Page 131 of The Salt King

“I think so,” she said.

When she looked back, there it was: a single burning figure walking towards them across the sand. She wondered what jinn wanted to do, once somebody had believed them into matter. They had kept seeing tiny points of light here and there, wandering.

Back the way they had come, above Amman, there was sprite lightning: the salt light must have done something to the atmosphere, because that invisible firestorm was becoming visible. Static electricity hung red in the air, a monstrous set of shapes with great tendrils that trailed almost to the minarets. In the clouds . . . in the clouds, there were what might have been buildings. Arches, domes, looping impossibly, glittering in the storm. Thunder rolled, but there was no rain.

They were downwind, and she could smell the ash from that lonely figure on fire. Even that smell wasn’t quite convincing. The memory of smoke, not real smoke.

“Are you sure?” Sally said.

“I’m sure. Where’s best?”

“If you go out towards it,” he said unhappily, nodding to a patch of ground almost spotlit by the lightning.

Tallis walked out over the dark sand. The cold was deep now. Snow flickered everywhere, gritty in the air, chasing nooses around the rocks and the ruins.

“Just there is good,” Sally called.

She waited, and the burning thing walked. She let it come closer, holding her thoughts still. It was the same feeling as holding numbers in her head without doing a calculation, because it would be easier if she just used a calculator.

Once it was close enough to talk to, she let go of the mental reins. Not real.

Like the last one, like she had known it would, the figure crumbled to a heap of embers and billowed away into the snow, which hissed on the last of the tiny fires.

She heard Sally blow his breath out, all relief.

An hour ago, she had tried to say that they needed to tell people that it was about belief and that things were real if you thought they were and not if you didn’t, but Sally was shaking his head well before she finished.

“That’s not going to work. It’s too complicated. This is social media we’re talking about. All this about belief—you’re giving them miles of stick and hoping no one gets the wrong end of it.”

“What should I say then?”

“Just say it’s fake. It’s all garbage. They’re just—I don’t know, projections, illusions, AI companies doing something weird. It’s about what people believe, right? What’s going to make them do it right—explaining exactly how it works, or just telling them what to believe? If you say that what they believe will happen, a lot of people will accidentally believe it’s real because it could be.”

“But . . .” Tallis trailed off. She wanted to say, That’s lying, but she heard how useless she sounded just in time.

“Fake news,” Sally said. “Garbage. AI.”

“I don’t think the people being eaten by jinn will be quite convinced by that!”

“But you’re not talking to the people who believe in jinn enough to manifest them,” he said. “You’re talking to the people like you. The die-hard bulletproof atheists who could see God on the mountain and say, Nope, you’re just altitude sickness, thanks. They need to believe it’s not real, not that it might be if they trip over the wrong thought.”

Now she turned back to the camera, as they had practised. “These things aren’t real. They’re just mirages in salt light. You’ve seen hologram musicians perform: this is the same. All this stuff online about them hurting people: it’s bollocks. Here’s the challenge. Find one in the street, go up to it, and put your hand straight through it. We’re going to boost the best videos you tag us in. Sally will be awarding extra points for stupid, unworthwhile things like . . .”

“Any available flamingos, zebras, sloths, dinosaurs, or otherwise hilarious animals,” Sally said cheerfully. “And Tallis will be joyless and depressing, with marks for elegance and creativity and, I don’t know—what’s your favourite thing, Tallis? Don’t tell me, I’ll guess. Is it . . . some kind of flatworm? Unflavoured chickpeas. Igneous rocks?”

“We’ll be posting for as long as Sally’s phone lasts or until I murder him,” Tallis rounded off. “Happy hunting!”

Sally gave her a thumbs-up and stopped the recording. “Now let’s see if the cell tower will let me . . .”

The vastness of the desert stretched out endlessly under the sea-monster shapes of the red lightning. Uninterrupted by mountains, the wind powered across the scrub, pulling snow with it and fluttering the canvas of their tent, where the glow of the camp stove struggled on, forlorn. The cell tower seemed tiny and insufficient.

Tallis bit her lip, trying to keep herself from believing it couldn’t work. Hold it, hold it, hold it.

“It sent,” Sally said.

Tallis thought she would feel relieved and hopeful, but she didn’t. Instead, there was a void of nothingness in the immediate future. What were they supposed to do now?

“Dinnertime,” Sally said happily.