Ian McDonald - River of Gods

“Every adivasi is loyal to the chief. You get in, you do your business, you get out, you do not hang around for thank-yous or kisses. Now, the defences at Chunar Fort.”

Aircraft hammer overhead so low and loud Shiv covers his head. Yogendra stands in the stem, turning to follow their lights; four military tilt-jets in tight formation. Shiv sees his teeth glint in the light from the city.

“Pump, pump!”

He works the creaking handpump, watches the water pooling around the plastic-sealed packages. He would be better throwing the fatuous techy thing over the side and bailing with his hands. Americans and their machines. Something to do everything. Learn that people are better and cheaper. You can punish them and they will learn.

The thunder moves west. In its wake the rain doubles in weight. On the left bank the gas flares from the processing plants give way to the heavy sandstone bulk of Ramnagar Fort, an imposing impostor under the floodlights. Yogendra takes the boat under the pontoon bridge, a sword of sound even in the downpour. Shiv studies Ramnagar; terraces and pavilions rising beyond its red curtain walls, their feet in the water. You stand there, Shiv thinks. You wait for when I get back, when I have taken your sister upstream and then we will see how proud and defiant you look with your walls and turrets. A true task for a raja, storming a castle. Not by siege or at the head of a thousand elephants, but by smart, by style. Shiv Faraji, Action Hero.

Now the swift little boat approaches the new bridge. Yogendra feels out the slack water channel and shoots it. A truck has come off the roadway and embedded itself in the shallows, a snag of decorative metal barely recognisable as a vehicle. There is still a smell of alcofuel on the water. Beyond the fuel reek, perfume. Shiv raises his head to the sickly odour of marigolds. Smell is the key of memory; a sharp flash of where he has smelled this before: the fat tires of his Mercedes SUV crushing petals as it climbed the banks here. Marigolds masking turning flesh, the swelling body he slipped into the waters of the Ganga, these waters he sails now. He has recapitulated the corpse’s journey, away from moksha.

“Ey!” Yogendra unhooks the earpiece of his palmer and lifts it up for Shiv to see. “Radio Kashi.” Shiv thumbs up the station. Urgent news voices breaking over each other, talking about soldiers, air strikes, fighting machines. Kunda Khadar. The Awadhis have taken Kunda Khadar. The Awadhis have broken on to the sacred soil of Bharat. The Awadhis are about to take Allahabad, holy Allahabad of the Kumbh Mela. Sajida Rana’s troops flee before them like mice from a stubble-burning. Sajida Rana’s vaunted jawans threw down their weapons and threw up their hands. Sajida Rana’s plan has brought ruin to Bharat. Sajida Rana has failed Bharat, shamed Bharat, brought Bharat to its knees. What will Sajida Rana do now?

Shiv turns the radio off.

“What is this to do with us?” he says to Yogendra. “The elephants fight but the rats go about their business.” The boy waggles his head and opens up the engine. The boat lifts its prow and pushes upriver through the walls of the rain.

“This is good kit. Not top, now, but good. I’ll take you through it. These are plasma tasers. You know how they work? They’re not hard. Arm here, the yellow tab. Your basic point and shoot. You don’t even need a particularly good aim, that’s the beauty of them and that’s what makes them your weapon of preference. There’s enough gas in the canister for twelve shots. You’ve got five each, that should be enough. Just throw them away when you’re done, they’re dead. They will stop machinery but their best use is against biological targets. Our man Ramanandacharya is a tech head and that is his fatal weakness, but he does have a few bits of meat around the place for sex and gun stuff. He likes women. A lot. He’s got this James Bond thing, so Mukherjee says. I mean, you’ve seen the castle? Now, I don’t know if they’re in red catsuits, but you might have to taser a couple, just to teach them, you know? And every yokel is his loyal mindslave. On top of that there’s a couple of real guys with guns and martial arts, Mukherjee says, but there’s a way to deal with them and that’s not let them get too close. Do you think the women are in red catsuits? Could you get me some photographs? Tasers for the meat. For the machines you want area-effect weapons. You want these sweeties. EMP grenades. These are so cool. Like pouring kerosene on scorpions. Just make sure you aren’t ’hoeked up or anything or you’re deaf, dumb, blind. Also, careful round the ware. I don’t need to tell you this but they will crispy any soft systems. Now, the suddhavasa where he keeps his decrypters. He’s converted an old Siva temple in the grounds—there on the map. The crypt won’t be very big, maybe only a few gigs, but I don’t recommend you try to mail it out. It’ll all fit onto a palmer. Just be careful with the EMPs around it, okay? You’ve got the master file name and the quantum key so even you should be able to pull it out of the suddhavasa. Now, why our beloved N. K. Jivanjee wants this, I don’t know, but we don’t ask. Not the Naths anyway.

“Getting back out, well that’s always the part where it’s a little bit loose. You kind of make it up as you go along here. That’s not to say there isn’t an uber-strategy. The thing is you don’t waste time. Get in there, take them out, get the thing and get out and do not permit distractions. Distractions destroy. Get out and don’t stop for anyone or anything least of all some village Egor. There’re more than enough shots in the tasers, if they look like they’re coming after you, drop a second minefield behind you. Get back to the boat and then get back here and you are a free free man, Shiv Faraji, and I will hail and salute you as a god and friend.

“How do I know all this? What do you think I do all day? Play sneak-and-shoot games and watch shitloads of movies. How does anyone know?”

After an hour and a half pushing upstream the monsoon slackens from a downpour to a steady rain. Shiv looks up from playing Commando Attack on his palmer at the change in tempo on the curved plastic. It would be an irony upon an irony if, after three years of drought and fighting a water war in the middle of a downpour, the saving monsoon should rain itself out in a single night.

Beyond Ramnagar the river is darker than darkness. Yogendra steers by GPS fixes on the shoals and the feel of the current. Shiv has felt sand grate under the hull. The shallows flow and reform faster than the satellites ten thousand kilometres overhead can map them. The boat rocks as Yogendra throws the tiller over hard. He cuts the engine, swings it up. The boat runs up on to the beach. Yogendra ducks through the canopy and jumps on to the shore.

“Come on, come on.”

The shore sand is soft, sinking and flowing away with the current beneath Shiv’s feet. The darkness out here is immense. Shiv reminds himself that he is only a few tens of kilometres away from his club and barman. A clutch of lights to the south is Chunar. In the vast quiet of the country night he can hear the traffic on the pontoon and the persistent chug of the water-extraction plants downstream. Jackals and pi-dogs yip in the distance. Shiv arms himself swiftly. He splits the taser mines between himself and Yogendra but keeps the kill switch. Hayman Dane’s file name and system key are in the fat man’s palmer, slung around Shiv’s neck.

Among the thorn-hedged dal fields of Chunar, Shiv rigs out for battle. This is madness. He will die here among these fields and bones.

“Okay,” he says with a deep shuddering sigh. “Wheel them out.”

He and Yogendra wrestle two bulky cling-wrapped rectangles on to the sand. Ribs and spars, curves and bulges press through the plastic skin. Yogendra flashes a long blade.