Zendegi

Martin crept into the camp, steering clear of the interrogators, hoping he hadn’t become disoriented and really was heading south. He wasn’t sure why there were so few people around; maybe they’d already sent a search party into the city, looking for Zal after he’d failed to return from his latest night of passion. The whole arrest scenario had been cooked up last weekend by the game’s software; the original story of Zal and Rudabeh had been a mixture of politics, family obligations and romantic swooning, loaded with proto-Shakespearean possibilities, but of limited interest to a six-year-old.

Helpfully, Zal’s tent was distinctly more ornate than the others; Martin could have sworn there was real gold thread in the design, or at least… whatever. A reddish-brown stallion was tied up right by the entrance; it regarded Martin irritably, and as he tried to squeeze past it, it began to neigh. Martin put a hand on its flank. ‘Sssh. Stay cool, buddy, and you might get to play Rakhsh in the sequel.’ That promise seemed to do the trick, or maybe it had caught a trace of its master’s scent on the intruder and deduced that Martin was here with Zal’s blessing.

He ducked into the tent. The silk brocade and khatam knickknacks were almost enough to blind a non-princely eye, but Martin scrabbled around beside the sleeping mat until the plain brown bag materialised from the clutter as a kind of absence of decoration that refused to go away. It was about the size of his hand, sealed with a knotted drawstring; it made no sound when Martin shook it, and when he squeezed it gently he felt nothing but a slight rearrangement of its contents beneath the material. Definitely not a dagger, nor lock-picking tools. Maybe a rolled-up piece of parchment?

Martin lifted his kameez and stuffed the bag down the front of his shalwar. The fabric bulged slightly, but the kameez would hide that. Whatever cultural specifics might plausibly be ascribed to this mutated version of a mediaeval poet’s tale of a much earlier time, Martin was fairly sure that the game’s rating precluded anyone patting down his groin.

The stallion snorted haughtily as he emerged from the tent, not quite betraying him, but making it clear that he was there only on sufferance. He moved quietly back the way he’d come, glad now of the mud on his clothes.

Then he stood at the edge of the river and bellowed, ‘Javeed! Pesaram! Koja’i?’

The reply came back instantly: happy, relieved, not quite tearful. ‘Baba! Inja hastam! Inja bia!’

Martin strode towards his son’s voice, oblivious to everything else around him, barely noticing the member of Zal’s retinue approaching him before the man stepped directly into his path.

‘Who are you?’

‘Forgive me, sir; I’ve been searching for my son.’ Martin looked past his interlocutor; Javeed was standing on a patch of bare ground between two men. One of them had a scimitar in a scabbard strapped to his back; Martin’s skin tingled with fear and revulsion, but he had to trust the game to have kept the threat abstract and muted. If anyone had waved a blade in Javeed’s face-

‘That’s not an answer.’

Martin forced himself to focus on the man blocking his way. ‘We were in the river, fishing; our boat struck a rock and went down. My son and I became separated. I swear, until now I was afraid he’d drowned.’

The man regarded him suspiciously, but a flicker of compassion crossed his face. Martin was sure he wasn’t human, but he wondered if he was one of the new-style Proxies that Nasim had mentioned, boosted with fragments of neural circuitry. Are you a dumb cousin of the thing I’ll leave behind? Martin wondered. Just human enough to react with real emotion to the idea of a drowned child?

The man with the scimitar said, ‘We thought he was a thief. Why didn’t he speak the truth?’

Martin said, ‘Sir, I apologise, but sometimes he goes crazy from the sun. His mind runs away from his work; all he can talk about is elephants.’

The third man laughed. ‘Elephants in “Lavosestan”? He’s got too much imagination to be a fisherman.’

Martin tried to appear deferential, though part of him was having trouble resisting the urge to grab a fallen tree branch and start clubbing everyone who continued to stand between him and his son. ‘As you say, sir. But he’s done no wrong, and we need to go back and drag out the boat while there’s still a chance to find it.’

The two men closest to Javeed exchanged glances. ‘Very well,’ said the one with the scimitar. They stood aside; Javeed ran to Martin and took his hand.

As they walked out of the camp Javeed said, ‘I thought you weren’t coming. I thought you were going to leave me there.’

Martin’s heart was pierced, but he forced himself to speak calmly. ‘I’d never do that. You know I’d never do that.’

Javeed said mournfully, ‘What will we tell Zal?’

‘It’s not what we’ll tell him, it’s what we’ll show him.’

‘Huh?’

Martin produced the bag, making as a big a show of it as he could. Javeed was enraptured.

‘You got it! What’s in it? What is it?’