by Ian McDonald
‘Pump, pump!’
He works the creaking handpump, watches the water pooling around the plastic-sealed packages. He would be better throwing the fatuous techy thing over side and bailing with his hands. Americans and their machines. Something to do everything. Learn that people are better and cheaper. You can punish them and they will learn.
The thunder moves west. In its wake the rain doubles in weight. On the left bank the gas flares from the processing plants give way to the heavy sandstone bulk of Ramnagar Fort, an imposing impostor under the floodlights. Yogendra takes the boat under the pontoon bridge, a sword of sound even in the downpour. Shiv studies Ramnagar; terraces and pavilions rising beyond its red curtain walls, their feet in the water. You stand there, Shiv thinks. You wait for when I get back, when I have taken your sister upstream and then we will see how proud and defiant you look with your walls and turrets. A true task for a raja, storming a castle. Not by siege or at the head of a thousand elephants, but by smart, by style. Shiv Faraji, Action Hero.
Now the swift little boat approaches the new bridge. Yogendra feels out the slack water channel and shoots it. A truck has come off the roadway and embedded itself in the shallows, a snag of decorative metal barely recognisable as a vehicle. There is still a smell of alcofuel on the water. Beyond the fuel reek, perfume. Shiv raises his head to the sickly odour of marigolds. Smell is the key of memory; a sharp flash of where he has smelled this before: the fat tyres of his Mercedes SUV crushing petals as it climbed the banks here. Marigolds masking turning flesh, the swelling body he slipped into the waters of the Ganga, these waters he sails now. He has recapitulated the corpse’s journey, away from moksha.
‘Ey!’ Yogendra unhooks the earpiece of his palmer and lifts it up for Shiv to see. ‘Radio Kashi.’ Shiv thumbs up the station. Urgent news voices breaking over each other, talking about soldiers, air strikes, fighting machines. Kunda Khadar. The Awadhis have taken Kunda Khadar. The Awadhis have broken on to the sacred soil of Bharat. The Awadhis are about to take Allahabad, holy Allahabad of the Kumbh Mela. Sajida Rana’s troops flee before them like mice before a stubble-burning. Sajida Rana’s vaunted jawans threw down their weapons and threw up their hands. Sajida Rana’s plan has brought ruin to Bharat. Sajida Rana has failed Bharat, shamed Bharat, brought Bharat to its knees. What will Sajida Rana do now?
Shiv turns the radio off.
‘What is this to do with us?’ he says to Yogendra. ‘The elephants fight but the rats go about their business.’ The boy waggles his head and opens up the engine. The boat lifts its prow and pushes upriver through the walls of the rain.
‘This is good kit. Not top, now, but good. I’ll take you through it. These are plasma tasers. You know how they work? They’re not hard. Arm here, the yellow tab. Your basic point and shoot. You don’t even need a particularly good aim, that’s the beauty of them and that’s what makes them your weapon of preference. There’s enough gas in the canister for twelve shots. You’ve got five each, that should be enough. Just throw them away when you’re done, they’re dead. They will stop machinery but their best use is against biological targets. Our man Ramanandacharya is a tech head and that is his fatal weakness, but he does have a few bits of meat around the place for sex and gun stuff. He likes women. A lot. He’s got this James Bond thing, so Mukherjee says. I mean, you’ve seen the castle? Now, I don’t know if they’re in red catsuits, but you might have to taser a couple, just to teach them, you know? And every yokel is his loyal mind-slave. On top of that there’s a couple of real guys with guns and martial arts, Mukherjee says, but there’s a way to deal with them and that’s not let them get too close. Do you think the women are in red catsuits? Could you get me some photographs? Tasers for the meat. For the machines you want area-effect weapons. You want these sweeties. EMP grenades. These are so cool. Like pouring kerosene on scorpions. Just make sure you aren’t ‘hoeked up or anything or you’re deaf dumb blind. Also, careful round the ware. I don’t need to tell you this but they will crispy any soft systems. Now, the suddhavasa where he keeps his decrypters. He’s converted an old Siva temple in the grounds - there on the map. The crypt won’t be very big, maybe only a few gigs, but I don’t recommend you try to mail it out. It’ll all fit onto a palmer. Just be careful with the EMPs around it, okay? You’ve got the maste file name and the quantum key so even you should be able to pull it out of the suddhavasa. Now, why our beloved N.K. Jivanjee wants this, I don’t know, but we don’t ask. Not the Naths anyway.
‘Getting back out, well that’s always the part where it’s a little bit loose. You kind of make it up as you go along here. That’s not to say there isn’t an uber-strategy. The thing is you don’t waste time. Get in there, take them out, get the thing and get out and do not permit distractions. Distractions destroy. Get out and don’t stop for anyone or anything least of all some village Egor. There’re more than enough shots in the tasers, if they look like coming after you, drop a second minefield behind you. Get back to the boat and then get back here and you are a free free man, Shiv Faraji and I will hail and salute you as a god and friend.
‘How do I know all this? What do you think I do all day? Play sneak-and-shoot games and watch shitloads of movies. How does anyone know?’
After an hour and a half pushing upstream the monsoon slackens from a downpour to a steady rain. Shiv looks up from playing Commando Attack on his palmer at the change in tempo on the curved plastic. It would be an irony upon an irony if, after three years of drought and fighting a water war in the middle of a downpour, the saving monsoon should rain itself out in a single night.
Beyond Ramnagar the river is darker than darkness. Yogendra steers by GPS fixes on the shoals and the feel of the current. Shiv has felt sand grate under the hull. The shallows flow and reform faster than the satellites ten thousand kilometres overhead can map them. The boat rocks as Yogendra throws the tiller over hard. He cuts the engine, swings it up. The boat runs up on to the beach. Yogendra ducks through the canopy and jumps on to the shore.
‘Come on, come on.’
The shore sand is soft, sinking and flowing away with the current beneath Shiv’s feet. The darkness out here is immense. Shiv reminds himself that he is only a few tens of kilometres away from his club and barman. A clutch of lights to the south is Chunar. In the vast quiet of the country night he can hear the traffic on the pontoon and the persistent chug of the water extraction plants downstream. Jackals and pi-dogs yip in the distance. Shiv arms himself swiftly. He splits the taser mines between himself and Yogendra but keeps the kill switch. Hayman Dane’s file name and system key are in the fat man’s palmer, slung around Shiv’s neck.
Among the thorn-hedged dal fields of Chunar, Shiv rigs out for battle. This is madness. He will die here among these fields and bones.
‘Okay,’ he says with a deep shuddering sigh. ‘Wheel them out.’
He and Yogendra wrestle two bulky cling-wrapped rectangles on to the sand. Ribs and spars, curves and bulges press through the plastic skin. Yogendra flashes a long blade.
‘What is this?’ Shiv demands.
Yogendra offers him the knife, turning it so the gleams of light from the distant town catch its steel. It is the length of a forearm, serrated, hooked at the tip, ferruled. He lays open the stretch plastic skins with two swift strokes. He returns the blade to its leather holster, next his skin. Lying in the plastic are two factory-fresh, chrome-bright Japanese trail bikes fuelled and ready to run. They start at first kick. Shiv mounts up. Yogendra walks his around the sand a little, feeling out the capabilities. Then Shiv nods to him and they open up the made-in-Yokohama engines and burn off through the rain-soaked dal fields.
SARKHAND ROUNDABOUT
At eleven thirty the huddle of umbrellas moves from the porch of the Rana Bhavan towards the Mercedes parked on the gravel turning circle. The umbrellas are white, an unnatural shade. They press together like a phalanx. Not one drop of water passes through. The rain is torrential now, a thunderous drowning downpou
r shot through with muggy lightning. At the centre of the cluster of domed umbrellas is Prime Minister Sajida Rana. She wears a white silk sari trimmed with green and orange. It is the most serious business she goes to this night. It is the defence of her country and her authority. All across Varanasi identical Mercedes are pulling away from tasteful government bungalows.
The umbrellas press up against the side of the car like piglets at the teat of a black sow. Safe and dry, Sajida Rana slips into the back seat. She sits instinctively on the left side. Shaheen Badoor Khan should be in the right seat offering analyses, advisements, perceptions. She looks alone as the doors lock and the car pulls off into the rain. She looks like what she is, a middle-aged woman with the weight of a nation upon her. The umbrellas break up and dart back to the shelter of the Rana Bhavan’s deep verandas.
Sajida Rana flicks through the hastily prepared briefing document. The facts are scant and perfunctory. The Awadhi assault was technically flawless. Brilliant. Bloodless. Military colleges will be teaching it for decades to come. Awadhi armour and mechanised infantry are within twenty kilometres of Allahabad, anti-aircraft and communication systems have come under sustained aeai attack and the defending battalion is in disarray, its control at the Kunda Khadar dam beheaded, desperately trying to re-establish a line of command with the divisional headquarters at Jaunpur. And it is raining. Sajida Rana is losing a water war in the rain. But it comes too late. Her nation can die of thirst in a deluge.
They knew. The bastards had it calculated to the minute.
In her white, gold and green sari Sajida Rana tries to imagine how the words of surrender will feel in her mouth. Will they be bloated, choking; will they be dry and acid, will they slip out as easily as a Muslim divorcing his wife? Talaaq talaaq talaaq.
Khan. Faithless Muslim. Betrayed her with another, a thing. When she needs his words, his insights, his presence beside her on the cream leather. If Jivanjee and his karsevaks knew she rode on cow-coloured leather . . . Let Jivanjee do your work for you, Khan had said. Now he will drive his juggernaut over her bones. No. She is a Rana, daughter of a founder of nations, a seeder of dynasties. She is Bharat. She will fight. Let the Ganga overflow with blood.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Traffic, ma’am,’ the driver says. Sajida Rana settles back on her upholstery and looks out through the rain-streaked windows. Neons and tail lights, the gaudy Diwali illuminations of the trucks. She thumbs the com.
‘This is not the usual way to the Bharat Sabha.’
‘No, ma’am,’ the driver says and sinks his foot to the board. Unbalanced, Sajida Rana reels. She tries the locks knowing it for folly, knowing she heard the solid, German-engineering click of the central locking. She opens her palmer, calls her security as the Mercedes touches one hundred and twenty.
‘This is Prime Ministerial emergency code. Lock on to my GPS signal, I am being abducted, I repeat, this is Sajida Rana, I am being abducted.’
Sky hiss. Then the voice of her chief of security says,
‘Prime Minister, I will not do that. No one will help you. You have betrayed Holy Bharat and Bharat will punish you.’
Then the Mercedes turns into Sarkhand Roundabout and the screaming starts.
JYOTIRLINGA
ENSEMBLE
The Bharatiya Vayu Sena Airbus Industries A510 bumps a little as it climbs through the cloud layer over Varanasi. Ashok Rana grips the armrests. He has never been a good flier. He glances out the rain-streaked window at the bright arcs of flares dropping away behind them. The fuselage vibrates as ECM drones launch from the under-wing pods. There has been no Awadhi aerial activity over Varanasi for days now but the air force takes no chances with its new Prime Minister. Ashok Rana thinks, from the angle of the raindrops on the glass I should be able to work out my speed. Many such inconsequential thoughts have come to him since the call from Secretary Narvekar in the night.
The plane lurches again, beating through the monsoon. Ashok Rana switches on his armrest screen. The camera shows his wife and daughters back in the press-office compartment. Sushmita’s face tightens with fear as the Airbus jolts again; Anuja gives a word of comfort, takes her hand. In his Prime Ministerial leather armchair, Ashok Rana allows himself a minute smile. He wishes there were a camera here at the front so they could see him. They would not be so afraid, if they could see him.
‘Prime Minister.’
His Parliamentary Private Secretary swivels his seat towards him and passes a much be-scribbled printout across the table.
‘We have a draft of the speech, if you would like to familiarise yourself with its key points.’
The Prime Ministerial transport gives a final buck and breaks free into clear air. Through the window Ashok Rana sees the moonlit surface of a storm-sea of cloud. The pilot bings off the seatbelt light and instantly the plastic tube of the fuselage is filled with call-tones. Every politician and civil servant is out of his seat and pressing around the conference table. They lean forward with expectant, keen faces. They have been wearing those expectant, keen faces since Secretary Narvekar and Defence Minister Chowdhury stooped down through the door of the Bharati Air Force tilt-jet that had landed in his garden to help Ashok Rana and his family aboard. Chief Justice Laxman administered the oath while the military transport dropped towards the remote, secure corner of the airport where Vayu Sena One had been brought. The army nurse with the white white surgical gloves had made the lightest of nicks in his thumb with a scalpel, pressed it to a diagnostic pad and even before Ashok Rana could register the pain she had swabbed it clean with surgical alcohol and slipped on a dressing.
‘For the DNA authorisation, Prime Minister,’ Trivul Narvekar explained but Ashok Rana’s attention was on the air force officer immediately behind the nurse, gun drawn, muzzle hovering a whisper from the back of her skull. To lose one Prime Minister is tragedy. Two starts to look like conspiracy. Then Chief Justice Laxman’s face loomed into his field of vision.
‘I now present you with the seals of state, Prime Minister. You are endowed with full executive authority.’
The A510 swims up towards the huge Bharati moon. Ashok Rana could look at it forever, imagine there is no chaotic, broken nation down beneath the clouds. But the faces expect. He glances over the printout. Measured phrases, memorable sound bites with edit-pauses written in before and after them, resolutions and rousing declarations. Ashok Rana glances again at his family in the little palm-sized screen.
‘Has my sister’s body been recovered?’
Every clamouring voice, every palmer falls silent.
‘The area has been secured,’ Secretary Narvekar says.
‘Can we trust the army?’
‘We have sent in regular forces. We can rely on them. The group was a small cabal among the elite divisions that supplied madam’s personal security unit. Those responsible are under arrest; unfortunately we were unable to prevent some of the higher-ranking officers from taking their own lives. The personal bodyguard is all dead, Prime Minister.’
Ashok Rana closes his eyes, feels the contours in the stratosphere around the aircraft shell that encloses him.
‘Not the Awadhis.’
‘No, Prime Minister. It was never a consideration that the Awadhis would resort to assassination, if you will excuse my use of the word.’
‘The rioters?’
‘Dispersed, Prime Minister. The situation in the city remains highly volatile. I would advise against any immediate return to Varanasi.’
‘I do not want them pursued. Morale is bad enough without loosing the army on our own population. But we should maintain martial law.’
‘Very wise, Prime Minister. Magnanimous in the face of national crisis; that will play well. Prime Minister, I don’t want to be seen to be pressurising you in this desperate time of shock and grief, but this speech . . . It is important that the nation hears from you, and soon.’
‘In a while, Trivul.’
‘Prime Minister, the slot is book
ed, the camera and audio are set up in the media centre . . .’
‘In a while, Trivul!’
The Parliamentary Secretary bows away but Ashok Rana can see the chewed-back irritation in the set of his lips. He looks out again at the moon, low now in the west on the edge of the silver sea of water raining down on his land. He will never be able to see it again, the lolling moon of India, without thinking of this night, without hearing the chime of the palmer in the night and the wrench of dread in his gut that knew, even before he answered, it was the worst possible news; without hearing the measured, well-rehearsed voice of Private Secretary Patak, so strange after the soft familiarity of Shaheen Badoor Khan, saying impossible things; without hearing the scream of tilt-jets thrashing the branches of the neem trees with their down-blast as his wife and children dressed and seized baggage in the dark for fear of making themselves illuminated targets for whatever it was out there that had turned upon the house of Rana. The light will forever be transformed into sounds. He hates that most, that they have tainted the moon.