The Year of Rice and Salt

He said to Khalid and Bahram, 'Coming down the ridge I was falling asleep on my feet, and thinking about your demonstration cast me into a vision. Thinking of your light, winking in the darkness across the valley, I thought, if I could see all moments at once, each distinct and alone as the world sailed through the stars, each that little bit different… if I moved through each moment as if through different rooms in space, I could map the world's own travel. Every step I took down the ridge was as it were a separate world, a slice of infinity made up of that step's world. So I stepped from world to world, step by step, never seeing the ground in the dark, and it seemed to me that if there was a number that would bespeak the location of each footfall, then the whole ridge would be revealed thereby, by drawing a line from one footfall to the next. Our blind feet do it instinctively in the dark, and we are equally blind to the ultimate reality, but we could nevertheless grasp the whole by regular touches. Then we could say this is what is there, or that, trusting that there were no great boulders or potholes between steps, and so the whole shape of the ridge would be known. With every step I walked from world to world.'

He looked at Khalid. 'Do you see what I mean?'

'Maybe,' Khalid said. 'You propose to chart movement with numbers.'

'Yes, and also the movement within movement, changes in speed, you know, which must always be occurring in this world, as there is resistance or encouragement.'

'Resistance of air,' Khalid said luxuriously. 'We live at the bottom of an ocean of air. It has weight, as the mercury scales have shown. It bears down on us. It carries the beams of the sun to us.'

'Which warm us,' Bahram added.

The sun cracked the distant mountains to the east, and Bahram said, 'All praise and thanks to Allah for the glorious sun, sign in this world of his infinite love.'

'And so,' Khalid said, yawning hugely, 'to bed.'

A Demonstration of Flight

Inevitably, however, all their various activities brought them another visit from Nadir Devanbegi. This time Bahram was in the bazaar, sack over his shoulder, buying melons, oranges, chickens and rope, when Nadir suddenly appeared before him with his personal bodyguard. It was an event Bahram could not regard as a coincidence.

'Well met, Bahram. I hear you are busy these days.'

'Always, effendi,' Bahram said, ducking his head. The two bodyguards were eyeing him like falcons, wearing armour and carrying long barrelled muskets.

'And these many fine activities must include many undertaken for the sake of Sayyed Abdul Aziz Khan, and the glory of Samarqand?'

'Of course, effendi.'

'Tell me about them,' Nadir said. 'List them for me, and tell me how each one is progressing.'

Bahram gulped apprehensively. Of course Nadir had nabbed him in a public place like this because he thought he would learn more from Bahram than from Khalid or Iwang, and more in a public space, where Bahram might be too flustered to prevaricate.

So he frowned and tried to look serious but foolish, not really much of a stretch at this moment. 'They do much that I don't understand, effendi. But the work seems to fall roughly into the camps of weapons and of fortifications.'

Nadir nodded, and Bahram gestured at the melon market they were standing beside. 'Do you mind?'

'Not at all,' Nadir said, following him in.

So Bahram went to the honey and muskmelon trays, and began to lift some onto the scale. He was certainly going to get a good deal for them with Nadir Devanbegi and his bodyguards in the shop!

'In weapons,' Bahram improvised as he pointed out the red melons to a sullen seller, 'we are working on strengthening the metal of cannon barrels, so they can be both lighter and stronger. Then again, we have been conducting demonstrations of the flight of cannonballs in different conditions, with different gunpowders and guns, you know, and recording them and studying the results, so that one would be able to determine where precisely one's shots would land.'

Nadir said, 'That would be useful indeed. Have they done that?'

'They are working on it, effendi.'

'And fortifications?'

'Strengthening walls,' Bahram said simply. Khalid would be furious to hear of all these promises Bahram was so rashly making, but Bahram did not see any good way out of it, except to make his descriptions as vague as possible, and hope for the best.

'Of course,' Nadir said. 'Please do me the courtesy of arranging one of these famous demonstrations for the court's edification.' He caught Bahram's eye to emphasize this was not a casual invitation. 'Soon.'

'Of course, effendi.'

'Something that will get the Khan's attention as well. Something exciting to him.'

'Of course.'

Nadir gestured with a finger to his men, and they moved off through the bazaar, leaving behind a swirling wake in the press of the crowd.

Bahram heaved a deep breath, wiped his brow. 'Hey there,' he said sternly to the seller, who was slipping a melon off the scale.

'Not fair,' the seller said.