Caliphate

2112)

Ling and Petra sat on the walkway around a tower on the side of the castle facing the other one, far below. There was a chainlink fence around the walkway, as there was for all the other towers and battlements of the castle. Girls in fits of depression, and houris were endemically depressed, had been known to throw themselves off in the past, before the fencing had gone up. This was, of course, bad for business.

The lower castle was a bustle of activity. Not only was a new wall and fence being put around it, but concrete was being poured around the outside for additional rooms, workmen-all apparently Nazrani- were installing cameras, and the place swarmed with black- clad janissaries. Above, a new chimney arose.

"A better whorehouse to compete with us, do you think?" Petra asked.

Ling didn't take her gaze from the place even when she answered, "No."

Ling seemed strangely uncommunicative. Since she was Petra's only real friend among the houris, this bothered the younger girl. Still trying to make conversation, she said, "They're doing an amazing amount of work."

"Yes," Ling agreed, "and apparently doing it well."

Montreal, Imperial Province of Quebec, 9 June, 2112

"That was very well done, John," Caruthers said, as the rebels were herded out of the apartment on Papineau Avenue not far from where it intersected with St. Catherine Street. Once, those routes had borne French names or been listed in the French style: Avenue Papineau and Rue Ste. Catharine. The United States, however, had never once since the beginning of the occupation shown any sympathy whatsoever for Quebec's distaste for cultural assimilation. French was not taught in the schools. Neither was in permitted to be on display in shops. Street names were right out. And if people spoke it at home, if that caused their children to be less than fluent in the imperial tongue, English? For that there were the knocks on the door and arrests in the night.

Habeas corpus did not apply to imperial provinces.

"It was a waste of a year of my life," Hamilton said. "Those people weren't rebels; they were poseurs, Marxist idiots caught up in the drivel of a century ago." Hamilton stopped speaking as one of the "rebels"-a lovely, tall, dark-blond girl named Helene-stopped to glare at him, resisting the shove of the escorting officer. She looked terribly disappointed and terribly hurt. They'd been bedmates for the last six months and she had never suspected he was working for the other side. Hamilton looked ashamed.

Ah, she was such a sweetheart. Maybe if…

Caruthers noticed. "What is it with you and tall blondes, anyway? Oh, never mind.

"John, we've been tolerant before and we suffered for it, badly. This is what 'zero tolerance' means."

Hamilton sighed as the police pushed the girl onward. "Can we get her some… consideration? 'Services to the Empire,' if nothing else?"

"I'll see what I can do," Caruthers said. "You cared for that one?"

"As much as I can care anymore, I suppose. She was very sweet and she's very young. I'd rather not have to think that I sent her to a freezing labor camp in Nunavut."

"All right," Caruthers agreed. "We owe you one and getting her sent to a re-education camp in Puerto Rico probably about covers that. Besides, she's young enough that re-education just might take."

"Thank you." Hamilton breathed a small sigh of relief. "What's next?"

"You can't operate here anymore," Caruthers said. "While this group may have been ineffectual, there are others that are considerably more capable." He paused to think for a bit before continuing, "School again, I think, language school."

"Fuck!"

"Trust me; you'll like the reason why, once it's explained."

Castle Noisvastei, Province of Baya, 21 Sha'ban, 1536 AH (17 June, 2112)

Her head moved rhythmically, the object of her attentions pulsing in her mouth. A crucifix swung back and forth in time with her bobbing head, hanging from a chain about her neck. "The men like the idea of fucking Christian women," Ling had explained once, when she'd given Petra the cross. "It asserts their superiority. It's also good for tips."

Petra was a full-fledged houri now; Ling had taught her well and patiently. She no longer knew how many men she had serviced since coming to the castle. It was over a thousand, certainly, even subtracting for repeat customers. She actually tried not to remember the numbers, or the acts. Though, of course, if she wanted to keep repeat customers, she did have to remember preferences. It was a difficult game of mental gymnastics.

For the first few months, Ling had been content merely to have Petra sit or kneel nearby and watch her perform. Well, not quite content; the almond-eyed girl had also taken Petra to her own bed and shown her how to enjoy a woman and how to please one.

"It's how we keep our sanity," Ling had explained.

After that first few months of observation, Ling had had Petra begin to take part, whenever she had a cooperative and suitable man in her quarters. Under Ling's patient coaching, Petra had learned the use of her lips and tongue, Ling's words explaining and encouraging,

Ling's hand firmly but gently guiding Petra's head, Ling scolding at first until Petra learned to accept whatever gift the customer might deposit in her mouth or on her face or lips. Only once had Ling beaten her, and that was because Petra had rudely thrown up after such a "gift."

Before her thirteenth birthday, Petra was a past master in the use of her mouth.

From there, Ling had moved on to more advanced courses. Always she was careful though, selecting, for example, very small men to open and stretch Petra's anus until she could handle larger. One day, Petra had balked, complaining, "It hurts and I hate the pain."

Thereupon Ling had taken Petra down to a lower level of quarters. There, blank faced women sat staring at walls. Others sucked frantically on men. Still others rode customers with seeming wanton abandon. Those last two categories were as blank-faced as the first.

"These are women who complained," Ling explained. "Women who complained once too often."

"What happened to them?" a horrified Petra had asked.

Ling had unconsciously rubbed the crown of her own head, above the hairline. "Oh… they were sent to doctors and little things were implanted in their brains. Some other things, parts of their brains, were removed. All their fucking and sucking is controlled by a computer brought from China that sits in the lowest levels of the castle. So far as I know, they feel nothing. So far as I know, they aren't even there. Maybe if the computer didn't make them eat they'd starve to death. But what if they are still there?

"Yes," Ling had answered the unspoken question, "it is a shitty world."

Petra never complained about the pain of anal sex after that. Nor did she complain this time when the customer pushed her head away and placed her on all fours, not even when lined his penis up on her anus, nor even when he thrust forward roughly. All she did was bite the inside of her cheeks and force out a false grunt of pleasure.

In her own room-she was entitled to her own room now that she was a full houri-Petra kept the letters she received from Besma. All of them spoke of how much the Moslem girl missed her sister and friend. None of them asked about Petra's life. Petra had been very clear in the first letter she'd been able to send, "Please, please, please never ask me what I do here." The letters had to go through Ishmael because Besma's father would have gone ballistic if she'd been caught receiving mail from or sending it to a famous brothel.

She reread the letters, sometimes. One in particular, she reread often.

"Fudail is dead. I could not take his manhood, but I did scratch out his eyes when he tried to do to me what he did to you. And, perhaps because I am small, he thought he didn't need his friends to help. I scratched out his eyes and then stabbed the pig through the heart.

"His mother, the lying bitch, said that her son did no such thing. My father, shortly before divorcing her, swore that it could only have been self defense. It was my word against al Khalifa's, with my father's testimony weighing heavily in the balance. The judges let me go.

"Al Khalifa, so I understand, has taken residence in the brothel here in Kitznen. Father won't discuss it, but Ishmael says it is so.

"Of course, you know I would never plan on doing such a thing to my poor, demented stepbrother."

It was that last line, coupled with the letter Besma had left in her great-grandmother's journal, that convinced Petra that Fudail had never tried to commit any crime against Besma, but that she had ruthlessly blinded and murdered him.

"Good for you, Besma," Petra said every time she reread the letter.

Petra thought upon that very letter, even as the grotesquely fat customer behind her ground his passion into her anus and squeezed the flesh over her hips hard enough to bruise. It helped… a little.

The fat man straining her anus was a frequent customer. She knew his name and preferences and shouted out in feigned passion, and in English, "Fuck me, Claude, fuck me!" while slamming herself backwards against him. He stank, but then they all stank. What matter; slaves had no right to object to stench. They could, however, at least think, Fuck you, you clod, fuck you.

When the customer was finished, while the filthy drool from his slack mouth dripped onto her back, Petra stayed still, remaining on all fours, his penis inside her upraised rear end. Eventually the customer pulled out, wiping his penis off on the cheeks of her ass. He stood, adjusted his robe and began to walk to the shower. Apparently rethinking it, he turned back and patted her posterior gently. "Good girl," he said, before leaving the bedroom. "Nice fuck." On his waddling way, he dropped two silver dirhem in a plate on a small table by the bathroom door.

Sex was cheap in the Caliphate, as cheap as female Nazrani slaves.

OSI Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, 17 June, 2112

"All rested up, John?"

Hamilton just snarled. Eight days, including travel time, did not amount to much of a rest.

The meeting was small, just Caruthers, Hamilton, and an unfamiliar woman who, despite wearing more or less fashionable female business garb, had something of the medical look about her, somehow. Caruthers didn't introduce her and she didn't introduce herself except as "Mary."

Hamilton was reasonably sure her name was neither "Mary" nor anything close to it. Mary was older, perhaps forty, tall, blond and…

Stop it! She's not Laurie and she doesn't even look much like Laurie.

Caruthers snapped his fingers in front of Hamilton's face. "Knock it off, John. Pay attention. This is important."

"Oh. Sorry."

Mary touched a button and three holographic images appeared above the table in front of Hamilton. Each was a more or less natural photo, not mug shots, of three men in white jackets of the type Hamilton associated with science and research.

Mary's right index finger pointed at the leftmost of the men Hamilton was already thinking of as "scientists."

"This is Dr. Claude Oliver Meara," she said. "Ph. D., Microbiology. He disappeared from his home near Atlanta about six months ago. He was under suspicion of committing statutory rape when he fled. A search of his house after his disappearance indicates a strong predilection for pederasty."

"We tracked him to Montreal, actually, before losing him," Caruthers added, raising a single eyebrow. You thought your little group of Frenchie separatists was so innocent and harmless, his mocking glance seemed to say.

Mary's finger moved to the next photo. That one was tall and slender, but bald, and almost unbelievably ugly. "Dr. Guillaume Sands. Ph. D. Biochemistry. Also disappeared. Also from Atlanta."

"Also via Montreal," Caruthers added, "which he was from, as a matter of fact. Just goes to show we still can't trust the Frogs."

Her finger lingered over the last picture for a moment, an especially nerdy looking character, before she said, "Dr. John Johnston IV. Epidemiology. Same story. I actually know this one, personally. Rude, arrogant bastard."

"Microbiology, biochemistry, and epidemiology? Why don't I like the sound of that?"

"Nobody likes the sound of that, John," Caruthers said.

"Okay… they disappeared. Where to?"

It was Caruthers' turn to show a picture, this one a high-definition satellite photo. "Here, we think." The three scientists disappeared to be replaced by a much larger view of two mountain-girt, snow- covered castles. One of these had a prominent, golden dome apparently grafted on as an afterthought. Certainly it didn't fit the architecture of the whole.

"The Caliphate? You want me to go inside the Caliphate? That's suicidal."

"For you or for them? Oh, never mind, we'll get to 'suicidal' later. Let me assure you, though, that the move has not been suicidal for them; quite the opposite."

"Let me understand;" Hamilton said, "we are talking about some kind of biological warfare agent being developed by the Caliphate to attack us?"

"More to counterattack us, we think," offered Mary.

Hamilton cocked his head to one side, quizzically. "Counterattack?"

"It should be obvious to you, John," Caruthers said, "that we've pretty much cleaned up our Moslem problems around the periphery. There are effectively none openly left in North or South America. The last of the Pacific islands that are of interest to us were cleared in the campaign you participated in, in the Philippines. Africa south of the Sahara has few that are not enslaved and none that are not oppressed. Japan and China-Australia, too-exterminated or drove out theirs long ago. Except for infiltrators coming across from the European Caliphate, and the odd group of raiders from the other Caliphate, those left in the Russian Empire are illiterate serfs, bound to the land. The traditional Moslem lands… the grandly named Caliphate of Islam, Triumphant, is a virtual wasteland. And Israel finally learned the lessons Himmler and Eichmann sought to teach, as well.

"All that's left is Europe. It's only a matter of time before we undertake Reconquista there, too."

Hamilton gestured with a hand, palm up, and a one-shouldered shrug. "Yes, all that's obvious enough. Tell me something new."

"They're not going to take the loss of their last worthwhile homeland lightly. If necessary, they'll destroy the world before turning it all over to us. We would do the same."

"I still don't-"

"They can build nukes and, more or less, maintain them. They've still got a huge, if decreasing, number of dhimmis to keep some poor semblance of a modern society going. They have never-so far as we can tell, and our intel on this is good- been able to develop a delivery system capable of getting through our defenses. Since we don't permit them travel, and we don't permit them freedom of the seas, and we do sink any ships or subs they launch on sight, they've got no effective way to bomb us."

"Introducing diseases, however," Mary interrupted, "they could probably do. They're much lighter, much more easily transported, and potentially much deadlier."

"We think, John," Caruthers said, "that they've enticed those three men over precisely to develop for them a superbug."

"And I'm supposed to find out if they are?"

"No. We can't take any chances on this. Your job will be to kill or capture them before they can. Actually, that's not strong enough. John, you need to kill or capture them and destroy their facility no matter what it takes or what it costs."

"Why me? I'm new… barely wet behind the ears as you've never ceased to tell me."

"Language aptitude, military background, biochemistry degree," answered Caruthers, simply enough.

"John," Mary added, "let me tell you about something that makes this so important that no level of violence is too much. No… first, let me ask you how much you know about disease?"

"What any biochemistry major would, I suppose," Hamilton answered.

"That may not be enough," Mary said, unconsciously wringing her hands. "I'll give you the quick version. There are several reasons why the human race has survived epidemics and pandemics, but the biggest are these: The strongest strains of any given disease kill quickest and do not spread so readily. The weakest do spread, and the weaker they are the more and the faster, overall, they can spread. Therefore, diseases tend to spread immunity before them because once you've survived the weaker strain, you are very likely to be highly resistant to the stronger. Secondly, the human body is capable of dealing with a very wide range of diseases. But it has to know that it is under attack. A truly new disease is very difficult for the immune system to deal with because it doesn't recognize it as a disease. Thirdly, and related to the other two, the ideal disease, from a weapons point of view, is spread via air, has a very long time it can be communicated between initial infection and onset of serious symptoms, enters a stage where it could not be communicated, and then kills more or less quickly, dying out itself. Fourthly, an ideal disease would not mutate and would exempt one's own population. We think that such a disease can be created from scratch. We know that if any group of three men can do it, these three can."

"These men are working on such a disease?" Hamilton asked.

"We think so… for a number of reasons."

Hamilton looked at Caruthers and sighed. "All right; sign me up."

"You have a long and intense training program ahead of you, then."

"I have one question: Why would someone be willing to do this? Money?"

"No," Mary said, "not money."

Castle Noisvastei, Province of Baya, 22 Sha'ban, 1536 AH (18 June, 2112)

Ling waited until the fat man had left before easing into Petra's room and crawling into bed next to her, conforming her own body to Petra's like one spoon to another. When Ling put her arm around her, Petra was stiff and unresponsive. Then again, she always was whenever that grotesquery in vaguely human form came to visit her.

"Bad, honey?" Ling asked.

Petra sniffled, "He didn't even grease my ass first… and I had to pretend I liked it. Oh, God, Ling… I hate my life."

"There are worse things," Ling said, thinking of the computercontrolled creatures down below.

"That's the worst part," Petra wailed. "I know there are worse things and I'm terrified of them." She spun within Ling's arms and buried her head in the Chinese slave's neck and hair.

Under the circumstances, Ling didn't even try to make love to Petra. Instead she just held her tightly and softly kissed her hair while the sixteen-year old houri cried herself to sleep.

When the Ministry of State Security recalls me, Ling thought, I will take this girl with me.

For while Ling had told the truth about having been sold when she was four, she'd neglected to mention that she had a chip in her head as well, one planted there when she was purchased by MSS and just before she was "sold west." In her case, however, nothing had been removed from her brain. Instead, she'd had a whole suite of things implanted-little things, mostly: loyalty, duty… code words and phrases… field craft.

Not even the Hindus did better human programming than did the Celestial Kingdom of the Han, once known as the Peoples Republic of China.

If possible, said a small voice in Ling's head.

OSI Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, 19 June, 2112

"My local contact is a what?"

Caruthers sighed. "She's a slave girl, a prostitute. More specifically, she's an implanted agent. She has a chip in her head. The Chinese have been doing this kind of thing for thirty years. It's the major reason we stopped allowing immigration from China."

"That's abominable."

Caruthers gave a characteristic shrug. "We do the same things with convicted criminals. So they don't bother with convictions? Not our problem."

"But we're at war with them."

Caruthers put out one hand, palm down and fingers spread. He wagged it, saying, "Not by declaration. Almost everybody is at war with almost everybody, these days, and all the time, too. What that means in practice though is that nobody's at war-not emotionally, anyway-unless bullets are actually flying. So, yeah, we're at war with them but, also yeah, we can cooperate."

"Do we know anything else about this woman?"

"We have a picture, sort of," Caruthers answered, then produced a hologram of that. The hologram was… decidedly odd, out of focus, as if taken through a bad lens.

"Awfully white, for a Chinese. Unusually large breasts, too. Why is the picture so fuzzy?"

"She's also relatively tall. The chinks were coy. We think she was specially bred, maybe even genengineered, for exoticism. As for the picture… our best guess is that the camera was her own eye, tapped by the chip in her head."

Hamilton had a sudden thought and as suddenly looked ill. "Jesus, that's vile. This poor girl was chipped, then sold as a hooker, and everything she does is recorded for anyone to see. And she knows this? Knows she's performing for a camera?"

"Look, I didn't make the world," Caruthers said testily. "I don't even approve. I just observe and report. They sell us-we buy from them- redundant human organs and we should balk over a little incidental voyeurism?"

Rocking his head from side to side, Hamilton grudgingly agreed. "Okay. Sure. Go on. What's her name, by the way?"

"Zheng Ling."

Castle Noisvastei, Province of Baya, 22 Sha'ban, 1536 AH (18 June, 2112)

"Petra, Honey, wake up," Ling said, while gently shaking the girl awake.

"What is it, Ling?" Petra asked sleepily.

"I just got the word. There's a big group of new-minted janissaries coming to the castle for their graduation party. We have to prepare. It's going to be a busy few nights."

Petra groaned. After all, she was still sore.

"Oh, stop it, you. At least they'll be young, strong and virile, with normal urges, and not grotesque, smelly, perverted old men. Now get up, lazy bones, and start making yourself gorgeous. There's money to be made and fun to be had."

"I don't want to have any 'fun.' The money, on the other hand… "

" Exactly! " Ling said. "Now pull on a robe and let's get down to Costuming and Jewelry before all the nice things are taken."

Sometimes Petra thought she could see elaborate paintings under the plain, off-white of the walls. Certainly the gilt, the blue and purple columns of what some of the staff still called "the Throne Room," suggested that the original builder-of whom Petra knew precisely nothing-had intended something very elaborate. Yet the masters insisted on "no graven images," and took this to include paintings of living creatures. She understood that if there ever had been paintings on the walls, these would have been covered up or destroyed.

Hurrying with Ling along one covered and arched walkway, framed by blue columns on one side and walls covered with erratic geometric shapes on the other, Petra stopped for a moment to gaze down at the "Throne Room."

It's makes no sense… it was not part of the builder's design… that this room should be only color. It calls out for something… more… something alive.

"Hurry, silly!" Ling demanded, impatiently.

Most of the girls were still asleep from the night's revelries. Of those who were awake, not all had heard of the arrival of a large party of janissaries. Of those who had heard, not all cared. Of those who cared, none had quite the fire of Ling.

She raced through Costuming and Jewelry, pulling this dress from that rack, that dress from this. Some she held up to herself. Still others, more others, actually, she sized and colored to Petra. For herself, Ling settled on a simple but painstakingly embroidered black silk, thigh-length tunic, the embroidery being of golden dragons and silvery phoenixes. Ling had learned over the years to accentuate her exoticism. The little voice in her head, the one she never told anyone about, pushed her in that direction as well. Ling sometimes wondered about the double standard the masters showed regularly: paintings on walls of real things were right out for them; embroideries of mythical beings for infidels were just fine.

Petra though… she was classic and only classic, in Ling's opinion, would do. For the Nazrani slave, Ling selected an ankle-length gown of white, crumply material, mostly silk as well, cut in the Empire fashion (the French Empire, not the American). The gown was high- waisted, with a golden belt just under the breasts. Those the gown left half-exposed, covering only the nipples and-were a girl a bit daring-not necessarily all of them.

"Try it on! Try it on!" Ling urged. "I've wanted to see you in this for ages."

Once satisfied with the fit of Petra's gown, Ling dragged her to Jewelry. There she selected pearls-earrings and necklace both-for herself, and golden pendants for Petra. Unsatisfied with just the pendants, however, Ling insisted that the slave managing the Jewelry department also produce a pair of gold torques for Petra's upper arms. For her necklace Petra could continue to wear the crucifix she always did.

"Classic," Ling said when Petra had donned both gown and gold. "Now take it all off and change back. We have time to make love before everything is ready and before we have to report to Cosmetics and Hairdressing-yes, I've already made us appointments. And you're too beautiful for me not to show my appreciation for it."

Honsvang, Province of Baya, 22 Sha'ban, 1536 AH

(18 June, 2112)

"Really, Abdul Rahman," Rustam said, "this is just too much. Sure, it's beautiful but when I think of the cost-"

"Oh, be still," the senior janissary trainer said. "The boys have done well. They deserve this bounty. Soon enough they'll be going off to different schools… or to face the infidels across the English Channel, or the Russian border or the Balkan Front. There'll be little enough beauty there. Let them enjoy."

"But the expense… "

"Twenty score gold dinar for three days of carousing? Seems fair to me."

"But… "

"You didn't bitch when Captain Masood brought you and your mates here, Rustam."

The junior sniffed. "That was different."

Abdul Rahman laughed aloud, the sound echoing off the rocky steeps surrounding. "Oh, yes, of course. Then it was your dick getting wet. I see it all clearly now. That makes all the difference in the world. You are absolutely right, Rustam. Go fetch the busses. We're heading back to the barracks… "

"Well… let's not be hasty," Rustam said, setting his face and his feet upon the steep upward path.

"Quick, boys," Muller said. "Paradise is on the top of this hill."

"Or if not Paradise," answered another, "a reasonably close facsimile. I hear the houris up there put those of Heaven to shame."

"I doubt that," Hans said, even while thinking, I doubt there are any houris at all in the real Heaven.

Even so, Hans trudged up with his pack-light marching order only-on his back. He made an effort to seem as enthusiastic about losing his virginity as any of the rest of the boys. Indeed, he seemed quite a bit more enthusiastic than some. Those? Well, put any couple of hundred young boys together and some of them are going to discover that they prefer the company, in all senses, of boys. Still, even those five or six put on a fair show of interest.

The janissaries made rather less of such things than the Caliphate for which they worked though, of course, they would hang any boys actually caught in any of a number of forbidden acts. They simply refused to infer such acts from extraneous behavior. In any case, such hangings were, in practice, rare. Only two of Hans' original company, for example, had been put to death for homosexuality and that had been years ago. Far more boys had been killed in training.

Within half an hour the point of the column, led by Rustam, reached a magnificent brick gate, framed by graceful minarets. From the right of the gatehouse, where Rustam formed up the company, Hans could see the upper third of a large golden dome, glittering in the sunset's light. Despite the minarets, the dome seemed out of place, as if it had been grafted onto a non-Islamic or a pre-Islamic building.

While Rustam formed the company and made sure nobody had drifted off, Adbul Rahman met by the main gate with a very fat man with two young children in tow.

" Can your establishment handle all one hundred and fifty-seven of my men, plus thirteen cadre?" Abdul Rahman asked. "I understood that you could."

Latif answered, "No problem, Abdul Rahman von Seydlitz. I've pulled in another thirty-two houris from some of my outlying establishments and had several servant's quarters done up as boudoirs. I've got a girl for each of you. That said, the girls are of varying qualities. Would you like to make assignments or would you prefer a lottery? Or would you prefer to let the boys pick their own?"

"They've had little enough choice in their lives," Abdul Rahman answered, "and will get little more in the future. Let us let them select their own temporary wives, but by rank in the corps and the class."

"As you wish, so shall it be," answered Latif. "I have on hand enough mullahs for the required services. And now the little matter of payment?"

Wordlessly, Abdul Rahman passed over a bank draft. "Four hundred gold dinar," he said, "as agreed."

"Riiighghght… FACE!" Rustam ordered. "Column of files from the left…"

"Follow me," said one of the section leaders, the leftmost one, while the others, including Hans, shouted, "Stand fast!"

"March!"

As the boys marched forward from the left, Hans kept his head and eyes fixed over his left shoulder. When he saw the third from the last man of the section to his left come up parallel, he gave the order, "Forward… March," and stepped off. Rather than giving commands for minor movements, Hans simply followed the last man of the previous section even as his men followed him. In a short time, he had led them through the massive gate and into a courtyard dominated by a huge mosque with an outsized golden onion dome perched above. This was the same dome he had glimpsed from outside.

Ahead was a broad stone staircase, hunched up against one wing of the castle. Up this the janissaries marched, then through a magnificent doorway, before entering a great hall.

None of the janissaries had eyes for the hall or for its decorations. Instead, they only had eyes for the girls lining each side.

Muller spoke for nearly all when he said, aloud, "I have died and gone to Heaven."

Ling nudged Petra discreetly. "Didn't I tell you this would be better than nasty old men?"

Petra didn't answer. Instead, she looked with shock upon one, in particular, of the boys filling the great hall. After a few moments' shock she managed to whisper, "I've got to get out of here."

"I don't understand," Ling said. "After hundreds of filthy perverts I thought-"

"One of them is my brother!"

"Oh…" The almond eyes widened. "Oh! Oh, shit!"

Interlude

Kitzingen, Federal Republic of Germany,

1 October, 2005

Gabi wrote in her journal:

My life has turned to absolute shit.

Mahmoud was serious about going to America. I thought it was just a passing fad but I was wrong. He didn't tell me until yesterday. I think he was in doubt until then.

It was the bombings in London. He expected the British to crack down on Muslims, to start rounding them up. When it didn't happen he still said, "We'll see. The people who once ruled a quarter of the world are not going to bend over for this. Give them two months to get the machinery in place."

Yesterday he said, "Even they lack the will to defend themselves."

That's when he told me that he'd gone to Frankfurt late last year, to the American consulate, not on orders from his company, but to apply for a work visa. And apparently his company decided better to send him overseas, and let him take a job from an American, than to keep him here and keep a "good German" out of work. I'm sure that's what they were thinking.

Since Mahmoud is a Christian now, it seems the Americans are a little more willing to let him in than they otherwise might be. Racist bastards! I told Mahmoud they were, too, and he said, "No. It has nothing to do with race. They just have a proper sense of caution… and the will to defend their homeland."

Why can't I make him see? What's missing in him that he can't see that "homelands" are not worth defending; that only people are?

He says that I'm blind.

Ooo, he makes me so angry sometimes!

I tell him that if he leaves, he's helping bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy; that if all the most reasonable Moslems or ex-Moslems leave then only the lunatics will remain. He tells me that some prophecies are destined to be fulfilled, and that those who don't heed them suffer for it. He tells me to look to the number of Germans who are leaving Germany, the number of French who are leaving France, the number of English that are leaving England, and then to deny that this prophecy will be fulfilled. He says to look to the birthrates and tell him that this prophecy won't be fulfilled.

As if there weren't already too many people in the world for the world to support. Why should we make even more of them?

Not that we haven't done our own little part. I haven't told him yet but the doctor told me last week that I'm going to have a baby. His baby, of course. If I tell him, he'll start nagging me for us to get married. If I tell him, too, he'll think it's to try to hold him here with me. If I tell him, he'll call it blackmail. And then he'll want all three of us to go to America.

As if I'd let my child be raised as an American! Never! Never! Never! Let my child be imbued with atavistic, virulent nationalism? Raised in a place so violent and lawless people keep guns? Never!

It's in everything they do. Six weeks ago Mahmoud made me go to an NFL Europe American football game, the Cologne Centurions playing the Frankfurt Galaxy. Our football allows for ties, it even prefers them. Not American football, though. They insist on fighting it out to the finish, with nothing but winners and losers. It's so wrong. And so typical.

Well, I have to run now. There's a demonstration scheduled by the Falterturm to remind the British that decent minded people will not tolerate them discriminating against their Moslems merely because some of those Moslems, prompted-I have no doubt-by racism, fought back.

I hope Mahmoud begins to see sense soon. My life would be blighted without him. I hope he knows that.