"Susanne Osthof? Have you heard of her? Do you think for a minute she didn't participate in her own kidnapping in Iraq? They even found money on her that was paid for her ransom!"
"There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for that, Mahmoud. The kidnappers simply reimbursed her for property she lost when they took her." Gabi looked upon Mahmoud with suspicion. "It's that Catholic priest who's filling you with this nonsense, isn't it?"
"You really believe both those things, don't you?" Mahmoud seemed to wilt. Before her calm, he felt his rage melt away.
"What I believe is that since you took up this Christian nonsense you've gone from a very reasonable and very bad Moslem to a very unreasonable and altogether too 'good' Christian. Relax, Mahmoud; there are several hundred millions of us. It will be a very long time before the nuts take over here."
"There are several hundred million of you that are spiritually empty vessels that Islam is eager to fill," Mahmoud said. "It's your lack of faith that makes you, and Europe, vulnerable."
Gabi shook her head. She was quite comfortable without religion, indeed, to the extent she retained some trappings of it,
those
made her uncomfortable. She couldn't imagine converting, and especially not to such an austere and anti-female faith as Islam. (As she saw it, Islam was anti-female; there were many who would have disputed that.) Since she could not imagine it for herself, imagining it for any substantial numbers of other people was simply inconceivable.
Mahmoud sat heavily on the couch next to Gabi and reached out to take her hand. "Please come with me?" he asked, for the hundredth time.
"To America? Mahmoud, I can't, I just
can't
. Anyplace but there."
"It is the only safe place for us, Gabi. It's the only place in the world with the will, the faith, the heart, and the strength of culture to remain free."
Gabi snorted. "Culture? America
has
no culture."
"This culture they don't have? It seems to dominate the world pretty well for something nonexistent."
Undeterred, Gabi marched on. "It's a place where the poor are free to sleep under bridges in the winter, yes? It's a place where the rich are free to exploit the workers, no? It's a place with race riots and lynchings . . . a place where the garbage is piled a meter deep to either side of their ramshackle highways."
"You really believe that? Racism? What does racism mean when blacks in America have higher per capita incomes than whites in Europe."
"That's not true anymore," Gabi answered huffily, pulling away her hand. "I just saw the figures and—"
"Don't think just about some exchange rates," Mahmoud interrupted. "Think purchasing power parity. And there, Sweden is beneath Mississippi. Why do you have ten percent unemployment when America's is under five percent? It's not even supposed to be possible to
get
under five percent, but they've done it. And most of the Americans are out of work only for a very short time. Most of Europe's unemployed are going to stay unemployed. Ah . . . never mind that. Just answer: How are you going to make jobs for all the Moslems if you've got ten percent unemployment? Coolie jobs? Do you think they'll settle, in the long run, for coolie jobs? In the last sixty years Europe has created maybe five million jobs, almost all of them in government, which produces nothing. America has created more than ten times as many, almost all of them productive."
"I still can't go with you, Mahmoud. I just can't."
The weakness of the Arab nations stems from the fact that they buy weapons instead of choosing to do their own research. If it chose the latter course, an Arab state could pull off two miracles at one stroke: invest in an army of researchers and engineers, thus contributing to full employment, and free itself from military dependence on the West.
—Fatima Mernissi, modern, enlightened, liberal,
Moslem feminist,
Islam and Democracy
Petra watched as thick, greasy looking smoke poured up from a chimney—a new one, not one of the old—at Castle Honsvang, far down the slopes. She'd seen such smoke dozens of times before and never thought much of it unless the wind came from that direction. On those days, she generally closed the window of her perch and retired down to her quarters. Her mother had been a decent cook and had never made pork smell quite so burnt and quite so bad.
Fortunately, today the wind blew from some other quarter, leaving Petra free to enjoy the fresh fall air and to peruse her great- grandmother's journal. She'd read it all many times before; between Besma and Ling she'd become quite well lettered. Still she found herself drawn back to certain passages over and over. With a sigh she closed the journal after reading once more great-grandmother Gabi's
cri-de-coeur
for her lost Mahmoud.
"Silly woman, grandma," she whispered. "You should have gone . . . as you yourself realized eventually. God knows,
I
wish you had. I wish—"
The words were interrupted as Ling danced in, waving a sheet of paper and exalting, "He's coming here again, Petra! And he's going to be here for a long time he says!"
"He?"
"Your
brother
, silly. Hans arranged to be assigned to local security at Honsvang, down the hill. He's finished all his training and is being assigned as an officer in the 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."
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."
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—"