Zendegi

The lance struck Hejir and threw him from his horse. Martin wheeled around and saw the Persian soldier flat on his back, his sword far away in the dust. Martin dropped the lance and dismounted, unsheathing his own sword and striding towards his enemy. As Hejir rose to his knees Martin swung at him like a child playing with a plastic toy; the gloves did their best to imbue the steel with a sense of real weight, of real consequence, but the task was beyond them.

Hejir twisted to avoid the blow, but this was the end game: he was disarmed, and the giant loomed over him. He bowed his head.

‘I am bettered,’ he said. ‘I beg for your mercy.’

Martin said, ‘I told you, no quarter.’ He swung the weightless sword again; his gloves shuddered as he parted Hejir’s head from his body. Blood gushed richly from the dead man’s neck, spilling onto Martin’s legs and feet. He stared down at the corpse, dazed and sickened but clinging to one certainty: he had to be prepared for Javeed to do something like this. Everyone who cared for him had to be prepared.

‘You worthless piece of shit!’

Martin turned; Jack was approaching on foot, his horse a few metres behind him. ‘You fucking worthless piece of shit!’ He tore the metal helmet from his head and threw it on the ground; his face was contorted with anger and disgust.

‘Baba, it’s just a game,’ Martin pleaded.

‘Are you my son?’ Jack raged. ‘Is this what that fucker Omar did to you?’

‘Baba, I’m sorry-’ Martin stood his ground as Jack walked up to him and started flailing impotently with his fists at Sohrab’s giant body.

Jack sank to his knees. ‘Is that what I taught you? You couldn’t help yourself, even when he begged for his life?’ He clawed at the dirt. ‘What am I, then? What am I doing here?’ He struck his head with his fists, distraught.

‘Baba, no one’s hurt, it’s just a game,’ Martin insisted. He shared Jack’s revulsion at what they’d both witnessed; he had known full well the feelings that his act would provoke. But he was sure he could have held his own response in check for Javeed’s sake; he could have stood back from his anger and found some gentler rebuke than this.

Jack gazed up at him wretchedly, cursing and ranting incoherently. Martin could see the helplessness in his eyes; he knew he’d gone too far and he wanted to stop. But the part of him that could do it wasn’t there. Maybe he still felt the ghost of it, like a phantom limb, but it had no purchase on reality, no power to change his course.

Martin said, ‘I’m not Javeed. This is just a test.’

Jack emitted a blood-curdling sob; his whole body shuddered with relief. But he still hadn’t won back control: he kept cursing Omar, cursing Javeed, cursing himself.

‘I’m sorry,’ Martin said. ‘I screwed up, I’m sorry.’

Jack looked down and shook his head impatiently. He didn’t want a post mortem, he just wanted to be done with this.

Martin stretched out his hand and erased him.

28

‘There was a family I met in Kabul,’ Martin said. ‘Ali and Zahra. They had four children; three girls and a baby boy.’

They were sitting in the MRI room. Peyman had made himself scarce. Nasim said, ‘Go on.’

‘They were from a small village in Bamyan Province. They’d been living without papers in Iran for three years, but they got caught in a sweep and sent back across the border. It wasn’t safe in their village, so they ended up in Kabul.

‘I met Ali on the street. It was winter; he was selling firewood – smashed-up furniture from garbage dumps, mostly. He invited me to his home and introduced me to his family; I interviewed him and his wife. I didn’t have a photographer with me, so I made a time to come back the next day.

‘When I returned… some people from the group that Ali had fled in Bamyan had found him, a few hours before. They’d cut off his head, in front of his family. In front of his wife and kids.’ Martin covered his eyes with one hand. ‘I didn’t see it happen, but I saw what it did to them.’

Nasim was silent for a while, trying to think of a way through the impasse. ‘There are a couple of things we could try,’ she said. ‘I could go back and find all the images we showed you that triggered that memory, and then rebuild the Proxy omitting your responses to them. Or we could put in some kind of filter, so the Proxy gets shielded from anything similar that happens in Zendegi.’

Martin looked up at her, incredulous. ‘Filtering his memories or censoring his experiences isn’t going to fix this. The Proxy should have been able to remember what had happened and talk about it with Javeed, calmly and sanely. If we just pluck it out of his head, or shield him from anything that reminds him of it, then what about the next thing that makes him go ballistic? The problem doesn’t lie with his memories; it’s the fact that he doesn’t have the capacity to deal with them.’

Nasim said defensively, ‘I did tell you that there’d be limitations.’ She had certainly included all the brain regions normally associated with impulse control, but given that the Proxy was, by design, incapable of forming all of the same perspectives as the original, there were always going to be situations where it was not going to behave the same way.

‘I’m not blaming you,’ Martin replied, without rancour. ‘You explained everything. I didn’t listen.’

Nasim shifted in her chair. ‘So what will you do?’

‘Javeed will live with Omar,’ Martin said. ‘There was never any choice about that.’

‘Can you talk to Omar?’

‘I have to.’ Martin laughed and wiped his eyes. ‘But how do you tell someone who’s offered to spend the next ten years raising your son that you’ve got a list of subjects on which you’d prefer that he kept his mouth shut? How do I do that without poisoning our friendship – and poisoning him against Javeed? Maybe I can slip it into some notes I hand him, just after the list of Javeed’s allergies.’

Nasim said, ‘You’ve been friends for fifteen years. Surely you can talk to him about anything now?’

Martin regarded her with bemusement. ‘Is it like that for you? No boundaries at all?’

‘Well, not exactly,’ Nasim admitted.

‘I’ve never been that close to Omar,’ Martin said. ‘Ever since I arrived in Tehran he’s gone out of his way to help me, but even now it’s still like we’re… guest and host. We can kid around about things that don’t matter, but we don’t criticise each other – that would be crass and ungracious. And after all these years of mutual tact, I don’t know how to change the rules without making it feel like a slap in the face.’

Nasim didn’t know what advice to give him. ‘You’ll find a way,’ she said.

Martin spread his hands: maybe. ‘Thanks for trying so hard with the side-load,’ he said. ‘I hope the research still tells you something useful.’ He stood.

‘I’ll give you a lift home,’ Nasim offered.

Martin shook his head. ‘I’ll get a taxi. You must have other things to do.’

‘Let’s not do ta’arof. I cleared my diary for the morning; I’ll give you a lift.’

They rode in silence most of the way. Nasim felt helpless; a part of her was still hunting for ways to salvage the project, to patch over the difficulties and make everything work. She knew that it was pointless, though. Whatever she proposed now, Martin was not going to change his mind.

When they reached the house, she walked with Martin to the door. ‘After the operation, if you’re not able to cope with an ordinary ghal’e, I can still organise time in a sca

Martin said, ‘Thanks, but if the transplant’s successful I should be in much better shape. Actually, I’m pla

‘Okay.’ They shook hands. ‘Good luck,’ she said.

Nasim was halfway back to the city when her notepad buzzed. The call was from Falaki: too much to deal with while she was driving, so she found a side-street where she could park and call him back.