Ian McDonald - River of Gods

“Coffee?”

Vik always has one, in a never-cool cup. Mr. Nandha cannot drink coffee. His acid reflux hates it. He gives his Ayurvedic tea bag to Vikram’s quiet assistant, whose name Mr. Nandha can never remember. The processor unit stands on Vik’s desk. It’s an industry-standard translucent blue cube, charred inside from Mr. Nandha’s EMP assault. Vik has it hooked into an array of probes and monitors.

“Okay,” he says and cracks his fingers. Theater of Bludd whispers from the speakers, muted from its usual thunder out of respect for Monteverdi-loving Mr. Nandha. “It would be a lot easier if you occasionally left us something to work on.”

“I perceived a clear and present danger,” Mr. Nandha says and is struck by revelation. Vik, cool Vik, technological Vik, trance-metal Vik, is jealous of him. He wants the missions, he wants the reserved first-class bogies and the well-cut Ministry suits and the gun that can kill two ways and the pocketful of avatars.

“You left even less than usual,” says Vik, “but there was enough to get a few nanoprobes in and unravel what’s been going on. I presume the programmer.”

“He was the first victim.”

“Aren’t they always? Would have been nice if he could have told us exactly why his home-brew satta aeai was running a background programme buying and selling on the international ventures market.”

“Please clarify,” says Mr. Nandha.

“Morva up in Fiscal will explain it better, but it looks like Pasta-Tikka was unconsciously trading crores of rupees for a venture capital company called Odeco.”

“I shall indeed speak with Morva,” Mr. Nandha decides.

“One thing I can tell you right off.” Vik stabs a line of code on his thin blue screen with his forefinger.

“Ah” says Mr. Nandha with a thin smile. “Our old friend Jashwant the Jain.”

Parvati Nandha sits in a bower of amaranthus on the roof of her housing block. She shields her eyes with her hand to watch another military transport slide in from the east and disappear over New Varanasi’s corporate towers. They and the high-circling black kites are the only interruptions of the peace of her garden in the heart of the city. Parvati goes to the edge, peers over the parapet. Ten stories down the street is thick with people as an arm with blood. She crosses the tiled patio to the raised bed, gathers her sari around her as she stoops to inspect the marrow seedlings. The plastic evaporation tent is opaque with moisture. Already the air on the roof is thirty-seven degrees and the sky is heavy, impenetrable, close, caramel yellow from the smog. Peering between the sheeting and the soil, Parvati inhales the smell of soil and mulch and moisture and growing.

“Let them get on with it themselves.”

Krishan is a big man who can move very quietly, as many big men can, but Parvati felt the cool of his shadow on the soft hairs on the nape of her neck, like the dew on the marrow leaves.

“Oh, you gave me a shock!” she says, demure and flustered, which is a game she likes to play with him.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Nandha.”

“So?” Parvati says.

Krishan takes his wallet and hands Parvati a hundred rupee note. “How did you guess?”

“Oh, it’s obvious,” Parvati says. “It has to be Govind, otherwise why would he track her down to that bad house in Brahmpur East just to mock and deride her? No no no, only a true husband would find his wife, no matter what she had done, and forgive her and bring her home. I knew it was him from the moment he turned up on the doorsteps of that Thai Massage house. That airline pilot disguise did not fool me. Her family may cast her out, but a true husband, never. Now, all he has to do is get his revenge on the director of that SupaSingingStar Show.”

“Khursheed.”

“No, he runs the restaurant. Arvind is the director. Govind will get his revenge, if the Chinese do not get him first about the casino project.”

Krishan throws his hands up in surrender. He is no devotee of Town and Country but he will watch and bet on its improbably complex plot lines if it makes his client happy. It is a strange commission; this farm on top of a downtown apartment block. It hints at compromises. They can be hard, these town and country marriages.

“I will have cook fetch you chai,” Parvati says. Krishan watches her call down the stairs. She has the grace of the country. The city for gloss, the village for wisdom. Krishan wonders about her husband. He knows that he is a civil servant and that he settles his accounts promptly and without argument. With only half a picture, all Krishan can do is speculate on the relationship, the attraction. Not such a speculation,the attraction. He sometimes wonders how he can ever find a wife for himself when even a low-caste girl can catch herself a solid middle-class husband with a glance and a turn of the hand. Garden well. Make money, plant it, grow it into more money. Buy a Maruti and move out to Lotus Gardens. You will marry as well as you can, out there.

“Today,” Krishan announces when he has finished his chai and set the glass down on the wooden wall of the raised bed, “I am thinking, perhaps beans and peas there, to give some kind of screen. You’re open on the left. And here, a quarterbed for Western-style salad vegetables. Western-style salad is the thing at dinner parties; when you entertain, cook can cut fresh.”

“We do not entertain,” Parvati says. “But there is a big reception out at the Dawar house tonight. It will be quite an occasion. It is so lovely out there. So many trees. But Mr. Nandha says it’s inconvenient, too far out. Too much driving. I can have everything here they have out there, and so much more convenient.”

It takes two runs down to the street for Krishan to bring up the old wooden railway sleepers he uses to build the retaining walls for the beds. He lays them out in rough order, then cuts and moulds the damp-proof sheet and lays it in position. Parvati Nandha sits on the rim of the tomato and pepper bed.

“Mrs. Nandha, are you not missing Town and Country ?” Krishan asks.

“No no, it is delayed until eleven thirty today, it’s the final day of the test against England.”

“I see,” says Krishan, who adores cricket. When she goes, he might bring up the radio.

“Well, don’t mind me.” He sets to drilling the drain holes in the sleepers but all the time he is aware that Mrs. Nandha is still perched there, watching.

“Krishan,” she says after a time.

“Yes, Mrs. Nandha?”

“It’s just, it’s such a lovely day, and when I’m down there, I hear all the dragging and bumping and hammering up here, but I never see it until it’s finished.”

“I understand,” Krishan the mali says. “You won’t disturb me.”

But she has, and she does.

“Mrs. Nandha,” he says as he bolts the last railway sleeper into place, “I think you are missing your programme.”

“Am I?” Parvati Nandha says. “Oh, I never noticed the time. Not to worry, I can catch the early evening repeat.”

Krishan hefts a sack of compost, slashes it open with his gardening knife, and sprinkles rich brown earth food down through his fingers on to the rooftop.

The burning dog gives off a vile oily smoke. Jashwant the Jain, his broom-boy before him, stands eyes closed. Whether they are closed in prayer or outrage Mr. Nandha cannot say. Within moments the dog is a small intense fireball. The other dogs still surge yipping around Mr. Nandha’s feet, too stupid in their small programmed obsessions to recognise danger.

“You are a vile, cruel man,” says Jashwant the Jain. “Your soul is black as anthracite, you will never attain the light of moksha.”

Mr. Nandha purses his lips and levels his gun at a fresh target, a cartoon scoobi with lugubrious eyes and yellow/brown Friesian-patterned fur. Sensing attention, the thing wags its tail and waddles towards Mr. Nandha through the frenzied sea of robor dogs, tongue lolling. Mr. Nandha considers Animal Welfare charities a ludicrous social affectation. Varanasi cannot feed its children, let alone its abandoned cats and dogs. Sanctuaries for cyberpets occupy an altogether higher level of scorn.