bleeding from the shoulder. Martin swung around, his ears ringing in the silence. A man with a neatly trimmed beard, wearing a pale green shirt decorated with the prison authority insignia, was standing a few metres away, in front of an open utilities closet.
The guard turned to Martin, shouting angrily, gesturing with his pistol. Martin raised his hands in surrender, but the guard kept screaming insults or instructions. Martin had no idea what he was saying, and the only response he could string together was an apology for his incomprehension: ‘Ma’zerat mikham, agha. Farsi balad nistam.’
The guard aimed his gun directly at Martin’s head.
Mahnoosh called out urgently, ‘Put down the phone! He wants you to put down the phone!’
Martin tried to drop it, but his fingers wouldn’t unclench. He wished he’d taken the keys when he’d been offered them.
The guard grunted and sagged to the ground. Someone had hurled a fire-extinguisher and hit him in the back. People piled on top of him, grabbing the gun and restraining him. Martin felt lightheaded; he sat on the floor and watched, detached from everything. The guard was taken to a newly vacated cell; the wounded protester was given a makeshift bandage and helped to the stairs. There was a hospital in the prison complex, Martin recalled. He wondered if they’d be willing to treat the man.
‘Hey! Martin jan!’
Martin looked up to see Omar approaching, with Behrouz following behind him. His face was gaunt and he was walking with a limp, but he was beaming. Martin rose to his feet and stepped forward to embrace him, fighting back tears of relief.
‘What happened? It looks like you lost twenty kilos.’
‘I did a hunger strike,’ Omar replied. ‘Looks like it worked. Twenty kilos and the walls come down; ten more and they would have made me President.’
Omar wanted to phone Rana. The protesters had managed to force open two offices with working landlines, but there were already long queues for those, so they decided to try the floor below. As the three of them were walking down the stairs, Martin’s phone emitted a chime he’d never heard before. He checked the display, and after a moment he realised that it was now showing an icon for the radio mesh network that he’d seen used at the Majlis protest. Someone must have found the local jammer and disabled it.
He showed Omar, who tried a few numbers, but the network was still jammed across most of the city. On the second floor one of the landlines was free; while Omar was making his call, Martin’s phone managed another novel sound. Someone on the network was offering a streaming video feed.
He tapped the icon, and it expanded into a shaky camera shot of a TV screen tuned to an IRIB news broadcast. Martin gave the phone to Behrouz.
Other people around them were already cheering ecstatically. Behrouz scowled, struggling to hear more. Martin waited patiently; there was a loop of text running at the bottom of the screen, it would all be spelled out eventually.
Behrouz said, ‘The moderate clerics have won some kind of deal. There’s going to be a referendum on the Guardian Council veto powers within three months, followed by new elections for the President and the Majlis before the end of the year.’
That was it, that was the saving move. If the deal held, there would be no civil war, but no turning back to the status quo either.
Omar was sitting on the floor, the office phone in his hand, weeping with joy. Behind him was a huge grey filing cabinet that someone had tipped on its side, spilling VEVAK’s meticulous accounts of their interrogations all over the floor. Maybe there hadn’t been enough time to put everything through the shredders. Or maybe the fuckers had thought they’d be coming back.
Martin turned to Behrouz and held out his hand. ‘Mubaarak.’ Behrouz shook it, but even as his expression of disbelief slowly melted into a kind of stunned acceptance, he wasn’t ready to claim victory.
‘Nothing’s certain yet,’ he insisted.
‘No,’ Martin conceded.
Behrouz smiled. ‘But it starts today. It might take us another ten years to be free – but it starts today.’
10
Nasim stared glumly across the sea of dinner jackets and evening gowns, trying to think of a way to escape to her hotel room before someone made yet another hypocritical speech in praise of Kourosh Ansari, President-elect of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
She turned to her mother. ‘I can’t believe I let you drag me down here. Half these people spent the last thirty years trying to get America to bomb their own country, just so they could go back and turn it into their own cosy little kleptocracy.’
‘That’s unfair!’ her mother replied. ‘A quarter of them at most. Anyway, that’s just the old men; you should be thinking about their sons.’
Nasim grimaced. ‘My idea of a romantic evening does not include a speech by Donald Rumsfeld at the Heritage Foundation.’
‘How many people have you actually spoken to tonight?’
‘Am I allowed to count waiters?’
‘Go and mingle.’ Her mother made a shooing gesture. ‘I didn’t buy you that dress so you could spend the night whining in my ear.’
Nasim left her and headed for the canapes. Amazingly enough, there’d been a vegetarian option, but it had been a quarter of the size of the other main courses and she was still famished.
As she stood at the buffet table trying to determine whether there was anything left that she could eat – other than garnishes – a voice beside her said, ‘Congratulations on your new President.’
‘Thank you.’ Nasim resisted the urge to add acerbically, ‘I do hope you’ll let us keep this one.’ She turned to face the speaker; the painfully thin young man looked familiar, but it took her a few seconds to place him. ‘Are you stalking me?’ she demanded. ‘Did you follow me to Washington?’
Caplan looked affronted. ‘Would you like to see my invitation? I’m a major donor to the Iranian-American Friendship Council.’
‘Since when? Three days ago?’
‘Six, actually.’
‘Six? A real futurologist.’ Nasim looked around for hotel security, but there was no honest complaint she could make that wouldn’t sound deranged and paranoid. ‘What exactly is it that you think I can do for you? Haven’t you heard the news about the HCP?’
‘Congress decided not to fund it.’ Caplan was stoical. ‘That’s sad, but it’s not unexpected. So there’ll be no big, coordinated federal project, but I’m sure you’ll still find grants here and there. I’ll be setting up my own foundation to help with that, though of course I can’t replace someone like Churchland.’
Zachary Churchland had died three weeks before and descended into the frosty limbo of an Alcor cryonic vault. He had left the bulk of his estate to the Benign Superintelligence Bootstrap Project, having finally concluded that he couldn’t trust his immortal soul to human hands.
‘I heard someone’s contesting his will,’ Nasim recalled. ‘Not just his widow; his first wife, too-’
‘Third wife. Actually I’m helping her fund the case,’ Caplan explained smoothly.
Nasim stared at him. ‘How does someone get to marry Zachary Churchland, then end up needing help to fund anything?’
‘A party in Las Vegas, a truckload of cocaine, and several professional athletes.’
‘I’m sorry I asked. But if she got nothing in the divorce, why would she be any luckier at the graveside? Or freezer-side.’
Caplan smiled. ‘She won’t be. But I found a lawyer who’s convinced her otherwise, based in part on the Leona Helmsley case – you know, the woman who was ruled mentally unfit after leaving twelve million to her dog. The ongoing litigation should help keep the bequest out of the Superintelligence Project’s hands for quite a while.’
