Caliphate

few moments, then said, 'Maybe the Nazis, themselves, were just a symptom—sure, an extreme symptom—of something deeper in the soul, something very primitive, very dark, very real . . . and very scary. Also something very envious; Amerika was not, after all, a love song.'

They both went silent then, still walking and holding hands. They heard the chant before they recognized it. When they recognized it, the two were almost at Mahmoud's auto. And by then it was too late.

'Kanaken raus! Kanaken raus! Kanaken raus! Kanaken . . . '

There were nine of them, standing around Mahmoud's car, pounding on it with their fists in time with the chant: 'Kanaken raus!' They wore leather and chains, or bomber jackets, and high, American-style, jump boots. Some were pierced; still others tattooed, though with only one exception the tattoos could only be seen where the neck met the chest and the shirts and jackets failed to cover them. The one exception had the numbers '88' tattooed on his forehead.

'There are nine of them, Mahmoud,' Gabi cautioned.

'Yes,' he agreed, sadly, 'but I only have the one car.'

Gabi screamed as a booted foot came down on Mahmoud's head for the dozenth time. In the near distance, a siren wailed with the peculiar soul-searing screech of the Polizei. It was a sound that conveyed images of burning buildings pouring off bricks as they crumbled, amidst ruined, blasted city blocks, with bombers droning overhead.

After a final flurry of kicks, the thugs turned as one and took off into the darkness. Perhaps they would be caught and perhaps not.

By the time the police car stopped, Gabi was on her knees, bent over Mahmoud's prostrate body, weeping. He was unconscious, his scalp split, blood seeping onto the asphalt of the pavement, and his face covered with it.

While one policeman trotted over to investigate, the other called for an ambulance.

'Animals!' Gabi screeched. 'Animals!'

'Yes,' the policeman agreed. 'But at least the assholes haven't learned how to march in step.' He saw that Mahmoud was breathing, then felt at his neck for a pulse. Satisfied with that, the policeman touched lightly around the bloody hair and scalp.

'I think he'll be all right, eventually,' the officer said in an attempt to calm the woman. 'I don't envy him the headache he'll have, though. Can you tell me what happened?'

Between gasps and bouts of tears, Gabi explained as best she could. As she did, the policeman, still listening, walked around the car, illuminating outside and in with his flashlight. As he did, the other policeman, call to the ambulance service completed, came to see to Mahmoud.

'Nothing on the outside to indicate the driver wasn't German,' he observed, 'but . . . oh, oh . . . ' The light settled on a text laying on the back seat. The cover was in Arabic. 'This must have caught their eye.'

'That?' Gabi said, incredulously. 'That's the Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam. It's a book of poetry.'

'It's in a foreign, non-Latin or Gothic alphabet,' the policeman said. 'That's often enough. With easterners especially is that often enough, particularly if they're unemployed.'

'You're his wife?' the policeman asked.

'He's ask . . . we live together,' Gabi answered.

'I don't envy you either then, the task of cleaning up his vomit when he returns home from the hospital.'

Chapter Six

The Europeans were once our slaves; today it is the Muslims. This must change. We must drive the unbelievers into deepest hell. We must stick together and hold our peace until the time comes. You can't see anything yet, but everything is being prepared in secret. You must hold yourself in readiness for the right moment. We must exploit democracy for our cause. We must cover Europe with mosques and schools.

—Sermon recorded in a Bavarian mosque, Early 21st Century

Kitznen, Province of Affrankon, 12 Jumadah II, 1533 AH

(13 May, 2109)

'I don't understand why we work so hard after we do the housework,' Petra said, despairingly. 'I mean . . . you go to school while I work all day. Then you come home and Ishmael escorts us so we can do outside work for pay. Then we spend most every night while you try to drum some education through my dense skull into my stupid brain. It's too much.'

'Your skull isn't dense and you're not stupid,' Besma corrected.

Besma bit her lower lip, uncertain whether she should tell Petra the reasons. Finally, she decided that, yes, the slave girl who was also her best friend was old enough to know.

'I'm fourteen now,' she began. 'Within a year, two years at the most, my father will arrange a marriage for me. Ordinarily, I'd ask for you to be part of my dowry so I could free you. But I know my stepmother won't permit that so she can keep a hold over me even after I'm married.'

Petra suddenly looked sick at the thought of her only real friend going away. Indeed, she felt sick, so much so that she almost missed the next sentence.

'We're working so we can make enough money to buy you from my father or, if he won't sell to me, to let you buy your own freedom which, as a pious man, he is certain to permit. Either way, you'll be free.'

'Free,' Petra echoed, wistfully. 'I can't even imagine . . . '

Besma smiled, ruefully. While she was not, technically, a slave, she would never be free and she knew it.

USAF Airship Prince Eugene, 15 May, 2109

The airship moved nearly silently over the shoreline. From the officers' lounge in the lower stern, Hamilton could see the white- capped waves buffeting that shoreline and the vague outline of the once magnificent mansions which had stood guard over equally ostentatious yachts. As the airship progressed, the shore fell away and the ruins of Los Angeles began to come into view.

Los Angeles had never been rebuilt. With each forward mile more and more ruins came into view. It was much worse than Kansas City had been. Most of the dead in L.A. had never been found.

Hollywood had never recovered, either. What the blast hadn't done the purges had. This was so much true that Australia (an allied state, neither a protectorate nor an imperially ruled province) provided the bulk of films shown in the contiguous fifty- seven states plus the imperial provinces of Ontario and Quebec. What didn't come from Australia, feature-length film-wise, tended to be Indian in origin, that, or Japanese.

IDI exercised very tight control over which films were permitted to be shown in public theaters.

Hamilton hadn't been home since Hodge's funeral. That had been miserable enough—virtually her entire hometown grieving as one— that for a time he'd doubted he'd ever go home again. Instead, he'd taken his leaves and R&Rs (Rest and Recreation periods, also called I&I, Intercourse and Intoxication) around the Pacific, drinking heavily and screwing whatever was available. That is, he'd screwed whatever was available for a while, right up until he'd realized that none of them—Anglo girls from Australia, delicate and graceful Japanese, superbly-legged and almond-eyed Thais, or smoky-dark Hindus—made him miss Laurie a jot less. With that realization his on-leave drinking had gone up even as his sexual escapades dropped to nothing.

He sipped at a scotch now, a product of the Province of Scotland imported through the allied Kingdom of England, even as the crumbling ruins of Los Angeles passed below.

Thompson was gone, not killed but promoted out of command over his vociferous and bitter objections. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, had been killed, victim of a five hundred pound bomb buried in a village square and