The Crystal Empire (16 page)

Abu Bakr Mohammed nodded. “His people, calling themselves Mughals, do not recognize unitarian reforms wrought by us Moslems here in Europe with Judaic advice. Perhaps they wish to re-create the splendor of ancient Khans. Perhaps—”

Far off, near an unseen ocean horizon, came a rolling boom which was not that of thunder, for the sky remained bright. The Caliph, kno
w
ing what it was, sighed.

“Well,
laa thaghthaam,
never mind. We do not believe they unde
r
stand it any longer, themselves. When God’s proper time arrives, they always say to themselves, generation after generation, this heresy—we, child—will be wiped out.”

He fell silent.

Shulieman continued. “Until this moment, however, ruling a myriad intransigent people of Asia has been sufficient to keep Mughal overlords occupied for centuries. They have a saying: Time enough for hous
e
cleaning later.’”

He looked up at his sovereign.

“If I understand your father aright, that dreaded time has at long last a
r
rived.”

“
Nanam,
yes, Rabbi, that is what We came to tell Ayesha. And you. We received word from Our Admiralty yesternight that Mughal forces have fallen upon our colonies in the Island Continent, destroying them. They pressed the survivors into slavery. We have just dispatched our mighty Pan-Semitic Fleet. Those were their guns we heard just now, performing depa
r
ture drills. We are to have war, perhaps the greatest and the cruelest war our world has ever witnessed.”

Far away, the thin voice of a muezzin rose above the lower rumble of the city.

“And may God,” said the Caliph, “have mercy upon all the Faithful.”

“Were it a gain near at hand, and an easy journey, they would have followed thee; but the di
s
tance was too far for them. Still they swear by God, “Had we been able, we would have gone out with you”...and God knows that they are truly liars.”—
The
Koran,
Sura IX

A man with a gun in his hand sat near the stairs, as far away from the bar as possible.

Mochamet al Rotshild tightened his grip upon the small two-barreled breech-loader he always carried in his pocket, grateful for the darkness of this damp and dirty place. One could not see the vermin certain to be crawling underneath the tables. He sat, waiting, listening to the music, watching women dance, pretending to drink his drink. The music was ra
u
cous, off pitch. The women (he was inclined to shout out “Put it back on!”) were almost as old as he was. When he left this place—if he were a
l
lowed to leave alive—he intended donating his drink to those vermin he was glad he could not see.

Where was that girl?

While he waited, Mochamet al Rotshild thought about many things. He had lived, and for the most part enjoyed, a long, eventful life which had left him many things to think about. One of these was the Caliph he now served, His Holiness Abu Bakr Mohammed VII.

A canny, pragmatic ruler following the legendary tradition of Haroun al Raschid, Abu Bakr Mohammed had made it his custom to surround hi
m
self whenever possible with an unusual mixture of counselors and admini
s
trators, assuring himself that they came from every conceivable walk of life within his vast, varied domain. This made certain security risks inevitable; still, upon occasion it produced an individual such as Mochamet al Rotshild, whom the Caliph insisted upon calling Comm
o
dore.

“I was the unlooked-for consequence of an unsanctified union,” the merchant had explained to the Caliph, when they had first met many years before, “between one of your Saracen noblemen and a lady of J
u
daic heri
t
age—and what her kin considered easy virtue.”

Within himself, Mochamet al Rotshild smiled over memories of that first meeting. The Caliph had journeyed to Marseilles, among other re
a
sons to confer an honor upon a rising merchant prince. Each had come away with what he had reason to believe was a new friend. Concerning his past, the “Commodore” had found himself being uncharacteristically open with Abu Bakr Mohammed.

A young Mochamet al Rotshild might have been doomed, even in this enlightened world of Judaeo-Saracen Europe, to a lowly status, m
e
nial l
a
bor, a lifetime of social invisibility. His mother, abandoned by her lover, cast out onto frozen street-cobbles by her penurious and puritan
i
cal family, had expired—he believed of nothing more than despair—just six years after he had been born.

At an early age, however, he had stumbled into a profession in which he could make a mark through brave intelligence, solely by his own e
f
forts, independent of whatever fate polite convention might otherwise have decreed for him. Having fallen prey to a press-gang, he had shipped out from his native Iskutlan (“I myself have seen that mighty, mysterious serpent of Loch al Ness,” he had lied to the Caliph decades later), from Glasgow, down the Firth al Claid, as a common seaman.

It had been an age of discovery, not only for the boy but for his entire civilization. He himself had witnessed many strange and wonderful sights, trading with white barbarians, presumed to be the final remnant of the ancient Christians, upon the eastern shore of the Savage Cont
i
nent, with the mighty and decadent Incas in the south, even with hostile and suspicious Mughals in ports from Sakhalin to the Red Sea. Growing up, he had su
p
plemented what he saw with book-wisdom, aspiring to everything a human being could learn of the universe he lived in.

Cabin-boy to deckhand, deckhand to mate, Mochamet al Rotshild climbed the endless ladder, at long last a master, then owner of his own ve
s
sel. Sails it had been in those days, canvas, line, great rotary wings turning side-paddles bigger than houses, taking him to worlds beyond imagination. Now all of his numerous fleet were run by steam—he had been first in his business to co
n
vert—as were railroads everywhere, crisscrossing Europe and Africa
.

There was occasional talk of slaveless sedan chairs.

The merchant sighed. Not in his time, he found himself half ho
p
ing—then, in an abrupt reversal, chiding himself for that same conserv
a
tism which kept his competitors from catching up with him. Slaveless s
e
dans run by steam, indeed! A fortune there, just waiting to be made! Not only would he be the first in Islam to purchase one, but, when he found time—perhaps after this current political unpleasantness was over with—he would see about hastening their invention!

Make a note of it!

Thus it was scarcely fear of the unknown but a familiar expectation which caused Mochamet al Rotshild now to grasp his concealed weapon with his left hand while pretending to drink with his right. He knew this sort of establishment very well. That it was buried deep within a lan
d
locked city, was a gathering-place for draymen, day-laborers, off-duty palace drudges, rather than barefooted sailors, reeking of creosote and coal-smoke, made little difference. He was aware of probabilities, not only of having been followed here but of being accosted by a simple robber. For this rendezvous, he had borrowed the oldest, most disrep
u
table clothing of his oldest, most disreputable servant. He had put aside his jewelry. A worn and dirty burnoose concealed the flaming red hair which, even at his age, remained something of a trademark with him.

Was that confounded woman ever going to show up?

There was a lull as the musicians laid ouds and concertinas they had been torturing aside, seeking whatever respite they were accustomed to. Dancing-women (he could hardly call them girls) circulated among their custom, selling drinks along with cynical promises. Mochamet al Ro
t
shild poured his own drink upon the floor beneath his table, then bought a s
e
cond from a half-naked harridan who could have been his mother—or at least his sister—and looked around him.

Charles Martel they called this basement, in reference to an inscri
p
tion graven over the nearby entrance of a grander building which, cent
u
ries b
e
fore, had become the Caliph’s palace. It had not been built by the Faithful.
Charles Martel
, the inscription demanded in flowing cursive,
where are you now?

Protected from that very Mortality originally ordained to the whol
e
sale destruction of their Faith—it was their conscientious practice of ri
t
ual sanitation which had afforded their salvation—dark-complected strangers with curve-bladed swords had, once upon a time, and on their way to greater conquest, marched into a deserted, undefended Tours with that sardonic question upon their lips.

They had received no answer.

Their ancient enemy was gone forever.

The Old World did not long lie empty, although the merchant gat
h
ered from the histories he had read that a greatly increased barrenness, as co
m
pared to earlier times, had been one consequence of the Death his ance
s
tors had not entirely escaped. Population everywhere was small and very slow-growing, yet it made a certain prosperity possible for those who had su
r
vived and been fruitful.

Today, not one citizen of Rome in five thousand could tell you who Charles Martel had been.
Laa thaghthaam,
it mattered but little. His had b
e
come name to an illegal drinkery where low-status palace servants came daily to break the laws of God and man. Mochamet al Rotshild had been required to give a password (“Open Sesame”) to some low-browed thug behind a slitted window before being allowed to descend into this temporary Gehenna. Unlike some of his predecessors, the C
a
liph left it alone, certain its eradication would spawn worse places, be
t
ter hidden.

If the former were possible.

The sweet-sour odors of
thanpaah
and
ghashish
drifted toward him upon stale,
ouiskeh
-tainted air. Mochamet al Rotshild, bastard son of poor-but-proud Iskutish Jewry and a slumming Moslem aristocrat, had in his youth avoided such deadfalls for the destitute hopeless. He pulled his cloak about him, wrinkling his nose.

“Charjooh, Siti, nabhwan thismaghly
...
?”

There came a soft, female voice behind him. He must be getting very old not to have sensed her approaching. He turned to see a close-veiled face, that of a woman, too well dressed to be safe in this establishment. A dram of the perfume she wore, pilfered no doubt from her mistress, might have bought this entire place.

“Sit down, girl!” he growled, “I am
not
your Lord—I am a ‘sir,’ if that makes you feel more comfortable. How do I know that you are who you are supposed to be?”

“Artichoke,”
the woman asserted, as if this reply she gave made pe
r
fect sense. It did, the merchant thought, indeed. More passwords, this one not quite so foolish as it sounded, grimly appropriate, a much-better-kept s
e
cret than “Open Sesame.”

“Very well, Marya,” Mochamet al Rotshild answered. “Wait till the m
u
sic starts again—if you wish to dignify it by that name—then tell me of the Princess’ most recent nightmare.”

2

Later, when the old man had wasted yet another
ouiskeh
upon a patch of crumbling, filth-encrusted brick, he was even less satisfied than he had been before.

The girl Marya was less wasteful. Lifting her veil modestly at i
m
modest intervals, she gulped her vile portion, as if this could somehow protect her from the potential consequences of being caught at spying upon the C
a
liph’s family.

Or at least from contemplating them.

Mochamet al Rotshild muttered, disappointment in his tone, “I have never heard of those particular thorn shrubs growing in the Island Co
n
tinent. It was not a prophetic dream at all.”

“Yet,” offered an alcohol-emboldened Marya, “the Holy Koran teac
h
es—”

“I
know
what the Koran teaches, child!” He looked at her empty cup, a sneer ill-concealed behind his beard. “Better than you, to appearances. Yet that strange flying machine...those weapons. Firing fifteen or twenty cartridges without reloading? It may be prophecy after all, of a time far in future, when—”