by R. M. Meluch
“If,” Shad Iliya said. “The operative word.”
“You brought the charge of antiquated against us. Don’t change emphasis now because I defeated you on that front, O Ye of the Heathen Name.”
Shad Iliya sat up and threw his pillow across the room. “When will you leave off this precious conceit of supposing you have a monopoly on the Supreme Being!”
“When God ceases to be.”
That meant never. “I shall hang you from a minaret and use you for target practice.”
“Why haven’t you attacked yet, General?” the Jew asked, sounding still congenial and tranquil—joyful, in fact. An alarm went off inside Shad Iliya, though he didn’t know why. A balance had shifted.
“I shall attack when I am ready,” he answered, guarded.
“You’re ready,” the Jew said, as elated as an unarmed soldier stumbling across a fully stocked weapons cache. “You’ve been ready.”
A lump rose in Shad Iliya’s throat. His hands were trembling unaccountably. He was going to say he didn’t know what the Jew was talking about. But only the guilty used those words, and of course Shad Iliya was guilty of nothing.
Except that Shad Iliya was afraid to kill. The coming battle terrified him, and the Jew smelled it. And the battle began in earnest. The Jew gave up trying to undermine the faith of the army in its leader and he began to gnaw at the head of the serpent itself.
“It is up to you to stop this war, Shad Iliya. You are the attacker. It is in your hands. You give the word that this atrocity may not be.”
“You surrender,” Shad Iliya countered.
“It is on your head, Shad Iliya.”
And the charge of stalling came home doubly when the general overheard his own soldiers wondering about the delay.
“Are we starving them out?” one asked.
“No. Can’t be,” another said. “It’s not our way.”
The thought chilled Shad Iliya. Blockade, starvation, was a messy way to go. It spawned gross inhumanity—or else martyrdom. Either way it was a hideous contemplation.
But Shad Iliya doubted it could even be done here. Any longer delay would allow the defenders to break the blockade. Time was the ally of Jerusalem.
For what am I waiting, then? Shad Iliya thought. Then, in anger, I am not!
“Ra′im!” he roared.
“Sir!”
“Twenty-four hours.”
“Yes, sir.”
All day long the Jew wielded his long knives, and Shad Iliya listened with dread, no longer able to turn off the voice of damnation. The Jew pulled out all holds. But one.
Throughout the campaign, the Jew never called the pale, blue-eyed general a nazi. It was the most obvious shot, and the Jew did not use it, for which Shad Iliya was both grateful and unnerved. Was it mercy?
He doubted it. For when Shad Iliya said, “I shan’t glory in destroying your people,” the Jew replied, “I shan’t glory in destroying you.”
You, said the Jew. Singular. Personal. He was not claiming victory. He was claiming destruction of Shad Iliya himself.
Sundown came, the eve of the battle. Jerusalem’s guns were not ready despite the borrowed time. The defenders had no chance.
They seem to know. Shad Iliya watched the Arab men flood into their mosques, the women drape their heads and go through their motions outside.
The Na′id soldiers within earshot chanted with the muezzin playfully. They knew, too.
A less certain Ra′im Mishari passed a scan scope to his general and directed his attention to a Jewish station in the new city. Shad Iliya lifted the scope and zoomed in on the group of soldiers. Some of them wore light-benders, which would make them invisible once activated, but that wasn’t what was alarming Ra′im. It was their attitude.
Some lounged in groups, joking, passing around their dwindling supply of cigarettes, while others were dancing their circle dances of old—around a fire.
Shad Iliya shuddered and lowered the scope.
“Why are they so confident?” Ra′im said worriedly.
“They are not,” Shad Iliya said. “They know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I do not understand either,” Shad Iliya said with a hand on Ra′im’s shoulder. “I only know it is so.”
Before retiring for the night, Shad Iliya made a last desperate effort to avert the coming massacre. The Na′id supreme commander as a rule never initiated contact on the link. He did so now and asked privately for a surrender.
“Of course not,” was the answer.
“What say your Christian and Muslim colleagues?” Shad Iliya asked.
“We are in accord,” said the Jew.
“Ask them!” Shad Iliya cried in obvious agony.
The Jew agreed to consult the other two members of the triumvirate, and he relayed their answers an hour later. “The Christian says that the Holy Land is not for the godless. The Muslim says Jihad.”
“Shit.”
“What means this word ‘shit,’ Philistine?”
“It is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning excrement, also synonymous with Jihad—so says Shad Iliya.”
“Strange. Cardinal Miriam is forever saying that hell is the Anglo-Saxon word for war. Or war is hell. I forget which.”
“God damn your flippancy! If you change your mind, this link will be open all night.”
“It is a morning assault, then, General?”
“Good night, Zealot.”
• • •
The defenders were not to spend a peaceful night. Shad Iliya told his own soldiers to get some sleep—real sleep. He bid only a few night officers to keep Jerusalem awake till dawn in readiness. At the places where the guns were being lowered, he ordered heavy salvos and robot flyovers at 0213 hours, and again at 0400 and 0415. “And the moment the muezzin opens his mouth for the 0300 prayer call. Everyone else to bed.”
Then he hiked down the far side of the Mount of Olives to his ship for a proper bath. His alien slave, Pony, came along to assist him. The pretty palomino-colored humanoid knew his master’s routine and was never too much in the way.
Pony was an androgynous, lithe-bodied, doe-eyed creature with white mane and horsetail. Shad Iliya had named the slave. Shad Iliya was one of those people who called a spotted dog Spot and a red horse Red. Pony’s real name had a click in it, and Shad Iliya was not about to torture himself learning to speak clicks in order to pronounce his alien slave’s name. Pony was a useful thing, a pretty piece of furniture, better than a robot. Pony would do anything for him.
Shad Iliya pulled Pony’s mane and closed both fists in the long, silvery hair, hardly aware of the creature in his hands, his fierce thoughts elsewhere. By heaven, you cannot fight a war with human beings. Are we not one family?
Pony waited meekly with bowed head, trying not to wince.
Shad Iliya swallowed hard. Life goes from my limbs and they sink, and my mouth is sere and dry; a trembling overcomes my body . . . my mind is whirling and wandering. And I see forebodings of evil, Krishna. I cannot foresee any glory if I kill my own kinsmen in the sacrifice of battle. These I do not wish to slay, even if I myself am slain. Shall we not, who see the evil of destruction, shall we not refrain from this terrible deed?
He released his slave and returned to his room in the chapel on the mount. Pony had already remade the bed and set out his nightclothes and some drinking water. And a shot of whiskey.
Good old Pony.
He lay down, the comlink on the marble-topped nightstand. He lifted his hand to it, wanting to call. But he could not. He had nothing new to say. He would sound very weak and frightened.
The Zealot called in the middle of the night. Shad Iliya rolled to the nightstand and lunged for the com with shaking hands. Will he surrender and avert this bloodbath?
No. He said he was lone
ly.
Shad Iliya was stunned. “So you call me?”
“You are the only man in the galaxy who can possibly be as lonely as I.”
Shad Iliya fell back on the bed, his eyes directed up at the painted ceiling in the dim light.
Truth.
Cricket sounds and cypress scent drifted through the window. The night was starry.
Shad Iliya checked his chronometer. It was nearly time for the next missile strike.
“You are probably worse off,” the Jew said. “Because you are wrong and know it.”
“Please.”
“Beg with me, Shad Iliya?”
“You know you will be slaughtered.”
“I know that?”
“Are you waiting for a miracle?” Shad Iliya rasped savagely.
The Jewish commander was grim. “No. There will be no miracles today.”
Shad Iliya closed his eyes tightly.
O gods, there truly will be a battle! The realization sickened him. That is it. That is it.
He tried to encourage himself with scriptures:
To forgo this fight for righteousness is to forgo thy duty and honor.
Fighting is obligatory, much as you dislike it.
The latter law the Na′id had taken from the Koran. And, realizing that, Shad Iliya fell deeper into despair. With both sides equally unbending, there was no way out. None at all. Shad Iliya rose before dawn and bawled for Pony to bring his dress uniform from the ship. Pony obeyed and helped him dress, including a bullet plate. Shad Iliya activated the radiation screen in his belt and drank the radiation medicine Pony brought as an extra precaution.
General Shad Iliya appeared on the steps of the war office in high temper, his eyes ringed angry red, his uniform blazing metallic blue. Everyone else was in battle drab.
He marched over the crest of the Mount of Olives to address his troops. A holo transceiver carried his image to his soldiers on all sides of the city. His fury channeled to fervor, and he stirred in them a patriotic spirit he didn’t feel. Then, more to encourage himself than them, he read from scripture in a sonorous voice:
“‘No one can bring to an end the Spirit which is everlasting. Therefore, great warrior, carry on thy fight. If any one thinks he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows the ways of truth. The Eternal in thee cannot kill. The Eternal in thee cannot die. Weapons cannot hurt the spirit and fire cannot burn it. The Spirit that is in all beings is immortal in them all. For the death of what cannot die, cease thou to sorrow. Think thou also of thy duty and do not waver. There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in a righteous war.’”
He closed, and the army erupted into cheers that resolved into a chant—not the Bel’s name, or any of the Empire’s catchwords, but his name, Shad Iliya.
There remained ten minutes until dawn. Shad Iliya gave the order to mobilize. He climbed back to his observation post on the chapel steps.
The city was quiet. The defenders were in hiding. They would have to be hunted down in the narrow streets and closed buildings, each a kind of fortress in itself with many traps.
The sun rose golden on the ancient town.
O God, save your city.
There were no crickets, no birdsongs this dawn. The muezzin’s morning prayer call went unanswered.
I am going to take Jerusalem, and even the God of three peoples cannot stop it.
Not even I can stop it.
The Na′id army appeared on the horizon on all sides at once, a black shroud of soldiers and transport ships and guns drawing in on the city.
A cry rose out of Jerusalem as if the city itself had a voice.
Be frightened, Jerusalem. Be frightened and live.
The tall Na′id standard crested the Mount of Olives behind Shad Iliya and cast a long shadow across the entire city, old and new. Shad Iliya found himself in its shadow.
He scared himself with the sight he had created. He was struck by a strong premonition of death.
Across from him, on the far horizon, the great dragon cannon Ba′al loomed, its mouth gaping at the new city.
This is an abomination. What have I done?
He spoke into the command circuit. “Anthem.”
The inciting military music sounded through the tiny speakers each Na′id soldier carried, and the Na′id army charged and opened fire with great noise. Shad Iliya covered his ears with his hands.
Ra′im shouted at his side, “Sir, is all that racket necessary?”
The general nodded. “For the Arabs. If they cannot hear it, they think it will not hurt them.”
They were an emotion-led people. Their wailing war cries curdled the blood. Both sides of this conflict were acquainted with the great power of sound.
The defenders had a few surprises. Shad Iliya had anticipated that there would be some. One was a portable scatter-dart cannon that swiveled and felled Na′id ranks on the north side of the city.
Shad Iliya was on the command circuit quickly. “The scatter cannon,” he said sharply. “Take that out. Whatever we have to use.”
A cluster of twenty-four smart missiles were launched at it en masse. One got through, and Shad Iliya relaxed a measure. The expenditure of precious hardware didn’t bother him. What else was it for?
He wished it could all be done with robots. As the battle progressed, he watched, sickened, as each contingency which he had hoped to avoid arose, and blood flowed in answer to it. The soldiers of both sides were heroes all, the best fighters on Earth—the people of Jerusalem fighting for their God, the Na′id fighting for Shad Iliya.
My people can see me, Zealot. Your God is painfully absent here.
A beam ricocheted off his personal n-screen. He wheeled and fired toward the source with a bullet gun.
A child carrying a beam gun reeled back with a high-pitched grunt and died. It was a barefoot, runny-nosed urchin someone had taken in.
The body was spirited away by Na′id soldiers with hurried, embarrassed apologies.
Shad Iliya was left agitated and ill. The shock was not at the child’s tender age—to Shad Iliya human beings didn’t gain or lose value with age—but that the child was human. Shad Iliya had never killed a human being with his own hand. It was too easy. There ought to have been more to it.
He swallowed down a rising gorge, lifted his scan scope to his eyes, and watched the battle.
An hour passed. He contacted Ra′im, whom he had sent to supervise the western front. “Pull out of the west quadrant. Stand by with Ba′al.”
“General, do you think—?” Ra′im started, stopped, restarted. “Sir, we’re holding our own.”
Questioning orders was unlike Ra′im. This battle was affecting him, too. “This will go on all day,” Shad Iliya told him. “At this rate, the city will fight to the last infant.” He needed to break the back of the defense. Now.
“Yes, sir,” Ra′im said, and he initiated the controlled retreat.
Shad Iliya withdrew into the war office and waited out the evacuation. An officer came to him to report, “We have a prisoner, sir.”
“The Jew?” Shad Iliya asked. He had ordered only one specific person taken alive.
“His wife,” said the officer, and motioned for the woman to be brought in.
She was young—Shad Iliya’s age—with long black hair, a dirt-smudged face, and blistered hands. Her wrists were bound behind her back and her ankles were shackled to restrict her steps to an abbreviated stride.
She knew the White Na′id at once. As she faced him, she whisked her long ponytail over her shoulder with an imperious toss of her head and spoke coldly in a rough, throaty voice. “Your wife is said to be the most beautiful woman in the galaxy. What do you want with me, General?”
Shad Iliya was angry. “You are a prisoner of war, not the booty of some pirate raid, so
let us not play at that. And, yes, my wife is beautiful. Myself, I would let you go.”
“That would be a mistake,” she said.
“I fear so.”
Jewish women were not gentle things.
“Your soldiers are on the run,” she said.
Shad Iliya nodded. His people were efficient in carrying out orders; Ra′im had them evacuating from the cannon’s path.
The woman frowned, sensing from his calm something sinister in the ease of the Na′id retreat.
The general’s young orderly, Sinikar, came into the room carrying a staple gun and ID with which to tag the prisoner’s ear. The woman stiffened like a rod as the boy drew near.
“No,” Shad Iliya said. He motioned Sinikar aside, and he removed the gold earrings from the woman’s right ear. He slipped them into her hip pocket. She stood rigid at his grazing touch. He took the ID tag from Sinikar and gently laced it through the woman’s existing earring holes.
Her eyes slid to the side as if trying to see her own earlobe. “What does it say?” A slight quaver betrayed apprehension.
“It says you are dangerous,” he said, then to his aides, “Get her out of here.”
They walked her as far as the door, then she suddenly broke away and ran stiff-legged back to him, yanking at her shackles. “General!” she cried.
“Yes.”
“Am I to be killed?”
“No.”
She breathed in relief. But didn’t seem sure if in reality she was better off.
A shout sounded from the portico over a descending-pitched whistle. “Incoming!”
“Get down!”
Shad Iliya dropped to the floor, taking the Jewish woman with him. He covered his head and hers, since her hands were bound, as the shells exploded around the building in thunderclaps. Clods of dirt clattered down on the roof in a dark hailstorm. One shell blasted very near and rang the chapel like a drum, sending down a rain of plaster on their heads and strewing white dust across the time-faded colors of the patterned floor.
Shad Iliya lifted his head, coughed in the dusty, thick, burned air. He checked the woman and then his curly-haired child orderly for injuries. They were unhurt. He looked up at the ceiling. The centuries-old frescoes of his pretty chapel crumbled around his ears.