The Fractal Prince

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tawaddud asks.

  ‘There are many things I did not teach little Tawaddud. If you want your voice to carry to the desert, you have to let the desert come to you.’

  Images of Alile flash in Tawaddud’s eyes. ‘Is that what you have done?’

  ‘Kafur has drunk the potent wine of stories too deep, it’s true. But it is the desert where stories come from, and that is where you will have to go to find an end to yours.’

  ‘What is he talking about?’ Sumanguru whispers.

  ‘If I want to reach the Axolotl, I need to expose myself to wildcode,’ Tawaddud says.

  The Sobornost gogol touches her shoulder. ‘He’s mad. Let’s get out of here. We will find another way.’

  ‘I have bottled desert jinni who eat wildcode,’ Tawaddud says slowly, touching her doctor’s bag. ‘I have used them to treat Banu Sasan. It could work if we do it quickly. And the Seals in my body are strong, my father made them. It could work.’

  Sumanguru’s eyes widen. ‘But—’

  ‘It’s my decision.’ She steps forward. ‘I’ll do it,’ she tells Kafur.

  The Master of the Palace of Stories bows to her. ‘Old Kafur is glad,’ he says, ‘that somewhere, under the mask of the daughter of the Gomelez, you are still his Tawaddud.’

  Deep down in the guts of the Palace, there is a room full of coffins. They are Sealed, emblazoned with the golden spirals and twists that shine brightly against the dark stone.

  Laboriously, Kafur opens the lid of one of them. An athar interface flashes into being above it. Inside is a tank shaped like a human body, filled with water, and a breathing apparatus with a black tube like an umbilical.

  ‘You need silence to listen,’ he says.

  She puts down her bag and takes out three bottles. ‘First this one, then this, then this,’ she tells Sumanguru. She makes him repeat the Names he must speak.

  ‘This is crazy,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to do this. It’s black magic. Five minutes, and I’ll get you out. I can take you to the Station, we can clean you up—’

  Tawaddud holds up the Sobornost mind-trap. ‘You have your magic, Lord Sumanguru, and I have mine.’ She removes her robe and her mutalibun bodystocking and lets them fall to the ground. The chill radiating from the coffins makes her bare skin crawl, and she shivers.

  Kafur takes out a clear glass bottle, filled with sand.

  ‘Do it,’ Tawaddud says.

  Kafur opens the bottle and pours the contents over Tawaddud. The sand runs over her skin like a caress. As it touches her, it starts to glow. It feels like the fog-hands in her garden, long ago.

  She lies down in the coffin and presses the breathing mask against her face. In an instant, the water becomes the same temperature as her body. Then the lid slams shut, and Tawaddud is alone with the desert.

  At first, she feels heavy and weightless at the same time, floating in silence. After a while, the voices start: a thousand whispers, in languages she does not understand, dry and soft like rustling leaves. Is this what Abu talked about? The voices of the desert.

  Then the lights come. It is like looking at the other Sirr Abu showed her, except she sees the whole world. She is floating in the heart of a galaxy, a vast spiderweb of light, bright pinpoints joined with threads that loop and spiral and intertwine.

  Zaybak, she whispers. Come to me.

  Her voice joins the muttering chorus around her, and her words are repeated, an echo of an echo of an echo in the bright net.

  Something responds, and her heart jumps. Tendrils of light snake out and curl around her. She looks up and there is a glowing being floating above her, as if in an ocean, a kraken of light, regarding her with curious childlike eyes. One of its tentacles brushes her, briefly, and she feels an echo of terrible longing. Then it is gone, speeding into the gaps of the network like a wisp of smoke.

  Zaybak, where are you? she calls again.

  Something else answers, this time. A shoal of elongated things, snake-like, moving like whips, without eyes but with sharp, sharp teeth. They twine around her limbs, cold and slippery and tight. Wild jinni who smell a body. She shouts a Secret Name, but it has no power here; they scatter from her but keep circling, waiting.

  Zaybak!

  There are more jinni, things that look like chains and tori and strange loops that swallow themselves, thick around her, hungry for embodiment, coming closer with each circuit. She tries to feel her body, tries to find the lid of the coffin so she can call to Kafur and Sumanguru and get out. But she has no voice, no flesh.

  A wind comes, scattering the desert things, blowing through her and into her and around her, a touch and a kiss and a voice at the same time, and suddenly she remembers steam rising from the tombs in the City of the Dead, after the rain.

  The Axolotl.

  Tawaddud.

  I missed you.

  I missed being you.

  A pause.

  Why are you here?

  Alile. Show me why.

  Regret. Shame.

  Show me.

  A journey through the desert, searching for purpose. Story gardens where the Aun live. Bliss and emptiness.

  Return to the city. Masrurs, they are called, jinn insurgents: they speak of protecting the desert. Their words ring true. They say they are swords of the Aun, whose task is to rid the desert of Sobornost machines. They promise redemption. Battles. Courage. Meaning.

  A muhtasib comes. He claims things are changing. Sirr will give names to Sobornost machines, so the Aun do not destroy them. There will be no more desert. No more stories. He says we can stop it. He will give the betrayers of Sirr to us, if we give him our stories.

  So that’s why Alile died.

  She did not die! If you know the secret, the desert does not kill. Whisper them the secret of the flower prince, and you take them with you to the desert. They become a story, like us, like the Aun, live for ever inside the wildcode. She is here, Tawaddud. Sirr itself could be here. Without the Sobornost. You could be here. Come with me. Let me tell you the secret again. It is beautiful and bright. We can be together forever.

  Forever. There was a story, told by a dark man. Two women on Venus: one did not want for ever.

  We don’t have to be that story. We are Zaybak and Tawaddud.

  A pause.

  I am Tawaddud. I am a different story now. Isn’t that what you told me? You are too old and strong. You were right. I want to be Tawaddud.

  I am sorry. It is so easy to be what we were.

  I know. It’s all right. But tell me: what did the muhtasib ask for in return?

  A Name. A Secret Name Alile knew.

  Did you give it to him?

  No. Shame. Betrayal. It was a trick. Alile told me. The muhtasib worked for the Sobornost. She knew him. I fled to the desert with her, to keep the secret safe.

  Why would the Sobornost want to hurt Alile? She was going to give them what they wanted.

  She knew the secret of the Jannah of the Cannon. They want it more than souls.

  Who was it? Who was the muhtasib who betrayed you?

  A serpent of fire.

  Abu Nuwas.

  The name bites deep. It almost pulls her out of the entwinement, but the vast soft thing around her that is the Axolotl draws her back in.

  We have to tell them.

  You are stronger now. You should come with me. What do you care of secrets and the Sobornost and Sirr? What have they ever given you?

  Let me go.

  Come with me!

  I can’t. Don’t make me.

  Come!

  No, Tawaddud says, opens her eyes and closes the Sobornost mind-trap around the Axolotl.

  The coffin lid opens. She comes out of the water like a newborn baby, coughing. Her eyes hurt. Her skin crawls and feels dry and hot. She touches her face: there are hard ridges under her skin. She lets out a small sob.

  Warm hands touch her shoulders. A voice whispers Secret Names. The wildcode vision is still with
her, and suddenly her skin shimmers with tiny jinni, hungry triangles eating wildcode. Their touch is like cool water, poured all over her. Then they cover her head, and the chill makes her gasp. But it only lasts for a moment. She turns to look at her doctor—

  —and sees a fiery serpent.

  Abu Nuwas smiles sadly. He stands in the coffin room, holding a barakah gun, flanked by hulking jinn thought-forms, clouds of spiky black smoke. Sumanguru struggles in their grip. Next to him is Rumzan the Repentant, spindly hands crossed in front of a faceless face.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says, picking up the Sobornost device floating in the coffin. ‘A mind-trap? I didn’t think you would go so far, Tawaddud. But your efforts are very much appreciated. I have been looking for this fellow for a long time.’

  ‘You bastard,’ Tawaddud hisses. ‘Where is Kafur?’ She stands up, gritting her teeth against the chill. ‘This is his Palace. He is not going to let you get away with this.’

  A wet cough. Kafur drapes a robe around Tawaddud’s shoulders. She recoils from his touch.

  ‘I’m very sorry, little Tawaddud. Old Kafur was offered a better price. And Lord Nuwas has always been a very good customer.’

  ‘Come along now,’ Abu says. ‘The night is young. And I did promise you a dinner at my palace, did I not?’

  22

  THE STORY OF THE PELLEGRINI AND THE CHEN

  She finds the master of the Universe on the beach, throwing rocks into the sea. He is wearing a child’s face. This is an old memory. Did he choose it for her? This is not where they first met. And it is very different from his usual virs, abstract spaces of language and purity.

  ‘It’s very nice,’ she says. The boy looks up, eyes wide, fearless but without any sign of recognition.

  What is Matjek playing at? It took her such a long time to get ready. Going through her Library, finding a memory of who she was when they first met, a hundred-year-old woman in white, but looking no older than forty, with just a hint of fragility in her step, a hat and sunglasses hiding scar tissue, golden rings in tanned fingers.

  ‘I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,’ the boy says.

  She kneels on the sand next to him.

  ‘I would hope that I’m not a stranger to you, Matjek,’ she says.

  The boy looks at her, brow furrowed in concentration. ‘How do you know my name?’ he asks.

  ‘I am very old,’ she says. ‘I know a lot of names.’ What kind of game is Matjek playing here? The wind tugs at her hat, and the sand is warm under her toes. Plankton lights up in her footsteps, like stars.

  ‘What are you doing, Matjek?’ she whispers. Suddenly, age returns to his eyes.

  ‘I’m trying to find something,’ he says. ‘Something I lost a long time ago.’

  ‘It’s a disease, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Trying to cling on to lost things.’

  He looks at her, with a cruel humour in his eyes. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ He pokes at the sand with a stick. ‘I know why you are here. They are killing you, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Anton and Hsien never trusted me. But we can talk about that later. It’s such a beautiful vir.’ She thinks it best to pay him a compliment when he is in such a sullen mood.

  The boy Matjek gets up and throws a stone into the sea. It skips a few times, then disappears into the waves. ‘It is not enough,’ he says, with fury in his voice, Matjek’s old rage at everything that is wrong with the world.

  ‘I can’t help you. I can’t intervene right now. We are too weak to risk a full-blown civil war. The zoku are watching and waiting. I know they look weak – but remember what the Kaminari did. We need to keep up the illusion that we are stronger than them. I will not risk a civil war to save a few of you.’

  ‘What exactly are you doing here, Matjek? Wrapping yourself in memories? This is not like you.’

  He laughs. ‘The innocent inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Would you have believed that innocence is key to the Kaminari jewel? To think how I always found Christianity ridiculous. Trust me, if I find what I’m looking for here, everything will change. In the meantime, I ask you to survive. That is what you do best in any case, isn’t it?’

  ‘You would let me die? Is that how you pay me back for all these years? You would have me become a ghost, just because it’s convenient?’

  The vir dissolves around them. Matjek assumes his Prime aspect, the voice of a billion gogols, the Metaself, the keeper of the Plan, the Father of Dragons.

  ‘I will sacrifice every Sobornost gogol, every conscious mind in the System, to make the Plan come true. But you never understood that, did you?’

  His voice is strangely gentle. In other virs, other pellegrinis and chens are having the same conversation. How much easier it would be if she could truly share his mind, to see what goes on in his head. But that way lie Dragons.

  Instead, she laughs. ‘It seems that you have become a slave to our own convenient fictions. How endearing. But then you were always a dreamer. Why don’t you dream us a new world, Matjek – a world without Dragons and entropy and zokus? Let me know when it arrives.’

  In the virs below, from their god-view of the firmament, they watch the other outcomes. Violence. Love. But mostly, resentment.

  ‘Don’t come to me again. I know what you tried to do with the Experiment and the thief. You are on your own. I’m sure you will manage just fine.’

  She withdraws, severing the links between her temple and his guberniya.

  ‘You never did want to grow up,’ she says.

  23

  TAWADDUD AND THE THIEF

  Abu and Rumzan take them to a viewing gallery near the top of the Ugarte Shard. The walls and floors of his palace are white and stark. Without athar glasses, Tawaddud sees only flickers of what is invisible: dense mandalas and geometric shapes decorating every surface. The wide window has a view of Sirr at night, dominated by the golden flame of the Station. She stares at it until it feels like it’s going to fall down, and the rest of her world with it.

  ‘My father knows we are here,’ she says. ‘You are finished.’

  ‘Dear Tawaddud,’ Abu Nuwas says. ‘You may be able to lie to your jinn clients, but I can see right through you.’ He taps his brass eye. ‘Literally.’ He shifts the gun in his hand, pointing at Sumanguru.

  ‘You might want to know that this is not Sumanguru of the Turquoise Branch. There is someone else lurking beneath his ugly face: a thief and a liar called Jean le Flambeur.’

  Tawaddud looks at Sumanguru. The other face that she has glimpsed before is fully visible beneath the scars now, intense eyes, a sardonic smile. He raises his eyebrows and shrugs. ‘Guilty as charged.’

  ‘What shall we do with you? I suppose it doesn’t matter. Accidents do happen near the wildcode desert, after all. And we have time to discuss that. Please, make yourselves comfortable. We are still waiting for someone to join us.’

  He gestures, and foglet chairs appear, transparent, curved shapes, floating in the air. He sinks into one, a leg over one knee. Gingerly, Tawaddud sits down facing the gogol merchant.

  ‘Why?’ she asks.

  ‘I told you. Revenge. Because I hate this place. Because of what Alile and her friends did to me. Yes, it was her; she bought me from the entwiner. She used me to find the Jannah of the Cannon and then left me in the desert to die. I told her the Name that opened it and she took it from me.’

  He squeezes the mind-trap in his hand, making a fist.

  ‘Well, I survived. I came back. I went to an upload temple first, but the hsien-kus could not undo what was done to me, to wash the desert away, not until they made Earth theirs. I found other ways to serve them. They were kinder mistresses than Alile, and far more generous.

  ‘But it’s not just about me, Tawaddud. You have seen it, too. Sirr is rotten: it makes monsters to survive and feeds on souls. We live in dirt when others in the System build diamond castles and live for ever. Don’t your beloved Banu Sasan deserve better than that?’

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; It’s not like that, Tawaddud thinks, remembering the Axolotl’s words. But she says nothing.

  ‘The Accords mean nothing. They have been a convenience for the Sobornost, nothing more. They were burned by the Aun, but they are ready now: what do you think the Gourd is for? When your friend here,’ he tosses the mind-bullet into the air and catches it, ‘tells me what I want to know, there is no need for the hsien-kus to take things slow. Earth will be uploaded, and I will have my reward. I will be made whole.’ He smiles sadly. ‘I wish I could say I’m sorry.’

  Tell them lies they want to hear.

  ‘You can never get it back,’ Tawaddud says. ‘What she took from you, you can never get it back. But you can find something else to replace it. Believe me, I know. Without the Axolotl, I was hollow, I was lost. But then, I met you.’

  Abu looks at her, human eye gleaming, his mouth a straight line. Then he starts laughing.

  ‘For a moment, I believed you. You did touch something, something I thought I no longer had.’ He shakes his head. ‘But you just used me to play your father. The body thief named you right. You are the Axolotl’s whore. Why do you think I was so interested in you in the first place? Because that’s what everybody calls you. When he gave me the slip, you were the obvious route to him. His weakness.

  ‘So don’t look so sad. We both got what we wanted. But enough of that. I do believe my other guest is here.’

  A door opens, and a hsien-ku in a black Sobornost uniform walks in. She gives Sumanguru a curt nod.

  ‘Lord Sumanguru – or should I say Jean le Flambeur? Apologies for arriving slightly late. My branch prides itself on punctuality.’

  I watch as Abu Nuwas hands the mind-trap over to the hsien-ku. Tawaddud is corpse-pale and shaking. Poor girl. I will make this up to you somehow. I promise.

  Except that the worst is still to come.

  ‘We owe you thanks, le Flambeur, for alerting us to the existence of a primordial Chen gogol in the first place,’ the hsien-ku says. ‘It will be excellent currency to keep him off our backs while we move against our sister, who I believe is your current employer, am I correct? Perhaps there is an opportunity for you to offer your talents to us instead.’