“Ah . . .” the golden man said. “May I?”

Nasir looked like he wanted to say no, but the golden man extended its hand and the little sim came crawling willingly into its palm.

“Now I remember,” the golden man said. It closed its hand gently and when it opened again, the sim was gone.

“What do you remember?” the robot said quietly. It looked into the golden man’s eyes, and there was something so fragile and so desperate in those nonhuman eyes that the look broke Mariam’s heart, just a little.

“I remember loving,” the golden man said. It said it in wonder. “I remember loving, and being loved.”

And it drew the robot to it, drew its face close to its own; closed its metal lips upon the other’s in a kiss that chimed like the sweetest of bells.

When they parted, the world was silent.

Then the golden man began to sing.

Mariam did not recognise the melody. There was something new about it, something light and joyful, and the song rose in both the physicality and the Conversation, a song of hope.

The golden man stepped out of Mukhtar’s Bazaar of Rare and Exotic Machines, and the robot walked by its side.

Mariam followed them, out of the store and into daylight.

26. The Sea

The sky was streaked with swarms of wild drones; a roc cried from the top of the al-Tusi Tower, highest in Neom, and was answered from all corners of the city by its brothers and sisters on the rooftops; in the sea the Leviathans rising replied with their own curious sing-song call that thrummed deep within the bones of the humans watching them in fear and fascination.

War had come to Neom at last.

Now humanity, watching, waited for its fate to be decided.

Mariam stepped out onto the street and the others, helpless against this onslaught of modern nature, could do nothing but follow. Nasir took Mariam’s hand in his. His palm was warm. She felt the beat of his heart against her skin.

The golden man sang, and a bulbul on a wire overhead turned its head and opened and closed its beak, trying to imitate the golden man’s song. A woman selling trinkets from a blanket on the ground lifted her head and stared mutely at the progression. In the coffee houses players put down their dice and counters and looked enraptured out of glass windows.

The golden man went down Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi Avenue, then turned and followed Musa Ibn Imran down to the sea.

Behind it came the UXOs, silent now, the rocs and the jubjubs, the worms and the drones. Awaiting it in the sea floated the globsters and Leviathans. The people of Neom, shaken from their comfortable existence, did not know what to say or what to do.

“Why is the shurta not doing anything!” a wealthy resident demanded, shaking an accusing, ringed finger at Nasir.