by Ian McDonald
On an inside sweep, Shiv hears it. Running feet in the rural pre-dawn. Titanium-shod feet, as much felt through the bike’s suspension as heard, gaining on them, faster than any running thing should. Shiv glances back. There is enough light in the sky to make out the pursuer. It holds its body low to the ground, poised, balanced; it paces on two strong legs like some monstrous demon bird released upon them from the high castle. It is gaining steadily. A glance at the speedo tells Shiv it is doing at least eighty.
Yogendra opens up his throttles a second after Shiv but to take the bikes up to the max on this crumbling, greasy rural road is as sure a death as the thing loping behind them. Shiv bends low over the handlebars, trying to make himself as small a target as possible for whatever esoteric firepower the machine carries. The turn-o ff must be soon. He can hear the metal beat over the drone of the Yokohama motor. That tree, that poster for bottled water, it’s here, surely. So busy looking, he almost misses Yogendra swing the bike across the blacktop and off on to the farm path. Panicked, Shiv brakes, oversteers, sticks a foot, almost spills across the country road before he brings the bike on to the sand track.
He saw it. There, behind him, down that road, pounding away, grey in the indigo, like it would never stop, never tire, keep running and running after them round the whole round world.
The dal bushes give way to hard-packed sand pocked with rain. The tyres kick up sprays of hardpan and there is the boat, where they left it, anchor run into the sand, pulled round on the current, low in the river from heavy bilges, and there is a Brahmin beside it, waist deep in the stream, his thread across his shoulder, pouring water from his cupped hands and chanting the dawn salutation of Mother Ganga. Shiv skids the bike to a halt, splashes into the water, starts to heave the hot machine into the boat.
‘Leave leave leave!’ Yogendra screams.
The Brahmin chants.
‘They can track us through them,’ Shiv yells.
‘They can track us through the mines.’ Yogendra runs his bike down into the stream, it falls with a splash, starts to fade into the river quicksand. He pulls up the anchor as Shiv rolls into the boat. It rocks sickeningly and there is a nasty amount of water under the seating but by now he cannot get any wetter but he can be a lot more dead. The robots looms over the dune crest and rears up to its full height. It is some evil stalking rakshasa, part bird part spider, unfolding palps and manipulators and a brace of machine guns from its mandibles.
The Brahmin stares at that.
Yogendra dives for the engine. Pull one pull two. The hunter takes a step down the sandy bank to better its aim. Pull three. The engine starts. The boat surges away. Ramanandacharya’s machine takes a leap to land knee-joint deep in the water. Its head swivels on to target. Yogendra heads for the centre of the stream. The robot wades after them. Then Shiv remembers Anand’s clever little grenade in one of his pockets. Bullets send the water exploding up behind Yogendra in the stern. He dives flat. The Brahmin in the shallows crouches, covers his head. The grenade lobs through the air in a graceful, glittering arc. It falls with a splash. There is nothing to see, nothing to hear but the tiniest of cracks that is the capacitors discharging. The robot freezes. The guns veer skywards, ripping the dawn with bullets. It sags on its knees, goes down like a gutshot gunda. Its mandibles and graspers flex open, it tips forward into the silt. The soft silvery quicksand takes it almost immediately.
Shiv stands in the boat. He points at the felled robot. He laughs, huge, helpless, joyful laughter. He cannot stop. Tears stream down his face, mingling with the rain. He can hardly draw breath. He has to sit down. It hurts, it hurts.
‘Should have killed him,’ Yogendra mutters at the tiller. Shiv waves him away. Nothing can press down or nay-say him. The laughter passes into joy, a simple, searing ecstasy that he is alive, that it is over now. He slips off the bulky bodhisoft, lies back on the bench, lets the rain fall on his face and looks up at the purple banding of clouds that is another day unfurling over his Varanasi, another day for Shiv. Shiv raja. Maha raja. Raja of rajas. Maybe he will work for the Naths again; maybe his name will open other doors for him; maybe he will go into his own business, not body parts, not meat, meat betrays. Maybe he will go to that lavda Anand and make him an offer.
He can make plans again. And he can smell marigolds.
A small noise, a small movement of the boat.
The knife goes in so smooth, so thin and clean, so sharp so pure it challenges Shiv to express its shock. It is exquisite. It is unutterable. The blade stabs cleanly through skin, muscle, blood vessels, serrated edge grating along rib until the hooked tip rests inside his lung. There is no pain, only a sense of perfect sharpness, and of the blood foaming into his punctured lung. The blade kicks inside him to the pulse of his body. Shiv tries to speak. The sounds click and bubble and will not form words. It stays like this for a long time, wide-eyed with shock. Then Yogendra pulls the blade and pain shrieks from Shiv as the knife hooks out his lung. He turns to Yogendra, hands raised to fend off the next blow. The knife comes twisting in again, Shiv catches it between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. The knife cuts deep, down to the joint, but he holds it. He holds it. Now he can hear the frenzied puffing of two men caught in a fight of death. They strike at each other in desperate silence as the boat wallows. With his free hand Yogendra grabs for the palmer. Shiv slaps out, grabs for Yogendra, for anything. He seizes the string of pearls around the boy’s neck, pulls it tight, grips it hard to hold himself up. Yogendra whips the knife free from Shiv’s grasp, ripping the barbed edge along the bone. Shiv lets out a high, keening whine that passes into a bloody, drowning burble. His breath flutters the edge of his wound. Then Shiv sees the loathing, the contempt, the animal arrogance and disdain the grey light reveals in Yogendra’s face and he knows that he has always felt this, always looked this way at him, that this blade was always coming. He reels back. The string snaps. Pearls bounce and roll. Shiv slips on the pearls, loses balance, wheels, flails; goes over.
The water takes him cleanly, wholly. The roar of the traffic transmitted through the concrete piers deafens him. He is deaf, blind, dumb, weightless. Shiv wrestles, thrashes. He does not know which way is up, where is air, light. The bodhisoft pulls him down towards it; he tries to flick it clear but the webbing straps coil and seduce. Blue. He is embedded in blue. Everywhere he looks, blue, forever in every direction. And black, like smoke, his blood twining upwards. The blood, follow the blood. But he has no strength and the air bubbles from the gash in his back, he kicks but does not move, punches but does not stir. Shiv fights water, sinking deeper in to the blue, drawn down by his weaponry. His lungs burn. There is nothing left in them but poison, ashes of his body, but he cannot open his mouth, take that final, silent whoop of water even though he knows he is dead. His head pounds, his eyeballs are bursting, he sees his half-severed thumb wave futilely in the blue, the great blue as he kicks and thrashes for life.
Blue, drawing him down. He thinks he sees a pattern in it; in the dying fascination of brain cells burning out one by one he makes out a face. A woman’s face. Smiling. Come Shiv. Priya? Sai? Breathe. He must breathe. He kicks, struggles. He has a huge erection in his heavy, dragging combat pants laden with esoteric cyberweaponry and he knows what must happen. But Yogendra will not have the crypt. Breathe. He opens his mouth, his lungs and the blue rushes in and he sees in the decaying embers of his brain who it is down there. It is not Sai. It is not Priya. It is the gentle, homely face of the woman he gave to the river, the woman whose ovaries he stole for nothing, smiling, beckoning him to join her in the river and the blue and redemption.
‘The first rule of comedy,’ says Vishram Ray checking the set of his collar in the gentlemen’s washroom mirror, ‘is confidence: every day, every way; we’re radiating confidence.’
‘I thought the first rule of comedy was . . .’
‘Timing,’ Vishram interrupts Marianna Fusco, perched on the lip of the next washbasin in the line. Inder and various st
affers Vishram never knew he had have sealed the Research Centre toilets off to all corners, whatever the state of their bladder or bowels. ‘That’s the second rule. This is the Vishram Ray Book of Comedy.’
But he hasn’t been this scared since he first stepped out into that single spot shining down on the chrome shaft of the mike stand with an idea he had about budget airline travel. No place to hide behind that mike. No place to hide in that minimalist wooden room with the single construction-carbon table in the centre. Because the truth is, his timing is shit. Calling a major board meeting in the middle of an assassination crisis, with enemy tanks lined up a day’s drive sunsetwards. And it’s the monsoon, just to add a little meteorological misery to the whole shebang. No, Vishram Ray thinks as he checks his shave in the mirror. His timing is perfect. This is real comedy.
So why does it feel like eighteen different cancers eating him up?
Shave okay, aftershave within tolerable limits, cuffs check, cufflinks check.
The chemical rush does wonderfully clear the mind of Kalis and Brahmas and M-Star theory multiverses. Comedy is always in the moment. And the true first rule, in Book of Comedy or the Book of Business, is persuasion. Laughter, like parting with wealth, is a voluntary weakness.
Jacket okay, shirt okay, shoes immaculate.
‘Ready to rock?’ Marianna Fusco says, crossing her legs in a way that makes Vishram imagine his face between them. ‘Hey, funny man.’ The most casual of hand gestures indicates the neat little line of coke on the black marble. ‘Just in case.’
‘Lenny Bruce wasn’t desi,’ Vishram says. He lets out a huff of tense breath. ‘Let’s do it.’ Marianna Fusco slips off her marble perch and scoops the line straight down the wash-hand basin.
If she’d offered him a cigarette . . .
Vishram strides down the corridor. His leather soles give the slightest of creaks on the polished wood inlay, Marianna and Inder are at his back, every step he walks a little taller, a little prouder. The warm-up has the audience now, working them, getting the juices flowing, you on the left clap your hands, you on the right whistle, you up there in the gods, just roar! For! Mister! Vishram! Raaaaaaaay!
The carved wooden doors swing open and every face around the transparent table locks on to Vishram. Without a word his entourage splits around the table and takes their assigned places, Inder on his right hand side, Marianna Fusco on his left, their advisors flying wing. Inder had been rehearsing them since five that morning. As he sets his palmer and ornately inlaid wooden document wallet (no leather: the policy of an ethical, Hindu power company) in his place at the head of the table, Vishram nods to Govind on the right, Ramesh on the left. Ramesh, he notes, has at least invested in a decent suit. His beard looks a little less scraggy. Signs. It’s no different for a stand-up or a suit, it’s all reading the signs. Team Vishram waits for its leader to sit. The advisors eyeball each other. Vishram checks out the shareholders. Inder-online has a clever little briefing feature that automatically gives him a profile, percentage control, voting history and a probability on how they will swing in this one. Many of the shareholders are virtual, either on video link or represented by aeai agents modelled on their personalities. No US boardroom would recognise this as shareholder democracy. Vishram switches off Inder’s clever little toy. He’ll do this the old way, the stand-up’s way. He’ll search for the subtle graces, the potential in the set of that mouth to turn into a smile, the invitation in the corners of those eyes that say, go on then, entertain me.
The battle lines are by no means obvious. Even within his own division, there are major holders like SKM ProSearch who will vote against him. Too close to call. A glance to Inder, a glance to Marianna. Vishram Ray stands up. The bubble of conversation around the table bursts.
‘Ladies, gentlemen, shareholders of Ray Power, material and virtual.’ The boardroom door opens. Clear in his line of sight, his mother slips into the room and takes a seat by the wall. ‘Thank you all for coming here this morning, some of you at considerable personal risk. This meeting is inevitably overshadowed by recent events, most fatefully by the brutal assassination of our Prime Minister Sajida Rana. I’m sure you would all echo my thoughts and sympathies for the Rana family at this time.’ A murmur of assent from around the table. ‘I for one fully support the efforts of our new Government of National Salvation to restore us to our customary order and strength. I’m sure some of you must have questioned the appropriateness of carrying on this meeting in the light of the political situation. I could tell you that I would not have done so unless I felt it was in the highest interests of this company. It is, but there is another principle I feel needs upheld at times like these. The eyes of the world are on Bharat, and I believe it needs to be shown that, for Ray Power at least, it is business as usual.’
A nodding of heads together, soft, slow applause. Vishram surveys the room.
‘Without doubt, most of you are surprised to find yourself back so soon at another Ray Power board meeting. It is only a couple of weeks since my father dropped his, if you’ll pardon the expression, bombshell. They have been a full and lively two weeks, I assure you, and I should warn you now, I fully intend for this meeting to be no less shocking - or transforming.’
A moment for audience reaction. His throat is as dry as a Rajasthan shitpipe but he won’t let slip even the weakness of a sip of water. Govind and his PA incline heads. Good. The murmur fades into inaudibility. Time to let the passion into the voice.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I want to announce to you a major technological breakthrough by Ray Power Research and Development. I don’t want to talk down to you; I don’t understand the physics either, but let me simply state, my friends, that we have achieved not just sustainable, but high-yield zero-point energy. In this very building, our research teams have explored the properties of other universes and have discovered how to make energy flow into our own on a commercial scale. Free energy, my friends.’
Snake-oil, my friends. No. You’re up there in the spotlight and the mike’s in your hand, that ultimate phallic symbol. Don’t get clever. Don’t get self-conscious.
‘Limitless free energy; energy that is clean, that doesn’t pollute, that requires no fuel, that is endlessly renewable - that is as boundless as an entire universe. I have to tell you, my friends, many many companies have been looking for this miracle, and it is Bharati scientists in a Bharati company that have made the breakthrough!’
He has cheer-leaders primed but the applause around the table is spontaneous and heartfelt. Now is the time for the sip of water and the glance over at his mother. She wears the merest of smiles on her face. And it’s that old glow in the balls, that hormone burn when you know you have them and can steer them any way you want. Careful careful, don’t blow it. It is timing, after all.
‘This is history, this will change the shapes of our futures not just here in Bharat, but for every man woman and child on the planet. This is a great breakthrough and this is a great nation and I want the world to know that. We already have the world’s media here; now I want to give them something that will really make them remember us. Immediately after this meeting, I have arranged a full-scale public demonstration of the zero-point field.’
Now. Reel them in.
‘In one quantum leap, Ray Power becomes a planetary-class player. And this is where I come to the second - more practical - reason I’ve asked you to come here. Ray Power is a company in crisis. We can still only speculate on our father’s motives for splitting the company, for my part, I have tried to be true to his vision of a Ray Power where vision and people mean as much as the bottom line. It’s not an easy standard to live up to.’
How may this engineer lead the right life? But he can’t get the image of Marianna Fusco on her back with his fist gripping one end of the knotted silk scarf.
‘I’ve called you here because I need your help. The values of our company are under threat. There are other, larger corporates out there whose values are not ours. They ha
ve offered very large sums of money to buy sections of Ray Power; I myself have been approached. You may judge me rash, or at least gauche, but I turned them down, for those very reasons: I believe in what this company is about.’
Throttle back.
‘If I believed they were working in the best interests of the zero-point project, I would entertain their offers. But they are interested only because their own high-profile plans are far advanced. They would buy us up only to delay or even close down the zero-point. Offers have been made - maybe even by the same groups - to my brothers around this table. I want to pre-empt them. I want to cut them off at the pass, as the Americans say. I’ve made a generous offer to Ramesh to buy Ray Gen, the generating division that would implement the zero-point technique. That will give me a controlling interest in Ray Power, enough to keep any outside influence at bay until the zero-point goes public and we are in a position to resist more effectively. The details of the offer are in your presentation packs. If you’d like to take a moment to study them, and to consider what I’ve said, and then we could move to a vote.’