by Ian McDonald
With what remained from his money when he had divided it between his mother and father and put some away in the credit union for Priya, Sanjeev went down to Tea Lane and stuck down the deposit and first payment on a pair of big metally leathery black and red and flame-pattern boots. He wore them proudly to work the next day, stuck out beside the driver of the phatphat so everyone could see them, and paid the owner of the Bata Boot and Shoe store assiduously every Friday. At the end of twelve weeks they were Sanjeev’s entirely. In that time he had also bought the Ts, the fake-latex pants (real latex hot hot far too hot and sweaty for Varanasi, baba), the Kali bangles and necklaces, the hair gel and the eye kohl but the boots first, the boots before all. Boots make the robotwallah.
‘Do you fancy a go?’
It was one of those questions so simple and unexpected that Sanjeev’s brain rolled straight over it and it was only when he was gathering up the fast-food wrappers (messy messy boys) that it crept up and hit him over the head.
‘What, you mean, that?’ A nod of the head toward the harnesses hanging like flayed hides from the feedback rig.
‘If you want; there’s not much on.’
There hadn’t been much on for the better part of a month. The last excitement had been when some cracker in a similar go-down in Delhi had broken through the Kali Cav’s aeai firewall with a spike of burnware. Big Baba had suddenly leaped up in his rig like a million billion volts had just shot through (which, Sanjeev discovered later, it kind of had) and next thing the biocontrol interlocks had blown (indoor fireworks, woo) and he was kicking on the floor like epilepsy. Sanjeev had been first to the red button and a crash team had whisked him to the rich people’s private hospital. The aeais had evolved a patch against the new burnware by the time Sanjeev went to get the lunch tins from the dhabawallah and Big Baba was back on his corner of the sofa within three days suffering nothing more than a lingering migraine. Jemadar-woman sent a get well e-card.
So it was with excitement and wariness that Sanjeev let Rai help him into the rig. He knew all the snaps and grips, he had tightened the straps and pulled snug the motion sensors a hundred times, but Rai doing it made it special, made Sanjeev a robotwallah.
‘You might find this a little freaky,’ Rai said as he settled the helmet over Sanjeev’s head. For an instant it was black-out, deafness as the phonobuds sought out his eardrums. ‘They’re working on this new thing, some kind of bone induction thing so they can send the pictures and sounds straight into your brain,’ he heard Rai’s voice say on the com. ‘But I don’t think we’ll get it in time. Now, just stand there and don’t shoot anything.’
The warning was still echoing in Sanjeev’s inner ear as he blinked and found himself standing outside a school compound in a village so like Ahraura that he instinctively looked for Mrs Mawji and Shree the holy red calf. Then he saw that the school was deserted, its roof gone, replaced with military camouflage sheeting. The walls were pocked with bullets down to the brickwork. Siva and Krishna with his flute had been hastily painted on the intact mud plaster, and the words, 13th Mechanised Sowar: Section Headquarters. There were men in smart, tightly belted uniforms with moustaches and bamboo lathis. Women with brass water pots and men on bicycles passed the open gate. By stretching Sanjeev found he could elevate his sensory rig to crane over the wall. A village, an Ahraura, but too poor to even avoid war. On his left a robot stood under a dusty neem tree. I must be one of those, Sanjeev thought; a General Dynamics A8330 Syce; a mean, skeletal desert-rat of a thing on two vicious clawed feet, a heavy sensory crown and two gatling arms - fully interchangeable with gas shells or slime guns for policing work, he remembered from War Mechas October 2023 edition.
Sanjeev glanced down at his own feet. Icons opened across his field of vision like blossoming flowers: location elevation temperature, ammunition load-out, the level of methane in his fuel tanks, tactical and strategic satmaps - he seemed to be in south-west Bihar - but what fascinated Sanjeev was that if he formed a mental picture of lifting his Sanjeev-foot, his Syce-claw would lift from the dust.
Go on try it it’s a quiet day you’re on sentry duty in some cow-shit Bihar village.
Forward, he willed. The bot took one step, two. Walk, Sanjeev commanded. There. The robot walked jauntily toward the gate. No one in the street of shattered houses looked twice as he stepped among them. This is great! Sanjeev thought as he strolled down the street, then, This is like a game. Doubt then: So how do I even know this war is happening? A step too far; the Syce froze a hundred metres from the Ganesh temple, turned and headed back to its sentry post. What what what what what? he yelled in his head.
‘The onboard aeai took over,’ Rai said, his voice startling as a firecracker inside his helmet. Then the village went black and silent and Sanjeev was blinking in the ugly low-energy neons of the Kali Cavalry battle room, Rai gently unfastening the clips and snaps and strappings.
That evening, as he went home through the rush of people with his fist of rupees, Sanjeev realised two things; that most of war was boring, and that this boring war was over.
~ * ~
The war was over. The jemadar visited the video-silk wall three times, twice, once a week where in the heat and glory she would have given orders that many times a day. The Kali Cav lolled around on their sofas playing games, lying to their online fans about the cool exciting sexy things they were doing, though the fans never believed they ever really were robotwallahs, but mostly doing battle-drug combos that left them fidgety and aggressive. Fights flared over a cigarette, a look, how a door was closed or left open. Sanjeev threw himself into the middle of a dozen robotwallah wars. But when the American peacekeepers arrived Sanjeev knew it truly was over because they only came in when there was absolutely no chance any of them would get killed. There was a flurry of car-bombings and I-war attacks and even a few suicide blasts but everyone knew that that was just everyone who had a grudge against America and Americans in sacred Bharat. No, the war was over.
‘What will you do?’ Sanjeev’s father asked, meaning, What will I do when Umbrella Street becomes just another Asian ginza?
‘I’ve saved some money,’ Sanjeev said.
With the money he had saved, Godspeed! had bought a robot. It was a Tata Industries D55, a small but nimble anti-personnel bot with detachable free-roaming sub-mechas, Level 0.8s, about as smart as a chicken, which they resembled. Even second-hand it must have cost much more than a teenage robotwallah heavily consuming games, online time, porn and Sanjeev’s dad’s kofta pizza could ever save. ‘I got backers,’ Godspeed! said. ‘Funding. Hey, what do you think of this? I’m getting her pimped, this is the skin-job.’ When the paint dried the robot would be road-freighted up to Varanasi.
‘But what are you going to do with it?’ Sanjeev asked.
‘Private security. They’re always going to need security drones.’
Tidying the tiny living room that night for his mother’s nine o’clock lesson, opening the windows to let out the smell of hot ghee though the stink of the street was little better, Sanjeev heard a new chord in the ceaseless song of Umbrella Street. He threw open the window shutters in time to see an object, close, fast as a dashing bird, dart past his face, swing along the powerline and down the festooned pylon. Glint of anodised alu-plastic: a boy raised on Battlebots Top Trumps could not fail to recognise a Tata surveillance mecha. Now the commotion at the end of the Umbrella Street became clear: the hunched back of a battlebot was pushing between the cycle rickshaws and phatphats. Even before he could fully make out the customised god-demons of Mountain Buddhism on its carapace, Sanjeev knew the machine’s make and model and who was flying it.
A badmash on an alco moto rode slowly in front of the ponderously stepping machine, relishing the way the street opened in front of him and the electric scent of heavy firepower at his back. Sanjeev saw the mech step up and squat down on its hydraulics before Jagmohan’s greasy little pakora stand. The badmash skidded his moped to a stand and pushed up his shades.<
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They will always need security drones.
Sanjeev rattled down the many many flights of stairs of the patriotically-renamed Diljit Rana Apartments, yelling and pushing and beating at the women and young men in very white shirts. The robot had already taken up its position in front of his father’s big clay pizza oven. The carapace unfolded like insect wings into weapon mounts. Badmash was all teeth and grin in the anticipation of another commission. Sanjeev dashed between his father and the prying, insect sensory rig of the robot. Red demons and Sivas with fiery tridents looked down on him.
‘Leave him alone, this is my dad, leave him be.’
It seemed to Sanjeev that the whole of Umbrella Street, every vehicle upon it, every balcony and window that overlooked it, stopped to watch. With a whir the weapon pods retracted, the carapace clicked shut. The battle machine reared up on its legs as the surveillance drones came skittering between people’s legs and over counter-tops, scurried up the machine and took their places on its shell mounts, like egrets on the back of a buffalo. Sanjeev stared the badmash down. He sneered, snapped down his cool sexy dangerous shades and spun his moped away.
Two hours later, when all was safe and secure, a Peacekeeper unit had passed up the street asking for information. Sanjeev shook his head and sucked on his asthma inhalers.
‘Some machine, like.’
Suni left the go-down. No word no note no clue, his family had called and called and called but no one knew. There had always been rumours of a man with money and prospects, who liked the robotwallah thing, but you do not tell those sorts of stories to mothers. Not at first asking. A week passed without the jemadar calling. It was over. So over. Rai had taken to squatting outside, squinting up through his cool sexy dangerous shades at the sun, watching for its burn on his pale arms, chainsmoking street-rolled bidis.
‘Sanj.’ He smoked the cheap cigarette down to his gloved fingers and ground the stub out beneath the steel heel of his boot. ‘When it happens, when we can’t use you any more, have you something sorted? I was thinking, maybe you and I could do something together, go somewhere. Just have it like it was, just us. An idea, that’s all.’
The message came at three a.m. I’m outside. Sanjeev tiptoed around the sleeping bodies to open the window. Umbrella Street was still busy, Umbrella Street had not slept for a thousand years. The big black Kali Cav hummer was like a funeral moving through the late night people of the new Varanasi. The door locks made too much noise so Sanjeev exited through the window, climbing down the pipes like a Raytheon Double- eight thousand I-war infiltration bot. In Ahraura he would never have been able to do that.
‘You drive,’ Rai said. From the moment the message came through, Sanjeev had known it would be him, and him alone.
‘I can’t drive.’
‘It drives itself. All you have to do it steer. It’s not that different from the game. Swap over there.’
Steering wheel pedal drive windshield display all suddenly looked very big to Sanjeev in the driver’s seat. He touched his foot to the gas. Engines answered, the hummer rolled, Umbrella Street parted before him. He steered around a wandering cow.
‘Where do you want me to go?’
‘Somewhere, away. Out of Varanasi. Somewhere no one else would go.’ Rai bounced and fidgeted on the passenger seat. His hands were busy busy, his eyes were huge. He had done a lot of battle drugs. ‘They sent them back to school, man. To school, can you imagine that? Big Baba and Ravana. Said they needed real-world skills. I’m not going back, not never. Look!’
Sanjeev dared a glance at the treasure in Rai’s palm: a curl of sculpted translucent pink plastic. Sanjeev thought of aborted goat foetuses, and the sex toys the girls had used in their favourite pornos. Rai tossed his head to sweep back his long, gelled hair and slid the device behind his ear. Sanjeev thought he saw something move against Rai’s skin, seeking.
‘I saved it all up and bought it. Remember, I said? It’s new, no one else has one. All that gear, that’s old, you can do everything with this, just in your head, in the pictures and words in your head.’ He gave a stoned grin and moved his hands in a dancer’s mudra. ‘There.’
‘What?’
‘You’ll see.’
The hummer was easy to drive: the in-car aeai had a flocking reflex that enabled it to navigate Varanasi’s ever-swelling morning traffic, leaving little for Sanjeev to do other than blare the triple horns, which he enjoyed a lot. Somewhere he knew he should be afraid, should feel guilty at stealing away in the night without word or note, should say stop, whatever it is you are doing, it can come to nothing, it’s just silliness, the war is over and we must think properly about what to do next. But the brass sun was rising above the glass towers and spilling into the streets and men in sharp white shirts and women in smart saris were going busy to their work, and he was free, driving a big smug car through them all and it was so good, even if just for a day.
He took the new bridge at Ramnagar, hooting in derision at the gaudy, lumbering trucks. The drivers blared back, shouting vile curses at the girli-looking robotwallahs. Off A roads on to B roads, then to tracks and then bare dirt, the dust flying up behind the hummer’s fat wheels. Rai itched in the passenger seat, grinning away to himself and moving his hands like butterflies, muttering small words and occasionally leaning out of the window. His gelled hair was stiff with dust.
‘What are you looking for?’ Sanjeev demanded.
‘It’s coming,’ Rai said, bouncing on his seat. ‘Then we can go and do whatever we like.’
From the word drive, Sanjeev had known where he must go. Satnav and aeai did his remembering for him but he still knew every turn and side road. Vora’s Wood there, still stunted and grey; the ridge between the river and the fields from which all the men of the village had watched the battle and he had fallen in love with the robots. The robots had always been pure, had always been true. It was the boys who flew them who hurt and failed and disappointed. The fields were all dust, drifted and heaped against the lines of thorn fence. Nothing would grow here for a generation. The mud walls of the houses were crumbling, the school a roofless shell, the temple and tanks clogged with windblown dust. Dust, all dust. Bones cracked and went to powder beneath his all-wheeli drive. A few too desperate even for Varanasi were trying to scratch an existence in the ruins. Sanjeev saw wire-thin men and tired women, dust-smeared children crouched in front of their brick-and-plastic shelters. The poison deep within Ahraura would defeat them in the end.
Sanjeev brought the hummer to a halt on the ridge top. The light was yellow, the heat appalling. Rai stepped out to survey the terrain.
‘What a shit-hole.’
Sanjeev sat in the shade of the rear cabin watching Rai pace up and down, up and down, kicking up the dust of Ahraura with his big Desi-metal boots. You didn’t stop them, did you? Sanjeev thought. You didn’t save us from the Plaguewalkers. Rai suddenly leaped and punched the air.
‘There, there, look!’
A storm of dust moved across the dead land. The high sun caught glints and gleams at its heart. Moving against the wind, the tornado bore down on Ahraura.
The robot came to a halt at the foot of the ridge where Sanjeev and Rai stood waiting. A Raytheon ACR, a heavy line-of-battle bot, it out-topped them by some metres. The wind carried away its cloak of dust. It stood silent, potential, heat shimmering from its armour. Sanjeev had never seen a thing so beautiful.
Rai raised his hand. The bot spun on its steel hooves. More guns than Sanjeev had ever seen in his life unfolded from its carapace. Rai clapped his hands and the bot opened up with all its armaments on Vora’s Wood. Gatlings sent dry dead silvery wood flying up into powder, missiles streaked from its back-silos; the line of the wood erupted in a wall of flame. Rai separated his hands and the roar of sustained fire ceased.
‘I got it all in here, everything that the old gear had, in here. Sanj, everyone will want us, we can go wherever we want, we can do whatever we want, we can be real anime heroes.’
‘You stole it.’
‘I had all the protocols. That’s the system.’
‘You stole that robot.’
Rai balled his fists, shook his head in exasperation.
‘Sanj, it was always mine.’
He opened his clenched fist. And the robot danced. Arms, feet, all the steps and the moves, the bends and head-nods, a proper Bollywood item-song dance. The dust flew up around the battle-bot’s feet. Sanjeev could feel the eyes of the squatters, wide and terrified in their hovels. I am sorry we scared you.
Rai brought the dance to an end.
‘Anything I want, Sanj. Are you coming with us?’
Sanjeev’s answer never came, for a sudden, shattering roar of engines and jet-blast from the river side of the ridge sent them reeling and choking in the swirling dust. Sanjeev fought out his inhalers: two puffs blue one puff brown and by the time they had worked their sweet way down into his lungs a tilt-jet with the Bharati air force’s green white and orange roundels on its engine pods stood on the settling dust. The cargo ramp lowered, a woman in dust-war camou and a mirror-visored helmet came up the ridge toward them.
