River Of Gods

by Ian McDonald

  ‘I’ll survive, thank you,’ says Vishram Ray. The first of the champagne arrives. Vishram assumes it’s the first. He’ll make that first last, although he’s supposed to abuse the hospitality. It is cold and very very good and drinking airborne has always made Vishram Ray feel like a god. The bastis spread under him, multicoloured plastic roofs so tight together they look like a cloth spread on the ground for a feast. The tilt-jet follows the line of the river to the edge of Patna airspace, then swings south. Vishram should read his briefing but Bharat bedazzles him. The titanic conurbation of slums breaks up in a weave of fields and villages that rapidly turns from tired yellow to drought white as the river’s influence diminishes. It would have looked little different two thousand years ago and were Vishram Ray indeed a god passing across holy Bharat to battle the rakshasas of the black south. Then his eyes catch on a power line and a stand of wind-turbines turning sluggishly in the heavy dry air. Ray Power turbines. His brother’s turbines. He looks out at the yellow haze of the horizon. Does he imagine a line of shadow in the brown high-atmospheric smog, the skirmish line of an advance of clouds? The monsoon, at last? The burned stone of the plain deepens to beige, to yellow, to outcrops of green trees as the land rises. The tiltjet rises with the edge of a plateau and Vishram is over high forest. To the west rises a line of smoke, drifting northward on the wind. The green is a lie, this high forest is dry, fire-hungry after three years of drought. Vishram finishes his champagne - flat and hand-warm now - as the seat-belt sign lights.

  ‘Shall I take that?’ the hostess says, too close again. Vishram imagines a tic of irritation on that perfect, made-up face. I resisted your seductions. The tilt-jet leans into a landing spiral. A change in turbine pitch tells him the engines are swivelling into landing mode but looking down Vishram can see nothing that appears like an airport. The tilt-jet drifts across the forest canopy, so low its jet-wash sends the leaves raving and storming. Then the engine roar peaks, Vishram drops into the canopy, birds scatter on every side in a silent explosion of wings and he is down with a gentle bounce. The engines ebb to a whine. Assam girl is doing the thing with the door. Heat floods in. She beckons. ‘Mr Ray.’ At the foot of the steps is an old Rajput with a great white moustache and a turban so tight Vishram feels himself developing a sympathetic migraine. Ranked behind him are a dozen men in khaki with bush hats bent severely up at one side and heavy assault rifles at the slope.

  ‘Mr Ray, you are most welcome to Palamau Tiger Sanctuary,’ says the Rajput with a bow.

  Assam girl stays with the tilt-jet. The hats carrying rifles spread out on all sides as the Rajput guides Vishram away from the ’plane. The ship has come down in a circle of bare dirt in a dense stand of bamboo and scrub. A sandy path leads into the trees. The path is lined with what seems to Vishram an excessive number of solidly built wood shelters. None is more than a panicked sprint away.

  ‘What are they for?’ Vishram asks.

  ‘In case of attack by tigers,’ the Rajput answers.

  ‘I’d imagine anything that could eat us is kilometres away by now, the noise we made coming in.’

  ‘Oh, not at all sir. They have to learned to associate the sound of aeroplane engines.’

  With what? Vishram feels he should ask, but can’t quite bring himself to. He’s a city boy. City. Boy. Hear that you man-eaters? Full of nasty additives.

  The air is clean and smells of growing and death and the memory of water. Dust and heat. The path curves so that in a few footsteps the landing pad is invisible. By the same camouflage the lodge conceals itself until the last stride. One moment it is green and leaves and rustling stems; then the trunks turn into stilts and ladders and staircases and there is a great wooden game lodge strung out across the treetops, like a galleon lifted by a monsoon and dropped in the forest.

  White men in comfortable and therefore expensive suits hang over the balcony rail, greeting him with waves and smiles.

  ‘Mr Ray! Come aboard!’

  They line up at the top of the wooden companionway as if receiving a boarding admiral. Clementi, Arthurs, Weitz and Siggurdson. They have firm handshakes and make good eye contact and express Business School bluff cheer. Vishram does not doubt that they would bend you over and stick a mashie niblock up your hoop at golf or any other muy macho power game. His theory of golf is, never play any sport that requires you to dress as your grandfather. He can see quite a nice little routine falling together about golf; if his were the kind of life that any longer contemplated stand-up routines.

  ‘Isn’t this just the greatest place for lunch?’ the tall, academic-looking one, Arthurs, says as he escorts Vishram Ray along wooden walkways, spiralling higher and higher into the roof canopy. Vishram squints down. The men with rifles look up at him. ‘Such a pity that Bhagwandas here tells us we’ve almost no chance of seeing a tiger.’ He has the nasal, slightly honking Boston accent. He’ll be the accountant then, Vishram decides. In Glasgow they had said, always have Catholic lawyers and Protestant accountants. They pass between rows of elegantly pyjamaed waiters in Rudyard Kipling turbans. Double mahogany doors carved with battle scenes from the Mahabharata are thrown open, a maitre d’ leads them to the meal, a sunken dining pit with cushions and a low table that would be the acme of kitsch but for the view out under the eaves through the panoramic windows to the waterhole. The verge is puddled to mud but Vishram thinks he sees chital sip nervously from the dirty brown water, ears swivelling on perpetual alert. He thinks of Varanasi, her vile waters and her radar defences.

  ‘Sit, sit,’ insists Clementi, a wide, dark-haired man, sallow as an Indian and already developing a blue chin. The Westerners adjust themselves with some huffing and laughing. Punkah fans wave overhead, redistributing the heat. Vishram seats himself comfortably, elegantly on the low divan. Maitre d’ brings bottled water. Saiganga. Ganges water. Vishram Ray raises his glass.

  ‘Gentlemen, I am entirely at your mercy.’

  They laugh over-appreciatively.

  ‘We’ll claim your soul later,’ says Weitz, who is the one who obviously never had to try too hard in Junior High, High, College Sports and Business Law School. Vishram’s eye for an audience notes that Siggurdson, the big cadaverous one, finds this marginally less funny than the others. The Born-Again; the one with the money.

  Lunch comes on thirty tiny thalis. It is of that exquisite simplicity that is always so much more expensive than any lavishness. The five men pass the dishes between them, murmuring soft alleluias of appreciation at each subtle combination of vegetables and spices. Vishram notices that they eat Indian style without self-consciousness. Their Marianna Fuscos have even drilled them on which hand to use. But for the quiet epiphanies of flavour and mutual encouragements to try a taste of this, a morsel of that, the lunch is conducted in silence. Finally the thirty silver thalis are empty. The maitre d’s boys flurry in like doves to clear and the men settle back on to their embroidered bolsters.

  ‘So, Mr Ray, without wasting too many words, we’re interested in your company.’ Siggurdson speaks slowly, a measured tread of words like a buffalo drive, inviting dangerous underestimation.

  ‘Ah, if only it were all mine to sell,’ Vishram says. He wishes he hadn’t taken a side of the table all to himself now. Every head is turned to him now, every body-language focused on him.

  ‘Oh, we know that,’ says Weitz. Arthurs chips in,

  ‘You’ve got a nice little middle-size power-generation and distribution company; good build-up, rudimentary semi-feudal ownership model and you really should have diversified years ago to maximise shareholder value. But you guys do things differently here, I recognise that. I don’t understand that, but then there’s a lot of things about this place that frankly make no sense to me at all. Maybe you’re a little over-capitalised and you do have way too much invested in social capital - your R&D budget would raise eyebrows at home, but you’re in pretty good shape. Maybe not planet-beating, not sector-leading, but good Little League.’

  ‘Nic
e of you to say so,’ Vishram says which is all the venom he can permit himself in this teak arena - he knows that they want to niggle him, nettle him, needle him into a careless comment. He looks at his hands. They are steady on the glass as they were always steady on the mike. It’s no different from dealing with hecklers.

  Siggurdson rests his big fists on the table, leans forward over them. He means to intimidate.

  ‘I don’t think you quite appreciate the seriousness of what we are saying. We know your father’s company better than he knows it himself. His move was abrupt but not altogether unexpected: we have models. They are good models. They predict with an acceptable degree of accuracy. This conversation would be happening whatever he decided with regard to you. That this conversation is taking place here is a reflection of how much we know not just about Ray Power, but about you, Mr Ray.’

  Clementi draws a cigar case from inside his jacket. He flips it open. Little beautiful black Cuban cigarillos like bullets in a magazine. Vishram’s saliva glands stab with hungry pain. Lovely smokes.

  ‘Who’s backing you?’ he asks with fake nonchalance. He knows they can see through it like a gauze veil. ‘EnGen?’

  Siggurdson deals him a long stupid-son look.

  ‘Mr Ray.’

  Arthurs moistens his lip with his tongue, a tiny, delicate pink darting dab, like a tiny snake lodged in the crevices of his palate.

  ‘We are a registered acquisitions arm of a large transnational concern.’

  ‘And what is that large transnational’s concern in the research division of Ray Power? Might it be anything to do with the results we’ve been getting in the zero-point lab? Results that are turning in neat little positives where everyone else’s are handing back big red negatives?’

  ‘We’ve heard rumours to that effect,’ says Weitz and Vishram decides that he is the cortex behind the whole operation. Arthurs the money man, Siggurdson the baron, Clementi the enforcer.

  ‘More than rumours,’ Vishram says. ‘But the zero point is not for sale.’

  ‘I think perhaps you may have misunderstood me,’ Siggurdson says slowly, ponderously. ‘We don’t want to buy your company outright. But if the results you’ve been getting are reproducible on a commercial scale, this is a very exciting area of potential high yield. This is an area we would be interested in investing in. What we want, Mr Ray, is to buy a share in your company. It would be enough money to run a full-scale demonstration of the hot-zero-point technology.’

  ‘You don’t want to buy me out?’

  ‘Mr Siggurdson said no,’ says Clementi tetchily. Siggurdson nods. He has a smile like a Minnesota winter.

  ‘Ah. I think I have misunderstood you. Could you excuse me one moment, gentlemen? I have to go to the snanghar.’

  Enthroned among the exotic wood panels, Vishram slips his ‘hoek behind his ear and flicks open the palmer. He’s about to call up Inder when the paranoia strikes. Plenty of time for these men in suits to have bugged the gents. He calls up a mail aeai, raises his hand like a pianist, ready to type air. They could have bindicams. They could have movement sensors that read the flexing of his fingers. They could have nanochips that read the gurglings of his palmer; they could have sanyassins looking into the corners of his soul. Vishram Ray settles on the polished mahogany ring and zips off a query to Inder. Inder-in-the-head is back within seconds; head and shoulders materialising over the toilet paper holder on the back of the door.

  She reels out names and connections Vishram knows only from the pink pages and money sections he would click past on his way to the entertainment listings, attention only caught by the unintentionally ridiculous corporate titles. He thinks of the khaki men with the straitly-tilted bush-hats and assault rifles. Hey guys, you’re in the wrong place. The tigers are up here.

  He types, HYPOTHETICAL: WHY WOULD THEY WANT MY COMPANY?

  There is an un-aeaily pause. When Inder speaks next, Vishram knows that it is the flesh and bone.

  ‘To tie you up forever in due diligence clauses, with the eventual aim of gaining full control of the zero-point project.’

  Vishram sits on the warm mahogany seat and the wood beneath and around him seems sweltering and oppressive, a coffin buried in summer earth. It is going to be like this from now on.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says aloud. Then he washes his hands to fix his alibi and walks back to the men around the table.

  ‘Sorry to be so long; funny, but I haven’t re-adjusted to the diet yet.’ He sits down, crosses his legs nimbly, comfortably. ‘Anyway, I’ve had a think about your offer . . .’

  ‘Take your time,’ Clementi suggests. ‘This isn’t the sort of decision to rush. Take a look at our proposal, then get back to us.’ He pushes a plastic wallet of high-gloss documents across the table. But Weitz sits back, detached, planning permutations. He knows, Vishram thinks.

  ‘Thanks, but I’m not going to need any more time and I don’t want to waste any more of yours. I am not going to accept your offer. I realise that I owe you some kind of explanation. It isn’t going to make much sense to you; but the main reason is my father wouldn’t want me to do it. He was as hard-headed a businessman as any of you here and he wasn’t scared of money, but Ray Power is first and foremost an Indian company and because it’s an Indian company, it has values and morals and ethics that are quite alien to the way you do business in the West. It’s not racism or anything like that, it’s just the way we work in Ray Power and our two systems are incompatible. The second reason is that we don’t need your money. I’ve seen the zero-point field myself.’ He touches a finger to the flaking corner of his eye. ‘I know you’ve been politely not staring at this; but that’s the seal of approval. None genuine without this mark. I’ve seen it, gentlemen. I’ve seen another universe and I’ve been burned by its light.’ Then the rush comes, that moment when you go off script. Head reeling with adrenaline, Vishram Ray says, ‘In fact, we’re going public with a full-scale demonstration within the next two weeks. And by the way, I gave up smoking three weeks ago.’

  After that there is coffee and very good armagnac, a drink Vishram knows he will never be able to take again without a freight of memory, but the talk is polite and mannered and dies quickly in the way of enemies with etiquette. Vishram wants to be out of there, out from the wood and the glass and the hunting creatures. He wants to be on his own in a place he can enjoy the fierce, intimate burn of a fine deed well done. His first executive decision, and he knows he made it right. Then hands are shaken and leaves taken but as the Major and his jawans escort Vishram back to the tilt-jet he imagines he is walking differently, and that they can all see, and understand, and approve.

  The hostess doesn’t try to come on to him on the flight home.

  At Ray Tower a gang of coolies shifts corporate furniture to a flotilla of removal trucks. Still glowing on adrenaline afterburn, Vishram rides the elevator up to his former office. The executive lift makes an unscheduled stop at the third floor, where a small, dapper, bird-like Bangla in a black suit steps in and smiles at Vishram as if he has known him all his life.

  ‘Might I say, Mr Ray, that you made the correct decision,’ says the Bangla, beaming.

  The glass elevator climbs the curving wooden cliff of the Ray Tower. Fires still burn out on the cityscape. The sky is a precious velvety apricot colour.

  ‘Just who,’ says Vishram Ray, ‘the hell are you?’

  The Bangla beams again.

  ‘Oh, a humble servitor. A name, if you must, would be Chakraborty.’

  ‘I have to tell you, I’m not really in the mood for obfuscation,’ Vishram says.

  ‘Sorry, sorry. To the point. I am a lawyer, hired by a certain company to convey a message to you. The message is this: we fully support your announcement to go to a full output demonstration as soon as possible.’

  ‘Who is this we?’

  ‘Less who than what, Mr Ray.’

  The glass elevator climbs higher into the amber glow of Varanasi’s holy smog.
r />   ‘What then?’

  ‘Odeco is a company that makes a few, carefully chosen, highly specific investments.’

  ‘And if you know that I just turned down an offer from a company that at least I’d heard of, what do you think your Odeco could offer me?’

  ‘Exactly what we offered your father.’

  It is now that Vishram wishes this glass cocoon had the fantasy stop button that is a mandatory feature in Hollywood elevators. But it doesn’t and they keep climbing the sculpted wood face of Ray Power.

  ‘My father didn’t take partners in the company.’

  ‘With respect, Mr Ray, I differ. Where do you think the investment for the particle collider came from? The budget for the zero-point project would have bankrupted even Ranjit Ray, unassisted.’

  ‘What’s your cut?’ Vishram asks. His Hero of the People warmth has been snuffed out. Games within games, levels of access and secrecy, names and faces and masks. Faces that can get into your elevator and tell you your most secret dealings.