Martin had begun shaving his head three weeks before it was necessary, to give Javeed time to grow used to his altered appearance before he was confronted with the more significant change: the change in their routine. He’d been expecting a tantrum when he broke the news, so he chose the time and place carefully: at home, the day before their next visit to Zendegi, having just made their choices on the website.
‘But I want to go to the shop!’ Javeed screamed.
‘Sssh. We’ll still go to the shop, straight afterwards. You can still talk to Uncle Omar and Farshid.’
‘But that’s stupid!’
It was a fair complaint. If they were going to Omar’s shop anyway, why not use the ghal’eha there?
‘Aunty Nasim has a special kind of ghal’e that’s easier for me to use, easier on my back. So she very kindly said that we could use that.’
‘I hate her!’ Javeed proclaimed.
‘No, you don’t,’ Martin said flatly. ‘You hardly know her. Anyway, you don’t even have to talk to her. We’ll go there, we’ll use the ghal’eha, then we’ll go to the shop. Okay?’
‘No! I want to do it the proper way!’ Javeed’s face contorted in anguish.
‘Well, you have a choice: we can go to Aunty Nasim for Zendegi, then visit Uncle Omar in the shop, or we can just stay home and you can play for an hour on your console instead.’
Javeed’s face became a shade redder. ‘That’s not fair!’
‘That’s the choice. Now do you want to help me cook dinner?’
‘No – I’ll help you throw it in the toilet where it belongs!’
Martin forced himself not to smile. ‘Shaitan nasho. And if you don’t like my cooking, that’s all the more reason to help.’
Javeed sat and wept as if the world were ending, but Martin hardened his heart. Javeed was too stubborn to reconcile himself to the new plan immediately, but while part of his insecurity obviously stemmed from Mahnoosh’s death, Martin had no intention of letting that become a reason to indulge him on everything.
Within an hour, the tantrum had cooled into a long sulk. Javeed was not quite stubborn enough to start throwing food or breaking things and risk losing Zendegi completely.
After school the next day, they caught the bus to the small office block north of the city centre that housed Zendegi’s operations. Apparently most of the actual computers were elsewhere, scattered around the globe and leased as required. Nasim was waiting for them in the lobby; Javeed was aloof rather than downright rude to her, and Martin suspected that he just came across as shy.
On the fifth floor, Martin explained to Javeed, ‘My ghal’e is a special kind, like I told you, so I’ll be in a room close by, but not right next to you.’ He tensed, prepared for an outburst, but Javeed just gave him a dissatisfied glare. When they reached the end of the corridor Bahador met them; he introduced himself to Javeed by waving a child-sized football jersey prominently signed by Ashkan Azimi. ‘Agha Ashkan told me I should give this to a friend of mine, but I don’t know anyone in quite the right size.’ Javeed’s eyes lit up with delight. He knew he was being bribed into compliance, but yesterday’s complaints suddenly seemed petty.
Martin squatted down and kissed him. ‘Be good, pesaram. I’ll see you in Zendegi.’
Nasim led Martin to the MRI room. The scanner was far more compact than the older model in the hospital’s radiology department – a machine that Martin had come to know all too well – but Bernard, the Swiss technician who operated Zendegi’s version, had assured Martin that the magnetic field was an order of magnitude stronger. Martin had come in on three mornings the previous week to learn how to control his icon while lying flat on his back with his head immobilised in a padded helmet.
He took out his wallet and removed his watch, his wedding ring, his belt and his shoes. He was wearing clothes that had been pre-checked and certified metal-free to save him from having to change for the scanner, but Bernard ran a detector over him quickly to be sure.
Nasim fitted the skullcap that would be used to take EEG recordings simultaneously with the multi-mode MRI; Martin sat beneath a UV light and watched in a mirror as the semi-permanent tattoos they’d given him revealed themselves with green fluorescence, to aid in the alignment of the cap. In order to limit interactions with the MRI’s magnetic field and radio pulses, the skullcap’s ‘circuitry’ was purely optical, reading the electric field leaking out of his brain by observing its effect on tiny capsules of electrolytes incorporated into the tattoos.
Bernard swabbed Martin’s arm with disinfectant and injected him with a mixture of contrast agents that had been magnetically polarised overnight in a special-purpose machine. You could image brain activity to a certain extent just by watching haemoglobin in the blood losing its oxygen to hungry neurons, and that was one signal they’d be looking for. But there were a dozen other processes that could be monitored simultaneously with modern machines – making the image sharper, more responsive and more informative – and extra chemicals with enhanced magnetic properties were needed to render those processes visible. Bernard had sketched the details, but Martin had had too much else on his mind to take it in. It was sufficient to know that they were pulling out all the stops to gather as much information as possible.
Nasim passed him a pair of gloves and he slipped them on, then she helped him with his goggles; all of this equipment had been specially built for use in and around the scanner. He walked over to the MRI, lay down and wriggled around to try to find a reasonably comfortable position that allowed his head to sit in the custom-moulded restraint.
‘Everything okay?’ Nasim asked.
‘Yes, thanks.’ Martin’s stomach was clenched with anxiety, but he’d already asked all the questions he could think of the week before. Nasim had assured him that there was nothing he could do that would corrupt the side-loading process; even if he thrashed about and spoiled the scan, they’d just discard the bad data. There was no risk of it being used inadvertently and turning the Proxy’s brain to mush.
‘What if I have homicidal thoughts about my son?’ he’d asked after one of the training runs. He’d been half- joking, but it had probably focused Nasim’s attention more effectively than if he’d merely waffled on about his fear of exhibiting impatience or irritability.
‘Does that happen often?’ she’d inquired.
‘No – but have you ever tried not to think of a pink elephant? Under threat of putting your only child in the hands of your evil clone?’
‘Calm down, Dr Jekyll. If you have any prolonged negative thoughts, let us know and we’ll throw out the whole session. But if they’re fleeting, I wouldn’t worry. This machine isn’t capable of churning out a second-by-second transcript of everything that passes through your mind; at best, we’ll be able to discern your most persistent thought patterns and associations and train the Proxy to share them. But we’ll be working hard to get enough information to do that. Brief mental tics will be right off the radar.’
Nasim flipped the goggles’ screens down, whiting out Martin’s vision. The top of the cage she fitted over his head included a camera that would monitor his facial expression, just as it would be monitored in an ordinary ghal’e. He heard the servo motor sliding him into place inside the scanner. He was free to move his hands, but if he tried to raise them above shoulder-height he’d get a swift reminder of his actual circumstances.
‘Are you ready for Zendegi?’ she asked.
Martin said, ‘Yes.’
Vivid blue sky. Yellow mud-brick buildings. Women in richly patterned scarves bustling past. Martin felt a tap on his hand. Javeed asked impatiently, ‘Baba, what’s wrong?’
Martin finally gained control of his gaze and managed to turn his icon’s head towards his son’s voice without struggling against his restraints. ‘Sorry, I was just getting used to my ghal’e.’ He looked around. ‘So this is Old Kabul!’ No time to make an entrance from the city’s outskirts; they’d been inserted straight onto a busy street. A small boy leading a donkey loaded with gourds squeezed past them; he grinned at Javeed and greeted him with ‘Salaam aleikum.’ No doubt the phrase was wildly anachronistic, since they were meant to be in the pre-Islamic era, but Martin wasn’t here to nitpick. They weren’t planning to be too faithful to Ferdowsi, let alone historical fact.
‘We need to get to Zal!’ Javeed reminded him.
‘Yeah – so what’s your plan?’
‘They don’t know that the man in the prison is Zal,’ Javeed reasoned, ‘so you should tell them he’s your son. Then they’ll let you see him.’
‘Okay. So we have to find the prison. Who should we ask?’
‘Hmm.’ Javeed didn’t want to entrust a random passer-by with this vital query, so they made their way along the crowded street. People could be heard touting wares from all directions, but the hubbub was not unpleasant; compared to the car horns and motorbike engines of downtown Tehran it was bliss.
Javeed spotted a pomegranate seller. He tapped Martin’s hand and whispered, ‘Buy something first, to make him happy.’
Martin smiled and obliged. He mimed reaching into the money-belt beneath his kameez; he’d remembered to pre-order coins on the website the day before. When he’d bought the fruit he addressed the trader respectfully, ‘Sir, my oldest son has gone missing, and I heard he was arrested this morning due to some misunderstanding. I need to visit him, but I’m a stranger in this city. Can you tell me where I’ll find him?’
The man expressed his sympathy and offered detailed directions. Martin struggled to commit them to memory; he should have ordered a pen and paper along with the coins. But Javeed appeared to have taken it all in; he set off briskly down the street, turning to Martin to urge him to catch up.
‘I told you Afghanis were friendly,’ Martin said, tossing the pomegranate onto the ground. The week before, one of Javeed’s schoolmates had pointed out an Afghani boy in another class and declared that his parents were sure to be murderers and the child himself a shameless thief.
‘That man wasn’t a real person,’ Javeed replied.
‘That’s true,’ Martin conceded. ‘But I’ve been to the real Kabul and met plenty of real people there.’
Javeed scowled impatiently; this wasn’t the time to talk about such things. Martin tried to relax; if he started thinking about all the pernicious nonsense he wanted his Proxy to be prepared to counter, he’d end up hijacking every Zendegi session for community service announcements. He had to trust Nasim to extract the same abilities from subtler cues.
They threaded their way through the crowds, past merchants selling clay pots, okra, lentils, whole butchered sheep. Martin couldn’t fault Javeed’s memory or sense of direction; he showed no signs of confusion or hesitation. In less than five minutes they were outside the prison.
It was an imposing, fortified building. As he pounded on the gate, Martin found himself recalling Evin, and the siege. A man with a thick black beard opened the gate a crack and eyed the callers suspiciously.
Martin repeated the story he’d told the fruit-seller.
‘We have three hundred prisoners,’ the warder replied. ‘How will I know your son?’
Martin assumed that Zal was sticking to an alias; being known as the visiting prince of Zavolestan might have got him released, but it would also have risked sparking a war. ‘His hair is white, like an old man’s. But he’s young, less than half my age.’
‘I know the one,’ the warder replied. ‘He was caught creeping into the palace stables.’
You don’t know the half of it, Martin thought. ‘He was just looking for a place to sleep,’ he said. ‘We’re strangers here, I and my two sons.’ He gestured at Javeed. ‘The boy misses his brother. Can’t you let us see him for a few minutes?’
The warder sniffed viscously, then hawked and spat on the ground. He opened the gate and let them through.
Three buildings with ominous barred windows faced into a central courtyard. The warder led them across muddy ground; Martin found himself skirting the puddles as if his new virtual self, lacking contact with the dry floor of a ghal’e, couldn’t help taking the threat of discomfort more seriously.
It was dim inside the prison building; it took a few seconds for Martin’s eyes to adjust. Two rows of cage-like cells stretched out ahead of them on either side, each containing half-a-dozen grimy inhabitants. There was no furniture at all, just some straw on the ground and a bucket for each cell that Martin was glad he couldn’t smell. In spite of himself, he couldn’t help searching the prisoners’ faces, wondering about their treatment and when they’d be released.
The warder led them towards a cell near the end of the right-hand row. ‘Hey, stable-boy! Your father’s here for a visit!’ A white-haired youth turned, a shocked expression on his face. His real father, Sam, was off fighting a war in Gorgsaran. Out of the warder’s line of sight, Javeed raised a finger to his lips: we won’t give away your secret, so don’t give away ours.
Zal walked over to the edge of his cage. ‘Welcome, Father. Welcome, Little Brother. I’m ashamed that you’re seeing me this way.’
‘I’m sorry it’s come to this,’ Martin said. ‘It’s my fault for not putting a roof over our heads.’
The warder left them. They drew closer to Zal and he asked in a low voice, ‘Who are you? I’m sure you weren’t in my expedition.’
‘We’re simple Persian travellers,’ Martin explained. ‘We heard about your plight and wondered how we could help.’
‘You must keep silent,’ Zal insisted. ‘If Mehrab learns that Sam’s son was inside his palace, visiting my beloved Rudabeh, no good will come of it for anyone.’
‘Do you want us to take a message to your entourage?’ Martin suggested. They were camped on the outskirts of the city. ‘You must have been missed by now.’
Zal shook his head. ‘If my companions learn my fate, it will be hard to restrain them. And if they enter the city and free me, that will make trouble that will not be easily undone.’
Javeed said, ‘Why did you sneak into the palace?’
Zal sighed. ‘Imagine a woman as slender as a cypress tree, with a face more lovely than the full moon.’
‘But couldn’t you just ask her father to let you marry her?’
‘I will! I must!’ Zal replied fervently. ‘But first I need to write to my own father, to persuade him that this match is auspicious. And then my father must find some way to win over the Persian King Manuchehr, to convince him that this alliance will not lead to tragedy. Mehrab is the grandson of Zahhak, the monster who brought death and sorrow to Persia for a thousand years! I cannot condemn Mehrab for his ancestor’s crimes – or in the same breath I would have to renounce my beloved – but nor should I misjudge the struggle I’ll face to gain my father’s approval and Manuchehr’s blessing.’
That Javeed had supposedly derailed Zahhak’s infamous career in an earlier encounter didn’t seem to faze him; if he’d been able to change the whole history of the Shahnameh there’d be no framework for the stories left standing.
‘Then how can we help you?’ Javeed asked.
Zal stood in silence, pondering the question. Then he squatted down to bring his face close to Javeed’s.
‘Tell me, are you a boy who can come and go from a place unseen?’
‘Yes,’ Javeed replied confidently.
‘Are you a boy who can be trusted with the most prized of my possessions?’
‘Yes.’
Zal hesitated, rocking back on his heels nervously. He wiped his nose on his filthy sleeve; his commoner’s disguise was very authentic, to the point where Martin had trouble picturing Rudabeh letting him into her room at all.
Zal made his decision. ‘In my tent outside the city,’ he whispered to Javeed, ‘there is a small bag made of plain brown cloth, with nothing to distinguish it or draw attention to its value. But if you can bring it to me without anyone knowing what you’ve done, I will throw open my treasury to you. You will have emeralds, diadems, five golden thrones, a hundred Arab horses adorned with the finest brocade, fifty elephants-’
‘Elephants!’ Martin saw Javeed’s happy face, captured in Omar’s shop before their first session, rendered at full strength for the first time in months.
‘Listen carefully,’ Zal said. ‘We are camped on the southern bank of the river, a short march east of here. There will be two sentries standing guard, but we are not at war, so they will not be too serious in their task, and they will not be watching the river. Sneak in through the rushes, then make your way through the camp. My tent lies furthest to the south. The brown bag is beside my sleeping mat. Bring that here, and all my hardship will be lifted. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you do this for me?’
‘Yes.’
Zal reached through the bars and grasped his hand. ‘Fortune has favoured me with an ally such as this. God protect you, Little Brother.’
Javeed was silent as they walked back towards the courtyard. Zal had been his hero even before Mahnoosh’s death; Martin was beginning to worry that the whole encounter might have been too intense.
‘What are you thinking, pesaram?’ he asked gently.
‘Can we get an island?’ Javeed replied. ‘To keep the elephants?’
‘Ah. We’ll see.’
The warder let them out through the gate; Martin handed him a coin in the hope that it might make him more amenable upon their return. On the street, Martin found his bearings by the sun; he was assuming it was morning, and when they caught sight of the Kabul River it was on their left, so they were definitely heading in the right direction.
‘See the mountains?’ Martin said.
Javeed looked up across the river at the craggy brown peaks. ‘Yes.’
‘When I came here in real life it was winter, so they were covered in snow. It was beautiful, but the weather was freezing.’
‘That’s when you were a reporter?’
‘Yeah. Twenty years ago.’
‘And there was a war here?’
‘Right. There was war here for more than thirty years.’
Javeed absorbed that in silence, but Martin knew he’d keep turning the revelation over in his head. He remembered more of what Martin told him than Martin remembered himself.
The closely packed houses and shops soon gave way to small fields. The river, usually narrow, was swollen with the summer’s melted snow; as it turned towards the dusty track they were following, Martin spotted a cluster of lavishly decorated tents a few hundred metres ahead. Three horses were visible, tethered to stakes, but there was nobody in sight. Maybe the sentries were having a siesta, but however vulnerable the apparently unguarded camp looked, Martin didn’t want to risk marching straight in rather than following Zal’s advice.
‘That’s the expedition,’ he said.
‘Where are the elephants?’ Javeed asked anxiously.
‘Back in Zavolestan, I expect. Don’t worry, I’m sure Zal will keep his word.’
They turned off the track and headed for the riverbank. As they approached, Martin regarded the thick, reedy vegetation with dismay. That the rushes couldn’t actually scratch their skin raw – or even register as tangible to any part of their body save their hands – offered a certain consolation, but it wouldn’t stop the plants impeding their movement almost as effectively as the real thing.
Martin went first, pushing the springy plants aside with his hands, clearing the way for Javeed to follow close behind him. The plants weren’t quite as tall as he was, so he walked with a crouch to keep himself hidden, grateful that at least his knees were spared the effects of doing that in an ordinary ghal’e. After a while he felt he’d settled into a successful rhythm, and he tried to crank up the speed – but Zendegi was having none of it: the same, only faster didn’t compute. At first he could make no sense of this; he couldn’t believe that the reeds were so heavy or stiff that a faster pace would require superhuman effort. Then he peered down at the mud and saw it adhering to his sandals as he lifted his feet. He couldn’t feel the burning in his calves that might have come from pulling himself free of such sticky ground over and over again, but the bottom line was that Zendegi wouldn’t let him operate his body as if these forces were of no consequence to him.
Perhaps they should have come closer to the camp before taking this arduous detour, but Martin had been paranoid about being spotted, and it probably wouldn’t help if they modified their plans now.
After five minutes Javeed lost patience. ‘You’re too big and noisy!’ he complained. ‘Zal didn’t say for you to come. Let me go by myself!’
Martin did not like the sound of that, but when he looked across the dispiriting expanse of marshland that still lay ahead of them, he finally noticed the fine network of gaps that a smaller body could slip through. Every third step he took was accompanied by the sound of reeds springing back into place, but with a little bending and swaying of his own Javeed could simply pass between them, almost in silence. Being lighter, he sank less deeply into the mud. And once he reached the camp his size was sure to offer similar advantages.
‘All right,’ Martin declared reluctantly. ‘Just remember-’
‘If I’m scared, thumbs-down,’ Javeed replied. ‘Don’t worry, Baba, I’ll be okay.’
Martin turned aside and let him dart ahead. Within half a minute he’d vanished from sight.
Standing alone in the mud, Martin struggled to keep his thoughts from turning self-consciously to the Proxy. It was as if the invisible apprentice who’d been peering over his shoulder all this time, silently observing everything he did, now deserved some form of acknowledgement – and a concise lecture on some fine points of parenting to supplement all this long-winded teaching by example. But that wasn’t how it worked. And since all the Proxy could do was mimic Martin’s thoughts – not receive them, like telepathic messages – the very last thing it needed was reflections on its own creation that might risk transforming its mind into a hall of mirrors.
The proper subject for contemplation was Javeed, the proper mood a celebration of the fact that they could still spend time together. But in the life Martin had once imagined for them this journey would have been a mere rehearsal, whetting their appetite for the real thing. It was hard to swallow the claustrophobic vision of his health declining to the point where they could rule out actually travelling anywhere: not Afghanistan, not Australia, not even the ruins of Persepolis with the other tourists. Just Zendegi, over and over again – with his body laid out flat, as if he were already in the morgue.
He cut off that line of thought and tried to focus on his memories of the real Kabul. He pictured the crowded city of twenty years before; thousands of refugees expelled from Pakistan and Iran had found their villages too dangerous to return to, and had ended up living in bombed-out buildings in the capital, trying to survive the winters with broken roofs and the only fuel whatever dead trees could be found in the city’s parks. He’d met one family – Ali and Zahra and their four young children – not too far from the bend in the river where Zal’s imaginary party was camped. When Javeed was a little older he would need to hear their story, to hear who’d survived that winter and who hadn’t.
Insects hovered over the mud. The sun was almost directly above now; Javeed was taking too long to return. Martin’s thoughts snagged on a complication: the Proxy needed to be ready to make the right judgement, not only for the six-year-old Javeed, but also for the ten-, the twelve-, the fifteen-year-old – for however long it continued to be invoked. It would have no power to form long-term memories, or be shaped by its experience of watching him grow up; it had to work out-of-the-box with Javeed at any age. The last thing Martin wanted it to do was to treat his teenage son like an infant.
And he was supposed to prepare for that… how? By mentally prefacing every action with a conscious acknowledgement that it might not be appropriate at some time in the future? Well, he’d just done that. Back in the here and now, Javeed was a small child, and he’d either got lost or been caught. That he hadn’t pulled the plug on the whole simulation meant almost nothing – least of all that he didn’t need help.
Martin pushed through the rushes as fast as he could. It was only when he drew close to the camp that he attempted a degree of stealth; he was prepared to risk detection, but so long as they remained in Zendegi he wouldn’t lightly throw away any chance they still had to succeed.
He crawled the last few metres on his knees and elbows; easier than in real life, maybe, but the concentration it took to manipulate his icon through the reeds felt almost as draining as any physical task. Charmingly, the game’s designers hadn’t failed to allow Zal’s party a place where they could feed fertiliser to the river’s algae: a tent had been set up backing onto the reeds, and it was sheer luck that Martin spotted it in time to avoid getting too close to its output plume. He crawled up beside the tent, then rose into a squat, partly sheltered as he peered into the camp.
Just out of sight, a man spoke, his voice at the edge of patience as if he’d been repeating the same question for a while. ‘Are you a spy, or a thief? Which one is it?’
‘No!’ came Javeed’s plaintive reply. ‘I just wanted a job to feed the elephants.’
Another man laughed. ‘Do you see any elephants?’
‘No, but you could take me to Lavosestan.’
‘Where?’
The first man said, ‘He’s a crazy little thief. Do you know what we do to thieves who don’t tell the truth?’
‘I’m not a thief!’ Javeed retorted. ‘I’d never take anything – unless someone told me to.’
‘Really? So what were you planning to take? And who is your master who told you to take it?’
‘No one!’ Javeed insisted. ‘I just wanted to see the elephants.’
Martin forced himself to keep some perspective. Javeed wasn’t having an easy time with his captors, but he didn’t sound desperate yet. His priorities were not hard to guess: an attempted rescue that blew their whole mission would not be acceptable.
Martin crept into the camp, steering clear of the interrogators, hoping he hadn’t become disoriented and really was heading south. He wasn’t sure why there were so few people around; maybe they’d already sent a search party into the city, looking for Zal after he’d failed to return from his latest night of passion. The whole arrest scenario had been cooked up last weekend by the game’s software; the original story of Zal and Rudabeh had been a mixture of politics, family obligations and romantic swooning, loaded with proto-Shakespearean possibilities, but of limited interest to a six-year-old.
Helpfully, Zal’s tent was distinctly more ornate than the others; Martin could have sworn there was real gold thread in the design, or at least… whatever. A reddish-brown stallion was tied up right by the entrance; it regarded Martin irritably, and as he tried to squeeze past it, it began to neigh. Martin put a hand on its flank. ‘Sssh. Stay cool, buddy, and you might get to play Rakhsh in the sequel.’ That promise seemed to do the trick, or maybe it had caught a trace of its master’s scent on the intruder and deduced that Martin was here with Zal’s blessing.
He ducked into the tent. The silk brocade and khatam knickknacks were almost enough to blind a non-princely eye, but Martin scrabbled around beside the sleeping mat until the plain brown bag materialised from the clutter as a kind of absence of decoration that refused to go away. It was about the size of his hand, sealed with a knotted drawstring; it made no sound when Martin shook it, and when he squeezed it gently he felt nothing but a slight rearrangement of its contents beneath the material. Definitely not a dagger, nor lock-picking tools. Maybe a rolled-up piece of parchment?
Martin lifted his kameez and stuffed the bag down the front of his shalwar. The fabric bulged slightly, but the kameez would hide that. Whatever cultural specifics might plausibly be ascribed to this mutated version of a mediaeval poet’s tale of a much earlier time, Martin was fairly sure that the game’s rating precluded anyone patting down his groin.
The stallion snorted haughtily as he emerged from the tent, not quite betraying him, but making it clear that he was there only on sufferance. He moved quietly back the way he’d come, glad now of the mud on his clothes.
Then he stood at the edge of the river and bellowed, ‘Javeed! Pesaram! Koja’i?’
The reply came back instantly: happy, relieved, not quite tearful. ‘Baba! Inja hastam! Inja bia!’
Martin strode towards his son’s voice, oblivious to everything else around him, barely noticing the member of Zal’s retinue approaching him before the man stepped directly into his path.
‘Who are you?’
‘Forgive me, sir; I’ve been searching for my son.’ Martin looked past his interlocutor; Javeed was standing on a patch of bare ground between two men. One of them had a scimitar in a scabbard strapped to his back; Martin’s skin tingled with fear and revulsion, but he had to trust the game to have kept the threat abstract and muted. If anyone had waved a blade in Javeed’s face-
‘That’s not an answer.’
Martin forced himself to focus on the man blocking his way. ‘We were in the river, fishing; our boat struck a rock and went down. My son and I became separated. I swear, until now I was afraid he’d drowned.’
The man regarded him suspiciously, but a flicker of compassion crossed his face. Martin was sure he wasn’t human, but he wondered if he was one of the new-style Proxies that Nasim had mentioned, boosted with fragments of neural circuitry. Are you a dumb cousin of the thing I’ll leave behind? Martin wondered. Just human enough to react with real emotion to the idea of a drowned child?
The man with the scimitar said, ‘We thought he was a thief. Why didn’t he speak the truth?’
Martin said, ‘Sir, I apologise, but sometimes he goes crazy from the sun. His mind runs away from his work; all he can talk about is elephants.’
The third man laughed. ‘Elephants in “Lavosestan”? He’s got too much imagination to be a fisherman.’
Martin tried to appear deferential, though part of him was having trouble resisting the urge to grab a fallen tree branch and start clubbing everyone who continued to stand between him and his son. ‘As you say, sir. But he’s done no wrong, and we need to go back and drag out the boat while there’s still a chance to find it.’
The two men closest to Javeed exchanged glances. ‘Very well,’ said the one with the scimitar. They stood aside; Javeed ran to Martin and took his hand.
As they walked out of the camp Javeed said, ‘I thought you weren’t coming. I thought you were going to leave me there.’
Martin’s heart was pierced, but he forced himself to speak calmly. ‘I’d never do that. You know I’d never do that.’
Javeed said mournfully, ‘What will we tell Zal?’
‘It’s not what we’ll tell him, it’s what we’ll show him.’
‘Huh?’
Martin produced the bag, making as a big a show of it as he could. Javeed was enraptured.
‘You got it! What’s in it? What is it?’
‘I didn’t look inside. That would have been rude.’
Javeed flapped his arms and grimaced with impatience. ‘Give it to me! Let me look!’
‘Not a chance!’ Martin replied. ‘I’ll give it to you outside the prison, but only to carry, not to open. It’s Zal’s business what’s inside.’
All the way back into the city, Javeed kept begging for a peek, but it soon turned into a game; he was teasing Martin, he didn’t expect to get his way. Martin was giddy with relief; Javeed hadn’t really felt abandoned, and the delay in freeing him had been worth it in the end.
‘We should bring lunch for Zal,’ Javeed suggested.
‘Good idea.’ They bought some apples, grapes and pomegranates from the man who’d told them the way to the prison, then some cooked ground beef wrapped in flatbread from another shop.
At the prison, the warder seemed to have forgotten his previous bribe. ‘One visit a month! By royal decree!’ He started to close the gate, determined to follow the letter of the law until Martin reached into his money-belt and came up with a handful of amendments and exceptions.
As they entered the cell block, Zal was standing near the edge of his cage. ‘Father! Little Brother! What have you done? I don’t deserve this feast!’ They passed him the food and he shared it out among his cellmates.
When the warder left, Javeed approached the bars. ‘We got what you asked for,’ he whispered, holding the bag discreetly by his side. The other prisoners averted their eyes as the contraband changed hands.
‘Truly you are worthy of my praise and gratitude,’ Zal said. ‘Half of all I have is yours.’
Javeed shook his head. ‘Just the elephants.’
Zal smiled. ‘As you wish, Little Brother.’ He stepped back and unknotted the drawstring of the bag, then he pulled the mouth wide and drew out a golden feather.
Martin caught a flash of unease on Javeed’s face. ‘Are you okay?’ he whispered. They both knew what the feather meant, what it would bring.
Javeed nodded.
‘We can go now if you want to. We’ll sort out the elephants on the website.’
‘I want to stay,’ Javeed said. He added, barely audibly, ‘I want to see it.’
‘Father, do you have a flint with you?’ Zal asked Martin.
When Martin shook his head, one of the other prisoners produced a small grey stone that had been hidden in his clothes. He handed it to Zal, who clasped him gratefully on the shoulder.
Zal struck the flint against a bar of his cell, holding the feather in the same hand. ‘Thanks to God and King Hushang, for the gift of fire.’ Martin saw the spark, but nothing followed. Zal repeated the motion a second time, a third. Finally, the feather caught alight.
White smoke wafted across the prison. The feather blazed with an intense light, but remained unconsumed. The inmates stood and watched the flame, then one by one their knees buckled and they fell to the ground, asleep.
A voice echoed through the building, tender and outraged, loud enough to shake Martin’s teeth. ‘What is this injustice? Who has put my own sweet child in a cage?’
The Simorgh stood at the entrance from the courtyard, filling the doorway, stooped to fit. Its dog’s head alone was half the size of a man; its muscular raptor’s body, adorned with shimmering metallic feathers, was squeezed into the confined space – but rather than making it look trapped and trammelled, this only concentrated its power.
Martin touched Javeed’s hand and they backed away slowly towards the prison’s far wall. However many Brownie points they’d earned with its foster-son, they did not want to be standing in this creature’s path when it decided to move.
Zal knelt and lowered his face. ‘My beloved protector, I am ashamed to ask for your help. You see with your own eyes where my carelessness has brought me. But I must find a way to marry Rudabeh without turning her family against mine. Give me this chance to salvage my fortune, and I will not disgrace myself again.’
Martin looked down at Javeed; he was not unafraid, but he was utterly engrossed. Javeed’s hair was a few shades lighter than that of the average Tehrani; nobody had ever spurned him because of it, least of all his parents, but that didn’t seem to be the point. And whatever resonance he’d found in the story of Zal’s childhood, he seemed to have taken consolation in the idea that his hero’s abandonment had gained him a strange kind of love and protection, more fierce, more powerful than the human kind he’d lost.
The Simorgh charged, a blur of flowing muscle and outstretched talons wreathed in gold. Javeed flinched, emitting an involuntary whimper. Martin said, ‘Enough,’ and brought them out.
He waited in the whiteness for the motor to free him, then he heard Nasim pull off the cage. He flipped up the goggles himself.
‘Everything okay?’ Nasim asked. Martin wasn’t sure if she’d watched the whole session, but in any case he wasn’t in the mood to start analysing the implications for the Proxy of all the choices he’d made.
‘Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’
‘Right.’
Martin shed his hi-tech attachments and reclaimed his belongings. He walked to the ghal’eha room where Javeed was waiting with Bahador, already wearing his signed Azimi jersey over his school clothes. Martin squatted down and embraced him tightly.
‘Mubaarak, pesaram. We’ll get an island for those elephants as soon as we get home.’
They took a bus to Omar’s shop. Martin had told Omar the same half-truth he’d told Javeed: that Nasim had equipment that was easier on his back. Omar had not made a big deal about it, and he greeted them as warmly as ever.
As Martin stood listening to Javeed recounting his adventure for Omar and Farshid, he thought: this is it, this is how it will be. Exactly the same scene, even after I’m gone: Javeed returning from his weekly session in Zendegi with his father.
Omar, Rana and Farshid would love and protect him, but he would not have lost his old life, his old family, completely. Even Mahnoosh would still be there beside him, in the Proxy’s echoes of Martin’s memories of her.
It was stranger than Zal’s story, but it could still come true. All he had to do was immerse himself in the side-loading process – and hang on long enough to be sure that it worked.