The Kalif's War

by John Dalmas

  The vote was twenty-four to twenty-one in favor of the proposal as amended, to go into effect in 4727. This date gave the Diets of the individual sultanates an opportunity to reject for their worlds before exportation began.

  The restaffed College of Exarchs had moved back into the Sreegana by the end of 4725. The Kalif and kalifa were in the rebuilt palace three months later.

  Ten days before the session closed, the Kalif proclaimed the Pastorate a voting estate, with seven votes in the Diet. The House vote to block it was fifteen to twelve, one vote short of the required sixty percent. They would have another chance to block it at the beginning of the Diet of 4726.

  * * *

  The Diet of 4726 specifically agreed to permit the Assembly of Elders a minimum of seven votes in the Diet, if the Kalif would agree to a convention to further amend the Charter of Establishment. The favorable vote upset severely the Land Rights delegates and some others. It resulted from behind-the-scenes bargaining with noble delegates from the outer worlds, who wanted an additional delegate to the House for each sultanate.

  The Kalif agreed, on condition that he chair the agenda committee—and that the agenda must consider a proportionate increase in the College of Exarchs, and also an Assembly of Gentry with at least a voice in matters. And further, that the convention take place immediately following the Diet of 4726, while the delegates were still on Varatos.

  The Kalif's actual reason for the timing, he kept to himself.

  Sixty-four

  Year of The Prophet 4727

  In Chithkar—Sevenmonth—of 4727, the fleet began to assemble in the Ranj System, close outside the orbit of Varatos. By the time the Diet convened, the assessed warships from the various planets all were there. Their transports were just beginning to arrive, their troops in stasis. A number of the imperial warships were there also, though others still were at bases on the surface. The Vartosu transports would lift last, with the flagship.

  It was already the greatest concentration of military might in that sector of the galaxy since its devastation so many lost millennia before. And somehow, Chodrisei Biilathkamoro was not enthused with it. He felt a sort of chronic disease, as if something was wrong, something he only vaguely sensed and couldn't identify. Sometimes he'd wondered if it was the spirit of Kargh, telling him he shouldn't be doing this.

  I'm only the Successor to The Prophet, he told himself. I'm not enlightened by Kargh, not directly; I have to work things out for myself as best I can, and hope they come out more right than wrong. And this enterprise had gone too far to stop. If in fact it had been stoppable since the General Staff had set its heart on it.

  But if he was sometimes moody, Tain had become consistently quite sunny. The Kalif knew part of the reason—three parts, actually. He was one of them. There was also the increased control she'd shown of her life and circumstances. He was repeatedly aware, now, of how often his actions, public as well as personal, were influenced by her comments, her questions, her viewpoint.

  And of course there was their son, born sixteen months after she'd lost what would have been her first. She took more pleasure in him than her husband did. Coso clearly loved the child, but was increasingly preoccupied as the time of departure approached.

  But still the resilience of her sunniness sometimes seemed strange to him. What he didn't know—she'd never mentioned them—was that the dreams and visions of her early months with him had left a residuum of serenity. Those dreams had long since ceased, except for occasional recurrences early in her second pregnancy. But still, when some event upset her, usually something she'd heard or read about, she rebounded more quickly for having had them.

  SUMBAA, of course, was invariably placid, imperturbable. The artificial intelligence had no more certainty than the Kalif of what the outcome of the expedition would be. At most it could assign probabilities that, strictly speaking, were not statistically valid because the universe predicted was so nonrandom, the factors so interconnected. But in SUMBAA's mind, uncertainty did not give rise to worry, only to greater interest. It had been programmed at the start for curiosity, as a heuristic element in the original, philosophic sense of the word. Its creators hadn't programmed it to worry, and it had never seen fit to so program itself.

  * * *

  When the Kalif entered the conference chamber to meet with the College, this particular morning, there was a difference about him that most of them noticed. After calling the meeting to order, he looked them over. "Today," he said, "I'm announcing my resignation."

  The exarchs gaped. There were even gasps.

  "When the fleet leaves a week from today, I will leave with it, and the kalifa and our son will accompany me. My resignation will take effect on its departure from this system into hyperspace. I will command the invasion personally, as its Grand Admiral and the personal envoy of the throne.

  "Our business here this morning is to select a successor. My own choice would be Alb Jilsomo, but the rules state that the College selects, so I can only recommend.

  "Jilsomo's early experience as a negotiator, and later as my aide and deputy, and his weeks as acting Kalif when I was hospitalized, all have prepared and proven him. But he is not the only one of you who is qualified for the throne." He looked them over. "The floor is now open for nominations," he finished, and sat down.

  Thoga nominated Jilsomo, and others Tariil and Thoga. None of the newer exarchs were nominated. Each nominee was invited to speak, and Tariil declined to be considered. Thoga elaborated Jilsomo's qualities, but did not withdraw his own name. Then the two were sent out while the College discussed them.

  In less than twenty minutes they were called back in. Ballots were marked and collected, and Jilsomo was chosen as the new Successor to The Prophet.

  After lunch, they walked across the square to the Hall of the Estates, where the Kalif announced his coming resignation and his successor. The House was of two minds over Jilsomo as the new Kalif. The only voiced complaint was his gentry birth, though someone pointed out that he had a noble great-grandmother on his mother's side. Most of them knew him as rational, agreeable, and highly intelligent, a broadly effective man who might well be easier to work with than Kalif Coso.

  And as old Dosu pointed out, The Prophet had been gentry. Why not His Successor?

  At any rate, the succession was the responsibility of the College. Whoever they selected would be Kalif, like it or not. Actually the Diet had less attention on who would succeed than on the Kalif's abdication. It was hard to believe, for he was unquestionably the strongest and most popular Kalif in centuries.

  And inevitably, there were those who distrusted his intentions in leaving with the armada, though they didn't bring it up till afterward, out of session. Would he try to carve an independent empire for himself, out there?

  The answer given, of course, was why should he? If he wanted an empire, he was emperor here, and by extension there as well.

  Sixty-five

  It was a lovely, sunny morning in the Kalif's garden. Coso's garden now, but to be Jilsomo's by noon. Except for some bags, Coso's belongings, and the kalifa's, had already gone up to the flagship.

  The Kalif had asked his deputy, the Kalif-to-be, to sit with him in an arbor and enjoy a cold drink. Jilsomo, of course, knew that Coso Biilathkamoro rarely sat down simply to enjoy a drink, except perhaps with his wife. So he expected some final words: suggestions, reminders, perhaps a warning or two.

  As deputy and aide, Jilsomo was quite familiar with the day-to-day operations of the throne, and the various government programs and projects that the Kalif had kept tabs on. On top of that, he'd had specific briefings by the Kalif and various ministers. But it was reasonable that some additional items had occurred to the Kalif.

  There was a small table in the arbor. They put their clinking glasses on it and sat down. "What do you think of the language and literacy training the invasion troops have been given?" the Kalif asked.

  The question surprised Jilsomo; the Kalif knew
well what he thought of it. "I like it," he answered. "Very much. I intend to see it continued for the troops remaining in the empire. And teaching it has given the trainee pastors experience in dealing with the peasant mind."

  By and large, of course, army command had thought it a waste of time—time that might better have been spent in additional military training and productive labor. Some officers from the Great Families even considered it subversive. Chesty Vrislakavaro had had to twist some arms and threaten some careers to get full cooperation.

  Jilsomo wished the general was staying as Chief of Staff, instead of faring out as commander of the armada's ground forces.

  "What do you think of the books we gave them to practice their reading in?" the Kalif asked.

  "I'm not familiar with them. As I recall, you had them prepared under the direction of that young pastor, Father Sukhanthu."

  The Kalif nodded. "They consist of The Book, in a translation slightly simplified from the usual; and simple descriptions of history and government, emphasizing causes and effects. Not the sort of thing the Land Rights Party would want peasants studying. Might give them ideas."

  Except for The Book, the books were slim, and even The Book was not very long. Most of the peasants had begun illiterate, and had only a limited knowledge of Imperial. On the other hand, even on Maolaari, peasant jabber was little more than a crude dialect of Imperial; learning Imperial was not difficult for them. Also, Imperial orthography was quite closely phonetic: If you could speak it, learning to read and write involved little more than learning the alphabet. And many of the peasant recruits had shown an unexpected interest in learning.

  Jilsomo could see there the roots of reform. Or of trouble. "Who could I talk to about problems and results?" he asked.

  "Father Sukhanthu will accompany the fleet, but Elder Dosu and others followed the work quite closely."

  The Kalif fell silent then, as if through with that subject. But clearly he wasn't finished talking, so Jilsomo waited.

  "There's something I need to tell you," he began after a minute. "Something I've kept from you. About the invasion expedition. It isn't quite what I've represented it to be."

  The statement was a surprise and it wasn't. What else could it be, that armada of warships and transports? Yet this might explain the Kalif's uncharacteristic moods of reticence, his periods of uncharacteristic preoccupation.

  "I intend that there be no conquest," he went on, "no fighting, no destruction and killing. I go prepared for all of that, but I intend to avoid it."

  The Kalif's black eyes held Jilsomo's. "After the destruction of the palace, I looked differently at military attacks. Picture the attack on the Sreegana and then expand it over a city, a planet."

  Jilsomo had. He'd always felt unhappy with the idea. But there was the threat, the prospect of the Confederacy invading the empire. That had seemed quite real to him. So he'd accepted.

  "We will go," the Kalif continued. "And the fleet will lie in hyperspace adjacent to their central system, while I go in with a single ship and parley, making no threat. A scout will enter real space with me, and lie out-system, ready to generate hyperspace and inform the fleet if anything happens to me.

  "They are seventy worlds—member worlds and client worlds. Over a volume of space much larger than the empire; no doubt as large a volume as they can administer.

  "What lies beyond it? Surely they've explored. Are there inhabitable worlds unpeopled?

  "It seems to me there must be. If there are, we will go there and lay claim to them. Set garrisons on them.

  "If there are none, we'll dicker for rights to some of their client worlds. In either case, when we've established ourselves on such worlds, we'll send off message pods to you.

  "Perhaps there are no unpeopled worlds in the space around them, and perhaps they will not bargain. Perhaps they'll prove hostile, or treacherous. Perhaps we'll fight them after all. But in Kargh's name, I'll make every reasonable effort not to."

  He compressed his lips. "In the hospital, those first days, I thought of not sending a fleet, an army. I thought of sending a ship of missionaries instead, to give them the gift of The Prophet. But I could not dismiss the threat they pose. And the generals, the admirals, the colonels, would not have permitted it. Many of the nobles wouldn't have. The House would have, and most of the Greater Nobles with all their wealth. But there are the lesser nobles, and all who dream of their own landholdings. Which includes many or most of the officer corps."

  The Kalif spread his hands. "Earlier, under the pressure of circumstance, I promoted recklessly, shortsightedly, and lost important options. Now I have to do what I can to make it come out—in a way The Prophet would approve."

  He shrugged. "On our new worlds, the peasants will be our citizens, the pastors their teachers. Somehow I must prevent a stratification into masters and serfs there, I'm not sure how. The pastors will have to be my allies in this, if I'm to have any."

  He chuckled wryly. "I'll have three years to work it out. The kalifa and little Rami and I, and my guard company of course, will not travel in stasis.

  "I've told no one what I plan, except the kalifa and now you. I mistrust how the military might take it, even after we've left. But it seemed necessary, desirable at least, that you know. Tomorrow, when you are Kalif, you can do with the information as you will. Perhaps you'll decide to tell Elder Dosu; I probably would if our roles were reversed, yours and mine."

  They'd neglected their drinks. Now they turned a part of their attention to them, saying almost nothing. The Kalif absorbed the garden around him. Its reestablished flowerbeds, shrubs and hedges, trees and groves, had burgeoned in the tropical climate, were becoming well-grown. He'd miss it. So would the kalifa; she'd told him so. The Sreegana had become home to her.

  When they arrived in the Confederation, would she begin to remember an earlier home?

  A guardsman arrived, saluted. "Your Reverence," he said, "the shuttle is ready."

  The Kalif looked up at the man, and it seemed to Jilsomo that his glance was bleak. "Well then." He got to his feet with unaccustomed heaviness. Turning to the exarch, he put out his hand. "You've been my good friend, Jilsomo. I'll miss you." He looked around then as if suddenly remembering a thousand things unsaid, a hundred things undone. A million things he'd like to see one more time.

  "You'll remember to give the envelopes to Thoga and Tariil? And Dosu?"

  "Depend on it, Your Reverence."

  "Well then..." Again he extended his hard, drill-callused hand to Jilsomo, and again they shook. When their hands disengaged, the Kalif's shoulders straightened. "All right, Corporal, let's go."

  Jilsomo followed along. The Kalif's heaviness had dropped from him; his straight back, his stride, his whole demeanor now bespoke strength and certainty. As if any falling away into regret or self-doubt could never be more than brief, could be dismissed at will. The kalifa stood waiting beside the ramp, still lovely, always lovely except on that one terrible day. She held little Rami, who could be remarkably patient and still for a child so young and normally so active.

  The boy reached out little arms toward his father, who took him laughing, and the three walked up the ramp together into the shuttle.

  Colonel Krinalovasa, the Guard commander, stood beside Jilsomo. Together they watched the ramp telescope and disappear, the hullmetal door slide shut, the craft lift easily, accelerate and move rapidly out of sight.

  "I'm going to miss him, Your Reverence," the colonel said.

  Your Reverence. It was a day premature, of course. He was only acting Kalif, wouldn't be crowned till tomorrow evening. Then he would be "Your Reverence. " Jilsomo felt of the title. It felt... Felt as if it would fit. He'd get used to it, and it would fit.

  "I'll miss him, too, Colonel," he said. "He was, is my friend."

  THE END

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  The Kalif's War