Ian McDonald: Cyberabad Days

Every boy in the class ran at the cry. Robotwar robotwar! The teacher called after them, Come here come here bad wicked things but she was only a Business-English aeai and by the time old Mrs Mawji hobbled in from the juniors only the girls remained, sitting primly on the floor, eyes wide in disdain and hands up to tell tales and name names.

Sanjeev was not a fast runner, the other boys pulled ahead from him as he stopped among the dhal bushes for puffs from his inhalers. He had to fight for position on the ridge that was the village’s high point, popular with chaperoned couples for its views over the river and the water plant at Murad. This day it was the inland view over the dhal fields that held the attention. The men from the fields had been first up to the ridge; they stood, tools in hands, commanding all the best places. Sanjeev pushed between Mahesh and Ayanjit to the front.

‘Where are they what’s happening what’s happening?’

‘Soldiers over there by the trees.’

Sanjeev squinted where Ayanjit was pointing but he could see nothing but yellow dust and heat shiver.

‘Are they coming to Ahraura?’

‘Delhi wouldn’t bother with a piss-hole like Ahraura,’ said another man whose face Sanjeev knew – as he knew every face in Ahraura – if not his name. ‘It’s Murad they’re after. If they take that out, Varanasi will have to make a deal.’

‘Where are the robots? I want to see the robots.’

Then he cursed himself for his stupidity for anyone with eyes could see where the robots were. A great cloud of dust was moving down the north road and over it a flock of birds milled in eerie silence. Through the dust Sanjeev caught sunlight flashes of armour, clawed booted feet lifting, antennae bouncing, insect heads bobbing, weapon pods glinting. Then he and everyone else up on the high place felt the ridge begin to tremble to the march of the robots.

A cry from down the line. Four, six, ten, twelve flashes of light from the copse; streaks of white smoke. The flock of birds whirled up into an arrowhead and aimed itself at trees. Airdrones , Sanjeev realised and, in the same thought, missiles! As the missiles reached their targets the cloud of dust exploded in a hammer of gunfire and firecracker flashes. It was all over before the sound reached the watchers. The robots burst unscathed from their cocoon of dust in a thundering run. Cavalry charge! Sanjeev shouted, his voice joining with the cheering of the men of Ahraura. Now hill and village quaked to the running iron feet. The wood broke into a fury of gunfire, the airdrones rose up and circled the copse like a storm. Missiles smoked away from the charging robots; Sanjeev watched weapon housings open and gunpods swing into position.

The cheered died as the edge of the wood exploded in a wall of flame. Then the robots opened up with their guns and the hush became awed silence. The burning woodland was swept away in the storm of gunfire; leaves, branches, trunks shredded into splinters. The robots stalked around the perimeter of the small copse for ten minutes, firing constantly as the drones circled over their heads. Nothing came out.

A voice down the line started shouting Jai Bharat! Jai Bharat! but no one took it up and the man soon stopped. But there was another voice, hectoring and badgering, the voice of school-mistress Mawji labouring up the path with a lathi cane.

‘Get down from there you stupid stupid men! Get to your families, you’ll kill yourselves.’

Everyone looked for the story on the evening news but bigger flashier things were happening in Allahabad and Mirzapur; a handful of contras eliminated in an unplace like Ahraura did not rate a line. But that night Sanjeev became Number One Robot Fan. He cut out pictures from the papers and those pro-Bharat propaganda mags that survived Ahraura’s omnivorous cows. He avidly watched J- and C-anime where andro-sexy kids crewed titanic battle droids until sister Priya rolled her eyes and his mother whispered to the priest that she was worried about her son’s sexuality. He pulled gigabytes of pictures from the world web and memorised manufacturers and models and serial numbers, weapon loads and options mounts, rates of fire and maximum speeds. He saved up the pin-money he made from helping old men with the computers the self-proclaimed Bharati government thought every village should have to buy a Japanese trump game but no one would play him at it because he had learned all the details. When he tired of flat pictures, he cut up old cans with tin-snips and brazed them together into model fighting machines; MIRACLE GHEE fast pursuit drones, TITAN DRENCH perimeter defence bots, RED COLA riot-control robot.

Those same old men, when he came round to set up their accounts and assign their passwords, would ask him, ‘Hey! You know a bit about these things; what’s going on with all this Bharat and Awadh stuff? What was wrong with plain old India anyway? And when are we going to get cricket back on the satellite?’

For all his robot-wisdom, Sanjeev did not know. The news breathlessly raced on with the movements of politicians and breakaway leaders but everyone had long ago lost all clear memory of how the conflict had begun. Naxalites in Bihar, an over-mighty Delhi, those bloody Muslims demanding their own laws again? The old men did not expect him to answer, they just liked to complain and took a withered pleasure in showing the smart boy that he did not know everything.

‘Well, as long as that’s the last we see of them,’ they would say when Sanjeev replied with the spec of a Raytheon 380 Rudra I-war airdrone, or an Akhu scout mecha and how much much better they were than any human fighter. Their general opinion was that the Battle of Vora’s Wood – already growing back – was all the War of Separation Ahraura would see.

It was not. The men did return. They came by night, walking slowly through the fields, their weapons easily sloped in their hands. Those that met them said they had offered them no hostility, merely raised their assault rifles and shooed them away. They walked through the entire village, through every field and garden, up every gali and yard, past every byre and corral. In the morning their bootprints covered every centimetre of Ahraura. Nothing taken, nothing touched. What was that about? the people asked. What did they want?

They learned two days later when the crops began to blacken and wither in the fields and the animals, down to the last pi-dog, sickened and died.

Sanjeev would start running when their car turned into Umbrella Street. It was an easy car to spot, a big military hummer that they had pimped Kali-black and red with after-FX flames that seemed to flicker as it drove past you. But it was an easier car to hear: everyone knew the thud thud thud of Desi-metal that grew guitars and screaming vocals when they wound down the window to order food, food to go. And Sanjeev would be there, What can I get you sirs? He had become a good runner since coming to Varanasi. Everything had changed since Ahraura died.

The last thing Ahraura ever did was make that line in the news. It had been the first to suffer a new attack. Plaguewalkers was the popular name; the popular image was dark men in chameleon camouflage walking slowly through the crops, hands outstretched as if to bless, but sowing disease and blight. It was a strategy of desperation – deny the separatists as much as they could – and only ever partially effective; after the few first attacks plaguewalkers were shot on sight.

But they killed Ahraura, and when the last cow died and the wind whipped the crumbled leaves and the dust into yellow clouds the people could put it off no longer. By car and pick-up, phatphat and country bus they went to the city, and though they had all sworn to hold together, family by family they drifted apart in Varanasi’s ten million and Ahraura finally died.