A Desert Called Peace

Epilogue
I

With Hecate and Bellona hurtling overhead, from just outside the cave's mouth that led down to his underground command post, Mustafa min Sa'ana, prince of the Ikhwan contemplated a bleak present and a bleaker future.

Why, O Merciful One, do you try me so? Why do you seem to favor the infidel? Why have you caused us to lose in Sumer? Is it my failings? Or is it that the Sumeris, themselves, are unworthy of your redemption? Or is it, perhaps, that you required us to lose there so that when we win this world, as we eventually must, we and our descendants will be in no doubt that it was You who gave us the victory, and not our own efforts?

Oh, yes, we will hang on in Sumer for a few more years, perhaps even a decade. We are a stubborn people, as You made us to be, and an optimistic one. But the tide is against us. I know this, no matter what I tell my followers. And the chief of the space infidels, the pigs from Old Earth, likewise assures me that our cause there is lost. He tells me that terror met terror there, and the greatest terrorists won.

Who would have believed it; that an infidel from the greatest of infidel states should have become a greater terrorist than even the bloody handed Fadeel al Nizal?

Curse him, O Mighty One, this filthy pig, Carrera.

And where is Fadeel, anyway? He has disappeared from the world and left no trace. I think he must have been taken, though. Too many cells around the world of which only Fadeel and I and my closest associates knew have likewise gone into the ether. Too many accounts with too many millions in them have also gone. I think Fadeel must have lived and I think he must have talked.

What could make a man like Fadeel talk? Oh, he was a lion, despite our occasional differences. No ordinary interrogation would have broken Fadeel. This Carrera swine must be deep into Shaitan's clutches if he could make Fadeel betray trusts.

Unconsciously, Mustafa's teeth ground together with the sheer hate and frustration of it all. He began to pace the mouth of the cave, hands clutched tightly behind him.

Allah, we've got to win. I have been to Taurus, I have been to the Federated States. I know what they are like. I know… You know, how they have begun to contaminate even the faithful.

It is an abomination. Especially is it an abomination where women are concerned. Women working outside the home? Women choosing their own mates? Women free to fuck whom they will without marriage, even within marriage? Women baring their bodies in public like wantons? Women learning to read? Women voting? Women free?

Abomination, abomination, ABOMINATION!

You have created the one above the other, the man above the women, just as You have placed the faithful above the infidel and the dhimmi. And these infidels would seek to recreate the worlds in ways contrary to your will? Forbid it, Almighty Allah! Help us to forbid it and to bring your just rule to this world, to this universe.

You, O Allah, are the greatest plotter of all. Help us and guide us, your faithful servants.

Mustafa had a sudden and unsettling, even an awful, thought.

He asked aloud of the night air, "Is it my fault that we have lost, my God? Is it my misspent youth? The days of uselessness and the nights of drunkenness and debauchery? I regret them all, O Most High. I know they all should have been either my wives or those held under my right hand before I touched them. I humbly ask-I humbly beg- Your forgiveness. I knew not then what I know now."

Facing toward Makkah al Jedidah, Mustafa prostrated himself, bowing repeatedly and whispering his prayers and his penance. When he was finished, his mind was clearer, clear enough to think upon the future which looked so bleak.

So we have lost in Sumer. So be it. What is there to gain, then? How shall we proceed?

Further attacks on the Federated States? The last one didn't work out precisely as planned, now did it? Why was this? I had thought them much weaker than they proved to be. I had thought them as weak as the Taurans. No, then; no more attacks on the FSC until and unless I can make them truly crippling. No more threats unless the threat is so deadly even they will not face it.

But what is left then? What is left when they have won in Sumer?

There are the Xamar pirates. They owe me, many of them. Perhaps they can be persuaded to integrate their individual efforts, to join the higher holy cause. I will dispatch Abdul Aziz to that end as soon as possible. Perhaps the pirates of the Nicobar Straits, too, can be brought into the fold. Most of them are of the faithful, after all.

And then there is Pashtia. Yes… perhaps Pashtia can be reopened as our major effort. After all, the mujahadein and the money that would go to Sumer otherwise are still available; will still be coming. And then, too, Pashtia has few roads and railroads, no ports, not many airports. Can the infidels even supply a larger force in Pashtia? Perhaps not; the Volgans never could.

Yes, Pashtia is where we shall fight them. Pashtia is where we shall crucify the swine.