Shadow of the giant
to prayer?
Besides, he had to deal with the stateless peoples—the
Kurds, the Berbers, half the nomad tribes of ancient Bactria. Alai knew
perfectly well that these Muslims would not follow a Caliph who kept the status
quo—not when Peter Wiggin was tempting revolutionaries everywhere with his
promise of statehood and the examples of Runa and Nubia.
We brought Nubia on ourselves, thought Alai. The ancient
Muslim contempt for blackest Africa still seethed under the surface; if Alai
had not been a member of Ender's Jeesh, it would have been inconceivable for
him, as a black African, to be named Caliph. It was in Sudan, where the races met
face to face, that the ugliness had emerged with so much virulence. The rest of
Islam should have disciplined Sudan long ago. And now they all paid the price,
with the humiliation of Sudan at the hands of the FPE.
So we have to give the Kurds and Berbers their own
governments. Real ones, not sham "autonomous regions." That would not
be popular in Morocco and Iraq and Turkey, Alai knew. That's why it was stupid
in the extreme to imagine embarking on wars of conquest when there was no peace
or unity inside the world of Islam.
Alai would govern from Damascus. It was far more central. He
would be surrounded by Muslim culture instead of Hindu. It would be a
civilian-centered government, not an obvious military dictatorship. And the
world would see that Islam was not interested in conquering the world. That
Caliph Alai had already liberated more people from oppressive conquerors than
Peter Wiggin ever could.
As Alai left his office, two of the guards fell in step
beside him. Ever since Virlomi simply walked into his office the day they got
married, Alamandar had insisted that it not be so easy to walk into highly
sensitive areas of the compound. "We are in occupied enemy country, my
Caliph," he had said, and he was right.
Still, there was something that made Alai uneasy about
having to be accompanied by guards as he moved about the compound. It felt
wrong. The Caliph should be able to move among his own people with perfect
trust and openness.
As Alai stepped through the door into the parking garage,
two more guards joined the two who had walked with him from upstairs. His
limousine sat idling at the curb. The back door opened.
He saw someone jogging toward him from among the parked
cars.
It was Ivan Lankowski. Alai had rewarded him for his loyal
service by putting him in charge of the administration of the Turkish nations
of central Asia. What was he doing here? Alai had not called him back from
service, and Ivan had not written or called about coming.
Ivan reached into his jacket. Where a gun would be, if he
was armed with a shoulder holster.
And he would be armed; he had carried a gun for too many
years to be comfortable without one now.
Alamandar got out of the open back door of the limo. As he
rose to his feet, he shouted at the guards. "Shoot him, you fools! He's
going to kill the Caliph!"
Ivan's gun was out. He fired, and the guard to Alai's left
dropped like a rock. The sound was strange—the barrel had a silencer, but Alai
was close to being directly in front of it, so it wasn't so much silenced as
shaped.
I should drop to the ground, thought Alai. To save my life,
I should get out of the line of fire. But he couldn't take the danger
seriously. He didn't feel as though he were in danger at all.
The other guards had their guns out now. Ivan shot another
one, but then the bullets—not silenced—flew in the other direction, and Ivan
fell to the ground. His gun did not slip from his hand; he maintained his grip
on it to the end of his life.
Or maybe he wasn't dead. Maybe he could spend his last
moments explaining to Alai how he could betray him like this.
Alai walked to Ivan's body and felt for a pulse. Ivan's eyes
were open. He was already dead.
"Come away, my Caliph!" shouted Alamandar.
"There may be other conspirators!"
Conspirators. There was no possibility of other
conspirators. Ivan didn't trust anybody enough to conspire with them. The only
person Ivan absolutely trusted was...
Was me.
Ivan was a perfect shot. Even at a run, he could not have
aimed at me and then clumsily hit two guards.
"My guards," said Alai, looking up at Alamandar.
"The ones he shot—will they be all right?"
One of the other guards jogged back to look. "Both
dead," he said.
But Alai already knew that. Ivan had not been aiming at
Alai. He had come here with one purpose in mind,
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher