Ian McDonald - River of Gods

“Dad, what are you doing here?”

“Puja for the end of an age.”

“This is a terrible place.”

“It’s meant to be. But the eye of faith sees differently and to me it seems not so terrible. It’s right. Fitting.”

“Destruction, Dad?”

“Transformation. Death and rebirth. The wheel turns.”

“I’m buying Ramesh out,” Vishram announces sitting barefoot among the ashes of the dead “That will give me two thirds control over the company and freeze out Govind and his Western partners. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.”

Vishram sees a flicker of old worldliness in his father’s eyes.

“I’m sure you can guess where the money’s come from.”

“My good friend Chakraborty.”

“You know who—or what, rather—is behind him?”

“I do.”

“How, long have you known?”

“From the start. Odeco contacted me when we embarked on the zero-point project. Chakraborty was admirably direct.”

“It was a hell of a risk, if the Krishna Cops had ever found out. Ray Power, power with conscience, treading lightly on the earth, all that?”

“I see no contradiction. These are living creatures, sentient creatures. We owe them a duty of care. Some of the grameen bankers.”

“Creatures. You said creatures there.”

“Yes I did. There seem to be three Generation Three aeais, but of course their subjective universes do not necessarily overlap though they may share some subroutines. Odeco I believe is a common channel between at least two of them.”

“Chakraborty called the Odeco aeai Brahma.”

Ranjit Ray gives a small knowing smile.

“Did you ever meet with Brahma?”

“Vishram, what would there be to meet with? I met men in suits, I talked to faces on the phone. Those faces may have been real, they may have been Brahma, they may have been its manifestations. Can one meet a distributed entity in any meaningful sense?”

“Did they ever say why they wanted to fund the zero-point project?”

“You will not understand it. I do not understand it.”

Lightning momentarily flashes up the inside of the cremation chamber. Thunder comes hard and heavy on it; strange winds stir the ash.

“Tell me.”

Vishram’s palmer calls. He grimaces in exasperation. Devotees glare at the interruption of profanity in their sanctum. High-priority call. Vishram flicks to audio only. When Marianna Fusco has finished speaking he slides the little device into an inside pocket.

“Dad, we have to leave now.”

Ranjit Ray frowns.

“I can’t understand what you are saying.”

“We have to leave right now. It’s not safe here. The Awadhis have captured the Kunda Khadar dam. Our soldiers have surrendered. There’s nothing between them and Allahabad. They could be here in twenty-four hours. Dad, you’re coming with me. There’re spare seats on the plane. All this has to stop now, you’re an important man with an international reputation.”

Vishram stands, offers a hand down to his father.

“No, I will not come and I will not be ordered around like some doting widow by my own son. I have made my decision, I have walked away and I will not go back. I cannot go back; that Ranjit Ray does not exist any more.”

Vishram shakes his head in exasperation.

“Dad.”

“No. Nothing will happen to me. The Bharat they have invaded is not the one I live in. They cannot touch me. Go. Go on, you go.” He pushes at his son’s knees. “There are things you must do, go on. Nothing must happen to you. I will pray for you, you will be kept safe. Now go.” Ranjit Ray closes his eyes, turns a blind, deaf face.

“I will come back.”

“You won’t find me. I don’t want to be found. You know what you have to do.” As Vishram ducks under the blood-daubed lintel his father calls out. “I was going to tell you. Odeco, Brahma, the aeai—what it’s looking for in the zero-point project. A way out. Out there in all those manifolds of M-Star theory there is a universe where it and those of its kind can exist, live free and safe, and we will never find them. And that is why I am here in this temple, because I want to see the look on Kali’s face when her age comes to an end.”

The rain is falling steadily as Vishram leaves the temple. The marble is greasy with water and dust. The narrow lanes around the temple still throng with people but the street spirit has changed. It is not the zeal of religious devotion, nor is it the communal celebration of rain falling on a drought dry city. Word of the humiliation at Kunda Khadar has passed into general circulation and the galis swarm with brahmins and widows in white and Kali devotees in red and angry young males in Big Label jeans and very fresh shirts. They peer up at television screens or tear hardcopies from printers or cluster round rickshaw radios or boys with news-feeds to their palmers. The noise in the streets rises as news spreads into rumour into misinformation into slogans. Bharat’s bold jawans defeated. The Glory of Bharat crushed. Awadhi divisions already driving around the Allahabad ring road. The sacred soil invaded. Who will save? Who will avenge? Jivanjee Jivanjee Jivanjee! Warrior-karsevaks march to sweep back the invader in waves of their own blood. The Shivaji will redeem the shame of the Ranas.

“Where’s your father?

Rickshaw drivers shove around Vishram as he pulls on his shoes. “He’s not coming with me.”

“I did not think he would, Mr. Ray.” Strange to hear those words from Shastri. Mister. Ray.

“Then can I suggest we get out of here because I feel very white and very Western and very female,” says Marianna Fusco. The steep lanes are streaming and treacherous with rain. “How is it with you things always end in a riot?” Marianna Fusco asks but the spirit on the street is jabbing, ugly, contagious. Vishram can see the tilt-jet on the beach between the overhanging buildings. Behind him a crash; voices lift into panic. He turns to see a tin samosa cart spilled on its side, its cargo of spicy triangles scattered across the gali, hot oil spreading across the shallow steps. A touch from the lighted gas burner; fire fills the narrow alley. Cries, shrieks.

“Come on.” Vishram takes Marianna’s elbow and hurries her down the steps.

The pilot has the engines warmed up as Vishram and Marianna dive into their seats behind him. Shastri steps back out of the blast pattern of the jets, hands raised in blessing. The tilt-jet lifts through the downpour as the people come pouring down the steps like rats rushing to water, waving lathis and picking up sticks and stones to throw at the alien, the invader. The pilot is already too high. He turns his ship and Vishram sees the fire as a pool of heat, spreading from building to building like liquid, undaunted by the rain.

“The Age of Kali,” he whispers. The lowest throw of the dice when human discord and corruption abounds and heaven is closed, when the ears of the gods are deaf and entropy is maximum and there is no hope to speak of. When the earth is destroyed by fire and water, Vishram thinks as the tilt-jet slips into horizontal flight, when time stops and the universe is born anew.

Outside the arch the rain falls like a curtain and Lisa Durnau is on her third gin. She sits on the wicker chair on the marble cloister. The only others on the terrace are two men in cheap suits and sandals, taking tea. From this vantage she can cover main gate and reception desk. The noise of the rain on the tired stone is incredible. It is some storm, even by Midwestern standards. Lightning and everything.

Empty again. She signs to the waiter. They are all young, shy Nepalis dressed as Rajputs, in Bharati Varanasi. She cannot work that. She cannot work most anything up here in the black north. She had just been getting the beautiful civilised south and its soft anarchy then she was set down in the middle of a nation and a city that looked the same and dressed the same but was in every way different.