Cyberabad Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

shimmering from its armor. 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.
         "It's 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 camo and a mirror-visored helmet came up the ridge towards them.
         With a wordless shriek, Rai slashed his hand through the air like a sword. The 'bot crouched and its carapace slid open in a dozen places, extruding weapons. Without breaking her purposeful stride the woman lifted her left hand. The weapons retracted, the hull ports closed, the war machine staggered as if confused, and then sat down heavily in the dead field, head sagging, hands trailing in the dust. The woman removed her helmet. The cameras made the jemadar look five kilos heavier, but she had big hips. She tucked her helmet under her left arm, with her right swept back her hair to show the control unit coiled behind her ear.
         "Come on now, Rai. It's over. Come on, we'll go back. Don't make a fuss. There's not really anything you can do. We all have to think what to do next, you know? We'll take you back in the plane, you'll like that." She looked Sanjeev up and down. "I suppose you could take the car back. Someone has to and it'll be cheaper than sending someone down from Divisional, it's cost enough already. I'll retask the aeai. And then we have to get that thing . . ." She shook her head, then beckoned to Rai. He went like a calf, quiet and meek, down to the tilt-jet. Black hopping crows settled on the robot, trying its crevices with their curious shiny-hungry beaks.
         The Hummer ran out of gas twenty kays from Ramnagar. Sanjeev hitched home to Varanasi. The army never collected it, and as the new peace built, the local people took it away bit by bit.
         With his war dividend Sanjeev bought a little alco-buggy and added a delivery service to his father's pizza business, specializing in the gap-year hostels that blossomed after the peacekeepers left. He wore a polo shirt with a logo and a baseball cap and got a sensible haircut. He could not bring himself to sell his robotwallah gear, but it was a long time before he could look at it in the box without feeling embarrassed. The business grew fast and fat.
         He often saw Rai down at the ghats or around the old town. They worked the same crowd: Rai dealt Nepalese ganja to tourists. Robotwallah