River of Gods (17 page)

"I see," says Krishan, who adores cricket. When she goes,
he might bring up the radio.

"Well, don't mind me." He sets to drilling the drain holes
in the sleepers but all the time he is aware that Mrs. Nandha is
still perched there, watching.

"Krishan," she says after a time.

"Yes, Mrs. Nandha?"

"It's just, it's such a lovely day, and when I'm down there, I
hear all the dragging and bumping and hammering up here, but I never
see it until it's finished."

"I understand," Krishan the mali says. "You won't
disturb me."

But she has, and she does.

"Mrs. Nandha," he says as he bolts the last railway sleeper
into place, "I think you are missing your programme."

"Am I?" Parvati Nandha says. "Oh, I never noticed the
time. Not to worry, I can catch the early evening repeat."

Krishan hefts a sack of compost, slashes it open with his gardening
knife, and sprinkles rich brown earth food down through his fingers
on to the rooftop.

The burning dog gives off a vile oily smoke. Jashwant the Jain, his
broom-boy before him, stands eyes closed. Whether they are closed in
prayer or outrage Mr. Nandha cannot say. Within moments the dog is a
small intense fireball. The other dogs still surge yipping around Mr.
Nandha's feet, too stupid in their small programmed obsessions to
recognise danger.

"You are a vile, cruel man," says Jashwant the Jain. "Your
soul is black as anthracite, you will never attain the light of
moksha."

Mr. Nandha purses his lips and levels his gun at a fresh target, a
cartoon scoobi with lugubrious eyes and yellow/brown
Friesian-patterned fur. Sensing attention, the thing wags its tail
and waddles towards Mr. Nandha through the frenzied sea of robor
dogs, tongue lolling. Mr. Nandha considers Animal Welfare charities a
ludicrous social affectation. Varanasi cannot feed its children, let
alone its abandoned cats and dogs. Sanctuaries for cyberpets occupy
an altogether higher level of scorn.

"Sadhu," Mr. Nandha says. "What do you know of a
company called Odeco?"

It is not the first time the Ministry has called on the Mahavira
Compassion Home for Artificial Life. It is an ongoing debate in
Jainism whether cyberpets and artificial intelligences are soul or
non-soul. But Jashwant is old school, a Digambara. All things that
live, move, consume, and reproduce are jiva, and so when the kids
have tired of the cyberscoobi and the Faithful Friend cyberguard-dog
calls the cops out eighteen times a night, there's a place other than
the rubbish piles of Ramnagar to go. More than the occasional harried
aeai finds shelter there, too. Mr. Nandha and his avatars have been
here twice in the past three years to carry out mass
excommunications.

Jashwant had been waiting outside the scruffy Janpur business
district pressed-aluminium warehouse to greet him. Someone or thing
had tipped him off. There would be nothing here for Mr. Nandha. As
Jashwant walked forward to greet the man from the Ministry, his
sweeper, a ten-year-old boy, doggedly brushed insects and crawling
things from the holy man's path with a long-handled besom. A
Digambara, Jashwant did not wear clothes. He was a big man, heavy
with fat around his middle body and constantly flatulent from his
holy high-carb diet.

"Sadhu, I am investigating a fatal incident involving an
unlicensed aeai. Our research indicates it was downloaded from a
transfer point on these premises."

"Indeed? I find that hard to believe; but, as you are entitled,
feel at liberty to check our system. I think you will find all is in
legal order. We are an animal welfare charity, Mr. Nandha, not a
sundarban."

Broom boy led the way. He wore only a very brief dhoti and his skin
seemed to shine, as if it had been rubbed over with oil flecked with
gold. There had been similar boys on his previous visits. All with
those dull eyes and too much skin.

Inside the warehouse, the din was as Mr. Nandha remembered, and then
some. The concrete floor heaved with thousands of cyberdogs,
constantly circling from charge point to charge point. The metal
shell rang to their creaking, yapping, humming, singing.

"More than a thousand in the past month," Jashwant said. "I
think is is fear of a war. In sinful times, people reconsider their
values. Much is cast off as worthless encumbrance."

Mr. Nandha drew his gun and aimed it at a stumpy little lap dog
sitting up on its back legs, front paws and tail waving, pink plastic
tongue waggling. He shot the dog. Now Indra the Thunderer has the
slowly advancing
scoobi-pet
in his sights.

"Sadhu, did you supply an unlicensed Level One Artificial
Intelligence to Pasta-Tikka of Nawada?"

Jashwant twists his head in pain but that is not the correct answer.
The em-bolt sends the cartoon dog a metre and a half into the air. It
lands on its back, thrashes once, and starts to smoke.

"Bad, evil man!"

The sweeper has his little besom raised, as if he might whisk Mr.
Nandha and his sin away. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility
that there are infected needles among the bristles. Mr. Nandha scares
the catamite down.

"Sadhu."

"Yes!" Jashwant says. "Of course I did, you know that.
But it was only resting in our network."

"Where did it come from, sadhu?" Mr. Nandha says, raising
his weapon. He draws aim on a waddling steel dachshund, all smiles
and clog-feet, then swings the barrel to bear on a beautiful, top-end
cyber-collie, indistinguishable from the flesh right down to the
live-plastic coat and fully interactive eyes. Jashwant the Jain lets
slip a small squeak of spiritual anguish.

"Sadhu, I must insist."

Jashwant works his mouth.

Indra targets, aims, and fires in one flick of Mr. Nandha's
intention. The cybercollie lets out a long, shrieking keen that
silences every other yap and wuff in the warehouse, snaps head to
tail in an arc that would crack any flesh dog's spine, and spins on
its side on the concrete.

"Well, sadhu?"

"Stop it stop it stop it, you will go to hell!" Jashwant
shrills.

Mr. Nandha levels the gun and one shot puts the thing out of its
misery. He picks a gorgeous tiger-stripe vizla.

"Badrinath!" Jashwant screams. Mr. Nandha clearly hears him
fart in fear. "Badrinath sundarban!"

Mr. Nandha slides his gun into his jacket pocket.

"You have been of great assistance. Radhakvishna. Most
interesting. Please do not attempt to leave the premises, police
officers will arrive shortly."

As he departs, Mr. Nandha notices that the broom boy is also quite
quick with the fire extinguisher.

Ram Sagar Singh, Bharat's Voice of Cricket, burbles the tail-end
batting order on the solar-powered radio. Dozing in the shade of the
hibiscus-trellis, Krishan is lulled into memory. All his life, that
slow voice has spoken to him, closer and wiser than a god.

It was a school day but his father had woken him before light.

"Naresh Engineer bats today at ul-Huq."

Neighbour Thakur was taking a load of shoe leather up to his buyer in
Patna and had been only too happy to give Kudrati father and son a
ride in his pickup. A low-caste lift, but this was in all likelihood
the last time Naresh Engineer would ever rake the bat.

The Kudrati land had come from the hands of Gandhi and Nehru; taken
from the zamindar and given to the tillers of Biharipur. Its histore
was his pride, not just the Kudrati inheritance but the heritage of
the nation itself; its name was
India
, not Bharat, not Awadh
or Maratha or States of Bengal. That was why Krishan's father must
see the greatest batsman India had produced in a generation step to
the crease; for the honour of a name.

Krishan was eight years old and his first time in a city. The
StarAsia sports channels were no preparation for the crowds outside
the Moin ul-Huq stadium. He had never seen so many people in one
place. His father led him surely through the crowd that swirled,
patterns within patterns, like printed fabric.

"Where are we going?" Krishan asked, aware that they were
moving against a general gyre towards the turnstiles.

"My cousin Ram Vilas, your grandfather's nephew, has tickets."

He remembers looking around at the hive of faces, felt his father's
sure tug on his hand. Then he realised that the crowd was bigger than
his father had imagined. Dreaming wide green spaces, stands in the
distance, polite applause, he had forgotten to arrange a meeting
place with cousin Ram Vilas. Now he was going to spiral his way
around the ul-Huq ground, if necessary checking every face.

After an hour in the heat the crowd was thin but Krishan's father
ploughed on. Inside the concrete oval bursts of loudspeaker cackle
introduced the players; the Indians greeted them with bursts of
applause and cheering. Father and son both knew now that his
grandfather's nephew had never been here. There never were any
tickets. In the sloping shadow of the main stand was a nimki seller.
Mr. Kudrati seized his son's hand again and hauled him across the
concrete. When they got within smelling distance of the rancid, hot
oil, Krishan saw what had galvanised his father. Balanced on the
glass display counter was a radio, blatting stupid pop.

"My son, the test match," his father gibbered at the
vendor. He thrust a flutter of rupees at the hot snack seller. "Tune,
tune, retune! And some of those pappadi, too."

The vendor reached in to the hot eats with a cone of newspaper.

"No no no!" Krishan's father almost screamed with
frustration. "First, retune. Then the food. 97.4." Ram
Sagar Singh came through in his BBC Received Pronunciation and
Krishan sat down with the paper cone of hot pappadi, back against the
warm steel cart to listed to the match. And that is how he remembers
Naresh Engineer's last innings, sitting by a nimki vendor's cart
outside the Moin ul-Huq cricket ground, listening to Ram Sagar Singh
and the faint, half-imagined crack of the bat, and then the rising
roar of the crowd behind him; all day as the shadows moved across the
concrete car park.

Krishan Kudrati smiles in his doze under the climbing hibiscus. A
darker shadow moves across his closed eyelids, a waft of cool. He
opens his eyes. Parvati Nandha stands over him, looking down.

"I should really be telling you off, sleeping on my time."

Krishan glances at the clock on his radio. He still has ten minutes
of his time but he sits up and flicks the radio off. The players are
on lunch and Ram Sagar Singh is trawling through his compendious
tallboy of cricket facts.

"I just wanted to see what you thought of my new bracelets for
the reception tonight," Parvati says, one hand on hip like a
dancer, the other weaving in front of him.

"If you held it still, I might actually see it."

Metal catches light, dazzling Krishan. Instinctively, he reaches out.
Without thought, his hand is around her wrist. Realisation paralyses
him for a moment. Then Krishan releases his grasp.

"That's very fine," he says. "Is it gold?"

"Yes," Parvati says. "My husband likes to buy me
gold."

"Your husband is very good to you. You will be number one star
attraction at this party."

"Thank you." Parvati ducks her head, now ashamed at her
forwardness, "You are most kind."

"No, I am just speaking the simple truth." Made bold by the
sun and the heavy scent of soil, Krishan dares: "Forgive me, but
I don't think you get to hear that as much as you should."

"You are a very forward man!" Parvati scolds, then, gently,
"Is that the cricket you are listening to?"

"The second test from Patna. We are two hundred and eight for
five."

"Cricket is not a thing I understand," Parvati says. "It
seems very complex and hard to win."

"Once you understand the rules and the strategies, it is the
most fascinating of sports," Krishan says. "It is the
nearest the English come to Zen."

"I should like to know about it. It's all the talk at these
social events. I feel stupid, standing there not able to say
anything. I might not know about politics or the economy, but I might
be able to learn cricket. Perhaps you could teach me?"

Mr. Nandha drives through New Varanasi to
Dido and Aeneas
,
English Chamber Opera recording, which Mr. Nandha notes for its rough
approach to the English Baroque. On the edge of his sensory envelope,
like a rumour of monsoon, is this evening's durbar at the Dawars. He
would welcome an excuse not to go. Mr. Nandha fears Sanjay Dawar will
announce the happy conception of an heir. A Brahmin, he suspects.
That will start Parvati again. He has repeatedly made his position
clear, but all she hears is a man telling her he will not give her
babies. This depresses Mr. Nandha.

A discord in his auditory lobes: a call from Morva, in Fiscal. Of all
of his people in the Ministry, Morva is the only one for whom Mr.
Nandha has any respect. There is a beauty and elegance to the paper
trail. It is detection at its purest and holiest. Morva never has to
leave his office, never faces the streets, never threatens violence
or carries a weapon, but his thoughts go out from his desk on the
twelfth floor across the whole wide world with a few gestures of his
hand and blinks of the eye. Pure intellect, disembodied as he flits
from shell company to tax haven, off-shore datahaven to escrow
account. The abstraction of his work excites Mr. Nandha: entities
with no physical structure at all. Pure flow; the movement of
intangible money through minute clusters of information.

He has chased down Odeco. It is a secretive investment company
sheltered in a Caribbean tax haven, much given to throwing
megadollars into blue sky. Its investments in Bharat include the
Artificial Intelligence unit at the University of Bharat, Varanasi;
Ray Power Research and Development division, and a number of
Darwinware hothouses hovering on the edge of legality breeding
low-level aeais. Not the aeai that leaped out of the backyard betting
scheme in Pasta-Tikka and ran amok, Mr. Nandha thinks. Even a
high-risk venture company like Odeco would not risk dealing with the
sundarbans.