Arslan

no more than a steppingstone to him—there he stood, smiling, with a baby in his arms. “This is Sanjar,” he said.

I focused on the child. “Sander?”

“San-jar!” He rolled the name joyously, all but singing it.

Arslan’s son. He was either small for his age or advanced for it. From a distance I had taken him for no more than a babe in arms, but he had the bright boy-face of a three-year-old. Now he put his hand commandingly on Arslan’s mouth and said something that sounded very clear, though it certainly wasn’t English. Arslan chuckled, shaking his head away from the little brown fingers. He might have been any proud young soldier-father.

Then Hunt Morgan walked out onto the porch beside Luella. He’d been gone four years at the fastest- changing time of a boy’s life, but I knew him at once. I hurried up the walk to shake his hand, and Arslan followed.

He was taller than Arslan; almost as tall as I. He had grown a soft little fringe of beard, as dark as his hair, and with his big dark eyes and soft mouth he looked like a Persian prince out of the Arabian Nights.

“Hello, Mr. Bond.” His handshake was solid. He wore Turkistani fatigues, with a sheath knife at his belt.

“Franklin,” I corrected.

Arslan set down the child, who promptly trotted over to the porch rail and started trying to climb it. With a clatter of heels, the red-scarfed woman flashed up the steps, swooped him up in her arms, and whirled on Arslan. I stood back comfortably against the house wall and watched. Arslan as a family man was a spectacle I’d never thought to see.

Whatever you could say for her temper, there was nothing wrong with her looks. Halfway through her tirade, she jerked off the red scarf, underlining her argument with a long loop of auburn hair. Her crackling eyes were blue, though her skin was the color of buckwheat honey. Arslan stood rocking on his feet, laughing at her. The child struggled down from her arms and went back to his rail-climbing unnoticed. With a final burst, the woman spun away and stalked into the house. Arslan lit a fresh cigarette and turned to Hunt and me. He was obviously charmed with the whole affair.

“I am taking the same room for myself, sir,” he announced. “And the same room for Hunt. Sanjar and Rusudan will use the southwest room.”

“Nice of you to leave me my bedroom.”

I didn’t realize at the moment how nice it was. The southwest room wasn’t big to start with, and Arslan’s orders crowded into it not only the mother and child, but four of the attendant women. The others—there were three or four more of them—disappeared in the course of the afternoon, touching off a general flutter of protest from the rest and a storm from Rusudan (if she had any more name or title than that, I never heard it). This time Arslan was roused to shout back at her, and she retreated up the stairs, spitting defiance with every step. Rusudan—her harsh name matched the metallic timbre of her voice and her harridan temper, but her features were clear and sweet. Arslan stood with hands on hips and grinned after her.

Not one of the women seemed to speak anything that could pass as English, though Rusudan made one or two stabs at it. Luella had her hands full, getting them settled in. I walked out of the confusion early, and into what would be Hunt’s room again.

Hunt stood in the middle of the floor, gazing mildly around. “Welcome home,” I said.

He gave me a sharp look—not sure if that was meant kindly. “How have things been?”

“Not too good, Hunt, but we’re surviving. Your folks are well.”

His mouth quirked with humor. “Which of us invites the other to sit down?”

“It’s your room.”

“It’s your house. Let’s sit down, shall we?”

We did, he on the bed and I on the one chair. “Well, there’s a lot to fill in,” I said. “Where have you been, and what’s happened?”

He spread his hand, palm down, a foreign kind of gesture. “Bukhara.” That seemed to be the end of the sentence. He hunched forward confidentially, but he was looking at his hands, not at me. “I tried to kill him once.” He shot me a glance, smiled faintly, and lowered his eyes again. “Like old times, isn’t it? Except that this time I can say I really tried to do it.” Now he drew the knife from his sheath and laid it across his knees, stroking his fingertips along the steel. It was a very practical-looking blade. “Not with this one,” he said. “This one was his own; he gave it to me, afterwards.”

No doubt there was a very interesting story there, as well as a very romantic one, but I didn’t want to hear it—not right now. Hunt wasn’t talking to me, he was playing a role, and, from the sound of it, one he’d acted out in his head till he knew it by heart. “What did you see of Turkistan?” I asked him.

He raised his eyes to me. “The Black Sands are gray. The Red Sands are pink.” He made the motion of a smile.

“Were you disappointed?”

He shrugged, eyes drifting downward again. “It’s a question of viewpoint. You can walk up and down hill all day and think you’ve gotten somewhere; but if you fly over the same area at ten thousand feet, you see that it’s really only—”

“No, I don’t!” He looked up, startled. “If it is a question of viewpoint,” I said, “then you can forget about that ‘really.’ I don’t think much of the objectivity of anybody who spends his life on the ground, and then the first time he goes up in a plane he hollers, ‘Oh, that’s what the world really looks like!’ If he’d spent his life in the plane, then the first time he got down on the ground he’d say, ‘Oh, this is how the world really is!’ That’s all hogwash. Reality is whatever you’ve got to deal with.”

His eyes lightened a moment. Then he closed his hand on the knife hilt and stood up abruptly, sheathing the knife with a practiced motion. “I ought to warn you. In case you’re involved in any plots against Arslan, or happen to get involved, or happen to hear of any, don’t tell me. Don’t even give me a hint. I’m afraid there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect him.”

“If that were true, Hunt, you wouldn’t have warned me.” We smiled at each other cordially, without contact.

“Ah,” he said. “Do robots have souls? That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“You’re not a robot,” I told him. “Don’t flatter yourself with that idea. You’re a human being endowed with free will, and you can’t get rid of it.”

“Ah.” He was—what?—eighteen now. “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I said. “I’m talking about responsibility. You’re still responsible for your actions. And your decisions.”

He tilted his head in polite incredulity. It was one of Arslan’s mannerisms. “Aren’t free will and responsibility distinct?”

“Not to me.”

He shrugged. “I don’t act. I don’t decide.”

“You can’t help it,” I said. “You’re doing both of them all the time. How do you know? You may have changed the course of history right here and now by warning me not to trust you with any plots. There are things you can’t control, sure, outside of you and inside of you; but you decide what to do about those things, and you act on that decision—whether you know it or not.” He was listening closely. Hunt had always been a courteous boy. “And not many people are decisive and active enough to try sticking a knife into Arslan.”

He couldn’t hold back a pleased little private smile at that. “Think about it, Hunt. And remember I’m always on your side. Your side, not Arslan’s.” I patted his shoulder once, and I left him.

I wanted information, not bungled assassination attempts. I wanted to know what Arslan had been doing to the world for four years, and what brought him back here now. And what, if anything, Evergreen had been.

He had been back three weeks, spending most of his time with Nizam, when the changes started. One morning there was an unobtrusive placard on the notice boards. Announcement, it said modestly. The curfew is abolished, effective immediately. By order of General Arslan.

There wasn’t any rush to take advantage of that order. For one thing, nobody wanted to be the first to test