River of Gods (22 page)

"You should have worn a tie," says Marianna Fusco. She is
cool, immaculate, creases all geometrical.

"I've done my tie-wearing for this lifetime," Vishram says,
lick-slicking down hair in the vanity mirror in the chauffeur's
headrest. "Anyway, as any historian of costume will tell you,
the sole purpose of the tie is to point to your dick. That's not very
Hindu business, that."

"Vishram, everything points to your dick."

Vishram thinks he hears the driver snigger as he opens the door.

"Don't worry, I've got you," Marianna Fusco whispers in
Vishram's ear as he walks purposefully up the steps. His 'hoek comes
to life in his head. A moment's visual blur as the aeai deletes the
junk and filters the ads, then he is striding forwards to meet the
director, hand held out in greeting. GANDHINAGAR SURJEET say the blue
words hovering in front of him. D.O.B 21/02/2009. WIFE SANJUAY,
CHILDREN: RUPESH (7); NAGESH (9). JOINED RAY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
2043 FROM UNIVERSITY OF BANGALORE RENEWABLE RESOURCES RESEARCH
DEPARTMENT. FIRST DOCTORATE. Vishram blinks off the supplementary
information.

"Mr. Ray, you are very welcome to our division."

"It's a pleasure to be here, Dr. Surjeet."

It's all playing a role, really.

"You do find us in something of a state of unreadiness," he
says.

"Not half as unready as me." The joke seems to go down
well. But then they would laugh, wouldn't they? Dr. Surjeet moves to
his department heads.

INDERPAL GAUR, says the relentless palmer. 15/08/2011, CHANDIGARH.
RESEARCH SUBDIVISION: BIOMASS. MARITAL STATUS: SINGLE. EMPLOYMENT
HISTORY AT

RAY POWER: JOINED R&D 2034 FROM UNIVERSITY OF THE PANJAB,
CHANDIGARH CAMPUS.

LET HIM DO THE INTRODUCTIONS, Marianna warns in lilac over Director
Surjeet's head. Dr. Gaur is a toothy, plump woman in traditional
dress, through there is nothing old-fashioned about the anodised
aluminium 'hoek curled against the side of her pigtail. He wonders
what is her 'hoek graffiting about him? VISHRAM RAY: WASTER SON.
FAILED LAWYER. ASPIRANT STAND-UP. THINKS HE'S PRETTY DAMN FUNNY.

"It's a great honour," she says, namasteing.

"All mine, I assure you," Vishram says.

And on, down the row of department heads and senior researchers and
team leaders and those who have had important papers published.

"I am Khaleda Husainy," says a small, intense woman in a
Western-style suit and a headscarf chador. "It is a great
pleasure to meet you, Mr. Ray." Her discipline is
microgeneration. Parasitic power.

"What, people generate power just walking up and down?"

"Pumps in the pavement, yes" she enthuses. "There is
immense energy being wasted out there, waiting for us to capture it.
Everything you do and say is a source of power."

"You should hook it up to our legal department."

It gets a laugh.

"And what do you do to help make Ray Power A-Number One?"
Vishram says to a young, almost-good-looking woman whose lapel badge
identifies her as Sonia Yadav.

"Nothing," she says with a smile.

"Ah," Vishram says, moving on. Hands to shake. Faces to
remember. She calls after him. "When I said nothing, I meant,
energy from nothing. Endless free power."

"You've got my attention now."

"I'm taking you to the zero-point lab," Sonia Yadav
explains as she leads Vishram and his entourage to her research unit.
She looks at him closely.

"Your eyeballs are moving. Is someone messaging you?"

Vishram shuts off Marianna Fusco's silent commentary with a twist of
a finger.

His father's engineers have designed a building more furniture than
architecture. All is wood and fabric, curved into bows and arches,
translucent and airy. The place smells of sap and resin and
sandalwood. The floors are strip maple inlaid with marquetry panels
of scenes from the
Ramayana
. Sonia Yadav looks pointedly at
Marianna's heels. She slips them off and closes them in her bag. It
feels right to Vishram to be barefoot here. It's a holy place.

At first sight the zero-point lab disappoints Vishram. There are no
humming machines or looping power conduits, just desks and glass
partitions, paper piled unsteadily on the floor, whiteboards on the
walls. The white boards are full of scrawls. They continue onto the
walls. Every square centimetre of surface is crammed with symbols and
letters wedged at crazy angles to each other, lassoed in loops of
black felt marker, harpooned by long lines and arrows in black and
blue to some theorem on the other side of the board. The brawling
equations spread over desks, benches, any flat surface that will take
felt marker. The mathematics is as unintelligible to Vishram as
Sanskrit, but the cocoon of thought and theory and vision comforts
him, like being inside a prayer.

"It may not look like much but the research team at EnGen would
pay a lot of money to get in here," Sonia Yadav says. "We
do most of the hot stuff over on the University collider, or at the
LHC in Europe, but this is where the real work gets done. The
headwork."

"Hot stuff?"

"We're following two approaches, hot and cold, we call them. I
won't bore you with the theory but it's to do with energy levels and
quantum foam. Two ways of looking at nothing."

"And you're hot?" Vishram asks, studying the hieratic
glyphs on the wall.

"Absolutely," Sonia Yadav says.

"And can you do what you say; generate power from nothing?"
She stands firm with a light of belief in her eyes. "Yes, I
can."

"Mr. Ray, we really should be moving on," Director Surjeet
urges.

As his party leaves, Vishram picks up a felt marker and quickly
writes on the desktop: DNNR, 2NITE?

Sonia Yadav reads the invite upside down.

"Strictly professional," Vishram whispers. "Tell me
what's hot and what's not." OK she writes in red. 8. PICK-UP
HERE. She underlines the OK twice.

Immediately outside in the corridor is a sight that instantly
detumesces Vishram's good humour: Govind, in his too-tight suit, with
his phalanx of lawyers, bowling down the corridor as if he owned the
place. Govind spies his younger brother, opens his mouth to greet,
damn, bless, chide—Vishram doesn't care, never hears because he
calls out, loudly,

"Mr. Surjeet, could you please call security." Then, as the
Director talks into his palmer, Vishram holds up one single,
commanding finger in front of his brother and his crew. "You,
say nothing. This is not your place. This is my place." Security
arrives; two very large Rajputs in red turbans. "Please escort
Mr. Ray from the building and scan his face for the security system.
He is not to return without my express, written permission."

The Rajputs seize Govind, one on each arm. It gives Vishram's heart a
pile of pleasure to watch them march him at a fast trot down the
corridor.

"Hear me, hear me!" Govind shouts back over his shoulder.
"He will wreck it like he has wrecked everything else he has
ever been given. I know him of old. The leopard cannot change his
spots, he will ruin you all, destroy this great company. Don't listen
to him, he knows nothing. Nothing!"

"I'm so sorry about that," Vishram says when the doors have
sealed behind his still-protesting brother. "Anyway, shall we
continue, or have I seen everything?"

It had begun at breakfast.

"Just what have I inherited?" Vishram asked Marianna Fusco
through mouthfuls of kitchiri at his breakfast briefing on the east
balcony.

"Basically, you've got the research and development division."
She laid out the documents around his greasy plate like tarot cards.

"So, no money and a pile of responsibility."

"I don't think this is something your father thought up on a
whim."

"How much did you know about this?"

"What, who, where, and when."

"You're missing a 'w' there."

"I don't think anyone understands that 'w.'"

I can, Vishram thought. I know how good it is to walk away from
expectations and obligations. I know how frightening and freeing it
is to go our there with nothing but a begging bowl, chancing people's
laughter.

"You could have told me."

"And breach my professional confidentiality?"

"You are a cold, hard woman, Marianna Fusco."

He forked down another load of kitchiri. Ramesh wandered into the
geometrical planting of English roses, now crisped and withering in
their third year of alien drought. His hands were folded behind him,
a posture as ancient and familiar as any other element of the Shanker
Mahal. Vishram-aged-six had mocked his older brother, stalking after
him, hands clamped behind back, lips sucked in in abstract
concentration, head up looking around for wonder in the world.

What about those East Asian trips? he wondered. Those Bangkok girls
who could do and be anything you imagined. He felt a small stirring
beneath his navel, a twitch of hormone. But it would be too easy No
hunt there, no play, no testing of the will and wit, no unspoken
contract of mutual recognition that both were engaged on a game with
its ploys and stages and rules. A warm wind with the smell of the
city on it tugged at the documents of incorporation. Vishram deployed
cups and saucers and cutlery to hold them in their proper places.
Ramesh, who had been trying to smell the desiccated roses, looked up
at the warm touch on his face and was genuinely surprised to see his
kid brother and his lady lawyer on the terrace.

"Ah, there you are, I was hall-hoping to find you."

"Wretched coffee?"

"Oh, please, yes. And there wouldn't be any more of that, would
there?"

Vishram nodded to the servant. Wonderful, how quickly you settle back
into the way of service. Ramesh poked at his plate of kitchiri with
his fork. "Why did he give it to me?" he said abruptly. "I
don't want it, I don't even understand it. I never did. Govind was
always the one with the head for business; still is. I'm an
astrophysicist; I know deep space organic molecular clouds. I do not
know electricity generating."

The split was clever, Shakespearean. Ramesh would have wanted the
unworldliness of blue-sky thinking. He had been given the meat and
muscle of the generating division.

Govind's ambitions would have been for the core infrastructure.
Instead he had been handed control of the distribution network. Wires
and cables and pylons. And Number Three Son, the attention seeker,
the grab-ass, had gear so arcane he didn't even know if it did
anything. Casting against type. Evil old sadhu.

The old man had left before the dawn. His clothes were neatly
hangered in the wardrobe. His palmer and 'hoek sat square on the
pillow with his wallet and his universal card beside them. His shoes,
well polished, were arranged toe-to-footboard at a perfect right
angle. His silver-backed hairbrush and comb were caught together in
their final kiss on the dressing table. Kukunoor, khidmutgar now Old
Shastri had left on the pilgrim path, showed all this to Vishram with
the same dispassionate sense of disposable history he had seen in
Scotland's historic homes and castles. He did not know where his
master had gone. Their mother did not know, either, though Vishram
suspected some secret conduit of communication to monitor his legacy.
The company would always be the company.

"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."