by Ian McDonald
‘Cool,’ both boys said together.
‘Hey now, didn’t you promise you’d let your folks know as soon as the network was up?’ said Mom, standing behind them. ‘And Kyle, you know your dad doesn’t like you playing that game.’
But she wasn’t mad. She couldn’t be mad. Dad was safe, Dad had called in, Dad would be home soon. It was all in the little tremble in her voice, the way she leaned over between them to look at the screen, the smell of perfume just dabbed on. You know these things.
~ * ~
It had been close. Kyle’s Dad called Kyle in to show him the rolling news and point out where his company car had been when the bombers hit the escort hummers.
‘There’s next to no protection in those things,’ he said over jerky, swooping flash-cut images of black smoke boiling out of yellow flames and people standing and shouting and not knowing what to do; pictures taken from a passer-by’s palmer. ‘They used a drone RAV; I saw something go past the window just before it hit. They were aiming for the soldiers, not for us.’
‘It was a suicide attack here,’ Kyle said.
‘Some karsevak group claimed responsibility; some group no one’s ever heard of before. Fired everything off in one shooting match.’
‘Don’t they go straight into a state of moksha if they blow themselves up in Varanasi?’
‘That’s what they believe, son. Your soul is released from the wheel of reincarnation. But I still can’t help feeling that this was the final throw. Things are getting better. The Ranas are taking control. People can see the difference we’re making. I do feel we’ve turned the corner on this.’
Kyle loved it when his dad talked military, though he was really a structural engineer.
‘So Salim got home safe.’
Kyle nodded.
‘That’s good.’ Kyle heard his father sigh in the way that men do when they’re supposed to talk about things they don’t want to. ‘Salim’s a good kid, a good friend.’ Another intake of breath. Kyle waited for it to shape into a but.
‘Kyle, you know, that game. Well...’
Not a but, a well.
‘Well, I know it’s real educational and a lot of people play it and enjoy it and get a lot out of it, but, it’s not really right. I mean, it’s not accurate. It claims it’s an evolution simulation, and it is as far as it goes. But if you think about it, really, it’s just following rules laid down by someone else. All that code was programmed by someone else; so really, it’s evolution inside a bigger framework that’s been deliberately designed. But they don’t tell you, Kyle, and that’s dishonest; it’s pretending to be something it’s not. And that’s why I don’t like it; because it isn’t honest about the truth, and I know that whatever I say, what you do with Salim is your thing, but I do think you’re not to play it here, in the house. And it’s good you’ve got a good friend here -I remember when Kelis was your age when we were in the Gulf, she had a really good friend, a Canadian girl - but it would be good if you had a few more friends from your own background. OK? Now, how about “Wrestle Smackdown” on cable?’
~ * ~
The referee had gone down with a head-butt to the nuts in the first thirty seconds so it was only when the decibel count exceeded the mundane Varanasi traffic roar that security heads-upped, guns-downed and came running. A guard-woman in full colour-smear combats and smart-visor locked her arms around Kyle and hauled him out of the steel-cage match into which the under-eleven practice had collapsed.
‘I’ll sue you I’ll sue the ass of you your children will end up living in a cardboard box, let go of me,’ Kyle yelled. The security woman hauled.
It was full fight, boys, girls, supporters, cheerleaders. At the bottom of the dog-pile, Striker Salim and Ozzie Ryan. Security hauled them off each other and returned the snoopy RAV drones that flocked to any unusual action to their stand-by roosts. Parameds rushed to the scene. There was blood, there were bruisings and grazings, there were torn clothes and black eyes. There were lots and lots of tears but no contusions, no concussions, no breaks.
Then the gitmoisation.
Coach Joe: OK, so want to tell me what that was about?
Ozzie Ryan: He started it
Striker Salim: Liar! You started it.
Coach Joe: I don’t care who started it; I want to know what all that was about.
Ozzie Ryan: He’s the liar. His people just lie all the time; they don’t have a word for the truth.
Striker Salim: Ah! Ah! That’s such a lie too.
Ozzie Ryan: See? You can’t trust them: he’s a spy for them, it’s true; before he came here they never got in, since he came there’s been things happening almost every day. He’s a spy and he’s telling them all ways to get in and kill us because he thinks were all animals and going to hell anyway.
Coach Joe: Jesus. Kyle; what happened?
Kyle Rubin: I don’t know, I didn’t see anything, I just heard this noise like and when I looked over they were on the ground tearing lumps out of each other.
Striker Salim: That is so not true ... I cannot believe you said that. You were there, you heard what he said.
Kyle Rubin: I didn’t hear everything, I just heard like shouting...
Gitmoisation part two.
Kyle’s dad: Coach Joe called me, but I’m not going to bawl you out, I think there’s been enough of that already. I’m disappointed, but I’m not going to bawl you out. Just one thing: did Ryan call Salim something?
Kyle Rubin: (mumble.)
Kyle’s dad: Son, did Ryan use a racist term to Salim?
Kyle Rubin: (twisting foot.)
Kyle’s dad: I thought Salim was your friend. Your best friend. I think if someone had done something to my best friend, doesn’t matter who he is, what he is, I’d stand up for him.
Kyle Rubin: He said Salim was a diaper-head curry-nigger and they were all spies and Salim was just standing there so I went in there and popped him, Ryan I mean, and he just went for Salim, not me, and then everyone was piling on with Ryan and Salim at the bottom and they were all shouting curry-nigger-lover curry-nigger-lover at me and trying to get me too and then the security came in.
At the end of it two things were certain: soccer was suspended for one month, and when it did come back, Salim would not be playing, never would be again. Cantonment was not safe for Bharatis.
~ * ~
He was trapped, a traffic island castaway. Marooned on an oval of concrete in Varanasi’s never-ebbing torrent of traffic by the phatphat driver when he saw Kyle fiddling in his lap with pogs.
‘Ey, you, out here, get out, trying to cheat, damn gora.’
‘What here, but?’
Out onto this tiny, traffic island twenty centimetres in front of him twenty centimetres behind him, on one side a tall man in a white shirt and black pants, on the other a fat woman in a purple sari who smelled of dead rose, and the phatphat, the little yellow-and-black plastic bubble, looked/sounded like a hornet as it throbbed away into the terrifying traffic.
‘You can’t do this, my dad’s building this country!’
The man and the woman turned to stare. Stares everywhere, every instant from the moment he slipped out of the back of the Hi-Lux at the phatphat stand. They had been eager for his money then, Hey sir, hey sahib, good clean cab, fast fast, straight there no detours, very safe safest phatphat in Varanasi. How was he to know that the cheap, light cardboard pogs were only money inside the Cantonment? And now here he was on his traffic island, no way forward, no way back, no way through the constant movement of trucks, buses, cream-coloured Marutis, mopeds, phatphats, cycle-rickshaws, cows, everything roaring ringing hooting yelling as it tried to find its true way while avoiding everything else. People were walking through that, just stepping out in the belief that the traffic would steer around them; the man in the white shirt, there he went, the woman in the purple sari, Come on boy, come with me, he couldn’t, he daren’t, and there she went and now there were people piling up behind him, pushing him pushing push
ing pushing him closer to the kerb, out in that killing traffic ...
Then the phatphat came through the mayhem, klaxon buzzing, weaving a course of grace and chaos, sweeping in to the traffic island. The plastic door swivelled up and there, there, was Salim.
‘Come on come on.’
Kyle bounded in, the door scissored down and the driver hooted off into Varanasi’s storm of wheels.
‘Good thing I was looking for you,’ Salim said, tapping the lighthoek coiled behind his ear. ‘You can find anyone with these. What happened?’ Kyle showed him the Cantonment pogs. Salim’s eyes went wide. ‘You really haven’t ever been outside, have you?’
Escaping from Cantonment was easier than anything. Everyone knew they were only looking for people coming in, not going out, so all Kyle had to do was slip into the back of the pick-up while the driver bought a mochaccino to go at Tinneman’s. He even peeked out from under the tarpaulin as the inner gate closed because he wanted to see what the bomb damage was like. The robots had taken away all the broken masonry and metal spaghetti but he could see the steel reinforcing rods through the shattered concrete block work and the black scorch marks over the inner wall. It was so interesting and Kyle was staring so hard that he only realised he was out of Cantonment entirely, in the street, the alien street, when he saw the trucks, buses, cream-coloured Marutis, mopeds, phatphats, cycle-rickshaws, cows close behind the pick-up and felt the city roar surge over him.
‘So, where do you want to go then?’ Salim asked. His face was bright and eager to show Kyle his wonderful wonderful city. This was a Salim Kyle had never seen before; Salim not-in-Cantonment, Salim in-his-own-place, Salim-among-his-own-people. This Mansoori seemed alien to Kyle. He was not sure he liked him. ‘There’s theNewBharatSabhaholydeerofSarnath DoctorSampunananandcricketgroundBuddhiststupaRamnagar FortVishwanathTempleJantarMantar…’
Too much too much, Kyle’s head was going round all the people, all the people, the one thing he never saw, never noticed from the roof-top look-out, under all the helicopters and cranes and military RAV drones, there were people.
‘River,’ he gasped. ‘The river, the big steps.’
‘The ghats. The best thing. They’re cool.’ Salim spoke to the driver in a language Kyle had never heard from his mouth before. It did not sound like Salim at all. The driver waggled his head in that way that you thought was no until you learned better, threw the phatphat around a big traffic circle with a huge pink concrete statue of Ganesh to head away from the glass towers of Ranapur into the old city. Flowers. There were garlands of yellow flowers at the elephant god’s feet, little smoking smudges of incense; strange strings of chillies and limes; and a man with big dirty ash-grey dreadlocks, a man with his lips locked shut with fishing hooks.
‘The man, look at the man ...’ Kyle wanted to shout but that wonder/horror was behind him, a dozen more unfolding on every side as the phatphat hooted down ever narrower, ever darker, ever busier streets. ‘An elephant, there’s an elephant and that’s a robot and those people, what are they carrying, that’s a body, that’s like a dead man on a stretcher oh man ...’ He turned to Salim. He wasn’t scared now. There were no bodies behind him, squeezing him, pushing him into fear and danger. It was just people, everywhere just people, working out how to live. ‘Why didn’t they let me see this?’
The phatphat bounced to a stop.
‘This is where we get out, come on, come on.’
The phatphat was wedged in an alley between a clot of cycle rickshaws and a Japanese delivery truck. Nothing on wheels could pass but still the people pressed by on either side. Another dead man passed, handed high on his stretcher over the heads of the crowd. Kyle ducked instinctively as the shadow of the corpse passed over the dome of the phatphat, then the doors flew up and he stepped out into the side of a cow. Kyle almost punched the stupid, baggy thing, but Salim grabbed him, shouted, ‘Don’t touch the cow, the cow is special, like sacred.’ Shout was the only possible conversation here. Grab the only way not to get separated. Salim dragged Kyle by the wrist to a booth in a row of plastic-canopied market stalls where a bank of chill-cabinets chugged. Salim bought two Limkas and showed the stallholder a Cantonment pog, which he accepted for novelty value. Again the hand on the arm restrained Kyle.
‘You have to drink it here, there’s a deposit.’
So they leaned their backs against the tin bar and watched the city pass and drank their Limkas from the bottle which would have had Kyle’s mom screaming germs bacteria viruses infections and felt like two very very proper gentlemen. In a moment’s lull in the street racket Kyle heard his palmer call. He hauled it out of his pants pocket, a little ashamed because everyone had a newer better brighter cleverer smaller one than him, and saw, as if she knew what dirty thing he had done, it was his mom calling. He stared at the number, the jingly tune, the little smiley animation. Then he thumbed the off button and sent them all to darkness.
‘Come on.’ He banged his empty bottle down on the counter. ‘Let’s see this river then.’
In twenty steps, he was there, so suddenly, so huge and bright Kyle forgot to breathe. The narrow alley, the throng of people opened up into painful light, light in the polluted yellow sky light from the tiers of marble steps that descended to the river and light from the river itself, wider and more dazzling than he had ever imagined, white as a river of milk. And people: the world could not hold so many people, crowding down the steps to the river in their coloured clothes and coloured shoes, jammed together under the tilted wicker umbrellas to talk and deal and pray, people in the river itself, waist deep in the water, holding up handfuls of the water and the water glittering as it fell through their fingers, praying, washing - washing themselves, washing their clothes, washing their children and their sins. Then the boats: the big hydrofoil seeking its way to dock through the little darting rowboats, the pilgrim boats making the crossing from Ramnagar, rowers standing on their sterns pushing at their oars, the tourist boats with their canopies, the kids in inflated tractor tyres paddling around scavenging for river-scraps, down to the bobbing saucers of butter-light woven from mango leaves that the people set adrift on the flow. Vision by vision the Ganga revealed itself to Kyle: next he became aware of the buildings; the guesthouses and hotels and havelis shouldering up to the steps, the ridiculous pink water towers, the many domes of the mosque and the golden spires of the temples and little temple down at the river leaning into the silt; the arcades and jetties and galleries and across the river, beyond the yellow sand and the black, ragged tents of the holy men, the chimneys and tanks and pipes of the chemical and oil plants, all flying the green white and orange wheel-banners of Bharat.
‘Oh,’ Kyle said. ‘Oh man.’ And: ‘Cool.’
Salim was already halfway down the steps.
‘Come on.’
‘Is it all right? Am I allowed?’
‘Everyone is allowed. Come on, let’s get a boat.’
A boat. People didn’t do things like that but here they were settling on the seat as the boatman pushed out, a kid not that much older than Kyle himself with teeth that would never be allowed inside Cantonment yet Kyle felt jealous of him, with his boat and his river and the people all around and a life without laws or needs or duties. He sculled them through floating butter-candles - diyas, Salim explained to Kyle - past the ghat of the sadhus, all bare-ass naked and skinny as famine, and the ghat where people beat their clothes against rock washing-platforms and the ghat where the pilgrims landed, pushing each other into the water in their eagerness to touch the holy ground of Varanasi, and the ghat of the buffalos - where where? Kyle asked and Salim pointed out their nostrils and black, black-curved horns just sticking up out of the water. Kyle trailed his hand in the water and when he pulled it in it was covered in golden flower peals. He lay back on the seat and watched the marble steps flow past, and beyond them the crumbling, mould-stained waterfront buildings and beyond them the tops of the highest towers of New Varanasi and beyond them the yellow clouds,
and he knew that even when he was a very old man, maybe forty or even more, he would always remember this day and the colour of this light and the sound of the water against the hull.