Alif the Unseen (16 page)

“Vikram,” Alif said to the form under the workstation, “what do you know about a Persian guy named Moqlas who might have been up to no good in the seventeenth
century?”

“Moqlas the dervish?” Vikram’s eyes reflected light like a cat’s. “He was a scholar of sorts. Very interested in the insides of books.”

“What reason would the Shah have to be upset with him, or have him watched?”

“He was what you would call a heretic.”

“But a learned heretic.”

“Some might say. Why do you care?”

“This de la Croix the convert was so worked up about studied with him. He believed one of the books Moqlas was helping him study—the
Mathnawi
—contained the
Philosopher’s Stone.” Alif looked back down at Vikram, who had managed to work his ankles over his shoulders like a circus acrobat. “But that doesn’t make any sense. The
Philosopher’s Stone is supposed to be a physical substance, right? An alchemy thing. Like some kind of miraculous chemical that turns stuff into gold, or the water of life, or something. Not
a book.”

“The distinction is relevant only to a fleshy idiot like you. The Philosopher’s Stone is knowledge, pure knowledge—a fragment of the formula by which the universe was
written.”

Alif rubbed his eyes. “And this thing is in the
Mathnawi
?”

“Well, it’s in a mathnawi, or so the theory goes.”

“What do you mean,
a
? Wasn’t the
Mathnawi
written by Rumi? Is there more than one?”

Vikram snorted. “Of course there’s more than one. Plenty of morons who thought they’d reached some great understanding of the cosmos claimed to have written one. But most of
them were terrible. Rumi’s was the only one that stuck.”

“You don’t think the Philosopher’s Stone was in Rumi’s
Mathnawi,
though.”

“If I did, I would be out conquering time, not sitting under this desk. What would happen if I pulled on that green wire?”

“Don’t, don’t!”

Vikram cackled gleefully.

“Would you just concentrate for two minutes?” snapped Alif. “I need to figure this out.”

“You’ve already figured it out. Obviously the mathnawi to which this de la Croix refers is the
Alf Yeom
. Ninety thousand verses is about right, length-wise. Obviously Moqlas
the dervish is the Persian mystic who initiated him into the study of the text, just as he was initiated by his teachers, and they by theirs, and so on, all the way back to whatever
fourteenth-century rapscallion first heard it from the djinn. Obviously Moqlas believed he could somehow decode it and come up with the Philosopher’s Stone and thereby empower himself to
manipulate matter and time.”

Alif made a skeptical face.

“Is that true?” he asked. “Can reading the
Alf Yeom
really do that?”

Vikram shifted, craning his neck in an unnatural way to meet Alif’s eye.

“A human being with a lust for forbidden knowledge might certainly think so. Whether he would ultimately succeed—no, that has never happened. Nor will it do you any good, if
that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I’m not wondering. I’m not interested in cosmic powers. I just want to figure out where Intisar picked this thing up and what she expects me to do with it.”

By way of response, Vikram sank his teeth into Alif’s ankle. Alif closed his netbook, cursing, and kicked the arm that reached out for his power cord. The convert appeared in the doorway
of the computer lab and motioned to them. Vikram extricated himself from beneath the desk, bending in ways that made Alif vaguely sick, and stood to greet her as though lurking under desks was
something ordinary. The convert had a strange expression: chin tucked, mouth pursed, brows drawn into a brooding look. She held the
Alf Yeom
in both hands like a platter. It had been
wrapped in some kind of protective film and sealed with surgical tape.

“How was archival science?” Alif hazarded.

The convert ran one thumb along a corner of the book, making the plastic film crackle. “Do you want the short answer or the long answer?” she asked.

“The long answer, naturally,” said Vikram. “You can tell us while we are sniffing out lunch. You do have such a thing as shawarma in this upper-class pile, don’t
you?”

“I can take you to the cafeteria.”

“Splendid.”

“I have to meet someone in a couple of hours,” Alif interjected. “At the
chaiwallah’s
we passed near the front entrance.”

Vikram looked interested. “What’s this? Meet whom?”

“The—my—the girl who sent me the
Alf Yeom
.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Vikram’s yellow eyes were merry. “We’ll all go and bear witness to your little tryst. It will be more romantic entertainment than the
convert has had in years.”

“Bastard,” the convert muttered.

“No one is going,” said Alif. “I don’t care what else you do, but I see her alone.”

“Well, whatever. The cafeteria is back that way in any case.” With a frigid glance at Vikram, the convert led the way out of the computer lab and down the hall. Radiant air hit Alif
in the face as they emerged into the overheated afternoon. He regretted the loss of the climate-controlled lab, so solicitous of both body and machine. Outside everything warred with everything
else: heat against skin, skin against propriety, propriety against nature. Alif rubbed sweat from the back of his neck, irritated.

The convert wove through clusters of chatting students toward a low building near the campus entrance. The scent of fry oil and chickpea flour wafted from its windows. Alif felt his stomach
rumble and wished he had eaten more of the minted yogurt Azalel had given them in the morning. He trailed behind the convert as she pushed through a pair of double doors and into a large hall. Long
tables and benches were set up on one end; on the other, sour
desi
women in uniform served food from behind metal counters.

“It’s campus food, but it’s hot,” said the convert, handing Alif a tray. He needed no more prompting, and loaded the tray with vegetable
pakoras, naan,
and
kabsa
with chicken that smelled as though it had been sitting on a hot plate for many hours. The convert found an empty table and sat down, setting the
Alf Yeom
on a bower of
clean napkins.

“Careful with that tray!” She slid the book farther along the table as Alif sat down across from her. “You’ll get grease on the manuscript.”

“Sorry.”

“Where’s mine?” Vikram pounced on the spoon Alif was reaching for, helping himself to the
kabsa
. Alif curled his lip.

“Okay, so here’s the deal.” The convert paused and steepled her hands beneath her chin like a Catholic icon. “I took a five-millimeter-by-five-millimeter sample from one
of the pages in the middle that had some blank space. I had my advisor look at it. Because the pages are paper instead of vellum and the condition of the book is so good, I assumed it
couldn’t be more than a couple hundred years old.”

Vikram smiled through his food, looking, Alif thought, like a man anticipating the punch line of a joke.

“My advisor—and I didn’t tell him anything, just asked him to look at the sample—disagrees. He thinks it’s no less than seven hundred years old.”

Alif quickly swallowed the lump of
pakora
in his mouth.

“He says the paper was made using a process that went out of vogue in Central Asia by the fourteenth century. It’s almost certainly Persian, too, or at least the paper itself was
made in Persia. He thinks that awful-smelling resin is what has kept the book in such good condition, though he can’t tell offhand what it’s made of. He wants to have the lab analyze
it.”

“So . . .” Alif trailed off, unsure of what he wanted to say.

“So I was wrong.” The convert smiled wryly. She looked tired. “This is the genuine article. De la Croix wasn’t making it all up. The
Alf Yeom
is real.”

Vikram leaned back in his chair with a satisfied purr. The convert gazed at him steadily, mouth twisting in exaggerated contempt. He seemed amused by her silent fury. His eyes shone, reflecting
the blue in hers as he stared back, unflinching, and it seemed to Alif as though he was saying something, though his lips did not move. Whatever it was, it caused the convert’s pout to
evaporate. She blushed and looked away, biting her lower lip in a way that was almost coy, and it occurred to Alif that she was almost pretty when she didn’t scowl.

“Now I’m really interested to know how your friend got her hands on this,” she said, clearing her throat self-consciously. “This is not the kind of artifact you find
lying around in a used bookstore. Or in a rare bookstore. Or in the Smithsonian. I ran searches on all the major lending libraries in the City, and called up a couple of the antiques dealers who
sell stuff they shouldn’t. No one’s ever heard of it.”

Alif studied the plastic-shrouded manuscript on its bed of napkins. It could not weigh more than half a kilogram, yet it felt like an unbearable load—an unasked-for, ill-defined
responsibility, an unknown unknown. How like Intisar, he thought, to drop this in his lap in her imperious way without thought for his broken heart. He was seized with contempt.

“I’m sick of guessing what all this means,” he said. “I want some facts.”

The convert shrugged. “I’ve told you all I know,” she said. “The lab will come back to us with the results of the resin test in a few hours. But I can’t tell you
where the book comes from.”

“I may be able to do as much,” mused Vikram, stroking his goatee. “But it would involve taking you someplace you shouldn’t really go.”

“Where’s that?” asked Alif, suspicion roused.

“The Immovable Alley. There’s an entrance to it in the City, but I haven’t used it in years—it’s probably moved by now.”

“But . . .” Alif attempted to collect his thoughts. “Alleys don’t move. So how could the entrance be somewhere other than where it used to be?”

“It moves.”

“But it’s called the Immovable Alley!”

“The alley is stationary. That’s the whole point. The world moves around it. So entrances and exits can pop up anywhere.” Vikram smiled, evidently pleased with himself.

“What a bunch of bull,” said the convert, wrinkling her nose. “Immovable Alley my ass. He wants to get us down some dark side street and rob us. Then when we call the police we
can tell them we were following a dude who thinks he’s a genie to a place that doesn’t exist, and they can lock us up in jail for being nuts.”

“My dear woman, how long have we known one another? I am hurt by your lack of confidence.” Vikram pulled his handsome face into a pout.

“I don’t care. I’m not falling for your tricks.” The convert crossed her arms and set her mouth in a thin, masculine line. Vikram imitated her. She pretended not to
notice.

“I’ll go,” said Alif, feeling emboldened. “Any alley, immovable or not, as long as there’s someone there who can tell me what I need to know.”

“Alternately,” said the convert in a slow, condescending voice, such as one would use with a child, “you could just wait until you meet your friend and ask her where she got it
and what she expects you to do with it.”

Alif rubbed
pakora
grease on his jeans, wilting under the convert’s scrutiny.

“I could,” he mumbled, “but I don’t even know for sure that she’s going to show up. Or what she’ll say when she does.”

The convert sighed, tucking a loose strand of hair beneath her head scarf.

“Okay,” she said. Narrowing her eyes at Alif, she stood. “But if I end up beaten, raped, or robbed, I’m blaming you. You are officially responsible for my well-being. Let
it be known that I’m only doing this under duress.”

“Nonsense,” scoffed Vikram. “You’re doing this because you’re curious. Come along, children.”

He loped toward the door of the cafeteria, humming. Alif and the convert followed, keeping a brittle distance between themselves. Outside, Vikram turned downhill, toward the edge of campus and
the Old Quarter wall beyond it. They threaded their way into the Old Quarter proper, beyond the university, along stone-paved streets that threw curious echoes. Everything here felt older, grander,
wealthier than the City Alif knew; there were trees that had been carefully cultivated against the dry desert air for a century or more, dust-caked and wide-rooted, spreading their leaves over the
arched entranceways of town houses and villas. Gone were the stocky apartment blocks and duplexes like the one he and Dina inhabited. Baqara District was indifferent to taste or beauty, and if one
wanted either, one had to look further than the outsides of things. Here were both in abundance.

“I wish I had money,” said Alif. “Money buys beauty.”

“What a cynical thing to say,” said the convert.

“He’s right,” said Vikram, cavorting a few steps. “However much we may wish to deny it. Money smooths the path for many things.”

“It’s different back home.” The convert spoke with a kind of offhanded confidence Alif associated with foreigners.

“I doubt that very much,” said Vikram. “America is a country like any other, with rich and poor. If you asked a poor American whether he’d rather remain so, or wake up
with a million dollars under his pillow, I guarantee you would get the same answer every time.”

The convert raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Have you ever even been to the States?”

“In what sense?”

“Is there more than one?”

“But naturally.”

“God, you’re ridiculous.” Flouncing her long skirt, the convert pulled ahead of Vikram, walking down the street with a purposeful gait. Vikram laughed.

“I didn’t mean to offend your vanity, my dear,” he called. “Slow down. I meet so few westerners that I forget how prickly your little consciences are.”

“Do you know how many words for foreigner I know?” the convert asked. She didn’t turn to speak; her voice seemed to float from the back of her silk-clad head. “Many.
Ajnabi. Ferenghi. Khawagga. Gori. Pardesi
. And I’ve been called all of them. They’re not nice words, no matter what you people claim.”