Jerusalem Fire

by R. M. Meluch

  “That was the idea.”

  “We wouldn’t have a chance if we engaged you now.”

  Yes, you would. Six to one? Come now, Ra′im, have you deified me? “I realize.”

  “You leave me no choice.”

  “That was also the idea.”

  A glimmer of a sad smile flickered at the corners of Ra′im’s eyes. It sounded so familiar—the deft maneuvering, the sure simplicity, ever one step ahead. So it seemed to Ra′im. He frowned. “How could you desert?”

  “What else does one do when one is born on the wrong side?” Alihahd said with profound tiredness, his blue eyes skyward and lost. “I do not know if what I did was right—I suspect not. But I did not know what else to do. Suicide, I suppose. But, frankly, I lacked the courage.”

  A tremor disturbed Ra′im’s square, solid chin. The speech sounded exactly like the man Ra′im knew—and he remembered how distressed his general had been the last time he saw him thirteen years ago.

  Ra′im spoke low, nearly guttural, emotion-charged and personal. “You should’ve said something. The Bel would have done anything for you.”

  “I didn’t say anything? I thought I had,” Alihahd said airily. “You all treated me as if I had gone mad.”

  As gently as he could, Ra′im said, “But you had.”

  Alihahd smiled, eyes shining at the sky. The thought hadn’t occurred to him. He found it funny. “But even a madman does not like to be treated like one,” he said.

  Ra′im Mishari remained grave. “Why did you hit those space stations?”

  Ah. Omonia. They suppose that was I? Alihahd sobered. “I did not,” he said without explanation, but clearly knowing more than he was offering.

  Ra′im spoke slowly, trying to discount the other possibility. “Itiri warrior-priests are legends, of course.”

  “Of course,” Alihahd said curtly and turned away before Ra′im could ask if the Itiri were allies of his. Let him think. The size of this bluff was staggering.

  Alihahd faced his rebel camp, and he paled again. A moment’s faintness passed over him, then he started his painful return, his back straight and stiff.

  The rebels were silent. What had happened out there, who he was, was still sinking in.

  Alihahd was accustomed to having all eyes on him, but he’d never been looked at like this in his life. The stares were tearing his guts out.

  When he reached the camp, someone jabbed a gun in his face.

  The shock of even that kind of gesture had long ago worn off, and Alihahd didn’t blink. He put his hand on the barrel, pushed it away, and announced in a husky growl, “For anyone else contemplating assassination, I suggest you wait for a more advantageous time.”

  He scanned the sea of eyes, some still denying, some crying. No one moved against him. They may have hated him, but he was still the highest card in the deck, and they wouldn’t remove it from play when it was in their hand.

  Vaslav was stricken. He was bawling. Only Musa and Harrison White Fox Hall were unaffected.

  “Alihahd,” Musa said to herself, her brows high. “He left.”

  “He certainly did,” Alihahd said raggedly. He looked to Hall, who was enormously entertained. Alihahd walked past and headed for the forest. Hall fell into step at his flank.

  “Do not say anything, Mr. Hall,” Alihahd said.

  “Not a word,” Hall said breezily.

  Inside the woods, Alihahd let himself limp as badly as he wanted to. He found a fallen tree trunk and sat heavily. His hands were quaking in aspen-leaf tremors. Lancing pains shot up and down his leg. Every nerve sang in delayed reaction to horror. He cupped his hands over his nose and tried to stop hyperventilating.

  In time, he became conscious again of Hall sitting beside him, trying to light his pipe full of soggy tobacco with a moist flint. His muttered imprecations were somehow soothing, and Alihahd gathered strength from his mocking presence.

  Noises from the camp filtered into the woods where they were, as the rebels began to thaw from their frozen shock. Only now was their kicked anthill beginning to buzz and scurry and crawl in reaction. Alihahd let it settle itself without him. The rebels would be better by themselves for now, and Alihahd needed to be alone—except for Hall, who did not count.

  The woods were shady, deep, and peaceful, cooling with the sun’s setting. Alihahd let its damp quietude surround him. He watched a droplet fall from a wet leaf. A creature like a red ant tracked through the moss on the rotting log.

  He whispered his own name. It had been so long since he owned it.

  “Shad Iliya.”

  19. Shadow of Masada

  SHAD ILIYA WAS BORN INTO a patrician house under the most auspicious circumstances, the second child of two war heroes. His mother was already carrying him at the battle of Antarctica, and it was said later that Shad Iliya had been winning battles before he was born.

  Like most prominent Na′id citizens, his mother made a point of being on Earth when her time came so that her child could be called a true native Earthling. And someday when he fought for the Empire to bring all of Earth under Na′id control, he could say he was reclaiming his homeland. He could not be called an invader.

  He was bred from the cradle to be a leader, and proved to have a natural ability, but he faced a great struggle to advance to any significant position because of his unpatriotic color. His parents were a typical Na′id mix of racial traits, so their second son was a bewildering embarrassment. He learned guilt early. Even as a child he knew he was evil. He hated his color and all it meant.

  So did his peers. He was lucky at least to be highborn and afforded the protection of his patrician heritage. No one dared destroy him. As it was, they were merely unmerciful.

  He tried to tan in the sun, but his fair skin only burned. He begged but was refused the use of melanin drugs, for they were deceitful. He was not trying to be deceitful—everyone knew what he was. They called him nazi. He just wanted to look like the others. But he could not.

  So he would have to be great instead. Praiseworthy.

  He sought refuge in the army, where he was good. He rose to the rank of major and dead-ended there. The rank was plenty high enough for someone who looked like him.

  He would have died a major but that the most powerful individual in the Empire had taken a liking to him. The Bel felt for the despised and talented young man, and he married his niece to Shad Iliya.

  Shad Iliya’s superiors noticed right away that someone was letting the Bel’s kin stagnate at his current rank.

  But he was still an embarrassment to promote. They couldn’t have a blond, blue-eyed Aryan leading battles against other humans. The symbolism was bad. So they sent him to faraway alien lands, where he was simply a human being combating the nonhuman menace. Out of the public eye he could be quietly elevated as his merit dictated. And Shad Iliya advanced rapidly.

  In semi-exile all those years, fighting on alien soil, he never lost a battle, and his record grew so astonishing that it reached public view anyway and he became a hero. At long last his name could be spoken aloud. And he was fondly nicknamed the White Na′id, their brilliant oddity.

  His victories helped to soothe the Empire’s other defeats. His reports could be counted on for good morale. He never failed—still always alien wars. No one realized that keeping him out of sight also kept him blissfully blind.

  He would never have run, never have wakened from his illusion of Right, had he not been turned against his own kind.

  He could slaughter inhuman aliens till Doomsday without a blush of repentance, as he had slaughtered the marlqai. He still had no regrets about that. But the Empire needed its best to end the century-old battle for Jerusalem.

  Shad Iliya did his duty, and Jerusalem fell to him.

  And it came to him like a revelation. He held his hands to his face, the truth still blindi
ng thirteen years later in the cool and shadowy Iry forest.

  “We were wrong. We were dead wrong.”

  Gregorian Year 5843 CE

  It was hilly country, the land around Jerusalem. The Na′id ships had been landing in the desert hills beyond the city for days until they formed a wide ring with which to raise an enormous energy-shield dome over the top of the defenders’ widest dome, cutting the city off from its millions of allies.

  Defenders and attackers couldn’t see each other yet for the distance and the hills, except atop one hill captured in a surprise thrust during the 27th Army’s initial landing—the Mount of Olives. The arriving army set up headquarters there for their general, the new supreme commander of the Jerusalem campaign.

  The Mount of Olives was an exposed promontory, but difficult for the defenders to fire upon, for it was actually within their first line of defense.

  Jerusalem was encased in energy shields, shells within shells of shields, which kept out electromagnetic radiation of frequencies higher than ultraviolet, as well as n-particles with wavelike properties. The city bristled with antiaircraft and bomb-intercept guns. Its only vulnerable points—so it was believed—were the windows created in the shield domes by the defenders through which to fire their guns. Previous attacking armies and fleets had flown over the city in their spaceships and hammered at those windows with little result.

  Now the Na′id were bringing down their ships and ringing the city like a closing noose. An uneasy Jerusalem waited on guard against the new strategy.

  Then arrived on the site the famous general, the thirty-four-year-old Shad Iliya. He stood in the open vehicle that shuttled him from his ship, across the Judean desert, toward his new headquarters on the Mount of Olives. The jeep moved fast. Shad Iliya liked the speed. He stood up to survey the land and to be seen. The dry desert wind stung his fair skin and sang in his ears.

  At the western foot of the mount, the jeep turned sharply past its center of gravity. It flipped over and spilled its august passenger out to roll in the ancient dust.

  The general’s waiting aides and horrified driver scurried to pick him up. But Shad Iliya was young, and he was already on his feet by the time they reached him. He shook himself and slapped a yellow coating of dust from his drab gray-green uniform. He spat dust. He would remember the taste for a long time to come.

  He looked to his aides easily, his pride only slightly muted, his spirits not at all. “Well. Where are we?”

  They directed him up the Mount of Olives.

  As he hiked up the slope with an energetic spring to his walk, his aide trotted alongside him, explaining, “There’s a twenty-first-century Neo-Hellenistic chapel we’ve turned into a war office.”

  “You did not damage it, did you?” Shad Iliya said.

  “No, sir!” the aide said with proper reverence for the work of human hands as they reached the summit.

  Over the top of the hill, Shad Iliya received his first view of Jerusalem, the golden city. He caught in his breath and felt his destiny whisper to him. The city looked like its pictures and holos, but here, present and living, its majesty spoke. The unmistakable golden Dome of the Rock stood in the foreground, the venerated ruin of the crumbling Western Wall beyond it, within the boundaries of the Old City. The Old City was the enemy prize to be captured, a flag of separation and a place rich in human history. The hearts of three major religions crowded that little space.

  “So close,” he murmured. “We are here.”

  “It went just as you said, sir,” one of his aides said. “The Resistance didn’t expect this line of attack at all. Here’s what we’re using as headquarters, sir.”

  The aide directed him to a handsome little chapel high on the eastern slope of the mount. There was nothing higher on the hill left intact after countless interfaith wars through centuries past.

  Shad Iliya took a moment to admire the chapel’s neat, graceful architecture with its blue tiles, white pillars, and painted entablature. One benefit of religion was that it had spurred humankind to great works of art during the childhood of the species when Man needed an anthropomorphic divine Father to protect him and tell him right from wrong. And Man built these lovely things for His sake. But the work was human. The achievement was human. The glory was human.

  Farther down the mount’s slope stood a charming Byzantine basilica with many-domed roof. Shad Iliya was enchanted. “Is that ours?”

  “Nominally, sir,” an aide said.

  “Can I see it?”

  “Not advisable, sir. It’s too dangerous. That’s Gethsemane. Our force field ends right there.”

  The young general nodded to the disappointing reality. He would have to wait. His blue-eyed gaze lighted on the elegant Dome of the Rock. He drew himself tall, extended a long arm to point, and announced in full voice, “Before the week is out, I shall walk beneath that dome.”

  Swept along with his emotional tide, the general’s knot of aides broke into spontaneous applause. Though the city had withstood an assault of a hundred years, if their Shad Iliya said one week, then the city would fall in one week. The faith of Shad Iliya’s followers was absolute. Shad Iliya would not lose.

  Shad Iliya smiled at them. He accepted adoration in those days. He actively sought it, and was sometimes given to theatrics.

  Drawn by the sound of unrestrained applause, which could signal the arrival of only one person, Lieutenant Colonel Ra′im Mishari came out through the cluster of white pillars that fronted the chapel to greet his general. Ra′im had supervised the taking of the hill as ordered. Shad Iliya could count on Ra′im to follow orders to the letter.

  Silently behind Ra′im trailed the morose generals of the 9th and 34th armies, whose command Shad Iliya had assumed. He’d met the generals earlier, on shipboard, to take the command batons from them. They greeted the young usurper sullenly. They regarded his initial success as minor and unpromising. They had been here for years. They knew the intractability of the city.

  Shad Iliya returned their salutes, then addressed his lieutenant colonel, “Very good, Ra′im. Any problems?”

  Ra′im pointed down the slope to Gethsemane. “The rebels have been trying to move a line of portable projectile artillery into the valley. We’ve been shelling them before they can set up—those are the craters there—but you can see it’s a narrow target.”

  The craters ran between the wall of the Old City and the Byzantine basilica, both of which the Na′id wanted intact and unblemished. The shelling needed to be precise.

  “Where is the Jericho Road?” Shad Iliya asked, trying to orient himself.

  “That line of craters.”

  “I see.” The general turned to go into his headquarters but was distracted by the sight of an ugly black tarp spread over a wide lumpy area beside the pretty chapel. “What is that?”

  “The dead in stasis, as ordered, sir.”

  Shad Iliya stared. “So many.”

  “Theirs, sir.”

  Theirs. He wasn’t accustomed to the enemy dead being human. The fact that he was fighting humans hadn’t taken on reality until that moment.

  He went inside the chapel.

  The place had been readied for him by his alien slave, Pony, and his personal orderly, a boy of thirteen years with the interminable name of Sinikarrabannashi. He was called Sinikar.

  The breeze coming through the chapel’s windows was dry and surprisingly cool. The faded blue-and-white-tiled floor had been swept clean. The Na′id standard and the flag of the 27th Army flanked the doorway. The blue-and-red Na′id seal hung on the wall.

  The curly-haired boy Sinikar saluted his general and, at a nod from Ra′im, put a comlink into his hand.

  “What is this?” Shad Iliya asked.

  “It was delivered, sir,” Sinikar said.

  “It’s a direct private link to the rebel commander,” Ra′im Mi
shari said.

  Shad Iliya looked to Ra′im. “Which?” There were three.

  “The Jew,” Ra′im said.

  It was a Jew who had organized Jerusalem’s defense. The command was titularly a three-headed monster composed of one Jew, one Muslim Arab, and one Christian. In reality, there was one acting genius at the helm, and two figureheads for pride’s sake, supporting him. The people of Jerusalem had succeeded in the Na′id goal of uniting the impossible trio of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam against a common enemy.

  Except that the common enemy was Shad Iliya.

  The artificial differences of religions annoyed Shad Iliya—especially these three religions. They professed belief in the same God, the Creator; they all used the same book with the same prophets and angels. Fundamental differences were few. According to two of them, God was sexless but still called “He,” while the third gave Him a queen and a son, which did not sit well with the other two, but it was not as if one premised a pantheon, one an Earth Mother, and one fire worship.

  In the name of mercy, it’s the same damned God!

  All three religions were, to Shad Iliya’s mind, anachronisms. Born out of early Man’s fear of death, they were throwbacks to civilization’s early days of infamy, and they perpetuated its slavery, male dominance, superstitions, and intolerance of other creeds—while straight from the Koran came the affirmation: “Mankind were once one nation.”

  The 27th Army was here to guide these reprobates back to a unified fold.

  Shad Iliya strolled outside to the chapel steps, turning the comlink over in his hand. He stopped between two white pillars and clicked on the com. He spoke into it experimentally: “Hello?”

  The response was immediate. “Ah, the mighty Philistine general!” The voice was cheerfully mocking and male. “At last. I thought you were sending your toadies to do your dirty work for you.”

  “No. I am here,” Shad Iliya said. “As you can probably see.” He took another step out from the pillars and scanned the city whose labyrinthine ways somewhere held the owner of the voice.