“Well, imagine that,” he said without enthusiasm. “It sure sounds like I’ve been having a good time.”
“I want to show you something,” she said excitedly, sliding a disk into her wristpad. It was half the size of the pads he remembered and was smooth without symbols.
A viddy came up on the beige wall. It showed the War Zone emptying of people, huge groups migrating southward as the Islamic State was opened.
“When?” he asked.
“Last year,” Khadijah said. “President Masters signed the Partition Order on Thanksgiving Day of 2037.”
“President Masters?”
“Kate Masters? I think you know her.”
“I thought I did,” he said enigmatically. “How did they work it?”
“The government and the YOU-LI Corporation have been quietly buying people out for years in those states. The earthquake in Memphis helped a lot. Most of the whites wanted to go anyway.” She pointed to the screen, house-to-house fighting in a small southern town, race against race. “Those who didn’t want to leave held out for a tune, but we eventually got rid of them all.”
“Got rid of them? There’s an Africk army?”
The kids giggled, Talib cocking his head.
“That term isn’t used much anymore,” Khadijah said, smiling.
“Why not?”
“Our African Islamic brothers didn’t think many of us were black enough to call ourselves African.” She smiled. “They started calling us ‘mestizos.’ The name stuck.”
“It’s not a complimentary title,” he said.
“We’ve made it one.” She sat up straighter, regal all of a sudden. “So the country is now called the United States of America and Islam. New Cairo encompasses Florida, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.”
“Why did they give in after all this time?” he asked. “It must have been damned expensive to buy out that many people.”
“They had no choice,” she said. “The world is seventy per cent Islamic. The Chinese Syndicates are dying fast because they no longer control trade. Africa is the seat of economic power right now. Ultimately, the Chinese cut a deal with us to funnel trade to the rest of America through our back doors at preferred prices. It keeps both countries alive.”
The wall now showed Martin Aziz waving to crowds and making speeches. “He is in charge,” Khadijah said. “But you are the heart of the people. We wouldn’t accept a settlement with the whites until they agreed to either let us see you or see your body. Nobody knew if you were alive or dead. Now that we know, I promise you, Abu, we won’t rest until you are free.”
“Why do I have the feeling this has very little to do with me?”
“You’re a symbol. You’re Abu Talib, larger than life. The people of New Cairo need a figure to look up to in these difficult days. When the whites left after partition, they burned everything behind them. We’ve been building from scratch. Your example is their strength.”
“My example,” he said, smiling again, the muscles hurting again. “I have set no example. I’ve been surviving like an animal here. I want you to know it hasn’t been easy. I’ve … changed quite a lot. To be even more honest, I haven’t thought much about the movement since I’ve been in here. Instead, I’ve thought about smelling real air again, or seeing the sky.” He held his hand out, slowly forming it into a fist. “I’ve thought about grabbing rocks out of the ground and knowing everything about an area there is to know through its rocks … a whole history through rocks to the beginning of time! I’ve thought about sex…”
She looked down instinctively, every gesture reading like a roadmap to him. “It’s all right,” he said. “Ten years is a long time. You didn’t know if I was alive, I—”
A loud buzzer went off; Khadijah immediately stood up. “It’s time to leave,” she said. “Is there anything you want to say to the people?”
He laughed. “Today’s the first day I’ve heard a voice other than my own in years.
I don’t even live in the same world you live in.”
She shrugged. “I’ll make up something.”
Her door clicked and popped open. The children moved toward it. So soon. How could it be over so soon? This was worse than the isolation. “Crane,” he said as she hustled the children out the door. “What’s Crane doing?”
Her brittle laugh startled him so much that his body twitched.
“How the mighty do fall. A pariah, that’s what Crane is. An outcast. Reviled … for planning to set off nuclear bombs. The tide turned against him when his insane plan was fully revealed. Then for years he was ranting and raving all over the teevs about some terrible disaster coming in California. Nobody listened to him. And I haven’t heard anything about him in a long time.” Halfway out the door, she turned back and said, “We’re going to get you out of here.”
“Come back for more visits,” he said, but she was gone. The door closed quickly, he heard the lock snap. “Tell them I must have access to information!” he shouted. “For God’s sake, do something!”
He slouched in the chair. His door clicked and popped open. Slowly, he got up, then trudged back to his cell. He’d live from visit to visit now, in the hinterlands of hope. He had lost the ability to track time … and he never would get it back.
Lewis Crane sat in the back seat of the Moonskimmer with Burt Hill. The all-terrain vehicle’s bulbous helium-filled underbelly made it feel as if they were floating over the stark lunar landscape. The stars were brilliant pinpoints above, the crown of Earth just passing over the horizon behind them. The real estate man talked nonstop, continually forcing internal adjustment of the cabin’s carbon-dioxide monitors. A pale trail of light from the Earth’s corona illuminated the landscape, this band of surface getting ready to enter a two-week period of “night.”
“We don’t get a lot of Darksiders up here,” the real estate man, named Ali, said. “People want the good property lightside, where you get the view of Earth.”
“That’s exactly what I don’t want,” Crane said, turning to the windows. They were skimming the Southern Sea, Galileo’s Mare Australe, on their way to YOU-LI’s defunct titanium mining operation in the Sea of Ingenuity. The Jules Verne Crater rose majestically on their left. The mare was dust, though, not water as Galileo had surmised, powdered rock and glass and asteroid scum.
“I don’t know why you want to look at places on the darkside,” Burt said, wheezing. “A man likes a little sunshine from tune to time.”
“They get as much light over here as on the other side,” Crane said. “You just don’t have to look at the Earth, that’s all.”
“I got’s lots good property over there,” the salesman said. “Prime Earthrise.”
Crane ignored the comment. “Now, anything I buy here is mine, right?”
Ali turned to him, black moustache arching over a wide smile. He formed his fingers into a circle with his thumb. “Absolute sovereignty,” he said, snapping his fingers open. “Many groups buy lands for their religious freedom, you know? Or for their politics. No Earth governments involved, see? It’s good system if you like ’a take care of yourself.”
“How about access to water?” Hill asked.
“How about it?” Ali returned. “You make whatever deals you can make to get what water you can. The consortium up here charge a lot, you know? Most people, if they can afford it, truck it up from Earth.”
Crane grunted. Earth wasn’t the place to find water nowadays. Oh, it was better in a number of respects. The atmosphere was ozone-regenerated, people living in the sun again the way he’d remembered from his childhood, and Masada had disappeared completely five years ago with barely any notice. Everyone was too busy worrying about the amount of radioactivity in their water supplies to care about too much else. The fallout from Masada had contaminated more than water. Waste products had leaked through their safety containments all over the world because nobody was willing to look at the problem until it had become a catastrophe. Tainted water was everywhere.