Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

“So all your conversations with friends and family, until now, took place in Hyderabad.”

“Cyberabad.”

“Whatever. Did you feel that your friends and family were speaking freely there? As freely as you and I are speaking now?”

“I don’t know. For much of that time, you know, I was not quite myself. It was only in the last few weeks that—”

“Did you ever see people doing this?” Uncle Dharmender glanced theatrically up at the Subaru’s dome light.

“I don’t understand.”

“It is a gesture people make, meaning, this room is bugged, we are being listened to, I am not really speaking my mind .”

“Perhaps. I don’t remember.”

“What about the people who recruited you for this mission? Who briefed you?”

“People I got to know during the fighting along the Line of Actual Control.” He referred here to Major Raju, who had “befriended” him during his Himalayan exploits and who had stayed in touch with Laks during his convalescence.

“Indian Army.”

“Yes.”

“Not people like us.”

“No.”

“What did these people say to you that made you want this?”

“Want what?”

“To be in the back of your uncle’s car getting into a wet suit so that you can sneak into a foreign country.”

“Our country is in danger.”

“India? Or the Punjab?”

“Same difference. If there is drought in the Breadbasket, all of India suffers.”

“And was this their claim? That there is drought in the Breadbasket?”

“The monsoon was late.”

“Late, yes. But it came. It did come, Laks.”

“Next year it may be later still.”

“That’s always true. To be Punjabi is to live in continual anxiety about next year’s monsoon.”

“But now people are messing with the weather.”

“You’re talking of this thing in Texas. That’s what they told you, isn’t it?”

“They showed me pictures. Explained the science.”

“I’m sure they did.”

They passed through a roundabout on the southern fringe of town, where three roads came together. “This is not the fastest way,” Laks said.

“What!?”

“You should have taken the first exit. Not the second.” He considered it. “This will get us there, though. It’s only 1.23 kilometers farther.”

“How would you know these things? That intersection was just built last year.”

“I can just feel where I am. Where I need to go. Like a sixth sense. I was leaning into the turn—but it never came.”

“Perhaps your uncle doesn’t want to take you down that first road because it is notoriously rough and winding, and your uncle wants to make it easier for you to get that crazy thing on.”

“Thank you, Uncle. I’m sorry I questioned your navigation.”

“Also, perhaps getting there absolutely the fastest is not most important thing in world.”

“Why not?”

“Perhaps I can talk a little sense into you. This is apparently the first real conversation you have engaged in since your brain got scrambled at the Line of Actual Control.”

“All right, well, let’s make the most of it then,” Laks said, a little absentmindedly. Getting all the bits of the wet suit on really was amazingly difficult. He wondered if the staff of the Indian consulate in Vancouver—who had provided him with all this stuff—had been given his correct measurements. Like many big men, Laks didn’t think of himself as big. He was just normal sized. Trying to get into a wet suit in the back seat of a Subaru gave him a different perspective.

Unspoken here—because it would have been awkward—was something about the family dynamic. Laks’s father was not very outgoing, his mother somewhat naive. Dharmender had guessed, correctly, that Laks’s reception at home in Richmond had been affectionate, but completely devoid of any meaningful conversation.

Dharmender was talking in bursts as he negotiated unfamiliar roads. This stretch of B.C., along the river south to the border, was not the B.C. of tourism brochures. It was the real B.C. of small blue-collar communities built around resource extraction: here, mostly mines and gravel pits, using the river as a convenient means of moving extremely heavy things. Scenic riverfront drives were in short supply. Where the bank neared the road, it was as likely to be occupied by barge docks as by campgrounds.

“During your fifteen minutes of fame last year,” Dharmender said, “we were all proud, for sure. But there was some concern that we have seen this movie before and it is not always one that has a happy ending for the man in the turban.”

“What kinds of movies have you been watching!?”

“Let’s put it this way. You were planning to join the Canadian Army, right?”

“Yes.”

“That would be a fine thing to do. Don’t get me wrong. But I will just point out”—and here Dharmender held up one index finger and made eye contact in the rearview—“that it is just what people want of us. They want us to follow orders and put ourselves in harm’s way. On their behalf. ‘Oh look, those weirdos turn out to be useful to have around.’ We are useful, in other words, for going to the front lines and getting killed. So they are happy to overlook the turbans and so on.”

“That’s putting it pretty harshly, Uncle! Someone has to be in the military, if we are going to have a military.”

“I overstate to make a point.” Dharmender slowed the car. For the nav system was depicting a turnoff that was by no means in actual evidence. One of those roads that only the computer thinks is real. It allegedly ran for a few hundred meters to a dead end near the bank of the river, which was now depicted as a slab of blue occupying half the screen.

“It’s here,” Laks said. “Turn the wheel . . . now!” His uncle was not inclined to do so; but suddenly it was just there, a pair of ruts in tall grass leading away into scrubby trees. They were on the dry side of the province and tall trees were rare, but here deep roots could draw off enough river water to carpet the stony landscape with stunted pines. A few moments’ drive took them to a turnaround where empty beer cans gleamed in the black scars of old campfires.

“This is it,” Laks said.

“You sure?”

Laks opened the passenger door and swung the pack onto his shoulder. “It’s hard to explain, but I can literally feel it in my bones.”

Also, it smelled safe here; but Laks didn’t want to launch into a whole sub-conversation about how the researchers, or whatever they were, at Cyberabad had re-wired his useless olfactory system.

“Like a fry or a smelt or whatever it was you were going on about,” Dharmender said, peering at him with a little more intensity than Laks was really comfortable with.

“Smolt.”

“You just know it’s time to head downstream.”

“It’s my . . . I don’t know what to call it. Destiny.” Laks looked down. Beneath his feet the ground was basically level, with little rocks and sticks perceptible through the neoprene soles of his wet suit booties. But his inner ear was auguring an irresistible downhill slope toward the water.

“Did you hear a word I said? About how people take advantage of us sometimes? About how convenient we are to them?”

“Every word, yes,” Laks said. “I’ll think about it.” He looked guiltily at the lavish care package, soon to be bear food in the provincial park up the road. “Tell Aunt Gurmeet it was delicious.” Not technically a lie.

Something gleamed under the dome light: the steel band Laks wore on his right wrist. He’d taken it off when struggling with the wet suit. It must have fallen onto the floor. “Don’t forget this,” Dharmender said, holding it out. Even Laks, in his distracted state, got the double meaning. He took the kara from his uncle’s hand, kissed it, turned his back, and began jogging toward the black waters of the river. It felt like running downhill. He slipped the kara on.