River of Gods (41 page)

"The sundarban where the United States government is decoding
information it received from space."

The big American rolls his head back.

"Man, you fuck off right now. I'm telling you, that little
pecker there with the scissors can cut off as much as he likes, but
you don't fuck over the White House."

Shiv moves to the row in front. This is the sign he has arranged. The
pit doors open and the girl pushes the microsabre cage in on a
rubber-wheeled gurney.

It had been sweet, getting back into the car, feeling the leather
upholstery, resetting the radio, knowing it wasn't hired now, it was
his; his raja's chariot, his own rath yatra. Sweet to have an
anthracite black unlimited card in his pocket, nestled right in there
with the roll of notes because as any gentleman knows the important
transactions are cash only. Sweet to let the streets see that Shiv
Faraji was back and untouchable. In Club Musst he peeled off the
notes one thousand two thousand three thousand four and slid them
across the blue counter in a little fuck-you line in front of Salman.

"You have given me more than you owe me, sir," Fat Salman
poked his pudgy finger at the last in line, a big ten K. Bar Star
Talvin was with clients around the angle of the bat, but glanced over
between cocktail acrobatics.

"That's a tip."

All the girls stared as he left. He looked for Priya, to acknowledge
her, tip her the nod of big thanks but she was drinking elsewhere
that night.

"You think maybe we should do some work now?"

It was the longest sentence he had ever heard from Yogendra. Shiv
sensed a change in the relationship since
Construxx
August
2047. The kid was cocky now. He had the balls to do the things Shiv
could not, because he felt something, because he was weak, because he
had choked at the moment. Never again. The boy would see. The boy
would learn. There was another body beside the woman in the sari
rolling into Ganga: Juhi going back over the balcony, heels kicking,
hands snatching. What he saw most clearly were her eyes. Long
stick-on lashes, semaphoring ultimate, resigned betrayal. It was
easier now, and he knew it would get easier still, but it pulled him
up. It was bad, bad as it can be, but he was a man again. A raja. And
he would do some work now.

Now it is morning and Hayman Dane backs away from the microsabre
snarling in its cage, snarling because Sai his cute handler in the
big combat baggies and small tight muscle top has shot his ass full
of stimulants and hallucinogens so when he looks at fat American he
sees enemy bad cat thing he hates kill pussycat faster faster. And oh
dear, far Hayman Dane has forgotten his handcuffs and he goes over
heavy like a load falling off a truck, kicking his legs and squirming
around trying to get up and you can't when you are that fat and your
hands are cuffed behind your back.

"Unfortunate," Shiv says, getting up and walking down one
step two three to the row in front.

"The fuck with you, man!" Hayman Dane shouts. "You are
in so much trouble. You are dead, you know. You and your butt-boy and
your bitch and your little fucking pussy."

"Well, there's not really any trouble here at all," Shiv
says taking a seat, resting his chin on his hands on the wooden pew
top. "You could tell me what sundarban you're working for."

"How many times do I fucking have to say this?" Hayman Dane
bellows. A string of drool lolls from his mouth on to the sand where
he lies on his side, face red with rage. For a genius he makes a very
fine fool, Shiv thinks. But then that is the Western idea of genius,
someone who is inhumanly good at just one narrow thing.

A vast morning was opening in crimson and saffron beyond the swags of
power and com cables as Yogendra took the cat out to make the lift.
Unsettled times coming. Perhaps even the long-promised monsoon. Shiv
pulled his jacket around him, suddenly chilled, and went to call on
his technical adviser. Anand was an aspirant dataraja who ran a small
stable of unlicensed Level 2.5 aeais out of the back of his uncle's
shoe repair shop in Panch Koshi. That was how Shiv knew him; he had
taken pairs there in the past. He was a good man with leather. He had
sewn them sweet and tight as Shiv waited with the finest
hand-stitching he had ever seen. Anand served coffee to the
customers, good strong Arab style coffee, with a nugget of Nepali
Temple Ball melted in the sweet, seething black liquid for those that
wanted.

This morning Anand's Gucci wraprounds masked flaky red eye-sockets.
Anand kept US time. Shiv folded himself onto the low bolster, lifted
a tiny, beautifully aromatic cup, and sipped. Mynahs crackled and
commented on the unfolding red morning from their cages hung from the
beams of the open wooden balcony. He tilted his head back as the
Nepalese kicked in.

"Raiding a sundarban." Anand pursed his lips and bobbed his
head in the way aspirant datarajas did to indicate
impressed
.
"My first advice is, if you can possibly get away with not doing
it, do."

"Your second advice?"

"It's surveillance surveillance surveillance. Now, I can breed
you up some ware will probably make you invisible to most common
monitoring aeais—few of them are even over Level One, but these
guys by definition aren't industry standard. Until I know who you're
up against, it's all guesswork." Anand puffed his cheeks out:
bafflement
in aspirant dataraja. "We're on that right now."

Yogendra would almost be there now. The parking space outside the
hotel had been reserved, an agreement with the doorman. He would be
powering the window down now, reaching for the stinger on the seat
beside him. No guns. Shiv hated guns. You have one shot, boy, make it
right.

Shiv sat back on his low embroidered divan. The coffee bubbled on its
trivet over the charcoal brazier. Anand poured two fresh cups. He may
look like a lavda, but he does things well, Shiv thought.

"My next query?"

"How much faith do you put in conspiracy theory."

"I don't put much faith in any theory."

"Everyone's got a theory, my friend. Theory is at the bottom of
everything. My cousin's wife's brother works dataprocessing for the
ESA and this is the rumour there. Remember some time back the
Americans and the Russians and the Chinese and the Europeans
announced they were going to send an unmanned mission to Tierra?"

Shiv shook his head. The second cup was making Anand's voice spread
out into a wash of story, like his mother telling him a hero tale of
Rama and bold Hanuman.

"The first EXP? Earth-like Extrasolar Planet? No? Anyway, they
found this planet Tierra and there was a big tarrah and stuff on the
news channels that they were going to build a probe to go there.
Listen up, here comes the conspiracy: there is no Tierra mission.
There never was. It's all a smokescreen for what they were really
doing up there. The rumour is, they found something. Something God
didn't make and we didn't put there. Some kind of object, and it's
old. Way old. I mean, not just millions, but billions of years old.
Can you imagine that? Arahbs of years. Brahma-scale time. It's got
them shit-scared—so shit-scared they're prepared to risk their
security and take it to the only people can do quantum crypto right.
Us." He stabbed his thumbs at his chest.

The American will be coming out now, Shiv thought, floating with the
sweet smoke up into the cube of air that filled the courtyard, away
from the flat words to the street where the women worked and the big
hire car waited with the needle in it. He will be coming out the
door, pale and blinking and cold. He will not even look at the car.
He will be thinking about his coffee and donut, coffee and donut,
coffee and donut. It is the habits that kill us. Shiv heard the spit
of the stinger. He saw the fat man's knees crumple as the chemicals
overloaded his motor neurons. He saw Yogendra wrestle him into the
back of the car. He smiled at the skinny street kid trying to haul
the big man up over the tailgate.

Shiv sat, hands draped over knees, on the soft cushion. The bars of
early cloud were burning away, the sky blueing. Another death-dry
day. He could hear distant radio. The announcer seemed to be very
excited about something. Raised voices, arguments, a denouncing tone.
He tilted his head back and watched the steam from the coffee curl up
until he could, with a squint, merge it with jet contrails. The
Nepali Temple Ball said,
believe
: believe nothing is solid,
everything is credible. It is a big universe. Shit. The universe was
tight and mean and crammed into a wedge of brightness and music and
skin a handful of decades long and no wider than your peripheral
vision. People who believed otherwise were amateurs.

"And my third query?"

Yogendra would have him by now, would have got him somehow into the
back before the spasms wore off, would have turned through the
traffic: fuck you to cars cabs phatphats trucks buses mopeds and
sacred cows, be bringing him in.

Anand's eyes widened as if taking in a truth too large even for a
conspiracy-theorist aspirant dataraja.

"Now this is the mad thing. You don't fucky-fuck with the Naths,
but there are rumours about who they're working with, who their
client
might be."

"Conspiracies and rumours."

"If there's no God, they're all you've got left."

"The client?"

"Is none other than Mr. Geniality himself, friend of the poor
and champion of the downtrodden, scourge of the Ranas and hammer of
the Awadhis: I present, the Honourable N. K. Jivanjee."

Shiv passed on a third cup of the enriched coffee.

Shiv gets up and moves, slowly as the play demands, to the row in
front. That is the cue for Yogendra to jump down on to the sand. He
saunters up to Hayman Dane, who is panting now. Yogendra turns his
head to this side, then to the other, studying him as if he is a new
fruit. Yogendra squats, makes sure Hayman Dane can see what he is
doing and picks up the severed earlobe. He dances over to the caged
microsabre and daintily drops the ear-tip through the bars. One snap.
Shiv can hear the crunch, small but distinct. Hayman Dane starts to
shriek, a shrill, pant-pissing keening moan, the shriek of a man in
final fear of his life, the shriek of a man who is no longer a man.
Shiv grimaces at the ugly, unseemly sound. He remembers his first
sight of him as Yogendra brought him down the tunnel into the ring;
Yogendra bouncing him before him with shoves from his hands, the fat
man taking little tripping, trotting steps for fear of losing his
balance, gaping around, blinking to try to understand what manner of
place this was. Now Shiv sees the piss stain spreading warm and dark
as the waters of birth across his tan shorts and he cannot believe
this white Western genius for hire can bring himself to end so
stupidly.

Yogendra hops back on to the rail. Sai goes to the cage. She lifts
the microsabre above her head and starts her parade, one foot slowly,
deliberately in front of the other. Step step step, turn. Step step
step, turn. The ritual dance that seduced and mesmerised Shiv the
night he saw her, in this ring, on this sand. The night he lost
everything. And now, she dances for him. There is something ancient
in it, the woman stalking the fighting floor, powerful, a dance of
Kali. The microsabre should have her wrist open, the side of her head
off. It hangs there, caressed by hands, hypnotised.

Shiv moves to the front row now. Ringside seat.

"I ask you, Hayman Dane. Where is the sundarban?"

Sai crouches in front of him, one leg bent under her, the other
outstretched to the side. She fixes Hayman Dane's tearful eyes with
her own. She drapes the cat around her neck. Shiv holds his breath.
He has never seen that move before. He has a fast, hard, pleasing
erection.

"Chunar," Hayman Dane sobs. "Chunar Fort.
Ramanandacharya. His name is Ramanandacharya. Let go my hands, man!
Let go my fucking hands!"

"Not yet, Hayman Dane," Shiv says. "There will be a
file name, and a code."

The man is hysterical now; an animal, no thought or wit.

"Yes!" he shrieks. "Yes, just let go my hands!"

Shiv nods to Yogendra. Crowing like a rooster he scampers up to the
American and unlocks the cuffs. Hayman Dane cries out as circulation
returns to his wrists.

"Fuck you, man, fuck you," he mutters but there is no
defiance in it now.

Shiv raises a finger. Sai strokes the tattered head of her
microsabre, millimetres from her right eye.

"The name and the key, Hayman Dane."

The man raises his hands: see, I am unarmed, helpless, no threat or
danger. He fishes in the breast pocket of his gaudy shirt. He has
bigger tits than some women Shiv has fucked. He holds his palmer
aloft.

"See man? It was in my fucking pocket all the time."

Shiv raises a finger. Yogendra snatches the palmer, swings over the
rail into the seating. Sai strokes the tattered head of her
microsabre.

"You'll let me go now, man. You've got what you want, you'll let
me go now."

Yogendra is already halfway up the aisle. Sai is on her feet, moving
back towards the tunnel. Shiv climbs the shallow stairs, one by one.

"Hey, what do I do now?"

Sai stands at the gate. She looks at Shiv, waiting. Shiv raises a
finger. Sai turns and throws the microsabre into the ring of bloodied
sand. Pig time.

In a white yukata, Sajida Rana leans over the carved stone balustrade
and exhales smoke into the scented fore-dawn darkness.

"You have fucked me up the ass, Khan."

Shaheen Badoor Khan had thought he could feel no sicker dread, no
tighter guilt, no deeper annihilation as his state car slipped
through the three AM streets to the Rana Bhavan. He had watched the
thermometer on the dashboard rise. The monsoon is finally coming, he
had thought. It is always unbearable just before it breaks. Yet he
saw ice, Bangla ice. The States of Bengal and their tame berg had
worked ice magic. He tried to imagine it, moored in the Bay of
Bengal, blinking with navigation lights. He saw the gulls circling
over it. Whatever happens, it will rain down on me and these streets.
He thought, I have bottomed out. I am hammered flat. There is no
further down to go. On the verandah of the Rana Bhavan he understands
that he is not even over the first shelf. The abyssal plain lies tens
of kilometres below him, down in the crushing dark. There is ice
above him, ice he can never break through.