CALIPHATE(11)

Arriving at the second floor, Hamilton's nose was assailed by a mix of esoteric foodstuffs in preparation mixed in with the marginally washed bodies of some of the sepoy officers—foreigners selected to lead some of the empire's foreign volunteers—who trained at Benning. These sort were often quite good, Hamilton understood. Some said that their ideas of personal hygiene did not always match those of the American citizen officers among whom they were billeted. More objective sources had told Hamilton that people with different diets will smell different, no matter their personal hygiene habits.

There were enough breakable objects in the bags that just dropping them was a poor idea. Instead, he bent at the waist and the knees to lower the two handheld ones to the concrete. Then, straightening— ouch—he reached up and lifted the third. This one he'd had balanced on the back-borne fourth and held steady with the pressure of his head. After lifting it overhead, he placed it, too, on the deck. The last (and curiously enough the Army was still issuing green duffle bags with shoulder straps) he took off one strap at a time.

His other personal belongings, books, dress uniforms and such, would arrive sometime in the next few days. He'd have to call to arrange a drop off and authorize the room to accept it.

"Welcome, Lieutenant Hamilton, to Olson Hall," said the room. "If you would place your palm on the gray panel to the right of the door and look with both eyes directly into the scanner above and to the left of that . . ."

As the palm and retinal scanner recorded and verified his identity, Hamilton heard a familiar feminine voice say, "About time you showed up."

"Hodge, you look like hell," Hamilton said, as the two sat at a table down in the bar just off the lobby of Olson Hall. "Your skin's a mess. You've lost what? Twenty pounds?"

"Twenty-five. And you think you look any better? They starved you worse than they did me."

"True," he agreed, "but not for as long. And it doesn't matter if my tits disappeared. I didn't have any to begin with."

"Never mind," she said, tilting her glass towards him. "They'll grow back. And drink up. I'll start looking better, I promise." She tilted her head to one side. "Did I ever tell you you're an asshole?" she asked.

"Many times."

"Did I ever tell you that you're a cute asshole?"





Kitznin, Affrankon, 5 Shawwal,

1530 AH (4 October, 2106)


Besma was awakened by crying. Worse than crying, really; what she heard was a brokenhearted sobbing severe enough to shake her little bed. Tossing the covers off, she put her feet on the floor and walked on cat feet to the source, an even smaller bed at the foot of her own.

"Petra, are you all right?" she asked. The sobbing grew, if anything, worse.

"I m-m-miss my mommy. I m-m-miss my daddy. And I w-w-want my brother, Hans. They didn't even let me take m-m-my d-d-dolly!"

Besma wasn't much older than Petra. She hadn't a clue about any clinical theories on what to do with a child who's been dragged from her home and sold as a slave. She did, however, have a good heart, a naturally kind and sympathetic heart. She spent some time stroking the hair of the weeping slave, then laid her own dark head down on Petra's lighter one. Finally, when those things did no good, she just wrapped the little Nazrani in a hug and joined her in her sobs.

The next day Besma cornered the groundskeeper, another slave though he was a Moslem from Mauretania, and asked him, "Ishmael, will you escort me to the town my new friend came from? She left some things behind and I'd like to get them for her."

"Ohhh, Miss Besma," Ishmael shook his brown head, frowning, "I don't know about that. I've still got hedges to trim and the garden plot needs weeding and . . . "

From a fold in her garment Besma drew out five silver dirhem, a gift from her father on the last Ramadan and all the money she had. She knew Ishmael had been working to buy his freedom for years, for as long as she could remember, in fact. She also knew that her father was quite liberal about letting his slaves buy their freedom, subtracting a percentage of the value of the work done from the purchase price and asking only for the difference. Lucky was the slave that found his way to Abdul Mohsem's household.

"I can always ask Rafi to fill in for me," Ishmael announced, his frown changing instantly to a smile. "Tomorrow, though, all right? Rafi's so stupid it will take me half a day to teach him what he has to do over a single day. And then I'll have to work half the night to fix the mistakes the idiot boy will have made before your father sees them."

Besma nodded quickly. A deal was a deal and she was certain Ishmael would keep his end of the bargain.