by R. M. Meluch
He searched for a wrap. He spurted blood all over the room ransacking it for a closure, overturning his nightstand, pulling out drawers and throwing things aside. Finally, he summoned a medirobot, which entered via the service chute and sealed his wounds.
Then Shad Iliya set the machine on a self-destruct sequence, furiously jealous of its mindless ability to destroy itself when he could not. And jealous of its mindlessness.
Before the medirobot could explode, Shad Iliya emptied it of its supply of melaninic. He had always wanted to be dark. Then he climbed out the window—his aides had locked the doors—and wandered away, leaving behind what looked like murder.
20. Jerusalem Stands
HARRISON HALL’S WHISPER called him back. “Captain.”
Alihahd sensed strain in the voice, but couldn’t answer, staring far away, caught between past and present, wondering what Harrison White Fox Hall was doing on the Mediterranean beach when he hadn’t even met him yet.
“You’re crushing my hand.”
Normality returned to Alihahd’s eyes. He released Hall’s hand all of a sudden. He couldn’t recall having taken it.
It was fully night in the Iry forest. The air was cool and moist, smelling of damp soil, wood, and lush foliage—and the smoky musk of Hall sitting beside him on the rotten log.
From beyond the trees came the subdued sounds of the rebel camp, waiting in standoff with the mighty Na′id 27th Army.
The past had caught up with him. He had always known it must. Something this big could not stay hidden. The universe was not wide enough. And he hadn’t exactly been avoiding the Na′id these past thirteen years. He had walked in their very midst—as if he wanted to be caught. It seemed he wanted what he most dreaded. And what he most dreaded had found him.
This was Jerusalem all over again—a great Na′id force facing a hopelessly doomed and cornered resistance—except that he was on the doomed side this time. Cosmic justice? He had made his last possible play, his only chance, to bluff his way out of the impending battle. He had shown his face.
The Na′id were frightened, for certain. But had it been enough? They hadn’t retreated. They should have done so by now if they were going to. They were still out there on the plateau as if deep down they suspected that the rebel force was only a paper tiger with a clay general.
Prospects looked bleak. They had to run. They had to. There was no other hope.
Alihahd reflected on the events that had brought him to this pass. He couldn’t have done anything differently. All decisions were forced by Fate, despair, ignorance, and cowardice. Had things been different, he could have done differently. But the past was fixed, and hypothetical extrapolations of alternate conditions were futile.
He spoke hypnotically, gazing back at the dream as it faded. “You doggedly execute your duty even though you know you are wrong. You dull your brain with wine to fog the edges of a reality that is too harsh to bear in full light, and still your thoughts will not shut off. There were no choices. It was this or death. And I lacked the courage for an honorable self-execution.”
He had spent the two years following the fall of Jerusalem in alcoholic oblivion in the alleys of Cairo, a city that could swallow anyone without a trace. At length he had dared to wake and ask what date it was, and for the first time took a fearful peek over his shoulder to see what he’d been hiding from for two years. It was still there. He was still the man who had taken Jerusalem. And now he was also a deserter from the Na′id army. His name was revered. And in all the universe only he knew it for a lie.
He still couldn’t find nerve to kill himself. So he had to figure out how to live.
Henceforth he was Alihahd, and never completely sober, though seldom as drunk as in a Cairo street.
He’d tried to make amends with his conscience, doing only what he thought right. But that meant assessing what was right and wrong, what was the measure, and who was the final authority. His ultimate authority used to be the Bel. When he threw off the authority of the Bel by deserting, he kicked the base of his whole life out from under him. The universe was suddenly without direction, confusing and terrifying.
In an almost sober moment he’d taken level stock of his situation and asked of his Furies: Who is in charge here now?!
And came the horrifying answer: You are.
He had no recourse, even to God. He didn’t believe in God—not often. And even if he had, he’d made war on God’s people. He couldn’t call to God.
He was alone in the universe. Most people had someone to answer to—God, parent, country, leader, law.
I have nothing. He was without country, without law, without God. And I am the leader.
And now, thirteen years later, the base had collapsed again and the universe was on its ear once more. The ultimate authority was wrong again. Alihahd was revealed as a fraud. So was the legendary Shad Iliya. He was running circles on an eternal battlefield. Hero, Rebel, Traitor: thrice a legend on both sides of the same war.
• • •
In the early-morning hours a messenger ship rolled out of one of the 27th’s twelve huge transports, rose from the Na′id camp, and left planet, burning a red streak across the sky. The troubled rebel camp bustled and droned, wondering what the move could portend. Alihahd/Shad Iliya would know. Vaslav was elected to approach him and ask, but no one could find Vaslav. So the rebels drafted another youth to go instead.
The girl came upon the infamous general in the dark of the forest, sitting on a log, talking quietly. The girl didn’t know what she had expected of Shad Iliya—a man-eating cyclops perhaps. But despite the horrible white face and eerie blue eyes, he hadn’t lost the calm demeanor and personal qualities that made him Alihahd, and the girl dared come near and ask what he thought the Na′id might be doing by sending out the small ship.
Alihahd brushed a bug from his sleeve. He had seen the blazing track overhead, and knew it for a robot ship making deadly haste to Mat Tanatti.
“They are sending to the Bel for advice. They do not want to use the Net, not even in code.”
The girl chewed on her peeling lower lip. “What should we do?”
“I would say that until the ship returns with instructions from the Bel, the Na′id will do nothing. So why don’t you go to bed?”
The girl smiled nervously. “Really? We’re that safe?”
“For the moment.”
The girl cast him a grateful look and ran from the forest.
When she was gone, Hall leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, turned his head to face Alihahd, and said, “What does it mean?”
“It means they are not running,” Alihahd said. He tossed a strip of bark away from him. “It means we are dead.”
Nocturnal beasts chittered, hooted, and peeped. Insects sang. Trees rustled. In the distance the ocean rushed. They were all lowland sounds, strange to Alihahd’s ears.
At length, Alihahd rose, exhaled a voiceless sigh. “I suppose it is my turn now.” He quit the forest without further explanation and went to the rebel flagship. Moments later, a second robot messenger ship took off and painted a red trail across the stars, bound to where with what message only Alihahd knew.
When Alihahd reemerged from the flagship, he found Layla sitting cross-legged on the ground at the bottom of the ramp, waiting for him. She had stripped off her shirt. Her chest was beaded with sweat in the sweltering air that didn’t cool much with the night as it had on the mountain. She hung her head. Stray hairs stuck to her neck. She moved only to swat at the flying bloodsuckers that lighted on her damp skin.
As Alihahd reached the bottom of the ramp, she looked up at him for a long time, and finally he questioned it. “Layla?”
“You are a traitor?” she said. Her question was not a question—merely incredulity seeking confirmation.
“It seems I am,” Alihahd said.
He was surprised to see Layla looking so ill. He beckoned. “Come inside. This ship can readjust your blood. You will feel better.”
She reflected on the offer, then reached up her hand to him. He pulled her to her feet.
As she followed him up the ramp, she said, “Do you really think it is a tottering tower of cards?”
“What is?” he said.
“The Na′id Empire.”
He had said that once, hadn’t he? The woman had a good memory. “Yes,” he said. “I am afraid it is.”
Layla was reviving when Alihahd was summoned away by one of his rebels shouting from outside, “Captain! Come quick!”
Alihahd descended the ship’s ramp at a long-legged trot to find the situation outside radically altered.
Across the plateau, the Na′id had mobilized. Their troops were assembling in the battle order along the perimeter of their defensive energy dome.
Even in the dark, Alihahd could see that their ranks numbered short. At least a quarter of them were missing—presumably wearing activated light-benders and moving God knew where. Alihahd grabbed one of his subordinate commanders by her upper arm. “Tia, get a scanner and find those ghost soldiers. You are looking for maybe three thousand people. Go.”
As the young woman ran, Alihahd turned to his second. “Musa, what happened?”
“I don’t know. They just decided to move. I’ve ordered all our people into their ships.”
Alihahd nodded, watching the massing enemy troops across the field. With his own people inside their ships, the Na′id couldn’t see how frightened and disordered they really were.
“Message for the Na′id?” Musa asked.
“None,” Alihahd said.
“Orders?”
“None.”
Musa stopped herself from asking, “Do you have a plan at all?” Instead, she withdrew to crouch underneath the flagship and activated her personal radiation screen.
Alihahd walked a few steps away from the ships to stand isolated on the wide plain beneath the black sky. Across the way, like a band of clustered stars, was the enemy’s twinkling row of lights and screens, nothing to bar their attack.
Alihahd spoke softly into the empty space around him. “Well, Ra′im?” The humidity seemed to mute the sound.
Any one of the Na′id viewing him through a scope could have read no feeling, no fear on his face or in his loose stance. And perhaps that was what was giving them pause. They didn’t advance.
Alihahd heard sauntering footsteps on the grass. They came to a stop behind him. Alihahd didn’t turn, keeping his eyes on the army that would not attack.
“Delay and delay,” he said in quiet disapproval. “Like Jerusalem.”
Harrison Hall’s ears pricked. Like Jerusalem. It was not the first parallel.
Was all this intentional? Harrison Hall thought, We are trapped here under the direction of a guilt-ridden, suicidal Na′id general on the wrong side of the battle of Jerusalem.
There was a plan after all.
Hall took a backstep. “Been nice knowing you, Captain.”
Alihahd remained as he was. “Good-bye, Mr. Hall.”
• • •
At his own little camp in the forest, Harrison White Fox Hall gathered up his things—his pipe, a few packages of foodstuff and a water purifier pirated from the rebel ships’ stores, a bio scanner, a tinder, and the disparate devices salvaged from his own spaceship, Nemo, by the mandesairi—and he fitted them all into a small pack. He stamped out the campfire he’d made for himself, bound back his long graying hair, tied his russet bandana across his brow, slung his pack over his shoulder, tucked his gun in his belt, and hiked up through the trees.
He hadn’t gone far up the densely forested slope when Layla came running after him, her form sparkling with a radiation screen, a taeben slung from one shoulder. She closed her hands on Hall’s coat and pulled him to a stop. “Where are you going?”
“Anywhere else,” Hall said. He tugged free of her and took long strides up the mountain incline.
Layla ran alongside him, two steps for his every one. “There is going to be a battle!” she cried.
“Is that right?” Hall said.
“You are needed!” Layla blazed.
Hall faced her. “Not so.”
Layla demanded explanation with a freckled scowl.
Hall let his pack slide down his arm to the ground at his side. “He can kill himself without me.”
Layla started to object, but Hall cut her off. “It’s Jerusalem, Layla. This time he’s on the side he thought was right the first time around—the side that got butchered. Jerusalem never had a prayer, and neither do we. He doesn’t intend to win this one. He doesn’t want to. This is a setup for a hopeless battle. History repeats itself—especially when the same person is calling the shots.”
Layla turned away. She tilted her face up, blinking quickly with gathering pools in her eyes, trying to deny what she heard.
“Vaslav left a long time ago,” Hall said. “It’s time we did, too. If we stay here, the possibilities are limited—and survival is not among them. He may run away himself.”
Layla wheeled with clenched fists. “No!”
“It wouldn’t be out of character.” He took Layla’s small, callused hand, and uncurled her fingers. “He never deserved the kind of loyalty he commands. Come with me. I need you.”
Layla pulled her hand away and threw her head back. “I will stay. And if it is to death, I die.”
Hall lifted his pack again and started away backward, still facing Layla for his parting. “He hasn’t fought in thirteen years. Unlike some of us, he doesn’t even remember how to win.”
A ship roared overhead, entering Iry’s atmosphere. It was another Na′id troop transport bringing reinforcements.
“Sounds like it’s starting,” Hall said. “You’ll be late.” He turned and quickened his pace.
Layla ran down the mountain as the ship came to land. She reached the forest edge, dashed across the exposed stretch of plateau, and dived underneath the rebel flagship, where Alihahd and Musa were. No shots had been fired yet. The rebels stayed hidden inside their ships. The Na′id army still held its position as another Na′id transport ship, the Dayyanu, came to land on the Na′id side of the field.
“Reinforcements?” Layla asked breathlessly, elbowing her way to crouch between Alihahd and Musa.
“Of a sort,” Alihahd said.
Layla lifted the scope of her taeben to watch the debarkation of the new company. Layla was night-sighted and could see well without an infrared filter. “They’re all brass and police,” she said. “And a general.” She quickly groped the ground beside her with a blind hand, keeping her eyes on the scope. “Give me a bolt rifle. I think I can pick him off from here.”
“No, Layla.” Alihahd stayed her eager hand. “Wait.”
Layla straightened and blinked. “Then we are to kidnap him?”
“Wait. Just wait.”
Musa pointed. “They’re breaking up.”
It was true. The Na′id troops had begun to drop back from battle positions along the edge of the shield dome.
“It came over the Net while you were gone,” Alihahd told Layla. “A stop order from the Dayyanu. The 27th didn’t believe it until now. They thought it was a trick of ours.” He smiled wryly and revised, “Of mine.”
“Why would the Dayyanu tell the 27th not to attack us?” Layla asked. Layla thought in black and white. This didn’t fit her template.
“There are other ways of winning,” Alihahd said. He borrowed Layla’s taeben to look at the new general.
Across the plateau, in a small glowtorch-lit ceremony, an honor guard of the dispirited 27th Army relinquished its standard from the flagship Nashparu to the Dayyanu. General Ra′im Mishari passed the command baton to the new general,
an older man unfamiliar to Alihahd on sight.
Damn you, Ra′im. Why did you not run? What an overblown mess this had become.
Ra′im had always been a good soldier. He was not a good leader.
Why did you not stay a lieutenant commander? thought Alihahd. Then, mournfully: Why did I not stay a general?
“I can still hit him,” Layla insisted.
“Don’t hit him,” Alihahd said, lacing his long, knobby fingers together. “Where is Mr. Hall?”
“Deserted,” Layla said.
Alihahd nodded. “You go, too.”
“It is my battle!” Layla cried.
“No battle,” Alihahd said. “It is a surrender.”
“No,” Layla said.
“It has to end somewhere—the blood,” Alihahd said.
Layla chewed on her lip, brown eyes welling with tears. Suddenly, she seized his arm and pulled. “Then you come back to Aerie with me and Harry. Let them fight if you cannot. You are not of them anymore. Or them.” She threw her hands toward both the Na′id and the rebels.
“Run?” Alihahd said, his brows elevated into his long, unkempt bangs. “That has to end as well.” His voice dropped very low, emotion-suffused. “I am Na′id. I have never stopped being a Na′id.”
Layla started to speak.
“Do not fight me, Layla. If I have ever made a harder decision, I do not remember.” He passed his hand over his eyelids. His eyes hurt. “My army is not an army. They are a mob. They have no training, no discipline, no experience—and little enough luck, it appears. Half of them don’t trust me, and—fact is—neither do I. We never had a prayer here. I do not know what possessed Ra′im to make him think we did. Musa, have you delusions of surviving an armed encounter with the 27th Army?”
Musa expelled her breath and admitted realistically, “No.” She crossed her arms, still doubting the preferability of surrender. “What kind of terms do you think you’ll get?”
She harbored visions of torture and prison and execution.
“What I have are: no investigation or prosecution for past crimes against the Empire; no reprisals against any of my rebels for this current action; citizenship for those who do not resist; and no questions.”
