Despite saying she would not gloss over things, still she carefully avoided mentioning "hareems", "slavery", and "women as second-class citizens" as some of those "other problems".
"And now, come we to bring the water back, seemingly causing more trouble than anything else we've done. Appropriate, I suppose; it's the biggest, most ambitious project we've proposed for al-Saḥra', and it bodes well to become the most important change we can make for you. You will have surface water again; you will have weather, and it will be much more temperate than that provided by your unending cloudless skies, harsh sun, and air so dry it sucks the moisture from one's skin. You will be able to grow your own crops. You will have grasslands, and forests, and also rivers and lakes in which to fish and swim and otherwise enjoy."
She looked out at her audience. It was amazing what the voice could do, she thought; they were, mostly, hanging on her every word.
"Al-Saḥra'," she continued, "was not made to train the faithful."
Several of her audience laughed. But they were friendly laughs.
"Ah," she said, "you have read the book. Or seen the movie. But this is not Herbert's Dune; this planet is not Arrakis, and thank goodness, it has no sandworms or spice. It is merely al-Saḥra', and we know how to make the rains come without setting off nuclear bombs. Because, thankfully, it's much simpler in real life than in fiction."
She stepped down from the platform to a large, flat rock that was conveniently located in front of the podium. FTSA2 started to move in, but she waved them off. "I will give you a sign and a portent," she said. "'Take the rod, and assemble the congregation, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes, that it give forth its water; and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock; so thou shalt give the congregation and their cattle drink.'" She closed her eyes, found the aquifer about three miles down – they weren't that far from Jadida, after all – and willed the Mesh to create a small spring, as she had done at the research station weeks before.
"What does she do?" came a cry.
"Patience," counseled Bahadur, who had taken her place at the microphone.
And within a minute or two, the water Ariela had summoned broke through the surface, and a little spring started sprinkling the dusty ground and forming a little pool.
A hush fell over the group. Men started falling to their knees, staring at the spring, the pool, and the woman who had summoned them.
"There," she said, satisfied. "I have performed for you a miracle; I have brought forth water from the rock, as the LORD God commanded the patriarch and prophet Moses thousands of years ago. Do you doubt now my ability to bring back your seas and lakes and rivers? We will make of al-Saḥra' once more a jewel in the heavens; no longer al-Saḥra', the Desert, but al-Jawhara, the Jewel, a beautiful, blue-green marble in the vast ocean of space. I have seen this vision; it is a true vision; and though you see me as only a woman, and a troublesome one at that, nevertheless Allah will bless you through me, Ariela bat Aviva Chayah, the Lion of God who brings you a new springtime of life." She reached out her hands to them, plaintively, with heartfelt tears in her eyes. "Will you accept the blessing, and through it, my love for your people?"
"Stop!"
Blinking the tears away, she looked back, and saw the mullah. But he had not shouted for her to stop because he disapproved; rather, he stepped down with her, and knelt on the rock before her. "Upon this rock," said he, "build we peace. It is what you said to me when we planned this journey. Because it is my responsibility alone for what we say and do here, as the leader in Council, I wish for you to bless me first. Should Allah disapprove, let His punishment be upon my head, alone."
The rest of the kneeling men nodded gravely, and generally indicated agreement that this should be so.
"Very well, my friend Mullah al-Mubarak," replied Ariela, gently; and she took his hands, leaned down, whispered the blessing in his ear, then kissed his cheek.
He lifted his hand to his cheek in astonishment.
Well, thought Ariela, with some humor, they all do it.
"My brothers," called out the mullah, "I tell you, this is sanctioned; and Allah will approve."
The congregation let out a communal sigh, in relief.
Thus did Ariela bat Aviva Chayah bless the multitudes – or, at any rate, the hundred or so members of the Islamic Council of al-Saḥra' there present – that day.
And when everyone departed, by unanimous consent they left the little spring flowing, as a reminder of the accord thus concluded at the site of the new Grand Mosque.
◆
A few months later, at First Water, many dignitaries, scholars, and Marines assembled for what was being called the first Ceremony of the Wells. The academic research station had been moved up onto the small mountain that would become the island known as First Water; but the people assembled were all at the original site, down in the depths of what eventually would become a strait between the island and the mainland.
Of course, there were speeches.
Ariela declined to give one. She felt anything she had to say would be perfectly expressed by what she was going to do after all the speeches ended.
But of course, the governor made a speech. The mullah made a speech. Some academic administrator they'd hauled out from the university back on Earth made a speech. The Secretary of the Interior, also having been hauled out from Earth, made a speech.
Her father made a speech. On behalf of the President, but still.
Sitting through all that was brutal.
Thankfully, they'd had the sense to erect one of those big white tents people generally used for outdoor receptions, and there were several big air conditioners pumping cold air into the thing. So there was shade, and the temperature was bearable, and there was even a little humidity in the air.
She sighed.
"Boring, isn't it?" asked Beam, skimming the program handout, in the next seat over.
She nearly jumped out of her skin.
"You really have to stop doing that," she scolded him, under her breath.
"Relax," he said. "Nobody can see me, and if they look at you right now, they will merely see you looking bored. So I take it your participation in this will be to bring the first well to the surface."
"Yes. They brought the wellhead in about a week ago, and they've been tinkering with it ever since. And before you wave that off with a, 'who needs a wellhead, they've got you to do the adjusting,' you can forget that right now. I don't intend to spend the next two hundred years sitting around tweaking the wells by hand. They'll have a nice, well-lit, climate-controlled central control room where they'll handle that based on the programming you've done, but they think I did."
"You'll still be here for a while, starting twenty-four wells and helping them even out the flow so the planet doesn't flip on its axis or start wobbling, or its rotation doesn't slow down."
"Oh yes." She sighed. "Probably for ten years or so. In the meantime, the 1/1 will continue to keep an eye on things and make sure we don't end up with a full-tilt war between the remaining hardcores and the rest of the planet."
Beam raised an eyebrow. "I doubt they will remain here long. From what I can see, there are hotspots flaring on about a dozen of your colony worlds. While you have more than just the single battalion now, do not rest easy and assume your battalion will be able to stay here in one place – or even in one piece."
"And that's why we've been building both Space Force and the SFM to the levels we have today," nodded Ariela. "I got a classified, JCS-level briefing not long ago. It wasn't to fight a notional war against elements of the Darkness, or even to protect ourselves against other races like the Xzl5!vt. It was to put down rebellions and other related stupidity among our own people. And pirates, if we can ever figure out where they're basing. One battalion can't do all of that. And our people can be rather stubbornly stupid."
"Indeed," said Beam, impassively.
"You'd know. You made us this way."
"Oh – perhaps. I do believe more than a little of it was part of your own evolution, but I will admit to the odd bit of tinkering here and there before you Homo sapiens finally arose."
"To which you alluded when we first found out who you really were."
Beam chuckled. "Well, yes." He looked up. "I think your father is wrapping up."
"Oh, thank God."
"You're welcome."
"Beam."
"Yes?"
"Shut it."
Beam smiled hugely, patted her hand, and slowly faded out.
" . . . and in conclusion, I will simply introduce the person everyone has been waiting for, the person who will start the terraforming project into motion; my daughter, Colonel Ariela Rivers Wolff."
She rose, then, and to polite applause, she walked from the back of the room all the way up to the podium, where her father, beaming, yielded the podium to her. She looked out on her audience, collecting her thoughts.
"I had not intended to say anything," she confessed, to an appreciative murmuring and a laugh or two from the crowd. "But somehow we humans cannot start any great or important undertaking without acknowledging, and invoking the blessings of, Deity. It is baked into our very DNA, something I was reminded of a few moments ago while sitting in the back, listening to the proceedings.
"So I ask the LORD God to smile upon our activities and doings today, that He find them goodly and pleasant, and that He walk among us as we transform this desert world back into the garden it once was and shall be again. May He bless the inhabitants thereof, and may they know themselves to be blessed as they once again join the community of Mankind for the great and important works which lie ahead of us.
"And now," Ariela continued, gesturing behind her through the clear plastic side of the tent, facing the wellhead, "let us finally begin our project, so long delayed, with the opening of Wellhead Number One."
She closed her eyes, and concentrated on the Mesh.
"Upward flows the Water!" she cried.
And at first a trickle, then a stream, and finally a geyser of water burst forth from the wellhead, just as it had that first day many months ago. And again, "rain" began to fall on the roof of the tent, and a pool of water started to collect around the well.
But this time, thought Ariela, with a feeling of joy and satisfaction, I won't be closing it again for many, many years.
And my daughters – all of them, even the ones to come – will live to see a new world here.
I can hardly wait, she grinned at the sudden thought . . . to go to the beach!
PART II:
THE LION AND HER DAUGHTERS:
2249 AD
Chapter 1
The Musician
What's that racket?
The dark-haired woman sleepily opened her eyes and looked at her comm, which was set for alarm-clock mode, and groaned. 0426, it read, placidly.
Goodie. Two and a half hours of sleep. Why can't the drunks ever stay in their damn cabins? You'd think there'd be fewer of them on a high-class liner like the Star of the Orient, but you'd sure be wrong. In fact, it seems to go the other way – the higher the class, the more noisy drunks. Oh, well.
She rolled over on her other side, facing the bulkhead, shut her eyes, and tried to go back to sleep.
Wait. Was that gunfire?
Instantly awake and alert, the woman slid silently out of her bunk, tiptoed over to the stateroom's tiny desk, picked up her suppressed M1911 – already in Condition One – and flipped the thumb safety off. Next, she moved over to the side of the hatch and punched the button for the "peephole", which in this modern day and age was a 15cm LCD display next to a small speaker. It gave a nice, high-def, wide-angle view of the corridor for several yards in both directions.
She nodded, grimly, as she noted several men in assorted, mismatched armor carrying guns and herding other passengers down the corridor. The next stateroom on their agenda appeared to be hers, so she simply stayed where she was, her pistol pointed at the ceiling in the classic two-handed grip she'd been taught years before. The pirate who entered her room was going to be in for a big fat fucking surprise, she thought, angrily. Thankfully, I'm actually wearing a nightgown for a change, or it would be even more of a surprise.
In the screen, she saw one of the burly men stop in front of her door. He appeared to apply a device to the lock panel, and the hatch started to slide open, but stopped after only about an inch of travel.
She grinned, evilly. She always employed a doorstop device to slow down anyone who might try this sort of thing, even in groundside hotels. But she knew it wouldn't hold very long against a determined effort to open the hatch. On the other hand, that wasn't the point; the point was to give her extra time to prepare a welcome for her uninvited guests.
"Damn it, the bitch blocked the hatch."
"Well, get it open, dumbass," came from a little farther away.
A crowbar slid through the crack, and the pirate heaved. The doorstop disintegrated – damn it, I know that's the point, but those things are not cheap – and the hatch slid open.
The pirate walked in, bold as brass (they always were, she'd heard) and stood facing the bunk, which in the dim light, and due to the rumpled blankets, appeared to have someone in it – something she hadn't planned, but nodded absently as she realized he'd been duped. "Okay, bitch, out of bed," he roared, "your worst nightmare has arrived."
The woman lowered her arms, which conveniently placed the M1911 at about the pirate's armpit level, where there was a huge gap for flexibility – bigger than it normally would be, given the misfit armor – in the side of the plate carrier. "No," she said, matter-of-factly, "Your worst nightmare is standing right here."
And before he could turn to present armor plates at her, rather than nothing but the armpit of his spacer's coverall, she fired once.
Thank goodness I brought the suppressor . . . that would have been ear-splitting without hearing protection.
The pirate dropped like a stone, heart-shot, with a look of utter surprise on his face.
"Tiny? Tiny, what's going on back there?"
She nearly broke out laughing at the name of her erstwhile captor, but kept her discipline as she stepped over the body and peered out into the corridor, quickly looking both ways and confirming all of the pirates and their captives had passed her door to one side. She didn't feel anyone back the way they'd come, so she felt pretty confident in her assessment that they'd all passed by.
"I'm what's going on back here," she said, diffidently, stepping out to face them, pistol pointing dead at the nearest pirate, who did a double-take and started to swing his own pistol from his captive's back to meet this new threat.
She fired again. Headshot, right up the nasal cavity. He dropped, like Tiny, what was left of his face looking utterly surprised. His pistol clattered to the floor, causing the entire group, pirates and captives alike, to spin around to look at her.
"Next?" she asked.
"Now, little lady, let's not be hasty, here," said the pirate who had called Tiny a dumbass just a few moments before (and hadn't been altogether wrong about that, she thought). Apparently he was the leader of the pack. "There's six – er – five of us, and one of you." He stuck his pistol in the back of his captive's head – a tall, slender, rather vacuous-looking blonde who was barely covered in a black nightie that was almost too short. The blonde screamed.
Of course she did. They always do, at least in the holos.
She gave the leader a look. "Only five of you?" she asked. "I don't think that's particularly fair."
He leered at her, lasciviously. "We never intended it to be."
"No," she said, levelly, "I didn't mean that way. I meant, not fair it's just the five of you up against me."
She shot him, again in the head. While at first she'd been slightly concerned he might tighten up in his death throes and shoot the blonde, at the last second she'd noticed his trigger finger was actually in the "booger hook off bang swit
ch" position, and thrown that concern to the winds.
He dropped, again with that look of utter surprise.
The blonde screamed again. Of course.
"Three tangoes serviced," she announced. "Four to go. Anyone want to surrender? Of course, if you surrender, you're going to be spaced. Me shooting you might be your less painful way to end."
One of the remaining pirates tried to raise a comm to his mouth.
She shot the comm out of his hand, and then shot him, too, for good measure.
The blonde . . . oh, never mind.
"Four down, three to go," she said. "You're keeping me from my beauty sleep, and I'm just getting more angry as time goes on. I don't have to use kill shots, you know."
"Who the fuck are you?" stuttered one of the remaining pirates.
She sighed. "Not a fan?"
"What?"
"My name is Raven Wolff Fox. Worlds-famous blues guitarist. Want to take a guess at who my mother and grandfather are?" She looked him up and down. "No? Well, I learned how to shoot this big iron, here, when I was just a pre-teen, and my Grumpaw was who taught me. His name is Lieutenant General John Wolff, and he's the commandant of the US Space Force Marines."
"Shit, Jonesy," said one of the other pirates, in a low, quaking voice. "That means her mother – "
Raven nodded, sagely. "Is Ariela Rivers Wolff, the Lion of God." She paused as belated understanding of just how badly they'd fucked up started to percolate its way through the pirates' slow brains. "Any questions, or are you going to drop your fucking weapons and raise your fucking hands? I do have enough pews left in this iron for all three of you. And I rarely need a second shot. Unless I'm really, really angry . . . and as I said, I'm well on my way to getting to that point."
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