River of Gods (40 page)

"I can't say I feel particularly unlucky," the girl says.
"Are you bad luck?"

"The worst kind," Shiv says. He relaxes and spreads himself
along the railing and so knocks her cocktail off the railing. It
drops like a god's tear, catching the light like a jewel. A woman's
scream comes up from below. "And there's your bad luck. I'm so
sorry. I would get you another one."

"Don't worry."

Her name is Juhi. Shiv steers her towards the ticket booths. Yogendra
detaches himself from watching pretty things and follows at a
discreet distanice. The Kunda Khadars really are very cold and very
good and very expensive. The red stuff is cinnamon flavoured, with a
little THC kick. Juhi chatters away about the club and its people.
Shiv glances up at the vip zone. The Nath siblings have moved up to a
higher level yet, two gold stars under the rippling plastic canopy.
Juhi kicks him gently, foreplayfully with her garial boot. Feathers
and everything.

"I see you looking up there, badmash. Who are you working for?"
Juhi works closer to him.

Shiv nods towards the Naths, surrounded by their dark fixers. Juhi
screws her face up.

"Chuutyas. You have business with them? You be careful. They can
do what they like because they have money and their daddy owns the
police. They look like angels but inside they are dark and old. They
are bad to women. He wants to fuck because he is twenty years old
inside his head but he can't get it up so he has to take hormones and
things and even then it's nothing. I've seen bigger on a dog. So he
uses toys and things. And she is as bad. She watches him play. I know
this because a friend of mine went with them once. They are as bad as
each other."

Russia grrl catches Shiv's eye, nods him over, and your little monkey
too.

"Come up with me," he says to Juhi. "You don't have to
meet them." He is thinking about when he has his setup money.
There will be more of those Kunda Khadar things and a hotel room and
some place with junk food and a television for Yogendra. Shiv begins
to feel the glow in his belly. The shoulders go back. The chin up.
The step lengthens, lightens. Golden people turn to look, their Kunda
Khadars like little murders in their hands. At the centre of them,
the golden children. Nitish and Chunni Nath stand side by side. They
are dressed identically in gold brocaded sherwanis. Their faces are
smooth and puppy-fat and more open and innocent than they should be.
The girl Chunni's hair hangs to her waist. Nitish is shaved, his
scalp glitters with mica dust. Shiv thinks it makes him look like a
cancer kid. They smile. Now he sees where it is hiding. In the old,
old smiles. Nitish beckons.

"Mr. Faraji." Nitish Nath's voice is high and pure and cuts
through the mix. "And the boy is?"

"Personal assistant."

"I see."

Shiv feels sweat bead inside his leather. Every word, nuance, tone,
muscle alignment is being scanned and read. He is getting that scent
again. He does not know if it is real or his mind, but when he is
around Brahmins he can always smell wrongness, genes turned awry.
They don't smell human.

"And the. female?"

"No one. Just someone I met. She's nothing."

"Very well. Come with me please."

There is a level above all levels, a tiny cage of construction mesh
suspended from the main crane. Shiv, Yogendra, and Nitish Nath fit it
like segments into an orange skin. All the chatter, the echoes, the
shuffle of bodies dancing silently on their tiered platforms are
silenced so abruptly Shiv feels their absence as a sharp pain.

"This area has a mute field," Nitish Nath says. His voice
is flattened, it sounds to Shiv as if he is speaking in his eardrum.
"Clever, isn't it? Most useful for sensitive business. We are
pleased with your performance to date, Mr. Faraji. Your businesslike
ethos is refreshing. It was intimated to you that if we were
satisfied with your work, there would be other tasks. We would like
to offer you a new contract. It will be dangerous. There's a distinct
possibility you could be killed. In return we will write off your
debts to the Dawoods. Their machines will not visit you again. And we
will add enough to set you up in this town, or any other."

"What is the job?"

"Abstraction, Mr. Faraji. Background then. This won't make any
sense to you, but never let it be said that you weren't fully
informed. For some time now the United States government has
subcontracted intelligence-related computing that it cannot process
under its own Hamilton Acts. It routinely uses datahavens in
countries that are not signatory to the international agreement that
have access to high-level artificial intelligence. You know what
Generation two-point-five means?"

"A computer you can't tell from a human seventy-five percent of
the time."

"A good summary. Anything above two-point-five is banned under
the terms of the act. Anything below must be licensed. Bharat is a
non-signatory country but self-enforces licensing of everything up to
two-point-seven-five—this is to preserve its dominant position
in the media market through the likes of
Town and Country
. Our
client has ascertained that a Bharati sundarban is carrying out a
decryption job for the United States—NASA, the Pentagon, and
the CIA are all involved, which is unusual but gives some indication
of the importance of the decoding work. Our client wants that
decryption key."

"What exactly do you want me to do?" The mute field is
making Shiv's molars ache. Nitish Nath claps his small, pudgy hands.

"So businesslike! It is a two-part mission. The first is to find
which sundarban is doing the decrypt. The second is to infiltrate and
steal the key. We know that this man arrived in Bharat three weeks
ago." Nitish Nath holds up his hand. He's wearing a palmer
glove. He holds a videoclip of a bearded Westerner in those baggy
clothes they wear that never fit them. He's been caught stepping out
of a phatphat looking left, right for traffic and pushing through the
crowds towards a Kashi bar. The clip loops again. "His name is
Hayman Dane, he's an American, a freelance crypto specialist."

Shiv studies the fat man. "I think he is in for a great deal of
pain." Nitish Nath giggles. It is not a sound Shiv wants to hear
again.

"Once you have the location and a plan for how to arrange the
abstraction, our client will cover your legitimate expenses in
addition to our generous remuneration package. Now can we leave this
place? Your body odour is beginning to nauseate me."

The mute field pops.
Construxx
August 2047 implodes on Shiv.
It feels fresh, lithe, breathing, clean. Shiv follows Nitish Nath
down the steep steps to the vip zone.

"I have a free hand?"

"Yes. Nothing will be traceable to us or our client. Now, we do
need your decision." It is no decision.

"I'll do it."

"Good good good!" Nitish Nath stops at the foot of the
steps to thrust his small, smooth hand into Shiv's. Shiv fights the
recoil reflex. The hand feels dead to him. He sees a woman's corpse
spilling out of black plastic into the black river. "Chunni! Mr.
Faraji is with us!"

Chunni Nath is less than half Shiv's height but when she looks up
into his eyes his balls prickle with fear. Her eyes are like spheres
of lead.

"You are with us. Good." She spins the word out like
cotton. "But are you one of us, Mr. Faraji?" Her brother
smiles.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Nath, what do you mean?"

"We mean, you have shown your worth in small things, but any
street gunda can do that."

"I am not some street gunda." Blue flickers, down in the
dance-shaft.

"Then demonstrate it, Mr. Faraji." She looks at her
brother. Shiv feels Yogendra's hand on his sleeve. "That girl
you came in with, the one you brought up here. I think you said you
met in the bar."

"She's just someone I met, she wanted to see the vip area."

"Your words were,
she's nothing."

"Yes, I said that."

"Good. Throw her over the railing, please."

Shiv wants to laugh, a vast, coughing bark of a laugh the size and
shape of this underground chamber at mad things that cannot possibly
be said.

"Much has been entrusted to you, Mr. Faraji. The least we can
demand is a demonstration of trustworthiness.''

The laugh dies in his lungs. The platform is high and cold and
terrifyingly fragile over a vast abyss. The lights look like
epilepsy.

"You are joking. You're mad, you are. She said you were mad
fuckers, that you liked to do things, play mad games."

"All the more reason then. We don't tolerate insults, Mr.
Faraji. It's as much a test for us as for you. Do you trust us that
you can do this thing here and no one will touch you?"

It would be easy. She stands by the rail, glancing over at him and
the other stellar rich on the platform. Kunda Khadars have relaxed
her. A hook of the foot, a push, the pivot around the metal rail
would send her over. But he cannot do it. He is a seller of parts, a
dealer, a butcher, a spiller of bodies into rivers but he is not a
killer. And he is dead now. He might as well get up on that rail, put
his arms out, and fall forwards.

Shiv shakes his head. He would speak, tell them this, but Yogendra is
faster. Juhi smiles, frowns, opens her mouth to scream all in the
instant it takes Yogendra to slam into her. He's a scrawny pup but
he's got momentum. The glass flies into the air spilling a spray of
bloody vodka. Juhi reels backwards. Yogendra lowers his head and
butts her in the face. Her hands fly up. She loses balance. She goes
backwards over the rail. Her garial boots kick, her feathers flutter.
her arms windmill. She falls through the slashing lights and silent
dancers. The brief scream, the ringing crack as she smashes into the
edge of a lower platform echoes up the concrete well of
Construxx
August 2047 Site. She bounces. She spins, a strange, misshapen
smashed thing. Shiv hopes it killed her. He hopes it broke her spine
quick and clean. Everyone hears the soft splintering thud as she hits
the bottom of the shaft. It took very much longer than Shiv had
imagined. Peering over the rail he sees the door muscle come running.
There is nothing they can do but talk into their collars. They look
up the light beams straight at him. The shrieks start from below.
Construxx
August 2047 is a cylinder of panicked screaming.

She came out for a night. That was all. Drinks. Dance. A flirt. A bit
of celebrity. Fun. Something to tell the girls the next day.

The empty glass still spins on the floor.

Nitish and Chunni Nath look at each other.

He's not a killer. He's not a killer.

A Russian girl gives him a thick plastic wallet. He can see the
wadded bank notes through the smoky vinyl. It seems to float in front
of him, he cannot understand what it is. He can see Yogendra standing
by the rail, drawn in on himself, pale as bone. He cannot understand
what it is.

She came out for a night. A body, spilling into the dark water. Juhi,
falling away from him, hands and feet milling.

"By the way." It is Nitish speaking. His voice had never
sounded so dead and flat even in the mute field. "In case you
ever wonder what the Americans are decoding. They have found
something in space and they have no idea what it is."

Art Empire Industry
, whispers the red graffiti.

The American is a big man and bleeds a lot in the sand ring. Unseen
in his box in the shadows under the gallery, Shiv studies him. There
is an expression he likes from American crime movies.
Stuck pig
.
He has never seen a pig stuck with a blade but he can imagine it,
little pig legs lifted up and kicking as it fights against the hands
pulling its head back, opening its pig throat to the edge. Then the
knife goes into the sweet spot, the blood spot. He imagines the pig's
waving legs like this man's pale, hairy hocks sticking out of his
baggy shorts. He imagines it might make a sound like this panting
wailing, flat and ugly, pushed through layers of fat. It would look
around it like this, looking for its killer. He dresses the
pig-of-his-mind in these American clothes.

Pigs revolt him.

It had only been a tiny nick, just to get the bleeding started. They
are more aggressive when there is blood on the air, the girl in the
muscle-top told him. You could even consider it a fashion
declaration. The earring looked ridiculous on a grown man. Better no
lobe at all.

"I ask you again. Where is the sundarban?"

"Look, I keep telling you, I don't know what the fuck you are
talking about. I'm not the man you want."

Shiv sighs. He nods to Yogendra. The kid climbs up on the rail,
scissors held out to catch the light.

"Don't you fucking cut me, man. You cut me and it's a diplomatic
incident. You are so fucked. You hear me?"

Yogendra grins, puts his arms out at his side, wiggles his hips,
snips his scissors chip-chop chip-chop. Shiv watches the estuary of
blood fan across the American man's neck. Some has already dried and
crusted, food for flies. He follows it under the round collar of his
surf-shirt—some starting to show through the fabric—down
his arm to form a rubbed, red slick around his wrists where he has
chafed at the cuffs. Stuck pig, Shiv thinks.

"You are Hayman Dane?"

"No! Yes. Look, I don't even know who you are."

"Hayman Dane, where is the sundarban?"

"Sundarban? Sundarban, what fucking sundarban?"

Shiv stands up. He brushes the dust from his new full-length leather
coat. As the tour guides who take the backpackers past the ghats at
dawn say, morning light makes all the difference.

It shows
Fight! Fight!
for the cheap dirty little back-alley
gambling joint it is. It shows up the dust and the cigarette burns
and cheap wood. Empty of fighters and sattamen and the gamblers and
the ringmaster strutting in his sequin costumes, singing into his
microphone, it has no spirit, no atman. He opens the door of his box
and steps on to the shallow staircase.