Prem set the pace. Not fast — you did not run on a wet mountain road carrying gear, because a twisted ankle at kilometer nine was worse than a slightly slower arrival at kilometer fourteen. You moved with purpose and you saved your energy for what the situation actually required, which he had been told was: a tilted bus on a rock shelf, thirty-two children who had been moved to higher ground, one teacher who had returned to the bus for the unconscious driver.
He had spoken to the base station twice on the way. He had also, after the second conversation, spoken directly to the school bus radio — the teacher had answered. The clarity of the signal had improved considerably once his team had rounded the gorge bend and the terrain between them and the bus had become more direct. He had spoken to her — Priya Nair, the name the base station had given him — and she had spoken to him with the exact, useful quality of a person who was managing something and was communicating what needed to be communicated without what didn't. The driver was unconscious but breathing. The children were on the slope, mobile, all thirty-two accounted for. The bus was still on the ledge. The water had risen to approximately six metres above the gorge floor, which put it about six metres below the ledge level. Buying time. Not a lot of time, but time.
"How far?" Geeta said, from behind him.
"Four hundred metres," he said. "We should be able to see the bus at the next bend."
They rounded the next bend. He stopped. He looked.
The bus was there — unmistakably yellow, unmistakably tilted, unmistakably on the rock shelf above the gorge which was unmistakably not the gorge floor because the gorge floor was now a brown, powerful, moving surface at least six metres below. The bus looked improbable in the way that things looked when they were in positions they should not be in and were staying there through the specific luck of exactly the right angle and exactly the right rock and exactly the right few metres of ledge width.
