The Dervish House (53 page)

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Authors: Ian Mcdonald

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Devlet Ceber says in his slow, bell-deep voice, ‘This is an extraordinary theory Professor Ferentinou; I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the kind of proof such theories demand.’
‘I am aware of it, Professor Ceber. I can give no such proof. All I can offer is to guide you through the sequence of events that have led me to this extraordinary conclusion.
‘On Monday an early morning tram was attacked on Necatibey Cadessi by a woman suicide bomber; it made the news briefly. Professor Saltuk mentioned it in his introduction to our sessions. The only victim was the woman bomber herself. That is unusual. Police swarm robots arrived at the scene to control, contain and identify victims. They were not the only ones. I have evidence that another group — almost certainly the group who coerced that poor woman to her death — were observing the bomb site with their own surveillance machines.’
‘Now, surely you must offer this evidence.’ Professor Ceber is a leading legal theorist on the left. Georgios dips his head in respect.
‘I plead a journalist’s defence,’ he says. Ceber nods. ‘These machines appeared to have been tasked with identifying, following and keeping surveillance of selected victims from the bombing. One of them is a neighbour of mine, a young man called, Necdet Hasgüler. He’s a feckless sort, of little ambition and with a troubled past; he is being looked after by his brother, Ismet, who runs a study group, and is something of an amateur shariat jurist himself, from the ground floor apartment. The last sort of person you would imagine gaining the ability to see djinn.’
Beskardes raises his eyebrows. Murmurs around the horseshoe of delegates. Saltuk fidgets and frets, trying to find an excuse to cut Georgios short. The insouciant jackdaw is nowhere to be seen.
‘Not just djinn, but visions of the Green Saint, Hızır, all manner of creatures from religious mythology. Round my part of Beyoğlu, which is still traditional in outlook, this makes you something of a religious celebrity. This young man’s visions could easily be dismissed as traumatic stress; but why go to such efforts to spy on a mere bomb victim? Then Selma Hanım tells me that Necdet Hasgüler is not alone, there is a veritable plague of visionaries: a man who finds his neighbourhood over-run with tiny machines, a woman who consults with the peri and other supernatural creatures as some form of oracle. Now, we all know that remarkable is unremarkable in Istanbul and miracles happen every morning before breakfast, but all these individuals appeared within hours of the bomb attack and, please mark this, all live within the catchment area of the tram line. Perhaps a coincidence, I don’t believe so. There is more.’ Georgios takes a sip of water. His voice is cracking and dry. ‘I did some research. I found physical evidence that allowed me to trace the robots back to a hire facility in Kayişdaği on the Asian side of the city. That is also the location of the Kayişdaği Compression Station on the main Nabucco pipeline under the Bosphorus to Europe. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place last night when young Necdet Hasgüler was abducted from the street outside his own home by unknown assailants.’
A murmur of concern, into which Ceber speaks.
‘Professor Ferentinou, you use expressions like “final piece of the puzzle”, but what you have presented us with is a series of unsubstantiated, disconnected events. I don’t see how you get from these to a theory that the European Union is under threat from nano-terrorism.’
‘I am aware of that,’ Georgios says. ‘My evidence you will have to take on trust. How I explain these events is this. There exists a terror cell in Istanbul developing a nanotechnology weapon. They organized the attack on the tram, it was an experiment. They selected victims to observe for symptoms that their nanoagent was effective. They see that it is and they are now working to a full-scale attack. They will introduce it into the gas pipeline at Kayişdaği, from which it will be carried into Europe.’
‘They’ll need replicators for that,’ interjects Yusuf Yilmaz, a popular technology journalist on
Cumhuriyet
.
‘Yes, I’m certain they will,’ Georgios says, ‘I’d imagine they could replicate exponentially using the hydrocarbon as feedstock. The word that was given to us was
gas
.’
‘Why, if they’ve been observing Mr Hasgüler, would they now need to abduct him?’ Ceber asks. Saltuk is furious now, rolling his pen between his fingers, picking at a piece of flaking varnish on the desk, foot unconsciously kicking kicking kicking; all the tiny aggressions by which stifled rage expresses itself.
‘Their surveillance of Mr Hasgüler failed. Their robot was destroyed in an accident; it was from the wreckage that I managed to trace it to Kayişdaği.’
‘These are substantial suspicions, Professor Saltuk,’ Ceber says. He is persistent in his examination of Georgios’ theory but he is fair. ‘Why did you not take them to police?’
‘My assistant is my neighbours’ son. He has the technical facility. But he is only nine years old. I wouldn’t want to place him in any danger.’ The delegates understand his second, unspoken fear,
or attract any accusations to myself
. ‘I believe there’s another motive to Mr Hasgüler’s abduction. They wanted to be very sure of the nature of his visions; are they simply hallucinations, or do they come from an underlying religious fervour?’
‘Expand on this please, Professor Ferentinou,’ Ceber asks though the room already knows Georgios’ answer.
‘Certainly. I believe their goal is the religious conversion of a sizeable portion of the population of eastern and central Europe.’
‘Nonsense.’ Ogün Saltuk spits out the word, a wad of rage. ‘Arrant nonsense. Replicators in the gas, terrorist cells, nanotech jihad; this isn’t speculation, this isn’t even blue-sky, this is pure science fiction.’ The lone writer looks up and utters a clear ‘Excuse me!’ but Saltuk’s bile is high and he talks over the man. ‘No no no, this will not do. I want Professor Ferentinou’s statement, all the questions and answers, struck from the records of this session.’
‘Why?’ Ceber asks. ‘Firstly, Professor Ferentinou’s theory is perfectly valid in terms of the purpose of this session. Secondly, he gives evidence of a crime; the abduction of this Mr Hasgüler. Thirdly, if there is any merit in them, as Professor Ferentinou himself said, it is imperative that police and security forces investigate immediately.’
‘You asked for “blue-sky thinking”,’ Yusuf Yilmaz the journalist says. ‘You got it. What’s wrong with that? In terms of the Professor’s evidence, it makes sense.’
Saltuk’s lip-chewing has come a cheek-twitching.
‘Evidence? A nine-year-old boy is hardly a credible authority. There is blue-sky thinking and there is palpable fantasy. We require some intellectual rigour here, not an exercise in join-the-dots and seeing a face. No no no, I can’t allow this because the Professor has made the cardinal error of deducing too much from inadequate sources.’
There is a cardinal error here
, Georgios Ferentinou thinks,
but it is you who have made it, Ogün Saltuk. You have alienated your own experts. And to that first error add a second and fatal error, that you don’t know, but your audience knows, and I know, and with which I will now kill you
.
‘You say “inadequate sources”,’ Georgios says. His hands are steady now, his voice is steady now, and clear. ‘Should you not rather say, “minimal sources”?’
‘What?’ Saltuk sees it now. There is nothing he can do about it.
‘Cognitive discontinuity, the theory that intelligence, working on minimal information can make leaps of intuition far beyond those achievable by directed thinking; that’ s the theory, if I remember correctly. A sufficient, rich and diverse ecology of information, with no data outweighing any other, isn’t that the theory?’
Ogün Saltuk can’t speak. There is a cognitive discontinuity here. He is being shown that he does not understand his own theory.
‘What is the title of your book, Professor Saltuk?’ Georgios Ferentinou asks. Ten years he has waited for this and at the end it is a pitiful and poor thing to see a man destroyed in a public forum. But Georgios will have it, every syllable of it. No one revenges like the Greeks.
‘
Great Leap Forward
,’ Saltuk says. To his credit his voice is clear and loud, but his face is pale as sick.
‘Yes, “How Ignorance Really is Bliss”,’ Georgios says.
Saltuk blusters about sessions running over time and hastily calls another coffee break to try and regain a measure of composure but everyone knows what has been done here and that the Kadiköy Group is finished. All around the salon small groups have spontaneously formed, talking nano, dissecting Georgios’ Great Leap Forward, debating the neurochemistry of faith. Ogün Saltuk stands apart at the window, isolated, insulated by a coterie of MIT staffers. There is no need for Georgios to be here. He would slip away quietly but Emrah Beskardes catches him at the top of the faux-rococo staircase.
‘Thought you’d get clean away?’
‘I don’t think I have anything more to contribute,’ Georgios says.
‘I’m glad that when it comes to pure unalloyed aggression, humans still have it over rooks.’
Georgios blushes. ‘No no, I shouldn’t have done that; I said too much, I let my temper carry me away. I was cruel.’
‘Well, it was a pleasure spending overpaid and underworked afternoons in your company, Professor Ferentinou. I have learned something new.’ Beskardes shakes Georgios’ hand. ‘I must read some of your work.’
‘It’s economics, it’s a dismal science. My driver’s here. It was a pleasure to meet you, Dr Beskardes. I shall never look at crows the same way.’
‘Keep an eye on those crows,’ Beskardes calls after him down the gilded stairs. ‘They really are bastards.’
‘The djinn tell me you studied nano engineering,’ Necdet says to Big Bastard. Two wordless hours since Green Headscarf and Big Hair left the room. Raised voices, a radio turned on to cover the dispute, slammed doors. Big Bastard edgy and volunteering nothing, not asking, not answering. ‘They told me a concierge had emphysema. They told me a woman was pregnant before she even knew it. I’m going to tell you about that one. My brother is a local shaykh, he opens the book, he gives judgements in domestic disputes, things like that. People come to him for advice. A woman who works in the art gallery next to us came to find out if she was pregnant. Out in the street, I saw her karin upside down in the earth and from it I was able to tell her what she wanted to know. How did I know this? It wasn’t creatures from the universe of fire and it wasn’t God. I just knew something no one else knew. Knowing without knowing, I think there are lots of ways that can happen. Maybe there are chemicals we sense but never register. Maybe it’s electrical. I think we get thousands, millions of bits of information every day that we’ve lost the ability to read or that we filter out because there’s just too much stuff to be conscious of. It’s knowing without knowing. So I see the way you handle that gun, and that your hands are quite delicate, and that the lettering on your T-shirt is really neat and I know you’re the one designed whatever’s in here.’ Necdet touches forefingers to forehead: horns of Iblis. ‘And by the same way, I know that you and Green Headscarf are together — I hope you don’t mind me calling her that, I’d rather use my own made-up names than any you’d make up for me. You’re both Alevis, it’s obvious. And I know in the same way that the reason her sister volunteered to be the bomber on the tram is because she’s from that Valley of Saints and Shaykhs you talk about. She was there on the night of the Divrican attack. Green Headscarf was at university. She was with you that night. You won’t tell me what happened to those people. What did she see?’
Big Bastard looks up. He’s trembling with quiet rage. He has been trembling with it for years, Necdet thinks.
‘If God truly were inside you, could you bear to look at it?’ Necdet says.
Big Hair and Green Headscarf enter the room again and take up their customary places. Their faces are harried, edgy. Green Headscarf’ s fists clench and unclench inside her sweater sleeves. Necdet sees Surly Fucker hovering and fidgeting and pacing within earshot in the adjoining room.
‘Have you ever looked at a map of our country, Necdet?’ Green Headscarf says. ‘It’s a map of the human mind. We’re split by water over two continents, Europe and Anatolia. We are seven per cent Europe, ninety-three per cent Asia. Conscious Thrace, unconscious, pre-conscious, sub-concious Anatolia. And Istanbul — have you ever seen a neuron, Necdet? A brain cell? The marvel is that the synapses don’t touch. There is always a gap — there must a gap, otherwise consciousness would not exist. The Bosphorus is that synaptic cleft. Potential can flow across the cleft. It’s the cleft that makes consciousness possible.’

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