Djinn City, page 29
“So it’s just us now?” Rais frowned. “In that case, you have to help directly.”
“What?”
“Barabas, please, we’re about to be destroyed. Khan Rahmans have been the emissaries in Bengal for two thousand years. Do you want the massive loss of dignatas involved in seeing us extinct?”
“Hrrmm. All right, fine. What do you need?”
“My mother’s moved her base to Wari. The old spells are damaged. I need you to repair the perimeter. And then you’re going to sit there and make sure no djinns attack the place.”
“That perimeter’s going to take days,” Barabas grumbled. “And what are you lot going to do while I’m slaving away?”
“Mother’s taking over the trust and then going to war with Dargoman,” Rais said. “Me? I’m going to stop Matteras. By the way, do you remember Kaikobad ever talking to Risal?”
“I shouldn’t think so. She was a bit uppity. Never invited me to her fancy sky tunnel.”
“Was he writing to her, perhaps?”
“He was always writing letters,” Barabas said. “I never paid attention to any of that.”
“Think, Barabas. How do you even send letters to someone up in the air?”
The djinn frowned. “There is an air courier. A Ghul. Kaikobad would have known him.”
“Can you ask him, please? I really need to know.”
“Okay, okay,” Barabas said. “I’ll call him down.”
“Let me know as soon as you can. One last thing. You ever heard of haplogroups?”
“Sure, I love their music. I’m up to date on all the obscure stuff. Moffat said he was going to help me become a hipster. That means someone very cool. He said I’ve got the right kind of beard.”
“Never mind.”
The house in Wari was already on red alert. Abdul lounged incognito in the tea stall at the entrance of the alley, winking as they crossed, his gun bulging clearly under his shirt. Two or three other ex-army subedars stood at strategic points, armed with pistols. The shopkeepers in the street knew Juny by this point, had already been recruited to her cause. They kept an eye out on who came and went. This was a Khan Rahman bastion, and despite the peculiarities of the doctor, almost everyone was a loyalist.
The gate was reinforced with iron bars, and a further gunman stood on the roof, armed with a rifle and other various small arms, not enough to stop a djinn, but proof enough against a man with a cane sword. Butloo still manned the front door. The stalwart was quivering with pride. He had somehow dug up an old army uniform, some kind of Gurkha rig from the British era, complete with the heavy-bladed knife. He snapped a salute, and then shook hands with Rais for good measure.
The house was a beehive on the ground floor, clerks at small wooden desks counting money, accountants poring over ledgers, and a clutch of lawyers around the dining table, smoking cigarettes and making lists of dirt they had on each other. Juny had refurbished the place. Every moldy surface had been scrubbed, painted, or, in some extreme cases, replastered. She had fitted the kitchen with equipment that actually worked: a gas stove, a microwave, a restaurant-grade refrigerator. Her carpenter had fixed all the windows with new netting, preventing the mosquitoes from coming in. The library had been restored to its former glory, shelves polished and straightened, for Juny had moved their entire occult collection back here, replenished with many of Kaikobad’s old books, whatever the used-book shop owners had been able to track down for her. Rais’s own haul of books, secured from Risal’s sky tunnel, had spilled over to a second room.
Upstairs, the entire second floor had been polished and painted, all the old junk furniture thrown out, the guest bedrooms made inhabitable, one of the sitting rooms cloned into a hospital room, prepared to receive the comatose owner of the house. Kaikobad, still in his long sleep, was coming home at last. Juny had taken the Doctor’s old bedroom suite, converting part of it into her office. The only room untouched was Indelbed’s. His aunt fully expected him to return one day and insisted that he should find all his meager belongings exactly as he had left them. It was perhaps a blind spot for her, and many of her allies whispered about it behind her back, speculating that she was losing her mind, but as she conducted the rest of her business with chilling precision, it was left alone.
Pappo was there when Rais returned, setting up a holding room for Sikkim, as were a dozen or so of the family, relatives already co-opted to the cause. Rais greeted them, left Barabas to work, and went upstairs. His mother was in Kaikobad’s room, going over papers with the family barrister, an elderly relative who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the trust.
“I brought Barabas,” Rais said. “He’s fixing the spells. Might not stop Hazard or Matteras, but at least we’ll get some warning.”
“I think Dargoman is the real threat anyway,” Juny said.
“All the guys with guns… it seems a bit excessive.”
“Look, my first job is to keep everyone safe,” Juny said. Her face softened. “No more casualties.”
“I see you’ve moved in GU Sikkim.”
“I had to. He’s one of our best resources right now—I want to make sure no one sticks a knife in him. Matteras has had his hooks in this family for a long time. I need to know who else is suspect.”
“Uncle Pappo?”
“He’s with us. Everyone downstairs has been vetted,” she said. “For the next few days, we won’t leave the house until the dust settles. I’ve also moved Kaikobad back in here, with full round-the-clock nursing care. That clinic was atrocious. He’s still completely nonresponsive, but who knows. I feel better having everyone under one roof. It’s not safe out there. If you need something, send for it. If you must go out, take Abdul and the driver. The cars are parked on the main road. Barabas must stay here.”
“He’ll stay. We just have to keep him drunk.”
“I’ve already stocked six cases of whiskey. We’ve called a board meeting for the trust tomorrow. It’s going to be held here. You better attend. We might have to show off Barabas to convince some of them that djinn are real. Can you believe they’ve not had an actual board meeting for the past thirteen years? Sikkim used to send the minutes by mail and they’d just rubber-stamp his diktats.”
“And now they’ll rubber-stamp yours.”
“You better believe it,” Juny said. “Now, did you bring a copy of the Compendium?”
Rais brought out a sheaf of papers bound in blue plastic. “Matteras has the original. I made a copy of course. I think the manuscript actually had spells woven into it. It’s possibly dangerous to readers. The djinn claim people have lost their minds reading it.”
Juny was already flipping through it.
“This is fascinating,” she said, propping open a page of the bestiary section. There was a picture of a minuscule catlike creature with wings. “He’s actually giving instructions on how to make this thing, I think.”
“Most of the theories are in the appendix,” Rais said. “Genetics and evolution.”
“Anathema to the conservatives.”
“Correct. Unpalatable to most djinn, in fact. Deep down they’re all convinced of their own superiority. How can you not be, when you’re the only ones that can manipulate the field?”
“Do you think he could actually make these monstrous things?” Juny asked after reading a few more minutes. “It’s disturbing…”
“I know,” Rais said. “He’s claiming almost godlike powers. I can understand why the other djinn wanted him put away.”
“So, son, what’s the plan? How soon is the storm going to hit? Should we be packing up and getting out of here?”
“Not yet,” Rais said. “Okay, here’s what I’m pretty sure about:
“One, it starts with Gangaridai and the Great War. That was twenty thousand years ago, and no one remembers any of the details. Two, Givaras wrote a lot of books. Matteras has destroyed all of them. Givaras created awful things, new forms of life. I think he actually fought in the Great War, but there’s no proof. Three, Givaras is in a murder pit with Indelbed and Risal. They might still be alive. Four, Risal is the missing historian who was researching the Great War. Her work is gone. I have her journals. There are nine volumes of bowel movements and minutiae. Teased in between are hints of her work. Five, also missing is Risal’s copy of the Register of Kings, possibly the last copy of a book chronicling the kings of Gangaridai. Six, the air courier just confirmed that Uncle Kaikobad was corresponding with Risal. He sent her a package. This is huge, because: seven, Risal mentions in an offhand way somewhere in volume seven that she has sent a sample for genetic testing and is waiting for the results.”
“You read all nine volumes?” Juny asked. “I couldn’t get through even half of one.”
“Reading vast quantities of useless things”—Rais smiled—“that’s my superpower.”
“I know,” Juny said. “Vulu and I used to laugh about that. You were a very frustrating child.” Her face softened. “You’ve done well, Rais. You didn’t give up. You didn’t run away. I’m proud of you.”
“Surprised?”
“Not at all,” she said. Then she laughed. “Your father and I worried a lot, you know, that you never finished anything. I’m glad you’ve found your calling.”
“Back to business,” Rais said, slightly embarrassed. “I don’t have the correspondence between Kaikobad and Risal. I think Kaikobad hid his own work, and Risal’s got stolen. But I have both of their notes. They’re talking about genetic drift and haplogroups, epigenetics and mutations. She started out researching Gangaridai and ended up working on genetics.”
“Why?” Juny asked.
“She had some genetic studies done, on mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes. As far as I can tell, it was only one sample. Why? What did she find? The original data is gone. I tried to track down the lab, but it shut down long ago. I gleaned some information from her offhand remarks, but I need to talk to a specialist and run some tests of my own. I’ve found a guy. Only catch is his lab’s in Nevada.”
“It’s not safe to go outside right now,” Juny said.
“I visited Uncle Kaikobad in the clinic, you know,” Rais said.
“What?”
“Yeah,” he said. “They told me you used to go there every month.”
“I made sure he was not being neglected,” Juny said. “Why did you go there?”
“I took a DNA sample—a cheek swab, a little bit of blood,” Rais said. “I also got a swab off Barabas. My friend Roger in Nevada is testing them both right now.”
“Why?” Juny asked.
“What do you know about haplogroups?”
“Nothing,” Juny said.
“So haplogroups are genetic groups descended from single ancestors. See when humans replicate, the DNA from the father and the mother get recombined. The kid gets a mixture of genes from each parent. Except for Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA. Y chromosomes come from the father intact, because women don’t have Y chromosomes, and the mitochondrial DNA comes from the mother’s body. In effect, all mitochondrial DNA in the world is matriarchal and all Y chromosomes are patriarchal.”
“Okay,” Juny said.
“Hang on, it gets interesting. Now any single nucleotide mutation in the Y chromosome gets passed on from father to son, so it’s possible to track entire populations to a hypothetical Adam, right? The first guy in Africa had Y chromosome A, let’s say, and then a few hundred years later, we had a mutation in one of his male descendant’s Y chromosomes, and his offspring became A1. Get it? Now on the mother’s side, there’s mitochondrial DNA, and you can track Eves like that. It’s useful in figuring out migration patterns and how original humans spread across the world. For example, we know that humans crossed the Bering Strait to populate the Americas because of haplogroups.”
“Is this relevant to us somehow?”
“Yeah, see, that’s what I thought. It’s really fucking boring. So why was Risal obsessed with human haplogroups?”
“She was?”
“Tell me something, how common is it for a djinn to work on human genetics?”
“As far as I know, most djinn disdain human science,” Juny said.
“She was studying something called the R2D. It’s a variation of one of the big haplogroups out of Central Asia. I started looking it up, except there’s no mention of R2D anywhere,” Rais said. “Not on the web, nothing in science journals, nothing in my university library. So I sent it to my doctor buddy in New York. He’s a Jew—they know this shit ’cause they’re always doing genetic research to get rid of hereditary diseases. Anyway, he got me in touch with Roger. I got him interested in the R2D subclade. That’s not the official name, of course, because it doesn’t actually exist. What he did have, though, was a working list of peculiar or unresolved haplogroup errors, or just plain oddities—there are plenty of them—and they go unresolved because there isn’t enough money or inclination to study them. This is the kind of stuff that crackpots use to make theories on alien intervention, or biblical origins of man, or whatever.”
“So Risal believed in aliens?”
“Well, single cases of this haplogroup, which she calls R2D, has been found four different times. The first time was in a Siberian tar body, which was carbon-dated to around 14,000 B.C. A second time was partial remains near the Gobekli Tepe region, where the Y DNA was inconclusively tested. Gobekli Tepe monoliths were dated around 8000 B.C., mind you. The third was in North America, among the Iroquois in a recent study of the Bering Strait crossing, but the sample was thrown out because it made no sense. The last was in India during a routine study trying to establish that Brahmins are a super-race descended directly from God. Anyway, the point is that it appears to be an old mutation of the Y chromosome that a) still exists, and b) has a very unlikely spread.”
“So Kaikobad sent Risal a genetic sample, what, twenty years ago?” Juny asked. “They were looking for this R2D group?”
“Kaikobad could do magic,” Rais said. “How?”
“Well, djinns have distortion fields,” Juny said. “As far as I know, that isn’t really magic. The field itself exists everywhere, it’s a part of physics. They have the ability to manipulate it within a certain range.”
“Right, so say Kaikobad had the same thing. The ability to manipulate the field. I mean, how else can we explain it?” Rais said. “What if it’s just a physical trait, like height or intelligence? What if it can be passed on genetically?”
“Let’s say it can be explained in scientific terms,” Juny said. “Then the real question is: How closely linked are humans and djinn genetically? Is the field ability independently present in humans as well as djinn? Or is it linked? Think about it. Humans and djinn are actually close enough genetically to reproduce. We know that for sure.”
“Indelbed.”
“Right,” Juny said. “He’s twenty years old now, you know.”
“The sample?”
“It might have been him.”
“Okay,” Rais said, getting excited. “What if humans and djinn are just related species, or even just mutations of one species? What if the R2D mutation is the genetic marker for the field ability? Most djinn don’t believe in evolution or genetics. They wouldn’t like this at all. I mean, it might tear them apart.”
“Say it’s true,” Juny said. “Djinn believe they are superior. This is a deeply rooted belief. Even the most tolerant, humanized djinn think they’re inherently better. Imagine if there was irrefutable proof that they’re just like us? I don’t think they could accept that, as a species. Say this is what Kaikobad discovered.”
“It would certainly explain why Matteras got rid of him and Risal.”
“Could we use it to stop Matteras somehow?”
“I don’t know, but we have to try,” Rais said. “If we can embarrass the Creationists, if we can set back Matteras somehow, it might be enough to negotiate. You have to get me to Nevada somehow.”
“It’s too risky.”
“It’s only Dargoman we have to worry about. If I can give him the slip, I’m safe enough from djinns. They won’t gun down an acting emissary officially investigating Risal’s disappearance.”
“Officially investigating?”
“That’s my next stop. Golgoras can deputize me if I twist his arm enough.”
“Good. That’s smart. You can’t go alone.”
“I was thinking Maria.”
“Do you trust her? Or are you infatuated?” Juny stared at him. “Because if you get it wrong, and she tells Dargoman, you’re dead.”
“I guess I’ll think about it then.”
“Okay, give me two days. I have a plan. I hope it works.”
CHAPTER 35
Kaikobad
The luster was gone from the city: the marble walls dark and grimy, the trees lining the central avenues listless, even the breeze reeking, laden with ash. Everything outside burned, and the stench tormented the remaining citizens. The noose had tightened sufficiently that essentials were scarce now—bread and rice, vegetables, oil, salt, fish—shortages that were unthinkable even a year ago. It was not so much that their gates were encircled, for the enemy did not have the forces to create an airtight siege; Horus had simply destroyed the hinterland, all the farms and settlements that supplied the city, possibly all the farms and towns in the entire continent. It was the first time they faced total war, a war devoid of champions or honor, most of the time even devoid of fighting.
Kaikobad, for so long trapped in the eternal city, felt its pain as if it were his own body under siege. He was no longer certain that he was seeing visions. It seemed more like he was actually living in the city, that it had somehow accreted around him. He wandered aimlessly and was drawn to a simple house in the brandy quarter adjacent to the outer wall, where the distilleries had once thrived. There was a broad courtyard in front, where caravans used to unload.
In the open terrace, shaded under an old mango tree, sat Kuriken, smoking a hookah, looking curiously peaceful. It was jarring to see him in such mundane surroundings. He wore his armor, the gleaming white kavach, and his power waxed with the morning sun, so that his field was a thing of gleaming beauty. It was said that Kuriken was incorruptible, implacable, that his armor could never be pierced, that the city would never fall as long as he stayed true. Watching him, Kaikobad could well understand the faith of his followers. He remembered the wasted version of this djinn from the real world, the bitter, mocking king whose field was black, whose fingers dripped blood, and he wondered what had happened to this magnificent champion, what dire path he had taken to arrive at his current fallen state.
