The Prophet's Ladder

by Jonathan Williams

  “You’re not trained to withstand this abuse, John. I know your background; I know everything about you. Just tell me. You won’t talk about this place when we release you, I know for a fact. You’ll continue your work—noble work! — because if you don’t we will kill your family, starting with your parents, and then your nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters, your wife. You have quite the sizeable family, don’t you, John?” Karim knew this was an empty threat: it wasn’t that they wouldn’t, it was that they couldn’t. The company intelligence logistics chain extended only so far as the Arabian Peninsula itself, as well as a few competitors’ offices in North America and Europe. They didn’t have the manpower to assassinate various civilians willy-nilly like a real global power; it just wasn’t cost effective.

  But John didn’t know that. The man sputtered, his speech filled with horror and bile, the words of a half-drowned man. “Monsters...you... you monster…”

  “I regret it having to be this way, John. You’re a good employee, and Todd really values your contributions. I’m afraid your doubts about the mission led you astray. Now.... the safehouse?”

  John looked at Karim, the look of a wounded, beaten man. He shocked him again, this time briefly, for half a second, to get the synapses firing. “Fuck! Okay…. okay.”

  Karim smiled, a kindly, fatherly look in his eyes. He would have his spec-ops security detail raid the site and hopefully tag the operative who had assaulted Todd Wittry. There would be retaliations of course, tit for tat, and it was likely that the agents had already packed up camp and moved on, like a sniper shifting his position for the next shot. Still, this was progress. They had to keep the foreign intelligence services on their toes; not get complacent. Otherwise the tower and the regional economic security it represented would fall into the wrong hands, or would be replicated too quickly...in Texas or the Gobi. In the end Karim knew that he was a necessary evil, an additional requisite for the greater good.

  ****

  Amina sat in the living room of her uncle’s house. His three children, none older than ten years, sat around her fidgeting; the youngest girl lay in her lap eating cookies that crumbled too quickly, the pieces falling out of her mouth before she could chew them with gummy, half grown baby teeth. She handed the girl another cookie, and told her to chew more carefully. Her uncle Husain, her father’s younger brother, sat with his wife next to Amina and the children. Husain was only ten years older than his niece, and owned a successful furniture warehouse in Tunis. This was a social call; one Amina could not escape, though in truth she felt comfortable here, surrounded by the domestic bliss of her extended family.

  Husain looked up at her, his hand lowering the volume of the television on the remote. “So your father tells me you’ve finished a big creative project?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Amina nodded. “I just finished compiling and illustrating a collection of Ali’s writings. I’m really proud of how it turned out.”

  Her aunt and uncle politely ignored her mentioning her deceased fiancé, as was typical of Tunisian custom, though the name clearly made them uncomfortable. Her aunt graciously carried on the conversation. “That’s great, Amina. I’m so proud of you. Will it be published soon?”

  “No...no. I’m having trouble finding a publisher willing to print the book. There are concerns about the repercussions of it going to press.” She bit into her own cookie; it was a dry, sugary thing, too sweet for her taste.

  Her uncle made a face. “Well, I hope it all turns out alright.” He was attempting to change the topic of conversation. “Will you be going back to work for your father soon?”

  The issue of Amina going back to work for her father was the last thing in the world she wanted to talk about at the moment. “Umm...not for at least a month or two. Maybe after that, God willing.”

  “God willing,” both her aunt and uncle replied by rote. Husain pressed on. “It was a good job, Amina. Most Tunisians your age would love to have that kind of work. Job security, a paycheck; it is good employment, and you’re helping people. Helping them with their savings...their futures! You know?”

  “Yes I know uncle, I do. You don’t need to convince me, honestly.” She wondered if she sounded defensive, as she’d already had this conversation at least ten times with her father and had grown tired of it. “I promise I’ll take up the graphic design work again when it feels right.”

  Husain saw the frustration in his niece’s eyes and realized he probably sounded a lot like his older brother; he decided to relent. “I don’t mean to press you, I’m sorry. We just want you to be happy, and we’re glad you’re here visiting us now. Isn’t that right, everybody?” Her aunt and the kids all echoed their agreement loudly, and Amina smiled, visibly moved by their kindness. They had moved on to talking about various extended relations when a news flash appeared on the TV screen. Amina looked up.

  Attempted suicide bombing at United Arab Emirates’ Al-Hatem Aerospace Launch Complex. Multiple injuries reported, one employee in critical condition.

  Realization coursed through Amina’s mind rapidly as she read the news crawl. The email! Nur Al-Hatem is the sheikh, the one building the space elevator! Her mind skipped over the immediate tragedy of the suicide bombing; such attacks were unfortunately commonplace in her world, and she, like the rest of her family present in the room had long ago become inured to reports of that kind. As well, she had suffered through her own, more personal tragedy, one just as savage, just as senseless as the bombing portrayed on screen. Instead, her mind raced as it led her to a possible solution to her own, more mundane conundrum.

  “Uncle Husain, I just realized I have another appointment to keep. It has been lovely seeing all of you. If you’ll excuse me?” She sat up and kissed both her aunt and uncle on the cheeks, as well as the children. The family seemed bewildered by her sudden, imminent departure.

  Her aunt replied, “Of course, Amina. Are you sure we can’t interest you in staying for lunch?”

  “No, no thank you. I really must be going.”

  “Alright. Well give your father and mother our love. We’ll see them soon for Eid.”

  “I will. Bless you.” And with that, she hurried out the door, walking as fast down the stairs and out onto the street as was seemly. Amina practically jogged home. I’m so stupid, why didn’t I run an Internet search for his name? She shook her head. Dumb luck I saw that news flash. Or maybe, just maybe, God has answered my prayers.

  ****

  The damage was not as bad as the emergency response workers had initially feared. The suicide bomber had destroyed himself at the security checkpoint station two kilometers east of the Tower complex. The asphalt roadway had been torn up; indicative of a high yield explosive, and the security guards’ office had been completely demolished. The bomber had traveled on a motorcycle, as evidenced by the debris scattered about the blast site. He or she probably posing as one of the innumerable tourists or sight-seekers who drove down the long stretch of highway into the Rub al-Khali hoping to catch a glimpse of the nascent space elevator. The Tower’s thread was occasionally visible even at this distance; its incredibly thin surface sometimes flashing reflected sunlight as a bright, brief flare. Some casual observers sometimes even mistook it for a mirage: a trick of the desert. The thin cable seemed an optical illusion, as if the sky had fractured into two halves of a pane of glass, the tether a crack that ran infinitely upwards.

  The three security guards stationed at the checkpoint had been badly wounded, and one had succumbed to his injuries, dying twenty hours after the attack in an Abu Dhabi hospital, surrounded by his wife and children. He had received the best possible medical care, for which his family was grateful despite their grief and anger at the attack’s senseless savagery.

  Todd surveyed the wreckage firsthand. He had been granted access to the site thanks to his title and position at Al-Hatem Aerospace. Why he’d come to see it he couldn’t say. Perhaps he’d been more shaken, changed even, by his recent brush with
death; the encounter feeding his own morbid curiosity. Perhaps he had wanted to revisit that type of violence, even in a residual way, again, to better strengthen his resolve. To assure himself that he could face it and remain standing; that he was unafraid.

  No matter the reason, he stood there in the fifty-degree heat (for he thought in Celsius units now as a matter of course) watching the cleanup crews scour the surrounding dunes. The pair of bodyguards that shadowed his every move, the ones assigned by Karim, stood off at a distance though they were always there, as constant as vultures hovering over carrion.

  What Todd did not know, could not know, was that in addition to this publicly decried bombing there had been two other attacks, both foiled by the many layers of security employed by his company. One bomber had attempted to approach the complex off-road via a dune buggy. The nomadic Bedouins the sheikh had hired to patrol the wilds surrounding the Tower stopped his assault. They had sprung from the earth like predatory lions from the brush, firing powerful hunting rifles at close range, hitting the gas tank of the vehicle, which erupted into an impressive fireball. The buggy rolled and flipped over in the air before landing with a sickening crunch, its driver incinerated totally. The other attack had been borne in the sky; a Cessna prop plane loaded with C5 had attempted to crash directly into the Tower itself, guided by the occasional, distant flash of the elevator’s sky bound tether. A pair of high-speed attack drones had shot the aircraft out of the sky within seconds of it crossing into restricted airspace.

  These two other attacks were not announced to the international media in the official press briefing, nor were they discussed at all by any Al-Hatem Aerospace employees who knew. Rather, Karim, acting on behalf of the sheikh himself, had ordered total radio silence, a complete lockdown of any and all knowledge of the events. If information of these two additional assaults were to leak there would be pandemonium and extended news coverage that would unduly affect the company and its work. One attack, a lone jihadist bomber, was not that unusual given the region and its dysfunctional history. Three attacks, all coordinated, one by air, smacked of a more sophisticated plot. Journalists would speculate that foreign powers were involved to some degree, which was most certainly the case. Indeed it was likely that this was retaliation, if you could call it that, for Karim’s team flushing out the CIA safehouse earlier that month: just another move in the company’s shadow war with foreign powers, those who felt threatened by Al-Hatem’s innovative endeavors.

  Todd lingered there for some time, processing what he saw, broiling in the heat. The extreme warmth didn’t bother him much though, he’d grown to like it; the dry, hazy burn, the weight of the sun pressing upon his back and scalp. Not at all like the sweltering, humid damp of Florida, a leech that drained one’s will and patience both.

  He’d return to work, nothing else to do. John was coming back from vacation tomorrow and they’d have to get him up to speed on the tether’s progress. Two of his staff was sick with a cold and he’d have to redo the shift schedule, reassign the workload. He also had those solifuge software updates to review before pushing the patches out. At least his medication had proved mostly effective in suppressing the lingering anxiety of another assassination attempt. Am I important enough to warrant calling it an ‘assassination?’ Unsure of the protocol on using the word, he returned to his car, the security detail following in their own vehicle. He’d talk about it with his therapist tomorrow.

  ****

  Nur reviewed the day’s tasks on his online calendar before getting out of bed. Dawn’s first light had only just crept through his balcony window before he noticed a long overdue reply email from Amina Hannachi, the bereaved widow of Ali ibn Abd al-Aziz. He stood up, stepping into a pair of well-worn leather slippers as he read her response. A simple breakfast of sliced fruit and coffee waited for him on the center table of his airy bedroom and he paced back and forth, sipping the warm, velvety espresso: newly ground Ethiopian beans were his singular preference; he could not start his day without a fresh cup. The scent of pine and lavender wafted in through the open windows, and he relished the natural perfume. His wealth was never of the ostentatious kind; he had nephews and cousins, brothers and sisters who constantly had to have the newest designer clothes, the fastest supercar on the market, the biggest yacht in the harbor. Gold plated automobiles and crystal chandeliers: none of it laid a claim on his heart. Even his relations’ grander projects: skyscrapers, underwater hotels, islands dredged up from the sea floor; such constructs, while impressive to the vast majority, did not suit Nur’s temperament or his ambition, for they were only the same trite status symbols dressed up in monumental fashion.

  No, for while Nur’s residence was spacious, he lived a relatively unassuming, tenable life. His household’s energy requirements were met exclusively by solar power. He had personally installed grey-water reclamation tanks and solar water heaters on his roof. The grounds about his home supported organic gardens, terrariums, and greenhouses in which he grew not only enough vegetables and fruits to feed both his staff and himself, but also enough for his groundskeeper to sell what was left over at the local souk. There too were herb gardens and cedar forests, and the reconstructed habitats of exotic, endangered Arabian gazelle, tahr, and oryx. Beyond those were his hawking grounds; the deep, untouched desert with its wild beauty.

  Even his mansion, its vast size stretching across several acres, had purpose. Much of its bulk contained dedicated laboratories and research facilities wherein his ideas and inquiries into the realm of higher physics and chemistry were given life and form.

  A handsome mosque lay interposed amongst the gardens and palaces of that twenty-first century paradise also, for though Sheikh Nur bin Zayed Al-Hatem considered himself a modernist in every sense, he was also a faithful, practicing Muslim. The mosque was a modest affair; a replica of a lovely 12th century masjid he had seen in Damascus years ago while there on business. All of his staff, men and women, were invited to gather there whenever they desired for Salat, or prayer, and to attend the sermons and classes of the imam who served in residence. Nur often rejoiced to hear the wafting call of the Muezzin echo through the passages of his home in the early hours of the morning, as he worked diligently with an employee on some aspect of a problem concerning flight logistics or a new booster mixture.

  Sheikh Nur was an educated man; he held undergraduate and graduate degrees in science and philosophy, art and theology. He insisted on maintaining a generalist’s worldview in an age of specialists, taking the eminent futurist Heinlein’s view on the matter as his own. He believed it was this perspective that had allowed him to accomplish so much in such a short time. Well, that and his family’s vast wealth, which he sensibly nourished and increased so as to not squander the rare opportunity he had been given. His relatives looked at him with both admiration and distaste, thinking him a strange loner, a foolish idealist, though they were never averse to investing in his newest project or company, as it always brought some amount of prestige to their oft-tarnished reputations.

  Nur had not taken a wife, and the rest of the world assumed he was living a wealthy bachelor’s reverie, dating various supermodels and actresses, though this was far from the truth. Rather, he simply had not met someone who could inspire him, who was enthused about his dreams as he himself was. Without such passion there could be no companionship, yet he did not feel particularly lonely in his present state. Rather, he found joy and camaraderie in his work and in the accomplishments, discoveries, and scientific breakthroughs achieved therein.

  The email from Amina seemed straightforward and deferential all at once, though Nur detected a hint of ambition and pride too. It seemed she had distilled the essential writings of Ali ibn Abd al Aziz into a book. Without perfidy she asked him, in a polite way, to fund its publication; no publisher felt confident in printing the collection for fear of its incendiary rhetoric. Her parents, she noted, had offered some monies, but these were insufficient save for a limited run. Nur had suspected t
hat she would ask him for such a thing; it was why he had contacted her in the first place. He’d already had Karim do a profile on the woman a while back as he had been a longtime reader of Ali’s blog: the woman was young, ambitious, educated, and as much a reformed Islamic modernist as her deceased fiancé and himself. Her talents, however, lay primarily in graphic design and in organizing protests and rallies, a talent that she had applied during the recent revolution in Tunisia.

  He’d have Karim or another one of his assistants draft a response in the afternoon. For now he was off to the Tower complex for a review and tour of the facilities’ newest security measures, and then lunch with the prime minister. The afternoon held a speaking engagement at a local trade school and then the evening’s briefing on the elevator’s construction timetable. There’d been delays as of late, which was unacceptable: too much was figuratively riding on the elevator’s success. Sheikh Nur set down his tablet and retreated to a private alcove for his morning ablutions and prayer; it was just another day.

  ****

  1334 -1341 CE, India

  Time passed and Ibn Battuta served his lord diligently as a judge in Delhi. He had seen the most extravagant sights: the Qutb Minar, the tallest minaret ever built by man; trains of elephants parading through Delhi upon which catapults were mounted, each launching showers of gold and silver coins onto crowds of onlookers; he had observed the procession of an army of ten thousand brightly mailed soldiers, Muhammad Tughluq’s finest, each equipped with modern crossbows and razor sharp halberds. He had even accompanied the Sultan on a week long hunting expedition, pursuing a ferocious man-eating tiger through the countryside. When they cornered the beast, Ibn Battuta had cowered in dread admiration, for it was a monstrous, powerful thing, possessed of beauteous form; God’s great design made manifest.