The Prophet's Ladder (4 page)

There, at a small, dingy establishment, the ‘Cafe Sahara’ only two blocks from the library, was a TV visible in the window, already displaying the program. Ali entered and sat down, signaling by hand gesture to the waiter for an espresso.  Three commentators sat around a table, two middle aged men in western suits and one older
Haji
wearing the distinct uniform of an Islamic cleric. The program title beneath the talking-heads read: ‘Degeneration of Tunisia?’ in bold, yellow script. Ali swallowed nervously and asked for the volume to be turned up.

“...What I am saying is, these types of websites are dangerous to our youth. Already the children spend too much time indoors on the internet, not enough time praying or studying, or getting exercise,” said the Imam. One of the suited men was nodding vehemently in agreement. “Aside from the fact that this is heresy; antithetical to the teachings of the Prophet, blessings be upon him, it is a misappropriation of the words of the Holy Quran; it is not
Sunnah
.”

The other man, the youngest of the three, who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, entered the verbal fray. “Well, I’m not so sure. Perhaps it is constructive for such persons to vent their frustrations online. What real harm will come of it? Not much, I say. There are millions of bloggers across the Middle East, North Africa, and around the world. What difference does two or three Tunisian bloggers make?”

The Imam spoke again. “This is a byproduct of the Arab Spring I tell you. The youth think that if they can overthrow a bloated, corrupt government for another then they can revolutionize Islam itself. Madness! I ask you: is this submission to the word of the Bringer of Judgment, the Most Compassionate? How can it be?”

As the Imam spoke to the other commentators, an incendiary quote from Ali’s blog appeared on the edge of the screen, highlighted in a white field. Someone must have sent the station a link to his site, perhaps one of the Wahabist, conservative readers who took issue with his positions on the value of the Hadiths or the current Islamic establishment in Tunisia. His website’s URL along with several other Tunisian academics’ sites and a few social-media handles scrolled across the bottom of the television.

Ali’s heart finally slowed its rhythm as the editorial program continued, with the conversation shifting to the value in walling off a country’s Internet access from the wider world, or even just blocking certain websites, as China’s “Great Firewall” had done. He shook his head. Wasn’t this what he wanted? What about that old North American expression he’d read, ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity’? Ali considered, not for the first time, the motivations behind his website. Was it an outlet? Was he actually trying to foment another revolution, this one a cultural, religious revolution, not just a political one? He had no clear answers.

Eventually the TV program cut to commercial, and Ali paid for his drink and left the cafe. There was no need to see any more; the Imam and the suits would move on to another issue to complain about, another aspect of society to condemn or disapprove of. Ali had to get home, check on his mother, smooth things over with his brothers. His father probably wouldn’t care about the media blowup; he didn’t know about Ali’s freelancing or the blog. Most of all, Ali wanted to get home and get online, so he could know how many additional people would be perusing his site, if any. He’d also rewatch the entire
Tunisia Today
program on the television channel’s website, if it was available, to make sure he hadn’t missed any relevant commentary from the beginning of the show.
What a crazy, media-conscious world it is
, he thought.
And I’m a part of it.

His mind slipped into a stream of self-deprecation for a while, the stress of the day’s events transmuting itself into self-criticism and abuse. It was unfair, but Ali had never been fair to himself, all things considered. His disparagement of his work and his choices in life had driven his writing, his reactionary beliefs, all of it. And he’d suffer for it. Suffer in silence if need be, for a cause greater than himself. Amina was the only one who knew, who really understood. Her love had saved him from himself often enough. The thought of her lessened his angst, eased his distress.
Got to get home.

****

Todd stood in a shielded, reinforced structure half a kilometer from the launch pad. The countdown to ignition continued, the speaker’s voice reverberating throughout the facility in Arabic and English. The concrete ‘box’, if it could truly be called such a thing, had been built to allow observers to get an up close and personal viewing of a launch. Its interior resembled something more akin to a football stadium’s skybox, with plush leather chairs and complimentary meal service. There were even alcoholic drinks available for those guests who did not abstain, something he hadn’t expected. High-definition flat screen monitors lined the interior walls, providing those within detailed images of the pad from multiple angles. One screen displayed the tall rocket, named “Al-Nasser” or “the Eagle”, in infrared so that they might view the vehicle through the surrounding fumes of steam and exhaust.

“Xhamsa….Five….Rabaa….Four….Tlata...Three….Eethnayn….Two….Wahaad….One… launch…”

The vehicle, white and green with a gold crescent painted on its side, lifted itself into the air with a roaring scream, a tail of iridescent fire trailing behind. Accelerating rapidly, Al-Nasser soared into the sky. It was a two staged rocket, 60 meters in length from nosecone to tailfins, and it was goddamned unbelievably fast. Todd had seen more than his fair share of rocket launches, but this was something else. He looked to his side where his new CEO stood alongside Karim Al-Thawadi, the gentleman who had interviewed him earlier. They were both smiling and conversing congenially, as though they had every reason to believe the flight would go smoothly. Karim had yet to introduce him to the chief executive officer, and he didn’t think it appropriate to approach them in the middle of their conversation. Instead, focusing on the launch, Todd reviewed the schematics and display readings that were being streamed live from the control room. Now several minutes into the launch, the rocket was about to exit the thermosphere, and was well on its way to establishing a solid apoapsis and an intermediate circular orbit at an altitude of around 11,000 kilometers. Though the contrail remained, the rocket was no longer visible to the naked eye, even in the azure desert skies above the spaceport. There were powerful cameras with telescopic lenses mounted on helium filled blimp drones drifting kilometers above the ground; these provided impressive images of the rocket as it sailed into outer space.

“Todd, please would you come over here?” Todd looked over his shoulder and saw Karim gesturing to him with a friendly wave. “I would like to introduce you to our CEO, Sheikh Nur bin Zayed Al-Hatem.”

Todd greeted the man in formal, classical Arabic. “Ah,
Salaam Allakum sidi
.”

“Ahh your Arabic is very good!” Sheikh Nur replied, in accented, erudite English. “
Wa Allakum Salaam
. You’ll be fluent in no time.” He smiled, and Todd immediately noted that the man possessed an immense reserve of charisma and charm. The sheikh’s eyes were a curious jade-amber color. He wore no tie, just a white button down shirt, grey khakis and a fitted charcoal jacket with a pin of the UAE flag on the lapel. “Are you enjoying our accommodations here in the observation gallery? I myself determined the specifications for the interior.”

“Yes sir. It is quite impressive. The facilities you’ve constructed here are much more…modern, and much more comfortable, than those we had at NASA.”

“Well that is always the difficulty with America isn’t it?” The sheikh replied, nodding. “You were the first to have the light bulb, and now your electric grid is ancient: it was built more than a hundred years ago! Your railways, your telecommunications infrastructure, all the same. NASA, the same. America is always the first to try, but the last to catch up. It is a blessing and a curse.” The sheikh laughed. “I say that with love in my heart! I studied at Princeton, you know.”

Todd nodded. What the sheikh had said was already apparent to him, having grown up in the U.S. “And your rocket, ‘Al-Nasser.’ I know I haven’t been formally introduced to my team here at Al-Hatem Aerospace, but may I ask what is its payload?”

“Of course my friend, you’ve been vetted thoroughly by Karim here. You may ask any question you like. It is carrying a Korean telecommunications satellite: nothing glamorous or exciting, at least not yet. We must contract out for some of our organization’s revenue, of course, in order to fuel more ambitious projects.” The sheikh gestured at the flat screen monitors where the rocket was now only a speck, a mote of dust in the exosphere high above even the drone cameras. “And besides, our Eagle here is still being improved upon. You may have noticed the speed of its ascent? Faster than your ATLAS 5 rockets even?”

“Yes sir. I did notice indeed. May I inquire if you are contracting with the Russians for the new engines, the RD-250’s perhaps? What are the specifications?”

“The Russians? No indeed my friend, and please, call me Nur.  No, the Russians have proven untrustworthy in the past, in various matters of salesmanship. No, these engines are home made.”

“The UAE has the capacity to construct rocket motors?” Todd was shocked.

“Well, we do now,” Nur replied, pleased with his subordinate’s reaction. “I have been investing for some time now in building up the infrastructure and the organizational know-how to do this. Also we’ve stolen some of the best from Alcaeus Space Systems, some European firms, even China. What is the expression? ‘Snatched them right out from under their noses,’ yes? Haha!” The sheikh laughed again, and this time Karim and Todd laughed along, swayed by his persuasion and charm. The man’s enthusiasm was infectious.

“Todd, I must insist you come hunting with me this weekend.” The sheikh clapped Todd on the shoulder. “Won’t you? I have a terrific falcon just trained. We’ll hunt on my family’s estate.”

“Thank you sir...Nur, I’d be honored. I must confess I’ve never hunted with a falcon before.”

“Excellent! It is the way of the Bedouin my friend. You will love it, trust me. A noble sport! I will have my secretary email you a calendar invite.” With that, Sheikh Nur bin Zayed Al-Hatem returned his gaze to the monitors where a stream of data flowed rapidly across the screen. He began conversing again with Karim in Arabic, gesturing at various figures, while Karim simultaneously took notes on his tablet, relaying talking points via a wireless headset. Todd noted with some satisfaction that the rocket had separated from its first stage and was now circularizing its orbit with a more fuel-efficient second stage engine; a handy graphic on the screen to his right displayed everything in a vivid, almost cartoonish 3D. Todd couldn’t concentrate on the display, however. His thoughts were of his overall impressions of the facility and the organization he now worked for. Everything was very impressive, exceedingly modern; it almost seemed too good to be true. How had a nascent startup in the UAE come to be at the forefront of commercial space exploration in so short a time? Had no one at NASA been paying attention?
Were we just too comfortable, too complacent to do things the old way, to go begging for scraps from congressional committees each year?
It shook him to the core.
Well, I’m here now; I’ve gotten out,
Todd thought.
Now I’m at the forefront, at the bleeding edge, and that’s what matters most.

The Eagle, Al-Nasser, was in the midst of ejecting its procedural fairings, the ‘shell’ that surrounded the top of the rocket, cradled inside was the telecommunications satellite, its payload. Now cameras mounted inside the spaceship relayed the images clearly down to ground control and his comfortable, couchside display. The two halves of the fairing drifted apart, seemingly like discarded, broken plastic Easter eggs. After a time, ground control ordered the release of the ship’s cargo. The satellite was rather mundane in appearance, a square box with solar panels and communications antennas compressed against its hull, ready to unfold and stretch out like the wings of a strange insect, a metallic butterfly emerging from its cocoon into a weird new world. With microbursts from its RCS thrusters the satellite propelled itself away from the rocket, fading away from the ship’s cameras into the inky black of the void.

The cameras’ lens now filled with the image of the dayside Earth, taking up fully one half of the screen with the departure of the satellite. A fragile sapphire jewel floating in the dark, coal coffee of space, wispy white clouds swirling across the oceans, mountains rippling across the surface of puce colored continents. His home. Everyone’s home. It was beautiful, hypnotic even now, though he had seen such images a thousand times. Todd sat there for several minutes, letting the slowly rotating image of Terra sap his mind of all worrisome thoughts. It was a kind of meditation. Many astronauts, those who’d worked on the ISS or served on shuttle missions had reported doing the same over the years. The planet, a focus point, a flickering candle flame of life serving as a nexus for contemplation.

Eventually, the rocket rotated itself and burned some of its fuel to secure a decaying orbit. Todd’s attention was brought down to the vivid graphics in front of him. Like some of the newer Alcaeus Space Systems rockets the vehicle was to return to Earth under a controlled, powered descent. Gone were the days when a rocket would break up in the atmosphere somewhere over the Pacific or Siberia as detritus. Al-Nasser’s frame would return wholly intact, landing on legs currently retracted inside its hull, advanced computer programs ensuring efficient burns of its thrusters and fuel. It was remarkable technology, the kind envisioned in those cheesy 1950’s sci-fi films where men in bulbous space helmets landed their rocket ships vertically on the moon, silver gloved hands extended in greeting to the extra-terrestrial natives: ‘We come in peace to serve all mankind.’ It was one thing seeing it in black and white, miniature models suspended on fishing-line, the flames of the rocket imitated by two-cent fireworks, but here it was in real life. Estimated time of return was two hours 40 minutes.
Marvelous
.