Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

“Good,” she replied, matter-of-factly. “Because you’re going to have one. I’ve made you a son to rule New Cairo.”

“What?”

Her eyes were playful. “You heard me,” she said. “You shouldn’t be surprised. We’ve been trying hard enough.”

He hugged her, flooded with a feeling of bittersweet euphoria. “That’s wonderful. When?”

“June,” she said. “Next June.”

“You know it’s a boy? You’ve tested?”

“I don’t have to test,” she said. “I have made a male for Islam. We are very strong-willed in my family.”

“Talib!” Ishmael shouted. “Turn on your damned aural!”

Abu kissed Khadijah, his stomach fluttery, and padded on the V fiber.

“Khadijah is pregnant!” he announced to anyone on the fiber.

A cheer went up from the assembled.

“We pray for a manchild,” Ishmael said. “Now will you please look at the screen?”

Talib looked and wasn’t surprised. On one side of the screen was a shot outside the walls of the War Zone in LA. Zoners, adults and children, stood in a large group, each holding a candle. They were singing. On the other side were the running tallies of the vote. NOI was losing.

“We are losing and my brother has our people singing negro spirituals!” Ishmael said, raising his arms to heaven. “A minstrel show!”

“Remember,” Talib said. “We knew there would be setbacks and regions we’d lose.”

“We’re down one percentage point in Seattle,” interrupted one of the poll watchers. “Down two points in Phoenix.”

“We’re losing our lead in New York!”

“That’s it,” Ishmael said low.

Talib looked at the overview board. The votes were swinging against the cause.

“Who’s running the Detroit screen?” Ishmael called into the confusion.

“I am, sir!” answered a man standing near Talib, who was on his feet now, Khadijah rising, too.

“No!” Aziz said, grabbing Ishmael’s arm. “You cannot do this.”

Ishmael jerked his arm away and spat on the floor. “This is the result of my listening to you,” he said. Then he asked the poll watcher, “Is Brother Elijah running the action in Detroit?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell him to turn on the heat, Brother.”

“Yes, sir.”

Aziz had already moved the Detroit War Zone to the big screen, Talib watching as Ishmael’s order reached the crowd. They broke from their singing immediately, throwing their candles at the FPF guard lined up fifty yards distant.

They charged the edge of the Zone screaming, “God is great!” They threw rocks, but when the nausea gas hit the blacktop, the real artillery came out.

“Guns!” Aziz yelled. “What are you doing?”

“What I should have done all along!” Ishmael returned. “At this point, this is the only way. Perhaps we can draw enough viewers to keep them away from their voting buttons. Maybe we can hold our lead. Get Miami on the horn!”

“The bottom’s dropping out of Detroit!” the poll watcher called. “We’re down five percent now.”

“Tell them to hold,” Ishmael said, pacing furiously. He pointed to a man working a small monitor. “What’s the screen comparison breakdown?”

“We’re still winning in cities where we have no presence,” the man returned over the aural.

“Brother,” Aziz said, intruding softly in the aural. “About Detroit…”

“Abort Detroit immediately,” Ishmael said. Frowning deeply, he strode into the midst of the action. People were furiously working their screens and downloading stats. “Cease all operations!” Ishmael commanded. The room suddenly quieted, all eyes on him.

The word went out quickly, the Zones breaking their candlelight vigils, the Detroit rioters already escaping back behind their walls.

“Now what?” Aziz said.

“You have the nerve to ask me that?” Ishmael put a finger right in his brother’s face. “We are going to lose, and I blame you.” He then pointed to Talib. “And I blame you.”

“Violence is not the answer. I’m begging you to keep peace,” Aziz said.

“No!” Ishmael shouted. He whirled away from his brother and shoved through the crowd, exiting through the side door without a backward glance.

Lewis Crane took the eggbeater up into the puffy clouds, bright white against a hard blue sky, then dipped quickly down. Charlie, two days shy of eighteen months of age, clapped his hands and giggled. He was sitting on his mother’s lap, a huge, yellow plush elephant in his own little lap.

“You know what clouds are, Charlie?” Crane asked as he banked south, headed for the Project. “They’re water.”

Charlie made a gurgling noise. He seemed to adore his parents, and delighted them by listening intently to every word they spoke to him, responding often with a profound string of gibberish.

“And how much does a cloud weigh?”

The child’s eyes, hazel like his mother’s, opened wide. As if he could understand everything his father said, he looked out at the sky. He was just learning to speak. He pointed a pudgy finger and said, “Coud … coud.”

“That’s right, pal. Cloud,” Crane said. “Bet you think those clouds don’t weigh a thing … like spiderwebs. But a really big cloud weighs a lot. Ten million pounds maybe. Big. Big, huh?”

“Big,” Charlie repeated, opening his arms wide. He held up his stuffed animal. “Ellypant.”

“Yeah,” Crane said, excited. “Maybe two elephants.” Beaming, he looked over at Lanie. “Did you hear that? Two new words—cloud and elephant—and he got the point about size!”

Lanie chuckled, smoothing Charlie’s hair while resisting the temptation to tease Crane. What the heck, though, Charlie was bright, probably not ready to make an acceptance speech in Stockholm, but Crane was justified in the pride he took in their son. How he loved Charlie. And what a terrific father he was. Most important of all, though, Lanie thought, was that Charlie was sweet-tempered, curious, and affectionate. Almost as if he could read her thoughts, Charlie twisted around and planted a wet kiss on her jaw. She was laughing as they spotted the Project hundreds of feet below.

As usual, there were protesters around the outer gates of the Project compound. They’d been there since groundbreaking, which had occurred just a few days after Charlie’s birth. Mohammed Ishmael had enlarged the scope of NOI protests while escalating their violence. Their avowed purpose in picketing Northwest Gemstone was to stop Crane from pursuing what they called “his mad schemes to wreak nuclear havoc to stop earthquakes.” That, Lanie and Crane knew, had come from only one source—Dan Newcombe. Well, Abu Talib, as he called himself now.

They’d feared when Dan had resigned from the Foundation that he’d go public with what he knew about Crane’s dream; they were only surprised he’d waited so long … or that it had taken him such a time to learn about Northwest Gemstone and put two and two together. So far, they hadn’t lied to the public. In fact they hadn’t made any public statements at all. But they didn’t have to lie, because the public was disinclined to believe NOI. After the loss of the referendum on a NOI homeland, Mohammed Ishmael had become much more prominent, often eclipsing Dan in the number and apparent importance of speeches, appearances on teev, and before their people.

And it was no doubt that it was Mohammed Ishmael who had returned the NOI to a warlike regimen of terrorist attacks.

The War Zones had rioted all at once, then moved farther out into the cities themselves—suicide bombers, cars full of gunmen shooting anyone unfortunate enough to be on the streets, full-scale urban warfare.