And the rest of your life looking back, Najia Askarzadah.
A tap on the glass. Shaheen Badoor Khan bends low. Najia winds down the window. His face is grey-stubbled, his eyes are buried in exhaustion but they hold a tiny light, like a diya floating on a wide, dark river. Against all events and odds, against the tide of history, he has glimpsed victory. Najia thinks of the women parading their battle-cats head-high around the fighting ring, torn but valiant. He offers a hand.
“Ms. Askarzadah.” His voice is deeper than she imagined. She takes the hand. “You’ll excuse me if I seem a little slow this morning; I have rather been overwhelmed by the flow of events, but I must thank you, not just for myself—I am only a civil servant—but on behalf of my nation.”
Don’t thank me, Najia thinks. I was the one sold you in the first place. She says, “It’s all right.”
“No no, Ms. Askarzadah, you have uncovered a conspiracy of such scale, such audacity. I do not know quite how to deal with this, it is quite literally breathtaking. Machines, artificial intelligences.” He shakes his head and she senses how infinitely weary he is. “Even with this information, it is by no means over yet and you are by no means safe. I have an escape plan—everyone in the Bharat Sabha has an escape plan. I had intended to take myself and my wife, but my wife, as you have discovered.” Shaheen Badoor Khan shakes his head again and this time Najia senses his disbelief at the nested involutions, the wanton daring of the conspiracy. “Let’s say, I still have loyal agents in positions of influence, and those whose loyalty I can’t trust are at least well paid. I can get you to Kathmandu, after that you are on your own, I am afraid. I’d ask one thing, I know you’re a journalist and you have the story of the decade, but please do not release anything until I have played my card?”
“Yeah,” Najia Askarzadah stammers. Of course, anything. I owe you. Because you do not know it, but I am your torturer.
“Thank you. Thank you indeed.” Shaheen Badoor Khan looks up at the bleeding sky, squints at the thin, sour rain. “Ah, I have never known worse times. And please believe me, if I thought what you have given me would make it worse for Bharat. There is nothing I can do for my Prime Minister, but at least there is something I may yet do for my country.” He stands up briskly, looks out over the sodden marshland. “We have a way to go yet before any of us are safe.”
He shakes hands, firmly, grimly, again and returns to his car. He and Tal exchange the briefest of glances.
“That the politician?” the taxi-wallah asks as he reverses up to let the Mercedes pass.
“That was Shaheen Badoor Khan,” Tal says, wet in the back seat beside Najia. “Private Secretary to the late Sajida Rana.”
“Hot damn!” the driver exclaims as he tailgates Shaheen Badoor Khan, hooting at early bullock carts on the country back road. “Don’t you love Bharat!”
Jamshedpur Grameen Bank is a dozen rural sathin women running microcredit schemes in over a hundred villages, most of whom have never left backcountry Bihar, some of whom have never physically met each other but they hold fifty lakh ordinary shares in Ray Power. Their aeai agent is a homely little 2.i bibi, chubby and smiling, with a life-creased face and a vivid red bindi. She would not look out of place as a rural auntie in an episode of Town and Country. She namastes in Vishram’s ’hoek-vision.
“For the resolution,” she says sweetly, like your mama would, and vanishes.
Vishram’s done the mental calculation before Inder can render it up on his in-eye graphic. KHP Holdings is next on the list with its eighteen percent stock, by far the biggest single shareholder outside the family. If Bhardwaj votes yes, it is game to Vishram. If he votes no, then Vishram will need eleven of the remaining twenty blocks to win.
“Mr. Bhardwaj?” Vishram asks. His hands are flat on the table. He cannot lift them. They will leave two palm-sized patches of misty sweat.
Bhardwaj takes off his hard, titanium framed glasses, rubs at a tactical spot of grease with a soft felt polishing cloth. He exhales loudly through his nose.
“This is a most irregular procedure,” he says. “All I can say is that, under Mr. Ranjit Ray, this would never have happened. But the offer is generous and cannot be ignored. Therefore I recommend it and vote for the resolution.”
Vishram allows his fist and jaw muscles a little mental spasm, a little yes. Even on that night when he took the Funny Ha! Ha! contest, there was never an audience kick like the murmur that runs around the board table that says they’ve all done their sums too. Vishram feels Marianna Fusco’s hosiery-clad thigh press briefly against his under the transparent plane of nanodiamond. A movement of the edge of his peripheral vision make him look up. His mother slips out.
He hardly hears the formalities of the remainder of the vote. He numbly thanks the shareholders and board members for their faith in the Ray name and family. Thinking: Got it. Got it. Fucking got it. Telling the table that he will not let them down, that they have assured a great future for this great company. Thinking: I’m going to take Marianna Fusco to a restaurant, whatever is the very best you can get in the capital of an invaded country that’s just had its Prime Minister assassinated. Inviting: everyone to make their way down the corridor and then we’ll see exactly the future you’ve voted for. Thinking: a softly knotted silk scarf.
IT’S LIKE HERDING CALVES, Marianna Fusco messages as Ray Power staffers try to usher board members, researchers, guests, strays, and those second-string journalists who can be spared from the Day’s Big Story down the Ramayana marquetry maple floors. The whorl of bodies brings Vishram and Ramesh, a head taller, into orbit.
“Vishram.” Big Brother smiles, broad and honest. It looks alien. Vishram recalls him always serious, puzzled, head bowed. His handshake is firm and long. “Well done.”
“You’re a rich man now, Ram.”
Typically Ramesh is the tilt of the head, the roll of the eyes upwards, looking for answer in heaven.
“Yes, I suppose I am, quite obscenely so. But you know, I don’t actually care. One thing you can do for me: find me something to do on this zero-point thing. If it’s what you say, I’ve spent my professional life looking in the wrong direction.”
“You’ll come to the demonstration.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Or I suppose I should say, universe.” He laughs nervously. Third rule of comedy, Vishram Ray thinks. Never laugh at your own jokes. “I think Govind needs a word with you.”
He’s rehearsed this so many different ways, so many different voices, so many nuances and stances and they all fall from him in the moments it takes to pick Govind out of the crowd. He can’t turn his weaponry on this chubby, shyly smiling, sweating man in the too-small suit.
“Sorry,” he says, extending the hand. Govind shakes his head, takes the hand.
“And that is why, brother, you will still never make it in business. Too soft. Too polite. You won today, you engineered a great victory, enjoy it! Press it home. Gloat. Have your security escort me from the building again.”