Ian McDonald - River of Gods

“What are you telling me, Ram?”

“It’s not for me.”

“What do you want, Ram?”

He toyed with his fork.

“Govind has made me an offer.”

“He didn’t waste much time.”

“He thinks it’s disastrous, splitting generation from transmission. The Americans and Europeans have been competing for years to get their hands on Ray Power. Now we are divided and weak and it’s only a matter of time before someone approaches one of us with an irresistible offer.”

“I’m sure he made a very convincing case. I can’t help but wonder where his money’s coming from for this great display of fraternal solidarity.”

Marianna Fusco’s palmer was already open.

She said, “His annual reports are filed with Companies House but his profits are down for the fifth quarter in a row and his bankers are getting edgy. I would say he’s looking at protective bankruptcy in the next couple of years.”

“So if it’s not Govind’s, I think you have to ask yourself, whose money is it?” Ramesh pushed the plate of kitchiri away from him. “Could you buy me out?”

“Govind at least has a company and a credit rating. I have a jokebook and pile of unopened envelopes with little cellophane windows.”

“What can we do?”

“We will run the company. It’s a strong company. It’s Ray Power, we’ve grown up with it, we know it like we know this house. But I’ll tell you one thing, Ram; I will not let you blame me for what happens. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got employees to meet.”

Marianna Fusco rose with him, nodded to Ramesh as they entered the cool dark of the house. Monkeys came skirling down the trees hungry for leftover kitchiri.

Vishram smelled Govind before he saw him reflected in the vanity mirror.

“You know, I could have got you any God’s amount of decent aftershave from London duty free. You still on that Arpal stuff? Is it some national loyalty thing, the national smell of Bharat?”

Govind slid into the reflection beside Vishram as he adjusted the hang of his cuffs. Good suit. Looking better than you, fat boy.

“And since when did we start to walk in without knocking?” Vishram added. “Since when has family needed to knock?”

“Since they all became big businessmen. And by the way, I won’t be staying here tonight. I’m moving out to a hotel.” Cuffs right. Lapels right. Collar right. Bless those Chinese tailors. “So, make your offer.”

“Ramesh has spoken to you, then.”

“Did you really think he wouldn’t? I hear you’ve a liquidity problem.”

Uninvited, Govind seated himself on the edge of the bed. Vishtam noticed in the mirror that his brother’s feet did not quite reach the ground.

“You may find this hard to believe, but all I want to do is keep the company together.”

“You’re right.”

Still Vishram kept his back turned.

“EnGen have made no secret that they want Ray. Even when our father was CEO, they had made approaches. They will have it, sooner or later. We cannot hope to stand against the Americans. They will have us in the end, and what we, between us, have to decide is if they pick us off one by one, or take us in one big mouthful. I know what I prefer. I know what is better for the company our father built. There is strength in unity.”

“Our father built an Indian business in an Indian way.”

“My brother, the social conscience?” In those five words Vishram knew that he and his brother were eternal enemies. Rama and Ravanna. “Those old women and Grameen bankers will be the first to turn on you when the offers come in,” Govind continued. “They speak fine and noble but offer then a purseful of dollars and see the solidarity of the poor then. They know business better than you, Vishram.”

“I don’t think so,” Vishram said softly. His brother frowned.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“I said, I don’t think so. In fact, you can say whatever you like now, and I will go against you. That’s the way it’s going to be from now on. Whatever you do, whatever you say, whatever offer you make or deal you strike, I will oppose it. You may be wrong, you may be right, it may make me a billion dollars, but I am going to oppose it. Because now I can, and now you can’t do anything or run to anyone or issue any older-brother orders, because I will still own one-third of Ray Power. Now, you’re in my bedroom and you didn’t knock and you’re certainly not here by invitation, but I’m going to overlook it because this is the last night I stay in this room, in this house and I have work to do now.”

It was only as he settled into the airco-cooled leather of the car that Vishram noticed the little crescents of blood in his palms; the stigmata of clenched nails.

It’s a dire Italian but it’s the only Italian. Nostalgic already for the cooking of the Glasgow Italians, a mighty race, Vishram had lit upon the prospect of pasta and ruffino before he remembered that Varanasi has no rooted Italian community, has no Italian in its genes at all. The staff is all local. The music is compiled from the charts. The wine is overheated and tired from the long drought. There is something on the menu called pasta-tikka.

“I’m sorry it’s so terrible,” he apologises to Sonia Yadav.

She struggles with overcooked spaghetti.

“I’ve never eaten Italian before.”

“You’re not eating Italian now.”

She has made an effort for this dire dinner. She has done something with her hair, hung a little gold and amber around her. Arpege 27 : that’ll have been some European duty-free somewhere. He likes it that she has worn a business sari and not an ugly Western-style suit. Vishram sits back in his chair, touches his fingertips together, then realises he looks too much like a James Bond villain and unfolds.

“How much could you reasonably expect a liberal arts boy to understand about zero-point power?”

Sonia Yadav pushes her plate away from her with evident relief.

“Okay, well for starters, it’s not strictly zero-point as most people think of it.” Sonia Yadav has a slight pucker between the eyes when she is saying or thinking or contemplating something difficult. It’s very cute. “Do you remember what I said back in the lab about cold and hot? The classic zero-point theories are cold theories. Now, our theories suggest they won’t work. Can’t work: there’s a ground-state wall you just can’t get around. You don’t beat the second law of thermodynamics.”

Vishram lifts a breadstick, breaks it theatrically in two. “I got the cold and hot bit.”

“Okay. I’ll try. And by the way, I saw that thing with the breadstick in the remake of the Pyar Diwana Hota Hai .”

“Little more wine, then?”

She takes the refill but doesn’t touch it. Wise woman. Vishram settles back with the traumatised Chianti in the ancient ritual of listening to a woman tell a story.

It’s a strange and magical tale as full of contradictions and impossibilities as any legend from the Mahabharata. There are multiple worlds and entities that can be two contradictory things at the same time. There are beings that can never be fully known or predicted, that once entangled remain linked though they be removed to opposite ends of the universe so that what happens to one is instantly felt by the other. Vishram watches Sonia’s demonstration of the double-slit experiment with a fork, two capers, and ripples in the tablecloth and thinks, what a strange and alien world you inhabit, woman. The quantum universe is as capricious and uncertain and unknowable as the triple world that rested on the back of the great turtle, ruled by gods and demons.

“Because of the uncertainty principle, there are always virtual particle pairs being born and vanishing again at all possible energy levels. So, in effect, in every cubic centimetre of empty space, there is theoretically an infinite amount of energy, if we can just stop the virtual particles disappearing.”