Ian McDonald - River of Gods

“Hey there.” An Australian couple want their gear checked. Thomas Lull runs their stash through his scanner while watching the party. Grey is the perfect party camouflage. She has melted into an interplay of silently moving limbs.

“Fine, you’re whistling Dixie. But we do have a zero-tolerance policy on penis-display suits.”

The guy frowns. Get out of here, leave me to my recreation. There, close by the decks. The bhati-boys are flirting with her. He hates them for that. Come back to me. She hesitates, bends low for a word. For a moment he thinks she might buy something from the Bangalore Bombastic. He doesn’t want her to do that. She shakes her head and moves on. She vanishes into the bodies again. Thomas Lull finds he is following her. She does blend well; he keeps losing track of her amongst the bodies. She isn’t wearing a ’hoek. How is she getting it then? Thomas Lull moves to the edge of the dance space. She only looks like she is dancing, he realises. She is doing something else, taking the collective mood and moving to it. Who the hell is she?

Then she stops in her dance. She frowns, opens her mouth, swallows for breath. She presses a hand to her labouring chest. She can’t breathe. The gazelle eyes are scared. She bends over, trying to release the grip in her lungs. Thomas Lull knows these signs well. He is an old familiar of this attacker. She stands in the middle of the silent crowd, fighting for breath. No one sees. No one knows. Everyone is blind and deaf in their own private dancescapes. Thomas Lull forces a path through the bodies. Not to her, but to the Scandie girls.

He has their stash read-out on his scanner. There’s always someone doing a quick, dirty lift on the salbutamol/ATP-reductase reaction.

“I need your wheezers, quick.” Goldie girl peers at him as if he’s some incredible alien elf from Antares. To her, he could be. She fumbles open her pink Adidas purse. “Here, those.” Thomas Lull scrapes out the blue and white caplets. The grey girl is panting shallowly now, hands on thighs, very frightened, looking round for help. Thomas Lull bulls through the party people, cracking the little gelatin capsules and shaking them into his fist.

“Open your mouth,” he orders, cupping his hands. “Inhale on three and hold for twenty. One. Two. Three.”

Thomas Lull claps his cupped hands over her mouth and blows hard between his thumbs, spraying powder deep into her lungs. She closes her eyes, counting. Thomas Lull finds he’s looking at her tilak. He’s never seen one like it before. It looks like plastic fused to the skin, or raw bone. Suddenly he has to touch it. His fingers are millimetres away when she opens her eyes. Thomas Lull snatches his hand back.

“You all right?”

She nods. “Yes. Thank you.”

“You should’ve brought some medication with you. You could have been in a lot of trouble; these people, they’re like ghosts. You could have died and they’d’ve danced right over you. Come on.”

He leads her through the maze of blind dancers to the shadowed sand. She sits, bare feet splayed out. Thomas Lull kneels beside her. She smells of sandalwood and fabric conditioner. Twenty years of undergraduate expertise pins her at nineteen, maybe twenty. Come on, Lull. You’ve saved a strange little driftwood girl from an asthma attack and you’re running your prepull checks. Show some self-respect.

“I was so scared,” she says. “I am so stupid, I had inhalers but left them back at the hotel. I never thought.”

Her soft accent would sound English to less experienced ears but Thomas Lull’s recognises a Karnatakan twang.

“Luck for you Asthma Man picked up your wheezing on his super-hearing. Come on. Party’s over for you tonight, sister. Where are you staying?”

“The Palm Imperial Guest House.” It’s a good place, not cheap, more popular with older travellers. Thomas Lull knows the lobby and bar of every hotel for thirty kays up and down the coconut coast. Some of the bedrooms too. Backpackers and gap-yearers tend toward the beachshacks. He’s seen a few of those too. Killed a few snakes.

“I’ll get you back. Achuthanandan will look after you. You’ve had a bit of a shock, you need to take it easy.”

That tilak: he’s certain it’s moving . Mystery girl gets to her feet. She offers a hand shyly, formally.

“Thank you very much. I think I would have been in very bad trouble without you.” Thomas Lull takes the hand. It is long and aesthetic, soft and dry. She cannot quite look at him.

“All in a day’s work for Asthma Man.”

He walks with her toward the lights among the palms. The surf is lifting, the trees grow agitated. The lamps on the hotel veranda dance and glimmer behind the veil of fronds. The beach party behind him is suddenly weary and stale. All the things that seemed valuable and confirming before this girl now taste thin and old. Perhaps the monsoon is coming; the wind that will blow him on again.

“If you want, there’s a technique I can teach you. I used to suffer asthma bad when I was young; it’s a breathing trick; to do with gas exchange. It’s quite easy. I haven’t had an attack in twenty years, and you can throw away those inhalers. I could show you the basics; you could call round tomorrow.”

The girl pauses, gives it thought, then nods her head. Her tilak catches a light from somewhere.

“Thank you. I would value that very much.”

The way she talks; so reserved, so Victorian, such regard for the stress of words. “Okay well, you can find me.”

“Oh, I will just ask the gods, they will show me. They know the way to everywhere.”

Thomas Lull has no answer to that, so he sticks his hands in the pockets of his cut-off baggies and says, “Well, gods permitting, I’ll see you tomorrow, ah?”

“Aj.” She gives her name a French pronunciation: Ah-zjh . She looks to the hotel lights, coloured bulbs jigging in the rising wind. “I think I will be all right from here, thank you. Until tomorrow then, Professor Lull.”

Tal travels tonight in a plastic taxi. The little bubble phatphat rattles over the pocks and pots of a rural road as the driver steers nervously by his single headlamp. He’s already narrowly missed one wandering cow and a column of women with bundles of firewood on their heads. Shade trees loom out of the deep, thick rural night. The driver scans the verge for the turn-off. His instructions are taped to the dash where he can read them by instrument light. So many kays along this road, through this number of villages, second left after the wall ad for Rupa underwear. He’s never been out of the city before.

Tal’s special mix plays big anokha breaks with Slav Metal death chords, in honour of the host. Celebrity occasions demand extra-special mixes. Tal’s life can be chronicled by a series of soundtrack files. Tal’s DJ aeai wove up a set of top grooves between drafting the wedding pavilion for the Chawla/Nadiadwala match. There’s much happening in Town and Country’s actors’ lives right now.

A sudden lurch throws Tal from the bench seat. The phatphat bounces to a stop. Tal rearranges yts thermal scatter coat, tuts at the dust on yts silk pants, then notices the soldiers. Six of them phase out of rural night camouflage. A chubby Sikh officer has his hand raised. He steps up to the taxi.

“Didn’t you see us?”

“You are kind of hard to spot,” the driver says. “No chance of a licence, I suppose?” the jemadar asks. “None whatever,” the driver says. “My cousin.”

“Do you not know we are in a state of heightened vigilance?” the Sikh soldier admonishes. “Awadhi slow missiles could already be moving across our country. They are stealthy things, they can conceal themselves in many ways.”