Caliphate

advantage of both the informal network of blood relations in Germany and the fact that German police had retreated from the Muslim neighborhoods, leaving them in the charge of German-funded Islamic police who were, in effect, an arm of the very mullahs and imams who counseled that the responsibility for rape fell entirely upon the female.

The police had warned Gabi this would happen and warned her, too, that despite the boys' practical immunity from prosecution, they would still kill her daughter, if they could, as a matter of 'principle.'

She'd thought of returning to her home town of Kitzingen but that, the police had also advised, was large enough and had enough of a

Muslim community now that she and the girl would be in danger there as well.

'Better a small town,' they'd advised. 'One where there are none but Germans. You'll find a lot of us are abandoning the cities as they turn into foreign enclaves. No one will find you and Amal too remarkable. It will be better in a small town, too, since the welfare benefits are being slashed all over.'

The welfare payments had become more important, too, as Gabi had found herself unable to sell much of her art. She, after all, concentrated on the human form and selling pictures of people had become a rather dangerous, as being against the Sharia, activity. Though she'd never encountered it, she'd had friends who had had their stalls and galleries ransacked by Islamic mobs.

In the end, she'd decided she must emigrate and take Amal with her.

American Consulate, Zurich, Switzerland, 5 March, 2024

After the retaliatory nukings, only Switzerland, in all of Western Europe, had maintained diplomatic relations with the United States— now, since the occupation of Canada, rapidly morphing into the American Empire. Thus, it had been to Switzerland Gabi had had to go to apply for a visa to immigrate into the U.S.

She took her number, and waited impatiently for it to be called. Her initial application had been submitted months before, shortly after she'd realized that no place in continental Europe was going to be safe.

Once her number was called, Gabi proceeded to a private office where a consular officer invited her to sit while perusing her file.

'I'm sorry, Ms. von Minden,' the official had said. 'Your application has been disapproved.'

'But . . . but why?'

In answer, the official began taking from the file documents and photographs, sliding them across the desk. Gabi saw herself in the photographs, standing on rostra while speaking to crowds, standing in crowds while carrying signs, signing petitions while being photographed.

She didn't understand. Her face said as much.

'We still take some immigrants from Old Europe,' the consular explained. 'But we don't really need them. We get plenty of high quality applicants from Latin America, India, Japan, China, Vietnam . . . all over. We not only don't need Europeans anymore, we don't really want them.

'I'm sorry to have to say it this way but . . . you're diseased, you see . . . politically diseased. You're in the process of losing your own homeland. You brought it on yourselves and it's become irreversible now. So ask yourself: Why should we accept into our country people with a history of destroying the country they live in?

'You're diseased, Ms. von Minden, and you're contagious. We had a long bout with the disease that's afflicted Europe, and it killed millions of us. Why should we allow any more contamination?

'Europe abandoned its future for a short period of comfort in the present, and you . . . you personally'—the consular's hand waved towards the pictures and documents on the desk—'encouraged this. Europe stopped having children, who are the future—because it was too uncomfortable, too inconvenient. Europe began taxing the future to buy comfort in the present. Europe let in millions of inassimilable, and therefore inherently hostile, foreigners to do the work that the children which you did not have could not do. And thus you have no future—you sold it—but only a past. Why should we let you take away our future? What do we owe you that we should risk that?'

'But my daughter? Her father was an American citizen!'

'We know. But he was not a citizen until well after your daughter was born. Thus, she is not a citizen. Worse, you raised her and she probably carries the same political disease you do. We don't want her either.

'For whatever it's worth, I'm sorry for you both.'

Chapter Twenty

The grandchild, far from being incidental, is decisive. Civilization persists when there is a widespread sense of an ethical obligation on the part of the present generation for the well-being of the third generation —their own grandchildren. A society where this feeling is not widespread may last as a civilization for some time—indeed, for one or two generations it might thrive spectacularly. But inevitably, a society acknowledging no transgenerational commitment to the future will decay and decline from within.

—Lee Harris, 'The Future of Tradition'

Flight Seven Nine Three, 24 Muharram,

1538 AH (4 November, 2113)

The first thing Hamilton noticed when he entered the cockpit and stood beside the pilot was that Ling (he knew, at some level, that Ling was being teleoperated but still thought of the body as Ling's) was crying, tears coursing down her cheeks in an endless flood. Retief was sitting next to the pilot in the copilot's chair.

'I'm sorry if—'

—'I need you to set me down,' Hamilton answered. 'There's one of our team still on the ground, at an-Nessang.'

'Not going to happen,' the pilot answered. 'I've lost so much lift that it's—no pun intended—up in the air as to whether I'll be able to make it across the lake to Switzerland. If I waste the altitude I've got I won't make it across.'

'Fuck!' Hamilton exclaimed. 'Parachutes?'

'Civilian airliners don't carry chutes,' Retief answered. 'Bad for passenger morale, don't you know.'

'I've got to get on the ground,' Hamilton insisted. 'If things had gone according to plan I'd have driven away from the castle—'

'Things never do,' the pilot said.

Retief thought about that for a moment, then said, 'There is a way but —'

'What is it, man?'

'We've got the winches to hold the ship down when it's landed and the winds are high. But they don't have much cable to them.'

'How much is 'not much'? Can they reach to the ground?'

'What's our altitude over ground?' Retief asked the pilot.

'About three hundred feet. It's staying pretty stable for now, since the ground is descending slightly.'

'Not enough,' Retief answered. 'Can you make a thirty or forty foot jump?'

Shit, my knees.

'Not a lot of choice,' Hamilton answered.

'Not a lot of time, either,' The pilot commented, looking at the map on his navigation screen. 'I'm having to balance lift from speed with loss of buoyancy from air pressure forcing lifting gas out. It's a bitch! Then again, I am the best. An-Nessang in . . . call it . . . oh, about five minutes . . . a little less.'

'Fuck it,' Hamilton said to Retief. 'Let's do it.'

'Any particular direction from the town you want to be dropped off?' the pilot asked, as Hamilton and Retief exited the cockpit.

'Right over it, if you can,' Hamilton answered over his shoulder. 'Maybe I'll luck out and find a soft roof about twenty feet below.'

'Stand on the hook,' Retief said.

Hamilton looked at the thing dubiously. Not that the hook didn't look strong; it was huge and solid. Rather, he was thinking of what it