The City Inside, page 20
She pulls out her phone to ask Narad what to do, wondering why she’s not been screaming at her with news alerts, to find a lot of messages from Narad about her bioreadings, but nothing from the news: there’s no signal at all. She fights panic: Have they shut down the internet again? She reminds herself that if it were an absolute crisis they would have shut down the metro, the train would just have whizzed by Cyber Bazaar, but her body refuses to listen. Something in her gut knows that things aren’t all right. Narad knows nothing, and now she’s all alone in the universe at a metro station exit with a riot brewing outside, no idea how to find the cybercriminal she’s supposed to meet to help her illegally track Zaria and Rudra and many questions about how her life came to this. The smart choice is clear: she should go back home right now. This is well outside her job description anyway: a vague sense of worry about those two entitled brats and a mild reluctance to admit to Radha that they’re missing certainly do not justify putting her life in danger.
She swipes through the exit, past the grumbling policewoman completely unmoved by her heroism, past the restless queue of people lining up at the entry gates, already winding into the distance, already threatening to bulge and break, to become a little riot of its own as the tension in the air mounts. Joey makes her way out to Cyber Bazaar.
Drones circle the blazing sky above the ramshackle towers that border the market square, feeding their various masters images from the ground. There are groups of men everywhere, loosely knit together, lurking, hovering, too busy glowering at their rival clusters to take pictures of Joey as she emerges from the station. The water tankers they’re supposed to be fighting over haven’t arrived yet, but the police have: they’re setting up barricades across the alleys that crisscross the market, stringing together a defensive perimeter. Joey can see a few different uniforms, it’s not just police, there are corporate troops in there as well, driving people away with batons, setting up checkpoints and barriers and scanning booths on the street. No detention buses, which is promising. No heavy weaponry, which is a relief. No water cannons either, which is good: she can’t imagine how a water-deprived crowd would react to water-cannon blasts.
A cheer goes through the crowd as one of the drones comes crashing to earth and smashes satisfyingly into a thousand spinning pieces: Joey looks up into the sky at once, but the sunlight is too harsh to see what broke the drone. She knows what it was, though: a trained hawk, one of the troop that the mysterious crime lord known as the King of Nehru Place uses to keep the authorities’ drones from seeing too much of the market. Joey has heard the King sometimes lends squadrons of fighter drones, and sometimes even his hawks, to localities where drones threaten to replace low-level human jobs. He’d tried to get monkeys to fight drones before that, but the monkeys, being monkeys, didn’t listen. Every day there’s a deadly kite festival above the rooftops of Cyber Bazaar: an idiotic Flowco had even tried to start a live tournament before being hacked into oblivion.
A station announcement: trains will only stop at Cyber Bazaar for the next fifteen minutes, and will be shut after. An escalation. Which means she needs to head back in right away if she wants to escape this battleground—or perhaps it’s already too late, she can’t even see the end of the entry queue. How bad is the riot going to be? She remembers, with great clarity, which drawer her riot-protection kit is lying in: without tear-gas-protection makeup, without face-recognition-scrambling stickers, how stupid would it be to not turn around immediately? Without network, she can’t even ask Laxmi to send her a photo of her boyfriend. Reminding herself that in ancient times people didn’t even have mobile phones but somehow managed to survive, she scans the growing crowd with slow-burning desperation, waiting for a sign.
And then a sign arrives—one of the gigantic smartbillboards mounted on a dodgy-looking tower switches to display a thirty-foot-tall Indi. In between a massive solar panel array shaped like a cartoon Krishna and a revolving Manchurian paneer taco he stands, smirking at her, gesturing towards the blinking logo of his new show, available both on mainstreamer satellite and on Flow everywhere, promising his adoring fans he’s going to teach them to be a Real Man. He looks good in a customised Haramcore digishirt; his hair and makeup’s different. Maybe it’s that, or the lighting, but he looks a lot fairer. Joey stops herself from noting down at least ten visual inputs, and wonders when she’ll unblock his calls on her phone: she’s stopped Narad from autodialling him three times now. The show starts this weekend. She knows she’ll watch it, probably with her parents.
In the distance, a slow, rolling drumbeat starts up: hundreds of parched hands banging on empty water containers, the heartbeat of a city rising, quickening towards rage. Somewhere, an anti-police chant starts up and gathers momentum. A low rumble sweeps across the street, transforming quickly into a tide of yells: in the distance, she can see a convoy of water tankers slowly approaching, flanked by police jeeps. People rushing towards the convoy, pouring out of every alleyway, hundreds, thousands, she can’t count that many. Shiny dots flash on their faces: sticker patterns that claim to fool facial recognition cams, though no one really knows if they work. She sees swords, hockey sticks, metal rods, 3D-printed disposable desi katta pistols; a man shoves her as he breaks the queue and rushes past into the station. Even in this moment, he’s managed to reach for her breasts.
A sharp crack, which her brain takes a second to tell her must be a gunshot. Screams, smashing glass, and Joey finds herself on the blazing footpath, a moan of pure terror gushing out of her throat. There’s a sharp throb on her left leg—she looks at it, and gasps: it’s covered in blood. Has she been shot? Wouldn’t she know for sure if she’d been shot? There are bodies hurtling everywhere around her, narrowly missing stomping all over her. Her sunglasses fall, and someone steps on them immediately. She scrambles on the footpath, screams as a running man stumbles over her and falls. She’s forgotten how to stand.
A hand grasps her wrist and pulls her up. She flails at her unknown assailant, seeing nothing, but he grabs her wrist tighter.
“Didi, come with us.”
It’s a boy, a teenager. Another boy stands with him, holding a cricket bat aloft, clearing a space. They have the same hair: the bright golden mohawks that mark them as SanSan vidboys. Her leg throbs. The boy who’d spoken tugs at her hand, and runs, dragging her with him: she takes one look at the crowd and follows, limping, then running as fast as she can. A few buildings down he stops at a collapsible gate, which is pulled open from the inside. They enter.
Another huddle of men, all armed, in a dark, ancient lobby, all staring at her, and Joey’s terrified, wholly convinced she was better off outside. The boy sees her planning a wild escape attempt, and makes placatory gestures: calm down.
“Rajada sent us,” he says. She stares at him, wholly uncomprehending. “Rajada, Laxmidi’s man. You are Flow didi, no?”
“Yes,” Joey says. Yes, she’s definitely Flow didi.
He darts off down a corridor, and turns and beckons impatiently when she stands, still frozen, her leg a dull throb, most of her salwar now covered in blood. One of the men by the gate makes a comment in a language she doesn’t understand and the rest laugh. The boy with the bat tugs at her arm, and she realises she doesn’t really have too many options.
She follows the boys down a dirty corridor lined with shops, all closed, metal shutters proclaiming electronics-y names. The floors are strewn with litter, wires, plastic bottles. They take a sharp turn, lead her down another corridor, past padlocked doors, mouldy cartons, puddles and rivulets of thick liquids she hopes fervently are mostly water, two sleeping dogs, tattered posters of Bruce Lee and Shah Rukh Khan, an open toilet of incredible stink and decrepitude, a dingy flight of stairs, towards an open elevator shaft. The boy with the bat stops, turns, stands guard. Her rescuer presses a button, and an ancient elevator creaks down towards them, lurching to a halt a few inches below floor level. Not seeing what else to do, Joey gets in, wondering if she’ll ever see her family again.
The lift goes up a few floors, and the boy leads her to a door that’s a little cleaner than the others, opens it, and asks her to wait inside, but then darts in before she enters. Joey follows, blinking in the strange new light, mostly off the massive computer-screen array lined up all along one wall of the tiny room. There’s a cot, a few metal office chairs, an ancient almirah, a groaning fan, a desk, a device on it she cannot identify that has a small rotating dish on top and a blinking red light: Some kind of scanner? There’s an air purifier, so she takes off her mask and heaves deep breaths, resisting the urge to scream. She wipes her face on her sleeve, leaving dark smudges. The boy opens a drawer, pulls out a bandage, a wad of cotton, and a large bottle of antiseptic, hands them to Joey, sets a plastic bottle full of water down on the floor near her feet, and runs off. She examines her bloodstained salwar—it’s a long cut, but shallow, probably a flying piece of glass. The bleeding stops as she dabs antiseptic on it, and she feels like a fool for thinking it was a bullet. There are bruises all over her body, everything hurts, but it’s clearly not a good time for a thorough inspection. She gulps the water in seconds—it’s scalding hot, but she couldn’t care less.
The boy holds an empty metal container in front of her.
“All devices, didi, sorry,” he says. They stare at each other in silence, each blinking once. Then she puts her phone in the container, and he hands her a cracked ceramic plate on which sits a blob of a foul-smelling brown gel, and indicates that she should smear it over her smartatt. She does, and even musters a smile as he waves what looks like an ancient tennis racket around her body for a minute. It doesn’t crackle or beep, and the boy seems satisfied.
Joey sits on the cot, shuddering, determined not to think about the last few minutes, watching the screens with deep suspicion as they scroll through a variety of landscape photos. A little later, when her eyes have adjusted, she almost sobs in relief as she sees, on the wall opposite the cot, a large laminated photo of Laxmi and her boyfriend, the mysterious Raja, posing in a photo studio for a scene re-creation of an early ’20s Bollywood hit. She realises she’s seen Raja several times, dropping Laxmi off near their gate on his scooter. A pleasant-faced, balding, potbellied, ever-smiling man, who never came upstairs even when her mother asked Laxmi to present him for inspection. She’d assumed he was the proprietor of some small spy-gear and data-retrieval hole, one of the hundreds scattered all over Cyber Bazaar.
But the man who now enters the room, with the boys darting around him, is clearly a man of power, and he’s not smiling. He offers his apologies: he hadn’t known how to reach Joey once they cut the network, and the boys had left their posts for golgappas, the idiots (he smacks their heads, to drive his point home). He inspects Joey’s cut, declares it safe, and begs her not to let Laxmi know about it.
“She’ll kill me,” he says. “As it is she was refusing to let you come here, but I couldn’t risk passing a message through Laxmi. The less she knows, the less your family knows, the better.”
Joey’s not sure how to address him—she’s always been very bad at the semi-feudal semi-gracious tone her parents seemed to have learned from the times when everyone they knew had domestic help, she knows the fake equality her peers often adopt in these circumstances is considered insulting and condescending, but at the same time she’s meeting Raja at his place of work, not as the maid’s boyfriend. And Raja appears to be some sort of local crime lord and might expect great respect.
“Is my family safe with Laxmi in the house?” she asks, choosing directness. He takes it well.
“Your family is protected,” he says. “Nothing moves in your neighbourhood that I don’t know about, and I am friends with all the powers that run it—for now. They need me, and they need Cyber Bazaar.”
“Explain further, please,” Joey says.
“Oh, Cyber Bazaar runs half the city—you didn’t know? Otherwise they’d have been shooting the crowd out there. Delhi has learned that sometimes the whole system can collapse, and you can’t be caught without anyone to turn to. When the government or its masters cut off your electricity, your signal, your water, you don’t know when you’ll get them back. You need to take care of yourself, have someone you can call. One way or another, the residents’ associations call us. Laxmi could live like a queen here if she chose—but it is better for both of us if she does not know about everything I do, and she is far safer with your family than she would be here, or in any of our houses. I can’t afford to spend time worrying about her.”
“But now I’m worried about my family. What happens when your friendships end?”
“You should have worried about your family before getting involved with Zaria Salam and Rudra Gupta.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re here. You’ll see them soon. I’m waiting for a call.”
“Networks are out.”
He waves an ancient mobile phone at her. “Not ours.”
“Then call my family and tell them they’re in danger, thanks to me.”
He stands in front of her, not meeting her eyes, struggling to say many things, failing. She doesn’t feel any need to put him at ease. New pains have sprung up all over her body, and there’s a harsh sourness in her mouth: she wants to vomit.
“I didn’t want you to get involved in any of this,” he says finally. “You haven’t seen me, but I’ve been around since you were a little girl, from before Rono was born. But you stepped forward and entered this world, and now you’re a part of it whether you like it or not.”
“I barely know Zaria.”
“Tell that to her enemies in the government when they find out who her, what is it, Reality Controller was before they left. No, you’re involved now. You chose to be. So now you need Laxmi exactly where she is. It is best for everyone. This isn’t a threat, I mean it. I guarantee your family’s safety with my life. We owe you everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t even know? That’s Avikda for you. Where do I start? If he hadn’t paid for a top-class hospital, private, my son would have died at birth. He wouldn’t even take money when I had it, later. Thanks to your mother, I knew where to send my children to school. They’re in Estonia now, studying, enjoying. They will have lives so good, I cannot even imagine.”
There are tears in his eyes, and Joey can’t speak for a few moments.
“Why don’t you go too, with Laxmi?” she asks. “You seem like you could find a way.”
He blinks and shrugs. “I like to think I have the courage to stay,” he says. “Things have to change here, and if all the good people leave, who will do the work? Don’t ask me this question. You stayed too.”
A bomb goes off nearby, and the building shakes: she’d forgotten there was a riot in progress just a few feet away. She panics at once, but Raja seems unperturbed.
“My people are not in this fight,” he says. “They’ll come back later, to open the shops.”
She recovers her breath, and notices a row of pictures in the darkest corner, now askew: Ambedkar. Gandhi. King. Phule. She catches herself wondering if his heroes are already a bit old-fashioned, and curses her ever-present inner trendspotter. He watches her looking at his collection, and looks somewhat abashed.
“I need to know so much more,” she says. “What are Zaria and Rudra doing? Do they work for you? Are you the King of Nehru Place?”
“There is no King in Nehru Place,” he says. “I’m not allowed to say more about their plans, but they’re going out into dangerous places to look for difficult answers. They don’t work for me at all—but we have common interests and beliefs, enough for us to help them.”
“How dangerous?”
“If they fail, they’ll die. Even if they succeed, people might not be ready to hear the truths they find. But they are doing what they feel they must. And whether they succeed or fail, we will learn much we do not know.”
“I don’t like this. Zaria knows what she’s doing, but Rudra? This isn’t right.”
“It is not in your hands. Or mine. They have heard the call, and they have to answer. If I had my way, I wouldn’t want you anywhere near Cyber Bazaar. But here you are. There was no other way that would keep them safe.”
The boys interrupt, with a tray bearing Joey’s phone, and another one laden with food, and a small plastic table which they set up with cheerful efficiency. Metal plates and glasses, huge mounds of rice, and bowls of pale yellow dal, crisp fried bhindi, and a thin chicken curry: the closest thing to home-cooked food Joey’s seen all week. The boys’ names are Kusu and Rocky, and after setting the table they hover near the door, looking at each other slyly, both silently daring the other to speak.
“What is it?” Joey asks.
“Didi, are you the pink girl? Gin the traitor?” Rocky asks. Raja yells at them and they run off, howling with laughter.
The background score of muffled screams and gunshots is not ideal, but the food is delicious, and Joey and Raja eat in silence. Joey’s surprised to find she can eat at all, but there’s something calming about the sight of Raja shovelling kilos of food into his face as if these were the most normal circumstances possible for a simple meal. When the food is done, Kusu appears to clear the table, managing not to smirk or look at Joey under Raja’s fierce gaze. Raja keeps checking his phone, but it’s stubbornly silent: to ease the tension, Joey decides to draw his story out of him. He’s hesitant at first, but grows comfortable once he realises it’s not an interrogation, and soon he’s telling her far more than he should.
Raja grew up in Madhupur, a cybercrime hub in Jharkhand, and learnt his skills from jobless engineers in dusty cybercafés. He met Laxmi in Calcutta, when he’d been sent there to run a small gang of sim-duplicators: he’d fallen in love with her data while picking her digital pocket, and she’d still not tired of reminding him about this. They’d run away to Delhi together to escape a local politician his gang had hacked, who’d set fire to Laxmi’s entire neighbourhood. That was twenty years ago. They were seventeen.
