Alif the Unseen (39 page)

Sweat broke out on Alif’s brow and beneath his beard. He rubbed his face with the back of one hand.

“What should I do?” he asked.

“I don’t have any answers. But I doubt anyone here in the Empty Quarter will be willing to shelter you now, knowing what they’d be up against.”

“If I say so, they might have to,” said the convert, in much-improved Arabic. “A lot of people here owed Vikram favors, which means they now owe me favors.”

“You would do that?” Alif felt a surge of desperate gratitude.

“Well, we can’t have demons overrunning the place. I’m pregnant, you know. The nesting hormones are kicking in like crazy. If keeping you safe keeps me safe, you can have
whatever I’ve got.”

“And the book?” Dina picked it up and weighed it in her hands like a bag of produce. Alif thought quickly.

“What if we did ask the
marid
to hide it here? And I took a fake with me? Any old book would do—they just have to think I’ve got the
Alf Yeom
and I’m
running away with it. That would at least keep the Hand and his creeps clear of you guys.”

“I’ll ask him right now.” The convert rose and made for the door, holding the hem of her dress above her bare feet. She reappeared a few moments later, shadowed by her titanic
nursemaid, who seemed to shrink in order to fit into the room.

“This thing you ask,” it rumbled, “is no small favor. There is nothing lost but may be found, if sought. One of your own poets said so. If this book is wanted, it will not stay
hidden forever.”

“But you’re good at hiding things,” said the convert. The
marid
looked pleased.

“I’m very good at hiding things,” it concurred.

“Maybe it doesn’t need to stay hidden forever,” said Alif. “Just long enough to get rid of the Hand. Who knows, it could be another couple hundred years before anybody
gets wise enough to go looking for it again.”

“A long time for you,” said the
marid
. “A short time for me—and then I might have to go through this all over again!”

“But you’ll do it?” The convert looked up at it with earnest eyes.

“If you wish,” it replied in a voice like settling rubble.

“I do wish.”

“Thank you,” said Alif fervently. The convert gave him a smile of triumph. Alif took the book from Dina’s hands, conscious of the way she let her fingers brush his in some
inscrutable gesture of tenderness, and felt himself go hot and cold again, still bruised by her succinct appraisal of his failings. He felt the stiff folio of paper between his palms, inhaling its
unsettling scent, now familiar enough to evoke a series of memories: the date palm grove in Baqara District, the lamplight in Vikram’s tent, the otherworldly bustle of the Immovable Alley.
Sheikh Bilal’s computer, breathing out exhaust, the crucible for his failed masterpiece.

“You look like you don’t want to let it go,” the convert observed.

Alif shook his head, dazed.

“I’ve resented this thing since the minute it became my responsibility,” he said. “And yet—it’s clear to me now that my life will be divided into what came
before this book, and what came after it.”

“Mine too,” said the convert.

“And mine,” said Dina.

Alif traced the flaking gold letters on the cover, running his finger over the first word of the title, the one that so resembled his name. The book warmed beneath his hands like a living thing,
and seemed full of portent, hinting at layers of meaning he had not yet uncovered: stories within stories that had remained invisible to him even as he translated them into code. There was always
something yet unseen. The ground itself was daily renewed, kicked up and muddled by passing travelers, such that it was impossible to repeat the same journey twice. Alif thought of all the times he
had left the duplex in Baqara District bent on some mundane errand: the courtyard gate closing behind him with a rattle, rattling again when he returned the same way; to him, ordinary and
frustrating, to the world, a process full of tiny variations, all existing, as Sheikh Bilal had said, simultaneously and without contradiction. He had been given eternity in modest increments, and
had thought nothing of it.

“Alif.”

Sakina was looking at him closely. He straightened his back and handed the book over to the
marid,
who pressed it between his hands. It vanished. The gesture was so natural that it took
Alif a moment to find it strange.

“Where’d the book go?” he asked.

“Away,” said the
marid
. “For now.”

“But you can get it back?”

“Certainly.”

Alif forced the air from his lungs in a sharp breath, then inhaled again more slowly.

“Do you happen to have another book that looks similar?” he asked the
marid,
avoiding its cloud-colored eyes. “Something that would convince an ordinary person at
first glance? Something you wouldn’t mind me borrowing for a few days?”

The marid made an indeterminate noise and disappeared into its house. It was gone for several minutes. Alif began to worry that he had offered it some unintended insult, and was on the verge of
asking the convert as much when it reappeared. In its hands was a book bound in faded blue, looking no larger than a shred of confetti against the marid’s thick fingers. It laid the
manuscript in Alif’s outstretched arms.

“Please be careful with this,” it said solemnly. “It is the jewel of my library. You have many versions of this book in the sighted world but none I would call accurate,
written as they were by the tribe of Adam. This one contains the only true and complete account of my cruel imprisonment by a young thief named Alla’eddin, many centuries ago.”

Alif choked on an indrawn breath.

“The
Alf Layla
?” he rasped. “This is a copy of
The Thousand and One Nights
?”

“Just so.”

“
Akhi,
” squeaked NewQuarter, “we’ve been shooting the shit with the lamp genie.”

“Shut up, shut
up
.” Alif hugged the book to his chest and forced himself to meet the
marid’s
gaze.

“Many thanks,” he said, voice cracking. “I’ll guard it with my eyes. I mean, it’s not going to be safe, exactly, considering—”

The
marid
began to look displeased.

“—But I mean, it will keep
her
safe,” Alif added in a rush, jerking his finger at the convert. “As long as the Hand thinks I still have the
Alf Yeom,
he’ll leave the rest of you alone.”

“Very well,” said the
marid,
looking mollified. Alif blotted his brow.

“Okay.” He turned to the convert. “How soon do you think we can meet with Vikram’s—with the people who owe you favors?”

“Let’s find out,” she said.

* * *

Within several hours, a strange collection of creatures had gathered in the
marid’s
courtyard. A few were
effrit,
ambulatory shadows like the one whose
computer Alif had debugged; a few more resembled Vikram or Sakina in their elusive, prismatic variance between human and animal and smokeless fire. Then there were some whose presence Alif could
only sense, muffled invisible objects that announced themselves only by absorbing sound. The convert sat on a cushion at the edge of the fountain, back poker-straight, looking too nervous and too
human to be administratrix of such a bizarre gathering. Alif hovered behind her, crossing and uncrossing his arms in an attempt to decide which pose looked more authoritative. The
marid
loomed over them like a banyan tree. Alif hoped its presence had the effect his own did not. He jumped when the convert cleared her throat.

“Thank you all for coming here to see me,” she said. “I’ve called on you as a favor to a friend—Alif, standing back there—and as a result of what has happened
in the Immovable Alley. Which is sort of his fault.”

“Thanks,” Alif hissed in her ear. “Now they’re going to eat me.”

“Basically, he needs protection,” the convert continued, ignoring him. “Since the man who is hunting him has allies among the djinn.”

Allies among the
shayateen, said one of the
effrit,
its words reverberating uncomfortably in Alif’s skull.
Not all of us are demons
.

“Yes, of course,” said the convert. “I was just speaking generally. Anyway, you don’t want these guys around, and neither do we.”

“The solution to that is simple,” said a tall yellow-eyed man. “We hand over this
beni adam,
and they go away.”

Alif resisted the urge to bolt.

“That would be simple,” said the convert, “but then they’d win, and you’d look weak. Why give them that satisfaction?”

“Because it would save us a lot of time and headache, frankly.”

A ripple of laughter passed over the assembly. The convert pursed her lips.

“Okay, okay. Let’s put it another way. You all owed Vikram favors, and as his widow, I am calling those favors in. Do this thing for me and the score is settled.”

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” said a spare-looking woman with a pair of black, curving horns, “but I never owed Vikram a favor large enough to include my
life.”

Hear hear,
said the
effrit. And why should the
beni adam
sit on his ass while we fight his battles for him? It hardly seems fair. We’re not a bunch of mindless idiots
enslaved in lamps, or milk cartons, or what have you, to be commanded by whatever third-born happens to come along
.

The convert looked back at Alif, biting her lip.

“I’m not planning to sit on my ass,” he said indignantly.

Oh? And what do you plan to do instead? Kick and scream?

“I—”

Alif was interrupted by the appearance of NewQuarter, who came rushing into the courtyard from the street beyond it, holding in his hands a sleek Sony laptop the width of a thick envelope.

“Alif,” he said in a gleeful voice, “look what I’ve got. This thing isn’t even supposed to be out of development. No, wait, that’s not the important part.
I’ve been on that talking shadow’s stupendous WiFi network, and I found—but you have to admire this machine with me for a minute. Some guy was literally hawking it from a blanket
on the street, along with some very pretty wireless gaming mice. I’m starting to like this place.” He sat on the ground a short distance from the convert and gave a curt nod to the
collection of djinn beyond her. “But look, look at this.”

Under the cool gaze of anthropomorphic shadows, Alif stuttered an apology and went to kneel next to NewQuarter.

“Can’t this wait?” he muttered. “I already look like an ass.”

“No, it can’t. Here.” NewQuarter swiveled the laptop toward Alif, displaying a pixelated blur, blocky horizontal chunks of image files and scrambled text.

“What is it?” Alif asked.

“That, my friend, is a screen grab from the City public utility Web site.” NewQuarter clicked an arrow button. Another image appeared: more scrambled images and text. “This is
the University of Al Basheera home page.”

He clicked again.

“The transit authority.” Another click. “The tourism board. There are dozens more like this. The whole City is digitally fucked. While we’ve been sitting here playing
Aladdin our little modern- day Carthage has been sacked.”

“Holy God.” Alif pulled the screen closer. “Who? How?”

“At first I thought it was one of our people getting stupid,” said NewQuarter. “You know, trying to foment revolution by shutting off the power or something. But everybody on
the cloud is as confused as you are.”

“The cloud’s all right?”

“Of course it’s all right. I set it up myself.”

“But if the servers are in the City—”

“They aren’t. They’re sitting in my uncle’s basement all the way in Qatar.” NewQuarter grinned, making himself look even younger. “You see? It’s good to
have an upper-class snot on your side.”

“Wow. Wow.”

“So I was thinking,” said NewQuarter, leaning forward, “what if it’s not a black hat operation at all?”

Alif frowned. “What else could it be?”

“Something even more ominous. Who’s got access codes and know-how and the stones to screw with all these different systems, all at once, without having to hack into anything at
all?”

Alif looked back at the screen grab. “You don’t think—?”

“That’s exactly what I think. What if this wasn’t meant to happen—what if this is simply the byproduct of an enormous digital manhunt? Alif, what if this means the Hand
has finally fucked up?”

A memory surfaced, carrying with it a feeling of grime and nakedness.

“He said he had people reverse-engineering the code I created out of the
Alf Yeom
—I warned him. I warned him something like this could happen if he tried to use it. He
didn’t believe me. He thought if he had enough processing power it would be different.”

“If he’s got access to your code, why does he still want that book so badly?”

“Well, look at where the code has gotten him—he probably thinks he can fix this mess if he can get his hands on the source material. He’s obsessed with the idea that I’m
just dense and can’t comprehend the full magnitude of what the
Alf Yeom
could mean for computing.”

“Do you suppose that’s true?”

Alif thought of the thing in the dark and shuddered.

“No. That book is like getting gradually lost. You start out in a garden on a path, and it looks so easy—easier than a lot of the other paths you’ve traveled, which were hemmed
in by all these if-then propositions and parameters and laws. So you walk, and the path gets rockier, and then there are gaps, and eventually you find you’re not even in the garden anymore
but out in some howling desert. And you can’t retrace your steps because the path itself was all in your head.”

Voices rose among the assembly of djinn. The convert gave Alif a chilly glare.

“I could use some help over here,” she said.

Alif got to his feet, straightening the hem of his tunic, and hurried to stand beside her.

“I think we’re screwed,” she muttered without turning.