Martin took his hand and they walked across the playground. ‘What did you do today?’
‘Just stuff.’
‘Nothing exciting?’
Javeed didn’t reply.
‘Any pictures for me?’
Javeed stopped and unzipped his backpack. He took out a rolled-up sheet of what Martin always thought of as butcher’s paper and offered it to him. Martin unfurled it to reveal a drawing in coloured pencil.
A bird with a dog’s head hovered over a nest on a mountainside; on closer inspection, it looked as if the nest was made of whole tree trunks. Inside the nest, a blond-haired boy stood stretching up his hands. The bird, the Simorgh, was holding a dead lamb in its claws.
‘She brought him some food?’ Martin asked.
Javeed nodded.
‘So she’s a friendly bird, she’s not too scary?’
‘She’s friendly to Zal,’ Javeed agreed. ‘But he won’t stay with her forever. His father comes and takes him back home.’
‘It’s a good picture.’
Martin rolled it up and Javeed stored it in his backpack again. Martin said, ‘No taxi today, we’re going to catch the bus.’ Javeed was surprised, then he smiled approvingly. The bus to the city took a slow, complicated route, but they caught it so rarely that it still had some novelty value.
The journey took them past the bookshop; Martin cringed a little to see the crowds walking straight by the security shutters, not even able to window-shop. He was still paying rent on the premises, frittering away Mahnoosh’s life insurance; he should make up his mind to re-open the place with an assistant, or try to sell the business. People of the Book. On the day they’d signed the lease, he’d insisted to Mahnoosh - with a straight face, for almost half an hour - that her own mildly ironic suggestion was a faint-hearted choice, and they really ought to call themselves The Nicest of the Damned.
When they reached their destination Martin apologised to Omar; they were half an hour late, and Omar always set aside two ghal’eha for them. ‘I wish you’d let me pay you what you’re missing out on.’
‘It’s once a week, it’s nothing,’ Omar retorted. ‘Ah, here’s the big warrior.’ He squatted down and kissed Javeed on the cheeks, then handed him a square of gaz.
‘Where’s Farshid?’ Javeed asked anxiously.
‘Helping someone carry a TV to their car,’ Omar said. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be here when you’re finished.’
Martin and Javeed went upstairs on their own. They were becoming used to the mechanics of the process; after they’d put on their gloves and goggles, Martin held up his notepad to the two ghal’eha in turn. The machines read Nasim’s certificate and made the connection to Zendegi; all he and Javeed had to do was step inside. As the rim of Martin’s castle ascended, he saw one of their neighbours’ spheres spinning furiously. Even through the sound-proofing he could hear a muffled trace of its inhabitant’s rapid footfalls until his own bubble closed around him.
When Martin lowered the goggles’ screens the bland white space of the castle vanished immediately and he was standing beside Javeed at the edge of a desert oasis. No gentle, staged transitions and no menus to deal with. They had made their selection on the weekend through Zendegi’s website, sparing them all the preliminaries now.
Javeed gazed wide-eyed at the building that lay ahead of them in the distance. ‘King Zahhak’s palace!’ They’d seen pictures of the pale-brown mud-brick fortress when they’d chosen the story, but the sense of immersion, the knowledge that they’d stepped right into the picture, was already enough to render the sight far more vivid. In spite of the building material, the architecture was impressively crisp, with near-perfect scallops capping the walls above a series of narrow, slotted windows for archers. A cylindrical tower stood at each corner, with walls in exactly the same style; no fancy battlements here.
Javeed began striding across the sand, glancing towards Martin almost surreptitiously, as if he didn’t want to be caught checking that his father was keeping up. They both wore white dishdashas, traditional Arab robes; this story came from the Shahnameh but it wasn’t set in Persia. Martin had done more than enough treadmill work for one day, so he used a discreet hand gesture to tell Zendegi to amplify his steps. The result wasn’t quite seven-league boots, but it enabled his icon to walk vigorously with almost no effort on his part.
The dusty trail leading into the oasis gave way to a broad, palm-lined avenue strewn with small white stones. Horses and camels rested on the shaded grass beside the road; streams rose from beneath the ground, feeding a series of shallow pools. Javeed, usually shy with strangers, called out, ‘Salaam!’ to a group of older boys tending the animals, and they replied with friendly waves. Martin doubted that there were humans behind their welcoming smiles - who would choose to take on such a tiny role? - but he could still appreciate the warmth of their greeting for what it was, a part of the atmosphere. Nobody in a painting, a movie, a book, could ever be your friend back in the real world; that didn’t render the whole exercise deluded or dishonest.
As they drew closer to the palace the streets filled with people and they found themselves weaving through a crowded bazaar. For their benefit, everyone around them was speaking Farsi - albeit without the usual modern colloquialisms, and in accents that sounded plausibly Arabic to Martin’s ear, down to ‘w’ in place of ‘v’ and ‘b’ in place of ‘p’. Customers were haggling with traders for bolts of cloth, jewellery, fruit, grain, spices. Martin felt a pang of guilt at the sheer profligacy of the backdrop - surely software couldn’t conjure all of this effortlessly; surely some human designer had slaved for days to get the details right? - but then he decided that it was probably all recycled, with a little tweaking, from one setting to the next. There were a thousand games and stories that would need a bazaar like this; once all the elements were set up, changing the faces and permuting the merchandise would probably be easy enough.
Javeed stopped, confused. ‘Where’s the man who’ll give us the job?’
‘We have to go through the bazaar to the side of the palace. Remember?’
‘He doesn’t have an office here?’
Martin smiled. ‘I don’t think so.’ Maybe it made sense that the king’s elaborate domestic bureaucracy ought to have a recruitment centre out in the bazaar, but the notes on the website had pointed them towards the palace kitchens themselves.
At Martin’s urging, Javeed asked directions from a carpet merchant; they didn’t have time to get lost in this maze. The woman’s instructions led them past an unsavoury-looking garbage dump; it was mercifully incapable of sharing its aromas, but the buzz of flies alone was enough to turn Martin’s stomach.
There was a bead-curtained doorway at the kitchen’s entrance to keep out the insects without blocking the passage of air. Martin parted the curtain with his hands, wondering for a moment if Zendegi was tweaking the physics to ensure that not one bead brushed his face or shoulders and punctured his suspension of disbelief. The room was dim after the afternoon sunshine; when his eyes had adjusted he saw sacks of rice and legumes, and shelves stacked with earthenware bottles.
A harried-looking middle-aged man came through from an adjoining room. He introduced himself as Amir and greeted them politely, but it was clear that he expected them to explain their business without delay. Against all plausible cultural norms, it was Javeed he engaged with directly.
‘We’re looking for work,’ Javeed explained.
‘Really? What can you do?’
‘I can sweep the floors,’ Javeed said. ‘My father can carry things.’
Amir looked dubious. ‘You have a strong back?’ he asked Martin.
‘Yes, sir.’ That might have been a bare-faced lie in the real world, but the morning’s exercise had actually left him feeling flexible. If he was dealing with weightless provisions, he could probably lift enough to feed a small army.
Amir turned to Javeed. ‘And you’re a hard worker? The new cook won’t forgive a scrap of dirt o
n the floor.’
‘I’ll do a good job,’ Javeed promised.
Amir made an elaborate pantomime of thinking it over, running his hand through his beard and scowling as if weighing up all manner of pros and cons, but this part of the story was preordained.
‘You’ll need to start straight away,’ he said finally. ‘There’s a banquet tonight, for the king and three hundred guests. The cook will expect to find everything spotless.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Martin said. ‘You won’t be disappointed.’
He reached down and tapped the back of Javeed’s hand.
‘Thank you,’ Javeed added. Martin was glad that his son understood that Amir was no more real than the guides and assistants who smiled out from the screen of their home computer - but if they were going to take the story seriously, he expected Javeed to behave with courtesy - even if only to avoid acquiring bad habits.
Amir returned to his office, where he appeared to be agonising over the accounts. Martin wondered if the plot generator stretched to the kitchen manager embezzling money to bale out his no-good, hard-gambling brother-in-law, but he wasn’t about to hijack Javeed’s crucial mission just to test the machinery at its margins.
Martin found the broom and handed it to Javeed. Even though the haptic gloves could exert no net force, the sensations they produced were enough to make light objects feel eerily tangible. As Javeed set to work, Martin didn’t envy him; the floor was filthy, and sweeping up nonexistent dust and food scraps would be barely less tiring than doing the same thing for real.
When Javeed had finished in the storeroom, they moved to the preparation room, closer to the kitchen itself. Half-a-dozen kitchen hands - five teenaged boys and an older supervisor named Haidar - were plucking birds, gutting fish, and chopping and peeling vegetables. There were baskets for their waste, but most of it was ending up on the floor. The boys teased Javeed, calling him pipsqueak and dropping handfuls of feathers every time he thought he’d earned a brief rest. Martin watched his son’s face; when the pressure started to get too much for him, he took the broom himself. When one of the boys, Ahmed, made as if to brush all his peelings onto a spot Martin had just cleared, Martin rebuked him sharply: ‘Show some respect and do your job properly.’ Ahmed looked to Haidar for support, but the man said, ‘Exactly. You should be busy enough without making trouble.’ Ahmed sulked for a while, but scooped the peelings into his waste basket.
Haidar addressed Martin. ‘I need you to bring in ten sacks of rice.’
Martin handed the broom to Javeed. When he returned with the first four sacks on his shoulders - if he was going to play at being healthy there was no point taking half-measures - Javeed was gone.
‘Where’s my son?’ he asked Haidar.
‘Cleaning up the kitchen.’
Martin peered through the doorway nervously, as if the ovens and pots full of scalding water could do Javeed real harm. He hurriedly fetched the rest of the rice, then slipped into the kitchen himself.
Javeed had swapped his broom for a cloth and was down on his hands and knees diligently scrubbing at an oily puddle. This from a boy with no compunction about treating a mustard bottle as a makeshift water-pistol then leaving the aftermath for others to deal with. Three assistants were tending to the stoves; the red reflected glow on their sweaty faces was enough to make Martin feel the oppressive heat himself.
‘When’s the cook coming in?’ he asked one of the assistants, who was stirring the contents of a huge pot.
‘Soon,’ the man replied brusquely.
‘I hear he’s impressed the king already. And he’s only been here three days.’
‘He’s a master of his art,’ the assistant declared haughtily. ‘Please, just do your job and stay out of our way.’
With most of the pots now simmering gently, and the assistant cooks more fastidious than the kitchen hands, the mess in the preparation room soon became pressing again, and Haidar called them back to his domain. Javeed coped admirably, but Martin could see that he was growing tired. He made a hand gesture to summon up a private menu, invisible to Javeed, and shaved fifteen minutes off the story’s overall running time. Javeed always pleaded for a full hour when they were making choices on the weekend, but Martin doubted that he’d feel too cheated by being spared a further dose of mediaeval toil.
A raised voice spilled out of the kitchen; someone was addressing the assistants in peremptory tones. ‘More heat, more water, more salt; I explained all of that yesterday. How difficult can it be?’ The cook wasn’t shouting abuse, but even his gentlest admonitions were followed by a crushed silence. Haidar and the kitchen hands lowered their eyes, their expressions hovering between cowed and reverential.
Javeed whispered, ‘That’s him, Baba.’ He sounded a little fearful; Martin forced himself not to puncture the mood by grilling him on his resolve to continue.
‘Yeah, that’s him, all right,’ Martin agreed solemnly. Javeed knew that he could pull the plug any time he wanted; he didn’t need endless prompting.
A skinny black-and-white cat ran across the room and into the kitchen, mewing plaintively. Martin heard the cook laughing, then calling to the cat, clicking his tongue. ‘You want some food?’ he asked. ‘I doubt there’s any to spare, but we’ll see.’
Javeed was standing in a corner of the room; Martin went and stood beside him. He caught a glimpse of the cat through the doorway, circling around expectantly as if following at the feet of someone who was making promising gestures. The cat began purring loudly, and a hand reached down and stroked its head, long, slender fingers scratching at its ears. ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ said the cook. ‘What have we got for you, I wonder? What have we got?’ The closer his patter came to baby-talk, the more Martin felt a chill down his spine.
The cat turned in ever tighter circles, rubbing its head against the long fingers. A second hand joined the first, stroking the cat’s flank, seeming almost to urge it on as the cat moved faster, its shape blurring with speed, black and white patches melting into grey.
The cook’s long hands caressed the whirling cat like a potter moulding clay. The sound of its hopeful purring grew louder, pulsing with the pressure of the fingers against its skin. Then the hands squeezed the spinning body tightly, bringing it to a halt before withdrawing from sight. The blur of cat-fur froze into clarity again, but now its shape had changed: its tail and rear end had been replaced by a mirrored copy of its head and chest. The poor animal had been transformed into conjoined twins, with two hungry, complaining mouths in place of one.
The two heads grimaced and snarled at each other; their single body postured and feinted, but the animal was too unbalanced to fight in the way it was accustomed to and within seconds it had been reduced to a writhing, ungainly ring of fur, thrashing around on its side, snapping and clawing at itself.
The cook said coldly, ‘Plenty of food within your reach now,’ and kicked the brawling animal out of sight.
Martin looked around the room, but nobody showed any sign of having witnessed the abomination; they had all kept their eyes conveniently averted. For a moment he was close to real frustration and anger: This ‘master of his art’ is not what he seems, you fools! But the whole point of the game was for Javeed - and himself, as the hero’s sidekick - to be the only ones to understand. The cook was not a man at all: he was the demon Eblis in human form. His culinary skills were meant to seduce this weak-willed king; if the banquet was successful, Zahhak’s display of gratitude to his impressive new servant would end in a transformation just as terrifying as the cat’s, and vastly more fateful.
Javeed looked daunted; Martin touched his hand. ‘What are we going to do?’ Martin whispered. ‘If Zahhak likes the food and he embraces the cook—’
‘Feathers,’ Javeed announced. ‘We have to mix in some feathers.’
Martin smiled. ‘Good idea.’ He’d been thinking of using a few handfuls of rotting waste from the garbage dump, but this sounded just as effective. It would also spare him any qual
ms about the wisdom of encouraging his son to spread dysentery.
Haidar and the kitchen hands finished their work: every pheasant had been plucked, every herb chopped, every vegetable diced. As Haidar surveyed the mess on the floor, he promised Javeed, ‘I’ll put in a good word for you with the boss. I’m sure he’ll want to keep you on.’
Javeed tried to be polite, but he seemed to realise that there’d be something dishonest about assenting to this notion unreservedly. ‘I might be busy with a different job tomorrow,’ he confessed.