Caliphate

PART II
Chapter Ten

Cape Town, South Africa,

14 October, 2113

Curiously enough, paper books had never gone out of style. Perhaps this was because there was something comforting about the solidity of a book. Perhaps it was because, as many said, books made attractive wall coverings. Perhaps it was merely that books suited the human mind and body in a way that screen images and holographic projections simply could not. Whatever the case, books were still commonly printed in dead-tree format.

Caruthers had made a present of such a book to Hamilton, just as the latter had boarded the airship at Reagan National.

"I know you think we're dirty, John," Caruthers had said. "And you're right; we are. But the difference between us and the people we are fighting is that we have a chance to get better on our own… and they don't and never will. Here's proof that we might get better."

It was a huge book, Empire Rising, more than twelve hundred pages, exclusive of appendices, end notes, tables, bibliography and photographs. Hamilton had spent most of the three-day trip to Cape Town engrossed in it.

Hamilton closed the book just as the airship slid over the coastline on its way to the aerodrome northeast of Cape Town. From this altitude, the entire scene looked very neat, almost antiseptic. He knew, from both his readings and his instruction at OSI headquarters, that the core of the place was anything but antiseptic. Moslems might hate the American Empire, a feeling that was fully reciprocated, but the every day, present tense loathing of most African blacks and whites for each other put those American-Moslem antipathies in the shade for sheer intensity, if not necessarily for destructiveness.

Looking down at the book before sliding it into his carryall, Hamilton thought, Well… it's got to be a good step that things like this can be published again. After ninety years of censorship, perhaps we've gotten over the Three Cities.

In his heart though, however much he wanted to, he didn't believe it.

" Meneer De Wet?" the black driver from Koop Human Resources asked, as Hamilton stepped out of the underground corridor that connected the airship landing pit with the main terminal. The driver was medium height, balding, with a neatly trimmed beard and an expansive gut. Hamilton suspected the fat concealed an impressive amount of muscle.

"Yes," Hamilton answered. He'd been expecting to be picked up. Almost he offered his hand to the driver before the endless hours of drill in South African customs reasserted itself. "I'm De Wet."

"Caruthers told me to say, 'Hi,'" the driver said, in Bronx-accented English. Hamilton immediately felt a profound sense of relief. "You'll be working for me. My name here is Bonginkosi Mathebula… and if I see you almost offer me your hand again, I will break it. Control yourself, baas. My friends call me 'Bongo.' That's good enough.

"Officially," Bongo continued, "I am your indentured manservant. Unofficially, I'm in charge. Don't forget it. If we didn't need a reliable white front man, you wouldn't even be here."

The drive to the company guesthouse on the outskirts of Cape Town was long. Bongo drove while Hamilton sat in back. The black used the opportunity to lecture.

"A century and a half ago, the whites were on top. You should already have known that but one can never tell what the idiots at Langley may forget to pass on.

"They'd have stayed there, too," Bongo continued, "through a combination of pigheaded determination and bloody-minded ruthlessness. Ultimately, they were pretty sure that as long as the black opposition was supported by and in turn supported the communists, the west would never let white South Africa go under. That was true, too, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late twentieth century. This made the value of the white regime to the anti-Soviet coalition drop like a lead weight.

"The Boers and the Cape English saw the writing on the walls then and, facing a desperate race war with no possibility of help from their racial kin, they made the best deal they could.

"Unfortunately for South Africa, while not all the whites' fears came to pass, enough of them did. After majority rule was instituted, whites fled the country in droves. Some of them left because of the crime. Other got sick of nepotism and corruption masquerading as affirmative action. I'm sure still others left in sheer funk at not being the local master race anymore.

"Whatever the cause, the white portion of the South African population dropped substantially, about in half, even while the black and mixed populations grew. Even worse, it was the most technically skilled and capable whites who left, while those who stayed tended to be government flunkies and corporate bureaucrats."

Bongo slammed on the brakes and cursed at a black couple crossing the street in front of the company car. The couple just smiled at him and waved.

"Two factors changed that rough demographic stability. One was the roughly one third of the black female population of child bearing age that was infected with HIV, the virus that caused AIDS, the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. This not only killed them in disproportionate numbers, generally in their most fertile years, it caused a very serious social breakdown because of the number of orphans produced. Still worse, it put financial strain on a government that had difficulty enough eking out tax dollars from the many sticky fingers, white and black, those tax dollars passed through. The government, hoping for yet more money in foreign aid to pilfer, even denied that HIV caused AIDS, which of course let the problem rage out of control.

"Still, with low white birthrates and white flight from the country, one could have expected roughly similar proportions to be maintained.

"And so they would have been, had there not been a different wave of white flight in the world, commencing in the 2020s. That wave emanated from Europe. Some of it washed up in Australia and New Zealand. Some small part was allowed into the United States and its possessions. But only South Africa found itself in really desperate need for immigrants. Thirteen million Europeans found their way here."

Bongo's voice grew contemplative. "I have often wondered if the barbarian migrations that wrecked the Western Roman Empire didn't start just that way, one group in Mongolia raiding Chinese living north of the Great Wall, thereby causing the Chinese to push the first offending group right off its lands, starting a chain reaction. Whether it did or not, it sure worked that way here. First the Moslems nudged us, then we made their lands uninhabitable, they in turn went to Europe, which drove the Europeans here, which further fucked the blacks here, in the ass and without grease.

"It might not have been so bad, except for two other factors. Those Europeans who fled were typically highly fertile and more than a little bitter about being driven-whatever the truth of the matter, that's how they felt about it-from their original homes. They were, moreover, the most highly conservative of Europeans. They were not remotely interested in nepotism masquerading as affirmative action. Nor did they see why affirmative action should disadvantage them, since their ancestors had had nothing to do with apartheid. This is all a fair point of view, you'll agree," Bongo said, smiling over his shoulder at Hamilton.

"The civil war that broke out in 2038 lasted for nine years and cost millions of lives. At the end of it, disciplined fire, the old European military tradition, and a critical alliance with the Zulu people ended black majority rule in South Africa. By 2065, virtually all of sub- Saharan Africa was under white sway once again. They've learned a lot, though. That controlling hand is often felt only lightly. They prefer to rule through locals, much as the French did for more than half a century after notionally giving up their empire.

"Still, give the Boers… oh, yes, they're all Boers now, even the Cape English… give them their due. They pay their bills. The only exception to effective white rule in sub-Saharan Africa is Zululand, a hefty chunk carved out of Natal and points north for the Zulu in full payment for their services. And this time they weren't idiot cheapskates about it; this time they gave the Zulu a real country."

"What the fuck?" Hamilton's eyes could not believe what they were seeing, one man, two women in hijab, half a dozen kids with the oldest girl in hijab as well. "A Moslem family? Running around free?"

Bongo raised his eyes heavenward and shook his head with disgust. "I knew those assholes at Langley would miss important details." His hand left the steering wheel to point a finger generally off to the right front. "We've got maybe three hundred thousand Moslems here in Cape Town, something like three-quarters of a million in the country as a whole, exclusive of possessions and protectorates. There's a mosque over there," he said. "Pretty large one, actually. They call it the 'Red Mosque.' No, it isn't painted red and never has been. About forty years ago, a wild-eyed imam used to preach the jihad from its pulpit. Then one Friday, the Boers sent in ten thousand assegai-wielding Zulu. They killed every man, woman, and child in the place, then went on to kill every imam in Cape Town and their families, except for a very few the government took under its protection. After that, about fifty-thousand more of them were sold, some locally and some to the Caliphate, as slaves.

"Since then? Never a problem with the Moslems here. Never a peep, as a matter of fact. And some thousands of them drop Islam and become Christians every year. See, Baas De Wet, terror works. "

KHR House, Swartland, Western Cape Province, Boer Republic of South Africa,

14 October, 2113

"Well, it beats the fuck out of Olson Hall," Hamilton whispered very softly to himself when shown to his temporary quarters. The woman guiding him was extraordinarily tall, being just over six feet. If Hamilton had been more familiar with South Africa he might have identified her as being a mix of Dutch, Irish, English, French, Arab, Malay, Swede, Bantu, and Hindi. The percentages would have defied even a native to guess. He thought her very pretty as, indeed, any man would have. The woman, not much more than a girl, really, whatever her height, introduced herself as "Alice."

She directed Bongo to place Hamilton's bags on the bed, then dismissed him, peremptorily. Hamilton thought it a fine commentary of the senior agent's fieldcraft that he bowed and scraped his way out on the suite with a more servile expression on his face than any Hamilton had seen on the liberated slaves of the Moros, during the Philippines campaign.

Alice then proceeded to empty out Hamilton's two suitcases, leaving alone only the contents of the locked carryall. The suits were hung in a large armoire, one of a pair to one side of the queen-sized bed. Underwear and socks went into drawers inside the armoire, while Alice carried his toiletries to the suite's expansive bath. Shoes she placed on a tree, without comment.

It was always a pleasure to watch an expert at work. Deciding that Alice knew what she was doing better than he did, Hamilton sat down in a comfortable stuffed chair and watched her work. She spoke very little.

It doesn't matter; a girl with an ass like that doesn't need to talk to be entertaining. Not that she's beautiful, but she's at least very pretty and her body is… amazing. If I weren't on mission I'd be a fool not to at least think about asking her out.

Some of Hamilton's clothing she found faulty upon examination. These she separated out for the maids to take care of.

And then she was done, standing there in the middle of the room. "Why don't you take a shower, baas," Alice suggested.

Hamilton's hair was full of shampoo and his eyes burning with soap when he heard a small click and felt a cool draft on his wet body. There was somebody inside the shower with him. He immediately backed into one corner, putting out one hand to guard while trying desperately to get the soap from his eyes.

He stopped himself, feeling inexpressibly silly, when he heard Alice laugh. "Didn't you understand?" she asked. "I come with the room… like a piece of furniture. I'm here for your enjoyment."

"How did you end up here?" Hamilton asked, later, as the two lay in bed, half-exhausted.

"I was born," Alice answered, cryptically. "I'm sorry," she amended. "That wasn't fair. I wanted to go to school. I couldn't afford it. KHR made me an offer. I get room and board-and it's a very nice room, don't you think?"

"Very nice," Hamilton agreed.

"Yes. The company gave me a budget to decorate and I did it myself. I was even able to save a little.

"Anyway… well, I get room and board, a small stipend, and can go to class when I don't have duties here. It may take me six years to get a degree, instead of four, but six years is better than never."

"And for that?"

"For that I signed a contract of indenture… I have to be nice to men assigned to this suite." She smiled warmly. "I was happy when you were assigned, baas. Usually the men are a lot older and I don't care for them much.

"Someday, if I graduate well, I'd like to put in papers to emigrate to America… or maybe some of its possessions where the rules for immigration are a little easier."

Hamilton said nothing but thought, You should try and I wish you luck, Alice. We may suck… but the rest of the world is just one giant vacuum that pulls away hopes and dreams and runs them through filth on the way to the garbage can.

Hamilton's last thought, as he drifted off to sleep, was, Amend will. Give ten thousand? No, that wouldn't be enough. Give twenty-thousand Imperial New Dollars to Alice Mbatha, of KHR House, Cape Town, with hopes that it helps her make her way…

Slave Pen Number Five, KHR House Holding Facility, Cape Town, South Africa,

17 October, 2113

"If you wince," Bongo said, on the elevator ride down to the pens, "if you give any indication that those kids are anything more than cattle, you are out of here." It was an idle threat, after spending so much time training Hamilton for this one mission, he was not going to be replaced. Still, Bongo thought, perhaps he didn't understand that.

"I won't," Hamilton assured his ostensible servant and genuine boss. "But I've got to ask: How the hell do you stand it, day after day, year after year?"

"You can get used to anything," Bongo replied. The subterranean elevator doors opened to the sound of wailing and moaning and utter human misery. "Some things are just a lot harder than others.

"This is one of the hardest," Bongo whispered, before taking the lead and saying aloud, "This way, baas, your lot is right over this way."

There were six pits below the elevator walkway. Separated by some kind of tough, clear plastic, they allowed the staff of the complex to walk between them to distribute food and water. The oddest thing, to Hamilton's eye, was that to one or two sides of each of five of the six pits women, some black, some brown, a few obviously with some white in their ancestry, stood staring at the sixth, their hands seeming desperate to push through the clear barriers that held them.

"Why-"

Bongo answered before the question was fully formed. "Those are mothers, pining for their children. The children-our cargo-are in the sixth pen."

Unbidden, Hamilton walked to stand above the sixth pen, the one obviously holding nothing but wide-eyed, mostly silent in shock or weeping with terror and despair, black and colored children aged from about six to nine or ten.

God is never going to forgive me for this, he thought. For that matter, I am never going to forgive me for this.

"You seem upset, baas," Alice said, standing in front of a seated Hamilton and wearing little but a short silk robe. "Can I help?" Before Hamilton could answer she dropped to her knees and began to undo his trousers.

"Later, Alice," he said. "Please. Later tonight I'd be very happy to have you again. For now, I just need to think."

"As you wish, baas," she answered, rising to her feet gracefully. "If you change your mind, just call. I'll be at the desk working on my studies."

South Africa had produced high quality wines and beers for centuries. Wine or beer, however, just wouldn't do. And the local whiskey was… charitably… not good.

The brandy, however, was superb. Hamilton poured his own drink from a net-wrapped, amber bottle labeled "Klipdrift."

Damned shame, he thought, that I can't allow myself to get drunk. Crimes like the ones I'm engaged in cry out for sweet oblivion.

Is there a way out of this? Caruthers was right; better two hundred should be enslaved than that four or five billion, and civilization itself, should die. But it would be better still if nobody were enslaved and all those billions, plus civilization, lived.

Is that possible, though? Is there any way I can save these kids? Save their mothers down in the slave pens? Do that while still stopping VA5H? I doubt it.

And what if I do? I mean, just imagine I had the money to buy every one of them down there and free them. What does that do? It improves the market so that more people get sold off. I could save those kids… but I can't do a damned thing about the two hundred that will be enslaved to make up for them. The demand will still be there… and that demand will be filled. And there is precisely nothing I can do about it.

Fuck.

As it turned out, Hamilton couldn't make love to Alice. She tried her very fine best to make it happen, of course, but under the circumstances her very fine best was not up to the task. No woman's would have been.

Even after he told her to give it up, and waited until she began softly to snore beside him, he still lay awake thinking of the problem of the slave children… and of slavery in general.

It has always existed, John, he told himself. Wars have been fought to end it, and it survived those. Alliances were formed to crush it; still it endured. Almost the whole world united against it, and still it survived.

It makes no legal sense, in that it puts an undue burden on everyone to protect the intelligent, self-willed, and dangerous property of a few. It makes no economic sense; you can get more profit paying a free man well than you will ever get from a slave that you pay nothing. Morally, it is not better than killing them; slavery is just death drawn out, the absence of liberty which is the absence of everything life is about, of everything that makes it worthwhile to live.

And then, too, what values does a slave learn? Looking out for number one, if they have any sense. And still they get manumitted, regularly. Hell, some Moslems buy slaves expressly to manumit to earn a few brownie points with God. But those slaves enter civil society with the "looking out for myself" attitude they learned as slaves. And they never lose it… but pass it on to the next generation… and the next.

And I'm going to deliver two hundred children to that? Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Okay, so it's an unutterable evil; what the fuck can I do about it? Anything? Am I lying here sleepless from guilt or from impotence.

He laughed at himself as that last thought. Surely Alice thought he must have a problem in that department.

No matter, he thought, suddenly, and the thought made Hamilton feel much, much better about himself. Yes, it looks impossible to do both, stop the VA5H and save those kids. But perhaps the horse will learn to sing; perhaps I can teach it to. I'm sure Laurie would have wanted me to try, at least. And… if I am too impotent to succeed, I am still not too impotent to try. Speaking of which…

"Alice… how asleep are you?"

Slave Pen Number Five, KHR House Holding Facility, Cape Town, South Africa,

19 October, 2113

One wall of the children's pen opened up with an echoing clatter of wheels, chains and gears. Black and colored security personnel in KHR House livery immediately entered the pen and began prodding the children out, forcing them through the newly opened wall and into two waiting cattle cars. Though the children were quiet enough, the mothers set up an awful wail as their babies were herded away. Their hands scraped helplessly at the clear plastic barriers holding them. Some cursed; others fainted; not a few wept to God for deliverance. Most of the children kept turning around, until forced onward, for a last glimpse of mothers they never expected to see again.

Hamilton's face was a cold stone mask, a fact that pleased Bongo. Perhaps the boy's learning.

Hamilton was reasonably certain he could not have maintained the stone mask if he hadn't determined that he was not going to let these kids be sold. Of course, even if I can save the kids, the mothers left behind I will not be able to save. I will not be able to reunite the families. Still, I must and will do what I can, save what I can. Now if I could only figure out how.

The cattle trucks backed up to the looming bulk of the airship scheduled for the northern flight to am-Munch, in the Caliphate's province of Baya. Liveried guards formed up to either side, with two more guards between the pair of cattle trucks. The drivers dismounted and unlocked the back gates, turning cranks to allow the gates to descend from lower pivots to form ramps. Some of the children, most of them, really, came out willingly enough when the drivers beckoned them. Not all did, however, until the drivers set off shrieking alarms inside the cargo sections. These drove the remaining boys and girls out, most of them wailing in terror.

Cargo slaves assigned to the airship stood inside to guide the children to their pen on the cargo deck. Whatever the cargo crew's feelings on the subject, their faces remained stone masks.

Hamilton's face mirrored those of the cargo slaves. He wondered, Okay, let's assume I can somehow free them. How do I then get them out of the Caliphate without returning them to South Africa? Little kids are not going to be doing any forced marching. And there are too many to put in one truck, even if I could drive them out through every checkpoint between am-Munch and the Channel or the Adriatic. How then? An airship? I can't fly an airship.

Fuck.

The Great Rift Valley spread below as Hamilton knocked on the cockpit of the airship. A small closed circuit camera emerged from the wall and proceeded to look him over, head to shoes. A door opened and one of the flight crew emerged asking, "Can I help you, Mineer De Wet?"

"I've never been in the cockpit of an airship," Hamilton said. "I was wondering if you good volk might be willing to give me a little tour, show me the ropes. Never know when it might be useful in my business."

The crewman shrugged and called out over one shoulder to his captain.

"Sure," the captain said. "Always glad to show hospitality to a member of KHR. C'mon in, mineer. Klaas, get up and give Mineer De Wet your seat."

No, way, Hamilton thought, after two hours of instruction and the captain of the ship even allowing him to take the controls. No way I can fly this thing except on autopilot and then only to one of the programmed airship ports. Which would mean predictability which would mean the kids and I would be shot down within minutes. No way to land the thing either, except under the same circumstances. Fuck.

The captain says he or his copilot, or any experienced pilot, could do all that alone in a pinch… but I am not, nor will I be, an experienced pilot. Again, fuck.

Take a crew hostage and force them to fly me? That's a thought. But then, how do I arrange to have the crew waiting? And even if I do, what keeps the caliph's Air Force from shooting us down anyway?

"They do build them pretty, no?" said the flight engineer to Hamilton, pointing as he spoke out a porthole towards another airship heading in the opposite direction. Hamilton read the name, "Retief," on the engineer's uniform.

"Who builds them pretty?" Hamilton asked. To him, all airships looked pretty much alike, differing only in size and, at unknown distances, not even in that.

"The Chinks," the flight engineer answered. "That's one of theirs, an Admiral Cheng Ho class, if I'm not mistaken… that, or a Long March. They differ only in size, not in shape. The Long March class carries about five- or six hundred tons more."

"Well," Hamilton said, "all airships are pretty. What makes that so special?"

"The lines of the thing." Retief shook his head, saying, "You don't see it, do you?"

"I confess not."

"Oh, well." The engineer sighed. "I suppose the Parthenon wouldn't have been pretty to the Maya, either. Just trust me, though, that is one beautiful ship."

"If you say so," Hamilton half-agreed.

"The other thing is," Retief added, "the Chinks don't use theirs much to carry slaves."

"You don't approve of the slave trade?" Hamilton asked, stone mask descending once again.

"No insult intended," the engineer answered, "but no, I don't. But I've got a family back in Pretoria and they have to eat, so I do my job and mind my own business. It's still disgusting."

You give me a little hope for humanity, friend, Hamilton thought, even as he made himself turn on his heels and walk away as if angry. He had to walk away; the temptation to ask the flight engineer for help in freeing the children was too great to trust himself had he stayed.

The Austrian Alps, rugged, forbidding and ice-capped, showed out the side windows. Switzerland was somewhere off to the west. The airships never crossed Swiss airspace unless they were planning on landing in Switzerland or had authorized passage through. Unauthorized crossings would invite the immediate attention of the Swiss Air Force, at which point the choices were landing or being shot down. Since slavery was illegal in Switzerland, the only western European state not subsumed in the Caliphate, ships like this one were well advised to avoid the country's airspace entirely.

"How do you live with yourself, Bongo?" Hamilton asked, in the privacy of their shared quarters. "How do you deal with the things you do?"

"You might as well know," Bongo said, "my real name is Bernard Matheson. And, yes, I'm from the Bronx. As for how I live with it, with myself… well… about a century ago four million of our countrymen were murdered because there was a mindset that wouldn't do bad things even to prevent worse ones. That allowed another mindset to arise, the kind that would do horrible things to prevent bad ones. For me, I'm content to take the middle road, and do bad things to prevent horrible ones. Yeah, it bothers me. Yeah, sometimes I sleep badly. But the fact remains, because of the bad things I do, a lot of much worse things are prevented."

Hamilton sighed, thinking of the PI campaign. And there, the evil-he thought there was no other word for the ethnic cleansing campaign he'd been a part of-was justified only by the prospect that, once the Moros were moved out, there would be a modicum of peace and an end to the endemic mutual massacre that had plagued the islands for centuries.

"Yeah… I understand. Been there; done that."

"You've done well, by the way, hiding how you feel about this," Bongo said. "I overheard the flight engineer worrying about his job because he might have offended you. You know they never pay any attention to us kaffirs, so they speak freely in front of us. Even the good ones do that."

Bongo frowned. "I almost forgot." He reached into a pocket and drew out a small computer memory card. "This message came in last night. I took the liberty of looking it over. At least you're not going to have to watch the kids auctioned off. Someone bought the whole lot, sight unseen. We have to deliver them to the town of Honsvang after we land. I've already arranged ground transportation from am- Munch."

Interlude

Kitzingen, Federal Republic of Germany,

11 November, 2005

It was late night and the town was quiet. Gabrielle and Mahmoud's apartment, however, was anything but. Nor had it been peaceful for months, ever since Mahmoud had revealed his intention of emigrating to America.

"There," said Mahmoud, pointing at the television screen as he stormed from one side of the small living room to the other, " there is the face of Europe's future! That is what you insist on staying to see."

The screen showed the face of a young Belgian woman, one Muriel Degauque, who had blown herself up in a fairly unsuccessful suicide attack on American forces in Iraq. She was a convert to Islam or, as Moslems preferred to think of it, a "revert."

"Nonsense," Gabi countered. While Mahmoud was enraged, she remained very calm. It was one of the things he loved about her… and that infuriated him at the same time. "She is, she was, just one poor disillusioned girl, hardly the wave of a flood of conversion."

"Indeed?" said Mahmoud, sneering. "Well then, how do you categorize Cat Stevens? Idris Tawfik? Yvonne Ridley?"

"If any of them were suicide bombers, surely I'd have heard of their names. Well… except for Cat Stevens, of course. Him I know about. And they're all harmless." Gabi shrugged eloquently.

"Susanne Osthof? Have you heard of her? Do you think for a minute she didn't participate in her own kidnapping in Iraq? They even found money on her that was paid for her ransom!"

"There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for that, Mahmoud. The kidnappers simply reimbursed her for property she lost when they took her." Gabi looked upon Mahmoud with suspicion. "It's that Catholic priest who's filling you with this nonsense, isn't it?"

"You really believe both those things, don't you?" Mahmoud seemed to wilt. Before her calm, he felt his rage melt away.

"What I believe is that since you took up this Christian nonsense you've gone from a very reasonable and very bad Moslem to a very unreasonable and altogether too 'good' Christian. Relax, Mahmoud; there are several hundred millions of us. It will be a very long time before the nuts take over here."

"There are several hundred million of you that are spiritually empty vessels that Islam is eager to fill," Mahmoud said. "It's your lack of faith that makes you, and Europe, vulnerable."

Gabi shook her head. She was quite comfortable without religion, indeed, to the extent she retained some trappings of it, those made her uncomfortable. She couldn't imagine converting, and especially not to such an austere and anti-female faith as Islam. (As she saw it, Islam was anti-female; there were many who would have disputed that.) Since she could not imagine it for herself, imagining it for any substantial numbers of other people was simply inconceivable.

Mahmoud sat heavily on the couch next to Gabi and reached out to take her hand. "Please come with me?" he asked, for the hundredth time.

"To America? Mahmoud, I can't, I just can't. Anyplace but there."

"It is the only safe place for us, Gabi. It's the only place in the world with the will, the faith, the heart, and the strength of culture to remain free."

Gabi snorted. "Culture? America has no culture."

"This culture they don't have? It seems to dominate the world pretty well for something nonexistent."

Undeterred, Gabi marched on. "It's a place where the poor are free to sleep under bridges in the winter, yes? It's a place where the rich are free to exploit the workers, no? It's a place with race riots and lynchings… a place where the garbage is piled a meter deep to either side of their ramshackle highways."

"You really believe that? Racism? What does racism mean when blacks in America have higher per capita incomes than whites in Europe."

"That's not true anymore," Gabi answered huffily, pulling away her hand. "I just saw the figures and-"

"Don't think just about some exchange rates," Mahmoud interrupted. "Think purchasing power parity. And there, Sweden is beneath Mississippi. Why do you have ten percent unemployment when America's is under five percent? It's not even supposed to be possible to get under five percent, but they've done it. And most of the Americans are out of work only for a very short time. Most of Europe's unemployed are going to stay unemployed. Ah… never mind that. Just answer: How are you going to make jobs for all the Moslems if you've got ten percent unemployment? Coolie jobs? Do you think they'll settle, in the long run, for coolie jobs? In the last sixty years Europe has created maybe five million jobs, almost all of them in government, which produces nothing. America has created more than ten times as many, almost all of them productive."

"I still can't go with you, Mahmoud. I just can't."