Chapter 14

His celebration party was held at Uncle Porat's compound because Yakhir's childhood house was too small for such a gathering of the family and friends. Many friends of the Clan were invited and a lamb and a pig were spitted for the celebration. The drink flowed and the party was a whirlwind of dancing and singing, of eating and laughing. Azzi brought his wife, who basked in the glow of her pregnancy, and his friends from the caravan came with wives. They made sure the celebration was not a quiet affair, with yelling, whooping, and exaggerated tales of manly adventure so over the top, their female listeners had to giggle with their hands covering their mouths. Yakhir waltzed through the party with a daze of near disbelief. As night showered the sky with stars, he found himself sitting, for the first time, in a corner of the backyard with Adilah loosely holding his hand while several of his now fellow master archivists stood around him.

Jahmiel cleared his throat with a swig of beer before he spoke, "I noticed, Master, that you mentioned the existence of four precious gems in your Defense today, but you only explained two of them. Would you care to explain this omission?"

Adilah reacted with a sense of anxiety and her grip tightened on her lover's hand. He smiled at the question and patted her on the knee letting her know that all was well. He was pleased to be asked because of the earlier disappointment of no one challenging him with the question during his Defense.

"The peculiar circumstances of my Defense demanded that I narrow down the focus of my presentation because of the gathered audience. All of us realize that my argument has significant political implications and my instinct was to stay on the specific subject as much as possible."

Jahmiel nodded to himself as he considered the words, "That is an acceptable reason, but your answer indicates that you know more about Ruby and Diamond than you were willing to produce at the time. Are you still planning to withhold this knowledge from your colleagues?"

"I knew I should have failed his ass," Kemal spoke up. "You've been holding back on us, boy. Cut the polite crap and give us what you found."

Yakhir gave a good laugh and pointed at Jahmiel who hid a smile behind a slurp of beer. "Don't blame me, blame him. Jahmiel and I had our first break when we finally penetrated the contents of the Kyoto cubes. This Kyoto-based company worked on the Diamond Initiative and in fact, they are the only company we found that had a symbol for the Diamond; it was a dragon with great fangs, a red tongue, and diamonds where its eyes should be. According to the information in the datacubes, the Diamond Initiative was the attempt to prevent another war and the dragon was the mythical protector of the new world; they were tied closely to the Ruby."

"What was Ruby, then?" Kemal eagerly followed up.

Yakhir fell back into lecture mode, "The Ruby Initiative invented what we remember as The Neural Net. The difficulty the survivors of the Fundi War faced was how to increase their knowledge in an exponential manner. The problems they faced with nuclear poison were so far beyond the science of that moment, that they needed some way to expand the knowledge base rapidly. The brilliant insight of one company, the Martell Consortium whose archives are in Shaft 1, is that the problem was not one of learning or genius, but of communication among great minds across the globe. The Ruby Initiative created the Neural Net to bring great minds together."

"Where does Diamond fit into this?" another master asked.

"Diamond rode herd on all of the initiatives, monitoring progress and preventing fundi types from taking over. The Neural Net was wide open and anyone with access could plug in and become a part of it; that's dangerous and that's the reason for Diamond. The weakness of my historical argument is that the Kyoto company doesn't use the word "Fundi" as what they are trying to prevent, but other terms of which I am not entirely sure of their meaning: "Machiavellian" and "totalitarian."

Adilah eventually pulled him away from the conversation and took him home for their own private celebration.

The next day Yakhir took Adilah to their future house to see how far the renovations had come. Azzi greeted them along with the other half dozen workers who appeared to be moving a little slower. They were happy to show off their work and lend an opinion on the beauty of Yakhir's bride, all good natured, of course.

The couple returned to his mother's house for lunch and for an escape from the noonday heat. As they cleaned up their dishes, a knock sounded at the front door. With a shrug of cluelessness, Yakhir went to the door and welcomed a young man covered with dust from the trail. He identified himself as Al-Bashrani Clan and they hastily offered him hospitality and a shower. After proclaiming his gratefulness and washing himself, the young man devoured a proffered noon feast.

With a sigh of a full belly, he told them that Janina had sent him. He carried a message for them. Shaheen, "may their orifices shrivel up and seal themselves," was preparing a strike by all of the clan. Their anger and indignation was great. Janina herself, along with her lover, was going into hiding in the western mountains and wanted Al-Taquir to take precautions.

That explained the rifle the young man left at the door. Adilah entertained the young man while Yakhir jogged house to house to spread the warning. His own rising anxiety seemed to match the generalized tension on the thoroughfares of the town. People scurried to secure their goods and finish their errands without pausing to talk or simply enjoy the day. The marketplace was bustling, but the mood was decidedly muted. Obviously others had heard that Shaheen wanted to lash out its anger. Yakhir was in the midst of grabbing a few items when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Slowly he turned and breathed a sigh of the relief when he looked into the face of his cousin.

"You are not safe here," his cousin whispered in his ear and Yakhir left off the unfinished bargaining and followed his cousin, almost as if he was sleepwalking. Outside of the bazaar, his cousin motioned him to an empty corner.

His cousin looked embarrassed, "There is a rumor circulating the market place that you have sex with your sister."

Yakhir knew his jaw fell open but never felt it drop. He swallowed once.

"The family knows," his cousin continued after glancing left and right, "that it is a ploy of Shaheen because incest is punishable by death. Our uncles fear that such a charge will give them justification to shoot you."

Yakhir rubbed his eyes to hide the tremors in his face. The fear and the relief of unrevealed deep secrets mingled in an obnoxious mixture in his throat. He wanted to vomit. Instead he took his cousin's unspoken advice and fled down the thoroughfare, humbled that his cousin remained behind to watch his back for unwanted tails.

He swung by his unfinished house and warned Azzi, who answered with one of his unusual blank faces. His friend sent everyone home to fetch their rifles and ammunition.

Yakhir and his cousins shared watches patrolling the streets that night. Even the feral cats, notorious denizens of the back alleys kept themselves quiet and out of sight.

Morning brought the hope of a better day because nothing had happened. Escorted by their self-appointed guest, Khalaf Al-Bashrani, Yakhir and Adilah returned to their house to lend support and appraise the progress since yesterday. They arrived earlier than usual and the workers were just picking up their tools and grabbing materials. Azzi looked a little fuzzy and ragged around the edges, but he had his laconic smile back on his face.

They were standing in the main room examining the new tile when shots rang out from somewhere in town. Everyone's head shot up with ears attentive and eyes wide. Yakhir ran for the front door and stuck his head out, trying to locate the source by sound and distance.

"Idiot!" Khalaf yelled and jerked him backwards. As Yakhir uttered a curse at his unwanted bodyguard's caution, a small explosion bombarded his left eardrum and a piece of stone scored his cheek. As he fell backwards, he watched Khalaf's rifle buck and buck again. With the ringing in his ear, he couldn't hear a thing.

The workers scrambled as if they were still on caravan. Rifles came out and men scattered around the house and up onto the roof. There were more shots and then cries of "they got away" and "I hit one of them."