Caliphate

it would take to make a vaccine if we had a sample of the virus.'

'We could give you a general purpose containment unit, small enough to carry, cold enough to keep the virus inactive, and large enough to hold any likely container you might find the virus in,' Mary answered. 'But the risks . . . '

'John,' Caruthers said, 'if you got caught and engaged . . . if the containment unit were breached . . . we're talking end of the world here.'

'We're talking end of the world anyway. This way we might have a chance of preventing that.' Hamilton turned his attention back to Mary. 'How long to manufacture a vaccine?'

'Full court press? Even assuming it can be done . . . maybe six weeks. Maybe a little less. But what difference would that make? Meara, Sanders and Johnston could simply—well, not 'simply'; but still they could—modify the virus to some other configuration.'

Caruthers smiled cynically. 'Mary, it isn't like John is going to leave them there alive. He'll either bring them back or . . . '

Her eyes grew wide. After all, she knew one of them. But . . . 'Oh. Yes, I suppose that makes sense.'

'No, Mr. Hamilton, not like that. Didn't you learn anything when you were among the heathen in the Philippines? You must remember to sit without pointing the soles of your feet at anyone more important than a servant.'

Wearily, Hamilton stood in front of the large tray of kibsa, a rice- and, in this case, lamb-based dish, and sat again, this time tucking his legs under him in such a way—and a damned uncomfortable way it was, too—without pointing the soles of his feet anywhere but behind him.

'Much better. We'll practice that more later but for now let's try the kibsa while it's still hot.'

The instructor reached out one hand, saying, 'There are a number of ways to do this, all more or less correct. We'll begin with the classic method, the one that prevails over most of the Arabian Peninsula.' Palm down, using his right hand, the instructor bent his fingers and dug them into the mass of steaming rice. He then closed his fist, causing a wash of gooey, yogurt-based sauce to run through his fingers and out each side of the cup of his hand. He continued to press until the mass of rice and lamb was compressed into a small ball about and inch and a quarter in diameter. This he then popped into his mouth.

'Your turn,' he said to Hamilton, once he'd swallowed the ball.

The instructor saw Hamilton reaching out with his left hand and, quick as a snake, grabbed a long pointer and used it to rap Hamilton's knuckles. 'Never,' he said, 'never, reach for or take anything with your left hand.'

'Motherfucker!' Hamilton exclaimed, alternately rubbing and flopping his hand with a loosed wrist. 'What the fuck was that for?'

'You learned nothing in the Philippines?'

Hamilton shrugged. 'Look, we killed them when they fought and rounded them up and deported them when they didn't, or couldn't anymore. We did not socialize.'

'I see,' said the instructor. He sighed. 'Where to begin? Mr. Hamilton, the Arabian Peninsula is not a place much given to trees or any crops from which paper could be made. Leather was, in olden times—and again, today—too valuable to use wastefully. Even rocks were rare in most places.'

'So?'

'What are you going to do after we eat this meal, oh, sometime over the next day or two?'

'Sleep?'

'Besides that?'

'Ohhh.'

'Yes, Mr. Hamilton. The culture our enemies sprang from never really got used to the idea of toilet paper. They used their hands. Given that they ate with their hands, it only made sense—you'll agree—for them to use one for one thing, and one for the other.'

'Got it. Right hand only or you're shitting in the pot.'

'Not just shitting in the pot, Mr. Hamilton. Use your left hand for anything involving another person and you are sending him the mortal insult of shitting on him.'

'Shokran,' Hamilton said.

'Very good. Afwan.'

Hamilton ran doubting hands over another man's face. Not that the face wasn't attached to the front of his skull; it was. But that face was not his. The cheekbones were higher; the eyes had been reshaped; the nose was broadened and the ears subtly reoriented to stick out ever so slightly more. His eyes were green now—'The enemy has a thing for green eyes,' Caruthers had said—and his chin more substantial.

'Who the fuck am I?' Hamilton asked.

'No one important,' Caruthers answered, chuckling. Hamilton didn't look amused. 'Oh, all right! You are Johann De Wet, scion of a not-very-important family from Cape Town. Though your name is Boer, and though you had a distant Boer ancestor of some importance, your ancestry is almost entirely English. You speak Afrikaans well enough, but with an accent. You elected to do military service, as all white South Africans must, prior to going to college. You rose to the rank of sergeant in the Logistics Corps, which sparked your interest in the transportation side of business. You are a graduate of the University of Cape Town where you majored in business administration, with a minor in international shipping.'

Hamilton raised one eyebrow. 'It's probably a stupid question, but . . . uh . . . I assume there is documentation? An electronic and paper trail to back this up?'

'All the important things, yes. The actual Johann De Wet died as a baby of pneumonia. Parents subsequently divorced and there were no other children.' Caruthers laughed. 'I imagine they'd both be very surprised to discover that their baby boy has returned from the grave.'

Caruthers continued, 'Upon graduation, you were hired by Koop Human Resources, based in Natal, but immediately sent to be an assistant administrator of a slave breeding camp in the Congo which has since been closed. Thereafter, you were resident in a hospital for two years while recovering from the outbreak of Ebola III that closed the camp.

'KHR, by the way, is a wholly owned subsidiary of OSI, though nobody knows that but us and South African Intelligence. And neither of us is saying. As I told you once, we can cooperate.'

'You mean the company has been in the slave trading business for years now?' Hamilton asked.

'Leave off, Mister Hamilton!' After he said it, the man seemed almost to shrink. 'It's a shitty world, John . . . and neither of us made it; we just have to live in it. Now if you'll allow me to continue, you will be working for one of our senior people over there. You don't need to know his real name but he goes by a local one . . .'

Excursus

Excerpts from: Empire Rising, Copyright © 2112, Baen Historical Press

Introduction

The United States finds itself now with an empire it does not want, that costs more than it brings in, and that requires the perversion of our values and the suppression of civil liberties we had enjoyed since the late eighteenth century and in some cases the early seventeenth, to the early twenty-first.

How did we get this way? Why is it that only now that we are beginning to be able to discuss it openly? Can we ever get rid of it? Can we keep some parts and dispense with others?

Can we even remain a nation . . .

* * *

Chapter II

We have seen in the previous chapter how various security measures, some sensible and others silly, some intrusive and others not, had never really sat well with the American psyche. It is open to debate whether those measures, even if maintained, could have stopped the attacks that followed their dismantling. What is not open to debate is that the security measures adopted at the beginning of the century were dismantled, and that attacks followed.

Seven bombs had been introduced into the then United States, and one into the United Kingdom. A further bomb was stopped by Israeli security forces as terrorists attempted to bring it in over the shore. Sadly, because it was stopped at sea, and the yacht carrying it sunk, the Israelis were unable to warn us, because they were ignorant themselves, for some days, of the nature of the yacht's cargo.

Of the American bombs, three came through Mexico and three through what was then Canada. A seventh, and the largest, came by sea. The targeted cities were Los Angeles, Kansas City, Chicago, Boston, New York, Houston, and Washington, plus London in the United Kingdom. The Chicago, New York, Houston and Washington bombs failed to create a nuclear detonation. In two of these, Houston and Washington, it was determined that the bombs were simply defective in manufacture. They exploded, spread a fair amount of radioactive material about the targeted cities, but killed very