Caliphate

lieutenants' discomfiture. Miles' smile, in particular, shone against his black skin.

'Hodge, what the fuck did you think you were doing leading my boys and girls into a goddamned minefield? Didn't anyone ever tell you mines are deadly to us?'

The captain's evil eyes swiveled to Hamilton. 'Dipshit,' he sneered, 'when the terrain doesn't suit bounding overwatch then don't do bounding overwatch. I don't give a flying fuck what the book says; you're paid to use your mind. Use it.'

At third platoon leader Thompson didn't swear, nor even sneer. Instead he said, 'Even very large directional mines can be fired from quite close to the troop line provided you sandbag behind them. Failure to so use them is an indicator of cowardice. That is something beyond my power to fix. You're relieved. Get out of my sight and send your platoon sergeant up. Then turn in your suit to the company armorer and report to battalion headquarters. Maybe Woody can find a use for you that fits your lack of talent.'

'Where did he ever learn to be such a bastard?' Hodge asked, over a cold meal from a pouch. She, all fastidious, was trying very hard to eat the meal without at the same time eating the bugs that swarmed it.

Both Miles and the XO, Fitzgerald, laughed. Miles added, 'A bastard? You think so? You ain't seen nothin' yet.'

'Look, Laurie,' Fitzgerald added. 'He's got another three weeks to prep us for combat. It wouldn't be so bad if we'd kept our old platoons, Miles with First and me in Third, with the adjutant leading Second. But the personnel shuffle before we deployed wrecked all that. In point of fact the Army might need you someday, but the company doesn't. It would do as well or better with the platoon sergeants running the show and no lieutenants rather than still wet-behind-the-ears ones.

But Thompson's stuck with you and making the best of it in the time he has.'

'Is that why he dumped Ken Parker?' Hamilton asked. 'Is he going to try to get rid of Laurie and me, too?'

'No,' Miles said. 'Or at least I don't think so. Parker was incompetent, an embarrassment to me as an American, and a worse one because we're both black. If the CO had wanted to get rid of you, he would have, but Parker had to go.'

'But he's just so mean about it,' Hodge said.

Fitzgerald shrugged. 'The man's short on tact, I'll grant you. Hell, the last battalion commander was actually afraid of him, he's such a tactless bastard. But he's long on tactics and that matters more.'

'Pretty good loggie, too,' Miles added.

Al Harv Kaserne, Province of Affrankon, 8 Jumahdi II, 1531 AH (31 May, 2107)

Hans was heartily sick of the religious instruction. Sure, they provided some snacks to supplement the otherwise bland diet. Sure, the bearded imam—a Sunni—in charge was an interesting, at least an enthusiastic, speaker and teacher. Sure, and best of all, no one was torturing his body to prepare it for future use as a janissary.

None of that made up for the consistent, and concerted attacks on Hans' most cherished beliefs, learned from earliest age at his mother's knee, and in school.

'To say that man is born into a state of original sin,' said the imam scornfully, 'means that the very handiwork of Allah Himself must be flawed. Yet this cannot be; Allah is perfect, in all he does. We do not worship mere power, boys, but perfection. Indeed, every child born is born into a state without sin, a state of purity.'

Hans was pretty certain, based on his dealings with other children, that they were no such thing.

'Thus, there cannot have been a need for Jesus, Peace be upon Him, who was a prophet and no son of Allah except in the sense that all of mankind are His sons and daughters . . . there was no need for him to die on the cross to redeem that which Allah had—in His infinite mercy—already long since forgiven. This is perhaps the greatest of lies the Nazrani tell.'

It was tempting to think and yet . . .

If Christ suffered and died for our sins, it is greater proof of His love for us than if he merely forgave us those sins.

'Now there are some who think,' the imam—no slouch as either a theologian or a teacher of young boys—continued, 'that this alleged crucifixion of Christ is greater proof of Allah's love for man. Nothing could be further from the truth; for Allah's forgiveness alone is perfect and sufficient. The alleged crucifixion is superfluous.'

The imam must have noticed Hans' facial expression.

'Yes, young eagle,' he said, with a warm and friendly smile, 'I can read your thoughts.' The imam laughed. 'No, I can't. But I've seen young reverted boys like you balk at that statement so many times I've come to expect it, and to note the signs of it. You have a question; I can see.'

Hans bowed his head respectfully. 'Yes, sir. How do we know Allah did not have a son, as the Nazrani teach? He can, after all, do whatever he wishes.'

'Ah, but why would He want to?' the imam answered. 'We have sons to carry on after us, because we all must grow old and die. But Allah is eternal and unchanging. He needs no son and His having one would be, again, superfluous. Worse, it is a form of polytheism, no different, in principle, from the beliefs of the old pagans. Even the accursed Jews never fell into this trap, though they fell into or created many others.'

'But Jesus, in both texts, performed miracles,' Hans objected.

The imam nodded, his face serious. 'In both texts, indeed. Note, though, that even the Nazrani texts tend to agree that Jesus made few or no miracles on his own word, but always invoked the name of Allah. A son, one who was begotten by a father and thus like unto the father, would have needed no help.'

Hans nodded, not as if he agreed but as if he had no counter- argument. The imam saw this.

'I know it is hard to give up the beliefs in which you were raised,' he said, still smiling. The smile, if anything, grew self-deprecating. 'Instant miracles are Allah's purview, not mine. There is time for you to come to the truth, boy. And the longer and harder the road, the more forcefully will you hold on to the truth once you reach it.'

Interlude

Kitzingen, Federal Republic of Germany,

16 January, 2004

Gabrielle shook all the way home from the mosque. She'd torn her burka off and thrown it in the gutter scant steps after passing the mosque door. 'They hate us that much? I can't believe it,' she said, over and over.

'Believe it, Gabi,' Mahmoud said. 'They despise everything about you . . . and about me, since I love you.'

She missed that admission. Hands waving widely, she said, 'But surely those . . . those . . . lunatics are a tiny minority. Mahmoud, I know Muslim people who are nothing like that.'

'You think you know them,' he corrected. 'But you do not know that you know them. We have no problem lying to or hiding our beliefs from the 'infidels' when necessary . . . or just useful.'

Gabi shook her head. 'But most of our Moslems come from Turkey, which is secular. A lot of them, too, come from the Balkans which didn't take religion seriously anyway.'

'And why do you suppose they left, then, some of them? Maybe because secularism and indifference to religion were not very comfortable to them, hmmm?'

'But we're even more secular than Turkey and more indifferent than Bosnians.'

'That's true,' he admitted, slowly shaking his head in quasi- agreement. 'For now, it's true. Yet the Turkish army stands as a bulwark against mixing