A Fire in the Sun

by George Alec Effinger

  "That's quite possibly true," I said, "but in the meantime, how about leaving me alone?"

  He shrugged. "Someone is waiting to see you, yaa Sidi."

  I blinked at him. "Who?"

  "A woman."

  I didn't have the energy to deal with Umm Saad now. Then again, it might be Chiri—

  "Shall I show her in?" asked Kmuzu.

  "Yeah, what the hell." I was still dressed, but I was getting very tired. I promised myself that this was going to be a very short conversation.

  "Marîd?"

  I looked around. Framed in the door, wearing a ragged brown cloth coat, holding a battered plastic suitcase, was Angel Monroe. Mom.

  "Thought I'd come spend a few days with you in the city," she said. She grinned drunkenly. "Hey, ain't you glad to see me?"

  5

  WHEN MY ADMIRABLE ADD-ON woke me on Monday morning, I lay in bed for a few moments, thinking. I was willing to admit that maybe I'd made a few mistakes the night before. I wasn't sure how I might have repaired the situation with Chiri, but I should have tried. I owed that much to her and our friendship. I wasn't happy about seeing my mother at the door later, either. I'd solved that problem by digging out fifty kiam and packing her off into the night. I sent Kmuzu with her to find a hotel room. At breakfast, Friedlander Bey offered me some constructive criticism on that decision.

  He was furious. There was a husky, hoarse quality to his voice that let me know he was trying like hell not to shout at me. He put his hands on my shoulders, and I could feel him tremble with emotion. His breath was perfumed with mint as he quoted the noble Qur'ân. " 'If one of your parents or both of them attain old age with thee, say not fie unto them nor repulse them, but speak unto them a gracious word. And lower unto them the wing of submission through mercy, and say: My Lord! Have mercy on them both as they did care for me when I was little.' "

  I felt shaken. Being inundated by Friedlander Bey's wrath was kind of like practicing for The Day of Judgment. He'd think that comparison was sacrilegious, of course, but he's never been the target of his own fury.

  I couldn't keep from stammering. "You mean Angel Monroe." Jeez, that was a lame thing to say, but Papa'd surprised me with this tirade. I still wasn't thinking clearly.

  "I'm talking about your mother," he said. "She came to you in need, and you turned her away from your door."

  "I provided for her the best way I knew how." I wondered how Papa had heard about the incident in the first place.

  "You do not cast your mother out to abide with strangers! Now you must seek the forgiveness of Allah."

  That made me feel a little better. This was one of those times when he said "Allah" but he meant "Friedlander Bey." I had sinned against his personal code; hut if I could find the right things to say and do, it would be all right again. "O Shaykh," I said slowly, choosing my words carefully, "I know how you feel about women in your house. I hesitated to invite her to stay the night under your roof, and it was too late to consult with you. I balanced my mother's need against your custom, and I did what I thought best." Well, hell, that was almost true.

  He glared at me, but I could see that he'd lost the edge of his anger. "Your action was a worse affront to me than having your mother as a guest in my home," he said.

  "I understand, O Shaykh, and I beg you to forgive me. I did not mean to offend you or disregard the teaching of the Prophet."

  "May the blessing of Allah be upon him and peace," Papa murmured automatically. He shook his head ruefully, but with each passing second his grim expression lightened. "You are still young, my son. This is not the last error of judgment you will make. If you are to become a righteous man and a compassionate leader, you must learn from my example. When you are in doubt, never be afraid to seek my counsel, whatever the time or place."

  "Yes, O Shaykh," I said quietly. The storm had passed.

  "Now you must find your mother, return her here, and make her welcome in a suitable apartment. We have many unused rooms, and this house is yours as well as mine."

  I could tell by his tone that this conversation was over, and I was pretty damn glad. It had been like crossing between the minarets of the Shimaal Mosque on a tightrope. "You are the father of kindness, O Shaykh," I said.

  "Go in safety, my nephew."

  I went back up to my suite, my breakfast forgotten. Kmuzu, as usual, went with me. "Say," I said, as if the thought had just occurred to me, "you didn't happen to let Friedlander Bey know about last night, did you?"

  "Yaa Sidi, "he said with a blank expression, "it is the will of the master of the house that I tell him of these things."

  I chewed my lip thoughtfully. Talking to Kmuzu was like addressing a mythical oracle: I had to be sure to phrase my questions with absolute precision, or I'd get nonsense for an answer. I began simply. "Kmuzu, you are my slave, aren't you?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "You obey me?"

  "I obey you and the master of the house, yaa Sidi." "Not necessarily in that order, though." "Not necessarily," he admitted.

  "Well, I'm gonna give you a plain, unambiguous command. You won't have to clear it with Papa because he suggested it to me in the first place. I want you to find a vacant apartment somewhere in the house, preferably far away from this one, and install my mother comfortably. I want you to spend the entire day seeing to her needs. When I get home from work, I'll need to talk to her about her plans for the future, so that means she gets no drugs and no alcohol."

  Kmuzu nodded. "She could not get those things in this house, yaa Sidi."

  I'd had no problem smuggling my pharmaceuticals in, and I was sure Angel Monroe had her own emergency supply hidden somewhere too. "Help her unpack her things," I said, "and take the opportunity to make sure she's checked all her intoxicants at the door."

  Kmuzu gave me a thoughtful look. "You hold her to a stricter standard than you observe yourself," he said quietly.

  "Yeah, maybe," I said, annoyed. "Anyway, it's not your place to mention it."

  "Forgive me, yaa Sidi."

  "Forget it. I'll drive myself to work today."

  Kmuzu didn't like that, either. "If you take the car," he said, "how can I bring your mother from the hotel?"

  I smiled slowly. "Sedan chair, oxcart, hired camel caravan, I don't care. You're the slave, you figure it out. See you tonight." On my desk was yet another thick envelope stuffed with paper bills. One of Friedlander Bey's little helpers had let himself into my apartment while I'd been downstairs. I took the envelope and my briefcase and left before Kmuzu could come up with another objection.

  My briefcase still held the cell-memory file on Abu Adil. I was supposed to have read through it last night, but I never got around to it. Hajjar and Shaknahyi were probably going to be griped, but I didn't care. What could they do, fire me?

  I drove first to the Budayeen, leaving my car on the boulevard and walking from there to Laila's modshop on Fourth Street. Laila's was small, but it had character, crammed between a dark, grim gambling den and a noisy bar that catered to teenage sexchanges. The moddies and daddies in Laila's bins were covered with dust and fine grit, and generations of small insects had met their Maker among her wares. It wasn't pretty, but what you got from her most of the time was good old honest value. The rest of the time you got damaged, worthless, even dangerous merchandise. You always felt a little rush of adrenalin before you chipped one of Laila's ancient and shopworn moddies directly into your brain.

  She was always—always—chipped in, and she never stopped whining. She whined hello, she whined goodbye, she whined in pleasure and in pain. When she prayed, she whined to Allah. She had dry black skin as wrinkled as a raisin, and straggly white hair. Laila was not someone I liked to spend a lot of time with. She was wearing a moddy this morning, of course, but I couldn't tell yet which one. Sometimes she was a famous Eur-Am film or holo star, or a character from a forgotten novel, or Honey Pílar herself. Whoever she was, she'd yammer. That was all I could count on.

  "
How you doing, Laila?" I said. There was the acrid bite of ammonia in her shop that morning. She was squirting some ugly pink liquid from a plastic bottle up into the corners of the room. Don't ask me why.

  She glanced at me and gave me a slow, rapturous smile. It was the look you get only from complete sexual satisfaction or from a large dose of Sonneine. "Marîd," she said serenely. She still whined, but now it was a serene whine.

  "Got to go out on patrol today, and I thought you might have—"

  "Marîd, a young girl came to me this morning and said, 'Mother, the eyes of the narcissus are open, and the cheeks of the roses are red with blushing! Why don't you come outside and see how beautifully Nature has adorned the world!' "

  "Laila, if you'll just give me a minute—"

  "And I said to her, 'Daughter, that which delights you will fade in an hour, and what profit will you then have in it? Instead, come inside and find with me the far greater beauty of Allah, who created the spring.' " Laila finished her little homily and looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me either to applaud or collapse from enlightenment.

  I'd forgotten religious ecstasy. Sex, drugs, and religious ecstasy. Those were the big sellers in Laila's shop, and she tested them all out personally. You had her personal Seal of Approval on every moddy.

  "Can I talk now? Laila?"

  She stared at me, swaying unsteadily. Slowly she reached one scrawny arm up and popped the moddy out. She blinked a couple of times, and her gentle smile disappeared. "Get you something, Marîd?" she said in her shrill voice.

  Laila had been around so long, there was a rumor that as a child she'd watched the imams lay the foundation of the Budayeen's walls. But she knew her moddies. She knew more about old, out-of-print moddies than anyone else I've ever met. I think Laila must have had one of the world's first experimental implants, because her brain had never worked quite right afterward. And the way she still abused the technology, she should have burnt out her last gray cells years ago. She'd withstood cerebral torture that would have turned anyone else into a drooling zombie. Laila probably had a tough protective callus on her brain that prevented anything from penetrating. Anything at all.

  I started over from the beginning. "I'm going out on patrol today, and I was wondering if you had a basic cop moddy."

  "Sure, I got everything." She hobbled to a bin near the back of the store and dug around in it for a moment. The bin was marked "Prussia/Poland/Breulandy." That didn't have anything to do with which moddies were actually in there; Laila'd bought the battered dividers and scuffed labels from some other kind of shop that was going out of business.

  She straightened up after a few seconds, holding two shrink-wrapped moddies in her hand. "This is what you want," she said.

  One was the pale blue Complete Guardian moddy I'd seen other rookie cops wearing. It was a good, basic piece of procedural programming that covered almost every conceivable situation. I figured that between the Half-Hajj's mean-mother moddy and the Guardian, I was covered. "What's this other one?" I asked.

  "A gift to you at half price. Dark Lightning. Only this version's called Wise Counselor. It's what I was wearing when you came in."

  I found that interesting. Dark Lightning was a Nipponese idea that had been very popular fifty or sixty years ago. You sat down in a comfortable padded chair, and Dark Lightning put you instantly into a receptive trance. Then it presented you with a lucid, therapeutic dream. Depending on Dark Lightning's analysis of your current emotional state, it could be a warning, some advice, or a mystical puzzle for your conscious mind to work on.

  The high price of the contraption kept it a curiosity among the wealthy. Its Far Eastern fictions—Dark Lightning usually cast you as a contemptuous Nipponese emperor in need of wisdom, or an aged Zen monk begging sublimely in the snow—limited its appeal still further. Lately, however, the Dark Lightning idea had been revived by the growth of the personality module market. And now apparently there was an Arabic version, called Wise Counselor.

  I bought both moddies, thinking that I wasn't in a position to turn down any kind of help, friend or fantasy. For someone who once hated the idea of having his skull amped, I was sure building up a good collection of other people's psyches.

  Laila had chipped in Wise Counselor again. She gave me that tranquil smile. It was toothless, of course, and it made me shiver. "Go in safety," she said in her nasal wail.

  "Peace be upon you." I hurried out of her shop, walked back down the Street, and passed through the gate to where the car was parked. It wasn't far from there to the station house. Back at my desk on the third floor, I opened my briefcase. I put my two purchases, the Complete Guardian and Wise Counselor, in the rack with the others. I grabbed the green cobalt-alloy plate and slotted it into the data deck, but then I hesitated. I really didn't feel like reading about Abu Adil yet. Instead I took Wise Counselor, unwrapped it, then reached up and chipped it in.

  After a moment of dizziness, Audran saw that he was reclining on a couch, drinking a glass of lemon sherbet. Facing him on another couch was a handsome man of middle years. With a shock, he recognized the man as the Apostle of God. Quickly, Audran popped the moddy out.

  I sat there at my desk, holding Wise Counselor and trembling. It wasn't what I'd expected at all. I found the experience deeply disturbing. The quality of the vision was absolutely realistic—it wasn't like a dream or a hallucination. It didn't feel as if I'd only imagined it; it felt as if I'd truly been in the same room with Prophet Muhammad, blessings and peace be on him.

  It should be clear that I'm not a terribly religious person. I've studied the faith and I have tremendous respect for its precepts and traditions, but I guess I just don't find it convenient to practice them. That probably damns my soul for eternity, and I'll have plenty of time in Hell to regret my laziness. Even so, I was shocked by the pure arrogance of the moddy's manufacturer, to presume to depict the Prophet in such a way. Even illustrations in religious texts are considered idolatrous; what would a court of Islamic law make of the experience I'd just had?

  Another reason I was shaken, I think, was because in the brief moment before I'd popped the moddy, I'd gotten the distinct impression that the Prophet had something intensely meaningful to tell me.

  I started to toss the moddy back into my briefcase, when I had a flash of insight: The manufacturer hadn't depicted the Prophet, after all. The visions of Wise Counselor or Dark Lightning weren't preprogrammed vignettes written by some cynical software scribbler. The moddy was psychoactive. It evaluated my own mental and emotional states, and enabled me to create the illusion.

  In that sense, I decided, it wasn't a profane mockery of the religious experience. It was only a means of accessing my own hidden feelings. I realized I'd just made a world-class rationalization, but it made me feel a lot better. I chipped the moddy in again.

  After a moment of dizziness, Audran saw that he was reclining on a couch, drinking a glass of lemon sherbet. Facing him on another couch was a handsome man of middle years. With a shock, he recognized the man as the Apostle of God.

  "As-salaam alaykum," said the Prophet.

  "Wa alaykum as-salaam, yaa Hazrat," replied Audran. He thought it was odd that he felt so comfortable in the Messenger's presence.

  "You know, "said the Prophet, "there is a source of joy that leads you to forget death, that guides you to an accord with the will of Allah."

  "I don't know exactly what you mean, "Audran said.

  Prophet Muhammad smiled. "You have heard that in my life there were many troubles, many dangers."

  "Men repeatedly conspired to kill you because of your teachings, O Apostle of Allah. You fought many battles. "

  "Yes. But do you know the greatest danger I ever faced?"

  Audran thought for a moment, perplexed. '' You lost your father before you were born.

  "Even as you lost yours," said the Prophet.

  "You lost your mother as a child."

  "Even as you were without a mother.
"

  "You went into the world with no inheritance."

  The Prophet nodded. "A condition forced upon you, as well. No, none of those things were the worst, nor were the efforts of my enemies to starve me, to crush me with boulders, to burn me in my tent, or to poison my food. "

  "Then, yaa Hazrat," asked Audran, "what was the greatest danger?"

  "Early in my season of preaching, the Meccans would not listen to my word. I turned to the Sardar of Tayef and asked his permission to preach there. The Sardar gave permission, but I did not know that secretly he plotted to have me attacked by his hired villains. I was badly hurt, and I fell unconscious to the ground. A friend carried me out of Tayef and lay me beneath a shady tree. Then he went into the village again to beg for water, but no one in Tayef would give him any."

  "You were in danger of dying?"

  Prophet Muhammad raised a hand. "Perhaps, but is a man not always in danger of dying? When I was again conscious, I lifted my face to Heaven and prayed, '0 Merciful, You have instructed me to carry Your message to the people, but they will not listen to me. Perhaps it is my imperfection that prevents them from receiving Your blessing. O Lord, give me the courage to try again!'

  "Then I noticed that Gabriel the Archangel lay upon the sky over Tayef, waiting for my gesture to turn the village into a blasted wasteland. I cried out in horror: 'No, that is not the way! Allah has chosen me among men to be a blessing to Mankind, and I do not seek to chastise them. Let them live. If they do not accept my message, then perhaps their sons or their sons' sons will.'

  "That awful moment of power, when with a lifted finger I might have destroyed all of Tayef and the people who lived there, that was the greatest danger of my life."

  Audran was humbled. "Allah is indeed Most Great, "he said. He reached up and popped the moddy out.

  Yipe. Wise Counselor had sifted through my subskullular impulses, then tailored a vision that both interpreted my current turmoil and suggested solutions. But what was Wise Counselor trying to tell me? I was just too dull and literal-minded to understand what it all meant. I thought it might be advising me to go up to Friedlander Bey and say, "I've got the power to destroy you, but I'm staying my hand out of charity." Then Papa would be overcome with guilt, and free me of all obligations to him.