Caliphate

Honsvang, Province of Baya, 22 Muharram,

1538 AH (2 November, 2113)

Hans was at Castle Honsvang, resting, it was devoutly to be hoped. Matheson and Ling had left this morning for am-Munch, Matheson taking the methane-powered car with him.

This left Hamilton and Petra alone. He still "owned" her for a few more days, and Latif still had his deposit against her return. With the mission upcoming and, in Hamilton's opinion, the really excellent chance that within a few days they'd all be dead, there was no question of, and less motivation for, sex.

And besides, thought Hamilton, lovely as she is, I haven't the first clue as to whether she's been doing it because she wants to, really, or because it's the only job she knows.

"Petra," he asked, "if we survive . . . make it through, what do you want to do with your life?"

I can't tell him I want to spend it with him, she thought. In the first place, it's ridiculous. He's an important man and I'm just a houri, defiled and defiling. He could never stay with me or want me with him permanently. What do I tell him?

Instead of telling, she asked, "What could I do? I can read but that's small beans in your world where all women can read. I know nothing but my . . . profession and that I would like to give up if I can."

"Well . . . of course you can," he said. "We have prostitutes where I come from but prostitution itself is illegal. They have even less of a position in my homeland than they do here. School? You can read, that's quite a bit. Would you like to go back to school?"

"Can you imagine me, at seventeen, sitting down at a desk too small, with my knees under my chin and surrounded by seven-year- olds?"

That was a funny image. Even so, he answered it seriously. "Maybe not in a regular classroom, no. How about if we hired a tutor for you?"

"I own nothing," she said. "Well . . . a little money I've saved hoping to buy myself back from Latif. But that's not enough for a tutor. Besides, I'll have to leave it behind. Asking for it would be too suspicious."

"I have money," he said. "Certainly enough for that. And there are programs, too, that help pay for such things. And my agency is going to owe you big if we pull this off." Of course, if we don't, and the disease is released, we're all going to be dead. So the agency and the country will owe you massively.

"Why should you pay for me?"

Because I think I'm in love with you? No, mustn't say that. How about, "Because we're comrades in arms? Because we're friends? Because it's the right thing to do?"

She thought about that for a while. Instead of answering, though, she admitted, "I'm terrified, you know. I might have talked big about striking a blow against this rotten system. But I'm scared to death. Do you know what they'll do to me if they catch me? My brother told me. They'll nail me to a wooden cross and leave me hanging there in agony for days. He's seen it. He's had to do it. Then, when they've extracted the last bit of pain they can from me they'll come with big iron bars and smash my legs so I hangthereuntilIsuffocate." Her voice grew high and a little shrill on the last few, jumbled, half-hysterical words of the last sentence. She really was terrified, he could see, and had been hiding it.

"I won't let that happen," he said. "Whatever the cost."

"If it happens, you'll probably be there on the cross next to mine." She bent her head as her shoulders began to shake.

He took her head in his hands and lifted it up to face him. There were tears gathering in her eyes, he could see.

"I won't let it happen," he promised, again. "If it gets that bad, well, they won't take either of us alive."

"You swear to it?"

"I swear."

"I've got to tell you something," Hamilton said. "I loved a girl once. She was a lot like you in looks, though, honestly, she was just pretty where you're really beautiful. She had all the advantages you never did. But she wasn't spoiled by it. She was very brave right to the end."

"The end?" Petra asked.

"We were in the Army together. Her platoon was ambushed. I couldn't get to her in time. She was killed. In the end, rather than let herself be captured she asked for fire to come in on herself."

"What was her name?"

"Laura . . . Laurie Hodge. I took it really hard for a long time. I suppose that's why I got out of the Army; it just reminded me every day that I'd failed her, a woman I loved."

Hamilton's face grew very serious. "But I won't fail you. I couldn't live with myself if I did."

And that was as close as he could come to telling Petra that he loved her.