“How did they die?” the dataraja asks.
“In a fire, on the fifteenth floor of.”
“Stop. Badrinath? Radha?”
“No one survived.”
“How?”
“We have theories.”
Anreddy sits on the transparent plastic floor, head bowed. Mr. Nandha shakes out the medallions, holds them up by the chain.
“You knew them, then.”
“Knew of them.”
“Names?”
“Something French, though she was Indian. They used to work at the University but got into the free world. They had a big-name project, there was a lot of money behind them.”
“Have you ever heard of an investment company called Odeco?”
“Everyone’s heard of Odeco. Everyone out in the wild, that is.”
“Did you ever receive funding from Odeco?”
“I’m a dataraja man, big and wild and fierce. Public enemy number one. Anyway, I wasn’t their particular shade of blue sky. I was into nanoscale robotics. They were high-level aeai; protein circuitry, computer-brain interfaces.”
Mr. Nandha holds the amulets against the plastic. “You know the significance of this symbol?”
“The riderless white horse, the tenth avatar.”
“Kalki. The final avatar that will bring the Age of Kali to an end. A name from legend.”
“Varanasi is a city of legends.”
“Here is legend for our times. Might Badrinath, with funding from this Odeco organisation, have been developing a Generation Three aeai?”
J. P. Anreddy rocks back on his coccyx, throws his head back. Siddha of the scuttling robots. He closes his eyes. Mr. Nandha lays out the amulets on the tiles in Anreddy’s full view. Then he goes to the window and slowly pulls up the blind. It folds up on itself in a wide concertina of sun-bleached fabric.
“I will tell you now our theory about how they died at Badrinath. We believe it was a deliberate attack by a laser-armed drone aircraft,” Mr. Nandha says. He draws up the next blind, admitting the blinding sun, the treacherous sky.
“You bastard!” J. P. Anreddy shouts, leaping to his feet. Mr. Nandha moves to the third window.
“We find this theory convincing. A single high-energy shot.” He crosses the room to the opposite set of mullions. “Through the living-room window. A precision attack. The aeai must have targeted, identified, and fired in a few milliseconds. There’s so much traffic in the air since the train incident no one is ever going to notice a drone slip out of its patrol pattern.”
Anreddy’s hands are spread on the plastic, his eyes wide, scanning the white sky for flecks of betrayal.
“What do you know about Kalki?”
Mr. Nandha furls another blind. Only one remains. Burtresses of light slant across the floor. Anreddy looks in pain, a cyber-vampire burned by the sun.
“They’ll kill you, man.”
“We shall see about that. Is Kalki a Generation Three aeai?”
He takes the soft cotton cord of the last blind and hauls it in, hand over hand. A wedge of light expands across the tiles. J. P. Anreddy has retreated to the centre of his plastic cage but there is no hiding from the sky.
“So?”
“Kalki is a Generation Three aeai. It exists. It’s real. It’s been real and existent for longer than you think. It’s out there. You know what Generation Three means? It means an intelligence, measured on standard assessment scales, between twenty and thirty thousand times human baseline. And they’re only the start. These are emergent properties, man. Evolution is running a million times faster in there. And if they want you, you cannot run, you cannot hide, you cannot lie down and hope that they will forget about you. Whatever you do, they can see you. Whatever identity you take, they know it before you do. Wherever you go, they’ll be there ahead of you, waiting, because they’ll have guessed it before you even think it yourself. These are Gen Threes, man. These are the gods! You cannot license gods.”
Mr. Nandha lets the rant ebb before he collects the cheap, heat-tarnished Kalki amulets and returns them to their bags.
“Thank you. I now know the name of my enemy. Good day.”
He turns and walks away through the shafts of dusty white light. His heels resound on the fine Islamic marble. Behind him he hears the soft woof of fists on flexible transparent plastic, Anreddy’s voice, distant and muffled.
“Hey, the blinds man! Don’t leave me, don’t leave the blinds! Man! The blinds! They can see me! Fuck you, they can see me! The blinds!”
20: VISHRAM
He has a desk big enough to land a fighter on. He has a top-level wood and glass office. He has an executive elevator and an executive washroom. He has fifteen suits made to the same design and fabric as the one he wore when he inherited his empire, with matching hand-tooled shoes. And he has for his personal assistant Inder who has the disconcerting ability to be physically in front of him and at the same time manifesting herself on his desk-top organiser and as a ghost in his visual cortex. He’s heard about these corporate PA systems who are part human, part aeai. It’s modern office management.
Vishram Ray also has a raging Strega hangover and an oval of sunburn around his eyes where he looked too deep and too long into another universe.
“Who are these people?” asks Vishram Ray.
“The Siggurdson-Arthurs-Clementi Group,” says Inder-on-the-carpet while Inder-in-the-desk opens her lotus-hands to show him a schedule and Inder-in-the-head dissolves into mugshots of well-fed white men with good suits and better dentistry. Inder-on-the-carpet has a surprisingly deep voice for someone so very Audrey Hepburn. “Ms. Fusco will brief you further in the car. And Energy Secretary Patel has requested a meeting, as has the Shivaji’s energy spokeswoman. They both want to know your plans for the company.”
“I don’t even know them myself, but the Honourable Secretary will be the first to find out.” Vishram pauses at the door. All three Inders wait inquiringly. “Inder, would it be possible to move this whole office right out of Ray Tower, to the Research Facility?”
“Certainly, Mr. Ray. Is it not to your satisfaction?”
“No, it’s a lovely office. Very. businesslike. I just feel a bit. close to the family. My brothers. And while we’re at it, I’d like to move out of the house. I find it a bit. oppressive. Can you find me a nice hotel, good room service?”
“Certainly, Mr. Ray.”
As he leaves Inder’s alters are already pricing corporate removal firms and hotel penthouse suites. In the Ray Power Merc, Vishram savours Marianna Fusco’s Chanel 27. He can also sense that she is pissed at him.
“She’s a physicist.”
“Who’s a physicist?”
“The woman I had dinner with last night. A physicist. I’m telling you this because you seem a little. snippy.”
“Snippy?”
“Short. Annoyed. You know. Snippy.”
“Oh. I see. And this is because you had dinner with a physicist?”
“Married physicist. Married Hindu physicist.”
“I’m interested why you felt you had to tell me that she was married.”
“Married Hindu physicist. Called Sonia. Whose pay-cheques I sign.”
“As if that makes any difference.”
“Of course. We’re professional. I took her to dinner and then she took me back to hers and showed me her universe. It’s small, but perfectly formed.”
“I was wondering how you were going to explain the panda eyes. Is this a universe of sunbeds?”
“Zero-point energy, actually. And you have very elegant ankles.”
He thinks he sees a shadow of a smile.
“Okay, these people, how do I deal with them?”