The Apex Book of World SF Read online

  “Apple,” I said, pointing to a picture. “A for apple.”

  The learning flew by. The djinn was hideously intelligent. After three days he was proficient enough to communicate in English, with the aid of pictures. He was a marvelous artist, could render a likeness with only a few lines. Conversation was now possible, through signs, words, and quick sketches.

  He told me that he was old, hideously old according to our timeline. He had been gone for a long time, absent from human affairs. Men had spoken Sanskrit when he had last been in these parts. He expressed his amazement at the development, the roads, buildings, and cars.

  “The languages are similar,” he said with a smile, when I spoke Bangla to him. “Your people are the descendants of those I knew in the old kingdom.”

  He had powers. He could materialize and dematerialize at will, back to some dark dimension. He extruded some kind of field, could affect objects in his sphere. He was a djinn, a mythical creature. Yet his bewilderment was real, his unease with the jostle of the crowd, a palpable discomfort with the future.

  He took to cigarettes and whiskey with elan; soon he was as human as me, a chameleon. His English became good enough for proper conversation. He confessed that he had known human languages before, or what passed for them when he had last been among the living. Memories were coming back to him, proficiencies fallen either through disuse or some injury. I imagined some tragedy in his past, some accident or illness which must have laid him low, sent him into hibernation.

  He spoke of the places he had been, the nature of the darkness outside. It was frightening. His very presence filled me with unease, opening a window into something awful and unreachable. It took me some time to realize that I held the same dread for him, that he was just as unmoored. We were opposites in anxiety. To me he was the great emptiness of other dimensions. To him, I was the claustrophobic press of present day, of humanity ruling the world and crowding out every other living thing, of six billion people breathing in and out, of living and dying and using up every scrap of land until no empty space was left.

  My time with him was limited, because I still had to follow the schedule. Any deviation was a risk. They were still watching, waiting for cracks to develop. Once people write you off, it’s very difficult for them to revise their opinions.

  Ludicrously, my first instinct was to ask for wishes.

  “You know, three wishes,” I said.

  His look of bemusement was comical.

  “My people think that djinns grant wishes.”

  “Well,” he said. After some consideration, “What would you want?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Money, I guess. I would have said money, before I actually met you.”

  “You are already quite rich,” he said.

  “Yes, but men can never have enough money,” I said. “Forget the money. I really don’t give a shit anymore. I mean, I don’t care if I leave anything behind. How about immortality? Is that something you can grant?”

  “I think that’s a power reserved for God.”

  “You believe in God? I thought perhaps you all had found a better answer.”

  “I could lengthen your life, perhaps. By aligning the defects in your body,” the djinn said. “And we are no closer to God than you.”

  “I’m not that keen on living forever anyways,” I said, after some self-examination. “Right now, I despise everyone around me.”

  “Well, they thought you were crazy.”

  “Yes, imagine dealing with that forever and ever,” I said. “No thanks.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I went into hibernation,” the djinn said. “I wish I hadn’t. I’ve missed some remarkable times. The problem is that it all goes so slowly, when you’re awake for it.”

  “I know what I want,” I said. “If I had wishes, that is.”

  “Three wishes you’d get, you said,” the djinn said.

  “I just need one. And it’s a wish you can grant, actually, if you were of a mind to.”

  “You realize that I have no actual wish granting powers,” the djinn said. “It’s all physics, what I can do…”

  “I want to know secrets.”

  “It’s supposed to be palaces, gold, and wenches,” the djinn said.

  “I have those things already, to some degree,” I said. “At this point in my life, they’re useless. I want to know something amazing. Some piece of secret knowledge. I want to know how the universe really works.”

  “I’m quite sure I do not know how the universe works,” the djinn said with distressing promptness. “I am not even sure I know how this little corner of the world we live in works. For example, what exactly is electricity? I must say I’m completely baffled.”

  “Look, I know all of that stuff,” I said, frustrated. “That’s just science. I can get you a book. Or use the internet.”

  “That’s another thing I don’t understand,” the djinn said, shaking his head.

  I was forced to smile. I still wasn’t too comfortable with computers, although I appreciated how utterly useful they were. I guess my generation had just missed out on it. We were still stuck in the land of two fingered typing.

  “It seems like I’m the one granting you wishes,” I said. I was cross. He was being deliberately obtuse. “Let’s start with basic things. What is your name, for example?”

  “I prefer not to say.”

  “Aha!” I said. “It is common in many mythologies, that knowing the true name of someone or something gives us power over them. You fear to give me your name. Is this the basis of your power?”

  “Nothing so romantic, I’m afraid,” the djinn said. “It is merely that my name is associated with certain painful memories. I am an exile of sorts, in fact.”

  “Oh.”

  “I wish for a new name, a fresh start. You must pick one. Something modern, something suited to today’s world.”

  “This is ludicrous,” I said. “It’s very stressful picking a name. I cannot do it. A name must reflect everything about you, your background, your family, your religion.”

  “Well think about it,” he said. “You are the only person I know. My only friend, if you like. In return, I will think about a great secret I can share with you.”

  “Alright,” I said, secretly flattered that he would call me friend.

  For the next week, I did not see him. I went back to work, started checking budgets, projections, and sales reports. In my absence things had started to slip. Money was disappearing, people were slacking, it was as if something vital had gone from the machinery, and I realized that it was me, it was my will that had been propping this whole thing up. Even now, as I saw the numbers swimming around, I couldn’t muster up any interest. Something had dissipated. It is normal to go through life with a vague dissatisfaction. The childhood promise of magic, answers, slowly gives way to a methodical plodding of problems encountered, problems solved, assets accumulated, debts paid. You wake up one day surrounded by expensive things, with the discomforting conclusion that you haven’t learnt anything, really, haven’t really plumbed the depths.

  The djinn, by his very tenuous existence, had reduced everything. Here was the other, if not the answer, at least hope. I had intimated my desire for secrets. In truth the idea of secrets had overwhelmed my thoughts. I did not crave women, or money, or power. I wanted to know secrets. I wanted to know how things worked.

  As the days passed I feared that he was gone. When he returned, I was relieved. I was relieved that I hadn’t imagined it. How can an insane person tell the outside from the inside? The only logical thing to do is see it through; to continue as if everything is real. I often arrived at this conclusion when I doubted myself.

  “I have been thinking,” the djinn said, ensconced in my office. “That our collaboration requires me to be more forthcoming. I am aware, that aside from irrefutable proof of my existence, I have not given you much else.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes. I have so many questions.”
r />   “This is not deliberate. Somewhat like you, I am damaged. My identity, my memories, are fractured,” the djinn said. “I cannot give you answers, because I myself do not have many of them. However, I will give you my name, meaningless as it is. I am called Jivar the broken. I was imprisoned, then exiled by my people.”

  “What was your crime?” I asked, fascinated now.

  “I refuted some long held truths among my people, about our own creation, our place in the world. My people believe, like man, that we were made by God. Except in our creed, we were the chosen race, bequeathed the worlds of light as well as darkness, as evinced by our physical superiority. Were we not alone bequeathed a universe of our own, one of pure holy energy?”

  “A not unreasonable belief,” I conceded.

  “My great crime? I suggested that like all life, we were mere accidents; that we ourselves had no idea about the dimension we inhabited, or this physical world, that we were all as lost as each other, humans and djinns, adrift in time.”

  “Jivar,” I said. “Jivar the broken.” I rolled it around my tongue, relishing the thrill. It seemed like a grand title. Here was a creature of myth, conversing with me. “This name sounds greater than anything I could give you.”

  “I was thinking on your request,” Jivar said. “There are old places here, places which were old when I was young. Many have been swept under the sea, but some still exist. There is a place near here, in the region you call Narshingdi. It is the remnant of an ancient city. Or rather, the upper layer of a city that once existed. I travelled there the past week.”

  “There’s an excavation there, in Wari-bateshwar,” I said. I remembered the articles some years ago. “They found an old city.”

  “Once, before the world was ice, there was a great kingdom of djinn here, when we were less scattered. Afterwards, men rebuilt it in the same name, the ancient civilization of Gangaridai. We must have private access to that site. Take me there, and I will show you a secret.”

  “That will not be hard,” I said. “As I recall, the archaeology team was out of funds. Give me three days.”

  I started making phone calls. The site was controlled by a local university, an impoverished archaeology department which could barely staff the site year around. A friend of a friend was a tenured professor there, and before long I had an appointment with the chief archaeologist. The man was earnest, and held forth on the many wonders of Gangaridai, and the relative penury of our efforts compared to international digs. I offered to fund him for the next three years, and it was sad to see the way his eyes lit up with desperate hope.

  “I will need two days with my team there,” I said. “For promotional reasons. They will find a way to get this money from the marketing budget.

  He agreed, of course. He would have agreed to give me his firstborn. The next call was to the UP chairman, a political thug who visited his area twice a year to throw lavish banquets for the ‘poor’. His ‘nephew’, another embryonic politician, actually ran the area with an iron fist, serving as chief drug dealer, pimp, toll collector, bureaucrat, police, and magistrate. He was actually a capable boy by all accounts and would probably become home minister one day. Normally I would have spent time on chit chat, but I just didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care to save money, and I certainly didn’t care about his dignity. I stated my request baldly, followed by a number. It was sufficient. The Chairman came to my office the next day, took his cash, and called his nephew in front of me, as well as the police station in his area for good measure. In his mind I was now a man Who Did Not Waste Time. The entire political cadre and police force in the area was now at my disposal.

  “This had better be worth it,” I said to Jivar, when all was readied. If my directors knew how much I had spent, they would have bundled me back to the sanitarium. Luckily, I alone knew all the gopher holes in this company, how money flowed around and around, and whereas I had always been the policeman, now I was the thief. It was strangely liberating.

  “It will be,” he said with a smile. “Just remember, some things you cannot unsee.”

  We took two Pajeros out of town, giant SUV’s with their windows blackened, one for me and the djinn, the other full of armed bodyguards. I normally didn’t go for this kind of thing, but I wanted privacy, and the guards were necessary to make sure no one saw too much of Jivar. We got to the site, and after half an hour of formal greetings and tea ceremonies, I lost my patience and kicked everyone out. Luckily, my advanced years allowed some rudeness.

  Jivar waved away my guards. I protested. I was an old man, I would need help.

  “I will help you,” the djinn said. “Do you not trust me?”

  I wasn’t sure I did, but at this point, I didn’t really care.

  We went to the dig, it seemed to be mainly a series of waist high walls and mounds, not very impressive. I had envisioned something like the pyramids. I tried to hide my disappointment. What could the djinn show me in all this mud and dirt? We wound our way through, he seemed to know what he was doing. At a certain point, where the ground was undisturbed, he paced and measured.

  “It’s here. There is a tunnel, a kind of staircase going underground.”

  “How do we get to it? I’m too old to dig,” I said. It was hot, and I was getting tired, irritable.

  Jivar moved me aside. “I will use my power. There is a mechanism still alive, which will open the way.”

  He put both hands on the ground and pushed. Whatever strain he was under was not physical, but it told all the same, for the air darkened around him, the leaves rustled, and I felt a terrible vertigo. The ground shook, there was a kind of grating noise, and suddenly a great calamity of dust covered us, and we fell down, as if in an elevator in free fall. I shouted in fear, but Jivar held me close, and his wiry strength was a comfort. I could see nothing, a great roaring made my ears drum, and I was about to pass out when it all stopped.

  We were in complete darkness, but the ground was still at least, and it was blessedly cool, almost clammy. Jivar flicked his fingers, and an orb of light, like a meager sun, came to live behind his shoulder. We were in a kidney shaped chamber, the walls and roof set with roughly hewn rocks, devoid of adornment, yet clearly manmade. I did not know how deep underground we were, but my ears felt strange, and it was completely, eerily soundless.

  Jivar ushered me to a hole in the ground, crude stairs made of blocks seemingly hacked into the body of a sloping tunnel. I felt claustrophobic dread at having to enter that coffin shaped hole, but Jivar led the way, and I followed quickly lest I lose his light. We kept going down, and everything was damp, clammy, the air fetid with some rotting smell. An hour rolled by on that terrible descent, and then two, and I began to rest frequently, leaning on the djinn, my breath coming in great shallow bursts; I was no longer enamored of this secret, I was now contemplating whether I would ever see daylight again.

  Jivar urged me on, half dragging me the last twenty minutes, until we at last came to an abrupt end. One second we were in that closed tunnel, and the next I was almost plunging into the abyss, my foot clawing through open air until Jivar pulled me back. The djinn made a motion and the light above his shoulder became luminous, like a bright star. We were on an interminable ledge that bordered an inky blackness, and as the light slowly penetrated, I could see the edge sloping down, faced with stone, smooth and horrible in proportion, and far across a similar sloping shore, a distance and scale of masonry which beggared the imagination.

  “It is an inverted pyramid,” Jivar said, sending the light out to hover high in the air, illuminating the structure further. “We must go down.”

  We walked along the lip of the precipice, and I followed the sloping sides with my eye, trying to fathom at which far away depth lay the apex of the triangle. After some time we reached a break in the ledge, and there were steps going down, long shallow ones, the stone edges rounded from great use. How many men had gone up and down building this thing? How long ago? As we descended, dank and unpleasant s
mells filled the air. Soon the light showed disturbing things underfoot; I tripped on a femur, and it crumbled to dust, and then my foot kicked a ribcage, sending it skittering. There were skulls, heavy browed, eyes pinched together with elongated craniums, things not quite human, bones with subtle wrongness about them that even my untrained eye recoiled from.

  Jivar noticed my disquiet. Indeed, we were now walking entirely through bone, for the steps and surrounding slope were covered by a latticework of the dead, a gently settled creeper bearing fruits of grinning heads, the flesh and skin long gone, all stacked in delicate balance, so that our mere passage was enough to send out mini avalanches in our vanguard. There were thousands of dead, hundreds of thousands!

  “The workers,” Jivar said. “They sealed them in of course, to hide the secret.”

  “Were these men?” I asked, in a hushed tone.

  “Not quite,” Jivar said. “It was long ago. We called them Grass people. They had longer skulls, and their eyes were different. They were shorter, and wider than men, but very similar otherwise. They were very skilled with their hands, and thus prized workers.”

  “Grass people. So many dead here.”

  “It was a great sacrifice. The Grass people ceased to exist afterwards. This is the entirety of their population, I believe.”

  I stared with loathing at Jivar, overcome by the matter of fact tone covering such an enormous, hideous crime.

  “It was much before my time,” Jivar said, noticing. He was adept now at reading my expressions, he missed nothing. “Things were different between djinn and men then. Indeed, there was no human civilization, not as you know it now.”

  “What is the point of this?” I asked. “This is like a giant cup filled with the dead. An entire species extinct. For what? Some kind of temple? Some monument to a pharaoh?”

  “It is a machine,” Jivar said. He smiled. “Do you think I would waste your wish in such a paltry way? This is one of the great secrets of the djinn.”