Ian McDonald - River of Gods

Krishan Kudrati smiles in his doze under the climbing hibiscus. A darker shadow moves across his closed eyelids, a waft of cool. He opens his eyes. Parvati Nandha stands over him, looking down.

“I should really be telling you off, sleeping on my time.”

Krishan glances at the clock on his radio. He still has ten minutes of his time but he sits up and flicks the radio off. The players are on lunch and Ram Sagar Singh is trawling through his compendious tallboy of cricket facts.

“I just wanted to see what you thought of my new bracelets for the reception tonight,” Parvati says, one hand on hip like a dancer, the other weaving in front of him.

“If you held it still, I might actually see it.”

Metal catches light, dazzling Krishan. Instinctively, he reaches out. Without thought, his hand is around her wrist. Realisation paralyses him for a moment. Then Krishan releases his grasp.

“That’s very fine,” he says. “Is it gold?”

“Yes,” Parvati says. “My husband likes to buy me gold.”

“Your husband is very good to you. You will be number one star attraction at this party.”

“Thank you.” Parvati ducks her head, now ashamed at her forwardness, “You are most kind.”

“No, I am just speaking the simple truth.” Made bold by the sun and the heavy scent of soil, Krishan dares: “Forgive me, but I don’t think you get to hear that as much as you should.”

“You are a very forward man!” Parvati scolds, then, gently, “Is that the cricket you are listening to?”

“The second test from Patna. We are two hundred and eight for five.”

“Cricket is not a thing I understand,” Parvati says. “It seems very complex and hard to win.”

“Once you understand the rules and the strategies, it is the most fascinating of sports,” Krishan says. “It is the nearest the English come to Zen.”

“I should like to know about it. It’s all the talk at these social events. I feel stupid, standing there not able to say anything. I might not know about politics or the economy, but I might be able to learn cricket. Perhaps you could teach me?”

Mr. Nandha drives through New Varanasi to Dido and Aeneas , English Chamber Opera recording, which Mr. Nandha notes for its rough approach to the English Baroque. On the edge of his sensory envelope, like a rumour of monsoon, is this evening’s durbar at the Dawars. He would welcome an excuse not to go. Mr. Nandha fears Sanjay Dawar will announce the happy conception of an heir. A Brahmin, he suspects. That will start Parvati again. He has repeatedly made his position clear, but all she hears is a man telling her he will not give her babies. This depresses Mr. Nandha.

A discord in his auditory lobes: a call from Morva, in Fiscal. Of all of his people in the Ministry, Morva is the only one for whom Mr. Nandha has any respect. There is a beauty and elegance to the paper trail. It is detection at its purest and holiest. Morva never has to leave his office, never faces the streets, never threatens violence or carries a weapon, but his thoughts go out from his desk on the twelfth floor across the whole wide world with a few gestures of his hand and blinks of the eye. Pure intellect, disembodied as he flits from shell company to tax haven, off-shore datahaven to escrow account. The abstraction of his work excites Mr. Nandha: entities with no physical structure at all. Pure flow; the movement of intangible money through minute clusters of information.

He has chased down Odeco. It is a secretive investment company sheltered in a Caribbean tax haven, much given to throwing megadollars into blue sky. Its investments in Bharat include the Artificial Intelligence unit at the University of Bharat, Varanasi; Ray Power Research and Development division, and a number of Darwinware hothouses hovering on the edge of legality breeding low-level aeais. Not the aeai that leaped out of the backyard betting scheme in Pasta-Tikka and ran amok, Mr. Nandha thinks. Even a high-risk venture company like Odeco would not risk dealing with the sundarbans.

Americans fear these jungle places as they fear everything outside their own borders and co-opt Mr Nandha and his kind to wage their unending war against the wild aeais, but much of Mr. Nandha admires the datarajas. They have energy and enterprise. They have pride and a name in the world. The sundarbans of Bharat and the States of Bengal, Bangalore and Mumbai, New Delhi and Hyderabad resound globally. They are the abodes of the mythical Generation Threes, aeais sentient beyond sentience, as high over human intelligences as gods.

The Badrinath sundarban physically occupies a modest fifteenth-floor apartment on Vidyapeeth. Dataraja Radhakrishna’s neighbours doubtless never suspect that next door live ten thousand cybernetic devis. As he hoots his way in to park through the mopeds Mr. Nandha summons his avatars. Jashwant had been warned. Datarajas have so many feelers, trembling to the vibrations in the global web, that is almost as if they are prescient. As he locks the car Mr. Nandha watches as the streets and skyline fill with gods, huge as mountains. Siva scans the wireless traffic, Krishna the extra- and intranet, Kali raises her sickle above the satellite dishes of New Varanasi to reap anything copying itself out of Badrinath. Harm’s our delight and mischief all our skill , sings the English Chamber Orchestra Chorus.

And it all goes white. A shout of static. The gods are wiped from the skyline. Dido and Aeneas shorts in mid-continuo. Mr. Nandha rips the ’hoek from his ear.

“Make way, make way!” he shouts at the pedestrians. In his first week with the Ministry Mr. Nandha experienced firsthand a full-strength EM pulse. There is no mistaking its signature. As he sprints up the steps to the foyer, thumbing for police support on his sputtering palmer, he thinks he sees a something, too big for a bird, too small for an aircraft, loop away from the apartment building and vanish into the Varanasi sky-glow. Seconds later the fascia of the fifteenth-floor apartment explodes in a gout of flame.

“Run, flee!” Mr. Nandha shouts as the smoking debris rains down on the gawpers but the one, huge, gagging thought in his head is that he won’t get his suit from Mukherjee’s now.

Prime Minister Sajida Rana wears gold and green today. Her cabinet knows to expect matters of national pride when she is dressed in the flag. She stands at the east end of the long teak table in the luminous marble cabinet room of the Bharat Sabha. Gilt framed oils of forebears and political inspirations line the long wall. Her father, Diljit Rana, in his judge’s robes, father of the nation. Her grandfather, Shankar Rana, in his English Queen’s Counsel silk. Jawarhalal Nehru, aloof and vaguely fearful in his sweetly cut suit, as if he had seen the price future generations would pay for the quick, dirty deal he did with Mountbatten. The Mahatma, father of all, with his bowl and wheel. Lakshmi Bai, warrior Rani, standing in the stirrups of her Maratha cavalry horse commanding the charge on Gwalior. And the autocrats of that other mighty Indian dynasty to share the name Gandhi, Sonia; assassinated Rajiv; Indira the martyr, Mother India.

The marble walls and ceiling of the cabinet chamber have been worked into an intricate filigree of Hindu mythology. Yet the acoustic is dry and resonant. Even whispers ring and carry. Sajida Rana places her hands on the polished teak, rests her weight on them, a fighter’s stance.

“Can we survive if we strike at Awadh?”

V. S. Chowdhury, Defence Minister, turns his hooded, hawk eyes to his leader. “Bharat will survive. Varanasi will survive. Varanasi is eternal.” There is no doubt in the echoing hall what he means.