The Crying Machine
A sharp, lyrical thriller of power, religion, and artificial intelligence.The world has changed, but Jerusalem endures. Overlooked by new superpowers, the Holy City of the future is a haven of spies and smugglers, exiles and extremists.A refugee with strange technological abilities searches for a place to disappear.An ambitious young criminal plots the heist that could make or destroy him.A corrupt minister harnesses the power of the past in a ruthless play for power.And the wheels of another plan – as old and intricate as the city itself – begin to turn…
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Greg Chivers 2019
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
Cover layout design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Greg Chivers asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008308773
Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008308797
Version: 2019-02-14
For Bea, Lucas and Charlotte
Nothing like this instrument is preserved elsewhere. Nothing comparable to it is known from any ancient scientific text or literary allusion. On the contrary, from all that we know of science and technology in the Hellenistic Age we should have felt that such a device could not exist.
Derek de Solla Price, ‘Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
Contents
Men stare from shadowed doorways. She is too obviously alien here, even with the paleness of her skin concealed behind high collars and a tinted visor. The women are invisible in this part of the city. Two sparsely bearded teenagers in baggy sherwal and thawb unashamedly follow her. It does not occur to them she might feel threatened, that they should exercise any kind of restraint. A trapped bird of fear flutters in her chest. All the tacit understandings of gender from home, with all the protections they give, are absent here, replaced by a new labyrinth of unwritten rules she flouts with every step. She is the transgressor in this place.
The address she was given by the trafficker in Marseille should be somewhere close, but the streets are unmarked, the buildings unnumbered save for intermittent brass plaques which seem to follow no recognizable order. She shoves the paper under the nose of a fat man selling leafed oranges from crates. His eyes narrow as he takes in the curling lines of script, then his face relaxes and he stares into the middle distance, pretending not to see her. All the eyes here play the same game, following the pornography of her movement intently, becoming blind the moment she approaches.
A corner leads her into an alley that ends suddenly in a wall topped with curves of broken glass. The two stubbled faces lurch into view when she turns around. They’re close enough to smell – turmeric and teenage boy beneath the faint tang of Jerusalem’s dust. It’s hard to tell the ages; the Arab boys grow hair younger. Their short, compact bodies warn of muscle beneath the loose fabric of their clothes. One looks away instantly in flawless imitation of his elders, but the other smiles nervously before dropping his gaze. Perhaps he has sisters.
The shorter one touches her. His hand on her cheek is damp with sweat. Her stillness should be a warning, but he is too enraptured with the discovery of blond hairs to notice. Without meeting her eyes, he fingers the stray strands behind her neck where they’ve come loose. Her teeth clench as she suppresses the urge to bite or kick. Violence brings attention.
‘Leave me alone.’ She hears her own voice struggling around the Arabic sounds, too high, too frightened. A mistake here could ruin the city for her. There are only so many places left to run.
