Ian McDonald - River of Gods

“What got them so wrapped up?”

“Some fashion thing,” Talv says. “They’ve brought this Russian model in, some nute, Yuri, something like that.”

“Yuli,” Yogendra says. His gums are scarlet from paan. The light is blue and the string of pearls he always wears knotted around his neck glows like souls. Red, white, blue. American grin. As long as Shiv has worked with him he has always worn those pearls.

“I’d shoot them, too,” Shiv says. “Deviates. I mean Brahmins; okay, they fuck around with the genes, but they are men and women.”

“I read the nutes are working on ways to get cloned,” Talv says mildly. “They’d pay normal women to carry their kids.”

“Now that is just plain disgusting,” Shiv says and when he turns back to set down his empty glass there’s a slip of paper on the luminous blue bar.

“What is this?”

“This is what they call a bill,” Talv says.

“I beg your pardon? Since when have I paid for drinks in this establishment?” Shiv unfolds the little docket, glances over the number. Double takes.

“No. What the fuck is this? Is my credit no good here? Is this what you’re saying, Shiv Faraji, we don’t trust him any more?”

The tivi girls look up at a raised voice, lit blue like devis. Talv sighs. Then Salman’s there. He’s the owner, he has connections Shiv doesn’t. Shiv holds up the bar tab like a charge sheet.

“I was telling your star here.”

“I’ve been hearing things about your bankability.”

“My friend, I have status all over this city.”

Salman lays a cold finger on the cold canister.

“Your stock is no longer as ascendant as it used to be.”

“Some fucker is undercutting me? I’ll have his balls in dry ice.”

Salman shakes his head.

“This is a macroeconomic issue. Market forces, sir.”

And Musst Club Bar goes into long zoom, so that its walls and corners seem to rush away from Shiv except the Brahmin’s head, which is huge and inflated and rocking like a painted helium balloon at a festival, laughing at him like a rocking fool.

Some see the red haze. For Shiv it has always been blue. Deep, vibrant, intense blue. He snatches up the plate of paan, smashes it, pins Talv’s hand to the bar-top, a long blade of glass poised over his thumb like a guillotine.

“Let’s see him shake and make with no thumbs,” Shiv hisses. “Bar. Star.”

“Shiv; now,” Salman says very slowly and remorsefully and Shiv knows that it’s the hiss of the cobra, but it’s blue, all blue, quivering blue. A hand on his shoulder. Yogendra.

“Okay,” Shiv says, not looking at anyone or anything. He sets the sliver down, puts his hands up. “It’s okay.”

“I will overlook this,” Salman says. “But I do expect payment, in full, sir. Thirty days. Standard business terms.”

“Okay, there is something very wrong here,” Shiv says, backing away. “I will find out what it is and I will be back for your apology.”

He kicks over his bar stool but doesn’t forget the body parts. At last, the girls are looking at him.

The Ayurvedic restaurant closes promptly at eight because its philosophy dictates you should eat no later. From the scene in the alley, Shiv guesses that it won’t be opening again. There’s a hire van, two pony carts, three delivery trikes, and a gaggle of pay-by-the-hour gundas running cardboard boxes in a chain out the door. Headwaiter Videsh, dismantling tables, barely looks up as Shiv and boy wonder storm in. Madam Ovary is in the office cherry-picking the filing cabinet. Shiv bangs the vacuum flask down on the battered metal.

“Going somewhere?”

“One of my laddies is on his way to your lodgings as we speak.”

“I was taken away. On business. I have got one of these, you know?” Shiv flips out his palmer. “Shiv, nonsecure communications. No.”

Madam Ovary is a small, fat, almost globular Malayam and wears a greasy pigtail down to the small of her back that hasn’t been released from its bonds in twenty years. She is Ayurvedic Mother to her laddies and plies them with tinctures and papers of powder. Those who believe credit her with genuine healing powers. Shiv gives his to Yogendra, who hawks them to tourists coming off the riverboats. Her restaurant has an international reputation, especially among Germans. The place is always full of pale Northern Euros with that gauntness of facial features you get from thirty days of constant gastro problems.

Shiv says, “Explain then: you’re firing everything into handcarts and all of a sudden this”—his cool, stainless flask—“has got leprosy in it.”

Madame Ovary consigns a few balance sheets to her plastic briefcase. No leather, no animal produce at all. Human products for human consumption, that is Ayurvedically sound. That includes embryonic stem cell therapy.

“What do you know about nonblastular stem cell technology?”

“Same as our normal foetal stem cell technique except they can use any cell in the body to grow spare parts and not embryos. Only they can’t get it to work.”

“It’s been working perfectly since eleven AM Eastern US Standard Time. What you have in there isn’t even worth the flask.”

Shiv sees again the body caught by the stream. He sees the woman’s sari bubble up behind her. He sees her on the scrubbed enamel tabletop in the All-Asia Beauty plastic surgery clinic, open under the lights. Shiv hates waste. He especially hates it when an inexperienced surgeon turns a routine egg-harvest into a bloodbath.

“There’re always going to be people can’t afford American technology. This is Bharat.”

“Laddie, do you know the first rule of business? Know when to cut your losses. My overheads are enormous: doctors, couriers, policemen, customs officials, politicians, city councillors, all with their hands out. The crash is coming. I do not intend to be underneath it.”

“Where are you going?” Shiv asks.

“I’m certainly not telling you. If you’ve any sense, you’ll have diversified your assets long before now.”

Shiv has never had that luxury. At every stage of his journey from Chandi Basti to this Ayurvedic restaurant, there was only ever one choice to make. Morality was for those who lived somewhere else than the basti. There had been one choice that night he raided the pharmacy. Any badmash could get a gun in the years of the Separation, but even then Shiv Faraji had been a man of style. A stylist uses a stolen Nissan SUV, rammed through the pharmacy steel shutter. His sister had recovered from the tuberculosis. The stolen antibiotics had saved her life. He had done what his father would not, could not. He had shown them what a man of courage and determination could achieve. He had not touched a paisa of the pharmacist’s money. A raja takes only what he needs. He had been twelve. Two years younger than his lieutenant Yogendra. Every step, the only step. It’s the same now the ovaries have come apart in his fingers. An action will present itself to him. He will take it. It will be the only action he can take. The one thing he will not do is run. This is his city.

Madam Ovary snaps shut her valise.

“Make yourself useful. Give me your lighter.”

It’s an old US Army model from the time they went into Pakistan. The days when they sent soldiers who smoked rather than machines. Madam Ovary applies fire. The papers catch and burn.

“I’m done here now,” she says. “Thank you for your work. I wish you well, but do not try to contact me, ever. We will not meet again, so good-bye for this life.”

In the car Shiv slaps on the radio. Jabber. All these DJs do: jabber, as if only way to tell them from aeais is by the constant flow of garbage from their mouths. Like the Ganga; this constant flow of shit. You’re a DJ, you play music. Music people want to hear, that makes them feel good or think of someone special or cry.