River of Gods by Ian McDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

Coon with
Upper Palaeolithic dentistry and manners to match. They enjoyed a
brief star-pet celebrity until their owners found them taking out
their and their neighbours' cats, dogs, Guatemalan domestics, babies.
The engineering company filed for bankruptcy before the writs took to
the air, but the patent had already been massively infringed in the
battle clubs of Manila and Shanghai and Bangkok.
    Najia watches an athletic girl in cropped muscle top and parachute
baggies parade her champion head-high around the ring. The cat is a
big silver tabby, built like a strike aircraft.
    Killing genes, gorgeous monster. Its fangs are sheathed in leather
scabbards. Najia sees the girl's pride and love, the crowd's roaring
admiration redirected on to her. The barker retires to his commentary
podium. The bookies issue a rush of slips. The competitors slide back
into their boxes.
    Muscle-top girl jabs a needle of stimulant into her cat while her
male colleague waves a bottle of poppers under its nose. They hold
their hero. They hold their breaths. Their opponents drug up their
contender, a low lean black microsabre, mean as midnight. There is
absolute silence in the arena. The barker gives a blast on his air
horn. The combatants let slip the leather guards and throw their
battle cats into the pit.
    The crowd rises in one voice and one blood. Najia Askarzadah howls
and raves with them. All Najia Askarzadah knows is two fighting cats
leaping and slashing at each other down in the pit as the blood
surges in her eyes and ears.
    It's terrifyingly fast and bloody. Within seconds the beautiful
silver tabby has one leg hanging from a rope of gristle and skin.
Blood jets from the open wound, but it screams defiance at its enemy,
tries to dodge and dart on the flapping triangle of meat; slashing
with its terrible, killing teeth. Finally it's down and spinning
spastically on its back, ploughing up a wave of bloody sand. The
victors have already hooked their champion with a neck loop and are
wrestling the furious, shrieking thing towards the pen. The silver
tabby wails and wails until someone from the judge's pew walks over
and drops a concrete breeze-block on its head.
    Muscle-top girl stands staring sullenly as the mashed, twitching
thing is shovelled away. She bites her bottom lip. Najia loves her
then, loves the boy whose glance she caught, loves everyone,
everything in this wooden arena. Her heart is quivering, her breath
burning, her fists clenched and trembling, her pupils dilated, and
her brain blazing. She is eight hundred percent alive and holy. Again
she makes eye contact with Obvious Hood. He nods but she can see he
has had a heavy loss.
    The victors step into the ring to receive the adulation of the crowd.
The barker screams into the sound system and on the bookies' bench
hands push money money money. This is what you came to Bharat for,
Najia Askarzadah, she tells herself. To feel this way about life,
about death, about illusion and reality. To have something burn
through bloody reasonable, sane, tolerant Sweden. To taste the insane
and raw. Her nipples are hard. She knows she's damp. This war, this
war for water, this war that she denies brought her here, this war
that everyone fears will come. She doesn't fear it. She wants that
war. She wants it very much.

5: LISA
    Four hundred and fifty kilometres above Western Ecuador, Lisa Durnau
runs through a herd of bobbets. They scatter from her, hiking up on
their powerful legs and hoofing it, semaphore crests raised. The
canopy forest echoes their warbling alarms. The young look up from
their grazing, forelegs pawing at air in dread, then shrill and dive
for their parents' pouches. The waist-high sauro-marsupials peel away
from Lisa in her running tights and top and shoes in two wings of
fright, hatchlings trying desperately to stuff themselves headfirst
into belly flaps. They're one of Biome 161's most successful species.
The forests of Simulated Year Eight Million Before Present throb
black