Read Online The Dervish House by Ian McDonald - Free Book Online

things around where no one can see you. Why why why did this have to be the day that a suicide bomber decided to blow himself up to God? It’s so selfish, like any suicide.

    She is halfway down the steps to Adem Dede Square when her ceptep calls. Sub-Aunt Kevser. The last person she needs to talk to. Her thumb hovers over the reject icon. She can’t. You are always available. The mantra was drummed into her at business school.

    ‘You took your time.’ As ever when she talks with Leyla, she looks like a school-teacher.

    ‘I was just doing something.’

    ‘Doing?’ There’s always been the assumption that Leyla’s aspirations are dispensable. The women drop everything for the family, it was the way down in Demre, it’s the way up in Istanbul.

    ‘It’s all right, nothing much.’

    ‘Good good good. Remind me, what was that course you did?’

    You know full well what I do , Leyla thinks. I can’t see her, but Great-Aunt Sezen is behind you directing this from her chair.

    ‘Marketing.’

    ‘Would that include raising finance and finding backers?’

    ‘It does.’

    ‘Hmm.’

    Just tell me, you bad old crow .

    Sub-Aunt Kevser continues, ‘Did you ever meet Yaşar Ceylan?’

    ‘Who’s he?’

    ‘He’d be your second cousin. Smart boy. University educated.’ Rub it in , sterile spinster. Yes, I only went to a business college . ‘He’s set up this new business start-up thing over in Fenerbahçe with some boy he did his doctorate with. I’ve no idea what it is; some new technology thing. Anyway, they’re very smart, very clever but useless at anything practical. Yaşar wants to expand but doesn’t know how to get to the people with the money. He needs someone to get him to the money men.’

    You see, you knew all the time.

    ‘When does he need someone?’

    ‘Right away. But you said you were doing something, so I don’t know . . .’

    ‘Has he got any money?’ Ever the drawback to working with family.

    ‘He’ll pay you. So you’ll do it?’

    ‘I’ll do it. Give me his number.’ Sub-Aunt Kevser’s face is replaced by a ceptep number. Leyla stores it quickly. God God thank you God. Sometimes family is your friend. She almost skips down the last few steps into Adem Dede Square. From desolation to ludicrous exultation in seven steps. Fenerbahçe. Business start-up. New tech. Fresh university graduates. It all means only one thing. The big one, the one that promises to build the future and change the world, the one where you can really make your name.

    Nanotechnology.

2

    The alien robot is an ungainly spider thing concealed among the graphics of the Commerzbank. Can observes it from his hiding place in the shadows of Allianz Insurance. An ugly boxy yellow industrial unit; a Xu-Hsi, or maybe a customized General Robotics. Licence number covered up with gaffer tape. An inspection machine would carry warning chevrons and flashers. Can Durukan knows his robots like other kids know cars or footballers or Chinese comics. An industrial bot wouldn’t pay a wink of interest even if the world were ending down there. What else could it be? On his adventures high above Eskiköy Can has encountered photodrones: machines set wandering on month-long journeys across the city by art students to capture the random and spontaneous. Those pause, shoot, stalk on. He has also met unofficial press bots upon the rooftops: stealthy, secretive surveillers used by investigative journalists and photographers looking for the news behind the press releases. Ghost machines that can flash-burn their memories to slag if detected by the state and its agents. Everything deniable. If this is a press drone, the photographer’s timing is brilliant. Too brilliant. And then there are the black drones: the ones they like to mutter about on the conspiracy sites. Invisible to official police bots, surveilling the surveillers. If this clunky chunk of yellow plastic is a legendary black drone, it’s in some very deep