Caliphate

security company.'

'Oh . . . oh, shit!'

'What? What 'Oh, shit'?'

'How often are we called down to Honsvang to service the men there, Ling, rather than them coming here? Every other month? Three times in four months? How do you think Hans will take it having you fucked in a different room in the castle? How will he take it when I am?'

'Oh.' The Han girl bit her lip. 'Hadn't thought about that. But . . . I mean it isn't like it's anything more than a job for me, and not one I like, either. Surely Hans would . . . no, I guess not. But he knows we sleep together and it doesn't bother him.'

''We' are a different matter entirely. What we do never seems to bother men, and that's not even counting when we're hired to put on a show.'

'Crap. We'll have to think of something then . . . that, or explain it to Hans in . . . right, forget I said that. Stupid idea to explain things rationally to stupid men.'

Castle Honsvang, Province of Baya, 8 Muharram,

1538 AH (19 October, 2113)

Sands, Johnston, and Meara watched through a high temperature glass window as flames raised the internal heat of the furnace to over two thousand degrees. The two bodies inside quickly burst into flames as their own fat caught fire, then burned down to ash. Even then, the residue was not released until that temperature had been maintained for some time. They were playing gods with world- destroying organisms here, and there was no room for chance.

'Damn' said Sands sadly, in a French accent, as he watched the last bits of bone from two human bodies turn to ash, 'I thought we really had something there.'

Meara shook his jowly head. 'Bitch mutates too rapidly. Just when we think we've got a counter-virus to render it sterile in some phase, it changes to something we can't sterilize.'

'Sometimes I wonder if we might not have been better off going with the discarding strands theory we left behind to throw the Empire off the track,' added Johnston.

'No . . . no, I don't think so,' Sands said. 'The form we have would be better if we can find a way to control it.'

And this was something of which the American Empire had no clue. The trio had been working on a virus such as described by Mary to Hamilton . . . officially. This virus did indeed change from harmless to deadly to sterile in five generations, being transmissible in all but the last stage. Yet they had never managed to time the thing just right. The extra strands simply would not slough off as planned.

On their own, though, and without leaving any computer record for the Empire to dissect, they had tried a very different approach, one which caused the virus to change by attacking different types of organs in turn. It was the theory and the work on this they had brought through Montreal to the Caliphate, for a very substantial set of fees and regular free access to highly desirable female slaves (except for Meara whose preferences switched between teenaged girls and very young boys).

This virus, the true VA5H, began by going after endothelial cells, those lining the throat and mouth. There, in those cells, the virus inserted various introns (DNA sections added), removed various exons (DNA sections removed), and produced a substantially different set of progeny because of the specific DNA of the cells invaded. These then went on to infect the nasal mucosa, and only the nasal mucosa, mimicking a cold and allowing the virus at that stage to spread by sneeze.

Within the nasal mucosa, a codon, coming from the DNA of the mucosa itself, inserted into the strand, changing its target to the lymph cells. There, it was spread by bodily fluid. This is to say, it didn't spread much.

It didn't have to. At the lymph cells, new modifications occurred, caused, once again, by the DNA of the lymphocytes themselves. This modification turned into full blown disease highly analogous to hemorrhagic smallpox. Moreover, it did so so quickly and so— literally, without pun—virulently, that infection of close family, co- workers, and medical staff was highly likely . . . for whichever of those co-workers, family and medicos had not already contracted the virus during its sneezing stage.

It was during this stage that the virus began sloughing off sections of that codon which controlled lethality, becoming more deadly with each new transmission. Within five such generations, the last bit of that codon had disappeared, leaving a virus that was no longer deadly and incapable of reproduction, in theory.

It was that 'in theory' part that had Sands, Meara, and Johnston up late, infecting and then incinerating the bodies of superfluous slaves, because the virus did not always lose the last, deadly section of that particular codon and those that did not went on replicating at the deadliest level.

Thus, they were working on two other projects. The first of these was to mimic the exterior polyglyceride coat of the virus to rapidly spread immunity through the Caliphate without giving warning to the Empire. The other, and more promising, project was a virus that would attack the ability of the human cells that produced the deadly form to do so.

Promising, however, was neither promised nor certain.

'And we're running out of test subjects,' said Johnston.

'No matter,' wheezed Meara, 'the Caliph is sending us another two hundred.'

Province of Baya,

19 October, 2113

Customs had been surprisingly thorough. Hamilton had assumed that the Caliphate would be as sloppy and susceptible to bribes there as it was reputed to be everywhere else. It hadn't worked that way. Oh, yes, the customs agent had taken the bribe and pocketed it. He'd then proceeded to go through Hamilton's and Bongo's bags with a fine toothed comb.

'The bribe,' Bongo had explained, 'is only good to keep them from taking the things you have legally. It does absolutely nothing as far as getting them to let you bring in something illegal unless you're already well connected.'

'Glad we came in clean,' Hamilton had agreed.

The city of am-Munch was . . . well, to call it a 'disappointment' was far too mild. It was, in Hamilton's words, 'Run down, unsightly, with garbage piled a meter deep to either side of the roads, creepy, depressing, dirty-rotten-filthy, and I can't believe any of my people ever lived in such a dump.' He'd been more than happy to leave, despite the quality—or lack, thereof—of the road that lay ahead.

That road was a crumbling highway running through sheer-sided mountain passes. Along that highway, a half dozen small cargo trucks bearing two hundred children trudged behind an auto bearing Hamilton and his black chief toward their destination. Bongo drove. Provided one wasn't a female, the Caliphate was pretty easy as far as licensing went. In other words, no license was required for males and none were possible for females. Rental cars and trucks were somewhat pricey.

Besides driving, Bongo had surreptitiously swept the auto for listening devices. By and large the Caliphate was less than sophisticated about such things. Still, it was always wise to make sure.

'Okay,' Hamilton said, 'this is too much. We need an 'in' to the castle and we get a purchase order for the entire group going to the castle. That shit just doesn't happen. Anything too good—'

'—to be true, isn't,' Bongo interrupted. 'I really don't understand your confusion. How do you suppose we knew where the three renegades were? How do you suppose we manage to operate here at all?'

Hamilton thought about that for a while before saying, 'We own somebody at the highest levels in the Caliphate, don't we?'

'That's always been my guess, baas.' It was a measure of Bongo's sheer professionalism that he'd never yet said that 'baas' with the verbal sneer he felt. 'There'd be a lot more of them, too, I think, if most of them weren't terrified of extermination.'

'It's not like we haven't given them reason for that,' said Hamilton.

'Nor like they didn't give us reason to give them reason. 'Sins of the fathers . . . to the third and fourth generations.' Sucks, don't it?'

Bongo downshifted to get over a particularly vile section of the road. He echoed his own words, answered his own question. 'Yeah, baas, it sucks. But there's not a lot you or I can do about it.'

'But how do we get control of someone in the Caliphate?' Hamilton asked. 'We don't