by Tom Kratman
"Easier to rent, I think," said Bernie. "But then we have the problem with the crew. Not many are likely to risk getting shot down just to free some slaves. And while our expense account is effectively unlimited, there is probably no amount of money that would get someone to fly on those odds.
"Ah . . . then again, there might be," Matheson added. "That crew that brought us and the kids? They seemed pretty disaffected to me, at least one of them. It might be something. Maybe." the Black agent shrugged. "Maybe, if we rent the same ship that brought us here and then seize it, that one might help us. But we're not bringing any of them in on this in advance. There are already too many people involved."
"All right then," said Hans. "Let's suppose that we can rent an airship and seize it. That takes . . . two people, one of them either Ling or myself?"
"Can't be you," Hamilton said. "We need you to get into the castle."
"The best choice would be Ling and myself," offered Bernie. "That way, if one of us is taken out the other can still pilot."
And besides, Bernie thought, it's not like I trust the Chinks not to have their own agenda. I'll feel a lot better if our escape is at least partially in my hands, not theirs.
"Which leaves only John and myself for both the castle and sealing off the road from af-Fridhav," Hans observed. "Can't be done. We'd need one more."
"That would be me," said Petra, whom everyone had thought to be asleep.
The fight over that one went on for quite a while.
"My little black ass," said Bernie. "She's only seventeen and she knows precisely nothing."
"On the contrary," Hans argued. "At this point she knows altogether too much. Everything, except the reason, as a matter of fact."
"Freeing the slave children and getting us out of here is all the reason I need," said Petra. "Striking out against the masters?" She laughed. "That's all gravy."
Hamilton found that he rather liked her laugh.
"She could control a line of command-detonated mines along the road from af-Fridhav," he said. "Not a lot of skill needed there."
"Provided we emplace them," said Bernie.
"We'd have to do that anyway," said Hans, "and some days in advance, too."
"Where would we get the mines?" asked Hamilton. "There's not enough time to gather the materials and make them."
Hans laughed aloud. "I'm sure you people have intricate forms and procedures for control of munitions. We don't. As long as the Christians don't get them there's little control, little organization for that matter. It's just a question of signing some out and having some reason for it."
Bernie thought about that for a while before saying, "One company from af-Fridhav. Call it . . . what? Five trucks? Six to be safe?"
"That sounds right," agreed Hans.
"So . . . a dozen directional antivehicular mines. With det cord, wire and detonators. Can you get that many?"
Hans just nodded and said, "I'll start by complaining about security around the castle and insist we put out some mines. I'll just take out extra. Say . . . mmm . . . half of those I'll use to refresh the security company's training in mines before we lay them around the castle. The rest we'll leave at the training location, intending to collect them later."
"No," Bernie said. "A little too pat. Too likely someone will notice when they don't show up. Try something else."
"If I had the dinar, I could bribe the men at the ammunition dump at Garmsch to give me extra, beyond what my colonel authorizes. It wouldn't be too suspicious, really. We have to bribe to get much of anything done in the Caliphate. I'll claim I need them for training and ask for an extra two dozen. Halfway between here and Garmsch we transfer over one dozen. Have you a vehicle that can hold a dozen?"
"Yes," Bernie agreed. "Barely. But what about the driver of the truck?"
"What driver? Driving is a manly thing here and I would drive. Loading would be done by the slaves at the ammunition dump and unloading by the soldiers here at the castle. I only need security if I claim I need security."
"That would work," Bernie agreed. "We can meet you halfway and transfer the mines to the sedan. How do we get them set up?"
"A couple of days before, John and I will go to the road and find an ambush position, set it up, camouflage them, and bury the detonator nearby. Then we bring Petra there, hook everything up and leave her to set them off if she sees a column of trucks coming. Or I can drop them off myself and hide them."
"I don't like that," Bernie said. "How's she to know it's really the right column, when she's out of communications?"
"I should have had myself chipped, after all," Hamilton said.
"That wouldn't fix the problem," Matheson disagreed, "because one of us two has to go into the castle and the other has to grab the airship. No, the girl's going to be on her own anyway."
"I could get us five tactical communications systems," Hans offered. "They're probably as good as what you are used to, since both the Empire and the Caliphate buy from China. Since I'm getting the weapons those would be little more trouble."
"That might help," Bernie conceded. "But we'll have to modify the frequency so that Caliphate forces don't pick it up."
You can do that, said the small voice in Ling's head. She said as much, aloud.
"Okay," agreed Bernie. "Now what I wouldn't give for a holocaust cloak."
"A what?"
"Never mind. It's an inside joke, an old inside joke. And we still haven't figured out what to do at the castle. Or how to pick up and extract Petra, since she's going to be separate."
af-Fridhav, Province of Baya, 13 Muharram,
1538 AH (24 October, 2113)
The amazing thing to Hamilton was that there were pleasure boats to rent, right there on the tightly guarded, watery border between Switzerland and the Caliphate. Military boats he'd expected. Fishing boats he'd expected. He'd come there, Petra in tow, looking for a way to steal one or the other.
But pleasure boats?
"Still," he said to Petra, as the two of them put-putted across the water on the Caliphate side, "they're awfully slow. And it isn't just a governor; they've got tiny little underpowered engines. We'd be out on the water for . . . "—he did some quick calculations—"ummm . . . nearly an hour. I could almost swim the lake as fast."
"I can't swim," Petra gulped. "There were streams and lakes near home but . . . well, you can't swim in a burka."
Hamilton nodded. "It's not too late for you to learn but it is too late to learn to do it well enough to make it across this lake. It's got to be a boat. But these are just too slow. We'd never make it, not once the janissaries were alerted."
He reached down to feel the water. "Brrrr. Cold. We couldn't swim this without wet suits."
"What are those?" she asked.
"Never mind. I'll show you once we're back home." He said that last with more confidence than he felt.
That was the first time he'd so much as suggested he'd want to have anything to do with Petra—miserable houri that I am—since they'd met. She held onto that thought, that hope, very tightly. Maybe I might mean something more to him than just a body to use.
Hamilton didn't notice any flash of emotion or expression on Petra's face. Instead, he was looking to the south, generally. There, two patrol boats passed within a few hundred meters of each other. One was Swiss, he gathered, the other from the Caliphate. The two boats trained guns on each other as they passed. Though it was too far— about a kilometer away—for Hamilton to make out the faces, every line in the pose of the bodies exuded menace, hate, and outright eagerness to open fire.
Life was hard in Switzerland, Hamilton had heard more than once, and food was always rationed. But the million men and women of the Swiss Army took their turns on the border and rebuffed any threat from the Caliphate, usually with much fall of blood and with few or no prisoners taken on either side. In a sense, the country was in a continuous low-level war that for level of sacrifice per capita matched the endless war to maintain and expand the
Empire.
"I'm an idiot," he announced.
"Why? How?"
"Because we don't have to cross the lake. We only have to get to the Swiss side of it. And that's much closer."
"Won't the Swiss shoot at us?" Petra asked.
"That's always a possibility, yes. But 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' As long as the janissaries are trying to kill us, the odds are on our side that the Swiss will help us."
"Oh. I'm not sure I like that word: Odds."
Hamilton laughed. "Honey," he said, "all of life is nothing but playing the odds."
Petra really didn't want to think about her perforated body sinking to the bottom of the cold deep lake. Instead, she changed the subject to life on the outside.
"Well, for one thing, you're going to like learning to swim and going scuba diving in a wet suit," Hamilton answered, as he turned the little rental boat to shore. And I am so going to like teaching you.
Petra leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. She had to raise her veil to do it.
Castle Honsvang, Province of Baya, 13 Muharram,
1538 AH (24 October, 2113)
Hans stood at attention in front of his corbasi. "Sir, the security around the castle could be much improved," he said.
As an initial matter, the colonel was inclined to be unpleasant over someone telling him that his own arrangements were inadequate. On the other hand, he had been somewhat distracted. He decided to hear the young odabasi out.
"Speak."
"There are two things, sir, that I think we can do. One is that the boys have become stale, doing nothing but standing guard. I think we should take . . . I should take, one to three platoons at a time out and train them in janissary skills that have become . . . slack."
"And?"
"There is no reason that the space between the wire obstacles cannot be mined," Hans said. "That's the second thing."
The colonel thought about that. He agreed wholeheartedly about the training suggestion. It was so refreshing to have a young officer with some initiative. He was less enthusiastic about the mines, given how often the American renegades staggered back to the castle drunk. He said as much.
"Command armed and optionally command detonated," said Hans. "We can ordinarily leave them disarmed and harmless, and only arm them if there is ever an attack on the facility."
"Well . . . " the colonel agreed, "we do have a fairly liberal ammunition budget that we've hardly ever touched. I approve, young odabasi. Start your training program and start improving the defenses."
Honsvang, Province of Baya, 13 Muharram,
1538 AH (24 October, 2113)
There were two ways that control, back at Langley, suggested to Matheson that he could proceed. One involved Andrussov oxidation. This was comparatively difficult and dangerous. On the other hand, the materials were certain. He began with that.
The materials weren't much of a problem. Methane was easy; the sedan ran on it and getting a spare tank was no problem. Pure oxygen was available, Matheson discovered, from the local pharmacy. Better, no prescription was required. He bought three tanks and two masks. Ammonia? That was available everywhere.
Platinum was a little more difficult. There was no jeweler's shop in Honsvang that had any. Nor had those of any of the other towns nearby had anything like the quantity he needed. And it would have been very suspicious for a kaffir, as he obviously was, to buy several hundred thousand rand or dinar worth of gold and diamond jewelry just to extract the little bit of platinum that held the stones in place.
He'd had to go all the way to am-Munch to find any substantial quantity of platinum, and then it came in coin form rather than in jewelry. The drive over country roads and along the decrepit remains of E533 had taken the better part of the day.
Still, there was an easier and safer method, if he could get the materials for that. Bernie hadn't been sure until he actually tried.
There was a print shop in am-Munch, one with a sign proclaiming it had been there for centuries. This provided a dye, Prussian blue, for no more than cost plus a moderate bribe to one of the workers. A bakery, of all places, had lye in sufficient quantities. Sulfuric acid he didn't bother getting, as Hans had said he could get it in any reasonable quantity from the motor pool.
Having the materials for the easier and safer method in hand, Bernie went after the lab gear required. In am-Munch, he also picked up the makings of a burner, beakers and tubing, plumbing supplies, a double walled stainless steel pressure cooker, a lot of epoxy, and some glass jars in large and small sizes, the smaller being able to fit inside the larger. That had taken most of the rest of the day. Almost as an afterthought, he picked up a bag of charcoal.
He drove back to Honsvang, then moved all of his little treasures into the suite. There he discovered that Hans had left him several liters of sulfuric acid, rather more than he needed. When it was all present and accounted for he thought, Okay, you bastards. Teleoperate me. Let's make us some cyanide.
Oh, and be really fucking careful, huh?
The thought came back, Mr. Matheson, this is Doctor Richter. I'll be operating you. I'll do my best.
Castle Noisvastei, Province of Baya, 13 Muharram,
1538 AH (24 October, 2113
It wouldn't do to have Petra in the suite while Bernie Matheson cooked up his devil's brew. For that matter, Hamilton had no desire to be there either. Mom didn't raise no fools.
Hans and Ling were in the next room. The castle's original walls were, of course, very thick and utterly soundproof. Not so the dividing walls that had been put in to make more cubicles for the houris. Thus, between the gasps, the moans, the thump-thump- thumping of bed against wall . . .
"Does that bother you?" Hamilton asked Petra, lying beside him wearing nothing but a smile.
She shrugged, then rolled over on one side to face him, her head resting on one hand. "You really get to where you don't even hear it."
"I suppose," he conceded. "That is, you don't. I do."
"Does it bother you?" she asked, then glanced down and, giggling, said, "I see that it does."
Her face grew serious. "You own me for the next week or more. I am your field. You know you can have me, if you want me."
He sighed and rolled his eyes. "I know. And I know it wouldn't mean very much to you. Or maybe it would be nothing. And . . . I'd rather not have you if it doesn't mean anything. Call me old fashioned."
"You're 'old fashioned,'" she echoed, and then laughed.
"I like the sound of your laughter," Hamilton said. "Truly, I do."
"No one's ever said that to me," she admitted. "Tell me more of what it's like where you live."
"It's a long way from perfect," Hamilton said. "And it used to be better, so I'm told . . . so I've read. It's more free for individuals, especially for women." He reached over and fingered the small crucifix that rested against the inside of her right breast. "Christians are in charge, though they're not all all that Christian. Some are though.
"We're a lot richer than in the Caliphate. Poor people there are generally better off than rich ones here."
She thought about that for a minute before asking, "Autos? My great-grandmother wrote that back then almost everyone had a car. Not that she approved of that, mind you."
"No," he shook his head. "Those are kind of rare. I own one, and have since I was twenty-one. But that was because I was in a position where I needed to be able to get around without relying on public transport. Now, of course, I still have one and for much the same reason."
"Could I have one? If I lived there, I mean."
"Probably, if you had the need and could pay the tax and pay for the fuel. Portable fuel is rare, expensive, and rationed. Most of it goes to the government. Most regular people get around by public transportation.
"You could drive mine," he offered. "Once you learned how to drive, anyway. Or at least how to tell the car where to take you."
That was a nice dream. But it was also, possibly, a suggestion o
f some future relationship together. He's not really thinking about what I am, what I have been. I think I owe it to him not to let him forget, not to let him be taken in by a false picture.
"I had a client who used to take me for drives," she said, "back when I was fourteen and fifteen. But I never saw anything. From the moment he started his car until the moment he stopped it I had to have my head bent over him. He was older than you . . . maybe forty."
Got no words for that one, Hamilton thought, except . . . "Well . . . if I drive you somewhere you won't have to unless you want to."