Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

“You assume correctly.”

“It will be the greatest sell job in the history of the world, but I’m ready to undertake it. The aspects are as good as they’ll ever get. I’ll need more from you than this disk to sell the program, though. You’ll fund it all, every cent?”

“I’m prepared to do that.”

“Then I only have to convince the right people of its feasibility. Get it all on paper. I assume you’ve red-teamed it?”

Crane nodded. “That’s what I’ve spent the last year doing. I know every argument against it and each counterargument.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out another disk. “It’s all on here.”

Sumi took the disk. “You are a feared and respected man at Liang Int. They landed on your wrong side once and paid the price. They’ll want to listen.” She pocketed the disk and stood. “I’ll get on it right away.”

Crane also stood. “You’ll do it, really do it?”

“Absolutely. It may be why I was put on this planet … solely to do this job.”

Lewis Crane, hard as rock and focused as an epicenter, fell back in his seat, stupefied. “I-I don’t know how to thank you, I—”

“No,” Sumi said, shaking her head vigorously. “It is I who thanks you. I may recoup my honor now.”

She bowed and hurried out of the chamber. Crane was shaking, nearly delirious.

Lanie squealed and threw her arms around his neck. “You did it! You … did … it! How do you feel?”

Crane wiped his eyes and kissed his bride to be. “I feel like the weight of five billion years has been lifted from my shoulders.”

Abu Talib, also known as Daniel Newcombe, stood in a huge cotton field with representatives from the Islamic republics of Algeria and Guatemala. Daily, Islamic dignitaries came to pay their respects or to negotiate trade deals with New Cairo. Right now, cotton was king.

Upon conversion to Islam, Newcombe had taken the name of Abu Talib. It was the name of Mohammed’s uncle and greatest lifelong supporter, who also had not believed in the prophet’s mission, as Newcombe/Talib did not believe in the tenets of Islam or in the philosophy of Brother Ishmael. It was the godless man’s way to embrace religion.

The field stretched out for hundreds of acres, the Yo-Yu screens, ten feet overhead, casting a slight bluish glow over everything. In the far distance Liang’s wall split the horizon. Hundreds of people worked in the field around them. Right now the cotton plants resembled small dead bushes, but the earth was black and rich, the spring rains mere weeks away.

Ali Garcia, the trade rep from Guatemala, was kneeling by a plant, frowning at it. “This will be American Upland cotton?” he asked, his fingers playing with a twiggy branch.

“Best in the world,” Brother Talib said. “It doesn’t look like much now, but the flowers will start forming after the rains come. Once they wither, the boll forms and matures in a couple of months. You’ll be able to take delivery in mid-August.”

“What can you produce from a field like this?” asked the Algerian, Faisal ben Achmed.

“We got eight hundred thousand bales of cotton from these fields last year without knowing what we were doing. This year we’ll double that. Interested?”

“Of course we’re interested,” Garcia said. “What are you looking for in return?”

“Investment capital, farm machinery, livestock, and building materials,” Talib said.

“We’re digging in, entrenching until the rest of our people are welcomed to the homeland. We want to establish a strong base from which to grow.”

“Kwiyis.” Faisal nodded. “Your people are strong, your soil blessed. You will make a good addition to our international family.”

“We must go,” Garcia said, standing, “if we wish to catch the shuttle to Belize.”

“Sure you can’t stay and have a meal with me?” Talib asked. “The food is delicious, and all raised right here in New Cairo. Let me extend my full hospitality.”

“Alfshukre,” Faisal said. “But no, and with regrets. Abu Talib’s hospitality is renowned.”

Talib nodded, then led them toward the main road through the fields, the three of them climbing, under a fat, warm sun, into the vehicle waiting there.

“How large are the occupied territories?” Garcia asked as the driver opened the focus and sped off.

“We are the northwestern corner of the territories,” he said. “The Mississippi divides us from Arkansas and Louisiana, and provides us a natural boundary all the way south to the Gulf of Mexico. We will extend east to the Atlantic Ocean. There will be enough room.”

“For now,” Faisal said, all of them laughing.

“Will the Americans capitulate?” Garcia asked.

“I hope so,” Talib answered. “I truly hope so.”

They drove through the cotton fields, then the soybean fields … the rice fields … past the dairies … past the chicken farms. Housing was mixed throughout the fields, workers living close to their jobs. The housing came in the form of three-story blocks of apartments made from brick fired in New Cairo. Building was a major concern and always on full throttle. Lacking the proper equipment early on, the building industry was nearly biblical in its methods, something Talib wanted to rectify as quickly as possible.

He loved the respect with which he was treated these days. With Crane he had lived in the shadows. Here, he cast the shadow, and it was a large one. Most everyone thought of him, not Brother Ishmael, when the Islamic State was mentioned. It put the two men on a strange footing, especially since Talib didn’t regard Ishmael as his spiritual leader.

Dead magnolia trees and live people lined the roadway leading up to the pre-Civil War plantation house that served as the governmental and religious headquarters for New Cairo. Yo-Yu had been given permission to build a shield plant in the walled state and in exchange they were designing tree shields so that regeneration of the thousands of magnolia and cottonwood trees in New Cairo could get underway.

He wished his guests sahbah innoor, had the driver move them along, then began to push his way through the crowd thronging the front entrance to the government house. There were always crowds, either people complaining or, most often, refugees seeking asylum. As soon as he was able to put up another building, he was going to have Immigration moved to the farthest geographical point in New Cairo from where he was standing.

The people parted for him the moment they recognized him. He was a Presence, thought of as Ishmael’s word made flesh, and was treated accordingly. And he was NOI’s only statesman. Brother Ishmael refused to assume that role and refused, even, to visit New Cairo until, as he said, “all my brothers are free to journey home.”

So, to the citizens here, it was Abu Talib who ruled New Cairo. To date no request of his had been denied, so his overlord status was unchallenged. New Cairo’s first year had been full of hardship, emotional, physical, financial. But they had survived and the colony was succeeding, and he had been a large part of it.

It had made sense, when he’d decided to go on sabbatical, to come here. He was close to the action and respected, and he could work with the very soil that had thrown his EQ-eco out of synch to begin with. Also, Crane and Lanie were far away. He was working hard to forget both of them—with little success.

His lab had been a large bedroom with a wide veranda. He worked and slept there, leaving the French doors open to the breeze all night. Now he coded in and locked the door behind him.

“Assalamu ahlaykum,” came a voice from amidst his computers and seismos.