Ian McDonald - Cyberabad Days

In that season I came many times to the city by the Ganga. Each time I was a different person. Accountants, counsellors, machine-soldiers, soapi actors, database controllers: I was the goddess of a thousand skills. The day after I saw the Krishna Cops patrolling the platforms at Delhi station with their security robots and guns that could kill both humans and aeais, Ashok began to mix up my modes of transport. I flew, I trained, I chugged overnight on overcrowded country buses, I waited in chauffeured Mercedes in long lines of brightly decorated trucks at the Awadh-Bharat border. The trucks, like the crack of an exploding skull, reminded me of my Kingdom. But at the end was always the rat-faced girli lifting her hand to my tilak and taking me apart again. In that season I was a fabric weaver, a tax accountant, a wedding planner, a soapi editor, an air traffic controller. She took all of them away.

And then the trip came when the Krishna Cops were waiting at the Bharat end as well. By now I knew the politics of it as well as Ashok. The Bharatis would never sign the Hamilton Acts – their multi-billion-rupee entertainment industry depended on aeais – but neither did they want to antagonise America. So, a compromise: all aeais over Level 2.8 banned, everything else licensed and Krishna Cops patrolling the airports and railway stations. Like trying to hold back the Ganga with your fingers.

I had spotted the courier on the flight. He was two rows in front of me; young, wisp of a beard, Star-Asia youth fashion, all baggy and big. Nervous nervous nervous, all the time checking his breast pocket, checking checking checking. A small-time badmash, a wannabe dataraja with a couple of specialist 2.75s loaded onto a palmer. I could not imagine how he had made it through Delhi airport security.

It was inevitable that the Varanasi Krishna Cops would spot him. They closed on him as we lined up at passport control. He broke. He ran. Women and children fled as he ran across the huge marble arrivals hall, trying to get to the light, the huge glass wall and the doors and the mad traffic beyond. His fists pounded at air. I heard the Krishna Cops’ staccato cries. I saw them unholster their weapons. Shrieks went up. I kept my head down, shuffled forward. The immigration officer checked my papers. Another shaadi bride on the hunt. I hurried through, turned away towards the taxi ranks. Behind me I heard the arrivals hall fall so shockingly silent it seemed to ring like a temple bell.

I was afraid then. When I returned to Delhi it was like my fear had flown before me. The city of djinns was the city of rumours. The government had signed the Hamilton Acts. Krishna Cops were sweeping house to house. Palmer files were to be monitored. Children’s aeai toys were illegal. US marines were being airlifted in. Prime Minister Srivastava was about to announce the replacement of the rupee with the dollar. A monsoon of fear and speculation and in the middle of it all was Ashok.

‘One final run, then I’m out. Can you do this for me? One final run?’

The bungalow was already half-emptied. The furniture was all packed, only his processor cores remained. They were draped in dustsheets, ghosts of the creatures that had lived there. The Krishna Cops were welcome to them.

‘We both go to Bharat?’

‘No, that would be too dangerous. You go ahead, I’ll follow when it’s safe.’ He hesitated. Tonight, even the traffic beyond the high walls sounded different. ‘I need you to take more than the usual.’

‘How many?’

‘Five.’

He saw me shy back as he raised his hand to my forehead.

‘Is it safe?’

‘Five, and that’s it done. For good.’

‘Is it safe?’

‘It’s a series of overlays, they’ll share core code in common.’

It was a long time since I had turned my vision inwards to the jewels Ashok had strung through my skull. Circuitry. A brain within a brain.

‘Is it safe?’

I saw Ashok swallow, then bob his head: a Westerner’s yes . I closed my eyes. Seconds later I felt the warm, dry touch of his finger to my inner eye.

We came to with the brass light of early morning shining through the jali. We were aware we were deeply dehydrated. We were aware that we were in need of slow-release carbohydrate. Our serotonin inhibitor levels were low. The window arch was a Mughal true arch. The protein circuits in my head were DPMA one-eight-seven-nine slash omegas, under licence from BioScan of Bangalore.

Everything we looked at gave off a rainbow of interpretations. I saw the world with the strange manias of my new guests: medic, nutritionist, architectural renderer, biochip designer, engineering aeai controlling a host of repair-shop robots. Nasatya. Vaishvanara. Maya. Brihaspati. Tvastri. My intimate demons. I was a many-headed devi.

All that morning, all afternoon, I fought to make sense of a world that was five worlds, five impressions. I fought. Fought to make us me . Ashok fretted, tugging at his woolly beard, pacing, trying to watch television, check his mails. At any instant Krishna Cop combat robots could come dropping over his walls. Integration would come. It had to come. I could not survive the clamour in my skull, a monsoon of interpretations. Sirens raced in the streets, far, near, far again. Every one of them fired off a different reaction from my selves.

I found Ashok sitting amongst his shrouded processors, knees pulled up to his chest, arms draped over them. He looked like a big, fat, soft boy, his mama’s favourite.

Noradrenalin pallor, mild hypoglycaemia, fatigue toxins , said Nasatya.

Yin Systems bevabyte quantum storage arrays , said Brihaspati.

I touched him on the shoulder. He jerked awake. It was full dark outside, stifling: the monsoon was already sweeping up through the United States of Bengal.

‘We’re ready,’ I said. ‘ I’m ready.’

Dark-scented hibiscus spilled over the porch where the Mercedes waited.

‘I’ll see you in a week,’ he said. ‘In Varanasi.’

‘In Varanasi.’

He took my shoulders in his hands and kissed me lightly, on the cheek. I drew my dupatta over my head. Veiled, I was taken to the United Provinces Night Sleeper Service. As I lay in the first-class compartment the aeais chattered away inside my head, surprised to discover each other, reflections of reflections.

The chowkidar brought me bed-tea on a silver tray in the morning. Dawn came up over Varanasi’s sprawling slums and industrial parks. My personalised news-service aeai told me that Lok Sabha would vote on ratifying the Hamilton Acts at ten a.m. At twelve Prime Minister Srivastava and the United States Ambassador would announce a Most Favoured Nation trade package with Awadh.

The train emptied onto the platform beneath the spun-diamond canopy I knew so well. Every second passenger, it seemed was a smuggler. If I could spot them so easily, so could the Krishna Cops. They lined the exit ramps, more than I had ever seen before. There were uniforms behind them and robots behind the uniforms. The porter carried my bag on his head; I used it to navigate the press of people pouring off the night train. Walk straight, as your mamaji taught you. Walk tall and proud, like you are walking the Silken Way with a rich man . I pulled my dupatta over my head, for modesty. Then I saw the crowd piling up at the ramp. The Krishna Cops were scanning every passenger with palmers.

I could see the badmashes and smuggler-boys hanging back, moving to the rear of the mill of bodies. But there was no escape there either. Armed police backed by riot-control robots took up position at the end of the platform. Shuffle by shuffle, the press of people pushed me towards the Krishna Cops, waving their right hands like blessings over the passengers. Those things could peel back my scalp and peer into my skull. My red case bobbed ahead, guiding me to my cage.