River of Gods (68 page)

"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 staffers
Vishram never knew he had have sealed the Research Centre toilets off
to all comers, 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
sunset-wards. 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 the 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 washhand
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 hider, 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 cheerleaders 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
over 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 have 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 preempt
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."

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 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 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 we 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.