Ian McDonald - Cyberabad Days

They are not the first to fall in love on the walls of the Red Fort.

The politicians have talked for three days and an agreement is close. In honour the Awadhi government has prepared a grand durbar in the great courtyard before the Diwan-i-aam. All India is watching so this spectacle is on a Victorian scale: event-planners scurry across hot, bare marble hanging banners and bunting, erecting staging, setting up sound and light systems, choreographing dancers, elephants, fireworks and a fly-past of combat robots, dressing tables and drilling serving staff and drawing up so-careful seating plans so that no one will feel snubbed by anyone else. All day three-wheeler delivery drays have brought fresh flowers, festival good, finest, soft furnishings. There’s a real French sommelier raving at what the simmering Delhi heat is doing to his wine plan. It’s a serious conference. At stake are a quarter of a billion lives.

In this second year after the monsoon failed, the Indian nations of Awadh and Bharat face each other with main battle tanks, robot attack helicopters, strikeware and tactical nuclear slow missiles on the banks of the sacred River Ganga. Along thirty kilometres of staked-out sand, where brahmins cleanse themselves and sadhus pray, the government of Awadh plans a monster dam. Kunda Khadar will secure the water supply for Awadh’s one hundred and thirty million for the next fifty years. The river downstream, that flows past the sacred cities of Allahabad and Varanasi in Bharat, will turn to dust. Water is life, water is death. Bharati diplomats, human and artificial intelligence aeai advisers, negotiate careful deals and access rights with their rival nation, knowing one carelessly spilled drop of water will see strike robots battling like kites over the glass towers of New Delhi and slow missiles with nanonuke warheads in their bellies creeping on cat-claws through the galis of Varanasi. The rolling news channels clear their schedules of everything else but cricket. A deal is close! A deal is agreed! A deal will be signed tomorrow! Tonight, they’ve earned their durbar.

And in the whirlwind of leaping hijras and parading elephants, a Kathak dancer slips away for a cigarette and a moment up on the battlements of the Red Fort. She leans against the sun-warmed stone, careful of the fine gold-threadwork of her costume. Beyond the Lahore Gate lies hiving Chandni Chowk; the sun a vast blister bleeding onto the smokestacks and light-farms of the western suburbs. The chhatris of the Sisganj Gurdwara, the minarets and domes of the Jama Masjid, the shikara of the Shiv temple are shadow-puppet scenery against the red, dust-laden sky. Above them pigeons storm and dash, wings wheezing. Black kites rise on the thermals above Old Delhi’s thousand thousand rooftops. Beyond them, a curtain wall taller and more imposing than any built by the Mughals, stand the corporate towers of New Delhi, Hindu temples of glass and construction diamond stretched to fantastical, spiring heights, twinkling with stars and aircraft warning lights.

A whisper inside her head, her name accompanied by a spray of sitar: the call-tone of her palmer, transduced through her skull into her auditory centre by the subtle ’hoek curled like a piece of jewellery behind her ear.

‘I’m just having a quick bidi break, give me a chance to finish it,’ she complains, expecting Pranh, the choreographer, a famously tetchy third-sex nute. Then, ‘Oh!’ For the gold-lit dust rises before her up into a swirl, like a dancer made from ash.

A djinn. The thought hovers on her caught breath. Her mother, though Hindu, devoutly believed in the djinni, in any religion’s supernatural creatures with a skill for trickery.

The dust coalesces into a man in a long, formal sherwani and loosely-wound red turban, leaning on the parapet and looking out over the glowing anarchy of Chandni Chowk. He is very handsome, the dancer thinks, hastily stubbing out her cigarette and letting it fall in an arc of red embers over the battlements. It does not do to smoke in the presence of the great diplomat A. J. Rao.

‘You needn’t have done that on my account, Esha,’ A. J. Rao says, pressing his hands together in a namaste. ‘It’s not as I can catch anything from it.’

Esha Rathore returns the greeting, wondering if the stage crew down in the courtyard is watching her salute empty air. All Awadh knows those filmi-star features: A. J. Rao, one of Bharat’s most knowledgeable and tenacious negotiators. No, she corrects herself. All Awadh knows are pictures on a screen. Pictures on a screen, pictures in her head; a voice in her ear. An aeai.

‘You know my name?’

‘I am one of your greatest admirers.’

Her face flushes: a waft of stifling heat spun off from the vast palace’s microclimate, Esha tells herself. Not embarrassment. Never embarrassment.

‘But I’m a dancer. And you are an…’

‘Artificial intelligence? That I am. Is this some new anti-aeai legislation, that we can’t appreciate dance?’ He closes his eyes. ‘Ah: I’m just watching The Marriage of Radha and Krishna again.’

But he has her vanity now. ‘Which performance?’

‘Star Arts Channel. I have them all. I must confess, I often have you running in the background while I’m in negotiation. But please don’t mistake me, I never tire of you.’ A. J. Rao smiles. He has very good, very white teeth. ‘Strange as it may seem, I’m not sure what the etiquette is in this sort of thing. I came here because I wanted to tell you that I am one of your greatest fans and that I am very much looking forward to your performance tonight. It’s the highlight of this conference, for me.’

The light is almost gone now and the sky a pure, deep, eternal blue, like a minor chord. Houseboys make their many ways along the ramps and wall-walks lighting rows of tiny oil-lamps. The Red Fort glitters like a constellation fallen over Old Delhi. Esha has lived in Delhi all her twenty-two years and she has never seen her city from this vantage. She says, ‘I’m not sure what the etiquette is either, I’ve never spoken with an aeai before.’

‘Really?’ A. J. Rao now stands with his back against the sun-warm stone, looking up at the sky, and her out the corner of his eye. The eyes smile, slyly. Of course, she thinks. Her city is as full of aeais as it is with birds. From computer systems and robots with the feral smarts of rats and pigeons to entities like this one standing before her on the gate of the Red Fort making charming compliments. Not standing. Not anywhere, just a pattern of information in her head. She stammers,

‘I mean, a… a…’

‘Level 2.9?’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

The aeai smiles and as she tries to work it out there is another chime in Esha’s head and this time it is Pranh, swearing horribly as usual, where is she doesn’t she know yts got a show to put on, half the bloody continent watching.

‘Excuse me…’

‘Of course. I shall be watching.’

How? she wants to ask. An aeai, a djinn, wants to watch me dance. What is this? But when she looks back all there is to ask is a wisp of dust blowing along the lantern-lit battlement.

There are elephants and circus performers, there are illusionists and table magicians, there are ghazal and qawali and Boli singers; there is the catering and the sommelier’s wine and then the lights go up on the stage and Esha spins out past the scowling Pranh as the tabla and melodeon and shehnai begin. The heat is intense in the marble square, but she is transported. The stampings, the pirouettes and swirl of her skirts, the beat of the ankle bells, the facial expressions, the subtle hand mudras: once again she is spun out of herself by the disciplines of Kathak into something greater. She would call it her art, her talent, but she’s superstitious: that would be to claim it and so crush the gift. Never name it, never speak it. Just let it possess you. Her own, burning djinn. But as she spins across the brilliant stage before the seated delegates, a corner of her perception scans the architecture for cameras, robots, eyes through which A. J. Rao might watch her. Is she a splinter of his consciousness, as he is a splinter of hers?