River Of Gods

by Ian McDonald

  8. PICK-UP HERE.

  She underlines the OK twice.

  Immediately outside in the corridor is a sight that instantly detumesces Vishram’s good humour: Govind, in his too-tight suit, with his phalanx of lawyers, bowling down the corridor as if he owned the place. Govind spies his younger brother, opens his mouth to greet, damn, bless, chide - Vishram doesn’t care, never hears because he calls out, loudly,

  ‘Mr Surjeet, could you please call security.’ Then, as the Director talks into his palmer, Vishram holds up one single, commanding finger in front of his brother and his crew. ‘You, say nothing. This is not your place. This is my place.’ Security arrives; two very large Rajputs in red turbans. ‘Please escort Mr Ray from the building and scan his face for the security system. He is not to return without my express, written permission.’

  The Rajputs seize Govind, one on each arm. It gives Vishram’s heart a pile of pleasure to watch them march him at a fast trot down the corridor.

  ‘Hear me, hear me!’ Govind shouts back over his shoulder. ‘He will wreck it like he has wrecked everything else he has ever been given. I know him of old. The leopard cannot change his spots, he will ruin you all, destroy this great company. Don’t listen to him, he knows nothing. Nothing!’

  ‘I’m so sorry about that,’ Vishram says when the doors have sealed behind his still-protesting brother. ‘Anyway, shall we continue, or have I seen everything?’

  It had begun at breakfast.

  ‘Just what have I inherited?’ Vishram asked Marianna Fusco through mouthfuls of kitchiri at his breakfast briefing on the east balcony.

  ‘Basically, you’ve got the research and development division.’ She laid out the documents around his greasy plate like tarot cards.

  ‘So, no money and a pile of responsibility.’

  ‘I don’t think this is something your father thought up on a whim.’

  ‘How much did you know about this?’

  ‘What, who, where and when.’

  ‘You’re missing a “w” there.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone understands that “w”.’

  I can, Vishram thought. I know how good it is to walk away from expectations and obligations. I know how frightening and freeing it is to go out there with nothing but a begging bowl, chancing people’s laughter.

  ‘You could have told me.’

  ‘And breach my professional confidentiality?’

  ‘You are a cold, hard woman, Marianna Fusco.’

  He forked down another load of kitchiri. Ramesh wandered into the geometrical planting of English roses, now crisped and withering in their third year of alien drought. His hands were folded behind him, a posture as ancient and familiar as any other element of the Shanker Mahal. Vishram-aged-six had mocked his older brother, stalking after him, hands clamped behind back, lips sucked in in abstract concentration, head up looking around for wonder in the world.

  What about those East Asian trips? he wondered. Those Bangkok girls who could do and be anything you imagined. He felt a small stirring beneath his navel, a twitch of hormone. But it would be too easy. No hunt there, no play, no testing of the will and wit, no unspoken contract of mutual recognition that both were engaged on a game with its ploys and stages and rules. A warm wind with the smell of the city on it tugged at the documents of incorporation. Vishram deployed cups and saucers and cutlery to hold them in their proper places. Ramesh, who had been trying to smell the desiccated roses, looked up at the warm touch on his face and was genuinely surprised to see his kid brother and his lady lawyer on the terrace.

  ‘Ah, there you are, I was half-hoping to find you.’

  ‘Wretched coffee?’

  ‘Oh, please, yes. And there wouldn’t be any more of that, would there?’

  Vishram nodded to the servant. Wonderful, how quickly you settle back into the way of service. Ramesh poked at his plate of kitchiri with his fork. ‘Why did he give it to me?’ he said abruptly. ‘I don’t want it, I don’t even understand it. I never did. Govind was always the one with the head for business; still is. I’m an astrophysicist; I know deep space organic molecular clouds. I do not know electricity generating.’

  The split was clever, Shakespearean. Ramesh would have wanted the unworldliness of blue-sky thinking. He had been given the meat and muscle of the generating division. Govind’s ambitions would have been for the core infrastructure. Instead he had been handed control of the distribution network. Wires and cables and pylons. And Number Three Son, the attention seeker, the grab-ass, had gear so arcane he didn’t even know if it did anything. Casting against type. Evil old sadhu.

  The old man had left before the dawn. His clothes were neatly hangered in the wardrobe. His palmer and ’hoek sat square on the pillow with his wallet and his universal card beside them. His shoes, well polished, were arranged toe-tofootboard at a perfect right angle. His silver-backed hairbrush and comb were caught together in their final kiss on the dressing table. Kukunoor, khidmutgar now Old Shastri had left on the pilgrim path, showed all this to Vishram with the same dispassionate sense of disposable history he had seen in Scotland’s historic homes and castles. He did not know where his master had gone. Their mother did not know either, though Vishram suspected some secret conduit of communication to monitor his legacy. The company would always be the company.

  ‘What are you telling me, Ram?’

  ‘It’s not for me.’

  ‘What do you want, Ram?’

  He toyed with his fork.

  ‘Govind has made me an offer.’

  ‘He didn’t waste much time.’

  ‘He thinks it’s disastrous, splitting generation from transmission. The Americans and Europeans have been competing for years to get their hands on Ray Power. Now we are divided and weak and it’s only a matter of time before someone approaches one of us with an irresistible offer.’

  ‘I’m sure he made a very convincing case. I can’t help but wonder where his money’s coming from for this great display of fraternal solidarity.’

  Marianna Fusco’s palmer was already open.

  She said, ‘His annual reports are filed with Companies House but his profits are down for the fifth quarter in a row and his bankers are getting edgy. I would say he’s looking protective bankruptcy in the next couple of years.’

  ‘So if it’s not Govind’s, I think you have to ask yourself, whose money is it?’

  Ramesh pushed the plate of kitchiri away from him.

  ‘Could you buy me out?’

  ‘Govind at least has a company and a credit rating. I have a joke-book and a pile of unopened envelopes with little cellophane windows.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘We will run the company. It’s a strong company. It’s Ray Power, we’ve grown up with it, we know it like we know this house. But I’ll tell you one thing, Ram; I will not let you blame me for what happens. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got employees to meet.’

  Marianne Fusco rose with him, nodded to Ramesh as they entered the cool dark of the house. Monkeys came skirling down the trees hungry for leftover kitchiri.

  Vishram smelled Govind before he saw him reflected in the vanity mirror.

  ‘You know, I could have got you any God’s amount of decent aftershave from London duty free. You still on that Arpal stuff? Is it some national loyalty thing, the national smell of Bharat?’

  Govind slid into the reflection beside Vishram as he adjusted the hang of his cuffs. Good suit. Looking better than you, fat boy.

  ‘And since when did we start to walk in without knocking?’ Vishram added.

  ‘Since when has family needed to knock?’

  ‘Since they all became big businessmen. And by the way, I won’t be staying here tonight. I’m moving out to a hotel.’ Cuffs right. Lapels right. Collar right. Bless those Chinese tailors. ‘So, make your offer.’

  ‘Ramesh has spoken to you, then.’

  ‘Did you really think he wouldn’t? I hear you’ve a liquidity problem.’


  Uninvited, Govind seated himself on the edge of the bed. Vishram noticed in the mirror that his brother’s feet did not quite reach the ground.

  ‘You may find this hard to believe, but all I want to do is keep the company together.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  Still Vishram kept his back turned.

  ‘EnGen have made no secret that they want Ray. Even when our father was CEO, they had made approaches. They will have it, sooner or later. We cannot hope to stand against the Americans. They will have us in the end, and what we, between us, have to decide is if they pick us off one by one, or take us in one big mouthful. I know what I prefer. I know what is better for the company our father built. There is strength in unity.’

  ‘Our father built an Indian business in an Indian way.’

  ‘My brother, the social conscience?’ In those five words Vishram knew that he and his brother were eternal enemies. Rama and Ravanna. ‘Those old women and Grameen bankers will be the first to turn on you when the offers come in,’ Govind continued. ‘They speak fine and noble but offer then a purseful of dollars and see the solidarity of the poor then. They know business better than you, Vishram.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Vishram said softly. His brother frowned.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘I said, I don’t think so. In fact, you can say whatever you like now, and I will go against you. That’s the way it’s going to be from now on. Whatever you do, whatever you say, whatever offer you make or deal you strike, I will oppose it. You may be wrong, you may be right, it may make me a billion dollars, but I am going to oppose it. Because now I can, and now you can’t do anything or run to anyone or issue any older-brother orders, because I will still own one-third of Ray Power. Now, you’re in my bedroom and you didn’t knock and you’re certainly not here by invitation, but I’m going to overlook it because this is the last night I stay in this room, in this house and I have work to do now.’

  It was only as he settled into the airco-cooled leather of the car that Vishram noticed the little crescents of blood in his palms; the stigmata of clenched nails.

  It’s a dire Italian but it’s the only Italian. Nostalgic already for the cooking of the Glasgow Italians, a mighty race, Vishram had lit upon the prospect of pasta and ruffino before he remembered that Varanasi has no rooted Italian community, has no Italian in its genes at all. The staff is all local. The music is compiled from the charts. The wine is overheated and tired from the long drought. There is something on the menu called tikka-pasta.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s so terrible,’ he apologises to Sonia Yaday.

  She struggles with overcooked spaghetti.

  ‘I’ve never eaten Italian before.’

  ‘You’re not eating Italian now.’

  She has made an effort for this dire dinner. She has done something with her hair, hung a little gold and amber around her. Arpege 27: that’ll have been some European duty-free somewhere. He likes it that she has worn a business sari and not an ugly Western-style suit. Vishram sits back in his chair, touches his fingertips together, then realises he looks too much like a James Bond villain and unfolds.

  ‘How much could you reasonably expect a liberal arts boy to understand about zero-point power?’

  Sonia Yadav pushes her plate away from her with evident relief.

  ‘Okay, well for starters, it’s not strictly zero-point as most people think of it.’ Sonia Yadav has a slight pucker between the eyes when she is saying or thinking or contemplating something difficult. It’s very cute. ‘Do you remember I said back in the lab about cold and hot? The classic zero-point theories are cold theories. Now, our theories suggest they won’t work. Can’t work: there’s a ground-state wall you just can’t get around. You don’t beat the second law of thermodynamics.’

  Vishram lifts a breadstick, breaks it theatrically in two.

  ‘I got the cold and hot bit . . .’

  ‘Okay. I’ll try. And by the way, I saw that thing with the breadstick in the remake of the Pyar Diwana Hota Hai.’

  ‘Little more wine, then?’

  She takes the refill but doesn’t touch it. Wise woman. Vishram settles back with the traumatised Chianti in the ancient ritual of listening to a woman tell a story.

  It’s a strange and magical tale as full of contradictions and impossibilities as any legend from the Mahabharata. There are multiple worlds and entities that can be two contradictory things at the same time. There are beings that can never be fully known or predicted, that once entangled remain linked though they be removed to opposite ends of the universe so that what happens to one is instantly felt by the other. Vishram watches Sonia’s demonstration of the double- slit experiment with a fork, two capers and ripples in the tablecloth and thinks, what a strange and alien world you inhabit, woman. The quantum universe is as capricious and uncertain and unknowable as the triple world that rested on the back of the great turtle, ruled by gods and demons.

  ‘Because of the uncertainty principle, there are always virtual particle pairs being born and vanishing again at all possible energy levels. So, in effect, in every cubic centimetre of empty space, there is theoretically an infinite amount of energy, if we can just stop the virtual particles disappearing.’

  ‘I have to tell you, this liberal arts boy doesn’t understand a word of this.’

  ‘No one does. Not deep down; understand as we understand understanding. All we have a description of how it works, and it works better than any theory we’ve ever come up with, and that’s including M-Star theory. It’s like the mind of Brahma; no one can understand the thoughts of a creator deity, but that doesn’t mean that there is no creation.’

  ‘For a scientist, you use a lot of religious metaphors.’

  ‘This scientist believes we live in a Hindu universe.’ Sonia Yadav presses her point. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not like those Christian fundamentalist creation scientists - that’s not science; it denies empiricism and the very fact the universe is knowable. Creationists adapt the empirical evidence to suit their particular scriptural interpretation. I think what I think because of the empirical evidence. I’m a rational Hindu. I’m not saying I believe in actual gods, but quantum information theory and M-star theory teach you the connectedness of all things and how properties emerge that can never be predicted by any of the constituent elements and that the very large and the very small are two sides of the same superstring. Do I need to tell a Ray about Hindu philosophy?.’

  ‘Maybe this Ray. So you’ll not be pulling N.K. Jivanjee on his rath yatra.’ He’d seen the photographs on the evening news. Hell of a scoop.

  ‘I’ll not be pulling, but I might be in the crowd. And anyway, it’s got an ecodiesel engine in it.’

  Vishram sits back in his chair, pulls at his lower lip as he does when observations and turns of phrase come flocking and cawing into a comedy routine.

  ‘So tell me; you haven’t got a bindi and you’re out without a chaperone; how does this all sit with N.K. Jivanjee and the mind of Brahma?’

  Sonia Yadav does the pucker again.

  ‘I will say this straight and simple. Jati and varna have benighted our nation for three thousand years. Caste was never a Dravidian concept - it was those Aryans and their obsession with division and power. That’s why the British loved it here - they’re still fascinated with anything to do with this country. The class divide is their national narrative.’

  ‘Not the bit of Britain I was in,’ Vishram asides.

  ‘For me, N.K. Jivanjee is about national pride, about Bharat for Bharat, not sold by the kilo to the Americans. About Hindu zero-point energy. And in the twenty first century, no woman needs a chaperone; and anyway, my husband trusts me.’

  ‘Ah,’ Vishram says, hoping his crestfallenness doesn’t carry. ‘So, M-star theory?’

  As far as he can get it, it’s like this. First there was string theory, which Vishram has heard of, something to do with everything being notes from
vibrating strings. Very pretty. Very musical. Very Hindu. Then there was M-theory, which attempted to resolve the contradictions of string theory but which reached in different directions, like the legs of a starfish. The theoretical centre arrived last, in the late twenties in the shape of M-Star theory . . .

  ‘I can see the star, but what’s the M for?’

  ‘That’s a mystery,’ Sonia Yadav smiles. They’re on Stregas now. The liqueur holds up well against the climate.

  In M-star theory the wrappings and foldings of the primal strings in eleven dimensions into membranes create the polyverse of all possible universes, all with fundamental properties differing from those experienced by humans.

  ‘Everything is there,’ says Sonia Yaday. ‘Universes with an extra time dimension, two-dimensional universes - there’s no gravity in two-dimensional universes. Universes where self-organisation and life is a basic property of space-time . . . An infinite number of universes. And that’s the difference between cold and hot zero-point theory.’