Ian McDonald - Cyberabad Days

‘You seem distracted, heart.’ He’s blind in this room – no camera eyes observing her in her jewelled skin-but he observes her through a dozen senses, a myriad feedback loops through her ’hoek.

‘I’m tired, I’m annoyed, I wasn’t as good as I should have been.’

‘Yes, I thought that too. Was it anything to do with the Krishna Cops this afternoon?’

Esha’s heart races. He can read her heartbeat. He can read her sweat, he can read the adrenalin and noradrenalin balance in her brain. He will know if she lies. Hide a lie inside a truth.

‘I should have said, I was embarrassed.’ He can’t understand shame. Strange, in a society where people die from want of honour. ‘We could be in trouble, there’s something called the Hamilton Acts.’

‘I am aware of them.’ He laughs. He has this way now of doing it inside her head. He thinks she likes the intimacy, a truly private joke. She hates it. ‘All too aware of them.’

‘They wanted to warn me. Us.’

‘That was kind of them. And me a representative of a foreign government. So that’s why they’d been keeping a watch on you, to make sure you are all right.’

‘They thought they might be able to use me to get information from you.’

‘Did they indeed?’

The night is so still she can hear the jingle of the elephant harnesses and the cries of the mahouts as they carry the last of the guests down the long processional drive to their waiting limos. In a distant kitchen a radio jabbers.

Now we will see how human you are. Call him out. At last A. J. Rao says,

‘Of course. I do love you.’ Then he looks into her face. ‘I have something for you.’

The staff turn their faces away in embarrassment as they set the device on the white marble floor, back out of the room, eyes averted. What does she care? She is a star. A. J. Rao raises his hand and the lights slowly die. Pierced-brass lanterns send soft stars across the beautiful old zenana room. The device is the size and shape of a phatphat tire, chromed and plasticed, alien among the Mughal retro. As Esha floats over the marble towards it, the plain white surface bubbles and deliquesces into dust. Esha hesitates.

‘Don’t be afraid, look!’ says A. J. Rao. The powder spurts up like steam from boiling rice, then pollen-bursts into a tiny dust-dervish, staggering across the surface of the disc. ‘Take the ’hoek off!’ Rao cries delightedly from the bed. ‘Take it off.’ Twice she hesitates, three times he encourages. Esha slides the coil of plastic off the sweet-spot behind her ear and voice and man vanish like death. Then the pillar of glittering dust leaps head high, lashes like a tree in a monsoon and twists itself into the ghostly outline of a man. It flickers once, twice, and then A. J. Rao stands before her. A rattle like leaves a snake-rasp a rush of winds, and then the image says, ‘Esha.’ A whisper of dust. A thrill of ancient fear runs through her skin into her bones.

‘What is this… what are you?’

The storm of dust parts into a smile

‘I-dust. Micro-robots. Each is smaller than a grain of sand, but they manipulate static fields and light. They are my body. Touch me. This is real. This is me.’

But she flinches away in the lantern-lit room. Rao frowns.

‘Touch me…’

She reaches out her hand towards his chest. Close, he is a creature of sand, a whirlwind permanently whipping around the shape of a man. Esha touches flesh to i-Dust. Her hand sinks into his body. Her cry turns to a startled giggle.

‘It tickles…’

‘The static fields.’

‘What’s inside?’

‘Why don’t you find out?’

‘What, you mean?’

‘It’s the only intimacy I can offer…’ He sees her eyes widen under their kohled make-up. ‘I think you should hold your breath.’

She does, but keeps her eyes open until the last moment, until the dust flecks like a dead tivi channel in her close focus. A. J. Rao’s body feels like the most delicate Varanasi silk scarf draped across her bare skin. She is inside him. She is inside the body of her husband, her lover. She dares to open her eyes. Rao’s face is a hollow shell looking back at her from a perspective of millimetres. When she moves her lips, she can feel the dust-bots of his lips brushing against hers: an inverse kiss.

‘My heart, my Radha,’ whispers the hollow mask of A. J. Rao. Somewhere Esha knows she should be screaming. But she cannot: she is somewhere no human has ever been before. And now the whirling streamers of I-dust are stroking her hips, her belly, her thighs. Her breasts. Her nipples, her cheeks and neck, all the places she loves to feel a human touch, caressing her, driving her to her knees, following her as the mote-sized robots follow A. J. Rao’s command, swallowing her with his body.

It’s Gupshup followed by Chandni Chati and at twelve thirty a photo shoot – at the hotel, if you don’t mind – for FilmFare ’s Saturday Special Centre Spread – you don’t mind if we send a robot, they can get places get angles we just can’t get the meat-ware and could you dress up, like you did for the opening, maybe a move or two, in between the pillars in the diwan, just like the gala opening, OK lovely lovely lovely well your husband can copy us a couple of avatars and our own aeais can paste him in people want to see you together, happy couple lovely couple, dancer risen from basti, international diplomat, marriage across worlds in every sense the romance of it all, so how did you meet what first attracted you what’s it like to be married to an aeai how do the other girls treat you do you, you know and what about children, I mean, of course a woman and an aeai but there are technologies these days geneline engineering like all the super-duper rich and their engineered children and you are a celebrity now how are you finding it, sudden rise to fame, in every gupshup column, worldwide celebi star everyone’s talking all the rage and all the chat and all the parties and as Esha answers for the sixth time the same questions asked by the same gazelle-eyed girli celebi reporters oh we are very happy wonderfully happy deliriously happy love is a wonderful wonderful thing and that’s the thing about love, it can be for anything, anyone, even a human and an aeai, that’s the purest form of love, spiritual love her mouth opening and closing yabba yabba yabba but her inner eye, her eye of Siva, looks inwards, backwards.

Her mouth, opening and closing.

Lying on the big Mughal sweet-wood bed, yellow morning light shattered through the jharoka screen, her bare skin goose-pimpled in the cool of the aircon. Dancing between worlds: sleep, wakefulness in the hotel bedroom, memory of the things he did to her limbic centres through the hours of the night that had her singing like a bulbul, the world of the djinns. Naked but for the ’hoek behind her ear. She had become like those people who couldn’t afford the treatments and had to wear eyeglasses and learned to at once ignore and be conscious of the technology on their faces. Even when she did remove it – for performing; for, as now, the shower – she could still place A. J. Rao in the room, feel his physicality. In the big marble stroll-in shower in this VIP suite relishing the gush and rush of precious water (always the mark of a true rani) she knew AyJay was sitting on the carved chair by the balcony. So when she thumbed on the tivi panel (bathroom with tivi, 000h!) to distract her while she towelled dry her hair, her first reaction was a double-take-look at the ’hoek on the sink-stand when she saw the press conference from Varanasi and Water Spokesman A. J. Rao explaining Bharat’s necessary military exercises in the vicinity of the Kunda Khadar dam. She slipped on the ’hoek, glanced into the room. There, on the chair, as she felt. There, in the Bharat Sabha studio in Varanasi, talking to Bharti from the Good Morning Awadh! News .