The afternoon heat lay over the Canal Bungalow like a blanket. Inside, the study was a mess of papers, rough plans, and a surprisingly neat little sketch of a beehive.
Jinnah held the sketch between two fingers, looking at it as if it had personally offended his sense of dignity.
"You seem," he said inwardly, "unreasonably attached to bees, Mr. Game Developer."
Bilal laughed in his corner of Jinnah's mind.
Guilty. But hear me out before you dismiss the entire species, Sir.
Aloud, Jinnah said, "Explain, then. Why this insistence that bee-keeping be central to our estate? We have wheat, cotton, fodder, tenant rents… and you keep returning to these insects."
Why Bees?
Three reasons, Bilal said. One economic, one agricultural, one psychological.
"Enumerate," Jinnah murmured, more to soothe himself than to encourage the demon.
First, the economic one, Bilal said. Honey is compact, storable, and high value per unit weight. Grain is heavy; you need carts, guards, storage. Honey goes in jars. Less bulk, more rupees. Even in my time, people pay a premium for good honey. It travels well, it does not spoil easily. For an estate that wants cash without shipping a trainload every week, it is ideal.
"Very well," Jinnah said softly, pacing between desk and window. "And the agricultural reason?"
Bees don't just make honey, Bilal replied. They pollinate. They move pollen from flower to flower. That means better grain set, more fruit, more seed. Put hives near crops and yields rise without new land. Same fields, more production. No extra acreage, no extra canals — simply better use of what you already have.
"So," Jinnah said, "one investment, two returns. Honey in the jars, grain in the bins."
Actually three, Beeswax a commodity of peace and war. Bees are like small winged revenue clerks who work for flowers and never ask for promotion.
Jinnah's lips twitched despite himself.
"And the psychological reason?" he asked.
Bees are politically neutral, Bilal said. You can make a man suspicious of new laws, new flags, new speeches. But if his mustard crop goes from ten seers to twelve because of hives, he will not argue whether the bee is 'Congress' or 'League'. He will simply acknowledge that the arrangement works.
"So the hive," Jinnah said, "becomes proof. A demonstration of competence that requires no slogan."
Precisely. You are not converting anyone to an ideology. You are making their lives easier in a way they can touch and taste. That is the kind of loyalty that survives rumours.
Jinnah studied the sketch again: boxes, frames, little circles where Bilal had drawn bees as dots.
"And," he added dryly, "I suppose you will tell me that in your world, people pay fashionable prices for jars labelled 'Organic Canal's Honey'."
You joke, Bilal said, but yes. Honey with a story sells better than honey without one. 'From the canals of Sandalbar' will be a very good story, if we live long enough to bottle it.
Why the Farabis Must Rotate
Outside the window, two of the Farabi men crossed the yard. Jinnah watched them go.
"You also insist," he said inwardly, "on this rotation scheme. Farabis to manage different sectors in turn with building a stronghold in each village. Why not simply assign each man to one village permanently? It would be efficient. One man, one patch, one set of tenants to know."
That is exactly why we cannot, Bilal replied. Permanent posting is how a Farabi becomes a mini-zaildar. The whole point is to avoid creating new little tyrants with my name on the title deed.
"You assume my men will become corrupt," Jinnah said.
I assume they are human, Bilal answered. Leave a man too long with unchallenged power over the same forty huts and the same shopkeeper and he starts saying 'my' villagers, 'my' grain, 'my' canal turn. Favouritism, side deals, petty extortions. It does not arrive on the first day; it creeps. Rotation disturbs the soil before roots harden into claws.
"What, precisely, do you propose?" Jinnah asked. "This needs structure, not parables."
Divide the estate into sectors, Bilal said. Canal House sector, Bhagatpur sector, Chak 17-M sector, Station sector. Each Farabi patrol team takes one sector for a fixed term — say six months, perhaps a year. They keep logs, learn faces, build trust. At the end of the term, they rotate. Bhagatpur team goes to Station, Station to Chak 17-M, and so on.
"So no one," Jinnah said, "becomes permanently the 'Lord of Bhagatpur'."
Exactly. Custodians, not owners. Above them, you keep two or three of your sharpest men as an audit team. They do not belong to any one village. They roam. They check stores, talk to elders, compare what is written with what is whispered. If one squad behaves like saints on paper and devils in reality, the discrepancy will surface.
"That," Jinnah said slowly, "is not unlike the system by which the Service shuffles its own officers. They are transferred from district to district to avoid entanglements — at least in theory."
Yes, Bilal said. We are stealing the one sensible instinct of Empire and applying it to our own structure: power must move, or it stagnates.
"And rotation," Jinnah added, "trains them. A man who has worked in all sectors will understand the whole estate, not only his corner. Useful if we must promote some to higher responsibility later."
Now you are thinking like a designer, Bilal said, satisfied.
"I am thinking," Jinnah replied, "like someone who has watched too many petty tyrants grow in the cracks of the law. Very well. We shall rotate."
Rings Around the Bungalow
The next week, the Canal Bungalow echoed with hammer blows, shouted measurements, and the scrape of bricks being unloaded from bullock carts.
On the southern side of the compound, masons were laying foundations in neat lines.
"These," Jinnah said to Ahmed Khan, Harrington's liaison, as they walked along the half-marked plots, "will house the Farabi families. Close enough to Headquarters for briefings, not so close that the bungalow becomes a barracks."
Ahmed nodded, glancing at the plan.
"Two rooms per unit," he said. "Shared courtyard, a bit of storage. Women will settle better if there is a proper yard for cooking and washing."
"And beyond that ring," Jinnah continued, tapping the estate map, "one stronghouse in each village. Bhagatpur, Chak 17-M, Station Basti. Thick walls, solid doors, upper room for grain, ground floor for meetings and — in emergencies — shelter."
"Shelter, Sir?" Ahmed asked.
"Yes," Jinnah said. "Think ahead. There will be bad seasons. Floods. rumours. Perhaps worse. In panic, people run in all directions. Better they run to one place we control than scatter into the fields. The stronghouse must say, without words: 'If things go wrong, there is somewhere to go.'"
"And the grain upstairs?" Ahmed asked.
"Buffer stock," Jinnah replied. "Not to undercut the bazaar, but to prevent starvation in a hard month. Loans in kind, recorded properly, repayable when harvest allows. We will keep clear ledgers. No 'favour' grain, no hidden rents. If we prevent desperation, we prevent mobs."
Also, Bilal added, grain upstairs is harder for thieves to carry than grain scattered in every hut.
Ahmed's pencil moved over the paper.
"And on the roof?" he asked, pointing to one small square Bilal had drawn.
"There," Jinnah said, "goes the antenna."
Each stronghouse would hold:
A small receiver set with headphones and a coil. A more powerful transmitter kept locked, to be powered only in distress.
"Most days," Jinnah told D'Souza, "the receivers will simply listen. Weather, Lahore messages, estate notices. Once a week, each village sends a scheduled signal. If all is well, they tap the routine code. If there is trouble, the emergency set opens."
"We'll need simple code, Sir," D'Souza said. "Short, easy to remember."
"We shall work one out," Jinnah replied. "Different patterns for flood, for fire, for bandit movement, for mass illness. No ambiguity. If Bhagatpur taps the sign for 'fever and deaths', I want to know that it is not mere gossip."
Evelyn, listening from the verandah, nodded at that.
"If two villages send the same pattern for fever in one week," she said, "I want to be warned before the whole canal belt becomes my ward."
"And a code," Mary added, "for 'out of soap'."
They all laughed. Later, when the list was written, she quietly made sure a mark for soap found its way into the margin.
Water, Filters, and the Doctor's Obsessions
If Bilal's favourite word was "bees", Evelyn's was "water".
"This," she said, standing by the canal's edge with hands on hips, "is not drinking water. It is liquid disease."
"We can boil," Jinnah said.
"Boiling helps," she replied. "But they will not boil every drop. They will be tired, careless, in a hurry. In summer, they will drink straight from the canal or from puddles. If you want fewer fevers, you must change what they drink, not only how you scold them."
She's right, Bilal said. Clean water is the cheapest miracle you can buy in this century.
"Very well," Jinnah said. "What do you propose? I cannot conjure some miraculous machine from future."
"You can," Evelyn replied, "ask Harrington to find the best of what exists now. Slow sand filters. Ceramic candles. Settling tanks with proper drainage. Anything that produces water less likely to kill a child."
So, in his next letter to the Commissioner, Jinnah added a paragraph in his neat hand:
I require assistance in procuring three reliable water filtration units suitable for estate and village use:
one for the Canal Bungalow and Farabi quarters, one for Bhagatpur, one for station basti and one for Chak 17-M.
If your Public Works or Sanitary departments have tested designs or suppliers, I would prefer to use established methods rather than experiment blindly.
When Harrington read that alongside the earlier request about rifles and wireless, he felt, oddly, more at ease.
"He asks for arms," he said to Margaret, "and in the next line for water filters."
"Which," she replied, "sounds like a man building a settlement, not an uprising."
Public Works, mildly bewildered but cooperative, identified a Bombay firm importing slow-sand filter tanks: large cylinders with layers of sand and gravel, designed to be filled at the top and tapped at the bottom.
A month later, three such units arrived by train:
One installed in the Canal Bungalow courtyard under a shaded awning.
Evelyn personally supervised the first use.
"Water goes in here," she told the gathered villagers. "We let it settle. We draw only from this tap, not with your cups in the tank. If I see you drink straight from the canal, I will throw your lota back into it. Hard."
They laughed, thinking she spoke half in jest.
She did not.
Weapons, Revolvers, and Responsibilities
On the same day the Bhagatpur filter gave its first clear stream, a sealed wooden case arrived at the Canal Bungalow, escorted by a constable whose moustache outstripped his authority.
Harrington's note was wired ahead and clipped to the lid:
LICENSED ARMS – SANDALBAR ESTATE
Rifles (bolt-action): 30
Shotguns: 10
Revolvers: 3
All to be entered in district records under estate security and rural uplift programme as previously discussed.
Ammunition as per standard allotment, with provision for periodic review.
The crate was opened in the presence of:
Jinnah, Ahmed Khan, The Farabi havildar and Mary — at Evelyn's insistence: "I want to know what sort of holes I'll be patching later."
Inside lay thirty bolt-action rifles preserved in grease, ten sturdy shotguns, and three revolvers in a smaller box.
"Not toys," Evelyn said sharply, as one of the younger men eyed a rifle too eagerly. "These are last arguments, not first."
"We shall treat them," Jinnah said, "as both shield and signature. Every rifle has a number. Every number has a man. Every man has a record. Any bullet fired will be accounted for in this house, even if Government forgets to ask."
He lifted one revolver, weighing it in his hand, then set two aside — one for himself, one for Evelyn — and pushed the third back into the box.
"That one stays locked," he said. "Spare. Perhaps for Ahmed in time, if his duties demand it. But I will not arm more heads than I must."
Evelyn eyed the revolver meant for her.
"I am a doctor," she said.
"You are also," Jinnah replied calmly, "a woman who will walk alone between villages with medicine boxes in a district where forty men with old grievances might decide you are a useful hostage. I would prefer you have a final word if you need it."
She nodded, slowly.
"I will take it," she said. "And I will hope I never use it on anything except a snake."
Guns, filters, bees, Bilal muttered. For a lawyer who claims to be 'retiring', this is quite a tech tree.
"We are not building a siege," Jinnah said inwardly. "We are preparing for storms."
He watched as the havildar checked each rifle, calling out serial numbers. Ahmed recorded them under a careful heading:
SANDALBAR ESTATE – SECURITY & RURAL UPLIFT ARMS REGISTER
Outside the bungalow walls, children were already filling brass pots from the filtered taps. Under a neem tree, carpenters knocked together the first bee boxes, cursing mildly at Bilal's finicky measurements relayed through Ahmed.
And above it all, the skeleton of the wireless mast rose, piece by piece, into the Sandalbar sky