River Of Gods

by Ian McDonald

  He catches his mother’s eye as he sits down. She smiles, privately, wisely, quietly as suddenly the entire boardroom is on its feet, shouting questions.

  The taxi driver was smoking with the radio on, sprawled out on the back seat with his feet sticking out the open door getting rained on as Tal came splashing across the glass bridge towing a stumbling, half-coherent Najia.

  ‘Cho chweet, am I glad to see you,’ Tal shouted as the driver switched on his yellow sign and flashed his headlights.

  ‘You had the look of people who might be in need of transport. ’ Tal bundled Najia into the back. ‘Anyway, there are no fares tonight, not with all that is happening. And I am charging you waiting time. Where to or shall I just drive again?’

  ‘Anywhere but here.’ Tal pulled out yts palmer and opened up Najia’s video file from N.K. Jivanjee together with a neat little chunk of blackware on every street-credible nute’s Must Have list: a phone tracer. A nute never knows when yt’s going to need a little Ron. Day. Voo.

  ‘Should we not be moving?’ Tal asked, looking up from stripping the code from the video file.

  ‘One thing I must be asking,’ the driver said. ‘I require assurance that you were not involved with this morning’s . . . unpleasantness. I may speak my mind on our government’s many failings and incompetencies, but I am at heart a man who loves his nation.’

  ‘Baba, the same people went after her, shot at me,’ Tal said. ‘Trust me. Now, just drive.’ That was when he floored the pedal.

  ‘Is your friend all right?’ the driver asks as he hoots a path through the soap worshippers, now on their feet, hands upheld as if in offering, eyes closed, lips moving. ‘She does not seem her usual self.’

  ‘She’s had bad news about her family,’ Tal says. ‘And what’s with them?’

  ‘They offer puja to the gods of Town and Country for the safe deliverance of our nation,’ the driver says. ‘Idle superstition if you ask me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ Tal mutters under yts breath. As the taxi turns on to the main road a big Toyota Hi-Lux turns in in a woosh of spray. Karsevaks cling to the roll bars and side rails. Blue light catches on their swords and trishuls. Tal watches it out of sight, shivers. Two minutes more, spellbound by the aeai . . .

  ‘I presume you would like me to avoid them as well as policemen, soldiers, government officials and everyone else?’ the taxi-wallah offers.

  ‘Especially them.’ Tal absently fingers the contoured studs beneath yts skin, remembering adrenaline burn, remembering a city of blades and trishuls and more than fear than yt ever felt possible. You don’t know it but I’ve beaten you, gendereds, Tal thinks. Rough boys, violent boys, think you own the streets, think you can do what you like and no one will stop you because you are strong, wild, young men, but this nute has you beat. I have the weapon in my hand and it has just given me the location of the man who will destroy you with it. ‘Do you know this place?’ Tal asks, leaning over the seatback and thrusting the palmer in front of the driver’s face. Out there beyond the slashing windscreen wipers the night was turning hollow grey. The taxi-wallah waggled his head.

  ‘It’s a drive.’

  ‘Then I can get some sleep,’ Tal says, settling back into the greasy upholstery, which is partly true and partly a disinvitation to the driver to chitter away about the state of the nation. But Najia clutches yts arm and whispers, ‘Tal, what am I going to do? It showed me things, about my dad, when were in Afghanistan. Tal, awful things no one else could know about . . .’

  ‘It lies. It’s a soap opera aeai, it’s designed to put minimal information together into stories with the greatest possible emotional impact. Come on, sister, who doesn’t get shit from their parents?’

  In the hour and a half it takes the Maruti to detour around smouldering trash fires, dodge checkpoints, slip through barricades of burned out cars, drive over street-sprayed swastikas and exhortations of Jai Bharat!, Tal hears the radio play the national anthem twenty four times, interrupted by short bulletins from the Rana Bhavan about the success of the Government of National Salvation in restoring safety and security. Yt squeezes Najia’s hand and presently she stops crying softly into the sleeve of her soft grey fleece top.

  The taxi-wallah balks at taking his lovely Maruti across the dirty, gravelly causeway.

  ‘Baba, for what I’m paying you, you buy a new taxi,’ Tal exhorts. It is then that the Merc comes bowling towards them along the long straight causeway from the walled hunting lodge half-seen in the grey drizzle; hooting furiously. Tal checks yts lock on the position of the target palmer, taps the driver. ‘Stop that car,’ yt orders.

  ‘Stop that?’ the driver asks. Tal flings the door open. The driver swears, skids to a halt. Before cry or protest, Tal has slipped out and walks through the drizzling rain towards the car. Headlights flash on, blinding yt. Yt can hear the engine rev deep in its throat. The horn is deep, polyphonic. Tal shields yts eyes with yts hand and keeps walking. The Merc leaps towards yt.

  Najia presses her palms against the glass and cries out as she sees the car bear down on Tal in yts bedraggled finery. Tal raises a futile hand. Brakes screech and bind in the clingy marsh-mud. Najia closes her eyes. She does not know what the sound of half a million rupees of heavy Northern European engineering striking a heavily engineered human body sounds like but she is certain she will know it when she hears it. She doesn’t hear it. She hears a heavy car door thud shut. She dares open her eyes. The man and the nute stand in the dawn rain. That is Shaheen Badoor Khan, Najia thinks. She cannot but remember that other time she saw him, in the photographs at the club. Flashlight over dark upholstery, carved wood, polished surfaces but the dialogue is the same, politician and nute. This time it is the nute handing over the object of power. Shaheen Badoor Khan is smaller than she had imagined. She tries to fit opinions to him: traitor, coward, adulterer, fool; but her accusations are drawn down like stars to a black hole to the image of the room at the end of the corridor; the room she was never in, the room she never knew existed, the room at the end of her childhood, and her father welcoming her. History is happening here, she tries to tell herself to burn through the dreadful gravity of what the aeai had told her about her father. In front of you on a dirt road the future is being shaped and you have a ringside seat. You are down there by the sand among the blood and sinews and you can smell the warm money. This is the story of yours or anyone else’s lifetime. This is your Pulitzer Prize before you are twenty-five.

  And the rest of your life looking back, Najia Askarzadah.

  A tap on the glass. Shaheen Badoor Khan bends low. Najia winds down the window. His face is grey-stubbled, his eyes are buried in exhaustion but they hold a tiny light, like a diya floating on a wide, dark river. Against all events and odds, against the tide of history, he has glimpsed victory. Najia thinks of the women parading their battle-cats head-high around the fighting ring, torn but valiant. He offers a hand.

  ‘Ms Askarzadah.’ His voice is deeper than she imagined. She takes the hand. ‘You’ll excuse me if I seem a little slow this morning; I have rather been overwhelmed by the flow of events, but I must thank you, not just for myself - I am only a civil servant - but on behalf of my nation.’

  Don’t thank me, Najia thinks. I was the one sold you in the first place. She says, ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘No no, Ms Askarzadah, you have uncovered a conspiracy of such scale, such audacity . . . I do not know quite how to deal with this, it is quite literally breath-taking. Machines, artificial intelligences . . .’ He shakes his head and she senses how infinitely weary he is. ‘Even with this information, it is by no means over yet and you are by no means safe. I have an escape plan - everyone in the Bharat Sabha has an escape plan. I had intended to take myself and my wife, but my wife, as you have discovered . . .’ Shaheen Bador Khan shakes his head again and this time Najia senses his disbelief at the nested involutions, the wanton daring of the conspiracy. ‘Let’s say, I still have loyal agents in position
s of influence, and those whose loyalty I can’t trust are at least well paid. I can get you to Kathmandu, after that you are on your own, I am afraid. I’d ask one thing, I know you’re a journalist and you have the story of the decade, but please do not release anything until I have played my card?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Najia Askarzadah stammers. Of course, anything. I owe you. Because you do not know it, but I am your torturer.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you indeed.’ Shaheen Badoor Khan looks up at the bleeding sky, squints at the thin, sour rain. ‘Ah, I have never known worse times. And please believe me, if I thought what you have given me would make it worse for Bharat . . . There is nothing I can do for my Prime Minister, but at least there is something I may yet do for my country.’ He stands up briskly, looks out over the sodden marshland. ‘We have a way to go yet before any of us are safe.’

  He shakes hands, firmly, grimly, again and returns to his car. He and Tal exchange the briefest of glances.

  ‘That the politician?’ the taxi-wallah asks as he reverses up to let the Mercedes pass.

  ‘That was Shaheen Badoor Khan,’ Tal says, wet in the back seat beside Najia. ‘Private Secretary to the late Sajida Rana.’

  ‘Hot damn!’ the driver exclaims as he tailgates Shaheen Badoor Khan, hooting at early bullock carts on the country back-road. ‘Don’t you love Bharat!’

  Jamshedpur Grameen Bank is a dozen rural sathin women running micro-credit schemes in over a hundred villages, most of whom have never left back-country Bihar, some of whom have never physically met each other but they hold fifty lakh ordinary shares in Ray Power. Their aeai agent is a homely little 2.1 bibi, chubby and smiling, with a life-creased face and a vivid red bindi. She would not look out of place as a rural auntie in an episode of Town and Country. She namastes in Vishram’s ’hoek-vision.

  ‘For the resolution,’ she says sweetly, like your mama would, and vanishes.

  Vishram’s done the mental calculation before Inder can render it up on his in-eye graphic. KHP Holdings is next on the list with its eighteen per cent stock, by far the biggest single shareholder outside the family. If Bhardwaj votes yes, it is game to Vishram. If he votes no, then Vishram will need eleven of the remaining twenty blocks to win.

  ‘Mr Bhardwaj ?’ Vishram asks. His hands are flat on the table. He cannot lift them. They will leave two palm-sized patches of misty sweat.

  Bhardwaj takes off his hard, titanium framed glasses, rubs at a tactical spot of grease with a soft felt polishing cloth. He exhales loudly through his nose.

  ‘This is a most irregular procedure,’ he says. ‘All I can say is that, under Mr Ranjit Ray, this would never have happened. But the offer is generous and cannot be ignored. Therefore I recommend it and vote for the resolution.’

  Vishram allows his fist and jaw muscles a little mental spasm, a little yes. Even on that night when he took the Funny Ha! Ha! contest, there was never an audience kick like the murmur that runs around the board table that says they’ve all done their sums too. Vishram feels Marianna Fusco’s hosiery-clad thigh press briefly against his under the transparent plane of nano-diamond. A movement at the edge of his peripheral vision make him look up. His mother slips out.

  He hardly hears the formalities of the remainder of the vote. He numbly thanks the shareholders and board members for their faith in the Ray name and family. Thinking: Got it. Got it. Fucking got it. Telling the table that he will not let them down, that they have assured a great future for this great company. Thinking: I’m going to take Marianna Fusco to a restaurant, whatever is the very best you can get in the capital of an invaded country that’s just had its Prime Minister assassinated. Inviting: everyone to make their way down the corridor and then we’ll see exactly the future you’ve voted for. Thinking: a softly knotted silk scarf.

  IT’S LIKE HERDING CALVES, Marianna Fusco messages as Ray Power staffers try to usher board members, researchers, guests, strays and those second-string journalists who can be spared from the Day’s Big Story down the Ramayana marquetry maple floors. The whorl of bodies brings Vishram and Ramesh, a head taller, into orbit.

  ‘Vishram.’ Big Brother smiles, broad and honest. It looks alien. Vishram recalls him always serious, puzzled, head bowed. His handshake is firm and long. ‘Well done.’

  ‘You’re a rich man now, Ram.’

  Typically Ramesh is the tilt of the head, the roll of the eyes upwards, looking for answer in heaven.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am, quite obscenely so. But you know, I don’t actually care. One thing you can do for me: find me something to do on this zero-point thing. If it’s what you say, I’ve spent my professional life looking in the wrong direction.’

  ‘You’ll come to the demonstration.’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Or I suppose I should say, universe.’ He laughs nervously. Third rule of comedy, Vishram Ray thinks. Never laugh at your own jokes. ‘I think Govind needs a word with you.’

  He’s rehearsed this so many different ways, so many different voices, so many nuances and stances and they all fall from him in the moments it takes to pick Govind out of the crowd. He can’t turn his weaponry on this chubby, shyly smiling, sweating man in the too-small suit.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, extending the hand. Govind shakes his head, takes the hand.

  ‘And that is why, brother, you will still never make it in business. Too soft. Too polite. You won today, you engineered a great victory, enjoy it! Press it home. Gloat. Have your security escort me from the building again.’

  ‘You’ve seen that routine already.’

  Ray Power’s PR crew has chivvied the herd onwards, Vishram and Govind are alone in the corridor. Govind’s grip on Vishram’s hand is tight.

  ‘Our father would be proud but I still maintain that you will run this company into the ground, Vishram. You have flash, you have charisma, you have showbiz and there is a place for that, but that is not how you run a business. I have a proposal. Ray Power, like the Ray family, was never meant to be a house divided. I have verbal agreements with outside investors but nothing is drawn up, nothing is signed.’

  ‘A re-merger,’ Vishram says.

  ‘Yes,’ says Govind. ‘With me running the operational side.’

  Vishram cannot read this audience.

  ‘I’ll give you an answer in time,’ he says. ‘After the demonstration. Now, I’d like you to see my universe.’

  ‘One thing,’ Govind asks as their leather soles click softly on the inlaid maple. ‘Where did the money come from, eh?’

  ‘An old ally of our father’s,’ Vishram says and as he subliminally hears that most feared of sounds to a comedian - his own footsteps walking off - he realises that in the scripts he rehearsed and never used, there was never one for what he would do if he had stood up behind that diamond table and died the death.

  They find a small space on the floor by the door, beneath the carriage attendant’s pull-down berth. Here they barricade themselves in with the blue impact-resistant suitcases and huddle against each other like children. The doors are sealed, all Parvati can see through its tiny, smoked glass porthole is sky the colour of its own rain. She sees through the partition door into the next car. The bodies are pressed up against the tough plastic, disturbingly flattened. Not bodies; people, lives like hers that cannot continue in any meaningful way back in that city. The voices drowns out the hum of the traction engines, the rattle of the rails. She finds it amazing that anything so monstrously overloaded can move at all but the tug of acceleration in the well of her belly, the small of her back against the ribbed plastic wall, tells her the Raipur Express is picking up speed.

  There is no staff anywhere to be found on this train, no ticket collector in her smart white sari with the wheel of Bharat Rail on her shoulder of the pallav; no clanking chaiwallah, no cabin attendant cross-legged on the bunk above them. The train runs fast now, power pylons blur past the tiny rectangle of smoky sky and Parvati panics for an instant that this is not the train, this is not th
e track. Then she thinks, What does it matter? Anywhere is away.

  Away. She presses against Krishan, reaches for his hand beneath the drape of her stained sari, surreptitiously so no one will see, no one will be tempted to speculate on what these two Hindus are doing. Her fingers encounter warm wet. She jerks them away. Blood. Blood spreading in a sticky pool in the space between the bodies. Blood clinging to the ribs of the plastic wall. Krishan’s hand, where it failed by millimetres to meet hers, is a clenched red fist. Parvati pushes herself away, not in horror, but to comprehend how this madness is happening. Krishan sags across the wall leaving a red smear, props himself up on his left arm. From just above his hip down his white shirt is red, soaked through with blood. Parvati can see it pumping through the fabric weave with every breath he takes.