Caliphate (20 page)

What does a "bad" Christian do living with a "good' one"? And I have no doubt that, if he converts, he will be a good one.

* * *

Mahmoud turned his face back to the books. He wasn't reading, though; he was thinking. Moreover, his thoughts closely paralleled those of Gabi, seated opposite.

What if I do convert? Life with Gabi will be harder.

Never mind that,
he decided suddenly. "
Render unto Caesar." She will still be my woman and queen of my heart. If she does not believe, I will make up for it.

Any realistic assessment of any possible scenario will inevitably conclude that nothing that al Qaeda can do can cause the collapse of America and the capitalist system. The worse eventuality in the long run would be that America would be forced to break its hallowed ideal of universal tolerance, in order to make an exception of those who fit the racial profiling of an al Qaeda terrorist. It is ridiculous to think that if al Qaeda continued to attack us such measures would not be taken. They would be forced upon the government by the people (and anyone who thinks that the supposed cultural hegemony of the left might stop this populist fury is deluded).

—Lee Harris, "The Intellectual Origins of America Bashing"

A hologram of a castle hovered above the table at which sat Caruthers and the deputy director of OSI for Direct Action. The picture was fuzzy, out of focus, as if the taker either had a very poor lens or was moving rapidly at the time the picture was taken.

"I think we should nuke the place right now," said Caruthers.

"The President has said no," answered the deputy director, shaking his head, "not until we've tried everything else. I asked. I insisted. He still said no. The secretary is still trying to convince him otherwise."

"Fuck. Send a battalion of Rangers?"

Again the DDDA said, "No. And you yourself know better. The preparations for any such operation will only guarantee that, instead of a company of security troops being around the place, there would be a division. That; and that if they haven't dispersed their research, they would quickly."

"I don't know that that's true," Caruthers said, "but even accepting that it is—"

"We might get them in, but we'd never get them out. Moreover, the Han insist on being in on this. They don't trust us with having what's in that castle any more than we would trust them. And we
need
their assistance, since they're the only ones with anyone on site."

"A small special ops team?" Caruthers asked. "Maybe one of the private outfits?"

"We thought about those," the DDDA answered. "And they might be doable. But a spec ops team would be too big to infiltrate through any of the ingresses we have. And a private contractor simply can't be trusted with something of this magnitude. The Swiss have already told us to fuck off: Neutrality
über alles
. We think we'd have a better chance with a two- or three-man team of our own."

"Well," Caruthers admitted with a shrug, "Old Bongo is about due to be pulled out of South Africa. And I've got another kid with the right background for the mission."

"Your baby, then," the deputy director said. "I'll see if I can't get the Han to get us some better pictures."

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."

"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 Hélène—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."

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.