Shadow of the giant

me about didn't need a large escort."
    "Only enough to get me to where a certain thick rope is
coiled like a snake."
    Peter nodded. "I have friends currently trying to find
his exact location."
    Alai smiled. "I assume it's far from the front."
    "If he's in Hyderabad," said Peter, "then he
will be under extremely heavy guard. But if he's across the border in Pakistan,
security will not be unusually heavy."
    "Either way," said Alai, "I will not have
your men exposed to danger."
    "Or observed," said Peter. "It wouldn't do
for too many people to know you were brought to real power with the help of the
Hegemon."
    "You do seem to be at hand whenever I make a play for
power."
    "This is the last time, if you win," said Peter.
    "This is the last time either way," said Alai,
then grinned. "Either the soldiers will follow me or they won't."
    "They will," said Peter. "If they get the
chance."
    Alai indicated his small escort. "That's what my camera
crew is here to ensure."
    Ivan smiled and lifted his shirt enough to show that he was
wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying grenades and clips and a machine
pistol.
    "Oh," said Peter. "I thought you had gained
weight."
    "We Battle School boys," said Alai, "we
always have a plan."
    "You're not going to fight your way in, then."
    "We're going to walk in as if we expected to be
obeyed," said Alai. "With cameras rolling. It's a simple plan. But it
doesn't have to work for very long. That thick rope, it always did love a
camera."
    "A vain and brutal man, my sources say," said
Peter. "And not stupid."
    "We'll see," said Alai.
    "I think you're going to succeed," said Peter.
    "So do I."
    "And when you do," said Peter, "I think
you're going to do something about the things Virlomi has been complaining
about."
    "It's because of those things that I could not wait for
a more opportune time. I must wash Islam clean of this bloody stain."
    "I believe that with you as Caliph, the Free People of
Earth can coexist with a united Islam," said Peter.
    "I believe so as well," said Alai. "Though I
can never say so."
    "But what I want," said Peter, "is insurance
that I can use in case you don't survive. Either today or at some future point,
I want to make sure I don't have to face a Caliph I can't coexist with."
    Peter handed Alai a couple of sheets of paper. It was a
script. Alai began to read.
    "If you die a natural death and pass on your throne to
someone you have chosen, then I'll have no need of this," said Peter.
"But if you were murdered or kidnapped or exiled or otherwise dethroned by
force, then I want this."
    "And what if you are killed or otherwise forcibly
removed from office?" asked Alai. "What happens to this vid then,
assuming I say these things for the camera?"
    "Try to encourage your followers not to think that
killing me would be good for Islam," said Peter, "and my soldiers and
doctors will guard against any other possible causes of my untimely
death."
    "In other words, I just have to risk it," said
Alai.
    "Come now," said Peter, "the only way this
vid will be useful is if you aren't around to repudiate it. And if I'm dead, it
will have no value to my unworthy successor."
    Alai nodded. "True enough."
    He stood up, opened his suitcase, and dressed in the
flamboyant costume of a Caliph as the Muslim people expected to see him.
Meanwhile, Peter's vidman set up his equipment—and the backdrop, so it wouldn't
be obvious it was taped on a battlecraft, surrounded by soldiers.
     
     
    At the gate of the heavily guarded military complex at
Hyderabad— once the headquarters of the Indian military, then of the Chinese
occupiers, and now of the Pakistani "liberators"—three motorcycles
pulled up, two of them carrying two men each, and the third a single rider with
a satchel on the seat behind him.
    They stopped well back from the gate, so no one would
suppose it was an attempt at a suicide bombing. They all held up their hands so
some trigger happy guard wouldn't take a shot at them while one of the men
pulled a video camera out of the satchel and fitted a satellite feed to the top
of it.
    That got the attention of the guards, who immediately phoned
for advice from someone in authority.
    Only when the camera was ready did the man who had been alone
on his cycle peel back the traveling coat that had covered him. The guards were
almost blinded by the whiteness of his robes, and long before he had his
kaffia-cloth and 'agal-rope in place on his head.
    Even the guards who weren't close enough to