Ian McDonald - Cyberabad Days

‘That’s the oldest son,’ Salim said. ‘It’s his job. These are rich people. It’s real expensive to get a proper pyre. Most people use the electric ovens. Of course, we get properly buried like you do.’

It was all very quick and casual. The man in white poured oil over the wood and the body, picked up a piece of lit wood and almost carelessly touched it to the side. The flame guttered in the river wind, almost went out, then smoke rose up and out of the smoke, flame. Kyle watched the fire take hold. The people stood back, no one seemed very concerned, even when the pile of burning wood collapsed and a man’s head and shoulders lolled out of the fire.

That is a burning man , Kyle thought. He had to tell himself that. It was hard to believe, all of it was hard to believe; there was nothing that connected to any part of his world, his life. It was fascinating, it was like a wildlife show on the sat; he was close enough to smell the burning flesh but it was too strange, too alien. It did not touch him. He could not believe. Kyle thought, This is the first time Salim has seen this too . But it was very very cool.

A sudden crack, a pop a little louder than the gunfire Kyle heard in the streets every day, but not much.

‘That is the man’s skull bursting,’ Salim said. ‘It’s supposed to mean his spirit is free.’

Then a noise that had been in the back of Kyle’s head moved to the front of his perception: engines, aircraft engines. Tilt-jet engines. Loud, louder than he had ever heard them before, even when he watched them lifting off from the field in Cantonment. The mourners were staring, the Doms turned from their ash-panning to stare too. The boat-boy stopped rowing; his eyes were round. Kyle turned in his seat and saw something wonderful and terrible and strange: a tilt-jet in Coalition markings, moving across the river towards him, yes him , so low, so slow, it was as if it were tiptoeing over the water. For a moment he saw himself, toes scraping the stormy waters of Alterre. River-traffic fled from it, its down-turned engines sent flaws of white across the green water. The boat-boy scrabbled for his oars to get away but there was now a second roar from the ghats. Kyle turned back to see Coalition troopers in full combat armour and visors pouring down the marble steps, pushing mourners out of their way, scattering wood and bones and ash. Mourners and Doms shouted their outrage; fists were raised; the soldiers lifted their weapons in answer. The boat-boy looked around him in terror as the thunder of the jet engines grew louder and louder until Kyle felt it become part of him and when he looked round he saw the big machine, morphing between city and river camouflage, turn, unfold landing gear and settle into the water. The boat rocked violently, Kyle would have been over the side had not Salim hauled him back. Jet-wash blew human ash along the ghats. A single oar floated lost down the stream. The tilt-jet stood knee-deep in the shallow water. It unfolded its rear ramp. Helmets. Guns. Between them, a face Kyle recognised, his dad, shouting wordlessly through the engine roar. The soldiers on the shore were shouting, the people were shouting, everything was shout shout roar. Kyle’s dad beckoned, to me to me. Shivering with fear, the boat-boy stood up, thrust his sole remaining oar into the water like a punt pole and pushed toward the ramp. Gloved hands seized him, dragged him out of the rocking boat up the ramp. Everyone was shouting, shouting. Now the soldiers on the shore were beckoning to the boat-boy and Salim, this way this way, the thing is going to take off, get out of there.

His dad buckled Kyle into the seat as the engine roar peaked again. He felt the world turn, then the river was dropping away beneath him. The tilt-jet banked. Kyle looked out the window. There was the boat, being pulled in to shore by the soldiers, and Salim standing in the stern staring up at the aircraft, a hand raised: goodbye.

Gitmoisation part three.

Dad did the don’t-you-know-the-danger-you-were-in/ trouble-you-caused/expense-you-cost bit.

‘It was a full-scale security alert. Full-scale alert. We thought you’d been kidnapped. We honestly thought you’d been kidnapped. Everyone thought that, everyone was praying for you. You’ll write them, of course. Proper apologies, handwritten. Why did you turn your palmer off? One call, one simple call, and it would have been all right, we wouldn’t have minded. Lucky we can track them even when they’re switched off. Salim’s in big trouble too. You know, this is a major incident, it’s in all the papers, and not just here in Cantonment. It’s even made SKYIndia News. You’ve embarrassed us all, made us look very very stupid. Sledgehammer to crack a nut. Salim’s father has had to resign. Yes, he’s that ashamed.’

But Kyle knew his dad was burning with joy and relief to have him back.

Mom was different. Mom was the torturer.

‘It’s obvious we can’t trust you; well, of course you’re grounded, but really, I thought you knew what it was like here, I thought you understood that this is not like anywhere else, that if we can’t trust each other, we can really put one another in danger. Well, I can’t trust you here and your dad, well, he’ll have to give it up. We’ll have to quit and go back home and the Lord knows, he won’t get a job anything closer to what we have here. We’ll have to move to a smaller house in a less good area, I’ll have to go out to work again. And you can forget about that Salim boy, yes, forget all about him. You won’t be seeing him again.’

Kyle cried himself out that night in bed, cried himself into great shivering, shuddering sobs empty of everything except the end of the world. Way way late he heard the door open.

‘Kyle?’ Mom’s voice. He froze in his bed. ‘I’m sorry. I was upset. I said things I shouldn’t have said. You did bad, but all the same, your dad and I think you should have this.’

A something was laid beside his cheek. When the door had closed, Kyle put on the light. The world could turn again. It would get better. He tore open the plastic bubble-case. Coiled inside, like a beckoning finger, like an Arabic letter, was a lighthoek. And in the morning, before school, before breakfast, before anything but the pilgrims going to the river, he went up on to the roof at Guy’s Place, slipped the ’hoek behind his ear, pulled his palmer-glove over his fingers and went soaring up through the solar farm and the water tanks, the cranes and the construction helicopters and the clouds, up towards Salim’s world.

When I was small a steel monkey would come into my room. My ayah put me to bed early, because a growing girl needed sleep, big sleep. I hated sleep. The world I heard beyond the carved stone jali screens of my verandah was too full of things for sleep. My ayah would set the wards, but the steel monkey was one of my own security robots and invisible to them. As I lay on my side in the warmth and perfume of dusk, I would see first its little head, then one hand, then two appear over the lip of my balcony, then all of it. It would crouch there for a whole minute, then slip down into the night shadows filling up my room. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark I would see it watching me, turning its head from one side to the other. It was a handsome thing; metal shell burnished as soft as skin (for in time it came close enough for me to slip a hand through my mosquito nets to stroke it) and adorned with the symbol of my family and make and serial number. It was not very intelligent, less smart than the real monkeys that squabbled and fought on the rooftops, but clever enough to climb and hunt the assassin robots of the Azads along the ledges and turrets and carvings of the Jodhra Palace. And in the morning I would see them lining the ledges and rooftops with their solar cowls raised and then they did not seem to me like monkeys at all, but cousins of the sculpted gods and demons among which they sheltered, giving salutation to the sun.