I pulled his bed covers up to his chin, brushed back his hair, kissed him on the forehead, and turned out his light. “Sleep well, child,” I said, and then I went back to my room. I was sure Uncle Teddy would be just fine in the morning. It had always worked for me.
DECEMBER, 2008
Dr. Morelande is the only one who comes to see me anymore. He says that Uncle Teddy is so busy he can’t find time to stop by. But I don’t think that’s exactly true. I think Uncle Teddy went on vacation with Mother and Dr. Armbruster, and he is having so much fun that he is not coming back at all.
Dr. Morelande has tried very hard to make this a good Christmas, but I am sorry to say I am not very happy. I am tired all of the time, and I can’t even move out of bed. Dr. Morelande asked me if I wanted anything for Christmas, but if I couldn’t have Mother or Uncle Teddy, then there was nothing to ask for.
But then I thought about it and thought about it for a long time, and I remembered the pictures Uncle Teddy had shown me many years ago. I told Dr. Morelande about the green photo album in Uncle Teddy’s room and asked him if he could find it for me. A little while later Dr. Morelande returned with the book.
Together we went through the pictures, and when we got to the one Uncle Teddy had shown me, the one with the man and the beautiful dark-haired woman, I made him stop.
“There is something I want for Christmas,” I told him. “There is something I want very much.”
I decided to tell Dr. Morelande about the passageways then. I didn’t think that I would get in trouble. I made him put me in my wheelchair and take me for a walk behind the walls. He argued with me at first, but I refused to be put off.
I told him exactly which path to follow. He wheeled me all the way down to the wall at the main entrance. I looked through the small opening. I was sure that the beautiful dark-haired woman would be standing at the door in her winter coat. I was disappointed that she wasn’t there. I thought that if I waited long enough she would certainly show up—she would come back like the winterberry, bright and strong even in the cold cold winter. There would be snowflakes in her hair, and she would say “Merry Christmas” in her lovely voice. So we waited.
Finally Dr. Morelande said that if I agreed to go to bed, he would wait for the woman, and bring her directly to me as soon as she arrived. I thought that this would be a good idea since I was so tired.
When she arrives, we will have many things to discuss. I have decided to make her my new friend. I think I will show her my book of writings. I think I will ask her about the white gown to show her that I have not forgotten, and then I’ll ask her about the children Uncle Teddy mentioned. I won’t tell her about the vacation place where everyone has gone without me, and not because I’m being sneaky, but only because I am very lonely and I would like her to stay with me for a while.
Harry Turtledove
Harry Turtledove first came to prominence as a writer of alternate world fantasy with The Misplaced Legion, the first volume in his multibook Videssos series of novels about the experiences of a Roman Legion translated to a world that runs on magic. Since then, he has explored the impact of altered historical events in a variety of works, including Agent of Byzantium, set in medieval times, the acclaimed Guns of the South, in which time travelers manipulate a southern victory in the American Civil War, and the first two volumes of The Great War saga, American Front and Walk in Hell, which envisions an America in which the United States and the Confederacy support opposing sides in World War I. His ambitious Worldwar series—which includes In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Striking the Balance, and Upsetting the Balance—projects an alternate World War II in which an alien invasion forges alliances between Axis and Allied opponents. Turtledove has also co-edited the anthology Alternate Generals. His many other works include the short-fiction collection Departures, the comic fantasy The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, and the linked novels Into the Darkness and Darkness Descending, epic tales of empire building set in a fantasy world where cataclysmic wars are fought with magic.
ISLANDS IN THE SEA
* * *
Harry Turtledove
INTRODUCTION
Islam exploded out of Arabia in the seventh century. The triumphant armies of the caliphs overthrew the Persian Empire and took Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa from the East Roman or Byzantine Empire. Muslim forces twice besieged Constantinople, in 674–78 and 717–18. In our history, the Byzantine capital held and the Byzantine Empire survived as Christianity’s eastern bulwark, holding Islam out of Anatolia and the Balkans for centuries to come and converting the Bulgars and Russians to faith in Christ. But what if the Empire had fallen in the eighth century instead of the fifteenth? The still-pagan folk to the north of Constantinople would have had new choices to make. . . .
A.H. 152 (A.D. 769)
The Bulgar border guards had arrows nocked and ready as the Arab horsemen rode up from the south. Jalal ad-Din as-Stambuli, the leader of the Arab delegation, raised his right hand to show it was empty. “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, I and my men come in peace,” he called in Arabic. To be sure the guards understood, he repeated himself in Greek.
The precaution paid off. The guards lowered their bows. In Greek much worse than Jalal ad-Din’s, one of them asked, “Why for you come in peace, whitebeard?”
Jalal ad-Din stroked his whiskers. Even without the Bulgar’s mockery, he knew they were white. Not many men who had the right to style themselves as-Stambuli, the Constantinopolitan, still lived. More than fifty years had passed since the army of Suleiman and Maslama had taken Constantinople and put an end to the Roman Empire. Then Jalal ad-Din’s beard had not been white. Then he could hardly raise a beard at all.
He spoke in Greek again: “My master the caliph Abd ar-Rahman asked last year if your khan Telerikh would care to learn more of Islam, of submission to the one God. This past spring Telerikh sent word that he would. We are the embassy sent to instruct him.”
The Bulgar who had talked with him now used his own hissing language, Jalal ad-Din supposed to translate for his comrades. They answered back, some of them anything but happily. Content in their paganism, Jalal ad-Din guessed—content to burn in hell forever. He did not wish that fate on anyone, even a Bulgar.
The guard who knew Greek confirmed his thought, saying, “Why for we want your god? Gods, spirits, ghosts good to us now.”
Jalal ad-Din shrugged. “Your khan asked to hear more of Allah and Islam. That is why we are here.” He could have said much more, but deliberately spoke in terms a soldier would understand.
“Telerikh want, Telerikh get,” the guard agreed. He spoke again with his countrymen, at length pointed at two of them. “This Iskur. This Omurtag. They take you to Pliska, to where Telerikh is. Iskur, him know Greek a little, not so good like me.”
“Know little your tongue too,” Iskur said in halting Arabic, which surprised Jalal ad-Din and, evidently, the Bulgar who had been doing all the talking till now. The prospective guide glanced at the sun, which was a couple of hours from setting. “We ride,” he declared, and started off with no more fanfare than that. The Bulgar called Omurtag followed.
So, more slowly, did Jalal ad-Din and his companions. By the time Iskur called a halt in deepening twilight, the mountains that made the northern horizon jagged were visibly closer.
“Those little ponies the Bulgars ride are ugly as mules, but they go and go and go,” said Da’ud ibn Zubayr, who was a veteran of many skirmishes on the border between the caliph’s land and Bulgaria. He stroked the mane of his elegant, Arab-bred mare.
“Sadly, my old bones do not.” Jalal ad-Din groaned with relief as he slid off his own horse, a soft-gaited gelding. Once he had delighted in fiery stallions, but he knew that if he took a fall now he would shatter like glass.
The Bulgars stalked into the brush to hunt. Da’ud bent to the laborious business of getting a fire going. The other two Arabs, Malik ibn Anas and Salman al-Tabari, stood guard, one
with a bow, the other with a spear. Iskur and Omurtag emerged into firelight carrying partridges and rabbits. Jalal ad-Din took hard unleavened bread from a saddlebag: no feast tonight, he thought, but not the worst of fare either.
Iskur also had a skin of wine. He offered it to the Arabs, grinned when they declined. “More for me, Omurtag,” he said. The two Bulgars drank the skin dry, and soon lay snoring by the fire.
Da’ud ibn Zubayr scowled at them. “The only use they have for wits is losing them,” he sneered. “How can such folk ever come to acknowledge Allah and his Prophet?”
“We Arabs were wine-bibbers too, before Muhammad forbad it to us,” Jalal ad-Din said. “My worry is that the Bulgars’ passion for such drink will make khan Telerikh less inclined to accept our faith.”
Da’ud dipped his head to the older man. “Truly it is just that you lead us, sir. Like a falcon, you keep your eye ever on our quarry.”
“Like a falcon, I sleep in the evening,” Jalal ad-Din said, yawning. “And like an old falcon, I need more sleep than I once did.”
“Your years have brought you wisdom.” Da’ud ibn Zubayr hesitated, as if wondering whether to go on. Finally he plunged: “Is it true, sir, that you once met a man who had known the Prophet?”
“It is true,” Jalal ad-Din said proudly. “It was at Antioch, when Suleiman’s army was marching to fight the Greeks at Constantinople. The grandfather of the innkeeper with whom I was quartered lived with him still: he was a Medinan, far older then than I am now, for he had soldiered with Khalid ibn al-Walid when the city fell to us. And before that, as a youth, he accompanied Muhammad when the Prophet returned in triumph from Medina to Mecca.”
“Allahu akbar,” Da’ud breathed: “God is great. I am further honored to be in your presence. Tell me, did—did the old man grant you an hadith, any tradition, of the Prophet that you might pass on to me for the sake of my enlightenment?”
“Yes,” Jalal ad-Din said. “I recall it as if it were yesterday, just as the old man did when speaking of the journey to the Holy City. Abu Bakr, who was not yet caliph, of course, for Muhammad was still alive, started beating a man for letting a camel get loose. The Prophet began to smile, and said, ‘See what this pilgrim is doing.’ Abu Bakr was abashed, though the Prophet did not actually tell him to stop.”
Da’ud bowed low. “I am in your debt.” He repeated the story several times; Jalal ad-Din nodded to show him he had learned it perfectly. In the time-honored way, Da’ud went on, “I have this hadith from Jalal ad-Din as-Stambuli, who had it from—what was the old man’s name, sir?”
“He was called Abd al-Qadir.”
“—who had it from Abd al-Qadir, who had it from the Prophet. Think of it—only two men between Muhammad and me.” Da’ud bowed again.
Jalal ad-Din returned the bow, then embarrassed himself by yawning once more. “Your pardon, I pray. Truly I must sleep.”
“Sleep, then, and Allah keep you safe till the morning comes.”
Jalal ad-Din rolled himself in his blanket. “And you, son of Zubayr.”
“THOSE ARE NO mean works,” Da’ud said a week later, pointing ahead to the earthen rampart, tall as six men, that ringed Pliska, Telerikh’s capital.
“That is a child’s toy, next to the walls of Constantinople,” Jalal ad-Din said. “A double wall, each one twice that height, all steep stone, well-ditched in front and between, with all the Greeks in the world, it seemed, battling from atop them.” Across half a century, recalling the terror of the day of the assault, he wondered still how he had survived.
“I was born in Constantinople,” Da’ud reminded him gently.
“Of course you were.” Jalal ad-Din shook his head, angry at himself for letting past obscure present that way. It was something old men did, but who cares to remember he is old?
Da’ud glanced around to make sure Iskur was out of earshot, lowered his voice. “For pagan savages, those are no mean works. And see how much land they enclose—Pliska must be a city of greater size than I had supposed.”
“No.” Jalal ad-Din remembered a talk with a previous envoy to Telerikh. “The town itself is tiny. This earthwork serves chiefly to mark off the grazing lands of the khan’s flocks.”
“His flocks? Is that all?” Da’ud threw back his head and laughed. “I feel as though I am transported to some strange new world, where nothing is as it seems.”
“I have had that feeling ever since we came through the mountain passes,” Jalal ad-Din said seriously. Da’ud gave him a curious look. He tried to explain: “You are from Constantinople. I was born not far from Damascus, where I dwell yet. A long journey from one to the other, much longer than from Constantinople to Pliska.”
Da’ud nodded.
“And yet it is a journey through sameness,” Jalal ad-Din went on. “Not much difference in weather, in crops, in people. Aye, more Greeks, more Christians in Constantinople still, for we have ruled there so much less time than in Damascus, but the difference is of degree, not of kind.”
“That is all true,” Da’ud said, nodding again. “Whereas here—”
“Aye, here,” Jalal ad-Din said with heavy irony. “The olive will not grow here, the sun fights its way through mists that swaddle it as if it were a newborn babe, and even a Greek would be welcome, for the sake of having someone civilized to talk to. This is a different world from ours, and not one much to my liking.”
“Still, we hope to wed it to ours through Islam,” Da’ud said.
“So we do, so we do. Submission to the will of God makes all men one.” Now Jalal ad-Din made sure Iskur was paying no attention. The nomad had ridden ahead. Jalal ad-Din went on, “Even Bulgars.” Da’ud chuckled.
Iskur yelled something at the guards lounging in front of a wooden gate in Pliska’s earthen outwall. The guards yelled back. Iskur shouted again, louder this time. With poor grace, the guards got up and opened the gate. They stared as they saw what sort of companions Iskur led.
Jalal ad-Din gave them a grave salute as he passed through the gate, as much to discomfit them as for any other reason. He pointed ahead to the stone wall of Pliska proper. “You see?”
“I see,” Da’ud said. The rectangular wall was less than half a mile on a side. “In our lands, that would be a fortress, not a capital.”
The gates of the stone wall were open. Jalal ad-Din coughed as he followed Iskur and Omurtag into the town: Pliska stank like—stank worse than—a big city. Jalal ad-Din shrugged. Sooner or later, he knew, he would stop noticing the stench.
Not far inside the gates stood a large building of intricately carven wood. “This Telerikh’s palace,” Iskur announced.
Tethered in front of the palace were any number of steppe ponies like the ones Iskur and Omurtag rode and also, Jalal ad-Din saw with interest, several real horses and a mule whose trappings did not look like Arab gear. “To whom do those belong?” he asked, pointing.
“Not know,” Iskur said. He cupped his hands and yelled toward the palace—yelling, Jalal ad-Din thought wryly, seemed the usual Bulgar approach toward any problem. After a little while, a door opened. The Arab had not even noticed it till then, so lost was its outline among carvings.
As soon as they saw someone come out of the palace, Iskur and Omurtag wheeled their horses and rode away without a backwards glance at the ambassadors they had guided to Pliska. The man who had emerged took a moment to study the new arrivals. He bowed. “How may I help you, my masters?” he asked in Arabic fluent enough to make Jalal ad-Din sit up and take notice.
“We are envoys of the caliph Abd ar-Rahman, come to your fine city”—Jalal ad-Din knew when to stretch a point—“at the bidding of your khan to explain to him the glories of Islam. I have the honor of addressing—?” He let the words hang.
“I am Dragomir, steward to the mighty khan Telerikh. Dismount; be welcome here.” Dragomir bowed again. He was, Jalal ad-Din guessed, in his late thirties, stocky and well-made, with fair skin, a full brown beard framing rather a wide face, an
d gray eyes that revealed nothing whatever—a useful attribute in a steward.
Jalal ad-Din and his companions slid gratefully from their horses. As if by magic, boys appeared to hitch the Arabs’ beasts to the rails in front of the palace and carry their saddlebags into it. Jalal ad-Din nodded at the other full-sized horses and the mule. “To whom do those belong, pray?” he asked Dragomir.
The steward’s pale but hooded eyes swung toward the hitching rail, returned to Jalal ad-Din. “Those,” he explained, “are the animals of the delegation of priests from the Pope of Rome at the bidding of my khan to expound to him the glories of Christianity. They arrived earlier today.”
LATE THAT NIGHT, Da’ud slammed a fist against a wall of the chamber the four Arabs shared. “Better they should stay pagan than turn Christian!” he shouted. Not only was he angry that Telerikh had also invited Christians to Pliska as if intending to auction his land to the faith that bid highest, he was also short-tempered from hunger. The evening’s banquet had featured pork. (It had not featured Telerikh; some heathen Bulgar law required the khan always to eat alone.)
“This is not so,” Jalal ad-Din said mildly.
“And why not?” Da’ud glared at the older man.
“As Christians they would be dhimmis—people of the Book—and thus granted a hope of heaven. Should they cling to their pagan practices, their souls will surely belong to Satan till the end of time.”
“Satan is welcome to their souls, whether pagan or Christian,” Da’ud said. “But a Christian Bulgaria, allied to Rome, maybe even allied to the Franks, would block the true faith’s progress northwards and could be the spearpoint of a thrust back toward Constantinople.”
Jalal ad-Din sighed. “What you say is true. Still, the true faith is also true, and the truth surely will prevail against Christian falsehoods.”
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