Alif the Unseen

  “You asked me to carry you,” she said.

  “I know, I know. Many thanks.” NewQuarter gave her a weak salute. She turned away and seemed to gather herself, like a great tawny bird preparing to launch itself skyward.

  “Where are you going?” Alif called in alarm.

  “With the dark things around, it’s even less safe for me here than it is for you,” she said, beating her arms against the wind, “I’m not coming back without an army.”

  Alif thought he could actually see feathers along her slender limbs. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “About that,” he said, “They are coming, right? The convert’s jinn friends?”

  “They’ve said so.”

  “What’s the word of a jinn worth, theoretically speaking?”

  Sakina laughed. With a tremendous lurch, she disappeared into the indifferently white sky. Alif stared after her, attempting to pick her out among the gulls wheeling overhead, but saw nothing.

  “Don’t just stand there, for God’s sake. We have zero time to waste.” NewQuarter led the way toward a stairwell at the corner of the roof, fumbling with a ring of keys. Dina swayed on her feet as she followed him, as though drunk; when Alif took her hand to steady her she made an inarticulate sound of complaint.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Too much flying around. Trying not to be sick inside my veil. It’s the worst thing. When I was thirteen and had dysentery I threw up at school, and had to spend an hour in the girls’ washroom rinsing and drying everything.”

  He remembered her at thirteen: slight, silent and stubborn, and always hovering nearby.

  “You should have asked for help,” he said, not quite caressing her hand.

  She shrugged. “It was a matter of pride. I was the only girl in the whole school who wore niqab, and everybody was waiting for me to take it off.”

  “You’re either brave or silly.”

  “Funny, I think the same thing about you.”

  “Please, please shut up,” called NewQuarter, jiggling a key in the lock of the stairwell door. “This is not the time for sweet nothings.” He wrenched the door open and clattered down a set of cement stairs leading into the building. Alif followed, leading Dina. The stairs were dim; bulbs sputtered in frosted glass sconces that had been smashed with a blunt object. A streak of liquid that ran along one elegant frescoed wall was almost certainly urine.

  “God, they’ve tossed the whole building!” NewQuarter picked up a shard of glass and let it drop, despondent.

  “Which they?” Alif looked around in dismay at the carnage.

  “The Hand’s people, the protesters—perhaps we’re not meant to know which.”

  “But you’re on their side! Why would the protesters—” NewQuarter turned on him with an impatient glare.

  “They don’t know I live here, you dolt. And even if they did— that’s a revolution we nearly walked into out there. A revolution, Alif. I could hand out leaflets listing all the ways I’ve risked my skin and betrayed the Emir and the State, but I’d still be a royal, and they’d still come for my head.”

  “Why would they do that?” Alif heard a series of loud pops from somewhere down the street, followed by a chorus of shouts.

  “Because they can’t help themselves. It’s all coming out in torrents now. Revolutions are ninety percent social diarrhea.”

  “Spoken like a true aristocrat,” muttered Dina.

  “How can we be sure it’s really a revolution?” asked Alif, hoping despite himself that it was not; he could talk of freedom, but would readily have settled for familiarity.

  “Of course it’s a revolution. Did you see the number of women in the streets? Last week it would have taken a forklift to get those same ladies out of their houses. The Emir is doomed.”

  They emerged into a parquet-floored hall made wretched by the domestic debris of the flats that lined it. Alif stumbled past the carcasses of inlaid tables, Tiffany lamps, Turkish carpets, and statuary of various kinds, his mind growing steadily numb. He started when he heard NewQuarter wail.

  “They smashed the plates after all,” he said. “Those things are hand painted. They cost me a hundred dirhams apiece.”

  Alif looked over NewQuarter’s shoulder at a shattered door leading into what had once been a well-appointed bachelor flat. A dozen blue-and-white china plates lay on the floor in pieces, creating a harried mosaic that NewQuarter scattered with his foot and an angry howl. More popping sounds echoed through a broken window overlooking the square. Alif thought he heard screams.

  “I think they’re firing at the demonstrators,” said Dina in a low voice, flinching as another volley of shots rang out. Alif inched away from the window. A thin wail rose up from the square below, along with the smell of burning rubber. The tinny voice of a man on a megaphone called upon the crowd to stand firm and form a line in front of the police.

  “This place isn’t secure,” fretted NewQuarter, pacing back and forth across his marble-floored living room and righting upended furniture as he went. He stopped beside a gutted antique clock topped with a golden elephant, freshly overcome with grief. “I was hoping we could stay here while you coded,” he continued a moment later in a calmer voice, moving about the floor again, “but all my computers are gone—door broken, lock smashed—basically we’re fucked.”

  A loud crash and a series of scuffling noises from the floor below punctuated his remark. Alif froze, locking eyes with Dina, who trembled silently. NewQuarter paused his restless circuit of the room, sucking in his breath and holding it until he turned red. The noise below ceased.

  “Even the damned flying woman has deserted us,” NewQuarter squeaked. “We have no way out of the City now.”

  “You’re the one who said you’d never let a jinn carry you around again,” hissed Dina. “She was insulted.”

  “Well aren’t you the voice of fucking reason.”

  “Shut up,” said Alif. The noise had started up again. It sounded like the scuttling of a trapped animal, but there was a dry quality to it, a chitinous quality, like the sound of rough cloth sliding past itself. It set Alif ’s guts working. He began breathing very hard.

  “I know what that is,” he whispered. “Oh God. Don’t let it come up here, don’t let it—Dina, please—” A cursory part of him felt unmanned by calling out to her so piteously, but he didn’t care; he was alone in the dark again. He imagined the room around him growing dimmer and colder, and the riot in the square dying away. From outside came the sound of bare feet padding up the stairs.

  “What’s happening to the light?” whimpered NewQuarter. Alif felt another stab of panic.

  “You see it too?”

  “What do you mean, too? What the hell is going on?”

  Breathing in frightened little gasps, Dina stepped toward the shattered door.

  “Dina!” Alif hissed, regretting his moment of weakness, “Stay here!”

  She ignored him. In a small voice, she began to recite the final words of the Quran.

  “Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of Daybreak,” said Dina, “from the evil of that which He created; from the evil of the rising darkness, and from the evil of spellcraft, and from the evil of the envious when he envies.”

  The footsteps paused, then continued in a burst of preternatural swiftness.

  “What is that thing?” shrieked NewQuarter.

  The air seemed to go out of the room. Alif dropped to his knees, rocking back and forth, all thought driven from his mind.

  “Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of mankind,” Dina continued. “The King of mankind, the God of mankind, from the evil of the creeping whisperer, who murmurs in the hearts of mankind, of the jinn and mankind.”

  A low cackle wafted through the remains of the door.

  “Yes, the right words,” came a voice. “The right words, yes.”

  Alif curled into a fetal position. Somewhere behind him, NewQuarter let out a high, awful sound, like a child waking from a night terror. D
ina remained where she was, a lovely black void against the gathering murk, her narrow back the only thing between Alif and the creature dragging its slow thighs through the doorway. It looked at him without eyes. A moment of recognition passed between them. Alif moaned, hands pressed over his ears, assaulted by the memory of his cell and the shrinking circle of footsteps that padded about him in the dark.

  “I seek refuge in God from the outcast Satan,” said Dina. “Say the words with me, please.”

  Alif realized she was speaking to him and obediently tried to move his lips, but no sound emerged.

  “Please,” said Dina again, a tremor in her voice.

  “I seek—I seek refuge—” He struggled to speak, pulling himself on to his hands and knees. As he lifted his head, Dina stepped backward into the light coming in through a smashed window. For a moment she was not black but gold, shedding rich afternoon sun from the folds of her robe.

  The creature hesitated.

  “I seek refuge in God from the outcast Satan,” said Alif. The fear that had seized him bled away, replaced by something furious and bright. The dark thing crept forward. The sunlight fell on it and on Dina alike, seeming to say with its terrible indifference that beyond the unseen were forces yet more invisible.

  “I seek refuge in God from God,” said Dina.

  The dark thing shuddered, recollected itself, and flung its rubbery body at her, a tooth-filled hole opening in its blank face. NewQuarter’s screaming rose several octaves. Alif struggled to his feet and struck out at the creature’s wriggling limbs, pulling it away from Dina, who stumbled backward with a gasp. Alif wrenched the dark thing’s long arms away from its body, struggling to maintain a grip on the slick surface of its skin. It let out a shriek and turned on him, opening the hole in its face until the ring of teeth extended beyond the black perimeter of its flesh. It went for his neck.

  Dina’s composure broke. She began screaming Alif ’s given name with a blind terror that threatened to override his bravado. The creature’s onslaught knocked him to the floor, slamming the back of his head into the marble tiles. Light sheared through the tender tissue behind his eyes, and he gasped, blinking, struggling to bring his attacker back into focus. His eyelids were suddenly leaden, his body slack.

  When he blinked again, he was surprised to see Vikram leaning over him.

  “What a fine mess this is, younger brother.”

  He was veiled in shadow, a premonition of twilight against the searing brightness in Alif ’s head.

  “I thought you were dead,” Alif muttered.

  “Then you’re not entirely an idiot, because I am dead.”

  Alif began to panic.

  “Then I’m dead too,” he said. “Oh God—”

  “What a tremendous baby it is,” scoffed Vikram. “You’re not dead. And even if you were, it would be no excuse to snivel so wretchedly.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m screwed anyway. State is shooting at people in the streets, the Hand’s got black eyeless things looking for me, and I don’t actually think I’m good enough at what I do to stop him—”

  “Suddenly it discovers humility. I thought you were supposed to be some kind of undersized genius.”

  “I’m not, I’m nothing. I’m pathetic.”

  “My sister didn’t think so.”

  “How would she know? It was only the one time—”

  “For God’s sake, that’s not what I meant. She says she sat on your windowsill many nights and watched you work for hours without pause. Surely you must have produced something of value.”

  It took Alif a moment to realize what he was talking about.

  “Tin Sari? How is that supposed to help?”

  “How should I know? Wave your skinny little fingers and say some magic words, or whatever it is you usually do.”

  Alif thought for a moment, bewildered.

  “If I could get Tin Sari to recognize the Hand,” he said, “theoretically I could bomb him with all kinds of things remotely, without having to track down every one of his digital fingers. But it would take weeks to gather enough data to develop a profile.”

  “Hmm,” said Vikram, “If you’ve been hiding from this man for so long, presumably you already know what you were hiding from.”

  Alif sighed in frustration, at a loss to explain to Vikram why his logic was unsound. He opened his mouth to retort, but stopped himself: unbidden, the dead man’s words turned over in his mind, revealing something he had not considered.

  “You’re right,” he said incredulously. “The data is already there— or rather, it could be inferred from past attacks on our systems. We’ve got years of diagnostics in the Cloud, all of us—NewQuarter01, and Abdullah from Radio Sheikh, and GurkhaBoss, and everybody. It might work. It could work.”

  “Very tidy, for an unconscious twit.”Vikram reached down and ruffled Alif ’s hair with a clawed hand. There was something disappointing in the weightlessness of his fingers. Alif discovered he had regained feeling in his arms and legs. The world began to right itself.

  “I’m hallucinating,” he observed.

  “I will say that you are, and leave you to ponder the implications,” said Vikram. He turned to go, loping back into the hazy light.

  “By the way,” he said, “When you wake up, duck.”

  Alif ducked. There was a tremendous crash overhead, a symphonic overture of escaping cogs and chimes. With a croak, the eyeless creature rolled off his body. Alif looked up to see NewQuarter standing over him with the remains of the antique clock in his hands.

  “You found your courage,” Alif wheezed.

  “I also pissed myself,” said NewQuarter.

  Alif tried to sit, but found himself jerked back down and dragged across the floor by the straps of his backpack. Dina began screaming again.

  “Give it us,” the creature hissed.

  Alif rolled on to his side, struggling free of his pack. The creature pounced on it like a cat, ripping open the nylon lining. It seized on the fragile binding of the Alf Layla with a cackle. Alif dove for the book, catching the opposite end before the dark padded fingers had a chance to wrestle it free. The creature yanked the book toward itself with a snarl. Alif felt his shoulder joints pop in a way that would have been pleasant at the hands of a masseuse in a hamam, but in present circumstances made him yelp; he scrambled backward, relinquishing his hold on the manuscript.

  “Fuck you!” he shrieked. “And tell the Hand to fuck himself too!”

  The hideous mouth gaped wide, and a fetid howl blasted Alif ’s face. The creature clutched the book to its chest. Bounding across the floor in an erratic pattern, it leapt out the shattered window facing the square and disappeared.

  For a moment all Alif could hear was terrified panting. He pulled himself up, winced, and lay back down. Pleading incoherently, Dina sank to the floor beside him, parting the hair on the back of his scalp with fingers that shook.

  “You should have just let him take it,” she said. “I don’t know why you fought like that.”

  “I promised the marid I’d keep an eye on that thing,” Alif muttered. “Anyway, it’s just a bump.”

  “Like hell,” said NewQuarter, bundling his robe up around his waist, “I’m surprised you’ve still got a skull. That was a real crack. You were completely unconscious for a few seconds.”

  “I thought it was going to kill you,” quailed Dina.

  “I thought it was going to kill you,” said Alif, attempting a smile. “You walked toward it like it was a stray cat you were going to shoo out of the garden.”

  “You were really brave,” said NewQuarter. He looked down at the robe bunched between his hands and made a face. Sighing, he let it drop, revealing a wet stain. “Ironically enough,” he said in a feeble voice, “That went more or less perfectly to plan. Hopefully we’ve bought ourselves a little time.”

  “Only as much time as it takes for that thing to get back to the Hand and the Hand to realize we’ve duped him, and then get really, real
ly mad.” Alif propped himself up on his hands. “I’ve got to code. We still need a working uplink.”

  “That is the only thing I believe I can still manage,” said NewQuarter, walking stiff-legged toward a bedroom off the main hall. “Boot up your netbook and look for a wireless network called CityState. I will presently recite the access code.”

  Dina handed Alif his shredded backpack. He lifted out his netbook, shaking his head several times to clear the last of the spots dancing in front of his eyes.

  “Are you sure this network is still up?” he called to NewQuarter. “It looked like the Hand managed to screw up every IP in the City.”

  “It’s up.” NewQuarter’s soiled robe flew out the door of the bedroom and landed in a heap in the hall. “He can’t touch this one. Satellite.”

  “He can if he has access to the land-based routing facility.”

  “He can’t if I own the satellite.”

  Alif gaped at NewQuarter as he came out of the bedroom wearing a fresh robe.

  “You’re too young to own a flat as nice as this one,” said Alif, “much less a satellite.”

  “How wrong you are. I could have bought a gold-plated Mercedes like that fat idiot Suleiman, number fourteen in line for the throne. You should be happy—the reason this City is so rotten is because the other twenty-five princes have more money than they know what to do with. I, on the other hand, have exactly as much money as I know what to do with. In the information age, he wins who has a clean and reliable internet uplink. Censors be damned.”

  “Your own satellite.”

  “My own satellite. Now shut up and start typing.”

  Alif ran his fingers up and down the home keys on his netbook. He tried to picture in his mind what he had to do. The memory of the great tower he had built on Sheikh Bilal’s computer distracted him; he wondered if he would ever again create something so beautiful, flawed though it was. The drudge work of ordinary coding seemed banal now. Without the Alf Yeom, he was another grey hat toiling away line by line behind a bright screen, unwatched and unregarded.

  “Out of curiosity,” said NewQuarter, “What do you plan to do?”