Cyberabad Days (26 page)

     Of course, it was the event of the season. The decrepit old Shalimar Gardens were transformed by an army of
malis
into a sweet, green, watered maharajah's fantasia with elephants, pavilions, musicians, lancers, dancers,
filmi
stars, and robot bartenders. Neeta and Priya were uncomfortable bridesmaids in fabulous frocks; a great brahmin was employed to bless the union of woman and artificial intelligence. Every television network sent cameras, human or aeai. Gleaming presenters checked the guests in and checked the guests out.
Chati
mag paparazzi came in their crowds, wondering what they could turn their cameras on. There were even politicians from Bharat, despite the souring relationships between the two neighbors now Awadh constructors were scooping up the Ganga sands into revetments. But most there were the people of the encroaching
bastis
, jostling up against the security staff lining the paths of their garden, asking,
she's marrying a what? How does that work? Can they, you know? And what about children? Who is she, actually? Can you see anything? I can't see anything. Is there anything to see?

     But the guests and the great were 'hoeked up and applauded the groom in his golden veil on his white stallion, stepping with the delicacy of a dressage horse up the raked paths. And because they were great and guests, there was not one who, despite the free French champagne from the well-known diplomatic
sommelier,
would ever say,
but there's no one there
. No one was at all surprised that, after the bride left in a stretch limo, there came a dry, sparse thunder, cloud to cloud, and a hot mean wind that swept the discarded invitations along the paths. As they were filing back to their taxis, tankers were draining the expensively filled
qanats
.

     It made lead in the news.

     
Kathak
stars weds aeai lover!!! Honeymoon in Kashmir!!!

     Above the
chowks
and minarets of Delhi, the djinns bent together in conference.

* * * *

     He takes her while shopping in Tughluk Mall. Three weeks and the shop girls still nod and whisper. She likes that. She doesn't like it that they glance and giggle when the Krishna Cops lift her from the counter at the Black Lotus Japanese Import Company.

     "My husband is an accredited diplomat, this is a diplomatic incident." The woman in the bad suit pushes her head gently down to enter the car. The Ministry doesn't need personal liability claims.

     "Yes, but you are not, Mrs. Rao," says Thacker in the back seat. Still wearing that cheap aftershave.

     "Rathore," she says. "I have retained my stage name. And we shall see what my husband has to say about my diplomatic status." She lifts her hand in a
mudra
to speak to AyJay, as she thinks of him now. Dead air. She performs the wave again.

     "This is a shielded car," Thacker says.

     The building is shielded also. They take the car right inside, down a ramp into the basement parking lot. It's a cheap, anonymous glass and titanium block on Parliament Street that she's driven past ten thousand times on her way to the shops of Connaught Circus without ever noticing. Thacker's office is on the fifteenth floor. It's tidy and has a fine view over the astronomical geometries of the Jantar Mantar but smells of food:
tiffin
snatched at the desk. She checks for photographs of family children wife. Only himself smart in pressed whites for a cricket match.

     "
Chai
?"

     "Please." The anonymity of this civil service block is beginning to unnerve her: a city within a city. The
chai
is warm and sweet and comes in a tiny disposable plastic cup. Thacker's smile seems also warm and sweet. He sits at the end of the desk, angled toward her in Krishna-cop handbook "non-confrontational."

     "Mrs. Rathore. How to say this?"

     "My marriage is legal...."

     "Oh, I know, Mrs. Rathore. This is Awadh, after all. Why, there have even been women who married djinns, within our own lifetimes. No. It's an international affair now, it seems. Oh well. Water: we do all so take it for granted, don't we? Until it runs short, that is."

     "Everybody knows my husband is still trying to negotiate a solution to the Kunda Khadar problem."

     "Yes, of course he is." Thacker lifts a manila envelope from his desk, peeps inside, grimaces coyly. "How shall I put this? Mrs. Rathore, does your husband tell you everything about his work?"

     "That is an impertinent question...."

     "Yes yes, forgive me, but if you'll look at these photographs."

     Big glossy hi-res prints, slick and sweet smelling from the printer. Aerial views of the ground, a thread of green blue water, white sands, scattered shapes without meaning.

     "This means nothing to me."

     "I suppose it wouldn't, but these drone images show Bharati battle tanks, robot reconnaissance units, and air defense batteries deploying with striking distance of the construction at Kunda Khadar."

     And it feels as if the floor has dissolved beneath her and she is falling through a void so vast it has no visible reference points, other than the sensation of her own falling.

     "My husband and I don't discuss work."

     "Of course. Oh, Mrs. Rathore, you've crushed your cup. Let me get you another one."

     He leaves her much longer than it takes to get a shot of
chai
from the
wallah
. When he returns he asks casually, "Have you heard of a thing called the Hamilton Acts? I'm sorry, I thought in your position you would ... but evidently not. Basically, it's a series of international treaties originated by the United States limiting the development and proliferation of high-level artificial intelligences, most specifically the hypothetical Generation Three. No? Did he not tell you any of this?"

     Mrs. Rathore in her Italian suit folds her ankles one over the other and thinks,
this reasonable man can do anything he wants here, anything.

     "As you probably know, we grade and license aeais according to levels; these roughly correspond to how convincingly they pass as human beings. A Level 1 has basic animal intelligence, enough for its task but would never be mistaken for a human. Many of them can't even speak. They don't need to. A Level 2.9 like your husband,"--he speeds over the word, like the wheel of a
shatabdi
express over the gap in a rail--"is humanlike to a 5 percentile. A Generation Three is indistinguishable in any circumstances from a human--in fact, their intelligences may be many millions of times ours, if there is any meaningful way of measuring that. Theoretically we could not even recognize such an intelligence, all we would see would be the Generation Three interface, so to speak. The Hamilton Acts simply seek to control technology that could give rise to a Generation Three aeai. Mrs. Rathore, we believe sincerely that the Generation Threes pose the greatest threat to our security--as a nation and as a species--that we have ever faced."

     "And my husband?" Solid, comfortable word. Thacker's sincerity scares her.

     "The government is preparing to sign the Hamilton Acts in return for loan guarantees to construct the Kunda Khadar dam. When the Act is passed--and it's in the current session of the Lok Sabha--everything under Level 2.8 will be subject to rigorous inspection and licensing, policed by us."

     "And over Level 2.8?"

     "Illegal, Mrs. Rathore. They will be aggressively erased."

     Esha crosses and uncrosses her legs. She shifts on the chair. Thacker will wait forever for her response.

     "What do you want me to do?"

     "A.J. Rao is highly placed within the Bharati administration."

     "You're asking me to spy ... on an
aeai
."

     From his face, she knows he expected her to say,
husband
.

     "We have devices, taps.... They would be beneath the level of aeai Rao's consciousness. We can run them into your 'hoek. We are not all blundering plods in the Department. Go to the window, Mrs. Rathore."

     Esha touches her fingers lightly to the climate-cooled glass, polarized dusk against the drought light. Outside the smog haze says
heat
. Then she cries and drops to her knees in fear. The sky is filled with gods, rank upon rank, tier upon tier, rising up above Delhi in a vast helix, huge as clouds, as countries, until at the apex the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, Siva look down like falling moons. It is her private Ramayana, the titanic Vedic battle order of gods arrayed across the troposphere.

     She feels Thacker's hand help her up.

     "Forgive me, that was stupid, unprofessional. I was showing off. I wanted to impress you with the aeai systems we have at our disposal."

     His hand lingers a moment more than
gentle
. And the gods go out, all at once.

     She says, "Mr. Thacker, would you put a spy in my bedroom, in my bed, between me and my husband? That's what you're doing if you tap into the channels between me and AyJay."

     Still, the hand is there as Thacker guides her to the chair, offers cool cool water.

     "I only ask because I believe I am doing something for this country. I take pride in my job. In some things I have discretion, but not when it comes to the security of the nation. Do you understand?"

     Esha twitches into dancer's composure, straightens her dress, checks her face.

     "Then the least you can do is call me a car."

* * * *

     That evening she whirls to the
tabla
and
shehnai
across the day-warmed marble of a Jaipuri palace
Diwan-I-aam
, a flame among the twilit pillars. The audience is dark huddles on the marble, hardly daring even to breathe. Among the lawyers politicians journalists cricket stars moguls of industry are the managers who have converted this Rajput palace into a planetary class hotel, and any numbers of
chati
celebs. None so
chati
, so celebby, as Esha Rathore. Pranh can cherry-pick the bookings now. She's more than a nine-day, even a nine-week wonder. Esha knows that all her rapt watchers are 'hoeked up, hoping for a ghost-glimpse of her
djinn
-husband dancing with her through the flame-shadowed pillars.

     Afterward, as yt carries her armfuls of flowers back to her suite, Pranh says, "You know, I'm going to have to up my percentage."

     "You wouldn't dare," Esha jokes. Then she sees the bare fear on the nute's face. It's only a wash, a shadow. But yt's afraid.

     Neeta and Priya had moved out of the bungalow by the time she returned from Dal Lake. They've stopped answering her calls. It's seven weeks since she last went to see Madhuri.

     Naked, she sprawls on the pillows in the filigree-light stone
jharoka
. She peers down from her covered balcony through the grille at the departing guests. See out, not see in. Like the shut-away women of the old
zenana
. Shut away from the world. Shut away from human flesh. She stands up, holds her body against the day-warmed stone; the press of her nipples, the rub of her pubis.
Can you see me smell me sense me know that I am here at all?

     And he's there. She does not need to see him now, just sense his electric prickle along the inside of her skull. He fades into vision sitting on the end of the low, ornate teak bed
. He could as easily materialize in mid-air in front of her balcony
, she thinks. But there are rules, and games, even for djinns.

     "You seem distracted, heart." He's blind in this room--no camera eyes observing her in her jeweled skin--but he observes her through a dozen senses, a myriad feedback loops through her 'hoek.

     "I'm tired, I'm annoyed, I wasn't as good as I should have been."

     "Yes, I thought that too. Was it anything to do with the Krishna Cops this afternoon?"

     Esha's heart races. He can read her heartbeat. He can read her sweat, he can read the adrenaline and noradrenalin balance in her brain. He will know if she lies. Hide a lie inside a truth.

     "I should have said, I was embarrassed." He can't understand shame. Strange, in a society where people die from want of honor. "We could be in trouble, there's something called the Hamilton Acts."

     "I am aware of them." He laughs. He has this way now of doing it inside her head. He thinks she likes the intimacy, a truly private joke. She hates it. "All too aware of them."

     "They wanted to warn me. Us."

     "That was kind of them. And me a representative of a foreign government. So that's why they'd been keeping a watch on you, to make sure you are all right."

     "They thought they might be able to use me to get information from you."

     "Did they indeed?"

     The night is so still she can hear the jingle of the elephant harnesses and the cries of the
mahouts
as they carry the last of the guests down the long processional drive to their waiting limos. In a distant kitchen a radio jabbers.

     
Now we will see how human you are.
Call him out. At last A.J. Rao says, "Of course. I do love you." Then he looks into her face. "I have something for you."

     The staff turn their faces away in embarrassment as they set the device on the white marble floor, back out of the room, eyes averted. What does she care? She is a star. A.J. Rao raises his hand and the lights slowly die. Pierced-brass lanterns send soft stars across the beautiful old
zenana
room. The device is the size and shape of a
phatphat
tire, chromed and plasticed, alien among the Mughal retro. As Esha floats over the marble toward it, the plain white surface bubbles and deliquesces into dust. Esha hesitates.

     "Don't be afraid, look!" says A.J. Rao. The powder spurts up like steam from boiling rice, then pollen-bursts into a tiny dust-dervish, staggering across the surface of the disc. "Take the 'hoek off!" Rao cries delightedly from the bed. "Take it off." Twice she hesitates, three times he encourages. Esha slides the coil of plastic off the sweet-spot behind her ear and voice and man vanish like death. Then the pillar of glittering dust leaps head high, lashes like a tree in a monsoon and twists itself into the ghostly outline of a man. It flickers once, twice, and then A.J. Rao stands before her. A rattle like leaves a snake-rasp a rush of winds, and then the image says, "Esha." A whisper of dust. A thrill of ancient fear runs through her skin into her bones.