Budayeen Nights: Stories

King of the Cyber Rifles

JÂN MUHAMMAD STOPPED HALFWAY UP THE STONY hill and put down his double armload of dry sticks. By the Persian calendar, it was the second week of Mordaad, the hottest part of the summer. What little grass grew on his hillside was already burnt brown for lack of rain. The dust was thick and the tumbled red rocks gave off an arid, baked smell. Jân Muhammad mopped the perspiration from his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform tunic. Flies buzzed all around his head, but he had long ago given up trying to chase them away. High overhead, the sun was a plate of brass hanging motionless. Jân Muhammad looked down reluctantly at his burden of firewood, then opened the catch at the throat of his tunic. Sand and grit had worked down under his collar and had begun to rub his neck raw. He wished he had enough water to rinse his sweat-streaked skin.

He carried the wood up the rest of the way to the observation post. He had a box for the fuel inside the small bunker, so he wouldn’t need to step outside again to fetch it. If he were under attack and the broken branches were outside, he would have to suffer in the icy night of the wasteland, or do without hot soup and tea. It was still too early in the day to think of lighting the stove, though. He had a lot of work to do before evening.

The narrow room where he ate, slept, kept watch, and fought was solidly built of roughly dressed stone and cement. He had a cot and a chair he had lashed together himself out of tree limbs, a blanket, a jug of water and a basin, another basin for evacuation, a small stove, and his data deck. He did not understand how the power source worked. It was buried in the hillside beside the observation post, and supplied current to the data deck, the weapons systems, the portable communications equipment, and two bare light bulbs that glared starkly through the long, empty nights. The army had not seen fit to give him an electric stove or any other conveniences. Jân Muhammad supposed they didn’t want him to get too comfortable. He could have reassured them on that point.

Like a crack of thunder from a clear sky, a mortar shell ripped a hole in the thin soil two hundred yards downslope. Jân Muhammad stood in the center of his small room, cursing softly. He’d just been thinking about a Mohâjerân raid, and now their deafening shell-bursts were walking slowly up toward his observation post, leaving craters like the devastating footprints of an invisible giant. The armed refugees had tried many times in the last year to pry the lonely soldier from his defensive position. Although they had stolen grenades, machine guns, and small arms, they had no leadership, no discipline, no strategies, and no definite goals. They were just a large mob in possession of some sophisticated weapons. They were poorly matched against Jân Muhammad and his data deck.

He sat down calmly at his work space. “Diagnostics,” he murmured. The autotest lights came on, all burning green; he grabbed the red plastic command module and chipped it onto the anterior implant plug at the crown of his skull. He gasped as the hot, stale-smelling observation post melted away. His brain began to receive information only through the data deck. He saw a panoramic view of his hilltop, the rugged pass to the west, and the cracked, dry plain to the east. The view was assembled from input from many holocameras hidden in the surrounding area, processed through the data deck, and presented to Jân Muhammad in a view he might have if he were hovering peacefully some fifty feet in the air. It took him a moment to let go of his body’s senses and surrender to the deck. As much as he liked chipping in, he resisted for an instant each time, with a tingling, absurd fear that on this occasion he wouldn’t be able to disengage.

Jân Muhammad chipped the black personality module onto his posterior implant plug. Now it wasn’t his physical environment that vanished, but Jân Muhammad himself. His own anxious, impetuous identity faded beneath an artificial construct wired into the black moddy. A fictional soldier usurped his brain, as perfect a warrior as the military programmers could make him: competent, cool, fiercely loyal, and absolutely fearless. With his distant sensors, Jân Muhammad watched the mortar shells blasting all around him, searching with terrible fingers for the stone bunker. The explosions didn’t concern him. He spoke a few words to the data deck and called up a magnified scan of the eastern perimeter. He caught the glitter of sunlight on metal at six hundred yards, near a tall shoulder of rock. Without needing to put his request into words, he got the precise coordinates of the target from the data deck. He fired a salvo of demolition rockets, waited fifteen seconds, and fired a second round. He watched twenty or thirty people, men and women, young and old, all dressed in rags and carrying rifles, sprint from the blasted rocks toward new shelter across fifty yards of open plain. Jân Muhammad put down a blaze of heavy machine gun fire; none of the rebels reached their cover alive.

He turned his attention to the Mohâjerân mortars. The attackers didn’t know how to use the weapons. Instead of making patterned searches, the mortar shells seemed to wobble all over the landscape. It would be only luck if one happened to find its target. Jân Muhammad was now conscious of the fact that sooner or later, the Mohâjerân might get lucky. He deduced that there couldn’t be more than two mortars in operation. He analyzed the parabolic paths of a dozen shells and calculated where each mortar was hidden. He fired three explosive rockets and two fragmentation shells at the targets. A moment later, stillness settled over the hillside, broken only by the occasional racket of Mohâjerân rifle fire.

Jân Muhammad relaxed a little, knowing that he had eliminated the chief danger. Through his amplifiers he heard the shrill, trilling war cry, “Allahu akbar!” Two squads of refugees charged up the hillside, one on the north slope, the other a quarter of the way around on the western side. It was suicide. Jân Muhammad’s machine guns opened up on both detachments; it took only a few seconds to dispose of them all. He would have to go out later and throw all the corpses into the defile. That irritated him more than anything else.

The rest of the Mohâjerân fled now, some shrieking and wailing for their dead comrades. Jân Muhammad watched them go, letting them escape. He didn’t feel like cutting them down with machine gun bullets or rockets. He didn’t feel like dealing with any more dead bodies around his post than he had to. They’d come back, they’d definitely come back; he’d kill them all another day. He popped the personality moddy out first, then the command moddy. He gasped again as his heightened senses and abilities fell away. He was once again limited to his own mortal body. The fatigue, fear, hunger, and thirst that had been obscured by the moddies flooded through him. He leaned forward and rested his head wearily on his arms. He still had his chores to finish.

By the time he’d finished breaking up the firewood and stowing it in the box, he heard a man’s voice calling to him from down on the hill. “Yaa sarbaaz!” came the high-pitched, wavering cry. It was Rostam, who traveled out from the village of Ashnistan twice a week with supplies.

Jân Muhammad grunted. He was looking forward to the goat cheese and fresh bread the old man was bringing. Quickly he threw a handful of sticks onto the crumbling coals in the stove and blew the fire into life. He poured water from a hanging goatskin into a small teapot and put it on to boil.

“Yaa sarbaaz! Soldier! Turn off your guns!”

Jân Muhammad made sure that the scrawny, bearded trader was alone, then slapped off the automatic ranging and firing mechanisms. Then he went outside. “It’s all right, O my uncle. Come on up.” He watched Rostam pick his way slowly among the rocks, leading his raw-boned, red-eyed mule.

When Rostam came close enough so that he didn’t need to shout, he gave Jân Muhammad a nod. “Salam alekom,” he said hoarsely.

“Alekom-os-salam,” said Jân Muhammad. “Come inside, I’m making tea.”

“Thank you, my son.” The old man lifted a coarse sack from the mule’s back and followed the soldier into the stone strongpoint.

Jân Muhammad checked the water, but it wasn’t hot yet. He turned back and offered Rostam the single chair in the bunker; he himself sat down on the edge of the cot. After a moment, he realized that the old man was staring at him. Jân Muhammad had forgotten to put his cap back on. Rostam was looking at the two chrome-steel plugs in the young man’s skull. The soldier leaned forward, grabbed his tan forage cap from where it lay on his data monitor, and jammed it low over his brow.

The old man pushed his lips out, then in, then out again. “Aga, I’ve brought you flour, lard, cheese, tea, and a little dried meat,” he said. “I’ve also brought you what we talked about a week ago.”

Jân Muhammad raised his eyebrows.

Rostam looked around nervously, as if there were listening devices hidden in the bare stone room. As a matter of fact, the comm unit in the military data deck could transmit everything that was said in the observation post, but Jân Muhammad had learned how to cut himself out of the net. He preferred to use the portable equipment. If he ever needed to use the deck’s link — if, for instance, the portable unit was disabled — he knew how to patch himself back in. “Don’t worry, O my uncle, we may talk.”

Rostam let out his breath in a rattling sigh. “I have brought you tobacco and some white liquor. I’ve brought magazines, too, aga. They’re printed in some language, I don’t know which, but they have good pictures. You know what I mean? Good pictures?”

Jân Muhammad nodded wearily. Rostam was his one connection to the village, to the world beyond his observation post. The soldier was not permitted to leave his small stony domain. From what his superiors said, this one hill guarding an unused pass through the Persian mountains was the key to the future of the Mahdi’s army, a vital position that guaranteed the inevitable Islamic conquest. Jân Muhammad didn’t believe all that, of course. He only knew that the post and the rocky defile below were his responsibility, and he was doomed — “honored,” in the words of his sergeant — to remain there like a mad hermit saint until he was killed by Mohâjerân raiders or until the rest of the world acknowledged the supremacy of the young savior, whichever came first.

The young soldier jingled his few remaining coins in his pocket. The payroll officer wouldn’t be coming by for at least another two weeks. Jân Muhammad guessed that before then, as usual, he would have to go a week or ten days without meat and tobacco. “How much do you want?” he asked.

“Twenty tuman, aga,” said Rostam.

The soldier gave him a sharp look. The price was twice what the supplies were worth.

“Eighteen tuman,” said Rostam. “It is getting difficult for me to bring these to you, my son. The shopkeeper in the village has sympathies with the Mohâjerân, he does not like selling me these things, knowing that they come to you. He charges me more than his other customers. And I am not as strong as I used to be, aga. The long journey from the village — “

“All right, I’ll give you sixteen.”

“You are the soul of your father,” murmured Rostam, catching the coins.

“You had better go now,” said Jân Muhammad. He was suddenly in a hurry to see the old man on his way back down the hill. “If the Mohâjerân should return while you’re here, I can’t guarantee that you’ll be safe.”

Rostam’s eyes opened wide. He got slowly to his feet. “You are right, my son. Thank you. Praise be to Allah for your kindness.”

“May you go in peace, O my uncle.” He watched as the old man hurried as fast as he could out of the bunker and down the hill. Rostam picked up a heavy stick and began beating his mule, which didn’t seem to pay any attention to the blows; it neither quickened its pace nor strayed from its path. Jân Muhammad waited until both man and animal were out of sight, then he took the water off the stove and dropped a healthy pinch of tea into the pot.

When he’d finished his refreshment and began stowing his supplies, the data deck interrupted him with a recorded call of a muezzin. Jân Muhammad immediately let a bag of flour he held fall onto his cot. He went to the deck and made a quick security check of the area outside. Then he went to the goatskin and let out a little water into his hands. He thought, “I perform the ablutions to prepare myself for prayer and seeking the nearness of Allah.” He drew his moist right hand briskly down from his hairline to his chin. He removed a ring on his right hand and quickly washed his right arm from elbow to fingertips. He did the same with his left arm. He drew the wet fingers of his right hand from the middle of his head forward to the hairline. He put the heel of his right hand on the toes of his right foot, and brought his fingers up to the ankle, then washed his left foot. He took his prayer rug and went outside, where he stood facing the southwest, toward the Kaaba in Makkah. While he prayed, all thoughts of his bloody battle that morning vanished. As usual, he murmured a prayer for the health of the Mahdi, and for his quick victory over the unbelievers. Jân Muhammad also added a prayer for the Muslims — like those he fought now in Mazanderan — who were in error, who had gone astray and did not recognize the Messiah who had come out of what had once been Algeria.

After his devotions, he couldn’t put off the unpleasant task of tending to the slain Mohâjerân any longer. He returned the prayer rug to its place, made another security check, then decided to chip in a personality module to take his mind off his work. He chose a blue plastic moddy manufactured in Riyadh, and settled it in place on his posterior plug. He chipped in three add-ons as well, one that would override his fatigue, one to override thirst, and a third that contained the entire text of the noble Qur’ân.

The moddy took possession of his consciousness and transported him from the barren Persian landscape to a fully-realized fantasy of Paradise. He wasn’t aware of the morbid labor he was performing. It was as if Jân Muhammad’s soul had left his body, or as if he had been lifted physically, still alive, into Heaven. Wonder and reverence enthralled him. Here was his reward for a lifetime of faithfulness. Here was ample payment for all the hardships he had endured for the sake of his love of Allah. He was refreshed, and the pleasures of Paradise were far greater than any his earthly imagination could have invented. What he had forsaken in life was now his to enjoy. The most delicious wine gurgled from exquisite fountains. Houris more beautiful than any mortal woman smiled at him and made him welcome. Above everything else, though, was the joy of his union with God. He felt a terrible sadness when he thought of the unbelievers, how they had scorned the Straight Path and would never know this peace.

Still marveling at everything he witnessed, Jân Muhammad slowly lifted a hand to his head and popped the moddy out. He stood squinting in the bright glare of the sun for a few seconds, confused, as the real world claimed him once again. He let out a deep sigh. It was good to be able to carry a bit of Paradise with him, but it was always a painful jolt to be thrust back into his own mind, faced again with his worldly troubles. The lingering effect of the moddy was that he knew that Paradise, when he was accepted into it in truth, would be inexpressibly more blessed than what the moddy designers had offered him. “Praise be to the Lord of the Worlds,” said Jân Muhammad.

He stood a few yards from his observation post, looking down into the Tang-e-Kuffâr, the Pass of the Infidels; many feet below, the broken bodies of the Mohâjerân men and women lay on the craggy floor of the defile. Their worthless automatic rifles, pistols, and grenades were now piled in a heap at the edge of the cliff. Jân Muhammad frowned, then turned and went back into the bunker.

Toward nightfall, while making another scheduled security check, he noticed movement at the northeast end of the pass. He called for greater magnification. Now he was certain; a small party, maybe twenty-five or thirty people, was moving slowly and carefully among the rocks. He watched as they stopped and knelt beside the corpses. Some of the Mohâjerân glanced upward. Jân Muhammad could see the hatred on their faces. A few of them unslung their rifles and held them ready, as if Jân Muhammad might suddenly appear, alone and vulnerable, from behind a pile of red boulders. At last the refugees left their dead fellows and continued their cautious way through the pass. Through the data deck, Jân Muhammad could hear their low murmurs, but could not make out any of their words.

He trained his guns on the rebels in the front of the column, fed the position and distance information from the data deck to the firing control, and watched as the Mohâjerân crept silently out of his field of vision. One by one, they disappeared from view through the ragged southern cut of the Tang-e-Kuffâr.

He felt a helpless rage build in him, then a swift, cold fear. He hadn’t fired a shot. He’d permitted every one of the enemy to escape unscathed. How could that be? “By the life of my eyes,” he swore. He was no traitor, no coward. He knew the significance of what had happened: The Mohâjerân had slipped through his guard to the desolate valley beyond. They were free now to join others of the growing refugee mob, to attack the Mahdi’s Persian Conciliatory Army where it was weakest. Every rebel that got by Jân Muhammad meant injury to the Mahdi, an obstacle to the victory of orthodox Islam.

Jân Muhammad slammed the data deck with a fist in frustration. He had to find out what had prevented him from destroying these Mohâjerân.

He tapped the diagnostic key on the data deck. Again all the test lights lit green. His deck was in perfect condition, both hardware and software. The problem was not with the deck or the weapons systems; it was with himself. That would be more difficult to deal with. He popped the military personality moddy. His anger and dread intensified, for Jân Muhammad was less able to confront this crisis than the electronic mind built into the moddy. With the command moddy still chipped in, he picked a spot high on the walls of the mountain pass and swung his machine guns and rocket launchers to bear on it. He wanted to let loose a few shots, but somehow the desire to fire wasn’t translated into a mental command. Nothing happened. No sound disturbed the chilly stillness of the twilight.

With a trembling hand, Jân Muhammad popped the command moddy out. The terrible truth was that he was now helpless and defenseless. He had a mighty arsenal linked to his data deck; but if he was somehow blocked from using it, he might as well be sitting on the hilltop with nothing more deadly than a slingshot. If the Mohâjerân learned the truth, he could be overwhelmed and murdered before the next day was out.

The thing to do now was contact his platoon sergeant. He used the portable transmitter. It took a few minutes to calculate the proper frequency for the day, tune the scrambler, identify himself to his headquarters and be recognized, and get patched through to Sergeant Abadani. He had to wait a long while. Finally, he heard the sergeant’s grumbling, cheerless voice. “Listen, sarbaaz, I’m going to tell you why you called me. Let me know if I’m right. You saw some goddamn Mohâjerân mucks and you proceeded to set up your attack by the numbers. Everything was fine until it was time to fire. Then you couldn’t. You didn’t stop a single one of the bastards. Right?”

Jân Muhammad was startled. “Right, Sarge. How — ?”

“You’re not the only one that’s happened to today. Now, where are you?”

“The Tang-e-Kuffâr.”

“Yeah. Well, seven of your buddies have called in with the same story. What we’ve figured is that somebody has entered your station and fed a baggie to your data deck. That’s what happened to the other seven posts.”

“But nobody has access to my deck but me.”

“That’s what they all said. But in every case, they could think of some Persian who had been permitted inside the bunker.”

Jân Muhammad opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. “There’s an old man from Ashnistan who brings me my food. He’s such a feeble old son of a bitch that I usually make him tea and let him rest inside my bunker.”

“And you like talking to him, too, right? Against orders?”

“Yes,” Jân Muhammad admitted. “I don’t get to see anyone else.”

“Is he your likely suspect?”

“He’s the only suspect, Sarge.”

“Good. Well, then, the next time you see him, you’re going to have to neutralize him.”

Jân Muhammad stared at the transmitter for a moment. “Maybe it would be better to let him live,” he said.

“The orders are to get rid of these saboteurs.”

“But, Sarge, the Mohâjerân are behind all this. When they know their agent has done what he’s supposed to, they’re sure they’re safe. They can just sneak through the pass whenever they want. I can’t use my guns or rockets. But if I kill old Rostam, they’ll know something’s up. They’ll know we’re on to them. If I just act normally and let Rostam think he’s safe, I may be able to account for a few refugee patrols before they catch on and start their frontal attacks again. That’s if I can get my weapons systems operational again.”

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll have a tech team out to you tomorrow as soon as we can.” Now it was the sergeant’s turn to fall silent for a few seconds. “You might have an idea there, sarbaaz. I’ll mention it to the lieutenant.”

“So what’s wrong with my data deck, then?”

Sergeant Abadani gave a humorless laugh. “You don’t know what a baggie is?”

“I’m a gunner, Sarge, I’m not a deck expert.”

“You’re supposed to be both. Your Persian slipped a bubble microplate into your deck, just long enough for your deck to copy it and add it to its memory. It wasn’t an assassin program, but it was a crippler. Your deck won’t respond to certain orders now, not through your cyberlink. It’ll feed you sensory input and perform harmless functions, but it won’t take any sort of offensive or defensive action. It’s like your spy tied a little invisible bag around a part of your deck’s operating system, isolating it and making it inaccessible to you. Until tomorrow, when we can slice out the baggie.”

“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do until then? What if I’m attacked?”

“You probably won’t be. Like you said, the rebels figure you’re more useful the way you are, with your teeth pulled. They don’t want to give the show away. They’ll just parade a few more units through the pass.”

Jân Muhammad frowned. “Is there any way I can operate the weapons systems the hard way? Bypassing the cyberlink?”

“Sure,” said Sergeant Abadani, “but you said you weren’t an expert. There’s a sequence of options that will let you fire any of your guns and rockets by selecting from a series of menus. It takes a lot of time. If you’ve never worked with it, it probably won’t be any use to you.”

“But it’s better than letting those bastards get by me. I hate the idea of watching them troop past like a gang of schoolchildren on a holiday.”

“Your attitude’s all right, sarbaaz, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then the sergeant told his gunner how to request the firing control menus from the data deck.

“That won’t be bagged, too?” asked Jân Muhammad.

“It wasn’t on the other seven decks.”

“All right, Sarge.”

“Report back if you see any action. We’ll be there sometime tomorrow. Now, clear the air.”

Jân Muhammad signed off. He tapped in the commands that called up the first of the attack menus.

Do you wish to activate automatic rifles?

Enter 1=yes, 0=no

Do you wish to activate submachine guns?

Enter 1 =yes, 0=no

Do you wish to activate heavy machine guns?

Enter l=yes, 0=no

Do you wish to activate 40 millimeter cannons?

Enter l=yes, 0-no

Do you wish to activate trench mortars?

Enter l=yes, 0=no

Do you wish to activate light artillery?

Enter 1 =yes, 0=no

Do you wish to activate antitank guns?

Enter 1 =yes, 0-no

Do you wish to activate antiaircraft guns?

Enter 1-yes, 0=no

A second menu presented him choices of rockets and bombs. A third menu let him activate the antipersonnel and antitank mines buried on the hillside and in the defile. It took Jân Muhammad a quarter of an hour to go through the entire sequence. If he had initiated the selection process just when he’d spotted a party of Mohâjerân, they would have run safely through the pass before he was finished. And he hadn’t even begun the targeting and firing procedures. The sergeant had been right; this was worse than useless.

He chipped in the command moddy and let his deck-enhanced senses make certain there were no Mohâjerân nearby. He chose a flat place on the floor of the Tang-e-Kuffâr that the rebels would have to cross in order to flee into the valley beyond. Caught for a moment in the open, they would have to choose between running a hopeless race through a storm of machine gun bullets or giving up and retracing the way they had come.

Through the cyberlink, Jân Muhammad knew the coordinates, in three dimensions, of every point within range of the cameras. With the link, he experienced the weapons systems as extensions of his augmented mind. He tried firing a few shots, willing the guns to open up on the target. When they remained silent, he sighed and called up the attack menu, then began running through the time-consuming manual procedures.

Do you wish to fire submachine guns?

Enter l=yes, 0=no

Jân Muhammad typed 1.

Do you wish continuous fire?

Enter 1 =yes, 0=no

Jân Muhammad typed 0.

How many rounds do you wish to fire?

Jân Muhammad typed 5.

To commence firing on your mark, type I.

When he typed 1, each submachine gun that could bear on the target spat five rounds into the hard-packed earth. Although it was a dark, moonless night, the data deck let him see the clouds of flying rock chips and dust. He felt better knowing that he could still operate his weapons, even in this clumsy way. He relaxed for the first time since early in the day, when he’d railed to stop the Mohâjerân party from making their defiant escape.

Just before dawn, after Jân Muhammad had succumbed to fatigue and was suffering through an uneasy dream of childhood and poverty, an alarm woke him. He swung groggily off his cot and leaned over the data deck, fumbling the command moddy and the military personality moddy into place. He felt a familiar elation as the confining bunker dissolved, replaced by an immediate awareness of every movement, every scent, every sound around his post.

Another small unit of Mohâjerân was picking its way through the mountain pass. They were moving boldly, confidently, knowing that Jân Muhammad’s armaments were disabled. He had an unpleasant surprise waiting for them.

When the first of the refugees reached the target, he jabbed his finger down on the 1 key. The shrill scream of the machine gun bullets ricocheting off rocks filled the narrow pass. Three unfortunate people at the head of the column howled and fell wounded to the red dirt. After a short while, however, the Mohâjerân realized that all the machine gun fire was aimed at one place. They began to move cautiously around that area, giving it as much room as they could. One by one, they gathered courage and slipped by to one side.

Jân Muhammad cursed. Of course, he could retarget the machine guns to another point, but the same thing would happen again. The enemy would realize they were safe elsewhere in the defile. And it was pointless to aim the guns by tapping information into the data deck. The refugees would all be gone long before he got the next position set up.

Jân Muhammad hurried outside. The deep blue sky of the false dawn and a cool breeze gave the morning an innocence that was pure illusion. Jân Muhammad knelt briefly on the edge of the cliff, glaring down in frustration, until a few shots from below made him scuttle back. That gave him an idea. Not far away, the weapons of the Mohâjerân he had killed were stacked together until headquarters sent someone to collect them. Jân Muhammad grabbed a plastic and alloy-steel automatic rifle. He examined it quickly; it was in disgraceful condition, but with luck it wouldn’t blow up in his face. He lay down with his head raised just high enough to see over the edge.

Jân Muhammad waited for a chance to avenge the insult they had paid him. When he saw a flicker of motion, he squeezed off a few rounds and was gratified to hear a shrill cry of pain. He still had his command moddy chipped in, so he was getting an unbroken view of the pass from one end to the other. He could see where each rebel had concealed himself. They had neutralized his data deck and his heavy weapons, but they were wrong if they thought he was going to admit defeat. He would fight even if he were reduced to throwing rocks and stones. He grinned as he looked down patiently from the cyberlink, down at his enemy. They didn’t realize how exposed they were.

Besides the rifles, Jân Muhammad had captured a number of grenades as well. He began tossing them down into the Tang-e-Kuffâr, flushing some of the refugees from hiding. The Mohâjerân decided to chance a break, and as they sprinted through the pass, Jân Muhammad picked them off in their panic. He had been trained to use cyberlinked guns, not conventional infantry weapons; but now the refugees were learning how badly they had underestimated him. When the sun first edged over the broad, parched plain, he had accounted for half the Mohâjerân in the party.

As the morning stretched on, he got a few more as they attempted to rush by him, and the rest when they withdrew up the winding, unprotected path. He stood up at last, his neck muscles aching and stiff. He hadn’t given up, although the refugees had taken away his advantage. Even if the Mohâjerân tried storming his bunker again, he wasn’t afraid. Without the cyber weapons, he was still confident that he could keep them from overrunning his position. He wondered what Sergeant Abadani would say when he heard that Jân Muhammad, using antique guns and toy rifles, had beaten a unit of Mohâjerân.

Hours later, while he was frying some flour in lard and chewing on a greasy stick of dried mutton, Rostam’s voice called to him from the bottom of the hill. The old man sounded frightened. That made Jân Muhammad laugh, but it was a somber and dangerous laugh. Jân Muhammad was curious if Rostam had been sent to try another scheme of some kind. The old man was a fool, and Jân Muhammad might have been amused, except he understood clearly that if Rostam had been successful, Jân Muhammad might well be dead now.

“Yaa sarbaaz!” Rostam’s voice quavered in the hot, still air. “Yaa sarbaaz, we must talk!”

Jân Muhammad kept scraping the browning flour in the pan. He added another spoonful of lard and watched it melt. “Rostam?” he called.

“We must talk!” The spy was terrified.

“Why do you say that? What do we have to talk about?”

“Don’t act that way, aga. Please let me explain. Let me come Up.”

“Explain if you want to, but do it from out there. This bunker stinks enough as it is.”

“I can’t just stand here and shout at you, aga.”

“Why the hell not?”

There was a pause. Jân Muhammad glanced out and saw Rostam shifting nervously from one foot to the other. He held his large stick, but the mule was nowhere to be seen. “Listen, O worthy one: It is true that I did as the Mohâjerân ordered, but I was forced to do it. They threatened me. I’m many times a grandfather, I’m all used up. I can’t stand up to strong young men when they force their way into my home.”

“They gave you something to put into my data deck?”

“Yes, aga.”

Jân Muhammad muttered a curse. “Did you think you were helping me, when you did what they told you?”

Another pause. “No, aga, but I had no choice! The shopkeeper in the village, he was with them, and he said that I’d die slowly in front of everyone if I did not cooperate. He said that he’d never sell me another loaf of bread, another bottle of wine for solace in my old age.”

“But you never thought to warn me. You were more afraid of this shopkeeper and the refugees than all of the Mahdi’s army. You are worse than the Mohâjerân; you have refused the service of the blessed Mahdi. You think only of your worthless belly, when you were given an opportunity to benefit the deputy of Allah.”

“I was afraid, aga!”

Jân Muhammad spat in disgust. “You’ve made that very clear, old man. You threw in your lot with the Mohâjerân, so now you’ll have to ask for protection from them. I wish you luck.”

“But, sarbaaz, the entire village…when they heard, they drove me out, into the desert — “

“And what do you want from me? Sympathy?”

Rostam began to weep. “I can’t live without food, without water. Where will I go?”

Jân Muhammad had stopped paying attention. He tapped a few keys on the data deck.

Do you wish to fire submachine guns?

Enter l=yes, 0=no

Jân Muhammad typed 1.

“Sarbaaz! Help me! I beg you, as one servant of Allah to another!”

“You submit when it serves your purpose,” shouted the soldier. “And when it doesn’t serve your purpose, you break every law of the Prophet, may blessings be upon his name and peace.”

Do you wish continuous fire?

Enter l=yes, 0-no

Jân Muhammad typed 1.

“Pity me!” Rostam was hysterical. He had fallen to his knees in the stony soil, and now he raised his arms in supplication. “Think of your own father. Would you treat him this way?”

“My own father would not have left me weak and vulnerable to my enemies, and he wouldn’t have taken sides with the haters of Allah.”

To commence firing on your mark, type 1.

“Bismillah!” screamed Rostam. He fell forward, laying his forehead in the dust, trembling with terror.

Jân Muhammad’s finger descended over the keys, hesitated, then hung motionless in the air. He could not bring himself to murder this wretched old man. “Go!” he called. “Get off my hill! Go starve to death in the wilderness! Walk to Jerusalem and ask the forgiveness of the Mahdi!”

“‘Whoever forgives and amends, he shall have his just reward from Allah,’” quoted Rostam. He staggered off, away from the young man he had betrayed, away from the village that had turned him out.

Jân Muhammad closed his eyes tightly, wondering at his sudden change of heart. “In the profane mouth of an unbeliever,” he murmured, “even the words of the Prophet can lose their beauty.” Behind him, unheeded, his poor midday meal burned and was ruined. With his augmented vision, Jân Muhammad watched the old man until he was out of sight, swallowed up by the seared and withered expanse of waste.