River of Gods (57 page)

"Redshirts?"

"Disposable extras. I think it's an American term. This is a
list of all the recent accesses to the set design system. See?
Someone's been into my design files regularly over the past eighteen
months. But what is freaky is, all those common code sections point
to an even higher level actor; one that contains Lal Darfan and
Aparna Chawla and Ajay Nadiadwala. It's like there's something else
running in there we can't see because it's too big."

In the cream coloured house by the water there was an atlas the size
of a small child. On the winter nights when the inlet froze, Najia,
age eight, would fight the thing down from its shelf, open it on the
floor, and lose herself in other climates. She played a game with her
mother and father where you picked a word on a map and raced to put a
finger on it. She realised early that the way to play and win was to
go big and obvious. The eye scrying through the towns and villages
and stations of the Matto Grosso could miss the name BRAZIL spread
across the map in faded grey letters the size of her thumb. Hiding in
plain sight among the scribbles.

Najia blinks out of Tal's spiral dance of codes and file addresses
back into the dark carrel. She is trapped inside a cube of rain. A
master script that wrote itself? A soap opera like India's seven
million gods; avatars and emanations descending through levels of
divinity from Brahman, the Absolute, the One?

Then she sees Tal push ytself back from the computer, mouth open in
fear, hand raised to ward off the evil eye. In the same perspective
she also sees Pande in his high-collared jacket and yellow turban
rush loose-boned into the department.

Tal: "This is impossible."

Pande: "Sir Madam, sir madam, come quick come quick, the Prime
Minister."

Then Najias Askarzadah's 'hoek flashes into full prope and she is
swept away from Tal, from Pande, from Indiapendent in the monsoon, to
a bright, high place, a silk-draped prospect among the clouds. She
knows where this is. She has been summoned to this place before. It
is the airborne elephant pavilion of Lal Darfan, sailing the line of
the Himalayas. But the man on the cushioned throne in front of her is
not Lal Darfan. It is N. K. Jivanjee.

Yogendra takes the boat out into a stream of burning diyas. Monsoon
winds churn Ganga but the little, delicate mango-leaf saucers bob on
through the broken water. Shiv sits cross-legged under the plastic
awning, gripping the gunwales and trying to feel the balance. He
prays that he will not have to hurl. He glances back at Yogendra
squatting in the stern, hand steady on the tiller of the alcofuel
motor, eyes reading the river. His skin is beaded with rain, it
streams from his hair down his face, his clothes cling to him. Shiv
thinks of rats he has seen swimming in open roadside sewers. But the
knotted pearls around Yogendra's neck shine.

"Pump, pump," Yogendra orders. Shiv bends to the little
bilge pump. The rain is filling the boat—a handy little
American sports white-waterer with Pacific Northwest iconography on
its bows though Shiv would have preferred an Eye of Siva—faster
than the hand-pump can clear it. That is not an arithmetic Shiv can
look at too closely. He can't swim. A raja's experience of water is
lolling in the shallow end of a pool with girls and floating drinks
trays. As long as it takes them to Chunar.

"You land somewhere around here." Anand laid the A4
high-resolution printouts of the Chunar district map out on his
coffee table.
Kif
coffee simmered on its brazier. Anand tapped
his finger on the map. "The town of Chunar is about five kays
south. I call it a town purely as a politeness to the fact that it's
on a bridge over the Ganga. Chunar is a rural shithole full of
cowfuckers and incest. The only thing of any interest is the old
fort. Here, I've got printouts." Anand dealt out a hand of
glossies. Shiv flicked through the photographs. The story of the
Ganga was the story of forts like Chunar, drawn down by historical
inevitability onto the promontories and hill-tops where the river
turned, drawing to them power, dynasty, intrigue, imprisonment,
siege, assault. One last assault. He paused at the interiors,
crumbling Raj-Moghul architectures smothered by swooping
construction-carbon canopies, white as salt in the sun.
"Ramanandacharya is a flash chuutya, but he's the only game in
town. As well as the sundarban, he's got a call centre. You want to
get into your husband's system, see what he's been up to; you want to
hack into that credit black-list, they'll crack the code for you
while you wait.

"Every adivasi is loyal to the chief. You get in, you do your
business, you get out, you do not hang around for thank-yous or
kisses. Now, the defences at Chunar Fort."

Aircraft hammer overhead so low and loud Shiv covers his head.
Yogendra stands in the stem, turning to follow their lights; four
military tilt-jets in tight formation. Shiv sees his teeth glint in
the light from the city.

"Pump, pump!"

He works the creaking handpump, watches the water pooling around the
plastic-sealed packages. He would be better throwing the fatuous
techy thing over the side and bailing with his hands. Americans and
their machines. Something to do everything. Learn that people are
better and cheaper. You can punish them and they will learn.

The thunder moves west. In its wake the rain doubles in weight. On
the left bank the gas flares from the processing plants give way to
the heavy sandstone bulk of Ramnagar Fort, an imposing impostor under
the floodlights. Yogendra takes the boat under the pontoon bridge, a
sword of sound even in the downpour. Shiv studies Ramnagar; terraces
and pavilions rising beyond its red curtain walls, their feet in the
water. You stand there, Shiv thinks. You wait for when I get back,
when I have taken your sister upstream and then we will see how proud
and defiant you look with your walls and turrets. A true task for a
raja, storming a castle. Not by siege or at the head of a thousand
elephants, but by smart, by style. Shiv Faraji, Action Hero.

Now the swift little boat approaches the new bridge. Yogendra feels
out the slack water channel and shoots it. A truck has come off the
roadway and embedded itself in the shallows, a snag of decorative
metal barely recognisable as a vehicle. There is still a smell of
alcofuel on the water. Beyond the fuel reek, perfume. Shiv raises his
head to the sickly odour of marigolds. Smell is the key of memory; a
sharp flash of where he has smelled this before: the fat tires of his
Mercedes SUV crushing petals as it climbed the banks here. Marigolds
masking turning flesh, the swelling body he slipped into the waters
of the Ganga, these waters he sails now. He has recapitulated the
corpse's journey, away from moksha.

"Ey!" Yogendra unhooks the earpiece of his palmer and lifts
it up for Shiv to see. "Radio Kashi." Shiv thumbs up the
station. Urgent news voices breaking over each other, talking about
soldiers, air strikes, fighting machines. Kunda Khadar. The Awadhis
have taken Kunda Khadar. The Awadhis have broken on to the sacred
soil of Bharat. The Awadhis are about to take Allahabad, holy
Allahabad of the Kumbh Mela. Sajida Rana's troops flee before them
like mice from a stubble-burning. Sajida Rana's vaunted jawans threw
down their weapons and threw up their hands. Sajida Rana's plan has
brought ruin to Bharat. Sajida Rana has failed Bharat, shamed Bharat,
brought Bharat to its knees. What will Sajida Rana do now?

Shiv turns the radio off.

"What is this to do with us?" he says to Yogendra. "The
elephants fight but the rats go about their business." The boy
waggles his head and opens up the engine. The boat lifts its prow and
pushes upriver through the walls of the rain.

"This is good kit. Not top, now, but good. I'll take you through
it. These are plasma tasers. You know how they work? They're not
hard. Arm here, the yellow tab. Your basic point and shoot. You don't
even need a particularly good aim, that's the beauty of them and
that's what makes them your weapon of preference. There's enough gas
in the canister for twelve shots. You've got five each, that should
be enough. Just throw them away when you're done, they're dead. They
will stop machinery but their best use is against biological targets.
Our man Ramanandacharya is a tech head and that is his fatal
weakness, but he does have a few bits of meat around the place for
sex and gun stuff. He likes women. A lot. He's got this James Bond
thing, so Mukherjee says. I mean, you've seen the castle? Now, I
don't know if they're in red catsuits, but you might have to taser a
couple, just to teach them, you know? And every yokel is his loyal
mindslave. On top of that there's a couple of real guys with guns and
martial arts, Mukherjee says, but there's a way to deal with them and
that's not let them get too close. Do you think the women are in red
catsuits? Could you get me some photographs? Tasers for the meat. For
the machines you want area-effect weapons. You want these sweeties.
EMP grenades. These are so cool. Like pouring kerosene on scorpions.
Just make sure you aren't 'hoeked up or anything or you're deaf,
dumb, blind. Also, careful round the ware. I don't need to tell you
this but they will crispy any soft systems. Now, the suddhavasa where
he keeps his decrypters. He's converted an old Siva temple in the
grounds—there on the map. The crypt won't be very big, maybe
only a few gigs, but I don't recommend you try to mail it out. It'll
all fit onto a palmer. Just be careful with the EMPs around it, okay?
You've got the master file name and the quantum key so even you
should be able to pull it out of the suddhavasa. Now, why our beloved
N. K. Jivanjee wants this, I don't know, but we don't ask. Not the
Naths anyway.

"Getting back out, well that's always the part where it's a
little bit loose. You kind of make it up as you go along here. That's
not to say there isn't an uber-strategy. The thing is you don't waste
time. Get in there, take them out, get the thing and get out and do
not permit distractions. Distractions destroy. Get out and don't stop
for anyone or anything least of all some village Egor. There're more
than enough shots in the tasers, if they look like they're coming
after you, drop a second minefield behind you. Get back to the boat
and then get back here and you are a free free man, Shiv Faraji, and
I will hail and salute you as a god and friend.

"How do I know all this? What do you think I do all day? Play
sneak-and-shoot games and watch shitloads of movies. How does anyone
know?"

After an hour and a half pushing upstream the monsoon slackens from a
downpour to a steady rain. Shiv looks up from playing Commando Attack
on his palmer at the change in tempo on the curved plastic. It would
be an irony upon an irony if, after three years of drought and
fighting a water war in the middle of a downpour, the saving monsoon
should rain itself out in a single night.

Beyond Ramnagar the river is darker than darkness. Yogendra steers by
GPS fixes on the shoals and the feel of the current. Shiv has felt
sand grate under the hull. The shallows flow and reform faster than
the satellites ten thousand kilometres overhead can map them. The
boat rocks as Yogendra throws the tiller over hard. He cuts the
engine, swings it up. The boat runs up on to the beach. Yogendra
ducks through the canopy and jumps on to the shore.

"Come on, come on."

The shore sand is soft, sinking and flowing away with the current
beneath Shiv's feet. The darkness out here is immense. Shiv reminds
himself that he is only a few tens of kilometres away from his club
and barman. A clutch of lights to the south is Chunar. In the vast
quiet of the country night he can hear the traffic on the pontoon and
the persistent chug of the water-extraction plants downstream.
Jackals and pi-dogs yip in the distance. Shiv arms himself swiftly.
He splits the taser mines between himself and Yogendra but keeps the
kill switch. Hayman Dane's file name and system key are in the fat
man's palmer, slung around Shiv's neck.

Among the thorn-hedged dal fields of Chunar, Shiv rigs out for
battle. This is madness. He will die here among these fields and
bones.

"Okay," he says with a deep shuddering sigh. "Wheel
them out."

He and Yogendra wrestle two bulky cling-wrapped rectangles on to the
sand. Ribs and spars, curves and bulges press through the plastic
skin. Yogendra flashes a long blade.

"What is this?" Shiv demands.

Yogendra offers him the knife, turning it so the gleams of light from
the distant town catch its steel. It is the length of a forearm,
serrated, hooked at the tip, ferruled. He lays open the stretch
plastic skins with two swift strokes. He returns the blade to its
leather holster, next his skin. Lying in the plastic are two
factory-fresh, chrome-bright Japanese trail bikes fuelled and ready
to run. They start at first kick. Shiv mounts up. Yogendra walks his
around the sand a little, feeling out the capabilities. Then Shiv
nods to him and they open up the made-in-Yokohama engines and burn
off through the rain-soaked dal fields.

At eleven thirty the huddle of umbrellas moves from the porch of the
Rana Bhavan towards the Mercedes parked on the gravel turning circle.
The umbrellas are white, an unnatural shade. They press together like
a phalanx. Not one drop of water passes through. The rain is
torrential now, a thunderous drowning downpour shot through with
muggy lightning. At the centre of the cluster of domed umbrellas is
Prime Minister Sajida Rana. She wears a white silk sari trimmed with
green and orange. It is the most serious business she goes to this
night. It is the defence of her country and her authority. All across
Varanasi identical Mercedes are pulling away from tasteful government
bungalows.