Chapter 1
When In The Desert, Have Dessert
"The mullah is madder than all hell," observed Fox.
Ariela sighed.
After an uneasy confrontation with the scientists, during which they'd admitted nothing because of "need-to-know", compartmentalized code-word clearances those worthies lacked, they'd packed everything back into Tumtum and the aircraft that had brought the scientific team, and flown back to the Newer Quarter, landing at what was more-or-less the local base for the USMC and USSFM stationed on the planet. A house and staff were also provided there for the convenience of the Commander of the 1/1.
"Fuck the mullah," said Delaney, helpfully. Major Delaney Fox, CO of the USSFM Intelligence Division's "Special Assignments" fire teams group, was visiting what was fast becoming her parents' new home away from home on al-Saḥra'.
"Hell no," muttered Ariela. "Not even in my worst bourbon-infused nightmares."
"One of my fire teams can eliminate him," offered Delaney.
"No!" shouted Ariela, exasperated. "We don't do that here. I don't care what your grandfather told you, we don't kill mullahs on al-Saḥra'!"
Delaney muttered something that sounded like, "He said we could make it look like an accident."
"Honey, no," temporized her father. "We can't create an accident and say he walked into it. They still venerate the ones you killed 'by accident' back at the turn of the century when you were supposed to be killing drug cookers, even if they did throw themselves in between you and the people you were trying to shoot."
"What does Bahadur say?" asked Ariela, interrupting any riposte her daughter might have been preparing.
Bahadur al-Hashimi was a former mechanical and nuclear engineer who had been installed as Colonial Governor by the United States way back in the late 2040's, after the abortive attempt by the South Chinese to worm their way onto the planet and into whatever the mullahs used for hearts, on the road to possibly asserting hegemony and supplanting whatever interests the United States had in the place – which was mostly as a dumping ground for radical Islamic fundamentalists. It just so happened that the mullahs had discovered a massive lode of precious metals and stones, which they let the South Chinese help them mine and exploit in return for advanced technologies they had no way to produce. Al-Hashimi had been their unwilling Chief Engineer for those projects; but in those days, when the mullahs said "jump", you asked "how high?" And he'd been unwilling enough (and pissed off enough) to set a home-made, Nagasaki-style nuclear bomb under the Alcubierre portal he'd been forced to build, and to key it to set off just after the facility was used to transport his two "slaves" – the woman who had later become his wife, and her daughter – to the orbiting transfer station, before the daughter could be sold on to another owner.
Which was how Ariela, her father, and his chum Chris von Barronov had met Prisha and Naira Aiyun – later al-Hashimi – and later Bahadur himself . . . but as they say, that is another story.
Fox shrugged. "He says he's tried to make him understand, but you know the mullahs this planet produces."
"Yeah." Ariela shuddered. "I do. The brainwashing they get in those madrassahs is worse than a prefrontal lobotomy." She looked in front of her and grabbed the bourbon bottle, uncorked it, poured a couple of fingers into the crystal tumbler on her desk, and took a long sip. "Ahhhhhhh," she sighed, savoring the liquid fire as it trickled down her throat.
"Mom," said Delaney, seriously, "day drinking is a bad thing, or so I'm told."
Ariela shook her head. "No big deal, the nanos will take care of it. I just drink for the taste." She grinned. "And it was a free bottle in front of me."
Fox snorted; Delaney rolled her eyes.
"So what exactly does this mad mullah want?" asked Delaney.
"He's upset that your mother made water come to the surface, might be able to do it again, and recreate the planet's ancient oceans," replied Fox.
Ain't no "might" about it, fumed Ariela, silently.
Delaney nodded, thoughtfully. "Yeah, they're big on the whole desert experience. Sucks to be them if we decide to terraform the planet from underneath them. They might have to learn to be civil and take a bath once in a while, like their co-religionists back home." She grimaced. "Every time I come back here, I have to get used to the smell of unwashed camel all over again. And the bad breath, I mean, jeez, pop a ToothNano once in a while."
"Not to mention having to wear a hijab when you go into the Older Quarter," replied her mother.
"No, I won't do that, and neither will Adrienne or Lyn," said Delaney, referring to Fire Team AS1's team sniper and their new medic, respectively. "We just go in wearing armor and all weaponed-up, along with the rest of the fire team. They're very respectful – at least, while we're in earshot." She frowned. "Since I just returned, I have no idea – did they ever give the Nameless City a name?"
Ariela nodded. "Bahadur took your suggestion, and it's now called al-Madinat al-Jadida. Or just 'Jadida' for short."
Delaney nodded back. "Sure. 'The New City', the old one being Medina back home, or 'New' for short. They have zero imagination, that's why the planet is named, 'the Desert'."
"Which is beside the point," said Fox, firmly.
He was a past master at shutting down arguments between his wife and his daughters. Whenever someone asked why he was so good at it, he would just shrug, and say, "Someone had to do it."
"So the point being," sighed Ariela, "I have to talk to this asshole, er, mullah."
"Yes."
"Is he here?"
"Yes." Fox looked at Delaney. "I'd advise you to scoot your ass out the side door, Major. If you don't want your unit caught up in this particular load of shit."
Delaney nodded, unperturbed. "Probably a good choice, Smaj," she replied. She turned and walked to the indicated door, opened it, then turned around with a smile. "Love you both!"
"Love you too, Del," said Ariela, with a grin. Fox just nodded, but he had a smile working somewhere under that all-business expression. Delaney waved, walked through, and shut the door behind her.
"I guess we should let the bastard in," noted Ariela.
"May I suggest a new strategy?" asked Fox, still not openly smiling.
"Of course, Fred. You know I depend on your advice."
"Let the mullah win." Now he did grin, widely.
Ariela rolled her eyes so hard, she was faintly surprised they didn't end up facing backwards. "How long have you had that one stored away, cherishing and polishing it?"
Fox looked at the ceiling, thinking about it. "When was the first time I ever saw that movie?"
"Beats me. I had to come all the way from my timeline to yours, plus uptime nearly thirty years, to meet you. As if I know what movies you saw during your misspent youth."
"I'll just let the mullah in, then."
"Yeah. You do that."
"You might want to put the bottle and the glass away. And pop a ToothNano."
"Oh. Good idea." Ariela hastened to hide the bourbon and her crystal tumbler in a desk drawer, then grabbed and bit down on a ToothNano, as Fox walked over to the main office door, opened it slightly, and said something to one of his men standing outside. He waited a moment, then swung the door open, allowing a white-robed, turbaned mullah to enter the room.
Ariela remained seated. "Mullah al-Mubarak. A pleasure to see you, sir."
Her tone made it clear that it was anything but. Fox winced. The mullah paid no mind, but crossed the floor to the indicated chair, and sat down. He muttered something under his breath. Something that sounded like, "'ant eahirat jundi allaeib shaqra' mubiadatan."
Problem was, even if Ariela hadn't been fluent in Arabic, her Mesh connection to the Great Simulation would have translated it for her. She sat back, a look of serene contemplation on her face, deciding whether or not to blast him for calling her a bleached-blonde play-soldier whore.
"Unlike some," she replied to him, calmly, in his own language, "I don't sit around the hare
em all day waiting breathlessly with my sister-wives for a stinking camel-fucker to come decide whether or not he wants to sleep with me, or if I have to make do with Mr. Thumb and his four stalwart sons tonight. I have better things to do – like make sure your people don't get up to any stupid shit I'd have to take official notice of."
The mullah started.
"I don't 'play soldier,' either; I did Basic and OCS and all sorts of other things, I'm a rifleman, expert marksman in both pistol and rifle, and I've served my time as a junior officer in responsible positions leading combat-ready Space Force Marines. And my hair is not bleached. It is natural, just like my mother's. I'd prove it, but only my husband and my doctor are privy to that, so you'll just have to take my word for it."
"The word of an infidel woman?" snorted the mullah.
Ariela remained calm, and said, softly, "Mullah al-Mubarak, you know who and what I am."
Fox recognized that voice. It was her buttery-smooth "Lion of God" voice. Well, if that won't calm him down, nothing will, he thought, grimly, fingering the butt of his holstered M12 Harbinger machine pistol.
"Try not your witchery on me, infidel," growled the mullah, but in normal tones, not shouting as Fox would normally have expected.
That's a start.
"Mullah, it isn't witchery; but I don't expect to convince you of that, so we'll have to leave it for what it is," said Ariela, still in the same soft tones. "I have merely a diplomatic duty to discharge here. You are upset about the proposed terraforming. You are even more upset that I seem to have brought water from the rock, in a manner you might consider miraculous, had it been anyone but an infidel woman who did it."
"We were told we would be left to run our planet as we saw fit."
"Yes," nodded Ariela, "and it was barely a generation before your predecessors violated one of the cardinal points of the agreement with the United States government. Even after the Marines came, ran off the South Chinese, and imposed a military government and a civilian governor on you, you couldn't live in peace, but started perverting the outmigration program we set up by turning outmigrants into drug mules. But since your people – or you on your people's 'behalf' – refuse antithanatic nanos, of course you weren't around then. Sergeant-Major Fox and I were. And we remember. I, personally, remember all the way back to Long Beach. And 9/11." She sat back in her chair, watching the mullah's expression change. He couldn't be much more than fifty, in Earth years; maybe not that old. "How far back do you remember, Mullah al-Mubarak?" she inquired, gently. "And why do you think we would allow you a free hand here on al-Saḥra' after we tried that once and got burned for our trouble? That is all myth and story to you, I am sure, but I assure you, to us, it is as fresh as the day it happened."
The mullah snorted. "You saved the Governor's whore wife and his daughter. This is known."
"Call us 'infidel' all you like – we revel in the term – but you will stop with the 'whore' shit, right now," said Ariela, still gently, "or you will certainly regret it. Thus saith the Lion of God."
Her voice may have been soft, but when the mullah looked her in the eye, he saw the glint of steel. And swallowed, nervously.
"Mullah," Ariela went on, "cannot you visualize the future of al-Saḥra'? I can. I see your people in two possible worlds. One is the one you are leading them into by your intransigence. It is the world of Iblis, the Shaitan, and Jahannam. This is not what you preach and promise to your people, if only they can keep faith against the infidel; nay, it is quite the opposite.
"The other is a world of sweet milk and honey . . . and free flowing water on the surface of this planet. Plants. Animals. A fig tree for every man and woman, under which he and she may rest and not be afraid. A living world, instead of this desert, this world of death you believe will hone and try your people. The question being, against what?
"For nearly a hundred years we have waited for your people to understand the choice represented by their removal to al-Saḥra'. Heaven or Hell; Paradise or the Abyss; God or the Devil. You may have Heaven if you wish it; we certainly wish it for you. As for Hell, well, the USMC and the Space Force Marines will see to it that is exactly where your people go, if they continue to resist us. Our patience with you is coming to an end. Mullah, when that day comes, where will you go?" Ariela shook her head. "Habitable planets, while we do find them occasionally, do not grow on trees. Face it; Al-Saḥra' was a gift to you, primarily because nobody else wanted it, but also because wiping you out on Earth would have been much, much simpler.
"It is not the first time I have offered life and death, the blessing or the curse. But offer is all I can do; you and your people must make the choice. Mullah, the universe needs your people. But it cannot use the flawed tool you are making of them. It needs them to follow the path of goodness in Islam, to learn to live in peace even with those who do not care to follow the same path."
"Gift or no," demurred the mullah, "it is sure you cannot believe there is any good in Islam. Else we would not be here on al-Saḥra' today."
Ariela shook her head. "No. Quite the opposite. We put you here because we could not believe there was not good somewhere in Islam. Otherwise, why bother? You know what we did to China. We had more reason to do it to you – and would have, had al-Saḥra' not been discovered in the nick of time. You can thank my father and my uncle for that, by the way; they had to do some fast talking to stop the U.S. leadership from simply wiping your population centers off the face of the planet, after they broke every speed record in the book returning to Earth with the news." She smiled, still gently. "And they had little reason to speak on your behalf. Particularly not my father. Yet even he believed there had been enough death, enough destruction."
The mullah sat back, thoughtfully.
"I am come among you now as a friend, bearing the olive branch of peace," Ariela said. "As a prophet?" She shrugged. "Perhaps. No matter what you believe, or what you see in me, it profits neither of us to continue to glare at each other across a divide, whether real or imagined. There are more important matters to concern all of us solely as human beings, regardless our differences. And there are other, better ways to hone and try your people as Allah doth require."
"You do not threaten our ways, then." The mullah raised an eyebrow, unconvinced.
"In the main, I could care less about your ways. I'm much more interested in whether or not you choose to be human. And side with other humans, in a pinch." Ariela put on a serious look. "Many years ago, we outlawed slavery on al-Saḥra' and emancipated your slaves because humans do not enslave other humans. Yet you should recall, we did not outlaw polygamy, or the keeping of concubines, so long as male and female alike understood they had the same rights as any other citizen – to live freely, to stay if they wished, or leave if they did not. We did insist on a civil divorce law through secular courts, and instituted a commission to look out for the welfare of women and children. But have we not otherwise left you to live and worship as you will?"
"Here, yes," admitted the mullah, grudgingly. "Yet, you have disallowed us from returning to Earth to perform the Hajj."
"For good reason. We were asked by your own Muslim brethren not to allow it." Ariela sighed. "They are happy, content, and engaged with the world. And still some of the toughest fighters humanity has – but in service to all humanity, not just a fraction of it. The last thing they want is a load of radicals coming back from al-Saḥra' to turn their children into jihadis. There has been enough of that in our history, and nobody has either the time or the inclination to put up with it any longer."
"They are not our brothers in Islam," replied the mullah, but in a neutral tone.
"And they say the same of you," countered Ariela. "Come, sir, are we now to trade such trivialities and banalities until the sun sets this evening in the West? We need to arrive at an accommodation, Mullah al-Mubarak, because as surely as the sun will set, and, come the morn, will rise again in the East, change is going to come to al-Saḥra, regardless of anything eit
her you or I can say or do to prevent it. Your own people eventually will see to that, as they more and more become disaffected with the life of privation you force upon them. As the winds of change blow across your world, you have a binary choice: Lead, or get out of the damn way. If you wish your voice to be heard in moderation, merely following is not an option." She sat back in her chair, folded her arms, and stared at him.
There was a moment of silence.
"I am not blind to the plight of my people. But it is not only myself you need convince," pointed out the mullah. "I answer to a Council in which I am merely the first among equals."
Got him.
She glanced at Fox. Her husband was standing on the other side of the room, out of the mullah's frame of vision. He was holding two thumbs up in agreement.
In the soft voice, she said: "Then, Mullah, perhaps we might bring in the tea and some light refreshment, and discuss how to bring them around."
He inclined his head, looking at her with a new appreciation. "Perhaps we might, at that, Colonel Wolff."
She waved at Fox, who pulled out his comm and spoke quietly into it.
Definitely got him.
◆
The next meeting on her agenda started out more smoothly, but with more outright acrimony. It was held in the laboratory and barracks space (a former warehouse module on the spaceport proper) the academic study group had been assigned when they arrived, six months prior, and the 1/1 had been handed their security duty. Ariela had protested to higher that this was something better done by private security, but had been overridden since the team was on official business for the Department of the Interior.
After tense good-afternoons were exchanged, things got a little ugly.
"Colonel Wolff," blustered the chief scientist of the terraforming survey, "you cannot simply hide behind 'top secret, compartmented information for which you are not cleared,' when something like what happened out there in the flats happens on your watch."
Ariela sighed. "Code-word, Dr. Bisset. Code-word. As in, seven people in the entire Galaxy have access to the code-word compartment wherein lies the explanation for what happened yesterday." Eight, if I include a humongous, quantum quaternary logic so far away from here I'm not sure even I know where it is, she thought, glumly. Speaking of code-word compartmented.
The Lion in Paradise Page 2
