Ian McDonald - River of Gods

Their little mouths are wide open.

Vishram shimmies in beside Marianna Fusco.

“When this is done,” he says, getting as close as professional propriety allows to a legal advisor, “How about. We go. Off somewhere. Where there is sun and sea and sand and really good bars and no people and we can run around in nothing but factor thirty for a month?”

And she slides her head as close to his as she dares and through a frozen public smile says, “I can’t. I have to go.”

“Oh,” says Vishram. And, “Fuck.”

“It’s a family thing,” Marianna Fusco says. “Big anniversary in my constellation family. People coming from all over. Relations I didn’t have last time we did this. No, I’ll be back, funny man. Just tell me where to turn up, sans luggage.”

Then the lights flicker and the room quivers. Glass rattles in the windows and door. There is a murmur of consternation. Director Surjeet’s hands are raised in placation.

“Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, please, there is no need for alarm. What we have just felt is a quite normal side effect of us ramping up the collider. We have closed one aperture and used the energy to warp the ’brane into another. Ladies and gentlemen, we have broken through into a new universe!”

There is polite, baffled applause. Vishram takes the opportunity to showboat.

“And what that means, my friends, is a twelve percent return on our energy investment. We put a hundred percent into maintaining the aperture, we get all that, plus an extra twelve back again! It’s this way to the zero-point future!”

Inder starts off a tattoo of enthusiastic corporate applause.

“You should have been a lawyer,” Marianna Fusco says. “You have the gift of talking endless shit on subjects you know nothing about.”

“Didn’t I tell you that’s what my Dad wanted for me?” Vishram says, positioning himself so that he can see down Marianna Fusco’s top. He imagines slowly, luxuriously oiling those hand-filling nipples.

“I remember you saying something about the law and comedy both being professions that make their living in the arena,” she says.

“I did? It must have been after sex.”

He does remember that conversation. It seems like another geological era, another incarnation. The room shakes again, harder, more sustained. Pens fall from desk; concentric ripples clash inside the water-cooler.

“Another universe, another point on the share-price,” Vishram quips but Sonia Yadav looks concerned. Vishram catches her eye. She abandons her tour. They move through the groups of shareholders back to the empty lecture hall.

“Problem?” he whispers. Sonia points at the display boards. Output, one hundred and thirty-five percent.

“We shouldn’t be anywhere close to that kind of figure.”

“It’s doing better than expected.”

“Mr. Ray, this is physics. We know exactly the characteristics of the universes we create, no surprises, no guesswork, no ‘better than expected, good boy, top of class.’”

Vishram messages Director Surjeet. When he enters, Vishram closes the door to hovercams and eavesdroppers.

“Sonia tells me we have a problem with the zero-point.”

Surjeet does this tooth sucking thing that grates Vishram’s nipples, especially when it reveals the saag he had for lunch.

“We’re getting anomalous readings.”

“That tells me exactly as much as ‘Vishram, we have a problem.’”

“Very well, Mr. Ray. It’s a universe, but it’s not the one we ordered.”

Vishram feels his balls contract. Surjeet has his palmer open, mathematical renderings and wire-frame graphics spins across it. Sonia, too, is reading the digits.

“Eight three zero.”

“It should be.”

“Two two four.”

“Wait wait wail wait wait; enough of the lottery results.”

Sonia Yadav says carefully, “All the universes have what we call winding numbers, the higher the number, the more energy we need to access it and the more we can get out of it.”

“We’re six hundred universes too high.”

“Yes,” says Sonia Yadav.

“Recommendations?”

“Mr. Ray, we must close the zero-point down immediately.”

Vishram cuts him off. “That is absolutely the last resort. How do you think that’s going to look in front of our entire board and the press? Another Bharati humiliation. If we can get the thing up to full power safely.” To Sonia Yadav, he says, “Does this pose any danger?”

“Mr. Ray, the energies released if membranes cross.”

Sonia cuts in.

“No.”

“You’re sure.”

“Dr. Surjeet is correct about the energy levels if membranes cross, it would be like a nano-Big Bang, but that involves energies thousands of times more powerful than we can generate here.”

“Yes, but the Atiyah’s Ladder effect.”

The guy who let off the second Big Bang, Vishram thinks. Creation Two. That’s the biggest laugh any comedian will ever get. He says, “Here’s what we do. We continue with the demonstration as planned. If it goes over one hundred and seventy, we close the whole thing down, show’s over, please exit via the gift shop. Whatever happens, nothing said in this room goes any further. Keep me appraised.”

As he heads for the door to the zero-point lab, thinking, I can see a beautiful clear career path opening in front of Ms. Sonia Yadav Hindu physicist, a fresh tremor hits the Research Centre, hits it hard, hits it to its roots, sends Vishram Ray and Sonia Yadav and Director Surjeet reeling for handholds, for something safe and solid that is not moving, knocks dust and plaster and loose ceiling tiles from the roof and rattles the display screens, those same screens that show power output at one hundred and eighty-four percent.

Universe 2597. The aperture is running away, laddering up through successive universes.

And Vishram Ray’s palmer is calling, everyone in that room’s palmer is calling, they put their hands up to their heads and it is the same voice in each of their ears telling them that the aeais controlling the aperture are not responding to commands.

They’ve lost control of the zero-point.

Like a Christian angel, like the sword of avenging Michael plunging from the sky, Mr. Nandha comes sliding down a path of air towards the Ray Research Centre. He knows that in the belly of the tilt-jet his Excommunication Squad is muted, uncertain, scared, mutinous. The prisoners will be talking to them, sowing unbelief and dissent. That is their matter, they do not share his dedication and he cannot expect them to. Their respect is a sacrifice he is prepared to make. This warrior woman beside him in the cockpit will bring him to his ordained place.

He clicks up the astringencies of a Bach violin sonata as the pilot tips the tilt-jet into the long slow dive towards the green rhombuses of the University of Bharat.

A presence, a throat clear, a tap on his shoulder interrupt the infinite geometries of the solo violin. Mr. Nandha slowly removes his ’hoek.

“What is it, Vikram?”

“Boss, the American woman’s going on about diplomatic incidents again.”

“This will have to be resolved later, as I have said.”

“And the sahb wants to talk to you, again.”

“I am otherwise engaged.”

“He’s mightily pissed off that he can’t get through to you.”

“I sustained damage to my communicator when I was battling the Kalki aeai. I have no other explanation.” He has turned it off. He does not want squawking questions, demands, orders breaking the perfection of his execution.

“You should still talk to him.”

Mr. Nandha sighs. The tilt-jet leans into a stack, climbing down the sky towards the airy, toy-bright buildings of the Rana’s university, gleaming in the sun that is tearing the monsoon apart. He takes the ’hoek.