Zendegi

by Greg Egan

  How much of this equanimity was down to her choice of ersatz neuroanatomy, and how much to Martin’s own clear-eyed acceptance of the imperfect deal he was buying into, Nasim couldn’t say. But the result was about as far as it could have been from a tortured abomination, screaming that if it couldn’t have real wind on its face, real hope for its future and real memories of its past it should be wiped from the face of the Earth. Confronted with stark reminders of its nature and every kind of stress short of outright sadism, it remained simply grateful for its chance to outlive Martin and keep watch over his son.

  Nasim continued the tests until dawn, then she took a break to grab a quick shower, change her clothes and gulp down some coffee. Then she sat and worked her way through another dozen permutations. It was beyond her power, beyond anyone’s, to know how the Proxy would respond to every conceivable piece of news that the coming decades might bring, but when she pushed the envelope the results tended more to laughter than to tears.

  ‘I’m afraid Javeed’s become a follower of Shahidi,’ she declared. ‘He doesn’t want to see you any more.’

  The Proxy’s shocked silence dissolved into guffaws. ‘Nice try, Nasim, but we agreed that if Javeed doesn’t want to wake me, no one else will. I’m guessing Martin’s still alive and you’re just putting me through my paces before he signs off on me.’

  Nasim replied provocatively, ‘And does it worry you that one of us might reject you?’

  The Proxy snorted. ‘I’d be worried if the two of you weren’t doing some heavy-duty quality control before you unleashed me on my son.’

  ‘So far,’ Nasim assured it, ‘you’ve come across as remarkably stable. But how do you feel when I tell you I’m about to shut you down, leaving you with no memories of our conversation?’

  ‘You’ll remember what we’ve said,’ the Proxy replied. ‘That’s enough. And when I’m doing my job for real, Javeed will remember; that’s more than enough.’

  Nasim halted it.

  Looking back, her night’s labours seemed surreal. Even after hours of dialogue, she couldn’t decide if the Proxy was genuinely conscious - in spite of its deficits, in spite of its crippled sense of self - or if it was just an accomplished actor: a brilliant mimic who felt nothing at all, but knew Martin’s responses inside out.

  She was certain of one thing, though. Even if Rollo was right and the Faribas were like battery hens in hell, this was one side-load who wasn’t facing a life of voiceless suffering. Either Virtual Martin felt nothing, or he felt exactly what he claimed to feel: love for his son, acceptance of his limitations, and contentment with the purpose for which he’d been brought into existence.

  As to whether he could fulfil that purpose, it was up to Martin now to decide.

  27

  ‘When are you coming hooooome?’ Javeed demanded, pulling free of Rana’s grip and walking over to the monitor beside Martin’s bed.

  ‘Don’t touch that,’ Martin warned him, ‘or the nurse will beat me up.’

  ‘When?’ Javeed repeated.

  Martin said, ‘Tomorrow night I’m going to come and stay with you and Aunty Rana, then after a few nights I’ll come back to hospital for my new liver. Then after a few more nights we’ll both be back in our own home. How does that sound?’

  Javeed ignored all the obfuscatory details and cut straight to the point. ‘Why don’t they give you your liver now?’

  ‘It’s not quite ready,’ Martin lied. ‘That’s why I’ve got the little one until then.’ He moved the sheet aside and showed Javeed the tiny, neat scar left by the keyhole surgery. ‘The one that the robot put inside me.’

  Javeed still didn’t quite believe him about the robot, even though Martin had shown him images from the manufacturer’s glossy website.

  Rana said, ‘It’s taking them a long time to grow your liver. A whole child can be born in nine months!’

  ‘An adult liver weighs as much as a new-born baby,’ Martin claimed, fairly sure that this was neither true nor relevant. All he needed now was for Dr Jobrani to walk in while his visitors debated the reasons for the organ’s tardy arrival. ‘Anyway, I’m lucky they can do it at all.’

  ‘Thanks to God,’ Rana agreed. ‘You’ll be out soon, as healthy as ever. Like Omar’s father with his artificial legs. You should see him, Martin: he’s like a young man again.’ This was clearly intended as a form of encouragement, but Rana seemed to mean it sincerely.

  ‘Yeah?’ Martin smiled. ‘Well, he waited more than forty years, so I don’t have anything to complain about.’

  Rana glanced at the clock on the wall and addressed Javeed. ‘Say good-bye to your father. We’ll go home and have some dinner.’

  Javeed approached the side of the bed and Martin kissed him. ‘Thanks for coming, pesaram. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ He turned to Rana. ‘Thanks for bringing him. I know he’s a handful.’

  ‘Khahesh mikonam.’

  ‘I’m not a handful!’ Javeed protested.

  ‘No, he’s been good,’ Rana said, almost convincingly. ‘It’s a pleasure to have him.’ She rose from her chair.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Martin said. ‘Khoda hafez.’

  ‘Khoda hafez.’

  When they were gone, Martin took his notepad from the side of the bed and returned to the Zendegi website. He’d narrowed down his list to three scenarios, but he wanted to make a definite choice for the following day so he could fall asleep knowing there’d be one less thing to deal with in the morning.

  In Zendegi, a great many people spent a great deal of time pretending to fight and kill each other, and Javeed had shown no signs that he would buck the trend. For all that Martin had tried to steer him away from battle scenes, the chances were that within a few years the attraction would prove irresistible. Martin had gone through that phase of his childhood fencing with sticks and shooting water pistols; there had been no technology around to make his opponents fountain blood and spill viscera. That magic had been confined to the movies, with the most graphic material out of his reach - though at twelve he’d managed to sneak into Jabberwocky and found himself in heaven.

  He was hoping there’d be time for several different test runs before the transplant, but with Zendegi’s health looking as precarious as his own, he needed to be prepared to make a judgement as quickly as possible. So if he wanted to see the Proxy jump through hoops, there was no point starting with any but the highest, and no point sparing the flames.

  Nasim collected Martin from the hospital and drove him across the city. She seemed nervous, but it was clear from her demeanour that the optimistic verdict she’d given him after her own tests had been genuine. The Proxy had not disappointed her; the only thing she feared was that Martin might not feel the same way.

  It was half past seven when they arrived, but despite the chilly morning Shahidi’s supporters were out in force. Martin had only been following the politics sporadically, but he’d heard Zendegi’s side-loads being lumped together with a whole grab-bag of permissive and un-Islamic trends. The respectable conservative line went like this: Nobody wanted the corrupt mullahs back, lining their pockets and throwing their enemies into prison, but the pendulum had swung too far and a correction was desperately needed. A vote to rein in immodesty and blasphemy would be the antidote to extremism, dealing with popular discontent before it exploded into a violent backlash.

  In the MRI room, Nasim fitted Martin’s skullcap. Bernard was having a day off; his trainee, Peyman, was operating the scanner. There was no need for contrast agents; they would not be collecting side-loading data today. The only reason Martin was here and not in a ghal’e was that controlling his icon mentally, via the scanner, would spare him from fatigue and allow him to fake a few futuristic tweaks to the system.

  Nasim said, ‘Don’t get alarmed if the Proxy doesn’t show up for a few minutes; it’s hard to say in advance how long I’ll be talking to it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Feel free to kill the game any time you want
to, or to keep running it for as long as you like. The scanner’s yours for three hours if you need it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Nasim flipped down his goggles and fitted the cage over his head. Martin waited for the whirr of the motor that would carry him back into Zendegi.

  The dying embers of a campfire lay in front of him; an orange light was breaking on the horizon. Martin stretched his arms out, feeling his way into his new body; the hands and forearms that came into view belonged to a giant, but the skin was as smooth and unlined as a child’s. Zal’s son Rostam had been preternaturally huge; only the Simorgh’s intervention - in which the bird had offered detailed advice on the herbal drugs to use for a Caesarean - had allowed Rudabeh to give birth to him and live. But Rostam’s son Sohrab was even more prodigious; the Shahnameh had him playing polo at three, shooting arrows and throwing javelins at five, and leading a conquering army at the age of ten.

  Martin turned away from the dying fire. He was standing on a slight rise; below him, embroidered tents and horses draped in silk brocade carpeted the desert as far as he could see. Around the tents, soldiers were finishing their meals, completing their ablutions and tending to their mounts. He could remember when a crowd scene like this would have needed a Hollywood budget and an hour’s worth of computations to render each frame; now it was being done in real time for his eyes alone. Or his, and one other pair.

  As he surveyed the camp, the soldiers who glanced his way quickly lowered their gaze in deference to their ten-year-old general. He had asked Nasim to modify the way he saw the Proxy, retaining some resemblance to his own appearance but changing a few parameters to break the spell; it would be hard enough playing his own peculiar role without the distraction of a mirror-image of his true self standing in front of him. The preview she’d emailed him had seemed workable - and it had looked so much like one of his uncles that Martin had decided to call it privately by the same name. His Uncle Jack had died twelve years before, and Martin had not been close to him since childhood, but borrowing his identity felt less strange than picking a name at random.

  When the white-haired man clad in armour strode towards him up the rise, Martin started to have second thoughts about his choice, but it was too late for that. Javeed would see the same icon as he’d seen from their very first trip together, so Martin did his best to let the sense of familiarity overwhelm everything else.

  ‘Javeed?’ Jack broke into a grin of delight and disbelief. ‘I thought you might outgrow me one day, but this is ridiculous!’

  ‘Welcome back, Baba.’ Martin stepped forward and reached down to take his hand.

  Jack was speechless for a moment, overcome with emotion. Martin tried to appear affectionate, but also a little blasé; the experience was meant to be anything but new to him. For Jack, every time would feel like the first time he was seeing his son again after his death. But Martin understood why Nasim had insisted that it be this way; not only had the side-loading process been pushed to its limits to get this far, she hadn’t wanted to curse the Proxy with a sense of its own life in time.

  Martin drew his hand away. ‘Does it help if I tell you that it always helps when I tell you that you always get over the shock?’

  Jack burst out laughing. ‘Absolutely!’ He looked away, fighting back tears. ‘Ah, pesaram. I wish—’ Martin knew how the thought ended: I wish your mother could have seen you like this. But Jack passed the test and kept silent; Javeed didn’t need that wound torn open, week after week.

  ‘What’s happening at home?’ Jack asked him. ‘How are Uncle Omar and Aunty Rana?’

  ‘They’re good,’ Martin said. ‘The shop’s still going well. Umm . . . Uncle Omar’s father died last year.’

  ‘I’m sorry. What happened?’

  ‘He had a heart attack.’ Martin underplayed it, as if to say: It was sad, and I’ll miss him, but he was a very old man, trying to appear neither anguished nor untouched.

  Jack seemed to be on the verge of pressing him for more, but then he caught himself; whatever need there’d been to discuss the death, that conversation would have happened long ago. ‘How’s Farshid?’

  ‘He got married. He’s got a daughter now.’

  ‘That’s great. Are they living with you and Omar?’

  ‘Yes.’ Martin hesitated. ‘I don’t think his wife likes me very much.’

  Jack said, ‘Maybe she’s just a bit jealous, because you and Farshid are so close.’

  Martin didn’t reply and Jack let it drop. ‘What about school?’ he asked.

  ‘School’s okay. I’m getting good marks in Farsi and English. And I’m the third fastest runner in my grade.’

  ‘Mubaarak!’

  Martin spread his bulky arms. ‘But today I think I’d make a good wrestler.’

  Jack laughed. ‘So you’re Sohrab?’

  ‘Yeah. Do you remember the story? Rostam was hunting along the border with Turan, and one night his horse went missing. While he was looking for Rakhsh he hooked up with Princess Tahmineh, but all he really cared about was his horse; he didn’t hang around to look after the kid.’

  Jack smiled uneasily; perhaps he knew that this tale of parental neglect turned out rather less happily than that of Sam and Zal.

  Martin said, ‘Don’t worry, Baba, you’re not playing Rostam. I made up a new character, an adviser from Princess Tahmineh’s court who travels with her son as a kind of guardian.’

  ‘A kind of guardian,’ Jack echoed. Maybe the demotion stung a little, but it was better than the fate in store down the line for Sohrab’s father.

  A bearded Turani nobleman approached Martin and bowed low. ‘My lord, the sun is risen and your soldiers await your instructions.’ Martin wanted to laugh - just as he and Javeed had once giggled at Kavus and his sycophants - but he stayed in character: twelve-year-old Javeed playing the revered boy-general Sohrab.

  ‘Today,’ he replied portentously, ‘we take the White Fortress.’

  ‘As you command, my lord.’

  Martin paid almost no attention to the troops gathering behind him; there were trumpets sounding and orders being shouted, but he trusted the game to handle the logistics without his oversight or supervision. He wasn’t here to hone his nonexistent skills as a military commander, or to fret about rivals rising up to overthrow him; this whole vast army was just an elaborate backdrop, a part of the landscape.

  He and Jack rode out across the desert side by side, ahead of the tide of horsemen and the camels following with the army’s provisions. Nasim would have explained to Jack how Javeed could be riding his mount in a ghal’e, while Jack would be controlling his own icon in essentially the same way as Martin was.

  Alone with Jack, Martin didn’t push the arrogant prince persona; he treated his surrogate father warmly as a co-conspirator with whom he was happy to break the frame. Javeed, Martin hoped, would soon get used to the memory problem and find a way to talk to Jack that satisfied them both. It would be frustrating to have to repeat himself, but he’d also have the power to set the agenda.

  ‘Farshid’s daughter is called Nahid,’ Martin said, ‘like his grandmother.’

  ‘How old is she?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Nearly one.’

  ‘So how do you feel about having a little niece around?’

  Martin said, ‘She’s nice sometimes. When she’s not screaming.’

  ‘She must keep everyone busy,’ Jack said.

  ‘They’re always fussing over her,’ Martin complained.

  ‘Well . . . she’s a baby, she’s helpless. She needs to be watched closely; she still has to learn everything about the world.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Think about all the fun you had with Farshid,’ Jack said. ‘Then think how happy Nahid will be if she has someone like you to look up to the same way.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Martin didn’t want to play Javeed as a pushover, but he didn’t have the stomach to take the resentment to a pathological extreme: threats to run away from home, or thought
s of harming the child. Jack was doing a reasonably tactful job so far; good enough, surely, to provide a kind of safety valve. Whenever Javeed felt his whole adopted family was against him, he’d always have his dead father’s ear.

  They rode on in silence for a while, but Martin could see Jack watching him out of the corner of his eye. It was impossible not to feel moments of dizzying empathy for Jack’s position, to imagine how painful the ache of love for Javeed would become from across that strange horizon. But Martin wasn’t here to offer him emotional support in some bizarre co-parental bonding session - least of all when any words of encouragement he provided would vanish from Jack’s memory long before they could be any real help. And if Jack’s task weighed heavily, as it surely did, at least the weight could not accumulate. When the alternative was losing contact with Javeed completely, Martin did not believe it would be too much to bear.