Cyberabad Days (23 page)

     The dust coalesces into a man in a long, formal
sherwani
and loosely wound red turban, leaning on the parapet and looking out over the glowing anarchy of Chandni Chowk.
He is very handsome
, the dancer thinks, hastily stubbing out her cigarette and letting it fall in an arc of red embers over the battlements. It does not do to smoke in the presence of the great diplomat A.J. Rao.

     "You needn't have done that on my account, Esha," A.J. Rao says, pressing his hands together in a
namaste
. "It's not as though I can catch anything from it."

     Esha Rathore returns the greeting, wondering if the stage crew down in the courtyard was watching her salute empty air. All Awadh knows those
filmi
-star features: A.J. Rao, one of Bharat's most knowledgeable and tenacious negotiators.
No,
she corrects herself. All Awadh knows are pictures on a screen. Pictures on a screen, pictures in her head; a voice in her ear. An aeai.

     "You know my name?"

     "I am one of your greatest admirers."

     Her face flushes: a waft of stifling heat spun off from the vast palace's microclimate, Esha tells herself. Not embarrassment. Never embarrassment.

     "But I'm a dancer. And you are an...."

     "Artificial intelligence? That I am. Is this some new anti-aeai legislation, that we can't appreciate dance?" He closes his eyes. "Ah: I'm just watching the
Marriage of Radha and Krishna
again."

     But he has her vanity now. "Which performance?"

     "Star Arts Channel. I have them all. I must confess, I often have you running in the background while I'm in negotiation. But please don't mistake me, I never tire of you." A.J. Rao smiles. He has very good, very white teeth. "Strange as it may seem, I'm not sure what the etiquette is in this sort of thing. I came here because I wanted to tell you that I am one of your greatest fans and that I am very much looking forward to your performance tonight. It's the highlight of this conference, for me."

     The light is almost gone now and the sky a pure, deep, eternal blue, like a minor chord. Houseboys make their many ways along the ramps and wall-walks lighting rows of tiny oil-lamps. The Red Fort glitters like a constellation fallen over Old Delhi. Esha has lived in Delhi all her twenty-years and she has never seen her city from this vantage. She says, "I'm not sure what the etiquette is either. I've never spoken with an aeai before."

     "Really?" A.J. now stands with his back against the sun-warm stone, looking up at the sky, and at her out of the corner of his eye. The eyes smile, slyly.
Of course
, she thinks. Her city is as full of aeais as it is with birds. From computer systems and robots with the feral smarts of rats and pigeons to entities like this one standing before her on the gate of the Red Fort making charming compliments. Not standing. Not anywhere, just a pattern of information in her head. She stammers, "I mean, a ... a..."

     "Level 2.9?"

     "I don't know what that means."

     The aeai smiles and as she tries to work it out there is another chime in Esha's head and this time it is Pranh, swearing horribly as usual,
where is she doesn't she know yts got a show to put on, half the bloody continent watching
.

     "Excuse me..."

     "Of course. I shall be watching."

     
How
? she wants to ask.
An aeai, a djinn, wants to watch me dance
.
What is this?
But when she looks back all there is to ask is a wisp of dust blowing along the lantern-lit battlement.

     There are elephants and circus performers, there are illusionists and table magicians, there are
ghazal
and
qawali
and
Boli
singers; there is the catering and the
sommelier's
wine and then the lights go up on the stage and Esha spins out past the scowling Pranh as the
tabla
and melodeon and
shehnai
begin. The heat is intense in the marble square, but she is transported. The stampings, the pirouettes and swirl of her skirts, the beat of the ankle bells, the facial expressions, the subtle hand
mudras
: once again she is spun out of herself by the disciplines of
Kathak
into something greater. She would call it her art, her talent, but she's superstitious: that would be to claim it and so crush the gift. Never name it, never speak it. Just let it possess you. Her own, burning djinn. But as she spins across the brilliant stage before the seated delegates, a corner of her perception scans the architecture for cameras, robots, eyes through which A.J. Rao might watch her. Is she a splinter of his consciousness, as he is a splinter of hers?

     She barely hears the applause as she curtseys to the bright lights and runs off stage. In the dressing room, as her assistants remove and carefully fold the many jeweled layers of her costume, wipe away the crusted stage make up to reveal the twenty-two-year-old beneath, her attention keeps flicking to her earhoek, curled like a plastic question on her dressing table. In jeans and silk sleeveless vest, indistinguishable from any other of Delhi's four million twentysomethings, she coils the device behind her ear, smoothes her hair over it and her fingers linger a moment as she slides the palmer over her hand. No calls. No messages. No avatars. She's surprised it matters so much.

     The official Mercs are lined up in the Delhi Gate. A man and woman intercept her on her way to the car. She waves them away.

     "I don't do autographs.... "Never after a performance. Get out, get away quick and quiet, disappear into the city. The man opens his palm to show her a warrant badge.

     "We'll take this car."

     It pulls out from the line and cuts in, a cream-colored high-marque Maruti. The man politely opens the door to let her enter first, but there is no respect in it. The woman takes the front seat beside the driver; he accelerates out, horn blaring, into the great circus of night traffic around the Red Fort. The airco purrs.

     "I am Inspector Thacker from the Department of Artificial Intelligence Registration and Licensing," the man says. He is young and good-skinned and confident and not at all fazed by sitting next to a celebrity. His aftershave is perhaps over-emphatic.

     "A Krishna Cop."

     That makes him wince.

     "Our surveillance systems have flagged up a communication between you and the Bharati Level 2.9 aeai A.J. Rao."

     "He called me, yes."

     "At 21:08. You were in contact for six minutes twenty-two seconds. Can you tell me what you talked about?"

     The car is driving very fast for Delhi. The traffic seems to flow around from it. Every light seems to be green. Nothing is allowed to impede its progress.
Can they do that?
Esha wonders.
Krishna Cops, aeai police: can they tame the creatures they hunt
?

     "We talked about
Kathak
. He's a fan. Is there a problem? Have I done something wrong?"

     "No, nothing at all, Ms. But you do understand, with a conference of this importance ... on behalf of the Department, I apologize for the unseemliness. Ah. Here we are."

     They've brought her right to her bungalow. Feeling dirty, dusty, confused she watches the Krishna Cop car drive off, holding Delhi's frenetic traffic at bay with its tame djinns. She pauses at the gate. She needs, she deserves, a moment to come out from the performance, that little step way so you can turn round and look back at yourself and say, yeah, Esha Rathore. The bungalow is unlit, quiet. Neeta and Priya will be out with their wonderful fiancé’s, talking wedding gifts and guest lists and how hefty a dowry they can squeeze from their husbands-to-be's families. They're not her sisters, though they share the classy bungalow. No one has sisters any more in Awadh, or even Bharat. No one of Esha's age, though she's heard the balance is being restored. Daughters are fashionable. Once upon a time, women paid the dowry.

     She breathes deep of her city. The cool garden microclimate presses down the roar of Delhi to a muffled throb, like blood in the heart. She can smell dust and roses. Rose of Persia. Flower of the Urdu poets. And dust. She imagines it rising up on a whisper of wind, spinning into a charming, dangerous djinn. No. An illusion, a madness of a mad old city. She opens the security gate and finds every square centimeter of the compound filled with red roses.

* * * *

     Neeta and Priya are waiting for her at the breakfast table next morning, sitting side-by-side close like an interview panel. Or Krishna Cops. For once they aren't talking houses and husbands.

     "Who who who where did they come from who sent them so many must have cost a fortune...."

     Puri the housemaid brings Chinese green chai that's good against cancer. The sweeper has gathered the bouquets into a pile at one end of the compound. The sweetness of their perfume is already tinged with rot.

     "He's a diplomat." Neeta and Priya only watch
Town and Country
and the
chati
channels but even they must know the name of A.J. Rao. So she half lies: "A Bharati diplomat."

     Their mouths go
Oooh
, then
ah
as they look at each other. Neeta says, "You have have have to bring him."

     "To our
durbar
," says Priya.

     "Yes, our
durbar
," says Neeta. They've talked gossiped planned little else for the past two months: their grand joint engagement party where they show off to their as-yet-unmarried girl friends and make all the single men jealous. Esha excuses her grimace with the bitterness of the health-tea.

     "He's very busy." She doesn't say
busy man
. She cannot even think why she is playing these silly
girli
secrecy games. An aeai called her at the Red Fort to tell her it admired her. Didn't even meet her. There was nothing to meet. It was all in her head. "I don't even know how to get in touch with him. They don't give their numbers out."

     "He's coming," Neeta and Priya insist.

* * * *

     She can hardly hear the music for the rattle of the old airco but sweat runs down her sides along the waistband of her Adidas tights to gather in the hollow of her back and slide between the taut curves of her ass. She tries it again across the
gharana's
practice floor. Even the ankle bells sound like lead. Last night she touched the three heavens. This morning she feels dead. She can't concentrate, and that little
lavda
Pranh knows it, swishing at her with yts cane and gobbing out wads of chewed
paan
and mealy eunuch curses.

     "Ey! Less staring at your palmer, more
mudras
! Decent
mudras
. You jerk my dick, if I still had one."

     Embarrassed that Pranh has noted something she was not conscious of herself--
ring, call me, ring call me, ring, take me out of this
--she fires back, "If you ever had one."

     Pranh slashes yts cane at her legs, catches the back of her calf a sting.

     "Fuck you,
hijra
!" Esha snatches up towel bag palmer, hooks the earpiece behind her long straight hair. No point changing, the heat out there will soak through anything in a moment. "I'm out of here."

     Pranh doesn't call after her. Yts too proud.
Little freak monkey thing,
she thinks.
How is it a nute is an yt, but an incorporeal aeai is a he?
In the legends of Old Delhi,
djinns
are always he.

     "
Memsahb
Rathore?"

     The chauffeur is in full dress and boots. His only concession to the heat is his shades. In bra top and tights and bare skin, she's melting. "The vehicle is fully air-conditioned,
memsahb
."

     The white leather upholstery is so cool her flesh recoils from its skin.

     "This isn't the Krishna Cops."

     "No
memsahb
." The chauffeur pulls out into the traffic. It's only as the security locks clunk she thinks
Oh Lord Krishna, they could be kidnapping me
.

     "Who sent you?" There's glass too thick for her fists between her and the driver. Even if the doors weren't locked, a tumble from the car at this speed, in this traffic, would be too much for even a dancer's lithe reflexes. And she's lived in Delhi all her life,
basti
to bungalow, but she doesn't recognize these streets, this suburb, that industrial park. "Where are you taking me?"

     "
Memsahb
, where I am not permitted to say for that would spoil the surprise. But I am permitted to tell you that you are the guest of A.J. Rao."

     The palmer calls her name as she finishes freshening up with bottled Kinley from the car-bar.

     "Hello!" (kicking back deep into the cool cool white leather, like a
filmi
star. She is a star. A star with a bar in a car.)

     Audio-only. "I trust the car is acceptable?" Same smooth-suave voice. She can't imagine any opponent being able to resist that voice in negotiation.

     "It's wonderful. Very luxurious. Very high status." She's out in the
bastis
now, slums deeper and meaner than the one she grew up in. Newer. The newest ones always look the oldest. Boys chug past on a home-brew
chhakda
they've scavenged from tractor parts. The cream Lex carefully detours around emaciated cattle with angular hips jutting through stretched skin like engineering. Everywhere, drought dust lies thick on the crazed hardtop. This is a city of stares. "Aren't you supposed to be at the conference?"

     A laugh, inside her auditory center.

     "Oh, I am hard at work winning water for Bharat, believe me. I am nothing if not an assiduous civil servant."

     "You're telling me you're there, and here?"

     "Oh, it's nothing for us to be in more than one place at the same time. There are multiple copies of me, and subroutines."

     "So which is the real you?"

     "They are all the real me. In fact, not one of my avatars is in Delhi at all, I am distributed over a series of
dharma
-cores across Varanasi and Patna." He sighs. It sounds close and weary and warm as a whisper in her ear. "You find it difficult to comprehend a distributed consciousness; it is every bit as hard for me to comprehend a discrete, mobile consciousness. I can only copy myself through what you call cyberspace, which is the physical reality of my universe, but you move through dimensional space and time."