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 thoughts 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.