CALIPHATE(126)

"Better a small town," they'd advised. "One where there are none but Germans. You'll find a lot of us are abandoning the cities as they turn into foreign enclaves. No one will find you and Amal too remarkable. It will be better in a small town, too, since the welfare benefits are being slashed all over."

The welfare payments had become more important, too, as Gabi had found herself unable to sell much of her art. She, after all, concentrated on the human form and selling pictures of people had become a rather dangerous, as being against the Sharia, activity. Though she'd never encountered it, she'd had friends who had had their stalls and galleries ransacked by Islamic mobs.

In the end, she'd decided she must emigrate and take Amal with her.





American Consulate, Zurich, Switzerland, 5 March, 2024


After the retaliatory nukings, only Switzerland, in all of Western Europe, had maintained diplomatic relations with the United States— now, since the occupation of Canada, rapidly morphing into the American Empire. Thus, it had been to Switzerland Gabi had had to go to apply for a visa to immigrate into the U.S.

She took her number, and waited impatiently for it to be called. Her initial application had been submitted months before, shortly after she'd realized that no place in continental Europe was going to be safe.

Once her number was called, Gabi proceeded to a private office where a consular officer invited her to sit while perusing her file.

"I'm sorry, Ms. von Minden," the official had said. "Your application has been disapproved."

"But . . . but why?"

In answer, the official began taking from the file documents and photographs, sliding them across the desk. Gabi saw herself in the photographs, standing on rostra while speaking to crowds, standing in crowds while carrying signs, signing petitions while being photographed.

She didn't understand. Her face said as much.

"We still take some immigrants from Old Europe," the consular explained. "But we don't really need them. We get plenty of high quality applicants from Latin America, India, Japan, China, Vietnam . . . all over. We not only don't need Europeans anymore, we don't really want them.

"I'm sorry to have to say it this way but . . . you're diseased, you see . . . politically diseased. You're in the process of losing your own homeland. You brought it on yourselves and it's become irreversible now. So ask yourself: Why should we accept into our country people with a history of destroying the country they live in?

"You're diseased, Ms. von Minden, and you're contagious. We had a long bout with the disease that's afflicted Europe, and it killed millions of us. Why should we allow any more contamination?

"Europe abandoned its future for a short period of comfort in the present, and you . . . you personally"—the consular's hand waved towards the pictures and documents on the desk—"encouraged this. Europe stopped having children, who are the future—because it was too uncomfortable, too inconvenient. Europe began taxing the future to buy comfort in the present. Europe let in millions of inassimilable, and therefore inherently hostile, foreigners to do the work that the children which you did not have could not do. And thus you have no future—you sold it—but only a past. Why should we let you take away our future? What do we owe you that we should risk that?"

"But my daughter? Her father was an American citizen!"

"We know. But he was not a citizen until well after your daughter was born. Thus, she is not a citizen. Worse, you raised her and she probably carries the same political disease you do. We don't want her either.

"For whatever it's worth, I'm sorry for you both."





Chapter Twenty




The grandchild, far from being incidental, is decisive. Civilization persists when there is a widespread sense of an ethical obligation on the part of the present generation for the well-being of the third generation —their own grandchildren. A society where this feeling is not widespread may last as a civilization for some time—indeed, for one or two generations it might thrive spectacularly. But inevitably, a society acknowledging no transgenerational commitment to the future will decay and decline from within.

—Lee Harris, "The Future of Tradition"





Flight Seven Nine Three, 24 Muharram,

1538 AH (4 November, 2113)


The first thing Hamilton noticed when he entered the cockpit and stood beside the pilot was that Ling (he knew, at some level, that Ling was being teleoperated but still thought of the body as Ling's) was crying, tears coursing down her cheeks in an endless flood. Retief was sitting next to the pilot in the copilot's chair.

"I'm sorry if—"

—"I need you to set me down," Hamilton answered. "There's one of our team still on the ground, at an-Nessang."