Caliphate

af-Fridhav, Province of Baya, 13 Muharram,

1538 AH (24 October, 2113)

The amazing thing to Hamilton was that there were pleasure boats to rent, right there on the tightly guarded, watery border between Switzerland and the Caliphate. Military boats he'd expected. Fishing boats he'd expected. He'd come there, Petra in tow, looking for a way to steal one or the other.

But pleasure boats?

"Still," he said to Petra, as the two of them put-putted across the water on the Caliphate side, "they're awfully slow. And it isn't just a governor; they've got tiny little underpowered engines. We'd be out on the water for . . . "—he did some quick calculations—"ummm . . . nearly an hour. I could almost swim the lake as fast."

"I can't swim," Petra gulped. "There were streams and lakes near home but . . . well, you can't swim in a burka."

Hamilton nodded. "It's not too late for you to learn but it is too late to learn to do it well enough to make it across this lake. It's got to be a boat. But these are just too slow. We'd never make it, not once the janissaries were alerted."

He reached down to feel the water. "Brrrr. Cold. We couldn't swim this without wet suits."

"What are those?" she asked.

"Never mind. I'll show you once we're back home." He said that last with more confidence than he felt.

That was the first time he'd so much as suggested he'd want to have anything to do with Petra—miserable houri that I am—since they'd met. She held onto that thought, that hope, very tightly. Maybe I might mean something more to him than just a body to use.

Hamilton didn't notice any flash of emotion or expression on Petra's face. Instead, he was looking to the south, generally. There, two patrol boats passed within a few hundred meters of each other. One was Swiss, he gathered, the other from the Caliphate. The two boats trained guns on each other as they passed. Though it was too far— about a kilometer away—for Hamilton to make out the faces, every line in the pose of the bodies exuded menace, hate, and outright eagerness to open fire.

Life was hard in Switzerland, Hamilton had heard more than once, and food was always rationed. But the million men and women of the Swiss Army took their turns on the border and rebuffed any threat from the Caliphate, usually with much fall of blood and with few or no prisoners taken on either side. In a sense, the country was in a continuous low-level war that for level of sacrifice per capita matched the endless war to maintain and expand the Empire.

"I'm an idiot," he announced.

"Why? How?"

"Because we don't have to cross the lake. We only have to get to the Swiss side of it. And that's much closer."

"Won't the Swiss shoot at us?" Petra asked.

"That's always a possibility, yes. But 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' As long as the janissaries are trying to kill us, the odds are on our side that the Swiss will help us."

"Oh. I'm not sure I like that word: Odds."

Hamilton laughed. "Honey," he said, "all of life is nothing but playing the odds."

Petra really didn't want to think about her perforated body sinking to the bottom of the cold deep lake. Instead, she changed the subject to life on the outside.

"Well, for one thing, you're going to like learning to swim and going scuba diving in a wet suit," Hamilton answered, as he turned the little rental boat to shore. And I am so going to like teaching you.

Petra leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. She had to raise her veil to do it.