River of Gods (16 page)

"Professor Lull, I do not understand." Aj's short hair
stirs as the bus picks up speed.

"Nor do I," Thomas Lull says, looking at the cramped bus
seat with distaste. A goat squirms against him. "But I do know
if sharks ever stop moving they drown. And sometime gods are not
enough to keep you right. Come on."

"Where are you going?" Aj says.

"I'm not spending five hours cooped up in here on a day like
this." Thomas Lull raps on the driver's glass partition. He
rolls his paan into his left cheek, nods, stops the bus. "Come
on, and bring your bag. They'll have everything out of it."

Thomas Lull climbs the roof ladder, extends a hand down to Aj.

"Throw that up here."

Aj slings the bag up. Two roof-rider boys grab it and stash it safe
among the bales of sari fabric. One hand holding her dark glasses in
place, Aj scrambles up on to the roof and sits down beside Thomas
Lull.

"Oh, this is wonderful!" she exclaims. "I can see
everything!"

Thomas Lull bangs on the roof. "To the north!" With a fresh
gust of bio-diesel smoke, the driver draws off. "Now, Buteyko
method, advanced class."

Lisa Durnau's not sure how many times Captain Pilot Beth's called her
But the board is lit up, there's chatter on the com channels and an
air of imminence in the atmosphere.

"Are we coming in?"

"Final approach adjustments," the little shave-headed woman
says. Lisa feels a soft nudge; the attitude jets burping.

"Can you patch this up on my 'hoek?" She's not going in
blind to a rendezvous with a certified, genuine Mysterious Alien
Artefact. Captain Pilot Beth hooks the device behind the immobilised
Lisa's ear, seeks the sweet spot in the skull, then touches a few
lighted panels on the board. Lisa Durnau's consciousness explodes
into space. Under full prope, the sensation that her body is the
ship, that she is flying skin to vacuum, is overwhelming. Lisa Durnau
hovers like an angel in the midst of a slowly rotating ballet of
space engineering: the laddered wings of a solar power array, a
rosette of film-mirrors like a halo of miniature suns; a high-gain
antenna loops over her head, an outbound shuttle flashes past. The
whole array basks in baking light, webbed by cable to the spider at
the dark heart, Darnley 285. Millions of years of accumulated dust
have coloured the asteroid only a shade less black than space itself.
Then the mirrors shift and Lisa Durnau gasps as a rayed trefoil
blazes silver on the surface. Astonishment turns to laughter; someone
has stuck a Mercedes logo on a space rock.

Someone not human. The triskelion is vast, two hundred metres along
an arm. The huge waltz slows as Pilot Captain Beth matches rotation
with the rock and Lisa Durnau forces a mental reorientation. She no
longer drifts face-forward towards a crushing dark mass. The asteroid
is under her feet and she settles like an angel on to it. Half a
kilometre off touchdown, Lisa picks out the clusters of lights of the
human base. The domes and converted drop-off tanks are coated in a
thick layer of dust attracted by the static thrown up by the
construction. The alien triskelion alone shines clear. The shuttle
settles towards a cross-target of red navigation beacons. A
procession of manipulator arms works diligently dusting the lamps and
the launch laser lens. Looking up, she can see them marching
hand-over-hand up and down the power and com cables. Preacherman's
daughter Durnau thinks of Bible stories of Jacob's ladder.

"Okay, I'm going to shut you down now," the voice of
Captain Pilot Beth says. There is a moment of dislocation and she is
back and blinking in the cramped cockpit of the transfer boat.
Counters scroll down to zero, Lisa feels the lightest of touches, and
they are down. Nothing happens for quite a long time. Then there are
clanks and clunks and hissings, Pilot Captain Beth unzips her, and
Lisa Durnau tumbles out in a wash of cramps and truly astonishing
body odour. Darnley 285 possesses insufficient gravity to pull, but
enough to give Lisa a sense of direction. This is down. This is left
and right and forwards and backwards and up. Another mental
reorientation. She is hanging head-down like a bat. Down, in front of
her face, the hatch dogs spin and opens out into a short tube narrow
as a birth canal. A further hatch rotates and opens. A chunky,
crew-cut man sticks his head and shoulders through. His nose and eyes
hints at Polynesian genes not too many branches down his family tree
and the suit-liner shoulder flashes say
US Army.
But he has a
great smile as he reaches a hand out to Lisa Durnau.

"Dr. Durnau, I'm Sam Rainey, project director. Welcome to
Darnley 285, or as our archaeological friends like to call her, the
Tabernacle."

The traffic is worse than ever now the karsevaks have a permanent
encampment around the imperilled Ganesha statue and Mr. Nandha the
Krishna Cop's yeast infections are punishing him. Worst, he has a
briefing with Vik in Information Retrieval. Everything about Vik
irritates Mr. Nandha, from his self-crowned nickname (what is wrong
with Vikram, a fine, historical name?) to his MTV fashion sense. He
is the inverse of the fundamentalists camped out on the roundabout.
If Sarkhand is atavistic India, Vik is a victim of the contemporary
and fleeting. But what has set Mr. Nandha's day foul was the
almost-argument with Parvati.

She had been watching breakfast television, laughing in her
apologetic, hand-lifting way at the hosts gushing over their chati,
soapi, celebriti guests.

"This invoice. It seems, it is, quite a lot."

"Invoice?"

"Ah, the drip irrigation."

"But it is necessary. You cannot hope to grow brinjal without
irrigation."

"Parvati, there are people do not have water to cook their
rice."

"Exactly, that is why I went for the drip irrigation. It's the
most efficient way. Water conservation is our patriotic duty."

Mr. Nandha held the sigh until he was out of the room. He authorised
payment through his palmer and his aeai informed him that Vik had
requested a meeting and gave him a new, unfamiliar route to work
avoiding Sarkhand Roundabout. He returned to bid Parvati good-bye and
found her watching the top-of-the-hour news.

"Have you heard?" she said. "N. K. Jivanjee says he
will get up a rath yatra and ride across the country like Rama until
a million peasants march on Sarkhand Roundabout."

"That N. K. Jivanjee is a rabble-rouser, and his party, too.
What we need is national unity against Awadh, not a million karsevak
louts marching on Ranapur."

He kissed Parvati on her forehead. The day's ills sweetened.

"Good-bye, my bulbul. You will be working on the garden?"

"Oh yes, Krishan will be here at ten. Have a good day. And don't
forget to pick up your suit from the laundry, we've that durbar at
the Dawars tonight."

Now Mr. Nandha rides up the outside of the Vajpayee tower in a glass
elevator. Stomach acid gnaws at him. He imagines it dissolving him
from within, cell by cell.

"Vikram."

Vikram is not particularly tall nor particularly well shaped but he
has not let these deter his fashion sense. The style being: baggy
sleeveless T with random text messages flashing up on the smart
fabric—they achieve the condition of accidental Zen, so the
doctrine goes—squarecut below-the-knee ketchies with athletic
tights worn underneath. Finish with Nike Predators at the equivalent
of the monthly salary of the upright Sikh on the front door. To Mr.
Nandha this looks merely undignified. What he cannot tolerate is the
strip of beard from lower lip to Adam's apple.

"Coffee?"

Vik always has one, in a never-cool cup. Mr. Nandha cannot drink
coffee. His acid reflux hates it. He gives his Ayurvedic tea bag to
Vikram's quiet assistant, whose name Mr. Nandha can never remember.
The processor unit stands on Vik's desk. It's an industry-standard
translucent blue cube, charred inside from Mr. Nandha's EMP assault.
Vik has it hooked into an array of probes and monitors.

"Okay," he says and cracks his fingers.
Theater of Bludd
whispers from the speakers, muted from its usual thunder out of
respect for Monteverdi-loving Mr. Nandha. "It would be a lot
easier if you occasionally left us something to work on."

"I perceived a clear and present danger," Mr. Nandha says
and is struck by revelation. Vik, cool Vik, technological Vik,
trance-metal Vik, is jealous of him. He wants the missions, he wants
the reserved first-class bogies and the well-cut Ministry suits and
the gun that can kill two ways and the pocketful of avatars.

"You left even less than usual," says Vik, "but there
was enough to get a few nanoprobes in and unravel what's been going
on. I presume the programmer."

"He was the first victim."

"Aren't they always? Would have been nice if he could have told
us exactly why his home-brew satta aeai was running a background
programme buying and selling on the international ventures market."

"Please clarify," says Mr. Nandha.

"Morva up in Fiscal will explain it better, but it looks like
Pasta-Tikka was unconsciously trading crores of rupees for a venture
capital company called Odeco."

"I shall indeed speak with Morva," Mr. Nandha decides.

"One thing I can tell you right off." Vik stabs a line of
code on his thin blue screen with his forefinger.

"Ah" says Mr. Nandha with a thin smile. "Our old
friend Jashwant the Jain."

Parvati Nandha sits in a bower of amaranthus on the roof of her
housing block. She shields her eyes with her hand to watch another
military transport slide in from the east and disappear over New
Varanasi's corporate towers. They and the high-circling black kites
are the only interruptions of the peace of her garden in the heart of
the city. Parvati goes to the edge, peers over the parapet. Ten
stories down the street is thick with people as an arm with blood.
She crosses the tiled patio to the raised bed, gathers her sari
around her as she stoops to inspect the marrow seedlings. The plastic
evaporation tent is opaque with moisture. Already the air on the roof
is thirty-seven degrees and the sky is heavy, impenetrable, close,
caramel yellow from the smog. Peering between the sheeting and the
soil, Parvati inhales the smell of soil and mulch and moisture and
growing.

"Let them get on with it themselves."

Krishan is a big man who can move very quietly, as many big men can,
but Parvati felt the cool of his shadow on the soft hairs on the nape
of her neck, like the dew on the marrow leaves.

"Oh, you gave me a shock!" she says, demure and flustered,
which is a game she likes to play with him.

"Forgive me, Mrs. Nandha."

"So?" Parvati says.

Krishan takes his wallet and hands Parvati a hundred rupee note. "How
did you guess?"

"Oh, it's obvious," Parvati says. "It has to be
Govind, otherwise why would he track her down to that bad house in
Brahmpur East just to mock and deride her? No no no, only a true
husband would find his wife, no matter what she had done, and forgive
her and bring her home. I knew it was him from the moment he turned
up on the doorsteps of that Thai Massage house. That airline pilot
disguise did not fool me. Her family may cast her out, but a true
husband, never. Now, all he has to do is get his revenge on the
director of that SupaSingingStar Show."

"Khursheed."

"No, he runs the restaurant. Arvind is the director. Govind will
get his revenge, if the Chinese do not get him first about the casino
project."

Krishan throws his hands up in surrender. He is no devotee of
Town
and Country
but he will watch and bet on its improbably complex
plot lines if it makes his client happy. It is a strange commission;
this farm on top of a downtown apartment block. It hints at
compromises. They can be hard, these town and country marriages.

"I will have cook fetch you chai," Parvati says. Krishan
watches her call down the stairs. She has the grace of the country.
The city for gloss, the village for wisdom. Krishan wonders about her
husband. He knows that he is a civil servant and that he settles his
accounts promptly and without argument. With only half a picture, all
Krishan can do is speculate on the relationship, the attraction. Not
such a speculation,the attraction. He sometimes wonders how he can
ever find a wife for himself when even a low-caste girl can catch
herself a solid middle-class husband with a glance and a turn of the
hand. Garden well. Make money, plant it, grow it into more money. Buy
a Maruti and move out to Lotus Gardens. You will marry as well as you
can, out there.

"Today," Krishan announces when he has finished his chai
and set the glass down on the wooden wall of the raised bed, "I
am thinking, perhaps beans and peas there, to give some kind of
screen. You're open on the left. And here, a quarterbed for
Western-style salad vegetables. Western-style salad is the thing at
dinner parties; when you entertain, cook can cut fresh."

"We do not entertain," Parvati says. "But there is a
big reception out at the Dawar house tonight. It will be quite an
occasion. It is so lovely out there. So many trees. But Mr. Nandha
says it's inconvenient, too far out. Too much driving. I can have
everything here they have out there, and so much more convenient."

It takes two runs down to the street for Krishan to bring up the old
wooden railway sleepers he uses to build the retaining walls for the
beds. He lays them out in rough order, then cuts and moulds the
damp-proof sheet and lays it in position. Parvati Nandha sits on the
rim of the tomato and pepper bed.

"Mrs. Nandha, are you not missing
Town and Country
?"
Krishan asks.

"No no, it is delayed until eleven thirty today, it's the final
day of the test against England."