Babylon Sisters Page 19

  The only traditional element missing from the city, in fact, was misery. Taylor saw no beggars, no faces ravaged by untended controllable illnesses. He passed many clinics, staffed by Westerners: immigrants in their new jobs. Also, he realised that there were no draught animals or conventional vehicles. Instead, small carts and scooters, impelled noiselessly by odd engines—Taylor’s trained eye recognised them as Stirling cycle devices, powered by demon heatpumps—were everywhere.

  The whole city seemed slightly inebriated, in fact. There was an almost physical euphoria, something in the air like ozone on a mountaintop. Taylor found his attention drifting again, and forced himself to recall his mission.

  He stopped, attracted by a tea-stand. Having stood in the sun since before noon, he was parched. He watched the proprietor prepare numerous cups of hot dark tea for his customers. Each cup of water was heated to boiling individually over a small black cube emblazoned with a demonsign. The cube had a single control.

  Taylor stared at this device with almost as much interest as he held for the drinks. Here was one of Holt’s products—the most revolutionary—in its simplest form: inside the cube was nothing but a number of self-replicating Maxwell’s demons—sophisticated nanomechanisms, silicrobes—and a quantity of plain air at ambient temperatures. The demons, intelligent gates, were layered in a screen that divided the interior of the cube in half. By segregating molecules of common air with non-uniform velocities, the silicrobes produced heat in one half of the cube, while the other half grew frigid. (Some of this energy they used for themselves.) The control regulated how many gates were switched on.

  Endless free power. A local reversal of entropy.

  This was what had toppled governments and transmogrified societies. Inside this small featureless cube was a power that was well on its way to remaking the globe.

  Taylor watched as customers exchanged dinars for drinks. A few seemed to partake without paying, failing to arouse any protest from the man running the booth. Taylor was just on the point of daring to do so himself when a voice spoke from his side.

  “You are just off the boat, I wager.”

  Taylor turned. A young Arab man with five-o’clock shadow, wearing jeans, a T-shirt emblazoned with the demonsign, and cowboy boots, stood beside him.

  “Yes,” admitted Taylor.

  “Understandably, you are perplexed. It is a common reaction. Money, you see, is on the way out here. In a society of growing abundance, it is losing its value. Many cling to it still, out of habit, but are willing to give freely of their products and labour if asked, knowing they may take freely in return. But enough of theoretical economics. It was my field of study, and I think sometimes I was on my way to becoming quite a pedant. You are thirsty.” The man spoke in Arabic to the proprietor, who quickly fixed Taylor some tea.

  Tea in the Sahara, he thought, sipping. That was both an old song and a chapter in one of Aubrey’s books. Things seemed suddenly to converge in a rush upon Taylor, and he felt dizzy.

  “Please,” said the Arab, taking Taylor’s arm, “my name is Azzedine, Azzedine Aidud. Allow me to find you some shade.”

  Taylor finished his tea quickly, nearly scalding his mouth, returned the cup, and allowed the man to lead him off.

  Walls old as life, alleys narrow as death, shadowy doorways—Taylor lost all sense of where the port was. His attention wandered, and he followed Azzedine as he had followed Narciso. Used to giving orders and leading, he now found himself reduced to a child’s role.

  They ended up in a walled garden, water purling gently in a fountain. Taylor vaguely remembered the Arab saying something about his family. Azzedine was speaking.

  “—and when I heard what was happening in my homeland, I left my studies in America—I was at Stanford, do you know it?—and returned. It was the only thing to do, obviously.”

  Taylor was seized by a sudden feverish energy. He grabbed Azzedine’s wrist.

  “Listen—do you know where Holt is now?”

  Azzedine’s face filled with near-religious awe, then disappointment. “The great man. How I wish I could meet him! It would be an honor to thank him personally, something I could tell my children about some day. But, sad to relate, I do not know.”

  “Is there some way we could find out?”

  “There is a branch of Holt’s tribe in town. They might know.”

  “His tribe?”

  “That is what the ones who work with Holt call themselves.”

  “Please, would you take me there?.”

  “Certainly.”

  The office of the tribe was a former Army building denoted by a special demonsign that featured a capital H in its center. The place was bustling with activity. The chain of command was hard to distinguish: no receptionists, no private offices, no obvious executives. After some time, Taylor found himself talking to a dark-haired Canadian named Walt Becker, Azzedine listening attentively.

  Taylor tried to lie convincingly. “Listen, you’ve got to tell me where Holt is. It’s imperative that I see him. I have crucial information for him.”

  “About what?”

  “It’s—it’s information about an attempt on his life.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first. Holt can handle it.”

  “No, this is different. He’s not prepared. Please, he’s an old friend. I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to him.”

  “You know Holt personally?”

  “We went to school together...”

  Becker seemed unconvinced, on the point of turning away. Taylor rummaged desperately through his small bag of tricks.

  “The woman with him, Aubrey. She’s my wife.”

  Becker perked up. “What’s your name again?” Taylor told him. “And what project were you just working on?”

  “Chunnel Two.”

  Becker nodded. “She said you might show up.”

  Taylor’s heart skipped. What kind of tripwires had she set?

  It looked, however, as if no alarms had gone off. Becker picked up a phone. “We’ll get you transportation right away.”

  Azzedine interrupted. “No. I claim the right to take him. My family were always marabouts, guides. I brought him here. It is only fair.”

  Becker shrugged. “Why not? Holt’s in the desert, the Tanzerouft, not far from Taodani. He got a project going with the Tuareg. Exactly what, I’m not sure.”

  Taylor laughed bitterly. “Out in the field himself. Holt always did have a weakness for micromanaging things.”

  Becker chuckled. “Call it nanomanaging now.”

  “The new Tangier to Tombouctou highway passes near to Taodani.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Not far. A thousand miles, more or less.”

  “You call that ‘not far’?”

  “In the past, yes, it would be a long distance. But not on the new road. You’ll see. Let’s get your bag, and we’ll be off.”

  Azzedine’s transportation was a twoseater, a teardrop-shaped, three-wheeled vehicle with a canopy laminated in gold to reflect the desert heat. Powered by demons, it needed no refuelling. The man was immensely proud of it, and seemed able to discourse endlessly on it, much to Taylor’s annoyance.

  “Classical physics, you know, Mister Taylor, claims that our power source is impossible. Information theory was supposed to have put a final nail in the coffin of Mister Maxwell’s demon, you see. In sorting molecules, the demon was supposed to discard information, which was thermodynamically costly, thereby negating all the work it had done. Holt’s insight was to see that a mechanism with a large enough memory could increase the entropy of its memory in order to decrease the entropy of its environment. When saturated, it would replicate a fresh heir, then self-destruct. Thus the problem of thermodynamic irreversibility is side-stepped.”

  As they moved slowly through the streets of Tangier, Taylor, eyes closed, reclined alongside the driver in his comfortable seat. The amber light filtering in through the one-way transparency coloured his face li
ke a marigold.

  “It’s all bullshit, Azzedine. There’s some hidden payback down the road. There has to be.”

  Azzedine seemed hurt. “Then, Mister Taylor, I must affirm that this car is powered on bullshit. Seriously, do you believe Mister Holt would set something loose like this if it were not perfected? He is a unique soul. Why, to aid the Tuaregs qualifies him as a holy man.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The Tuaregs are not even really Arabs. They claim to be an ancient noble race, but I do not trust them. Do the men not veil their faces, so you cannot read them?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do. Holt is brave to work with them. As you might say, he’s one ‘major dude.’ I know many in other lands vilify him, claiming he is irresponsible and crazy to unleash such forces so rapidly. But he knows just what he is doing. Someday the whole world will acknowledge him as its saviour, as we here do now.”

  “We’ll never live to see if it happens as you predict.”

  “Only God knows. And as there is no God but Allah, Holt is his prophet.”

  On the outskirts of Tangier began a golden road of almost supernatural smoothness, heading south-east straight as a surveyor’s wetdream. The road was lined with young palms fed with a continuous length of trickle-irrigation tubing, studded with demon-powered pumps.

  “Look,” said Azzedine with admiration, “fused from sand by more of Holt’s creatures of genius.”

  “Wonderful,” said Taylor. He was simultaneously keyed-up and weary. There definitely seemed to be something in the air that sharpened the senses and quickened the pulse. Conversely, his mind was burdened with its weight of fatality, the self-imposed geas to regain Aubrey and put an end to Holt’s madness.

  Azzedine cranked the little car up to one hundred and twenty kilometers an hour. Twelve or fifteen hours, and they should be there.

  Taylor managed to doze off during one of Azzedine’s impassioned monologues about the miracle of North Africa. He awoke as they passed through Fez and began to ascend into the Grand Atlas Mountains. They crossed the nonexistent border near Chaouf, and entered the true desert. Even here, the road flew out ahead of them, indomitable, lined with hopeful trees.

  Azzedine drove like one possessed by the Holy Spirit. Taylor, waking at intervals in the night, tried vainly to imagine what was going on in the Arab’s mind. Did he view himself as divinely appointed by Kismet to find the stranger in the marketplace and convey him to his meeting with Saint Holt?

  Around midnight, after eight hours of driving, they stopped for a brief rest at an oasis.

  Hive-shaped buildings with thick walls, constructed by nanomachines from sand, sat beneath date-palms and talha trees. Camels were hobbled by the well. A man in a flowing gandourah appeared, and bowed them welcome. He brought them inside and roused his whole family: two wives and six children. The women, their hair modestly concealed from the strange males by cloth wraps, served Taylor and Azzedine couscous with chunks of lamb and a milk drink called zrig, followed by dates and honey.

  Taylor was curious. “Ask them why they live out here, so far from anywhere.”

  Azzedine enquired. The husband launched into a long impassioned speech. Azzedine’s eyes grew large.

  “He claims that wherever Holt has rested becomes a haram, a holy place, and he hopes to gain heavenly merit by staying here and helping travellers.”

  “Oh, Jesus, this is really too much—”

  After Azzedine had a short nap, the travellers were off.

  Fifteen hours after their departure, as dawn was breaking in shades of apricot and cream, they reached Taodani, a small town in the north of a Mali that was no more.

  They parked. Outside the car, the heat smote them like a velvet-covered hammer, dazing Taylor.

  “Now what?” asked Taylor.

  “We will find a local who knows where the Tuaregs are camped and can serve as guide. Then, I’m afraid, it will be camels for us. There are no roads in the Tanzerouft.”

  A shopkeeper, instantly cooperative at the mention of Holt’s cursed name, directed them to a man called Mahfoud.

  Mahfoud, apparently in his fifties, was desert-thin, desert-dark. “Of course I can bring you to Holt. Did I not guide the azalai, the salt caravans, for years?”

  “How far is he?”

  “Twenty-five miles. With luck, eight hours’ travel.”

  Taylor groaned. “When can we start?”

  “Tonight. Travelling by dark, we will avoid the heat.”

  Taylor and Azzedine spent an hour or two buying, under Mahfoud’s direction, a few supplies. They napped in the house of the town’s prefect. By moonrise, they had all assembled on the edge of town.

  The camels wore wooden butterfly-shaped saddles. Mahfoud tied the waterskins, the girbas, to the saddles. Each camel was controlled by a bridle to which was attached a rope.

  Mahfoud couched the camels. “Mount now.”

  Taylor and Azzedine ascended. The camels rose, making half-hearted protests at the weight.

  “Your beasts will follow mine. But do not drop the headrope, whatever you do, or they will bolt.”

  Mahfoud moved to the fore of the caravan. Holding his camel pole across his shoulders, he started the train in motion.

  Mounted on his camel, Taylor, still wearing his filthy linen suit, found the riding deceptively easy.

  Two hours later, his whole body felt like a single giant bruise. The night, while cooler, was still in the nineties. The monotony of the trek, the slowness after the speed of the drive, made him want to scream. Would he never reach Holt?

  Rocking atop the smelly beast, Taylor was suddenly taken by the ironic notion that his whole journey was more comedy than tragedy. A plane to Spain, a boat to Africa, a car to the desert, a camel to some filthy nomad encampment. It was all too much like one of those movies where the characters experience successive degradations in their quest, until they end up pedalling on a child’s bicycle...

  Seeking reassurance, Taylor reached beneath his jacket. Tucked into the waist of his trousers was his gun. It felt hot against his skin.

  Constellations spun; the desert drifted past them.

  The Tuaregs had not moved, and were easily found. They were camped in a depression which even Taylor could recognize as a dry wadi. From a distance, their flattened oval tents of dom fiber looked like some abandoned circus, dropped impossibly into the waste of sand. In the middle of the encampment was a modern tent, obviously the ringmaster’s, Holt’s.

  Taylor tried urging his camel to greater speeds, but found it as unresponsive as stone. After a seeming eternity, they arrived in the midst of the camp.

  It was so early, pre-dawn, that no one was yet up.

  Taylor painfully dismounted.

  He stumbled at an awkward trot towards Holt’s tent. Azzedine hung back out of respect, while Mahfoud was busy with the camels.

  Taylor pulled back the tent flap and an unexpected blast of air-conditioning smacked him in the face, utterly disconcerting him for a moment. Recovering, he saw in the dim light two sleeping figures on separate cots: Aubrey and Holt, both in T-shirts.

  If they had been together in bed, he knew he would have shot them.

  But as they were, looking like children, his wife and his best friend, they drained everything from him except self-disgust.

  With a roaring in his ears, Taylor raised the gun to his own temple.

  He pulled the trigger—

  Once, twice, a number of times.

  No flare, no aroma of gunpowder, nothing but dull clicks.

  Taylor dropped his hand and looked down in befuddlement at the traitorous weapon. He ejected the full clip, studied it as if expecting it to voice an explanation, then tossed it aside. He began to cry.

  Holt and Aubrey were awake now. A light came on. Holt manoeuvred a campstool behind Taylor, and pressed his shoulders. He sat.

  “Aubrey, I could use some tea. And I’m sure Nick could too. Would you mind?”

 
Aubrey’s single nod was like a wordless recrimination that drove straight through Taylor’s heart. His sobs deepened.

  Holt, damn him, was acting all apologetic, as if it were he who had attempted the suicide, and not Taylor.

  “It’s a shock at first, Nick. I know. Hell, I remember when I discovered it. And you should have seen the faces on the UN troops when they tried firing at us. But certain entropic reactions from the old paradigm are just impossible now, within a large radius of the demons. You can’t get an internal combustion engine to function within miles of Maxwell’s Land. It’s a local accumulation of anti-entropy, put out as a byproduct of the demons’ sorting. God knows why our metabolisms still work. Sheldrake thinks it’s got to do with the morphogenetic field. But shit, it’s all beyond me—I admit it. One thing I do know. The field should reach Europe pretty soon. After that, they’ll have no choice but to use my demons. I figure America has about another ten years, tops, if she stays stubborn. Although I’d go back to help any time sooner, if they asked.”

  Taylor’s sobs diminished. “What...what are you going to do with me?”

  Holt looked at Aubrey, his face—as youthful as it had been in their school days—honestly ingenuous. “Gee, I don’t know. There’s so much to be done, whole continents to convert, a hundred countries, thousands of societies. Take what we’re doing out here. We’re going to restore the wadi. There’s plenty of water, it’s just three hundred feet down. These new silicrobes we’ve engineered form micro-capillaries and bring the water up one molecule at a time. We could sure use you to help restore the biosphere—but maybe you have some ideas.”

  Taylor was silent. Holt turned as Aubrey approached with tea.

  “Aubrey, what do you say we should do with Nick?”

  His wife looked at Taylor, and he managed to meet her eyes. He thought he had never seen her so radiant or self-possessed. That drivel in her farewell letter—it had all been true. He waited with trepidation for her to speak.

  “Put him to work,” she said forcefully. “What else? Even now,” she said, “nobody gets something entirely for nothing.”