Critical Mass (36 page)

“Carpet-bomb Chechnya.”

“We’ve done enough suppression there. Anyway, we’d need our own version of Dream Angel.” He considered for a moment. “I will tell you this, Alexandrov: we have lost a war nobody knew we were fighting.” He raised his eyebrows, a smile touching his lips. “Including us.”

Alexandrov knew when to leave him alone, and quietly withdrew.

COMMUNICATION FROM THE MAHDI OF THE EARTH OF MUSLIM PEOPLE

GLORY TO GOD, THE CALIPHATE OF ETERNAL PEACE IS COME.

THE END OF TIME IS HERE.

Because the Crusader King, William Johnson Fitzgerald, did not perform
sadaha
, and the Christian churches were not closed, and an apostate decadent and fallen Muslim danced on the balconies of the greatest of these palaces of sin and evildoing, there has been a serious consequence.

An attempt has been made, also, upon the life of your guide, but as he is held hidden yet in the folds of Allah’s robe, he remains with you, and no amount of Crusader treachery can ever kill him or capture him.

Now, in view of the continuing Crusader apostasy, hear your Mahdi.

The law of Šar
’ah is enacted throughout the world, and replaces all other law.

You who suffer under the burden of debt, rejoice, for God has said it: your debt is canceled, and any trading in debt or with debt is liable under the Law. Further payment of debt will be punished under the Law. Extension of credit will be punished under the Law.

The existing authorities are ordered to arrest the money changers of the world, and the masters of debt, to wit, the chairmen of the leading banks, a list of whom will be sent to the kings and emperors of the world. And any citizen may also arrest them and bring them to prison, or imprison them himself, for the Glory of God and the Sanctity of His Word.

The use of intoxicants is forbidden now.

The apostate laws of marriage are ended, and now the only legal marriage is between professing Muslims. Divorced people may only marry other divorced people. The giving of proper bride wealth is obligatory for any wedding from today.

Women must strive to cease working at jobs outside of the home, driving automobiles, and going about uncovered. Gradually, the Law will be enforced, as women learn the happiness that it brings them. Adultery by man or woman, properly confessed or witnessed according to law, is punished by stoning until dead.

Sanctions against slavery are ended, and the holders of slaves may now go openly with their slaves.

All executions are now public. Crime is punished according to the Law. The thief must lose his hand, the murderer his head, and so on.

Criticism of Mohammed is no longer allowed, and to those who have the Crusader taste for satire and derogation, your Mahdi urges you: reflect carefully, for you are no longer free to curse God or his prophet.

We repeat, for the last time, that the Crusader King William Fitzgerald must at once perform
sadaha
before all mankind.

The Crusader King has an evil plan called the Dream Angel, which even at this moment is poised to visit death upon hundreds of millions of Muslim people. If the jets leave the fail-safe points where they are now cruising, fifty Crusader cities will be at once put to the atomic torch.

We have spared the Crusader capital, because the flagrant apostasy of the pope could not go unpunished. But unless
all
of the requirements listed here are met, the Crusader capital will be destroyed at midnight tonight, and it will then be known that the pure and noble forces of Allah cannot be stopped.

The glorious Day of Standing is upon us, and your Mahdi rejoices with you, in the name of Allah the Most Holy, and Mohammed who is his prophet.

LITTLE MARY SUNSHINE

The destruction of the Vatican and the burning of Rome brought silence to the
world. The streets, which in some places had been full of protestors and in others revelers, now became empty. Most TV and Internet outlets simply posted a copy of the Mahdi’s latest statement and left it there without comment. Radio stations recorded a reading of it, and repeated the recording over and over again, afraid to say anything else.

President Fitzgerald huddled with his family in the stripped wreck of the residence. He had not gone into the West Wing in days. When he spoke, it was in a whisper, to avoid being overheard by any listening devices that his attempt to sterilize the place had missed. He’d had the windows boarded up and covered with carpeting, to thwart laser-based listening, and with tinfoil, in a layman’s attempt to scramble radar and microwave systems.

He feared that the penetration of the government might have turned the surveillance capabilities of the U.S. intelligence community against its master. Not because it was probable, but because he could no longer be sure.

Thus the place looked like the lair of a madman, Howard Hughes or some such. To an extent, it was probably useful if those who came here went away whispering about Fitzgerald’s sanity. Let the new Mahdi hear rumors that he was unstable. Perhaps he would become overconfident, and be drawn into some sort of mistake.

Fitz stared at the latest pronouncement, delivered to him by his own son on a sheet of paper. Dan lingered near. Linda and Polly were in the president’s bedroom, which he and Linda shared. That one room he had left untouched. They were under strict orders to speak of nothing important there. For his part, he stayed out. When he slept, in uneasy fits and starts that were more like falling than falling asleep, he did it on a cot brought in by his Marines. “Rome,” he muttered.

“Dad?”

All the terror, all the rage, boiled up in him, blasting up from his deepest heart like bloodred lava. “
Rome! Rome Rome Rome
!”

Dan drew back. An uneasy Marine pushed open the door.

“I’m going to do it,” Fitz said. Four words, softly uttered by a man who wished to the great God that he had never heard of politics.

“You mean . . . release Dream Angel?” Dan asked.

Fitz laughed in his son’s face—barked it out, the bitter snap of it made harder by the flat echo off the stripped walls.

“I’m going to go out there”—he pointed vaguely toward the Rose Garden—“and I’m going to do
sadaha.
” He felt himself crumpling, his heart echoing like an empty cave, and then Dan was trying to hold him, his good son, strong son. Fitz added, “We can’t win. Not against this—this monstrosity. We need God and we ain’t got God, have we?”

“Of course we do,” Dan said.

Fitz advanced on the two young Marines in the room. “Out!”

They looked to Dan, young eyes darting under their helmets. Dan gave them a curt nod, and suddenly Fitz saw him as a sort of savior. Dan had the answers. Dan could retrieve this situation.

“What do you think I should do?”

“Dad, if we don’t release Dream Angel, Polly and I are going to live under Šar
’ah law. That’s going to be your legacy.”

“They’ll burn our heart out! Burn it out! Fifty cities!”

“Unless it’s a bluff.”

A rush of tingling raced up his arms, followed by swaying nausea. He moved quickly to a chair, immediately sank down in it. “Yeah,” he said. “Kennedy played chicken. I guess I can.” And then he saw it, saw it clear. “I will go down there and I will shout that
ula ula
shit for our little fucking unkillable Mahdi; then I will wait one hour.” He went close to Dan, embraced him in a hug that made him stiffen. They were not a touchy-feely
family. Fitz tried to stifle the loopy mirth that was coming up but couldn’t. Looming like a great, mad golem over his son, he giggled. “Then,” he managed to say, “I will release Dream Angel.”

“Dad . . . it’s a plan.”

“A good plan!”

“Why wait, though?”

“Throw him off.”

“The second those planes lock onto their courses and the cruise missiles are launched, he’ll know.”

“These are primitive people. They’ll be celebrating. Rattling goddamn bones.”

“They are not primitive. They’re smart and effective. You can do
sadaha
. Who knows, maybe it will throw them off. But you better sure as hell move Dream Angel out at the same time.” He seemed to swell before his father, and Fitz saw in him all the power, the pile-driver instinct, of their clan. “Break ’em, Dad. Break ’em! Because I don’t want to live like that, and I’m telling you, nobody does, not even the Muslims—the normal ones, that is.”

The moment Fitz had considered releasing Dream Angel, his next thought had been of the fire in the cities, London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid—who knew, perhaps Moscow and Beijing, too, and why not Tokyo, LA, Chicago, and, certainly, old New York? “ ‘What candles may be held to speed them all?’ ” he said. “ ‘Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes / Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.’ ”

“ ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth,’ ” Dan said. “Wilfred Owen. Verboten, now, under Šar
’ah.”

Dan suddenly seemed like a comic figure, somebody from the Sunday funnies, a capering, grinning goon. Fitz had to literally fight the urge to slap him down, it was so strong. He compelled his fists to open, compelled his mind to push away the savagery that was a hair’s breadth away from possessing him. “Okay,” he said, “time to chop-chop.
Logan
!”

The outer door opened immediately, and his chief of staff came in.

“You sound like you’re walking in socks even when you’re not,” Fitz commented. “That’s a joke, Son.” He turned to Logan. “Okay, my dear—” He went close to him, gazed into the eyes. Sad,
sad
! “We are going to do this so-called—what’s it called, Son?”

“
Sadaha
.”

Logan took a deep breath. “Sir, the entire cabinet is downstairs, and I think you owe it to the system to at least enter the Cabinet Room.”

“Ah, yes, of course I do. I owe them! I owe everybody! And hell, it’s real convenient, because now that slavery’s coming back, I can literally belong to everybody! Snap your fingers, here comes Fitz. The ultimate in public service. Cabinet Room, sure. Boots to lick, here I come!”

He saw Logan’s eyes flicker toward Dan, then come back again, not reassured. Fitz continued, “You know, you two fellas know me by the moles on my damn butt. But lemme tell you. I am light-years away. I look like I’m here. Yeah. But I am not here. I am way out on the far edge, and the wind is blowing from behind and I am looking down, and sliding closer, and while you guys are in the White House, the truth is, I’m looking down from this terrible precipice. And I know what I am seeing. It is the abyss.” He clapped his hands. “Dresser! Suit me!”

The bedroom door clicked. Cracked a little. Opened. Linda and Polly came out. “We released the staff,” Linda said. “But I can straighten your tie.”

Polly stood to one side, shoulders hunched. He knew her when she was like this, his pouty willow of a girl, her fifteen-year-old face capable of so easily breaking his heart or mending it, or sending it with her slightest smile into high orbit. “Hey, girl kid, you don’t look so hot.”

An eye rolled on the visible side of her face, rested on him for a moment, then looked away.

“You need makeup, too,” Linda told him. “You look dead.”

That made him smile, proving, he thought, that corpses can. “Just a little tired,” he said.