“I will pray for you, excellent khan, and for God’s forgiveness of the mistake you made this day,” Paul said gently. Theodore, on the other hand, looked as if he were consigning Telerikh to the hottest pits of hell.
Niketas caught Jalal ad-Din’s eye. The Arab nodded slightly to his defeated foe. More than anyone else in the chamber, the two of them understood how much bigger than Bulgaria was the issue decided here today. Islam would grow and grow, Christendom continue to shrink. Jalal ad-Din had heard that Ethiopia, far to the south of Egypt, had Christian rulers yet. What of it? Ethiopia was so far from the center of affairs as hardly to matter. And the same fate would now befall the isolated Christian countries in the far northwest of the world.
Let them be islands in the Muslim sea, he thought, if that was what their stubbornness dictated. One day, inshallah, that sea would wash over every island, and they would read the Qu’ran in Rome itself.
He had done his share and more to make that dream real, as a youth helping to capture Constantinople and now in his old age by bringing Bulgaria the true faith. He could return once more to his peaceful retirement in Damascus.
He wondered if Telerikh would let him take along that fair-skinned pleasure girl. He turned to the khan. It couldn’t hurt to ask.
SUPPOSE THEY GAVE A PEACE
Susan Shwartz
Susan Shwartz has been writing fantasy and science fiction for more than twenty years. She is the author of the extraplanetary adventure Heritage of Flight, as well as the Heirs to Byzantium alternate world fantasy trilogy, comprised of Byzantium’s Crown, The Woman of Flowers, and Queensblade. The Heirs to Byzantium series lays the groundwork for her recent Shards of Empire and its sequel Cross and Crescent, sword-and-sorcery epics set in the eleventh century at the twilight of the Byzantine empire, which explore the clash of cultures during the First Crusade. Shwartz has collaborated on the Star Trek novels Vulcan’s Forge and Vulcan’s Heart with Josepha Sherman, and on Empire of Eagles with Andre Norton, for whom she also compiled the tribute anthology Moon-singer’s Friends. She has edited the Arabesque anthologies and is a coeditor for the Sisters in Fantasy anthology series.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER the war, and my damned sixth sense about the phone still wakes me up at 3:00 A.M. Just as well. All Margaret needs is for me to snap awake, shout, and jump out of bed, grabbing for my pants and my .45. I don’t have it anymore. She made me sell it as soon as the kids were old enough to poke into the big chest of drawers. I don’t interfere when she makes decisions like that. The way things are going to the dogs, though, I’d feel a whole lot better about her safety if I had the gun.
So I stuck my feet into my slippers—the trench foot still itches—and snuck downstairs. If Margaret woke up, she’d think I was raiding the icebox and go back to sleep. I like being up and alone in my house, kind of guard duty. I don’t do much. I straighten towels or put books back on the shelves—though with Steff gone, that’s not a problem anymore. I don’t like seeing the kids’ rooms so bare.
Barry’s models and football are all lined up, and Margaret dusts them. No problem telling the boys from the girls in our family. Barry’s room is red and navy, and Steff’s is all blue and purply, soft-like, with ruffles and a dressing table she designed herself. Now that she’s at school, we don’t trip on clothes all over the place. And I keep reminding myself we ought to yank out the Princess phone she got when she turned thirteen. Light on the dial’s burned out, anyway.
I wish she hadn’t taken down the crewelwork she did her freshman year. The flower baskets were a whole lot prettier than these “Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came” posters. But that’s better than the picture of that bearded Che-guy. I put my foot down about that thing, I can tell you. Not in my house, I said.
I’m proud of our house: two-floor brick Tudor with white walls and gold carpet and a big ticking grandfather’s clock in the hall. Classy taste, my wife has. Who’d have thought she’d look at someone like me?
Besides, dinner was pretty good. Some of that deli rye and that leftover steak…
As the light from the icebox slid across the wall phone it went off, almost like it had been alerted. I grabbed it before it could ring twice.
“Yeah?” I snapped the way I used to in Germany, and my gut froze. My son Barry’s in Saigon. If anything goes wrong, they send a telegram. No. That was last war. Now they send a car. God forbid.
But Steff, my crazy daughter—every time the phone rings at night I’m scared. Maybe she’s got herself arrested in one of her goddamn causes and I’m going to have to bail her out like I did in Chicago. Or it could be worse. Two years ago this month, some kids were in the wrong place at the wrong time up at Kent. Damn shame about them and the National Guard; it’ll take us years to live it down. Hell of a thing to happen in Ohio.
I thought my kid was going to lose her mind about it. The schools shut down all over the place, all that tuition money pissed away, and God only knows what she got into.
Not just God. Margaret. Steff would call up, say “put Mom on,” and Margaret would cry and turn into the phone so I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I think she sent money on the sly-like, so I wouldn’t make an issue of it. You don’t send kids to college so they can get shot at. Steff would say you don’t send anyone anywhere so they can get shot at. She’s just a kid, you know. She doesn’t really believe all that stuff. The kids shouldn’t have been there. Anyone could tell you that.
“Hey, that you, Joey?” The voice on the other end was thick with booze. “It’s Al. Remember me?”
“You son of a bitch, what’re you doing calling this hour of night?” I started to bellow, then piped down. “You wanna wake up my whole damn family?”
“Thought you’d be up, Joey. Like we were… the time when…”
“Yeah… yeah…” Sure I remembered. Too well. So did Al, my old army buddy. It happens from time to time. One of us gets to remembering, gets the booze out—Scotch for me these days now that my practice is finally paying off—then picks up the phone. Margaret calls it “going visiting” and “telephonitis” and only gets mad at the end of the month when the bills come in.
But Al wasn’t from my outfit at the Battle of the Bulge. Weren’t many of them left. Not many had been real close friends to start with: when you run away from home and lie about your age so you can go fight, you’re sort of out of place, soldier or not.
Damn near broke my own dad’s heart; he’d wanted me to follow him into school and law school and partnership. So I did that on GI bills when I got out. Got married and then there was Korea. I went back in, and that’s where I met Al.
“Remember? We’d run out of fuel for the tank and were burning grain alcohol… rather drink torpedo juice, wouldn’t you? And pushing that thing south to the 38th parallel, scared shitless the North Koreans’d get us if the engine fused…”
“Yeah…” How far was Korea from Saigon? My son, the lance corporal, had wangled himself a choice slot as Marine guard. I guess all Margaret’s nagging about posture and manners had paid off. Almost the only time it had with the Bear. God, you know you’d shed blood so your kids don’t turn out as big damn fools as you. I’d of sent Barry through school, any school. But he wanted the service. Not Army, either, but the Marines. Well, Parris Island did what I couldn’t do, and now he was “yes sir”–ing a lot of fancypants like Ambassador Bunker over in Vietnam. At least he wasn’t a chicken or a runaway…