“I see,” said Waqqas “How very strange Rado must be, to let a woman hold power there. Is that why you left?”
“No, Sidi. A diplomat must bear many things in his service to his country and to Allah, may He be praised. I have been recalled on matters of state.” He saw no reason to mention the trading agreement with this fool. As for his duty, it was to get back on the road as soon as possible.
“Matters of state?” Waqqas eyed him. “Forgive me, but then I must ask...why didn't you take a more direct route, instead of curving down through my lands?”
Your lands? Qusay shrugged. “My wife has heard tell of the beauty of the deep South, and I could not deprive her of the chance to see it. Ateeqa has endured much to be a diplomat's wife, you see. What better way to show my thanks than to let her smell the scent of your magnolias, see the quiet majesty of the Spanish moss, and hear the Spring birdsong of your forests?”
Truly, he thought, I am blessed with a patient wife, who endures the sweltering humidity, the stench of these swamps, the growling of alligators, and the prattling of fools like you. I will be a long time making up to her for choosing this route home.
“But you should have sent word ahead so that I could prepare for your presence, Ambassador.” Waqqas shook his head. “You must stay for two days so that my people can prepare a banquet befitting the honor of your visit. I will have rooms prepared.”
Qusay managed to not groan. “Truly, your generosity is as wide as the bayou,” he said. And as wide as your waist.
Fortunately, the man had no lavish meal prepared yet for his unexpected arrival. Eventually Qusay managed to extricate himself from Waqqas and rejoin his wife.
Ateeqa was effusive in her praise of the quarters they were given. “A place fit for a Sultan!” she exclaimed, dazzling the servant who let them in with one of her smiles. What took you so long? Yes, I know; others are listening.
“It is indeed,” he agreed. I am sorry, my wardat alssahra. The pompous toad Waqqas wanted to impress me, and to cut his greeting short would have fostered suspicion.
“And this window gives such an enchanting view of the forest.” Did you just call me your Desert Rose? Some women might like to be compared to a blossom, I suppose, but to an Adenium obesum? Is this your way of saying I'm gaining weight?
He smiled at her. “Yes, it surely does.” You are far too erudite for my own good, my love. I had forgotten the scientific name of the flower. He took her into his arms. I have never seen the sands of Arabia, he told her, but I know a rare and precious beauty that blooms in the desert of my heart.
“Come, husband, it is nearly time for the evening prayer.” Not as rare as you think. That flower grows in Florida too, I have heard.
“Has it been too boring, waiting for me with the women?”
“Of course not, beloved.” What do you think? The kalet, the bastard, has kept them ignorant! They were as dull as dirt. I'll bet he hasn't even let them learn to read.
He kissed her. The reports were accurate, then. This self-styled Caliph is as backward as they come: a walking stereotype. The Emirs will be pleased.
Indeed they will, she agreed. When Texas makes its move East, Waqqas will fall easily and give Dallas no warning of the doom that will await their armies.
Chapter 55
Isaac: Homecoming
“A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise council”
– Proverbs 1:5
Rebekah must have seen him from the front window. She burst out of the door and nearly flew into his arms as he trudged up the walk to the farmhouse. Isaac held her a long time.
“I was afraid you weren't coming back.”
He kissed her and laughed. “You have nothing to fear from the women in Rado.”
She hugged him again. “For a Tzaddik, you're not very wise. I was worried about Texas, not other women.”
He smiled. “It is not wisdom that makes a Tzaddik. If we are lucky, and worthy, God may give us wisdom. But there are no guarantees.”
“Maybe not for you,” she said, “but I for one can guarantee that supper will be ruined if I don't get back to the kitchen.”
He released her and followed her into the house. At the sound of the door Samuel looked up and ran to him. Was he taller? He can't be. It's only been a few weeks. Has that been long enough to forget his height?
Samuel soon proved he was still only a child. After a hug he asked, “Did you bring me anything from Denver?”
Isaac laughed. It was good to know some things never change. “I did.” He pulled it out of a pocket and showed it to his son.
Samuel looked at the little wooden top, with Hebrew letters painted on its four square equatorial sides. His face fell. “Another dreidel? But I have a couple of those already.”
“Not like this one,” Isaac said. “Watch.” He sat down cross legged on the wooden floor and put the pointed end of the little top on the floor. He held it there upright for a moment, then released it. The dreidel began to spin.
“This one never falls down,” he said. “it just keeps spinning.”
Samuel's eyes got very large. “How does it do that? Is it some kind of gentile magic?”
“There is no such thing as magic,” his father told him. “What the Tzaddikim do, that's something from God. So this must be, too. It's something they call spinspace.”
“Did you put some spinspace on the dreidel?”
“No, I got someone else to do it. I'm still trying to learn spinspace, myself. We don't have it here. Not yet.”
“And you won't have supper, either, if you don't wash your hands,” said Rebekah.
Samuel's eyes were glued to the dreidel. It had spun up to a certain speed and then held that rate, as if it would spin forever. At his mother's words, however, the boy grabbed the toy and stuffed it into a pocket.
Dinner was longer than usual, because Isaac had to deal with an interminable interrogation about his and Nathan's doings in Denver.
Samuel's questions, predictably having to do with soldiers and battles, were the ones most easily dealt with. “No, there was no war with Texas while I was there,” he told the boy. “They signed a peace treaty while we were still on our way there.”
“But will they keep to the treaty?” Samuel asked.
“I don't know,” he admitted. Rado and the Lone Star Empire have no Desolation between them to prevent the movement of armies, as we have between New Israel and the Dixie Emirates.”
This earned him a frown from Rebekah. “Will Nathan come home if a war starts? Why did you leave him back there, anyway? Why isn't he home with his family?”
“Nathan's studying at a special school...” he began.
“I know all about that,” said Rebekah. “Do you think we live on the Moon? Even this far away, the traders bring stories with them. We've heard about the Xander School.”
“It's the reason I was asked to bring him with me,” Isaac told her. “Nathan is going to be a Tzaddik one day.”
“So why aren't you teaching him, instead of them?”
“What's a Tzaddik?” Samuel wanted to know.
“Shush. Well? Why aren't you teaching him, instead of foreigners?”
“Because they know things we don't. Nathan will get both kinds of training, from me and from Xander. He's going to be a very special Tzaddik when he is old enough.”
“What's a Tzaddik?” Samuel repeated. “Can I be one too? Will you teach me too?”
Actually, you can, Isaac thought. But he kept this to himself. Things were complicated enough at the moment without getting into that too. “If God wills it,” he said.
Sarah's questions were of a different sort. “How do the girls in Rado find husbands? Do they have matchmakers?”
“I don't know,” he admitted. “I didn't stay long enough to learn all about the people and their customs. But I think they are much like the gentiles that live here in New Israel. Sometimes marriages are arranged, and sometimes they find
their partners all by themselves.”
All in all, it was a long dinner before he could finally say the thanks and help Rebekah clear the table. They sent Samuel and his sister to go study. The children were only too happy to duck out of helping.
“I can't believe you just left him there among strangers,” she said, handing him a dish to dry.
“They're not strangers any more,” he said.
“But he's just a child!”
“You know better than that,” he murmured. “By our own customs he's a man now. Has been, ever since he had his bar mitzvah. We can't treat him like a child any more.”
She fell silent, scrubbing the next plate so hard he feared she might break it. She thrust it at him and snatched the next one from the pile.
“You have to let him go,” he said, gently. “This is something every mother goes through, and now it's your turn. It'll be good practice for when Samuel and Sarah come of age.”
“Don't talk down to me!” she snapped. “I know all about that. But he's out there among strangers, with no guidance...”
“Actually, I think Xander provides a lot of guidance.”
“You know what I mean! Soon we'll have to find a wife for him, and whomever it is will want a good Jewish boy, not someone who's grown up imitating gentiles.”
“Not just gentiles,” he said. “His roommate's a boy from the Emirates.”
This made her turn toward him, forgetting the dishes entirely. “You've left him with an Arab?” she said, horrified.
“Not an Arab,” he said, patiently. “A Muslim. Arabs live in Arabia, far across the ocean. Kareef grew up a few hundred miles south of us.”
“It's the same thing!” she insisted. “Everyone knows you can't trust them. That's why we have the Desolation. If I knew you might do something like this, I would have forbidden you to go until you promised to bring him back with you.”
“I'm surprised at you,” he said, trying to hold down the anger he could feel rising inside of him. “Haven't we suffered enough, ourselves, from prejudice? Kareef is a fine young man who happens to follow a different path to God.”
“What? Now you're saying that they are as good as us? That all of our traditions mean nothing? I can't believe I'm hearing this, and from a Tzaddik, too! Maybe you'd like Sarah and Samuel to start worshiping Allah now.”
“They already do. Don't we say there is only one God? God doesn't care what name we use for Him. Do you really think he ignores the prayers of Christians who don't call Him Yahweh?”
She grabbed another plate and turned away. “You're losing your way, Isaac. What happened to you out there in Denver?”
“I prefer to think that I'm seeing my way, seeing it more clearly than ever before,” he said. “I think Xander sees it too. The way forward is together, not separate.”
She scrubbed viciously. “If you think that, then – ”
There was a knock at the front door.
She shoved the plate at him. “Who could that be, this late in the day?”
He sighed. “You know who it has to be. They must have heard I was returning.” He dried the plate and slid it into the rack before going to the door.
Sure enough, a line of white-robed men were on the front walk. He opened the door. “Do we have to do this now? Why can't you ever come before nightfall, like most guests?”
“Why should we hurry?” said Elias. “And you know why we come now, Brother Isaac. You're a Tzaddik too; you know we try to keep our identities from becoming common knowledge. And we do have lives to live, and our own things to do while the Sun shines.”
Yes, he knew, and he knew why the secrecy was so necessary. If all of his neighbors knew he was a Tzaddik, they'd be forever taking up his time asking him to resolve squabbles and do miracles for them. “Come in," he said, knowing there was no other choice possible. He led them into the study and shut the door.
“Was your trip a success?” Elias asked.
“More than we anticipated. Nathan has been accepted into Xander's School, and is learning things we could never have taught him here.”
“Such as?”
“Pathspace and spinspace.”
“What are those?”
“They're all part of something that includes what we can do here in New Israel. Pathspace involves controlling the paths objects travel in, and spinspace is almost like it, except spinspace is more concerned with rotations, and curved paths.”
“Whose terms are these?”
“Xander made them up. He learned pathspace by himself, just as we've developed tonespace and the people in the Emirates have developed a grasp of spinspace.”
“Are you saying that gentiles and Muslims can actually become Tzaddikim?” Elias did not sound happy about that idea.
“No,” said Isaac. “I'm saying that our abilities are not unique and that anyone can learn these skills. New Israel and the Emirates have institutionalized their wonder-workers under the aegis of religion, but you don't have to be religious to do what we do. As far as I can determine, Xander seems to have no religion at all, yet he's considered a very powerful wizard.”
Brother Tobit spoke up. “Without a moral compass, human selfishness can work great evil with this kind of power.”
“I'd hardly say that Xander lacks moral compass,” said Isaac. “He seems to have collected a lot of books, and from our conversations I gather he's read the Torah and the Quran in addition to the Christian Bible.”
“So they're all just books to him,” said Elias.
“What I mean is, he's quite scholarly, for a gentile, and willing to take wisdom wherever he finds it.”
They tried to digest that. “What is the political situation?”
“I was getting to that.” He withdrew his copy of the trade agreement from an inner pocket of his robe. “This is an agreement on trade between Rado, New Israel, and the Emirates.”
They studied it in silence for a time. “There are terms here we do not know,” Elias said. “What is a thermodyne?”
“A combination of a swizzle and something Nathan learned how to do.” He didn't bother to hide his pride in the boy.
He pulled one out of another pocket. First he stroked it lengthwise to get the airflow going. “I'm sure you all recognize this from descriptions. We still have a few of them here in New Israel, but no one knows how to make them. Well, Xander can make them, using his pathspace.”
“They could be very useful for ventilating the mines,” Elias admitted grudgingly.
“But this isn't just a swizzle,” said Isaac. Now he stroked around the circumference of the pipe, and let the end of it begin to glow red-hot. Now the wind from the thermodyne was hot air.
“I see,” said Elias. “It's some kind of combination of the swizzle and the everflame. I suppose that's handy in it's own way, but hardly a breakthrough.”
“Oh it's very handy,” Isaac agreed. Now he stroked around the circumference of the pipe in the opposite direction and let them watch the hot glow fade, as the end of the pipe grew frosty instead. He blew cold air at them, making them blink.
“It's more like a combination of the swizzle, the everflame, and the coldbox,” he said. “Something no one has ever seen before. It's not even mentioned in the old writings about the Tourists!” There was no way to keep the pride out of his voice. My son made this! “With one of these thermodynes, you can stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer.”
“And you learned how to make this, from Xander?” Finally Elias sounded impressed.
He grinned. “I wish I could claim credit. Actually, my son discovered how to make it work. He's not just learning things we don't know, out there in Denver. With Xander's wizards, Nathan is discovering things nobody knows.”
Chapter 56
Nathan: A Brighter Blue
“...let your heart retain my words...”
– Proverbs 4:4
By now the process came so naturally he barely needed to think about it. Pick up another length of pipe from t
he box on his left. Did they have a smith turning out pipe, or had it been scavenged from some old building? Don't know and don't care. Apply the icetorch weave, then drop it into the box on his right. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lester pull one of the icetorches from the box. Nathan couldn't see what happened next, but he knew Lester was applying the swizzle weave. After a moment, Lester tossed it into the final box on his right. Another thermodyne in the world.
He picked up another inert pipe from the box on his left. “Why are we doing this?”
“You know that as well as me,” Lester grunted, as he picked up another icetorch from the box between them.
“Not really. I mean, I get it, that we need more thermodynes to start up the triangle trade with Rado, New Israel and the Emirates.”
“So?”
“I just think we could be making better use of our time.”
Lester concentrated, then dropped another thermodyne into the box with the others. “You don't think this is a good use of our time?”
“No. I mean yes, I think we this isn't the smartest way to get where we're going.”
“How can you say that? You're the fastest at making icetorches, and I'm the quickest swizzler. Together, we're the best team for cranking out thermodynes.”
“Yes,” he said. “but we're not learning anything by doing what we do best.” He picked up another pipe and regarded it.
“All right,” said Lester. “In a few minutes we'll switch places. You're right. I need more practice with the icetorch weave and you need to get faster with swizzles.”
“That will be slower, but better for our training,” he agreed. “But it's not what I meant. We're a bottleneck. This is keeping the two of us from learning anything new. Where is the next class of students? We should be teaching more wizard candidates so they can take over the assembly line while we help Xander expand what we can know and teach.”
Lester dusted off his hands and leaned back in his chair. “I know what you mean. A few more thermodynes are not going to be much help is Texas invades again.”
Tonespace: The Space of Energy (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 3) Page 22