River Of Gods

by Ian McDonald

  In the late hours of a July evening the slow missiles arrive on target. For the past two nights they have moved through city streets, running along suburban garden walls startling hunting cats, leaping from rooftop to rooftop across the narrow inner city alleys, jumping down tiers of balconies to dart silent and dark across city streets, banding together in twos and threes, in tens and dozens, finally in their hundreds, a swarm of plastic paws and flexing whisker antennae, setting the pi-dogs to barking. But no one heeds the barking of pi-dogs.

  At ten thirty two hundred and twenty slow missiles infiltrate all key systems at Ray Power’s Allahabad Main electrical distribution station and simultaneously detonate themselves. Western Bharat from Allahabad to the border is blacked out. Communication lines go silent. Command and control centres are paralysed, scrambling to get their back-up systems online. Satellite ground stations go blind. Air defence switches to auxiliary. Emergency power-up takes three minutes. Restoring comlinks and control chains takes another two minutes. It is a further three before Bharat is fully defence-capable.

  In those eight minutes, one hundred and fifty Awadhi helicopter drop-ships supported by aeai ground-attack craft morph out of stealth and offload infantry and light mechanised units five kilometres inside the Bharati border. As APCs drill through dirt-scrabble border villages and mortar teams set up advanced positions heavy armoured units move under air support from their holding positions and sweep in towards the northern end of the dam. Simultaneously two armoured divisions punch through Bharat’s lightly defended border at Rewa and push up the Jabalpur road towards Allahabad.

  By the time the back-up power is online and command and intelligence systems are restored, Bharat’s western artillery positions are staring down the muzzles of Franks main battle tanks while swarms of rat-robots take out the defensive minefields and the first mortar rounds whistle eerily onto the Kunda Khadar dam. Surrounded, cut off from the command structure and naked to air power, support pinned down holding Allahabad, General Jha surrenders. Five thousand soldiers lay down their weapons. It is the most triumphant eight minutes in Awadh’s history of arms. It is the most ignominious in Bharat’s.

  At ten forty the cell network is restored. Within ten minutes palmers are ringing all over rain-punished Varanasi.

  VISHRAM

  Under the instruction of old Ram Das the outdoor staff carry the garden furniture to the shelter of the Shanker Mahal’s generous porches. Vishram walks past a line of white cast iron and wicker crossing the lawn. His mother sits alone at the far end of the garden, a little pale woman at a little white table highlit against the towering dark of the monsoon. Like a British dowager, she will wait until the storm is upon her before she relinquishes her redoubt. Vishram perennially remembers her thus, on the lawns, at her white tables, beneath her clustered parasols, with her ladies and her chai on a silver tray. Vishram always loved the house best in the rain, when it seemed to float free against the green and the black clouds. Then its dehydrated ghosts returned to life and his room sounded to their creakings and clickings. In this season the Shanker Mahal smells of old wood and damp and growing, as if the plant patterns on his bedroom ceiling might burst into bud and flower. The entwined figures on the pillars and brackets relax in the rain.

  ‘Vishram, my bird. That suit does look well on you.’

  He summons back the last garden chair with a crook of his finger. Lightning glimmers beyond the Ashok trees. Beyond them, headlights slash through the murk.

  ‘Mamaji.’ Vishram inclines his head. ‘I won’t keep you. I need to know where he is.’

  ‘Who, dear?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘Your father is a man who takes the spiritual life seriously. If he has chosen the sadhu’s path of seclusion, that should be respected. What do you need from him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Vishram Ray says. He thinks he sees his mother duck away a sly smile as she lifts her cup of Darjeeling to her lips. Electric hot wind buffets the flower-beds; peacocks shriek in panic. ‘I want to tell him something I’ve decided.’

  ‘A business thing? You know I’ve never had a head for business, ’ Mamata Ray says.

  ‘Mother,’ Vishram says. All his life she had maintained this soft lie; simple Mamata understands nothing of business, wants nothing to do with it, that is men’s affairs, business and money and power. No decision had ever been taken, no investment made, no purchase recommended, no research authorised, that Mamata Ray had not been there saying she knew nothing but what would happen if, and how would that be, and in the long run might this? Vishram did not doubt that her hesitant questions had been at the root of the Shakespearean division of Ray Power, hers the voice that gave Ranjit Ray his blessing to walk away from the world.

  Vishram pours himself a cup of the scented Darjeeling tea. He thinks the taste over-refined but it gives himself something to do with his hands. First Rule of Comedy. Always have something to do with your hands.

  ‘I’m buying out Ramesh. I’ve called an extraordinary board meeting.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to Mr Chakraborty.’

  His mother’s eyes are lenses of lead, reflection of the churned grey sky.

  ‘I know what Odeco is.’

  ‘Is this what you want to tell your father?’

  ‘No. What I want to tell him is that I have very few choices here and I’ve made the best I think I can.’

  Mamata Ray sets her cup on the table turning it on the saucer so the handle faces exactly to the left. Gardeners and houseboys lean close, anticipating action. The rising wind tugs at their turbans and tassles.

  ‘I argued against it, you know. The decision to split the business. That may surprise you. I argued against it because of you, Vishram. I thought you would waste it, throw it away. I am no different from Govind in that. Your father alone had faith. He was always so interested in what you were doing in that terrible Scottish country. He did quite respect you for having the courage of your own convictions - you always had, Vishram. I said I had no head for business, maybe it is people I have no head for, my own sons. Maybe I am too old to change my opinions.’

  Mamata Ray looks up. Vishram feels rain on his face. He sets down his cup - the tea is cold, bitter - and the malis lift first it, then the table. The rain drops heavily on the bougainvillea leaves.

  ‘Your father is doing puja at the Kali temple at Mirzapur,’ Mamata Ray calls back from the rear of the procession of garden furniture. The rain is heavy but not so loud as to mask the sound of aircraft engines on approach. ‘He does puja for the end of an age. Siva’s foot is descending. The dance begins. We have been given over to the goddess of destruction.’

  As they reach the safety of the east veranda the clouds burst. Thunder blares as the tilt-jet comes in over the water garden. Navigation lights turn the pelting drops into a curtain as the engines swivel into descent mode and the wheels lower towards Ram Das’ shaved turf. The garden staff shield their eyes.

  ‘Then again, you were right, I always was a flash bastard,’ Vishram says to his mother and dashes through the rain, collar of his good suit pulled up, towards his transport. Marianna Fusco waves excitedly from the rear seat.

  Old Shastri leads Vishram and Marianna Fusco up the steep galis of Mirzapur. The laneways are narrow and dark and smell of piss and old joss. Kids fall in behind the little procession as it trudges up from the concrete ghats. Vishram glances back at the tilt-jet on the river beach. The pilot has taken his helmet off and sits on the sand a respectful distance from the fuel tanks smoking a cigarette. The monsoon that was breaking over Varanasi has not reached Mirzapur sixty kilometres west. The alleys concentrate the heat into a thing almost tangible; trash swirls in the djinns of stifling, fetid air. Marianna Fusco climbs steadily, letting the stares of the youths and old men slide off her peripheral vision.

  The Kali temple is a marble plinth crowded in on every side by shops selling votives and gajras and icons of the goddess custom printed from a huge database of images. Kali is
the main business of this end of Mirzapur, a decaying rural town that missed the information revolution and still wonders what happened. The footpaths push up against the water-washed marble steps, even at this late hour they are thronged with devotees. Bells clang constantly. Metal cattle grids herd the worshippers toward the garbhagriha. A cow saunters up and down the steps, bones moving loosely inside its bag of yellow skin. Someone has daubed red and yellow tikka paste between its horns.

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ Marianna Fusco says. ‘Someone’s got to mind those shoes.’ Vishram understands the apprehension in her voice. This is a place outside her experience. It is essentially, inexplicably Indian. It makes no concessions to any other sensibilities; all the contradictions and contraries of Bharat are made incarnate in this place of love and devotion to the wrathful manifestation of primal femininity. Black Kali with her garland of heads and terrible swift sword. Even Vishram feels a clench of the alien in his stomach as he ducks under the lintel adorned with musician Mahavidyas, the ten wisdoms that emanate from the yoni of the black goddess.

  Shastri remains with Marianna Fusco. Vishram is absorbed into the stream of pilgrims, shuffling through the maze. The temple is low, smoky, claustrophobic. Vishram salutes the saddhus, receives their tilaks for a handful of rupees. The garbhagriha is minute, a narrow slit of a coffin where the black, goggle-eyed image is smothered under swags of marigold garlands. The narrow passage is almost impassable from the crowd pressing around the sanctuary, thrusting their hands through the yonic slit to light incense, offers libations of milk and blood and red-dyed ghee. Thirsty Kali demands seven litres of blood every day. Goats provide it now in sophisticated urban centres like Mirzapur. Vishram’s eyes meet those of the goddess that see past present future, piercing all illusion. Darshan. The surge of people whirls him on. Thunder shakes the temple. The monsoon has come westward. The heat is intense. The bells clang. The devotees chant hymns.

  Vishram finds his father in a black windowless sub- temple. He almost stumbles over him in the deep darkness. Vishram puts out his hand to steady himself, pulls it back from the lintel, wet. Blood. The floor is thick with ash. As his eyes adjust he sees a rectangular pit in the centre of a room. SmasanaKali is also goddess of the ghats. This is a cremation house. Ranjit Ray sits cross-legged among the ashes. He wears the saddhu’s dhoti and shawl and red Kali tikka. His skin is grey with vibhuti; the white sacred ash streaks his hair and stubble. To Vishram this is not his father. This is a thing you see sitting by a street shrine, sprawling naked in a temple doorway; an alien from an other world.

  ‘Dad?’

  Ranjit Ray nods. ‘Vishram. Sit, sit.’ Vishram looks around but there is nowhere but ash. It’s probably a worldly thing to worry about your suit. Then again he is worldly enough to know he can get another one. He sits down by his father. Thunder shakes the temple. The bell clangs, the devotees pray.

  ‘Dad, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Puja for the end of an age.’

  ‘This is a terrible place.’

  ‘It’s meant to be. But the eye of faith sees differently and to me it seems not so terrible. It’s right. Fitting.’

  ‘Destruction, Dad?’

  ‘Transformation. Death and rebirth. The wheel turns.’

  ‘I’m buying Ramesh out,’ Vishram announces sitting barefoot among the ashes of the dead. ‘That will give me two thirds control over the company and freeze out Govind and his Western partners. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.’

  Vishram sees a flicker of old worldliness in his father’s eyes.

  ‘I’m sure you can guess where the money’s come from.’

  ‘My good friend Chakraborty.’

  ‘You know who - or what, rather - is behind him?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘From the start. Odeco contacted me when we embarked on the zero point project. Chakraborty was admirably direct.’

  ‘It was a hell of a risk, if the Krishna Cops had ever found out . . . Ray Power, power with conscience, treading lightly on the earth, all that?’

  ‘I see no contradiction. These are living creatures, sentient creatures. We owe them a duty of care. Some of the grameen bankers . . .’

  ‘Creatures. You said creatures there.’

  ‘Yes I did. There seem to be three Generation Three aeais, but of course their subjective universes do not necessarily overlap though they may share some subroutines. Odeco I believe is a common channel between at least two of them.’

  ‘Chakraborty called the Odeco aeai Brahma.’

  Ranjit Ray gives a small knowing smile.

  ‘Did you ever meet with Brahma?’

  ‘Vishram, what would there be to meet with? I met men in suits, I talked to faces on the phone. Those faces may have been real, they may have been Brahma, they may have been its manifestations. Can one meet a distributed entity in any meaningful sense?’

  ‘Did they ever say why they wanted to fund the zero point project?’

  ‘You will not understand it. I do not understand it.’

  Lightning momentarily flashes up the inside of the cremation chamber. Thunder comes hard and heavy on it; strange winds stir the ash.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Vishram’s palmer calls. He grimaces in exasperation. Devotees glare at the interruption of profanity in their sanctum. High priority call. Vishram flicks to audio only. When Marianna Fusco has finished speaking he slides the little device into an inside pocket.

  ‘Dad, we have to leave now.’

  Ranjit Ray frowns.

  ‘I can’t understand what you are saying.’

  ‘We have to leave right now. It’s not safe here. The Awadhis have captured the Kunda Khadar dam. Our soldiers have surrendered. There’s nothing between them and Allahabad. They could be here in twenty-four hours. Dad, you’re coming with me. There’re spare seats on the plane. All this has to stop now, you’re an important man with an international reputation.’

  Vishram stands, offers a hand down to his father.

  ‘No, I will not come and I will not be ordered around like some doting widow by my own son. I have made my decision, I have walked away and I will not go back. I cannot go back; that Ranjit Ray does not exist any more.’

  Vishram shakes his head in exasperation.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘No. Nothing will happen to me. The Bharat they have invaded is not the one I live in. They cannot touch me. Go. Go on, you go.’ He pushes at his son’s knees. ‘There are things you must do, go on. Nothing must happen to you. I will pray for you, you will be kept safe. Now go.’ Ranjit Ray closes his eyes, turns a blind, deaf face.

  ‘I will come back . . .’

  ‘You won’t find me. I don’t want to be found. You know what you have to do.’ As Vishram ducks under the blood-daubed lintel his father calls out. ‘I was going to tell you. Odeco, Brahma, the aeai - what it’s looking for in the zero- point project. A way out. Out there in all those manifolds of M-Star theory there is a universe where it and those of its kind can exist, live free and safe and we will never find them. And that is why I am here in this temple, because I want to see the look on Kali’s face when her age comes to an end.’

  The rain is falling steadily as Vishram leaves the temple. The marble is greasy with water and dust. The narrow lanes around the temple still throng with people but the street spirit has changed. It is not the zeal of religious devotion, nor is it the communal celebration of rain falling on a drought-dry city. Word of the humiliation at Kunda Khadar has passed into general circulation and the galis swarm with brahmins and widows in white and Kali devotees in red and angry young males in Big Label jeans and very fresh shirts. They peer up at television screens or tear hardcopies from printers or cluster round rickshaw radios or boys with news-feeds to their palmers. The noise in the streets rises as news spreads into rumour into misinformation into slogans. Bharat’s bold jawans defeated. The Glory of Bharat crushed. Awadhi divisions already driving ar
ound the Allahabad ring road. The sacred soil invaded. Who will save? Who will avenge? Jivanjee Jivanjee Jivanjee! Warrior-karsevaks march to sweep back the invader in waves of their own blood. The Shivaji will redeem the shame of the Ranas.

  ‘Where’s your father?

  Rickshaw drivers shove around Vishram as he pulls on his shoes.

  ‘He’s not coming with me.’

  ‘I did not think he would, Mr Ray.’ Strange to hear those words from Shastri. Mister. Ray.

  ‘Then can I suggest we get out of here because I feel very white and very Western and very female,’ says Marianna Fusco. The steep lanes are streaming and treacherous with rain. ‘How is it with you things always end in a riot?’ Marianna Fusco asks but the spirit on the street is jabbing, ugly, contagious. Vishram can see the tilt-jet on the beach between the overhanging buildings. Behind him a crash; voices lift into panic. He turns to see a tin samosa cart spilled on its side, its cargo of spicy triangles scattered across the gali, hot oil spreading across the shallow steps. A touch from the lighted gas burner; fire fills the narrow alley. Cries, shrieks.