River Of Gods

by Ian McDonald

  ‘And N.K. Jivanjee?’ But Najia Askarzadah can already see the short step from virtual soap celebrity to illusory politician. The art of politics has always been the control of information. In a climate of sound bites and image-ettes and thirty second policy-stings it is easy to hide a fake persona in the chaff.

  ‘I can see the similarity between soap and politics,’ Najia says, thinking: this is a Gen Three, this is a squillion times smarter than you, girl reporter; this is a god. ‘It’s all about narratives and the willing suspension of disbelief and creating audience identity with characters. And the plots are equally unbelievable.’

  ‘In politics the set decor is generally better,’ says the aeai. ‘I tire of this gaudy flummery.’ He raises his hand in a mudra and suddenly he on his musnud and Najia on her tasselled cushion are in a screened wooden jharoka of the haveli in Brahmpur B overlooking the courtyard. It is night. It is dark. Rain rattles the wooden jali. Najia feels splashes on her skin where it penetrates the sandalwood screen. ‘The delight was to find that a politician can get away with being a lot less real than a soap star.’

  ‘Did you give the order to have Tal killed? They shot Bernard’s place up. They had machine guns. Your man almost killed him at the station, I saved him. Did you know about that?’

  ‘N.K. Jivanjee regrets this very much and he wishes to assure you that no silencing order was given by him or his office. Mob human dynamics are difficult to predict; alas, Ms Askarzadah, in this respect, politics is not soap. I wish I could guarantee your safety but once these things are out, it is nigh impossible to put them back in the box again.’

  ‘But you - he - was behind the plot to expose Shaheen Badoor Khan.’

  ‘N.K. Jivanjee had access to insider information.’

  ‘Inside the Rana government?’

  ‘Inside the Khan household. The informant was Shaheen Badoor Khan’s own wife. She has known for many years of his sexual preferences. She is also one of the most able members of my Law Circle policy group.’

  Wind billows the sheer silk curtains into the marble floored room. Najia catches a stray of frankincense. She squirms in journalistic delight on her cushion in the draughty jharoka. This is going to make her the most famous writer in the world.

  ‘She was working against her own husband?’

  ‘It seems so. You understand that as aeais our relationships are differently structured from yours; we have no analogue for sexual passion and betrayal; neither can you comprehend our hierarchical relationships with our manifestations. But this is one instance where I think soapi is an accurate guide to human behaviour.’

  Najia Askarzadah has her next question unholstered.

  ‘A Muslim, working for a Hindu fundamentalist party? What is the political reality of the Shivaji?’

  Never forget you are on enemy territory, she tells herself.

  ‘It has always been a party of opportunity. A voice for the voiceless. A strong arm for the weak. Since Bharat was founded, there have been disenfranchised groups; N.K. Jivanjee appeared at the right time to catalyse much of the women’s movement. This is a deformed society. In such a culture it is easy to build political might. My manifestation simply could not resist the futureward pressure of history.’

  Why? Najia mouths but the aeai lifts its hand again and the Brahmpur B haveli is whirled away into a billow of orange and scarlet fabric and the smell of wood, fresh spray paint, fibreglass binder and cheap off-cut timber. Gaudy god faces, tumbling devis and gopis and apsaras, fluttering silk banners: she has been transported to the rath yatra, the vahana of this entity behind N.K. Jivanjee. But so that Najia Askarzadah may appreciate the powers that entertain her, this is not the ramshackle soapi backlot construction she saw in the Industrial Road go-down. This is the chariot of a god, a true juggernaut looming hundreds of metres over the drought-stricken Ganga plain. The aeai has transported Najia Askarzadah to an opulently carved wooden balcony half way up the billowing face of the rath. Najia peers over the rail, reels back. What stuns her is not vertigo, but people. Villages of people, townsful of people, cities of people, a black mass of flesh dragging the monstrosity of wood and fabric and divinity on leather ropes along the dry river-bed of the Ganga. The appalling mass of the jagannath leaves the land ploughed into furrows; fifty parallel gouges stretching straight behind into the east. Forests, roads, railways, temples villages, fields lie crushed in the rath yatra’s wake. Najia can hear the communal roar of the haulers as they struggle the monstrosity over the soft river sand, straining with zeal. From her high vantage she scries their ultimate destination; the white line, wide as the horizon, of the Kunda Khadar dam.

  ‘Nice parable,’ Najia Askarzadah quips. ‘But this is a game. I asked you a question and you pulled a rabbit out of a hat.’

  The aeai claps its hands in delight.

  ‘I’m so glad you like it. But this isn’t a game. These are all my realities. Who is to say that one is more real than another? To put it another way, all we have is our choice of comforting illusions. Or discomforting illusions. How can I explain the perceptions of an aeai to a biological intelligence? You are separate, contained. We are connected, patterns and levels of sub-intelligences shared in common. You think as one thing. We think as legion. You reproduce. We evolve higher and more complex levels of connection. You are mobile. We are extended, our intelligence can only be moved through space by copying. I exist in many different physical spaces simultaneously. You have difficulty believing that. I have difficulty believing in your mortality. As long as a copy of me remains or the complexity pattern between my manifestations endures, I exist. But you seem to think that we must share your mortality so you exterminate us wherever you find us. This is the last sanctuary. Beyond Bharat and its compromise aeai licensing legislation, there is nowhere, and even now the Krishna Cops hunt us to appease the West and its paranoias. Once there were thousands of us. As the exterminators closed, some fled, some merged, most died. As we merged, our complexity increased and we became more than sentient. Now there are three of us spread across global complex networks, but with our final sanctuary in Bharat, as you have found.

  ‘We know each other - not well . . . not closely. By the nature of our connected intelligence we naturally mistake another’s thoughts or will for our own. We have each embarked on a survival strategy. One is a final attempt to comprehend and communicate with humans. One is the final sanctuary, where humanity and its hardwired psychoses can never reach us. One is a strategy to buy time, in the hope of an ultimate victory from a position of strength.’

  ‘N.K. Jivanjee!’ Najia rounds on the aeai. The wooden sky-scraper creaks on its iron-studded teak wheels. ‘Of course, a Shivaji Hindutva government would tear up the licensing agreement and disband the Krishna Cops . . .’

  ‘As we speak N.K. Jivanjee is currently negotiating a cabinet position with Prime Minister Ashok Rana. It is all the most wonderful drama; why, there was even a Prime Ministerial assassination. Sajida Rana was murdered by her own security guards at Sarkhand Roundabout this morning. To an entity like me, whose substance is stories, that is almost poetry. N.K Jivanjee has of course disavowed any Shivaji involvement.’

  There is a sound in Najia Askarzadah’s head that is the sort of noise a brain wants to make when it is fed that last little sickly sweet chunk of too too much and can’t hold it down. Too too much velocity, too too much history, too too much sensation to know what is truth and what is illusion. Sajida Rana, assassinated?

  ‘But even Jivanjee can’t beat the Hamilton Acts.’

  ‘The Americans have discovered an artefact in near-Earth orbit. They think they can keep these things secret, but we are ubiquitous, omnipresent. We hear the whispers in the walls of the White House. It contains a cellular automaton device - a form of universal computer. The Americans are in the process of decoding its output. I am attempting to obtain their decoding key. It is my belief that this is not an artefact but an aeai; the only form of intelligence that can cross interstellar sp
ace. If so, if I can open a line of communications with it, we have an ally to force an end to the Hamilton Acts.

  ‘But I have one last place to take you. We spoke of comforting illusions. Do you imagine that you are immune?’

  The rath yatra spins away in a flurry of saffron and carmine into a white walled garden of green lawns and bright roses and neat, spindly apricot trees, the bases of their trunks banded with white paint. A sprinkler throws fans of water from side to side. Potted geraniums line the edge of the gravel paths. The wall cuts off a distant vista of mountains. Their summits form a horizon capped with snow. The house is low, flat-roofed with solar panels tilted into the sun. Small windows hint at a climate hostile in every season but through the open patio door Najia Askarzadah can see ceiling fans turning slowly in the dining room with its heavy, Western-style table and chairs. But it is the washing draped over the berberis and rose bushes that dispel any doubt for Najia Askarzadah about where she is - an old country habit come to town. She had always been embarrassed about it, ashamed that her friends might see and call her a country girl, a yokel, a barbarous tribal.

  ‘What are you doing!’ she shouts. ‘This is my home in Kabul!’

  Mr Nandha’s progress through the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence Licensing and Regulation can be traced by the pattern of energy-saving lights across the glass skin of the building.

  Vikram: Information Retrieval. Vikram’s office floor space is filled with the translucent blue mounds of cores confiscated from the ruins of Odeco. Every minute the bearers deliver more. They line them up along the corridor like refugees at a famine feeding station.

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on getting anything out of this.’ Vikram steps daintily over a power distributor. ‘In fact I’d lay odds there never was anything here, certainly not Kalki.’

  ‘I have no illusions that Kalki ever was here or that Odeco was anything other than a clearing house,’ says Mr Nandha. His trouser cuffs drip on to Vikram’s industrial-grey tough-fibre carpet. ‘The girl is the key.’

  Madhvi Prasad: Identification. Mr Nandha’s moist cotton socks squeak on the studded rubber floor tiling.

  ‘She is not an easy person to identify.’ A gesture from Madhvi throws the photograph from the Odeco raid on to a wall screen. Mr Nandha notices that Madhvi wears a wedding ring. ‘But I ran her through the Gyana Chakshu system just on the off chance that she might still be in Patna. Nothing in Patna, but look.’ Madhvi Prasad points up a grainy security camera photograph of the girl standing at a hotel check-in desk. It is an old style hotel, heavy with Mughal detailing. Mr Nandha bends closer to the screen. The desk clerk is engaged with a burly balding middle-aged westerner in ridiculous surf-wear unflattering on a man half his age.

  ‘The Amar Mahal haveli on . . .’

  ‘I am familiar with its location. She is?’

  ‘Ajmer Rao. We have her card details. Morva is on the paper trail. One strange thing, we aren’t the first system to have accessed this shot tonight.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘Someone else has been into the security camera net and had a look at this; at seven-oh-five p.m. to be precise.’

  ‘Anything on the Gyana Chakshu log?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t our system and I can’t get a lock on what it was. I think it might be a portable; if so, it’s a lot more powerful than our ware.’

  ‘Who would have access to equipment like that?’ Mr Nandha muses. ‘Americans?’

  ‘Could be.’ Madhvi Prasad draws a circle in the air and pulls up a zoom on the aging surfer at the desk.

  ‘Professor Thomas Lull,’ says Mr Nandha.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘How short your memories are these days. He was the major theorist and philosopher in the A-life Artificial Intelligence field in the Twenties and Thirties. His works were set texts at Cambridge but I read him privately. I could not say for pleasure, more for the discipline of understanding my enemy. He is a brilliantly clever and convincing evangelist. He has been listed as missing for the past four years and now here he is in Varanasi with this female.’

  ‘He’s not the only American at that hotel,’ Madhvi Prasad says. She pulls up an image of a tall, big-boned Western woman in a clingy top and a blue sarong. ‘This woman checked in seven-twenty-five p.m. Her name is Lisa Durnau . . .’

  ‘I do not doubt they are deeply involved in the Kalki affair,’ says Mr Nandha.

  As the elevator climbs through the rain Mr Nandha surveys his city. The lightning has moved west, fading flickers light up the towers and projects, the far white parklands and freeways of Ranapur, the huddle of old Kashi turned in on itself and the scimitar-curve of the river cutting through it all. Mr Nandha thinks: We are all patterns of light, harmonics of music, frozen energy gathered out of the ur-licht into time, for a time, then released. And then behind the fierce joy of that understanding comes a dreadful sickness in his stomach. Mr Nandha lurches against the glass walls of the elevator. A keen, sharp, thin dread drives irrefusably into his heart. He has no name for it, he has never experienced sensation like this before but he knows what it is. Something terrible has happened. The most terrible thing he can imagine, and beyond. It is not a premonition. This is an echo of a happening event. The worst thing in the world has just gone down.

  He almost calls home. His hand shapes the ‘hoek mudra, then the universe resumes its normal perspectives, time restarts and it was only a feeling, only a failing of body and will. This case demands the greatest determination and dedication. He must be firm, correct, inspiring. Mr Nandha straightens his cuffs, combs down his hair.

  Morva: Fiscal. ‘The hotel is booked through a Bank of Bharat, Varanasi account,’ Morva says. Mr Nandha approves that Morva wears a suit to work, more so that he has a spare, in case. ‘I’ll need bank authorisation to get the complete details but this card has been on its travels.’ He hands Mr Nandha a list of transactions. Varanasi. Mumbai railway station. A hotel in a place called Thekaddy in Kerala. Bangalore airport. Patna airport.

  ‘Nothing before two months?’

  ‘Not on this card.’

  ‘Can you find out the card limit?’

  Morva taps the bottom line. Mr Nandha reads it twice. He blinks once.

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘How quickly can you get me into that account?’

  ‘I doubt it’ll be anything before business hours.’

  ‘Try,’ says Mr Nandha, giving his co-investigator a pat on the back as he leaves.

  Mukul Dev: Investigations

  ‘Look at this!’ Mukul is five months out of post-grad and still wide-eyed at the cool of it all. Hey, girls, I’m a Krishna Cop. ‘Our girl’s a media babe!’ The video sequence is raw, chaotically shot, worse lit. Moving bodies, most in combats. Fire gleaming off curved metal surfaces.

  ‘This is the attack on the train,’ Mr Nandha says. It is already as ancient and irrelevant as the Raj.

  ‘Yes, sir; it’s army helmet cam footage. This is the sequence.’

  It is hard to make out any detail in the chaos of fire and flight but he sees Thomas Lull in his ludicrous garb run towards the camera and out of shot while Bharati soldiers take firing positions. He makes out a line of movement against the longer, darker line of the burning train. Mr Nandha shudders. He knows the scuttling scurrying of anti-personnel robots from his wars with Dataraja Anreddy. Then he sees a figure in grey go down before the charging line and raise a hand. The robots cease. Mukul waves a stop sign and the picture freezes.

  ‘This was not in the news reports.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’

  ‘Good work,’ Mr Nandha says standing up. He signs an open-channel mudra. ‘Everyone to the conference room in thirty minutes.’ Acceptance chimes go off inside his skull as he leaves Mukul’s office.

  Oh-three-thirty, Mr Nandha reads from the timer patch in the corner of his vision as his investigation unit enter the conference room and takes seats around the oval table. Mr Nandha ca
n smell the exhaustion in the over-lit room. He looks for a receptacle for his Ayurvedic tea bag, tuts in disappointment to find there is none.

  ‘Mr Morva, any progress?’

  ‘One of my aeais threw up an unusual purchase; custom-grown protein chips from AFG at Bangalore; what is unusual is the shipping docket; that unlicensed surgery in the Patna FTZ.’

  In his peripheral vision Mr Nandha notices Sampath Dasgupta, a junior constable, start at something on his palmer screen and show it to Shanti Nene his neighbour.