Looking for the Mahdi

by N Lee Wood

  Hamid was surprised, and impressed. He nodded. Yes, he was thinking, I was small and dark. A woman would not speak; my atrocious accent could be kept quiet. His lips quirked up, the audacity of the scheme amusing him. It was possible I could pretend to be a woman. It might work…

  Jamilah fetched one of her older dresses, winter-wool voluminous and heavy. Hamid wouldn’t allow her to touch me, however, and the two men tried to drape the henna-dyed garment around my body, fumbling around my splinted arms to get it adjusted, while Jamilah hovered by nervously. I yelped in pain when Hamid inadvertently touched my broken cheek attempting to adjust the yashmak around my ears.

  “My husband, please,” Jamilah said finally, in frustration. “It is not quite right. These are women’s things. May I be allowed…”

  He waved a hand impatiently, and she stepped up close to me to arrange the h’jab head scarf and thick embroidered veil across my face. Her fingers brushed my skin, and for a moment, we locked eyes. She knew—in that moment, she knew. Her eyes widened slightly. She nodded almost imperceptibly with the tiniest hint of a smile. I wondered if she would tell Hamid later.

  I stayed in the house until after dark, sipping tea and resting until I could manage. Bulletins continued to arrive at Hamid’s via his network of young men and ragged street urchins. The palace was occupied, but under siege from the army, bloody fighting in the main streets. How much Hamid had to do with coordinating the running battle, I didn’t know and didn’t ask.

  I didn’t want to be involved anymore.

  I had dozed, only the injections pushing the pain far enough away for me to have slept fitfully. A little before sunrise one of the younger men drove us into the mountains in the south within walking distance of the border.

  The roads around the capital had filled with people escaping the worst of the fighting, but had thinned out to makeshift camps parked along the highway shoulders. People sat in their cars listening to their radios, smoking and gossiping, mothers rocking children by camp stoves, all waiting to see if it would be necessary to flee the fighting in Nok Kuzlat any further. But as yet it was too early for refugees to begin pouring across the borders. The fighting had not reached the rural provinces, no one sure yet how far any civil war would spread. Villages stirred to life sleepily as we passed, a few lights in the windows, unconcerned.

  Two miles from the border, the young man put us aboard a small bus already filled with migrant workers on their way to a day job in a neighboring country where money was more plentiful. The rickety bus bumped its way down the dirt road, stopping at the border.

  The Khuruchabjan side of the checkpoint was empty, the army having abandoned its posts. Its neighbor, however, had doubled their guards, and I could see heavy armored vehicles in the early morning haze being brought up to line the narrow mountain pass. We were all brusquely ordered off the bus at machine-gun point, and Halton and I limped in line behind the migrant workers. I stayed the respectful distance behind Halton, my head down, extra clothes tied into padding around my middle to make it look as if I were pregnant.

  The guard glanced at my bruised eyes, and laughed at Halton’s carefully feigned surliness. He took the papers out of Halton’s grimy black-nailed hand and examined our day visas, worn documents with holoflats of our faces pasted on the back. The photos were nearly obscured after they’d been carefully tarnished with grease; they could have been anyone’s picture. He squinted at us, not as if he suspected the papers of being forged, but to see if we were worth the bother of hassling. My heart beat rapidly as he searched Halton’s small pack, confiscating the few coins he found there. Then he waved us through to reboard the bus.

  I entered Khuruchabja as a woman disguised as a man. I left it as a woman disguised as a man disguised as a woman.

  How’s that for schizophrenia?

  TWENTY-THREE

  * * *

  We took the bus to the end of the line, getting off with the rest of the unwashed day workers heading toward the agricultural fields. They went in one direction, we headed in the other, and slowly walked the long miles to a relatively civilized town.

  There was no American embassy in which to seek sanctuary, even if I could have trusted it, diplomatic relations having been broken yet again in the past several years. However, the UN ran a small clinic on the outskirts: twenty or so army cots crowded in a one-room hut, every one of them occupied, some with more than one patient. Halton managed to get me to it before I passed out.

  The lone doctor, a young overworked Indian, clucked his tongue disapprovingly and glared at Halton in silent accusation. But he asked no questions while he splinted the fingers of both hands in a rudimentary plaster cast and sewed up my stab wound, while I hid the others with a pretense of modesty. To him, I was just another hapless peasant woman caught in a violent culture.

  He probed my broken cheekbone cautiously, muttering in frustrated Hindi to himself. I knew I needed some delicate surgery which he hadn’t the equipment for. He gave me an address for a charity surgical hospital run by Médecines sans Frontières in Tanrasda, four hundred miles away. Other than that, all he could do was tape up my face as best he could and give me painkillers.

  After putting in a plastic drain tube to draw off any infection, he rebandaged the stab wound and gave me a bottle of antibiotics, instructing me on how to take them in a tone one would use with a particularly stupid child.

  “You must come back in four days to have the drain removed. Do you understand?” he said in his exasperated singsong voice. “I give you more pills to make you feel better if you come back…”

  Yes, yes, we assured him, and he sighed, knowing full well we would not return. Then we got the hell out.

  We found a cheap hotel, the kind of run-down place catering to indigent pilgrims slowly wending their way on hadj to Mecca. I had hidden the handful of Khuru rials as well as a limited amount of écus we had left in the clothes tied around my waist. Here, all we could use the rials for was toilet paper. Halton got me into the single, narrow bed and left to exchange half the êcus at an extortionary rate. He also took the red Khuruchabjan wool robe with its beautiful embroidered yashmak and traded it in the street for a few coins and an ordinary black cotton aba’ayah, worn and plain. Anonymous.

  Although we needed to save as much of the local cash as we had left, we paid extra for the luxury of having a private room. Minimal at best, it was still the only room with an antique coin-operated handheld telephone bolted to the wall. With the last of my strength, I made a series of phone calls. I didn’t phone my “safety deposit box” contact in GBN (don’t ask me, I’m not going to tell you), since they’d get the message on what to do next from oblique sources. I didn’t doubt that CDI would have everybody under surveillance by this time.

  Then I allowed Halton to take care of me. Even while I lay in the lumpy, lice-infested bed, sweating and feverish, I knew something unusual was happening. The only ones who had known about the slipclip had been Laidcliff and his sidekick. But as soon as the clip had been deposited, a copy had automatically been sent directly to CDI, addressed politely to “Chief Asshole in Charge.” It certainly got someone’s attention, judging by all the commotion still going on in Nok Kuzlat.

  I was in no condition to go anywhere. While I slept, loaded to the gills with painkillers, Halton wandered the streets, listening to the excited rumors. The stories were garbled and contradictory, but it was clear all hell was breaking loose in Khuruchabja.

  By the third day, my fever broke, and I knew I was going to live, because in spite of the pain I was hungry. The hotel had a small kitchen on the ground floor, a sort of communal dining room, front desk and lobby. The food was atrociously bad and outrageously priced. An occasional chicken wandered in, clucking and pecking at the fallen crumbs of its erstwhile coop mates.

  The diners packed the room, but spent most of their time staring at a single flat-screen television, wired into one corner, so as to ignore the rancid taste of the heavily spiced food they were s
hoveling into their mouths.

  The hotel pirated channels wherever they could, and the Khuruchabjan news service came in coherently, if not clearly. Mixed with partial broadcasts stolen from CNN and GBN, reports were sketchy. Between the eager rush of words, I pieced together what was happening.

  The Archangel Gabriel had found its Mahdi.

  The AI had been lurking quietly in the data systems, until Yousef’s disconnect signal alerted it. Then it had gone into overdrive, stirring up an electronic whirlwind in search of the Chosen One while all the turmoil and confusion boiled out onto the streets of Nok Kuzlat. The phony Sheikh Larry hastily disappeared within hours after the copy of the slip-clip got to CDI. The army had tried to stage a coup d’etat. Someone had shut down telephones and electricity, not to stifle communication between rebel factions, but in an attempt to kill the troublemaking AI invading the government’s data system.

  It hadn’t worked. Once Gabriel had escaped, putting the cork back in the bottle wasn’t going to stop the genie. I guessed it was most likely Abdullah who cracked its recognition code. During the height of the revolt, Gabriel had appeared in all its glory at a mosque, and someone had stepped forward, speaking the correct passwords. Gabriel acknowledged him before the astonished eyes of the faithful as the legitimate heir to Sheikh Larry and the Royal Presidential Throne of all Khuruchabja, true descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, champion of social justice to the world, midwife of an Islam rebirth, the once and future Mahdi.

  Guess who? Ibrahim al-Ruwala.

  Someone had gotten a shot of this on an amateur handheld video camera, and even the few wobbly, out-of-focus moments taken through the doorway over hundreds of bobbing heads still managed to capture some of the impressiveness I knew the AI could inspire. After this miraculous appearance, Gabriel vanished in a flash of dazzling heavenly light, disappearing forever. The AI programming self-destructed, leaving no incriminating evidence behind that this had been anything less, or anything more, than a genuine miracle.

  The country exploded in a frenzy. The uproar expanded like ripples outward, pilgrims on their way to Mecca suddenly deciding to make a slight detour to the mosque in Nok Kuzlat to see where the phenomenon had occurred. There they could argue the merits of whether this had really been a miracle or a fraud, and in either case what did it mean? One of the things it meant, I knew, was that CDI was going to have a bitch of a time keeping the lid on. And, hopefully, they’d be a little too preoccupied to spend much energy tracking down Halton and me.

  On the fourth day, Halton snipped the stitches and pulled the drain from the puckering wound under my shoulder blade and replaced the bandage. The break in my cheekbone had started knitting together, leaving my face oddly flattened and making my eye water constantly. I still hurt like hell, but I was healing rapidly enough. We weren’t ready to move on, though, until CDI knew whose balls I held in my broken little fist.

  Halton had to dial while I held the phone awkwardly in my bandaged left hand, fistfuls of coins dinging merrily. After long arguments and explanations to various international phone operators in assorted degrees of English, I got through to CDI through a GBN secure line. The line hissed static as I waited for the call to go through. Halton sat on the edge of the rickety bed, the little baggage we had by the door ready to go as soon as I hung up. A woman answered the call, a receptionist’s cool voice.

  “Yes, good afternoon,” I said in my best professional voice to the woman at the other end. “Would you please connect me with the Chief Asshole in Charge?”

  She didn’t even stop to gasp. “One moment, please.”

  They had been expecting my call. “Kay Bee Sulaiman?” a deep, masculine voice said. Such a lovely voice, exuding warm confidence.

  “You got it on the first guess,” I said. “You must be the Chief Asshole.”

  “Ms. Sulaiman,” the sympathetic voice said smoothly, “I think there has been a grave misunderstanding…”

  “Aww, jeez,” I said, disappointed. “You must have gone to the same college I did. James Cagney, Media Art History 201, right?” There was a baffled pause.

  “Maybe it was James Coburn. I can never remember.”

  “Ms. Sulaiman, I’m very relieved you called. I think it’s of utmost importance we talk this over…”

  I knew they would want to keep me talking as long as possible to try to break through the GBN shield and trace the line. Not that it made that much difference; I knew I was safer from the CDI while staying in a hostile country than I was in the good of U.S. Of A. “Then talk fast, because as soon as I hang up, we’re gone. The only question is, which direction we go next.”

  “All right,” the voice said. “We’re both reasonable people. I’m willing to negotiate. Surely we can come to some mutually acceptable arrangement—”

  I cut him off. “You’ve obviously seen the same stupid spy holos I have. There’s only one deal: You leave us alone, I leave you alone. Take it or leave it.”

  “By ‘us’, I assume you mean the fabricant.”

  Even with a single line handphone, Halton had good ears. He reacted visibly, shuddering. I muffled the phone against my chest and said quickly, “Get out of range of his voice. Now.” As he stood up and went to the farthest end of the room, I said into the phone, “Yes, I mean John Halton. He’s mine. I’m claiming him. Finders keepers, losers weepers. You got a problem with that?”

  “None at all,” Mr. Smoothie said. “If you’ll allow me to speak with him, I can assure him that it’s all in order, he should consider you the legal registered owner…”

  I laughed, sharp and unamused. “Laidcliff is dead. But he played some interesting tricks before he went. You can send the paperwork in the mail, if you like. That should be adequate.”

  There was another pause, this one longer. “Ms. Sulaiman, I think you should know Cullen Laidcliff was a rogue agent. He was not under any official orders, and operating entirely outside our authority, I assure you.” It might even have been the truth, but it would be typical CDI routine to disavow all knowledge of Laidcliff’s activities once the agent had thoughtlessly deceased on them. I wondered which part of the schism Mr. Slick was on, then decided it didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference to me or to Halton.

  “Laidcliff was out of control,” the CDI man went on. “He abused his authority and was using his fabricants illegally for his own reasons. By the time we were alerted, you had unfortunately already been caught in the middle. I wish I could express how truly sorry we are for that.”

  Sure. Don’t confuse incompetence with conspiracy. “Even if that’s true, not a goddamned one of you has given me any reason to trust you… except John,” I said coldly.

  “I understand your misgivings, but I can’t warn you strongly enough, Ms. Sulaiman,” he pressed. “You don’t know anything about fabricants. Your life is very much in jeopardy. Laidcliff sabotaged their training; their conditioning is impaired. Halton is dangerously defective.” He sounded so concerned with my welfare. “It’s not simply a matter of stolen Government property, which in itself, I’m sure you realize, is a felony offense…”

  I snorted.

  “You don’t seem to understand the grave danger you’re in. The entire John Halton series has malfunctioned, lethally. He is not a human being, you cannot trust him. The fabricant could turn on you at any time without warning—”

  He was starting to sound shrill.

  I cut him off. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Long pause. “All right.” The man’s voice had cooled discernibly. “Suit yourself. It’s your neck. As to the film, it’s no longer as much of a problem to us as you seem to think it is.”

  “Then you won’t mind if we air it on prime time news, will you?”

  Mr. Suave seemed to take an awfully long time thinking it over. Another dramatic pause. “Really, Ms. Sulaiman, I believe you’re making more out of this than is really…”

  “Look, infeedel,” I said, putting on my hokeyest TV Arab villain accent, “I
get very good pictures of imperialist Americhurja do very bad things. See all you faces very clear. I show this to great American peoples, they rise up and strike you like scorpions in the desert, infeedel traitor—you blood run like rivers in the sand, maybe you have beeg troubles with Congressional funding next year…”

  There was another long pause. Finally he said, “Perhaps it would be better if we agreed that this slight embarrassment could be kept quiet for the time being.”

  “Perhaps it would. Perhaps you should think about cleaning up the mess you’ve made. Perhaps I can come home and you guys don’t bother me no more, huh?” There was another of his theatrical delays. “Hello, hello? Maybe I’m not talking to the right guy. You seem to be having to wait for permission or something…”

  Mr. Slick finally got a bit irritated. “We’ll eventually find all the copies, Sulaiman,” he snapped, his nice polite company voice gone. “Even if we don’t, we’ll soon have this whole affair neatened up. In a few months, a year at most, that clip will be worthless. The world isn’t going to care what happened in some backwater country. It’s already yesterday’s news.”

  “I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Meantime, it’s just like the script, you got the idea? Anything happens to me or my friend, we’re all going to be real famous two hours later.”

  “I got the idea,” he said sourly, and slammed the phone down.

  “Oooo!” I said, jerking the phone away from my ear. “What a rude man. He didn’t even say goodbye.”

  John was having trouble again understanding my sense of humor.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  * * *

  We headed out with a band of pilgrims on hadj, seeking safety and anonymity in numbers, then took a sharp right turn and aimed for Turkey. The UN soldiers at the border examined our American passports with skepticism, eyeing a short, badly beaten up woman in a black aba’ayah and a peasant man in dirty, baggy pants and an embroidered qabah tunic. By now, Halton had grown a thick, Arab-style mustache which didn’t match his passport photo. They made us wait at the police station until someone from the nearest GBN bureau could come out from Urfa and vouch for us. By the time they got us to the airport at Ankara, I was in really lousy shape.