CHAPTER 28

THEY WERE BACK in Benzamir’s old lodgings. The four of them crowded round, kneeling, staring at the still-wrapped book lying on the floor. Benzamir had ordered more light, and when the lamps had proved insufficient, stationed his light-bees over the rug.

‘Master, what are you waiting for?’ Wahir reached forward, and Said slapped the boy’s arm and shook his head in reproof.

‘I don’t know,’ said Benzamir, and sat back on his heels. ‘I never open presents straight away. I always try and guess what’s in them first, and see if I’m right afterwards.’

‘But you know what’s in it,’ sighed Alessandra.

‘No. No, I don’t. I know what it’s supposed to be. I’m hoping it might well be something greater.’

‘The traitor’s magic?’

‘Thank you, Said.’

Alessandra had had enough. ‘For heaven’s sake.’ She peeled back one of the folds of heavy cloth and let it fall back in a cloud of sparkling dust. Despite herself, she grew hesitant.

‘Do it.’

She complied. The ceiling shimmered with reflected light.

‘Shiny,’ said Wahir, and dared to place a greasy fingertip on the cover.

Benzamir frowned. ‘This isn’t right.’

‘What do you mean?’ Alessandra breathed on the cover, watched the way her breath condensed on it, then evaporated away. ‘This is the User book.’

He jabbed his finger down. ‘But this is a User book.’

‘I just said that.’

‘I wasn’t expecting an actual User book.’ Benzamir pressed his palms together so that his nails turned white. ‘It’s not what I thought it would be.’

‘Will someone tell me what’s going on?’

‘The master doesn’t have to explain himself to you,’ said Said.

Alessandra took offence and narrowed her eyes at him.

Benzamir opened the cover and traced his fingers over the map-and-leaves symbol cut into the surface of the first page. There was writing beneath it.

‘Can you read what it says?’ asked Said.

‘Maybe. This language is as dead as a dead thing, but it gave rise to World. Anyway, there’s more to reading than just the words. There has to be context and meaning and understanding.’ He looked up, his face illuminated. ‘This is a genuine antique. Pre-Turn. This isn’t something from the traitors, dressed up to be User tech: this is the real thing.’

‘Are you disappointed, master?’

Benzamir slowly smiled. ‘How could I be disappointed with something as magnificent as this? Look.’ He drew his fingers across the first page, bowing it up, bringing it down onto the cover. There were more words, arranged in columns, in the same precise, inhuman hand. He slid pages by until he reached one that showed a picture of some coloured balls.

There was something odd about the picture. It seemed to be set behind the book, like a tiny model. Wahir tried to dip his finger into it, and only hit hard metal.

‘Where is it?’

‘Watch. I think I know what this does now. Just watch the picture.’ Benzamir brought the light-bees down so that the page shone.

The balls started to turn, then fly apart, disappearing under the edge of the frame. At their first movement, everyone but Benzamir rocked backwards. Gradually they edged forwards again. One ball of each colour was left behind. Each of these was broken down in turn, and then those parts turned into a pastel line of various lengths.

Suddenly the balls were back, and the whole sequence started again.

They watched, entranced, but when it became clear that nothing else was going to happen, they grew restless.

Their impatience eventually penetrated Benzamir’s rapt attention. He opened another page at random and let it charge up enough to play its video clip through.

‘But what does it do?’ asked Said. ‘Why is the emperor turning the city upside down to find this?’

‘Apart from the fact that this is simply amazing? This is all the secrets of the Users in one handy volume, complete with moving pictures. Except’ – and he turned the book over, opened the back cover and leafed a few pages in – ‘except this is just quantum physics. It’s not genetics, or cosmology, or chemistry. Or geology, ecology, or any other -ology you care to mention. There’s more out there than this.’

Alessandra worried at her lip. ‘There may have been another one.’

‘What happened to that?’

‘It went with the original seller. Apparently; it was only a rumour.’ She threw her hands up. ‘I don’t know! Why are we doing this?’

‘The master has enemies,’ said Said, as if he himself understood fully.

‘Magicians,’ said Wahir, ‘wicked magicians who would steal our souls and seal them in little bottles.’

‘Enough,’ murmured Benzamir. He turned back to an earlier page and watched as a Bose-Einstein condensate falteringly flowered in its depths. He tapped the picture with his knuckle, but it didn’t cure the jerky rendering. ‘I had hoped that this was something the traitors were putting about. But it’s not; this was made here, seven hundred years ago, when the Users were at their height. I can understand why the Kenyan emperor wants this book. What I can’t understand is how he came to lose it in the first place.’

‘Stolen,’ said Alessandra.

‘That’s the story, but there’s more to it; more than a man trying to reclaim his property. You don’t use an army for that.’ He stared at the book and ran his fingers down both sides of the cold metal cover. ‘I wonder what it might be.’

He lapsed into silence for so long, the others thought he might have fallen asleep. Even the light-bees dimmed to faint burning coals.

Wahir touched his shoulder. ‘Master?’

Without changing expression, Benzamir said: ‘Can you understand what this means? Any of it?’ He nodded at the book.

‘No, master.’

‘No. No one could. Not, I bet, even the emperor’s finest minds. Not for another five hundred years.’ He looked around. ‘No one in this whole wide world knows what a Riemann cut is or how to use one. Or understand that Phase theory is a subset of Unity physics. Or how to create zero-point energy using the Casimir effect without bringing the universe to a crashing halt.’

Wahir suddenly realized what he was missing. ‘Except you, master. You understand the User secrets, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ He grabbed Wahir by the shoulders and play-wrestled him to the ground, laughing. ‘But I’m not the only one, am I? Not now. Either the emperor is a compulsive collector like Al Ahiz, or he’s doing a favour for someone. I want to know who that is.’

‘Master?’

Benzamir sprang to his feet. ‘If His Imperial Highness wants this book so badly, I think we should give it to him. In person. I think we should see what he does with it afterwards.’

‘I’m not sure, master,’ said Said. ‘Why won’t he accuse us of stealing the book ourselves, and have us clapped in irons?’

‘We know he wants the book. We know that north, south, east and west, he’s looking for any clue of its whereabouts. And we have it. We’re bringing it to him as a gift.’

‘It’s as the master says, Abu Said,’ said Wahir. ‘The emperor would lose face if he took the book from us and threw us in prison. He’ll give us gold, lots of gold, and jewels, and’ – his imagination failed him – ‘all sorts of presents.’

Said pursed his lips as he thought of a response, but Wahir carried on.

‘We’ll have to pretend to be someone else. Who will we be? Merchants, or pilgrims, or wise men?’

‘We’re all wise, men and women.’ Benzamir smiled. He gathered together the tiny bundle of his belongings and walked round the room, extinguishing the lamps one by one. ‘But none of those.’

‘Then what will we be?’

‘Ambassadors. Emissaries from a faraway land, come to pay our respects and present our credentials from our king.’

‘I take it you don’t need me to point out,’ said Alessandra, ‘that we don’t have any letters of introduction, and only you come from a faraway land. The rest of us won’t pass as exotic enough.’