Caliphate Page 5

  Hodge nodded, then made herself go stock still as she said, "Suit . . . inflate shock cushions." From a pump in the back with the power pack the suit began to fill up—to overpressurize, actually—several sets of inflatable cushions. These came in two types and served two purposes. One was to cushion against the shock on direct fire hits, shrapnel and concussion. These were the ones inflating now. The others, however, had already been inflated. It was changes to the pressure in these "cushions" that, once detected by the computer, caused it to apply power to the exoskeletal pluscles that made some of them contract until pressure was equalized. After many different attempts, this had been found to be the most practical for military purposes.

  "I read inflation as good," Hamilton announced, thinking and that's not even counting your tits, "annnd . . . you're up."

  Kitznen, Province of Affrankon, 13 Duh'l-Qa'dah,

  1530 AH (10 November, 2106)

  Petra recited from a children's book Besma had saved:

  " . . . I is for Infidel, burning in Hellfire.

  "J is for Jew . . . Besma, what's a Jew?"

  The Moslem girl shrugged and shook her head. "I don't know. Demons, I guess. I think there aren't any, anymore. Or at least none near here."

  "Okay.

  "J is for Jew, whom even the rocks hate.

  "K is for Kaffir, enslaved in the jihad.

  "L is for liar . . ."

  Petra suddenly stopped reading. Her face grew very sad. "That's what the man said who took me from my family, that I was enslaved under jihad since my father couldn't pay the tax that allowed us to be dhimmis."

  "That's just so wrong. I'm sorry, Petra."

  "It's all right. It wasn't your fault."

  "Let's start over at the beginning," Besma suggested, thinking to get Petra's mind away from thoughts of jihad and slavery.

  The girl thumbed the pages back and started over:

  "A is for Americans, devils incarnate . . . Why are the Americans devils, Petra?"

  Besma shuddered. "Because they tried to exterminate us."

  Private Rodger W. Young Range, Fort Benning, Georgia,

  10 November, 2106

  "Kill 'em quick, before they get away!"

  Hamilton didn't know whose voice it had been, shouting over the comm system. He thought it sounded like Hodge but, if so, her voice had never been quite so full of passion, not even in bed. He checked his heads-up display to find her position, then looked over to where she stood above a trench, pouring fire down into it. The bullets, all tracers, looked like some alien weapon from a movie about the future.

  The range (rather, the range which bore the name) had seen many uses over the years and had once been in a different place. One major use, in the other place, had been as a close assault course. In the original version of this, machine guns had fired at about waist level over the heads of troops crawling forward. Later on, this was deemed too unsafe and the guns were fixed to fire well over the heads of even the tallest man. That this had totally destroyed the already limited moral training value of the range was deemed acceptable by those more concerned with safety statistics than with victory on the battlefield.

  They didn't do that anymore, for Suited Heavy Infantry, at least. Now rifles and machine guns, the same kinds as favored by the Moslem enemy across the globe, were aimed by remote control and fired to hit. Since with full-up armor the suits were more or less invulnerable to those rifles and machine guns, it was still a very safe exercise. On the other hand, it was a great way to build confidence in the troops in the armor's ability to withstand direct hits.

  While Hodge fanned the trench with lead-tipped flame, Hamilton passed her by, bouncing up and over it and taking a kneeling firing position—trees and sandbags being not as good a protection as four millimeters of liquid metal armor—to begin peppering a bunker farther downrange.

  As he did so, Hodge knelt beside him and changed out the helical magazine on her left-wrist-borne CCW, or "close combat weapon." Colloquially, among the troops, the things were known as "Slags," as in "Slag 'em,"—turn them into something wet and runny.

  Once that was done she took her own weapon, a fifty millimeter semi-automatic grenade launcher, and fired a salvo of four rounds of training practice—it had the same ballistics as a high explosive service round but only as much explosive as one might find in a blasting cap—at the bunker, one of which went directly through the aperture. The bunker decided it was dead and cut off control to the remote operator.

  Hamilton directed his comm system, "Closed circuit, me to Hodge," and said, after the beep that indicated the changeover, "Good job, you bloodthirsty bitch. Glad you're on my side."

  They both heard, through the platoon net, "Action right. Enemy platoon counterattacking. Kill 'em."

  No sooner had they heard this than a flurry of bullets swept over both of them. The suits shrugged those bullets off, but they still had enough energy to rock the two troopers back.

  Hodge began slow fire—one round per two seconds—at the advancing robotic targets. As she did, she said, "Closed circuit; me to Hamilton" and then, "Did I ever mention this shit makes me horny?"

  Kitznen, Provence of Affrankon, 13 Duh'l-Qa'dah,

  1530 AH (10 November, 2106)

  "Now he," Besma said, "is a beautiful man."

  "Do you suppose he really looked like that?" Petra asked, "Or do you think maybe my great-grandmother sort of . . . what's the word?"

  "Idealized?"

  "Yes, that one. Do you think she idealized him or did he really look like that?"

  "Either way, he's a dream. And there's something about that."

  "That" was a male appendage, plainly visible in the drawing.

  To that Petra agreed. Mohammad had had a point. Even at nine, a girl is still in good part already a woman.

  The drawing the girls were looking at in the journal was labeled "Mahmoud" in the artist's superb handwriting.

  "He's one of my people, I think," Besma said.

  "Not one of mine, for sure," Petra agreed. "What do you think he was to my great-grandmother?"

  "I don't know. Let's try to read some more. Maybe we can find out."

  Private Rodger W. Young Range, Fort Benning, Georgia,

  12 November, 2106

  "No," Hamilton insisted, "we are not going to dump our groin armor so we can fuck."

  "Scaredycat," Hodge taunted.

  "Nothing of the kind," he answered. "It's just that the thought's preposterous. It'd be like two robots going at it."

  Unable to help herself Hodge started to giggle. "It really would look ridiculous. But then, who's going to see?"

  "Everybody. We don't have thermal imagers for nothing and the heat waves rising from your hot little ass would be sure to be noticed."

  "You think my ass is hot?"

  "I think all of you is hot, Laurie."

  Some things, she thought, are better than sex. Being thought "hot" is sometimes one of them. "Okay. I'll leave you alone for now. But when we get back to Olson Hall you better show me that you really think all of me is hot."

  "Deal," Hamilton agreed.

  Though they were lying on their backs in the dirt next to each other, she didn't bother to snuggle in. Hamilton was right; there was something obscene about two robots cuddling.

  "You done good, today, Laurie," Hamilton said.

  "Thanks. You, too. Though this suit is a damned uncomfortable thing and pretty unflattering to a girl's figure."

  At first Hamilton said nothing to that. After a few moments, though, she realized he was laughing.

  "What's so funny?"

  "Well . . . I was just thinking, a girl in a heavy infantry suit is perfectly dressed under the enemy's law. What's the difference between wearing a burka and wearing Class B armor?"

  She thought about that for a few seconds before answering, "I can't kill people as easily wearing a burka."

  Kitznen, Affrankon, 14 Duh'l-Qa'dah,

  1530 AH (11 November, 2106)


  Ishmael escorted the two burka-clad girls from the house to the market. That was part of his official duty; he didn't hit Besma up for baksheesh for it. This was to the good as Besma only had the two dozen dirhem she'd begged from her father to buy some new clothes and shoes for the new girl in the house. Her father's wife had objected, and her older stepbrother, Fudail, had sneered, but still her father had given over the money. Besma was, after all, the pearl of his heart.

  They went into a women's and girls' shop, a simple door into an old brick building with a sign to one side and the windows painted black. Ishmael had to wait outside with the other various mahram, the men suitable as escorts for women because sexual intercourse was prohibited between them and the women escorted.

  Ishmael was not exactly in that category. He could legally have had intercourse with either Besma or Petra, had they been married. Ishmael, however, was a eunuch, having been castrated as a boy, just before he was sold. He couldn't really be expected to have intercourse with anyone and so was mahram as a practical if not a legal matter. Even so, Ishmael's master, Abdul Mohsem, was taking some risk by having him escort the family's womenfolk.

  One aspect of that risk was visible just across the street from where Ishmael and the rest of the mahram squatted outside the women's store. Ishmael didn't know what the crime was, but he saw a group of mutaween, wearing their traditional brown robes, drag a man from another shop and force him up the street to one of the usual sites reserved for executing the judgments of the police for the prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue. There was a stout pole there, affixed into the cobblestones. From the pole hung a looped rope.

  The man being forced blubbered and begged for mercy. It was not forthcoming.

  First, one of the mutawa knocked the man to his back by a blow to the face. Then two others gathered up his legs and lifted them. A fourth dropped a loop of rope over the ankles while a fifth pulled on the rope to raise the feet. Once this was done a sixth lashed the rope to a pintle on the pole. The man's shoes were removed, and the senior of the mutaween took a long, stiff but flexible stick from another and bared his right arm to the shoulder.

  Even from as far away as he was, Ishmael heard the hiss of the stick. He could have been considerably farther away and still heard the scream of the victim.

  The shop was small and the shelves and racks something less than full. Dust gathered here and there showed that the emptiness was not a recent phenomenon. And yet Besma had said that this was one of the better women's shops in the town. Petra assumed this was so, and really didn't even notice the emptiness of the stock or the dust where no stock lay. Her town's one remaining general store had had even less.

  "What was that?" Petra asked, as the reverberating sound of a human scream penetrated the shop's black-painted windows.

  "The mutaween," the shopkeeper answered. "They become more vicious with each passing day. And if you're a poor Nazrani minding your own business . . . I'm Muslim and it still makes me sick what they do to the Nazrani."

  Petra gulped. She was both Nazrani and poor. Worse, she was owned. What would they do to her?

  Besma patted her arm. "Don't worry," she insisted, "I won't let them near you and they wouldn't dare touch me."

  Having had a chance to watch the household for a while by this point, Petra wasn't sure that Abdul Mohsem hadn't doted on Besma so much that she had forgotten her place in the world. After all, their burkas sat on a chair in one corner. Outside was a man who would escort them wherever they went. And she'd seen enough to know that Moslem women, if wealthier, were not even as free as the wretched Nazrani girls and women of Grolanhei.

  She said nothing, though.

  Besma turned her attention to the shopkeeper and said, "My friend needs two new dresses and a pair of shoes."

  "Yes, miss. Right away." The shopkeeper measured Petra by eye, then went to a shelf and dusted off some cobwebs. She removed half a dozen ankle length dresses in what she thought was a fair match for size and brought them to the girls.

  For the nonce, Petra was able to screen out the screams and sobs coming from outside in her wonder at the fine—she certainly thought it was fine—clothing the shopkeeper began laying out on a table top.

  * * *

  The actual beating was over, though the victim still sobbed loudly. Two of the mutaween left, while the rest stood around smoking and, apparently, telling jokes.

  "Poor bastard," Ishmael said to no one in particular.

  One of the mahram smiled, perhaps sadly, and said, "You haven't seen anything yet. Wait."

  It wasn't long, so Ishmael saw, before the two mutaween who had left returned carrying a large bucket between them.

  "Now it gets nasty," the mahram who had spoken previously said. "That's ice water. They're going to pour it over his feet."

  "What will that do?" Ishmael asked.

  "You'll see."

  The two mutaween lifted the bucket and began to pour water over the bruised soles of the victim's feet. Within a few seconds the crystal clear water running off the feet turned red, even as the victim emitted a scream such as Ishmael couldn't remember having heard since his own castration.

  "Does something to the blood vessels, the bones, and the skin," the mahram explained. "Regular water wouldn't do; it has to be cold."

  "Il hamdu lillah, what did he do to deserve that?"

  The mahram looked on Ishmael with something like pity. "You don't get around much do you? The mutaween probably demanded a 'donation' which he refused. That would be enough."

  Ishmael, even though he thought this an abomination, also thought it very likely as the mutaween began circulating about the square shouting, "Donations for the defenders of the faith to continue with their holy work?"

  He still had the dirhem he'd been given by Besma. When he dropped one in the cup of a mutawa, and got nothing but a dirty look in return, he decided that his feet were more important than a few bits of silver. He turned over all he had. Each tinkle of silver on silver was like a knife to his heart. That money was freedom money. And, yet, how much would the mutaween, who made a living from robbing others of their freedom, care for the freedom of a castrated slave?

  There had been just enough money, after purchasing dress and shoes, to replace Petra's threadbare burka with a new blue one.

  "It will match your eyes," Besma assured her, "even if no one but you and I and Ishmael know that it does."

  Interlude

  Kitzingen, Federal Republic of Germany,

  11 January, 2004

  Mahmoud stretched out on one side of Gabrielle's bed. He'd tried to cover himself partly with the top sheet but she'd insisted on full nudity for her sketch. Having moved the sheet, she'd stepped back, looked him over, then reached out and draped his penis at what she thought was an aesthetically appealing angle.

  "Besides," she said, smiling warmly, "I like seeing you like this."

  It was a strange thing to Gabi, what she'd come to feel for Mahmoud. She was modern and western; casual, recreational sex was no big thing to her. What she felt when she was with Mahmoud was not casual. Rather, it was—though she didn't like the term— something approaching sacred.

  What he felt for her? Well, he'd never plainly said. His upbringing wouldn't permit it yet. Yet in his every action he proclaimed love. He was putting up with posing for her, after all, even though he hated it.

  "I still feel ridiculous," he said, even while putting up with the pose for the sake of love.

  "It's for art," she insisted. "You'll be famous."

  "I don't want to be famous. And my mother will have a stroke if she sees."

  "Your mother is kept in purdah, veiled and without a television," Gabrielle countered. "She buys no books; she can't even read. She'll never see."

  Mahmoud sighed. When an argument was lost, it was lost. "At least turn on the television so I can keep my mind busy."

  That seemed fair. Gabrielle walked over and turned on the TV. When the screen cleared, she and Mahmoud
saw what appeared to be a major protest in Paris. It soon became clear that the protest was over a recent French decision to ban the wear of hijab in schools. There were at least two German states, or Länder, that were considering similar measures.

  "That's just so wrong," Gabrielle said.

  Mahmoud disagreed. Shaking his head firmly, he said, "It's not wrong, though it might be pointless and it might turn out to be a mistake. Trust me; I know my people. Any toe in the door you give them they will exploit ruthlessly. Any concession you make will convince them you are weak and lead only to demands for ever greater concessions. Which you'll give because making the concession in the first place showed that you were weak; that, or stupid, which amounts to the same thing.

  "That said, the only thing worse than making a concession is first making a show of strength and defiance and then backing down. That will convince my people that you are both stupid and weak. And I'm not sure the French will understand that . . . or understand that, once having taken their stand, they can't ever back off from it. You're making some of the same mistakes here, with your publicly funded mosques."

  "Oh, hell, Mahmoud, that's ridiculous!" Gabrielle exclaimed. "To think that a few little headscarves are going to bring about the collapse of the Republic of France. To think that treating Turks here with some decency is going to ruin Germany."

  "It's not the symbols, Gabi, it's what the symbols do to the minds of men, how they affect the cost-benefit calculus, and where they indicate the direction of movement is."

  "I still think it's ridiculous to think that a minority population— what is it in France? Five percent? Ten?—is going to overthrow the country."

  "Probably closer to ten percent," Mahmoud said, "Eight, at least. But it's a population that's young and growing." He stopped for a moment and asked, "Gabrielle, how many brothers and sisters do you have?"

  "None, as you well know."