Chapter 3: After Action Report

I had been awake and active for 101 straight hours when I dragged my tired body to Conference Room Four. I was accompanied by a bakers dozen of chattering Arab women still wearing their burkas, ankle-length dresses with long sleeves and with head scarf and veil. Bare foot, of course. The new Caliphate preferred women be barefoot, and I was told that the women were also kept naked beneath their burkas—and nude at home, too. They had been scanned for weapons and I permitted them to retain their clothing until after their CAP tests because I wanted them to score as high as possible. Sponsor level, even. Two of the houri trainees—two more women--were in Sick Bay undergoing emergency medical treatment. Accompanying me were Candi and her wolf Calgary. Spots (a jaguar) and “her” girl Dawn were with us, too. Svetlana (a Siberian tiger) had claimed my left hand—she held it in her mouth and wasn’t letting go. A pair of female Marines brought up the tail. Note that the animals were all female. Fatima had claimed “her” lion Kimba and the two cobras Starbright and Darkwater were in their own little homes in the Kennels. I felt like a shambling corpse but this was training and conditioning for battle conditions—sleep is a luxury in combat.

I prefer to gate directly into my destination whenever transporter pads allow but I made an exception for the houri trainees. Some of the animals get disoriented when I take them through transporter pad networks. The greater the animals’ intelligence, the less they blindly trust and humans have reason to distrust. It wasn’t necessary to cause distress, so we had a bit of a forced march. Eventually I staggered through the double wooden doors that reminded me of the movie edition of throne rooms and the furniture had been moved around. A U-shaped table for the Qua, with Lilith sitting at the head of the table. Flanking tables for bunches of unidentified people. There was a lot at stake in this meeting. I marched up to the proper spot in front of Lilith, just across the table from her, and saluted.

A contingent of three Arab men were watching from the side. Two wore what I call “beer goggles” and Solomon didn’t. The “beer goggles” permitted looking at naked women without seeing nudity—the goggles put either virtual reality clothing on the image of women or put something over the naughty bits so that the wearer wasn’t offended. The Arab contingent represented the Caliphate—which was only minority Arab, by the way. Many races and peoples follow Islam.

“Governor, fifteen houri trainees assigned and thirteen present; trainee Ilsa and Heleema are in Sick Bay for emergency medical treatment.” I reported in heavily-accented Arabic.

“Noted, Lieutenant,” Lilith acknowledged in English with a nod. She switched to swift, flawless Arabic and ordered the women to come up one at a time, state their name, and chose one of three fates: upon completion of their training they’d ship back to Earth and the Caliphate, or they’d be posted off-ship somewhere in the Confederacy, or they’d remain aboard Arc Dios. If they went back to the Caliphate, their fate was what they made it. In the larger Confederacy, sponsors would be slotted in whatever job their skills suited them for best and non-sponsors would be sent to a concubine pool to be adopted. Here on Arc Dios sponsors would become part of the crew and concubines would be impregnated immediately upon graduation. “One at a time.”

The first woman strode forth unafraid and announced her full name—Arab names give the person’s genealogy, and women pick up their husband’s background as well. She was Fatima’s mother and General Mubarak’s former wife—he had to divorce her so that she could take the job. The other dozen women also announced themselves and all declared for the Caliphate.

“Hafie,” Lilith addressed the last woman, “you do not qualify. You are not old enough to test. Solomon, is this girl up for adoption?”

“Yes, Governor Lilith,” Solomon waved a scroll as he spoke. “Her father is my brother-in-law and he has signed this adoption document.”

I was really out of it due to fatigue. I just didn’t have enough energy left to identify, catalog and analyze everybody in the room. All I did was check for hostility—and the only hostile was Colonel Dorman. Or I was prejudiced and I missed other hostiles—no, the many animals in the room were not sensing hostility except from Johnny Dorman. Networking is nice when it works.

“Then I shall adopt her as my daughter,” Lilith commanded, “and when she is of age she will be tested. Hafie, welcome home.”

“That’s not legal!” Dorman thundered.

“Quite the opposite, Colonel,” Ricardo Corleone, my personal assistant AI in human avatar form, rebutted by reciting Confederacy law. “So you see, if parents are willing to assign a sponsor the guardianship of their minor children, defined as humans under the age of 14, then that child may be extracted.”

“What’s keeping millions of parents from doing that?” Dorman objected.

“Two things,” Tess said. “First, and most often, parents are selfish creatures. If they can’t go with their child, they’ll keep their child with them. That usually is what the child wants, too. Humans are hardwired for that. Second is fear. No telling what sort of perverts we are and no telling what suffering we’ll inflict on their child. Many children have been abandoned and those are the children that Tom collects. Some were abandoned because the parents couldn’t care for them any more—died, or the parents are children themselves. Others were abandoned by parents that just don’t give a damn. And a few parents reluctantly give up their children to provide the children with a better life.”

“The other two women,” Ricardo said, “Ilsa had acid thrown in her face and was blinded. Heleema was beaten so severely that her skull, pelvis and one arm were fractured.”

“Let’s stipulate that of fifteen women—Halfie is a woman in our society—only 12 are able to begin training,” Solomon announced. “If the two in your hospital decide to stay here, that’s between you and them. I hope we don’t lose any more, but I trust you won’t kill them unjustly.

“I don’t understand this hold you have over dumb animals, Thomas. The tiger could bite your hand off but she doesn’t.”

“Svetlana regards Tom as her strange but lovable tiger cub,” Lilith explained. “That’s right—not a mate. Tigers only meet to mate and then go their separate ways. The male tiger would kill and eat his own offspring, given the chance. Tom protects Svetlana’s babies. She in turn wants Tom to get dinner and sleep. She’s worried that he isn’t feeling well.”

“Speaking of dumb animals,” I interrupted, “you must be made aware that the med-tube and replicators are intelligent life and that they will be connected to the houris. If the houris dies, the machines will become dust. If the houris are abused, the machines go on strike. I’m a lousy salesman and you might take that as a threat. What are the attributes of self-aware life?”

The answers are self-evident. One feature is that life reproduces itself. The Confederacy Artificial Intelligences are life—they even bud off, reproduce by fission, by making copies of themselves. AI grow as well. Growth is change, is expanding capabilities. I have to let other humans figure that out themselves. Dawn, an uneducated savage from an isolated tribe in South America, could have told them. We civilized and schooled humans have made ourselves stupid. We are so stupid that we cannot even hear other humans—like Dawn, like Lilith—when they tell us Truth.

“Anyone can inflict pain and suffering,” I declared. “Giving another joy is a rare gift. Creating is the god-like power, not destruction.”

“What’s this?” spouted an unidentified member of the Arab contingent. “What cheap Jew trick are you trying to play?”

“We concluded that you’re just after the replicators and med-tubes,” Lilith lilted. “That’s okay—you will need them for your space project. My husband talked the AI into providing the equipment as long as someone we trust was in control. He’s been distributing replicators world-wide and sneaking in a few med-tubes, but in each case it’s to a sponsor-level human that won’t be extracted for one reason or another. They’re stay-behinds for Earth-at’s defense. Half of your equipment will be installed in your starship and half will be used by your military. Putting them under the control of the houris means that the machines won’t be abused. As my beloved husband has explained, the med-tubes and replicators are living entities. They can reproduce themselves under specific conditions, which includes their assigned human being healthy and happy. That means you will have many more replicators and med-tubes, given time.”

“The general explained that to us,” Solomon admitted, “and I’ve seen it myself when Tom trained our space defense force instructors. I witnessed Tom capturing the jinn.”

“You saw something on a screen,” a third member of the Arab delegation corrected. “It could have been just a movie for your entertainment.”

“That’s true,” I agreed, “it could have been just a movie like ‘Forbidden Planet,’ It was too dangerous to enter the interdiction field that was dismantling the artifacts and building New Mecca. I didn’t leave the pod.”

“I know what I saw,” Solomon said, “and I felt that jinn’s power, its evil nature. You commanded it. Your lion and snake worked with you to control the jinn and intern it somewhere safe. If Omar and his Saudi Binladen Group had opened that chamber beneath the Sphinx, they would be dead and so would most of Cairo. General Mubarak reports that he was with you when you captured the Devil that the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) imprisoned in Mecca. There were others in the Caliphate and you will deal with them in good time. Only you and your animals, of course, but no other Confederacy people—no other Confederacy humans or AI. We don’t trust other Westerners.”

“We don’t trust Colonel Lawrence,” the second Arab said. My mind was all cotton wool from fatigue. No, make that exhaustion. Names and faces just weren’t sticking at the moment. I wasn’t exactly awake and I wasn’t sleeping either. It took me a moment to remember that I was no longer a US Army sergeant and that in addition to a commission in the Confederacy Navy I held a valid commission in the Earth Defense Command. For a moment I slipped into the dream world where I knew all—and then I was jerked awake by Svetlana tugging on my hand. Svetlana—named for Stalin’s daughter. Good tiger. Wonderful mother. I was being asked a question. Lilith asked that the question be repeated because I had fallen in and out of micro-sleep. “I asked the colonel why the houris take longer to train than men.”

“That’s simple,” I explained. “They were men. The houris are women. The women had more to learn.”

Feminists would be howling like the wolves if they heard that. I told the truth—because the women were going to do far more. Yes, I was introducing alien elements into Islam by stealth. Women in the Caliphate were little more than property—and less valuable than male slaves, especially eunuchs. The old ways were returning with a vengeance. Islam prohibited castration but there was nothing un-Islamic about slavery. If the male slaves had been castrated by infidels, no Muslim was guilty—and hey, those infidels were worse than animals, don’t you know? I was telling the truth because the women were learning trade craft—learning to be spies and agents provocateur. One mission assigned to me was to police the human species. Linking the fates of the human women to their machines assured that the women would be treated well. The houris program was an extension of Operation Arab Dagger, only these women were in very real danger of being killed. Killing a woman, whether justly or unjustly, would lose the Caliphate the use of their med-tubes and replicators. As the women would do nothing overt that would harm the Caliphate or its future colony on a star far away, their value would protect them from harm.

I hope.

“I understand that Colonel Lawrence is concerned about the houris,” the third member of the Arab delegation spoke up. “A fatwa has been published that any Believer who has intimate relations with a houris has not committed sin. Houris exist for the comfort and entertainment of men. Houris will have to comfort and pleasure each other. These houris will also be training other women as houris—if I understand what Colonel Lawrence said just minutes ago, when a woman becomes a qualified houri, she will receive a new replicator and med-tube linked to her.”

“Men can be houris, too,” Lilith said.

“Let’s not go there,” Solomon said. “We’ll only allow selected women to become houris. No sleep learners, either. Too easy to brainwash good Believers.”