brother,” confirmed Rahul. Pointing a bejeweled hand at the illuminated factory, he assumed a solemn tone, “You can go back to bed, friends. That siren isn’t for us!”

Scarcely had the legless cripple finished speaking than five men surged out of the darkness beside the railway track. Haggard, ghastly, exhausted, with their eyes starting out of their heads, they looked like specters in a horror film. One of them was dragging an unconscious comrade. Other escapees came up behind that first group.

“Get out of here! There’s been an accident,” gasped a man who had stopped to recover his breath. “The plant’s full of gas. If the wind starts to blow in this direction, you’re all done for.”

Belram Mukkadam raised his stick above the heads about him. He had tied his gamcha, a cotton scarf, to it and was waving it about like a flag.

“Let’s move out!” he cried. “Follow me! Quickly!”

The semblance of a procession formed behind him. No one panicked because, for all the howling of the siren, it was still difficult to believe in the danger. Before leaving, old Prema Bai lit incense before the statue of the god on the small altar at the end of the alleyway. It was then that a potbellied individual with a shaggy beard and a scarlet turban appeared. With the help of his two sons, the moneylender Pulpul Singh was carrying his most precious possession. He would never have left home without the safe to which he alone knew the combination.

The frequent soundings of the plant’s alarm siren did not seem to shake the confidence of the engineers running the factory. As for the local government authorities, they confined themselves to writing to the two trade union leaders to assure them that the safety of Carbide workers “would be subject to close investigation at the opportune moment.”

With the exception of the unfortunate Ashraf, the accidents had claimed no deaths either inside or outside the factory. At Carbide, these accidents were seen, therefore, as the teething pains experienced by any new plant. The two trade unionists did not share this opinion. They