THE STERADIAN TRAIL: BOOK #0 OF THE INFINITY CYCLE Read Online Free PDF

semester,’ Lakshman said.
    ‘I was kidding,’ Joshua said. ‘The complexity of the Travelling Salesman Problem goes up steeply with the size of the problem, sort of like the old Indian grains-on-the-chessboard story; no algorithm can rein that in. If you have ten nodes to visit you have ten factorial, or millions of possible routings to consider; if you have fifteen nodes, they run into the billions; by twenty you have trillions. Even the world’s most powerful computers can’t cope with that kind of exponential growth in complexity, so it makes no sense for you to waste your time on it. Just send me what you’ve got here,’ he pointed at the board, ‘and I’ll take it from there.’
    ‘Yes sir.’
    ‘When you email me, do me a favour and cc it to my personal ID as well – it’s on the back of the card I gave you. I have tons of emails sitting in my MIT inbox I still need to plough through; I don’t want yours to get lost in the deluge.’
    ‘Okay sir,’ Divya said. ‘I’ll send it to both IDs.’
    Divya took leave of Joshua and Lakshman and bounded up the steps, her face glowing like a beetroot.
    ‘Well, Lax,’ Joshua said once Divya was out of earshot, ‘my last day in India has turned out to be the best. I wasn’t too keen on this talk to start with, but you really made it worth it. I owe you one.’
    ‘Hey, I didn’t do anything,’ Lakshman said.
    ‘We can squabble about it over beer. The dinner plan’s still on, right?’
    ‘Any plan that involves beer is always on,’ Lakshman said. They wiped the boards clean and made their way out to execute it.
    My last day in India has turned out to be the best.
    Joshua was going to regret crowing like that before long. Wheels were already in motion to prove him wrong on both counts: the day was neither going to be his last in India nor his very best.
     

 
    5
    T he passport confiscator led Joshua from the teeming chaos of the departure area to a relatively calmer spot a few yards away. After looking around and making sure there was no one else nearby to disturb them or listen in, he motioned away the four cops escorting Joshua. Although the officer looked a bit younger than the other cops, the flippant manner in which he waved them away and the servility with which they responded told Joshua that he held a fairly senior position. Curious, Joshua ran his eyes over his badge. It read: ‘Joyshankar Banerjee I.P.S.’.
    ‘Sorry sir, you cannot catch your flight today,’ the officer said to Joshua, firmly but politely.
    ‘Why not?’ Joshua asked.
    ‘We have strict orders.’
    ‘From where?’
    ‘You’ll find out soon.’
    ‘Why can’t you tell me?’
    ‘Sorry sir. We’re not privy to that information. All we know is, we have to stop you from boarding your flight; that’s all.’ Joshua was now convinced that Banerjee was placed fairly high up the hierarchy. He had to be, to use lines like ‘not privy to that information’.
    As Joshua mulled how to pry Banerjee’s clamp-stiff lips open, he noticed a cop with a trademark potbelly hurtling towards them, gasping for breath. He saluted Banerjee and said something in Tamil. Joshua could catch just a few stray words: Ceegee . . . parking . . . wait . . .
    ‘Can you come with us?’ Banerjee said to Joshua. ‘We’ll take you to someone who can answer your questions.’
    Three more cops joined in and they escorted Joshua to the far end of the airport’s parking lot.
    This part of the parking lot stood in stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of the arrival-departure area. Plunged in eerie silence, filled with banks of neatly parked Ambassadors, Joshua felt as if he were entering a cemetery at midnight.
    The monotony of the creamy Ambassadors was broken by what looked like a shiny black marvel of American engineering: a limousine custom-fitted with a right-hand-drive. Standing by its side was a tall Caucasian woman in her early fifties, dressed in a formal suit, her blonde hair flowing in what