Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #213

by TTA Press Authors

  Years later, at his wife's insistence, he'd taken a few weeks off work at the shipyards, dressed in the clean white ihram robes, and flown to Mecca for an abbreviated pilgrimage. The journey from Fujian to Arabia had only served to make him envy the pilot his chance to fly. The pilot, a dullard from the steppes of Mongolia, took no joy in his office, laggardly shuttling his charges from airstrip to airstrip, as though he were steering a ferry across a sluggish river, not racing across the skies. Yusuf, whose astigmatism had kept him from qualifying for the pilot's exam, seethed in annoyance, clutching the hem of his ihram robes.

  On landing in Mecca, Yusuf and the other pilgrims walked together to the Holy House, dutifully reciting the prayer of submission. But as they made their way through the narrow valley, their little company joined with the hordes of others, who had traveled overland across the desert from Rabigh in the north, or Riyadh in the east.

  Yusuf had felt nothing of the elation of his first hajj, only an insuppressible annoyance at the jostling, foul-smelling mob around him, and the still, dry heat of the valley air, which he'd scarcely noticed in his youth, was now inescapable. The crowds, swirling around the black-curtained walls of the Kaaba, were so dense that, when passing the eastern corner, Yusuf never came near to touching, much less kissing, Al-Hajarul Aswad, the Black Stone.

  At the time, Yusuf had felt that the holy city had changed somehow in the intervening years. That the world had become a meaner place when he was not looking. But now, lying in his bed in the still dark hours of the early morning, the sound of the Tiankong explosion still ringing in his ears, Yusuf knew that it was not the world that had changed. It was he himself who was no longer the same.

  * * * *

  Yusuf arrived at the shipyards early the next morning. Before he'd even had his morning qahwah, he called the three surviving members of the Taikong One launch crew to appear before him—Ruan, Yan, and Diao.

  When the men had assembled in Yusuf's small office, he explained to each of them their new roles, from this point forwards. “Ruan,” Yusuf said, addressing the man previously responsible for environmental mechanics in the crew capsule. After Hsiao, he had been the most senior member of the team. “You're now my second."

  His mouth drawn into a tight line, Ruan nodded. Yusuf knew that the man had been angling for an advancement in station for years, but knew too that Ruan had been a close friend to Hsiao for just as long, and that he took no joy in accepting the blood-stained position.

  "Yan—” Yusuf addressed the man who heretofore had overseen propulsion “—Diao—” he turned to the man at Yan's side, who had been a back-up member of the Taikong One launch crew “—you are both now elevated in rank as a result of yesterday's ... tragedy ... and each of you will be required to take on additional responsibilities.

  "However, given the short time before we must accomplish our goals, I'm afraid you don't have time to train your own replacements. As a result, you must continue to do your original tasks, while taking on your new roles. Everyone—” Yusuf looked around the room at the three men with a gesture that included himself, as well as everyone beyond the walls of his office “—everyone will have to work double shifts, if we are to get things done in time."

  The men scowled, and Diao grumbled beneath his breath, but none of them complained outright. They were all as emotionally invested in the Tiankong project as Yusuf himself, and he knew that they all wanted just as badly as he for their mission to be a success.

  * * * *

  After the noon prayers, Yusuf was back in his office when his assistant, a Hindi named Jaiveer, entered to tell him that he had a visitor.

  "Who is it?” Yusuf said, not looking up from the papers spread before him.

  "Commander Qiu Liwei,” came a familiar voice, and Yusuf looked up to see a man dressed in the uniform of the Imperial Navy of the Air standing in the doorway. Yusuf had spoken with the commander on several occasions, since the first days of the Taikong project. A decorated pilot, Qiu had been seconded from the Imperial Navy to the Ministry of Celestial Excursion, and his was the responsibility to oversee the selection and training of taikonauts.

  "Come in, please, Commander Qiu,” Yusuf said, motioning the commander to a chair while Jaiveer backed out into the corridor, closing the door behind him. “What is it I can do for you?"

  "What...” Qiu broke off, rubbing his blood stained eyes. Then, blinking rapidly, he continued. “Sorry. I'm ... I'm not quite flying at full speed today."

  "You'll have to forgive me saying so, commander, but you don't look very well."

  The commander gave a rueful chuckle and, climbing to his feet, began to pace the length of the small office. “I was up all night on the radio. First with my superiors at the Imperial Navy of the Air, then with my superiors at the Ministry of Celestial Excursion, and then again with my Navy superiors, asking me what the Ministry bureaucrats had said, and finally radioing to the families of the three taikonauts who got themselves killed in yesterday's explosion."

  Yusuf drew a heavy sigh, and nodded. “Yes, I had to radio the families of the five engineers and technicians yesterday afternoon. An ... unpleasant task."

  "Well,” Qiu said with a shrug, “it is one of the necessary burdens of leadership, but I'd gladly pass it to other hands, if I could. I'd prefer the bickering and intrigues of ministry and military politics to that unpleasant duty, any day."

  Qiu had continued the course of his pacing, and now stopped before an antique pistol, framed in a glass case on the wall. He looked at it admiringly for a long moment, and then glanced over his shoulder at Yusuf. “You know, I don't believe I've ever noticed this before. It's the vintage of the War Against the Mexica, is it not?"

  "Yes,” Yusuf said, a little wistful. “It belonged to my wife's father, Foreman Lin, my predecessor at the shipyards. He served in the Army of the Green Standard during the last years of the campaign, and carried that pistol with honor. When he died, a few years after he'd given me his daughter's hand in marriage, I inherited his position, his office, and his wife who now lives with my family. In many ways I am living a continuation of his life, so it only seemed fitting to leave his heirloom there, on the wall."

  A long silence fills the room, stretching out.

  Finally, Yusuf took a deep breath through his nostrils, his chest expanding, and spoke. “But I doubt you have come to exchange news of our evenings, Commander, or to hear about my family's history."

  "No,” Commander Qiu said, shaking his head sadly. He slipped into the seat opposite Yusuf, and rested his hands on the front of the desk. “I've come for a status update on the Taikong project."

  "But I gave the Ministry of Celestial Excursion an update this morning, and the Imperial Navy of the Air an update the night before. Nothing has changed since my reports."

  "I have heard the official reports—” Qiu waved his hand in a dismissive gesture “—but I want to speak to you about the realities of their situation. We should speak as men, not as pawns of distant bureaucrats and politicians. I lost three good pilots last night, and you five of your best techs, to say nothing of a fortune in precision-engineered machinery that was blasted into dust and charred debris. And now our masters are instructing us that, while a delay of a few months is acceptable, pushing the date of the manned launch to next year or the year after is most definitely not. If this mission isn't successful, I'm going to find myself in a junker, flying patrols on the Vinland-Mexica border, and my life expectancy will be shorter than that of a bowl of rice in the hands of a starving man. I'm not sure what they'll do to you, but I assure you it won't be any more pleasant."

  Yusuf steepled his fingers, and looked at Qiu thoughtfully. “You're asking whether it's possible to pull in the schedule of Taikong Two far enough that we can launch and land before the end of Metal Dragon year."

  "Yes,” Qiu said simply.

  "Will you have the taikonauts ready to crew the mission?"

  "If you have a rocket ready to light, I'll have the pilo
ts to squeeze inside."

  Yusuf nodded, and thought for a long moment. “Then you should start selecting your taikonauts at once. We will launch Taikong Two into orbit this year."

  Qiu clapped his hands, and rose to his feet. “Well, then, I suppose I should let you get back to work.” He opened the door, pausing only briefly to call back over his shoulder. “Good luck, Yusuf,” the commander said, and then he was gone.

  "I'm going to need it,” Yusuf whispered, turning his attention back to the papers before him. “We all are."

  * * * *

  A few days later, Yusuf was in his office, again, going over the reports from his crew. For the last several days the engineers had been combing over every bit of data they had about the accident. They were in the final stages of constructing the Taikong Two rocket, and if they could discover what caused the explosion of Taikong One, they could change the design to eliminate the flaw.

  Yusuf's thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door.

  "Yes, what is it?” he asked, as Jaiveer appeared in the doorway.

  "Ruan needs to speak with you, Master Foreman, and there is a man waiting at the gates to see you, as well."

  "What's the man's name?” Yusuf asked.

  Jaiveer consulted a slip of paper in his hands. “He says that it is Abdul-aziz bin Kitsepawit."

  Yusuf nodded, and pushed back from his desk. “Have the guards escort bin Kitsepawit here, and go ahead and show Ruan in."

  Jaiveer dipped his head in an abbreviated nod, and then ushered Yusuf's number two into the room.

  "Ruan, what news?"

  "Well, Foreman Ounaminou,” Ruan said, drawing a heavy breath, “I'm pleased to report that construction on Taikong Two is proceeding more or less according to schedule, with our productivity impacted only marginally by the ... by the change in schedule."

  "Good, good.” Yusuf nodded. It was to be expected, really, since the construction of the two Taikong projects had been performed by separate, more or less autonomous teams. The team responsible for Taikong Two had the same reporting structure as the Taikong One engineering team that was lost in the explosion, but from the mid-level managers down they were completely independent of the other team, for all intents and purposes.

  "Unfortunately,” Ruan went on, biting his lip, “the team analyzing the data from the explosion is no closer to discovering the cause of the conflagration."

  Yusuf has hardly left his office in days, and then only to visit the site of the explosion on the launch pad, going home only for a bare few hours every night to try ineffectually to sleep. He'd become a stranger to his son in less than a week.

  "We'll need to continue to pore over the data until we know the cause of the explosion. I just can't in good conscience put another flight crew and ground support team in the same situation, if we don't know what caused the explosion the first time."

  "Foreman Ounaminou?” came a voice at the door, and Yusuf looked up to see a guard standing there, a familiar Athabascan lingering behind him. “An Abdul-aziz bin Kitsepawit to see you?"

  "Show him in,” Yusuf said with a wave. “Abdul-aziz. I apologize for missing our dinner appointment earlier this week, but I have been busy."

  "As I can see,” Abdul-aziz said, squeezing into the room, moving to stand beside Ruan. He glanced over the papers piled high on Yusuf's desk. “You look tired, my friend. You are working too hard."

  "I have duties to perform, Adbul-aziz,” Yusuf said, shaking his head. “We have an unfinished rocket to launch into orbit by year's end, and there are only so many days in the calendar."

  "Well, we all have our duties, but if you don't take better care of your health, you won't make it to the year's end yourself, and then where will your project be?"

  From speakers in the corridor, they can hear the broadcast sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer for the maghrib sunset prayer.

  "Come, my friend,” Abdul-azis said. “Come pray, and when we are done, you and I shall go to your home, and your wife will cook for us."

  Ruan stepped forward, a concerned expression on his face. “Foreman Ounaminou, I'm going to be staying late to supervise the investigation tonight, so we can do without your presence until tomorrow. You should go home, be with your family, and get some rest."

  Yusuf rose wearily to his feet, placed a weary hand on Ruan's shoulder, and then, without another word, followed Abdul-azis outside to pray.

  * * * *

  Yusuf had met Adbul-azis several years ago, shortly after he returned from his second hajj. He had been disillusioned after his trip to Mecca and, wanting to try to recapture the faith of his younger days, once back home in Fujian he sought out a Sufi master, or shaykh. After studying with the shaykh for some time, Yusuf had been welcomed into the zawiyas, or lodge. Here Yusuf found some small measure of comfort, studying the sacred writings. The succor that he could not find in the pages of the Qu'ran he now found at the feet of his master. He came to understand that there were three forms of knowledge, and that the intellection to which he'd clung since his days at Al-Azhar University was the lowest and least of the three. In time he came to grasp the knowledge of states, emotionalism, coming to perceive something supreme but not able yet to avail himself of it. He continued to strive for Knowledge of Reality, through which man can perceive what is right, what is true, beyond the boundaries of thought and sense—to attain to truth.

  At the zawiyas Yusuf came to know another of the shaykh's adherents, Abdul-azis bin Kitsepawit. Abdul-azis had only recently come to the Middle Kingdom from the far distant Khalifah. He was an Athabascan, one of the native peoples of the continent whose ancestors had adopted the faith of Islam brought to those shores by the early Muslim settlers from the Middle Kingdom. Abdul-azis worked in the records department of the Fujian division of the Imperial House of Calculation. He had a wife and family back in Khalifah, who he wrote to often, but who did not visit him in the Middle Kingdom, as they could not afford the passage overseas. Someday Abdul-azis hoped to save up enough to bring his wife over to the Middle Kingdom to live with him, but for the time being their constant correspondence would have to sustain him. Abdul-azis also had a large extended family of siblings and cousins to whom he wrote, and who wrote him, on a frequent basis.

  At first, Abdul-azis was just a familiar face at the lodge. In time, he and Yusuf began to talk, informally, before and after the sessions with the master, and as months became years their informal talks spilled out into their lives, as the two met for meals, prayed with one another, and became closer than brothers. Yusuf had never had any siblings growing up, and found in Abdul-azis a companionship he'd never known before. He praised god for his good fortune at finding such a friend, who was always at his side when he needed assistance or guidance.

  Abdul-azis had a quick wit and a strong mind. Often, when Yusuf found himself at a difficult juncture in developing a design, he would show his friend his schematics and, in many cases, simply the process of explaining the workings of a design to Adbul-azis helped Yusuf to identify a flaw. Officially, Yusuf was not meant to show his designs to anyone not authorized by the Ministry of Celestial Excursion or the Imperial Navy of the Air to view them, but if his superiors had any notion of the invaluable assistance Adbul-azis had provided to any number of projects over the last few years, most notably the Huixing and Taikong rockets, Yusuf was sure that they could not object. Yusuf had even shown his friend designs which Yusuf ultimately did not move past the initial development stage, using him as a sounding-board for ideas before bringing them to the rest of his engineering team. So far as Yusuf was concerned, Abdul-azis had been sent to him by God himself.

  * * * *

  Yusuf and his family—his wife, his wife's mother, and Ma, their young son—were joined by Abdul-azis as they sat around a small table, eating their evening meal. Lin Shui, perhaps out of joy at having her husband back at home, if briefly, after so many days, had prepared several meals’ worth of dishes, and the table before them was pil
ed high, crowded with plates of bisteeya, a large mound of couscous, a bowl of fish tangine, chicken with lemon and olives, and even a lamb kefta.

  They ate in silence, for as long as they were able, each of them making a valiant effort to clear as much of the food off the serving plates as possible, but after a time each of them felt the need to take a break, their bellies swollen and their appetites well sated. Yusuf leaned back, sipping a cup of hot tea.

  "Father,” his son Ma began, pushing a pile of couscous from one side of his plate to another with a slice of chicken. “Today, in madrassa, we studied sura 122, about the Jinn?” The boy had a way of pronouncing simple statements as though they were questions.

  "Yes, son?” Yusuf said.

  "Well, I wanted to ask you whether the Jinn that the Prophet Muhammad—"

  "Peace and blessings be upon him,” Yusuf interrupted, scolding the boy gently.

  "Peace-and-blessings-be-upon-him,” his son repeated, hurriedly. “Are these Jinn the same from the stories, like the Fisherman and the Jinn, about demons and spirits trapped in jars by the seal of Solomon, obliged to perform services for any who free them from imprisonment?"

  "Some would say so,” Yusuf said. “The fifteenth sura teaches us that while the almighty created man from sounding clay, from mud molded into shape, the race of the Jinn, created before man, was made from the fire of a scorching wind. Thus are the Jinn lower than the angels, and are not immortal."

  "And is it true that they live in the emerald mountains of Kaf which surround the flat surface of the Earth?"