Ian McDonald - River of Gods

Tal snatched up the arak, took a bitter draft.

“It all ended. I’d say it was like a film, the credits roll, the lights came up, and we were back in the real again, but it wasn’t. It didn’t have a third act. It didn’t have an against-all-the-odds-happy-ever-after. It just got worse and worse and then it just ended. It stopped, like the film snapped and I wasn’t living in a Manori Beach apartment and I wasn’t at the John Connon School and I wasn’t going round the parties with all the stars saying, oh look, isn’t it sweet and look how big it’s getting ? I was in a two-room apartment in Thane with Costanza, going to the Bom Jesus Catholic School, and I hated it. I hated it. I wanted it all back again, all the magic and the dancing and the fun and the parties and this time I wanted it to go on after the credits rolled. I just wanted everyone to look at me and say, wow. Just that. Wow.”

Tal sat back, inviting admiration but the man looked afraid, and something more Tal could not identify. He said, “You are an extraordinary creature. Do you ever feel that you’re living in two worlds, and that neither of them is real?”

“Two worlds? Honey, there are thousands of worlds. And they’re as real as you want them to be. I should know; I’ve lived all my life between them. None of them are real, but when you get into them, they’re all the same.”

The man nodded, not in agreement with anything Tal had said, but at some inner dialogue.

He summoned the bill, left a pile of notes on the little silver tray. “It’s getting late, and I do have affairs to attend to in the morning.”

“What sort of affairs?” The man smiled to himself.

“You are the second person to ask me that tonight. I work in information management. Thank you for coming with me here and the pleasure of your company; you really are an extraordinary human, Tal.”

“You didn’t give me your name.”

“No, I don’t believe I did.”

“That’s so male,” Tal said, sweeping along behind the man on to the street where he was already waving down a taxi.

“You could call me Khan.”

Something has changed, Tal thought as yt slid in to the back seat of the Maruti. The man Khan had been nervous, shy, guilty at the Banana Club. Even in the restaurant he had not been at ease. Something in yts story had worked on his mind and mood.

“I don’t go to White Fort after midnight,” the driver said.

“I will pay you treble,” Khan said.

“I’ll get as close as I can”

Khan leaned his head against the greasy rest.

“You know, it really is an excellent little restaurant. The owner came here about ten years ago in the last wave of the Kurdish diaspora. I. helped him. He set the place up, he’s doing well. I suppose he’s a man trapped between two worlds as well.”

Tal was only half listening, curling up in the arak glow. Yt leaned against Khan, for warmth, for solidity. Yt let yts inner arm roll into the space between them. The row of buds were puckered like bitch-nipples in the street glow. Tal saw the man start at the sight. Then a hand was stabbing down the front of yts lounging pants, a face loomed over yt, a mouth clamped over yts. A tongue pressed entrance to yts body. Tal gave a muffled scream, Khan recoiled in shock, which gave Tal space to push and shout. The phatphat bounced to a halt in the middle of the highway. Tal had the door open and was out, shawl flapping behind yt, before yt was fully conscious of what yt was doing.

Tal ran.

Tal stops running. Yt stands, hands on thighs; panting. Khan is still there, peering through the headlight blur, calling out futilely into the traffic roar. Tal stifles a sob. Yt can still smell the aftershave on yts skin, taste tongue in yts mouth. Shaking, yt waits a safe few minutes before flagging in a cruising phatphat. DJ Aeai plays MIX FOR A NIGHT TURNED SCARY.

New day, new array. Everyone from cleaners to Centre Director turned out under the canopy of the Ranjit Ray Research Centre. They look nervous. Not nearly as nervous as your unexpected and unprepared CEO, Vishram Ray thinks as the car crunches sensuously up the raked gravel drive. Vishram checks cuffs, tugs collar.

“You should have worn a tie,” says Marianna Fusco. She is cool, immaculate, creases all geometrical.

“I’ve done my tie-wearing for this lifetime,” Vishram says, lick-slicking down hair in the vanity mirror in the chauffeur’s headrest. “Anyway, as any historian of costume will tell you, the sole purpose of the tie is to point to your dick. That’s not very Hindu business, that.”

“Vishram, everything points to your dick.”

Vishram thinks he hears the driver snigger as he opens the door.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” Marianna Fusco whispers in Vishram’s ear as he walks purposefully up the steps. His ’hoek comes to life in his head. A moment’s visual blur as the aeai deletes the junk and filters the ads, then he is striding forwards to meet the director, hand held out in greeting. GANDHINAGAR SURJEET say the blue words hovering in front of him. D.O.B 21/02/2009. WIFE SANJUAY, CHILDREN: RUPESH (7); NAGESH (9). JOINED RAY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT 2043 FROM UNIVERSITY OF BANGALORE RENEWABLE RESOURCES RESEARCH DEPARTMENT. FIRST DOCTORATE. Vishram blinks off the supplementary information.

“Mr. Ray, you are very welcome to our division.”

“It’s a pleasure to be here, Dr. Surjeet.”

It’s all playing a role, really.

“You do find us in something of a state of unreadiness,” he says.

“Not half as unready as me.” The joke seems to go down well. But then they would laugh, wouldn’t they? Dr. Surjeet moves to his department heads.

INDERPAL GAUR, says the relentless palmer. 15/08/2011, CHANDIGARH. RESEARCH SUBDIVISION: BIOMASS. MARITAL STATUS: SINGLE. EMPLOYMENT HISTORY AT

RAY POWER: JOINED R&D 2034 FROM UNIVERSITY OF THE PANJAB, CHANDIGARH CAMPUS.

LET HIM DO THE INTRODUCTIONS, Marianna warns in lilac over Director Surjeet’s head. Dr. Gaur is a toothy, plump woman in traditional dress, through there is nothing old-fashioned about the anodised aluminium ’hoek curled against the side of her pigtail. He wonders what is her ’hoek graffiting about him? VISHRAM RAY: WASTER SON. FAILED LAWYER. ASPIRANT STAND-UP. THINKS HE’S PRETTY DAMN FUNNY.

“It’s a great honour,” she says, namasteing.

“All mine, I assure you,” Vishram says.

And on, down the row of department heads and senior researchers and team leaders and those who have had important papers published.

“I am Khaleda Husainy,” says a small, intense woman in a Western-style suit and a headscarf chador. “It is a great pleasure to meet you, Mr. Ray.” Her discipline is microgeneration. Parasitic power.

“What, people generate power just walking up and down?”

“Pumps in the pavement, yes” she enthuses. “There is immense energy being wasted out there, waiting for us to capture it. Everything you do and say is a source of power.”

“You should hook it up to our legal department.”

It gets a laugh.

“And what do you do to help make Ray Power A-Number One?” Vishram says to a young, almost-good-looking woman whose lapel badge identifies her as Sonia Yadav.

“Nothing,” she says with a smile.

“Ah,” Vishram says, moving on. Hands to shake. Faces to remember. She calls after him. “When I said nothing, I meant, energy from nothing. Endless free power.”

“You’ve got my attention now.”

“I’m taking you to the zero-point lab,” Sonia Yadav explains as she leads Vishram and his entourage to her research unit. She looks at him closely.

“Your eyeballs are moving. Is someone messaging you?”