by Ian McDonald
‘My next query?’
‘How much faith do you put in conspiracy theory?’
‘I don’t put much faith in any theory.’
‘Everyone’s got a theory, my friend. Theory is at the bottom of everything. My cousin’s wife’s brother works dataprocessing for the ESA and this is the rumour there. Remember some time back the Americans and the Russians and the Chinese and the Europeans announced they were going to send an unmanned mission to Tierra?’
Shiv shook his head. The second cup was making Anand’s voice spread out into a wash of story, like his mother telling him a hero tale of Rama and bold Hanuman.
‘The first EXP? Earth-like Extrasolar Planet? No? Anyway, they found this planet Tierra and there was a big tarrah and stuff on the news channels that they were going to build a probe to go there. Listen up, here comes the conspiracy: there is no Tierra mission. There never was. It’s all a smokescreen for what they were really doing up there. The rumour is, they found something. Something God didn’t make and we didn’t put there. Some kind of object, and it’s old. Way old. I mean, not just millions, but billions of years old. Can you imagine that? Arahbs of years. Brahma-scale time. It’s got them shit scared - so shit-scared they’re prepared to risk their security and take it to the only people can do quantum crypto right. Us.’ He stabbed his thumbs at his chest.
The American will be coming out now, Shiv thought, floating with the sweet smoke up into the cube of air that filled the courtyard, away from the flat words to the street where the women worked and the big hire car waited with the needle in it. He will be coming out the door, pale and blinking and cold. He will even look at the car. He will be thinking about his coffee and donut, coffee and donut, coffee and donut. It is the habits that kill us. Shiv heard the spit of the stinger. He saw the fat man’s knees crumple as the chemicals overloaded his motor neurons. He saw Yogendra wrestle him into the back of the car. He smiled at the skinny street kid trying to haul the big man up over the tailgate.
Shiv sat, hands draped over knees, on the soft cushion. The bars of early cloud were burning away, the sky blueing. Another death-dry day. He could hear distant radio. The announcer seemed to be very excited about something. Raised voices, arguments, a denouncing tone. He tilted his head back and watched the steam from the coffee curl up until he could, with a squint, merge it with jet contrails. The Nepali Temple Ball said, believe: believe nothing is solid, everything is credible. It is a big universe. Shit. The universe was tight and mean and crammed into a wedge of brightness and music and skin a handful of decades long and no wider than your peripheral vision. People who believed otherwise were amateurs.
‘And my third query?’
Yogendra would have him by now, would have got him somehow into the back before the spasms wore off, would have turned through the traffic: fuck you to cars cabs phatphats trucks buses mopeds and sacred cows, be bringing him in.
Anand’s eyes widened as if taking in a truth too large even for a conspiracy-theorist aspirant dataraja.
Now this is the mad thing. You don’t fucky-fuck with the Naths, but there are rumours about who they’re working with, who their client might be.’
‘Conspiracies and rumours.’
‘If there’s no God, they’re all you’ve got left.’
‘The client?’
‘Is none other than Mr Geniality himself, friend of the poor and champion of the downtrodden, scourge of the Ranas and hammer of the Awadhis: I present, the Honourable N.K. Jivanjee.’
Shiv passed on a third cup of the enriched coffee.
Shiv gets up and moves, slowly as the play demands, to the row in front. That is the cue for Yogendra to jump down on to the sand. He saunters up to Hayman Dane, who is panting now. Yogendra turns his head to this side, then to the other, studying him as if he is a new fruit. Yogendra squats, makes sure Hayman Dane can see what he is doing and picks up the severed ear lobe. He dances over to the caged microsabre and daintily drops the ear-tip through the bars. One snap. Shiv can hear the crunch, small but distinct. Hayman Dane starts to shriek, a shrill, pant-pissing keening moan, the shriek of a man in final fear of his life, the shriek of a man who is no longer a man. Shiv grimaces at the ugly, unseemly sound. He remembers his first sight of him as Yogendra brought him down the tunnel into the ring; Yogendra bouncing him before him with shoves from his hands, the fat man taking little tripping, trotting steps for fear of losing his balance, gaping around, blinking to try to understand what manner of place this was. Now Shiv sees the piss stain spreading warm and dark as the waters of birth across his tan shorts and he cannot believe this white western genius for hire can bring himself to end so stupidly.
Yogendra hops back on to the rail. Sai goes to the cage. She lifts the microsabre above her head and starts her parade, one foot slowly, deliberately in front of the other. Step step step, turn. Step step step, turn. The ritual dance that seduced and mesmerised Shiv the night he saw her, in this ring, on this sand. The night he lost everything. And now, she dances for him. There is something ancient in it, the woman stalking the fighting floor, powerful, a dance of Kali. The microsabre should have her wrist open, the side of her head off. It hangs there, caressed by hands, hypnotised.
Shiv moves to the front row now. Ringside seat.
‘I ask you, Hayman Dane. Where is the sundarban?’
Sai crouches in front of him, one leg bent under her, the other outstretched to the side. She fixes Hayman Dane’s tearful eyes with her own. She drapes the cat around her neck. Shiv holds his breath. He has never seen that move before. He has a fast, hard, pleasing erection.
‘Chunar,’ Hayman Dane sobs. ‘Chunar Fort. Ramanandacharya. His name is Ramanandacharya. Let go my hands, man! Let go my fucking hands!’
‘Not yet, Hayman Dane,’ Shiv says. ‘There will be a file name, and a code.’
The man is hysterical now; an animal, no thought or wit.
‘Yes!’ he shrieks. ‘Yes, just let go my hands!’
Shiv nods to Yogendra. Crowing like a rooster he scampers up to the American and unlocks the cuffs. Hayman Dane cries out as circulation returns to his wrists.
‘Fuck you, man, fuck you,’ he mutters but there is no defiance in it now.
Shiv raises a finger. Sai strokes the tattered head of her microsabre, millimetres from her right eye.
‘The name and the key, Hayman Dane.’
The man raises his hands: see, I am unarmed, helpless, no threat or danger. He fishes in the breast pocket of his gaudy shirt. He has bigger tits than some women Shiv has fucked. He holds his palmer aloft.
‘See man? It was in my fucking pocket all the time.’
Shiv raises a finger. Yogendra snatches the palmer, swings over the rail into the seating. Sai strokes the tattered head of her microsabre.
‘You’ll let me go now, man. You’ve got what you want, you’ll let me go now.’
Yogendra is already halfway up the aisle. Sai is on her feet, moving back towards the tunnel. Shiv climbs the shallow stairs, one by one.
‘Hey, what do I do now?’
Sai stands at the gate. She looks at Shiv, waiting. Shiv raises a finger. Sai turns and throws the microsabre into the ring of bloodied sand. Pig time.
SHAHEEN BADOOR KHAN
In a white yukata, Sajida Rana leans over the carved stone balustrade and exhales smoke into the scented fore-dawn darkness.
‘You have fucked me up the ass, Khan.’
Shaheen Badoor Khan had thought he could feel no sicker dread, no tighter guilt, no deeper annihilation as his state car slipped through the three a.m. streets to the Rana Bhavan. He had watched the thermometer on the dashboard rise. The monsoon is finally coming, he had thought. It is always unbearable just before it breaks. Yet he saw ice, Bangla ice. The States of Bengal and their tame berg had worked ice magic. He tried to imagine it, moored in the Bay of Bengal, blinking with navigation lights. He saw the gulls circling over it. Whatever happens, it will rain down on me and these streets. He thoug
ht, I have bottomed out. I am hammered flat. There is no further down to go. On the verandah of the Rana Bhavan he understands that he is not even over the first shelf. The abyssal plain lies tens of kilometres below him, down in the crushing dark. There is ice above him, ice he can never break through.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
It is so weak. And it is a lie. He does. He had rehearsed it as he reeled in the phatphat back to the haveli. The words, the order of the confessions, the drawing out of secrets a lifetime deep, all had come to him in one mass, one rush, perfectly formed in his head. He knew what he must do. But he must be let do it. She must grant him that grace.
‘I think I deserve something,’ Sajida Rana says.
Shaheen Badoor Khan lifts one hand in exquisite pain but there is no placating it, no amelioration. He deserves no mercy.
The lamps had been on in the old zenana. Standing in the cloister, Shaheen had strained to pick out women’s voices. Most nights there were guests; woman writers, lawyers, politicians, opinion makers. They would talk all the hours beyond the old purdah. Bilquis should know, before any, before even his Prime Minister, but not in front of guests. Never in front of guests.
Gohil the chauffeur came bleary, hobbling with a rolled-down sock in his boot, stifling a yawn. He turned the official car in the courtyard.
‘The Rana Bhavan,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan ordered.
‘What is it, sahb?’ Gohil asked as he drove through the automatic gates into the perpetual crawl of traffic. ‘Some vital affair of state?’
‘Yes,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan said. ‘An affair of state.’ By the time the car reached the junction he had written his letter of resignation on the government notepad in the arm-rest. Then he took his ‘hoek, set it to audio only and called the number he had kept next his heart since the day he was invited to the Prime Ministerial Office and offered the role of Grand Vizier, the number he had confidently expected never to use.
‘Shah.’ He heard Sajida Rana’s breath shudder. ‘Thank gods it’s you; I thought we’d been invaded.’
Shaheen Badoor Khan imagined her in bed. It would be white; wide and white. The light would be a small, shallow pool from a lamp. She would be leaning over a bedside cabinet. Her hair would be loose, it would fall darkly around her face. He tried to imagine what she wore in bed. You have betrayed your government, your nation, your faith, your marriage, your dignity, and you are wondering if your Prime Minister sleeps naked. Narendra would be at her side, rolled over into a muffled, white cylinder, go to sleep, affairs of state. It was well known that they still slept together. Sajida Rana was a woman of appetite, but she insisted on her family name.
‘Prime Minister, I must tender my resignation with immediate effect.’
I should have rolled the partition up, Shaheen Badoor Khan thought. I should have put glass between myself and Gohil. Why bother? In the morning he will see everything. Everyone will see everything. At least he will have a good story, nuggety with gossip and eavesdroppings. You owe him that much, good and faithful driver.
‘Shah, what nonsense is this?’
Shaheen Badoor Khan repeated himself verbatim, then added, ‘Prime Minister, I have put myself in a position that has allowed the government to become compromised.’
A soft sigh like a spirit departing. A sigh so weary, so tired. A rustle of fine, crisp, clean-smelling white cotton.
‘I think you should get over here.’
‘I am on my way, Prime Minister,’ Shaheen Badoor Khan said but she had already cut the connection and all he heard was the Zen hum of cyberstatic in the sanctuary of his skull.
Sajida Rana rests on the white balustrade, hands firmly gripping the rail.
‘How good is the detail?’
‘My face is clearly visible. There will be no doubt that it is me. Prime Minister, they photographed me giving money to the nute.’
She bares her teeth, shakes her head, lights another cigarette. Shaheen Badoor Khan had never thought of her as a smoker. Another secret about his Prime Minister, like her vile mouth. That is the reason she must have brought him out here; to keep the smoke out of the Rana Bhavan. Marvellous, the details he notices.
‘A nute.’
Now the dying within starts. In that one syllable are all her disgust and incomprehension and betrayal and rage.
‘They are . . . a gender . . .’
‘I know what they are. This club . . .’
Another cube of him is torn away. The tearing is agony but once it is gone the pain vanishes. There is a clean joy in being able to say the truth for once.
‘It is a place where people go to meet nutes. People who find nutes sexually attractive.’
Smoke rises straight from Sajida Rana’s cigarette before breaking into lazy, phantom zigzags. The air is wonderfully still. Even the eternal roar of the city is muted.
‘Tell me one thing, what did you think you could do with them?’
It was never a doing thing, Shaheen Badoor Khan wants to exclaim. That is what you can never understand, soft from your bed with the smell of your husband still on you. That is what the nutes have always understood. It is not about doing anything. It is about being. That is why we go there, to that club, to see, to be among creatures from our fantasies, creatures we have always longed to be but which we will never have the courage to become. For those brief burning stabs of beauty. Sajida Rana does not let him say these things; she cuts in: ‘I don’t need to know any more. There is, of course, no hope of you remaining in the administration.’
‘I never thought there might be, Prime Minister. I was set up.’
‘That’s no excuse. In fact, it only makes it . . . What were you thinking? No, don’t answer that. How long has it been going on?’
Another wrong, uncomprehending question.
‘Most of my life. As long as I can remember. It’s always been going on.’
‘When you said that time we were coming back from the dam, when you said you and your wife were going through a cold period . . . for fuck’s sake, Khan . . .’ Sajida Rana grinds the dead stub out with the heel of her white satin slipper. ‘You have told her, haven’t you?’
‘Not about this, no.’
‘Then about what?’
‘She knows about my . . . predilections. She has known for some time. For a long time.’
‘How long?’
‘Decades, Prime Minister.’
‘Stop calling me that! You do not call me that. You’ve been a liability to this government for twenty years and you still have the gall to Prime Minister me. I needed you, Khan. We could lose this. Yes, we could lose this war. The generals have all been showing me their satellite pictures and their aeai models and they all say that the Awadhis are moving troops in to the north towards Jaunpur. I’m not so sure. It’s too obvious. One thing the Awadhis have never been is obvious. I needed you, Khan, to play against that fool Chowdhury.’
‘I am sorry, I am truly sorry.’ But he does not want to hear what his Prime Minister has to say. He has heard it all already, he told it to himself again and again as the car slipped through the stifling morning. Shaheen Badoor Khan wants to talk, to let all the things he has packed down all this lifetime spill out like water from the stone lips of a fountain in some decadent European city. He is free now. There is no secret now, no restraint and he wants so much for her to understand, to see what he sees, feel what he feels, ache where he burns.
Sajida Rana settles heavily on the balustrade.
‘It’s raining in Maratha, did you know that? It will be here before the week is out. It’s moving across the Deccan. As we speak, there are children dancing in the rain in Nagpur. A few days more, and they will be dancing in the streets of Varanasi. Three years. I could have waited. I didn’t need to take the dam. But I couldn’t risk not taking it. So now I’m going to have Bharati jawans patrolling the Kunda Khadar dam in the rain. How will that look to the plain people of Patna ? You were right though. We did fuck N.K. Jivanjee up the ass. And
now he’s paying me back. We have underestimated him. You underestimated him. This is the end of us.’
‘Prime . . . Mrs Rana, we don’t know . . .’
‘Who else? You’re not as clever as you think, Khan. None of us are. You resignation is accepted.’ Then Sajida Rana clenches her teeth and smashes her fist into the carved limestone railing. Blood starts from her knuckles. ‘Why did you do this to me? I would have given you everything. And your wife, your boys . . . Why do men risk these things? I will condemn you.’
‘Of course.’
‘I can no longer protect you. Shaheen, I do not know what is going to happen to you now. Get out of my sight. We shall be lucky if we survive the day.’