THE WIRELESS WOMAN Calcutta, 14 August 1942 ◆ Leela Mukherjee first heard the future as an argument between two dead men. One voice belonged to the British district controller at Diamond Harbour, who had been dead for three weeks according to the underground newspapers. The other belonged to a German signals officer broadcasting from somewhere beyond Rangoon. They spoke on a frequency reserved for weather balloons, using a code Leela had helped design before she resigned from

THE PALACE OF UNFINISHED WONDERS The crooked path led through places that refused to remain places. A desert became a library whenever we looked away. A staircase climbed into its own pocket. Mountains exchanged positions because one had a better view of the river. At last we reached the Palace of Unfinished Wonders. It had seven towers, eight shadows and no visible entrance. The silver hiccup bounced against a wall. HIC! A door appeared. The song of the unripe star made it g

THE MACHINE THAT KNEW EVERYTHING EXCEPT WHY The city of Ganakpur had no arguments. Its streets were swept before dust could settle, its clocks struck together, and even the pigeons appeared to land according to a timetable. Shopkeepers opened their shutters at the same second, pedestrians crossed roads in matching rows, and nobody stopped in the middle of a sentence to search for a better word. Nobody needed to choose anything because the Great All-Knowing Machine chose eve