A whisper inside her head, her name accompanied by a spray of sitar: the call-tone of her palmer, transduced through her skull into her auditory centre by the subtle ’hoek curled like a piece of jewellery behind her ear.
‘I’m just having a quick bidi break, give me a chance to finish it,’ she complains, expecting Pranh, the choreographer, a famously tetchy third-sex nute. Then, ‘Oh!’ For the gold-lit dust rises before her up into a swirl, like a dancer made from ash.
A djinn. The thought hovers on her caught breath. Her mother, though Hindu, devoutly believed in the djinni, in any religion’s supernatural creatures with a skill for trickery.
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 I can catch anything from it.’
Esha Rathore returns the greeting, wondering if the stage crew down in the courtyard is 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-two 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. Rao now stands with his back against the sun-warm stone, looking up at the sky, and her out 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 curtsies to the bright lights and runs off stage. In the dressing room as her assistants remove and carefully fold the many jewelled layers of her costume, wipe away the crusted stage makeup to reveal the twenty-two-year-old beneath, her attention keeps flicking to her lighthoek, 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-coloured highmarque 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 overemphatic.
‘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 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 apologise for the unseemliness. Ah. Here we are.’