After that there is coffee and very good armagnac, a drink Vishram knows he will never be able to take again without a freight of memory, but the talk is polite and mannered and dies quickly in the way of enemies with etiquette. Vishram wants to be out of there, out from the wood and the glass and the hunting creatures. He wants to be on his own in a place he can enjoy the fierce, intimate burn of a fine deed well done. His first executive decision, and he knows he made it right. Then hands are shaken and leaves taken but as the Major and his jawans escort Vishram back to the tilt-jet he imagines he is walking differently, and that they can all see, and understand, and approve.
The hostess doesn’t try to come on to him on the flight home.
At Ray Tower a gang of coolies shifts corporate furniture to a flotilla of removal trucks. Still glowing on adrenaline afterburn, Vishram rides the elevator up to his former office. The executive lift makes an unscheduled stop at the third floor, where a small, dapper, birdlike Bangla in a black suit steps in and smiles at Vishram as if he has known him all his life.
“Might I say, Mr. Ray, that you made the correct decision,” says the Bangla, beaming.
The glass elevator climbs the curving wooden cliff of the Ray Tower. Fires still burn out on the cityscape. The sky is a precious velvety apricot colour.
“Just who,” says Vishram Ray, “the hell are you?”
The Bangla beams again.
“Oh, a humble servitor. A name, if you must, would be Chakraborty.”
“I have to tell you, I’m not really in the mood for obfuscation,” Vishram says.
“Sorry, sorry. To the point. I am a lawyer, hired by a certain company to convey a message to you. The message is this: we fully support your announcement to go to a full output demonstration as soon as possible.”
“Who is this we?”
“Less who than what, Mr. Ray.”
The glass elevator climbs higher into the amber glow of Varanasi’s holy smog. “What then?”
“Odeco is a company that makes a few, carefully chosen, highly specific investments.”
“And if you know that I just turned down an offer from a company that at least I’d heard of, what do you think your Odeco could offer me?”
“Exactly what we offered your father.”
It is now that Vishram wishes this glass cocoon had the fantasy stop button that is a mandatory feature in Hollywood elevators. But it doesn’t and they keep climbing the sculpted wood face of Ray Power.
“My father didn’t take partners in the company.”
“With respect, Mr. Ray, I differ. Where do you think the investment for the particle collider came from? The budget for the zero-point project would have bankrupted even Ranjit Ray, unassisted.”
“What’s your cut?” Vishram asks. His Hero of the People warmth has been snuffed out. Games within games, levels of access and secrecy, names and faces and masks. Faces that can get into your elevator and tell you your most secret dealings.
“Only success, Mr. Ray. Only success. To repeat and perhaps amplify my employers’ message to you, you intend to run a full-scale demonstration of the zero-point project. Odeco desires this very much. It wishes you to know that it will back you to ensure the success of the project. Whatever that entails, Mr. Ray. Ah. This seems to be my floor. Good day to you, Mr. Ray.”
Chakraborty slips between the doors before they fully open. Vishram ascends a full floor before he thinks to drop a level back to where the weird little man got off. He looks out into the curving corridor. Nothing, no one to see. He could have stepped into an office. He could as easily have stepped into another, zero-point universe. The lowering sun beats into the elevator but Vishram shudders. He needs to get out somewhere tonight, away from all this, even for a handful of hours. But which woman is he going to ask?
21: PARVATI
The apricot flies in a high, rising arc out over the parapet, turning slowly, bleeding a trail of juice from its crushed skin. It drops out of sight between the buildings, the long fall to the street.
“So that crossed the boundary in the air, so that makes it?”
“A six!” Parvati exclaims, clapping her hands together.
The crease is a line in gardener’s chalk, the wicket, a ply seedling box with three sides knocked off, stood on its heel. Krishan leans on his bat; a spade.
“A six is technically a weak shot,” he says. “The batsman has to get under it and he’s got no real control over where it’s going. Too easy for the fielders to get an eye on it and make the catch. The real enthusiast will always applaud a four more than a six. It’s a much more controlled stroke.”
“Yes, but it looks so much more bold,” Parvati says, then her hands fly to her mouth to suppress giggles. “Sorry, I was just thinking, someone down there. and they haven’t done anything, but all of a sudden they’re covered in apricot. and they think, what’s going on? Apricots are falling out of the sky. It’s the Awadhis! They’re bombing us with fruit!” She folds over in helpless laughter. Krishan does not understand the joke but he feels the infection of laughing tug at his rib cage.
“Again again!” Parvati picks up a fresh apricot from the folded cloth, hitches her sari, makes her short run, slings the fruit side-arm. Krishan slices the apricot down into a skittering roll towards the parapet drain slits. Shattered flesh sprays up in his face.
“Four!” Parvati calls, pressing four fingers to her arm.
“Properly, it’s a no-ball because it was thrown, not bowled.”
“I can’t do that overarm thing.”
“It’s not hard.”
Krishan bowls a handful of apricots one at a time, slow up the back, accelerating into the downswing, counterbalancing with his free arm. The soft fruit go bouncing into the shrub rhododendron.
“Now, you try.”
He tosses Parvati an underripe apricot. She catches it sweetly, bares the sleeve of her choli. Krishan watches the play of her muscles as she tries to make the run and step and swing in her cumbersome, elegant clothing. The apricot slips from her grasp, drops behind her. Parvati rounds on it, teeth bared in exasperation.
“I cannot do it!”
“Here, let me help you.”
The words are spoken before Krishan can apprehend them. Once as a boy in a school lesson he read on the school web that all consciousness is written in the past tense. If so, then all decisions are made without conscience or guilt and the heart speaks truly but inarticulately. His path is already set. He steps up behind Parvati. He rests one hand on her shoulder. With the other he takes her wrist. She catches her breath but her fingers remain curled around the ripe apricot.
Krishan moves her arm back, down, turns the palm upwards. He guides her forward, forward again, pressing the left shoulder down, moving the right arm up. “Now pivot on to the left foot.” They hang a precarious moment in their dance, then Krishan sweeps her wrist to the zenith. “Now, release!” he commands. The cloven apricot flies from her fingers, hits the wooden decking, bursts.
“A fine pace delivery,” Krishan says. “Now, try it against me.” He takes up his position at the crease, sights with his spade-bat, affording Parvati all the sporting courtesies. She retreats beyond the further chalk line, adjusts her clothing, makes her run. She lunges forward, releases the fruit. It hits the deck cleavage first, bounces crankily, spinning. Krishan steps forward with his spade, the apricot hits the top, skips and splatters against the wicket. The flimsy plywood falls. Krishan tucks his spade beneath his arm and bows.