Ian McDonald - Cyberabad Days

‘But what are you going to do with it?’ Sajeev asked.

‘Private security. They’re always going to need security drones.’

Tidying the tiny living room that night for his mother’s nine o’clock lesson, opening the windows to let out the smell of hot ghee though the stink of the street was little better, Sanjeev heard a new chord in the ceaseless song of Umbrella Street. He threw open the window shutters in time to see an object, close, fast as a dashing bird, dart past his face, swing along the powerline and down the festooned pylon. Glint of anodised alu-plastic: a boy raised on Battlebots Top Trumps could not fail to recognise a Tata surveillance mecha. Now the commotion at the end of the Umbrella Street became clear: the hunched back of a battlebot was pushing between the cycle rickshaws and phatphats. Even before he could fully make out the customised god-demons of Mountain Buddhism on its carapace, Sanjeev knew the machine’s make and model and who was flying it.

A badmash on an alco moto rode slowly in front of the ponderously stepping machine, relishing the way the street opened in front of him and the electric scent of heavy firepower at his back. Sanjeev saw the mech step up and squat down on its hydraulics before Jagmohan’s greasy little pakora stand. The badmash skidded his moped to a stand and pushed up his shades.

They will always need security drones.

Sanjeev rattled down the many many flights of stairs of the patriotically-renamed Diljit Rana Apartments, yelling and pushing and beating at the women and young men in very white shirts. The robot had already taken up its position in front of his father’s big clay pizza oven. The carapace unfolded like insect wings into weapon mounts. Badmash was all teeth and grin in the anticipation of another commission. Sanjeev dashed between his father and the prying, insect sensory rig of the robot. Red demons and Sivas with fiery tridents looked down on him.

‘Leave him alone, this is my dad, leave him be.’

It seemed to Sanjeev that the whole of Umbrella Street, every vehicle upon it, every balcony and window that overlooked it, stopped to watch. With a whir the weapon pods retracted, the carapace clicked shut. The battle machine reared up on its legs as the surveillance drones came skittering between people’s legs and over counter-tops, scurried up the machine and took their places on its shell mounts, like egrets on the back of a buffalo. Sanjeev stared the badmash down. He sneered, snapped down his cool sexy dangerous shades and spun his moped away.

Two hours later, when all was safe and secure, a Peacekeeper unit had passed up the street asking for information. Sanjeev shook his head and sucked on his asthma inhalers.

‘Some machine, like.’

Suni left the go-down. No word no note no clue, his family had called and called and called but no one knew. There had always been rumours of a man with money and prospects, who liked the robotwallah thing, but you do not tell those sorts of stories to mothers. Not at first asking. A week passed without the jemadar calling. It was over. So over. Rai had taken to squatting outside, squinting up through his cool sexy dangerous shades at the sun, watching for its burn on his pale arms, chain-smoking street-rolled bidis.

‘Sanj.’ He smoked the cheap cigarette down to his gloved fingers and ground the stub out beneath the steel heel of his boot. ‘When it happens, when we can’t use you any more, have you something sorted? I was thinking, maybe you and I could do something together, go somewhere. Just have it like it was, just us. An idea, that’s all.’

The message came at three a.m. I’m outside . Sanjeev tiptoed around the sleeping bodies to open the window. Umbrella Street was still busy, Umbrella Street had not slept for a thousand years. The big black Kali Cav hummer was like a funeral moving through the late night people of the new Varanasi. The door locks made too much noise so Sanjeev exited through the window, climbing down the pipes like a Raytheon Double- eight thousand I-war infiltration bot. In Ahraura he would never have been able to do that.

‘You drive,’ Rai said. From the moment the message came through, Sanjeev had known it would be him, and him alone.

‘I can’t drive.’

‘It drives itself. All you have to do it steer. It’s not that different from the game. Swap over there.’

Steering wheel pedal drive windshield display all suddenly looked very big to Sanjeev in the driver’s seat. He touched his foot to the gas. Engines answered, the hummer rolled, Umbrella Street parted before him. He steered around a wandering cow.

‘Where do you want me to go?’

‘Somewhere, away. Out of Varanasi. Somewhere no one else would go.’ Rai bounced and fidgeted on the passenger seat. His hands were busy busy, his eyes were huge. He had done a lot of battle drugs. ‘They sent them back to school, man. To school, can you imagine that? Big Baba and Ravana. Said they needed real-world skills. I’m not going back, not never. Look!’

Sanjeev dared a glance at the treasure in Rai’s palm: a curl of sculpted translucent pink plastic. Sanjeev thought of aborted goat foetuses, and the sex toys the girls had used in their favourite pornos. Rai tossed his head to sweep back his long, gelled hair and slid the device behind his ear. Sanjeev thought he saw something move against Rai’s skin, seeking.

‘I saved it all up and bought it. Remember, I said? It’s new, no one else has one. All that gear, that’s old, you can do everything with this, just in your head, in the pictures and words in your head.’ He gave a stoned grin and moved his hands in a dancer’s mudra. ‘There.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll see.’

The hummer was easy to drive: the in-car aeai had a flocking reflex that enabled it to navigate Varanasi’s ever-swelling morning traffic, leaving little for Sanjeev to do other than blare the triple horns, which he enjoyed a lot. Somewhere he knew he should be afraid, should feel guilty at stealing away in the night without word or note, should say stop, whatever it is you are doing, it can come to nothing, it’s just silliness, the war is over and we must think properly about what to do next. But the brass sun was rising above the glass towers and spilling into the streets and men in sharp white shirts and women in smart saris were going busy to their work, and he was free, driving a big smug car through them all and it was so good, even if just for a day.

He took the new bridge at Ramnagar, hooting in derision at the gaudy, lumbering trucks. The drivers blared back, shouting vile curses at the girli-looking robotwallahs. Off A roads on to B roads, then to tracks and then bare dirt, the dust flying up behind the hummer’s fat wheels. Rai itched in the passenger seat, grinning away to himself and moving his hands like butterflies, muttering small words and occasionally leaning out of the window. His gelled hair was stiff with dust.

‘What are you looking for?’ Sanjeev demanded.

‘It’s coming,’ Rai said, bouncing on his seat. ‘Then we can go and do whatever we like.’

From the word drive , Sanjeev had known where he must go. Satnav and aeai did his remembering for him but he still knew every turn and side road. Vora’s Wood there, still stunted and grey; the ridge between the river and the fields from which all the men of the village had watched the battle and he had fallen in love with the robots. The robots had always been pure, had always been true. It was the boys who flew them who hurt and failed and disappointed. The fields were all dust, drifted and heaped against the lines of thorn fence. Nothing would grow here for a generation. The mud walls of the houses were crumbling, the school a roofless shell, the temple and tanks clogged with windblown dust. Dust, all dust. Bones cracked and went to powder beneath his all-wheeli drive. A few too desperate even for Varanasi were trying to scratch an existence in the ruins. Sanjeev saw wire-thin men and tired women, dust-smeared children crouched in front of their brick-and-plastic shelters. The poison deep within Ahraura would defeat them in the end.