Ian McDonald - Cyberabad Days

‘Hush. Sleep now.’

I woke among the stars. For an instant I wondered if I was dead, stabbed in my sleep by the poison needle of an Azad assassin robot that had scaled the hundred windows of the Jodhra Mahal. Then I saw that they were the mirror shards of the roof, shattering the light of a single candle into a hundred thousand pieces. Heer sat cross-legged on a dhuri by my low bedside.

‘How long…’

‘Two days, child.’

‘Are they…’

‘Dead. Yes. I cannot lie. Every one.’

But even as the House of Jodhra fell, it struck back like a cobra, its back broken by a stick. Homing missiles, concealed for years, clinging like bats under shop eaves and bus shelters, unfolded their wings and lit their engines and sought out the pheromone profiles of Azad vehicles. Armoured Lexuses went up in fireballs in the middle of Jaipur’s insane traffic as they hooted their ways towards the safety of the airport. No safety even there, a Jodhra missile locked on to the company tilt-jet as it lifted off, hooked into the engine intake with its titanium claws until the aircraft reached an altitude at which no one could survive. The blast cast momentary shadows across the sundials of the Jantar Mantar, marking the moment of Jodhra revenge. Burning debris set fires all across the slums.

‘Are they…’

‘Jahangir and the Begum Azad died in the tilt-jet attack and our missiles took out much of their board, but their countermeasures held off our attack on their headquarters.’

‘Who survived?’

‘Their youngest son Salim. The line is intact.’

I sat up in my low bed that smelled of sandalwood. The stars were jewels around my head.

‘It’s up to me then.’

‘Memsahib…’

‘Don’t you remember what he said, Heer? My father? You are a weapon, never forget that . Now I know what I am a weapon for.’

‘Memsahib… Padmini.’ The first time yt had ever spoken my name. ‘You are still shocked, you don’t know what you’re saying. Rest. You need rest. We’ll talk in the morning.’ Yt touched yts forefinger to yts full lips, then left. When I could no longer hear soft footfalls on cool marble, I went to the door. Righteousness, rage and revenge were one song inside me. Locked. I heaved, I beat, I screamed. The Hijra Mahal did not listen. I went to the balcony that hung over the alley. Even if I could have shattered the intricate stone jali, it was a ten-metre drop to street level where the late night hum of phatphat autorickshaws and taxis was giving way to the delivery drays and cycle-vans of the spice merchants. Light slowly filled up the alley and crept across the floor of my bedroom: by its gathering strength I could read the headlines of the morning editions. WATER WARS: DOZENS DEAD IN CLASH OF THE RAJAS. JAIPUR REELS AS JODHRAS ANNIHILATED. POLICE POWERLESS AGAINST BLOODY VENDETTA.

In Rajputana, now as always, water is life, water is power. The police, the judges, the courts: we owned them. Us, and the Azads. In that we were alike. When gods fight, what mortal would presume to judge?

‘A ride in triumph, a fall through a window into love, a marriage and a mourning?’ I asked. ‘That’s it?’

Sul the astrologer nodded slowly. I sat on the floor of yts observatory. Incense rose on all sides of me from perforated brass censors. At first glance the room was so simple and bare that even a sadhu would have been uncomfortable, but as my eyes grew accustomed to the shadow in which it must be kept to work as a prediction machine, I saw that every centimetre of the bare pink marble was covered in curving lines and Hindi inscriptions, so small and precise they might be the work of tiny gods. The only light came from a star-shaped hole in the domed ceiling: Sul’s star chamber was in the topmost turret of the Hijra Mahal, closest to heaven. As yt worked with its palmer and made the gestures in the air of the janampatri calculations, I watched a star of dazzling sunlight crawl along an arc etched in the floor, measuring out the phases of the House of Meena. Sul caught me staring at it, but I had only been curious to see what another nute looked like, close up. I had only ever known Heer. I had not known there could be as many as six nutes in the whole of India, let alone Jaipur. Sul was fat and had unhealthy yellow skin and eyes and shivered a lot as it pulled yts shawl around yt, though the turret room directly under the sun was stifling hot. I looked for clues to what yt had been before: woman, man. Woman , I thought. I had always thought of Heer as a man – an ex-man, though yt never mentioned the subject. I had always known it was taboo. When you stepped away, you never looked back.

‘No revenge, no justice?’

‘If you don’t believe me, see for yourself.’

Fingers slipped the lighthoek behind my ear and the curving lines on the floor leaped up into mythical creatures studded with stars. Makara the crocodile, Vrishaba the Bull, the twin fishes of Meena: the twelve rashi. Kanya the dutiful daughter. Between them the twenty-seven nakshatars looped and arced, each of them subdivided into four padas; wheels within wheels within wheels, spinning around my head like blades as I sat on Sul’s marble floor.

‘You know I can’t make any sense out of this,’ I said, defeated by the whirling numbers. Sul leaned forward and gently touched my hand.

‘A ride in triumph, a fall through a window into love, a marriage and a mourning. Window to widow. Trust me.’

‘Young girls are truly beautiful on the inside.’ Dahin the dream doctor’s voice came from beyond the bank of glaring surgical lights as the bed on which I lay tilted back. ‘No pollution, no nasty dirty hormones. Everything clean and fresh and lovely. Most of the women who come here, I never see any deeper than their skin. It is a rare privilege to be allowed to look inside someone.’

It was midnight in the chrome and plastic surgery in the basement of the Hijra Mahal, a snatched half-hour between the last of the consultations (society ladies swathed in veils and chadors to hide their identities) and Dahin hooking into the global web, settling the lighthoek over the visual centre in yts brain and pulling on the manipulator gloves connected to surgical robots in theatres half a world away. So gentle, so deft; too agile for any man’s. Dahin of the dancing hands.

‘Have you found it yet?’ I asked. My eyes were watering from the lights. Something in them, something beyond them, was looking into my body and displaying it section by section, organ by organ, on Dahin’s inner vision. Traditionally, the hijras were the only ones allowed to examine the bodies of the zenana women and reported their findings to the doctors outside.

‘Found what? Finger lasers? Retractable steel claws? A tabletop nuke wired into your tummy?’

‘My father said over and over, I’m a weapon, I’m special… I will destroy the house of Azad.’

‘Cho chweet, if there’s anything there, this would have shown it to me.’

My eyes were watering. I pretended it was the brightness of the light.

‘Maybe there’s something… smaller, something you can’t see, like… bugs. Like a disease.’

I heard Dahin sigh and imagined the waggle of yts head.

‘It’ll take a day or two but I can run a diagnostic.’ Tippytapping by the side of my head. I turned my head and froze as I saw a spider robot no bigger than my thumb walking towards my throat. It was a month since the night , but still I was distrustful of robots. I imagined I always would be. I felt a little flicking needle pain in the side of my neck, then the robot moved over my belly. I cringed at the soft spiking of its sharp, precise feet. I said, ‘Dahin, do you mind me asking; did you do this?’

A short jab of pain in my belly.