Chapter 43: Conversations

Time: March 15, 8240 1:39 PM

Ammar and I both knew enough about each other's heresies to get us all slowly executed. Still, our situations were far from equal. I was in a position of relative power, and hence I thought I had the greater responsibility to be considerate. My wives and I were all intensely curious to hear Ammar's tale, but we spent the first half hour after our revelations describing our own activities. Ammar listened with rapt attention. His need for knowledge finally satisfied, he took pity on us and began telling his side of the story.

"I'm absolutely astonished," he said. "You know so much about me, yet have kept your discoveries hidden from the rest of the world. Your guard Ilias, and your security teams, they know nothing of us?"

"Completely without suspicion. We have to be careful though. They're sharp people with excellent resources. We slip up just once, our world will come crashing down around us. Once suspicions are aroused, the game is over."

Ammar nodded thoughtfully. "I'll take my own life before I'd reveal any of this Ilias. I'm still a danger to you though..." He didn't have to complete the thought. The truth drugs of an Inquisition Council were well known. "Ilias, I promise, no one else in my organization will know of this. You have my Holy word."

Abigail spoke up. "That might not be possible Ammar, if we're to work together. My marriage has debated this point quite a bit. Some limited form of revelation between our two groups will be essential."

Ammar nodded at her and then smiled. "I've often wondered what it would be like to have a face-to-face conversation with a woman where we're treating each other as true equals. Thank you for the pleasure Abigail. I've talked with Dalis through secure quantum channels, but it's not the same."

A tear came to Abigail's eye. "My friend Dalis? I was hoping she was alive!"

"I spoke with her just three days ago" said Ammar, turning back to me. "Ilias! Before I begin my explanations, I have to know! How did we fail to keep ourselves hidden from you?"

"Your skills at concealment were superb Ammar. It was only our predisposition to investigate your Brotherhood that let us to you."

There was a moment of silence. "Still," he said at last, "why investigate the Brotherhood? Something must have provided the first clue."

Michal and Dodi were sitting with us quietly. Abby, Sheffie, and Chanah, were giving each other bright smiles. "This was all your brilliance Abby," said Sheffie. "Why don't you tell him?"

"Okay. Ammar, it was the name of your Brotherhood which first drew me to you."

Ammar looked perplexed. "A horticultural name sounds sinister?"

"It was the particular flower that you chose."

"The Brotherhood of the Rose? I don't understand. It's a genuine botanical preservation society, officially sanctioned by the home Guild at Bel'darstan." Ammar frowned. "It's a common enough flower. How could it possibly..."

Chanah spoke up. "A long time ago, it was a flower associated with courtship between men and women. From before the war, I mean. Remember us telling you of the crystals? The rose was also a flower associated with secrecy. Did you ever hear of the ancient phrase sub Rosa?" For the last two words, Chanah tried to guess what the ancient Latin might have sounded like.

Ammar slowly shook his head.

"Well, it means under the rose. Ancient, ancient history, thousands of years before the war, secret societies in the lands of northwestern Europe would place a rose on the table when they met. The rose was their symbol that the conversations were sub Rosa, were sealed under the rose."

"I had no idea," whispered Ammar. And then he looked at me. "But Ilias!"

"Yes?"

"You would know I had no idea. So why was this a red flag for you?"

"Well..." I said smiling.

Ammar's eyes went wide. "The Holy! It was all a bluff, wasn't it?!"

I laughed. "Oh, the clues were there, and too numerous to be dismissed. But yes, they were very subtle, with plausible alternatives. The gold mining outpost was our best guess. We kept asking ourselves what we would have done, to hide a thousand young girls from the world."

"Ammar," asking Abby in a pleading voice. "I must know. Qeturah, Pascha, Yadira, are they all still alive?"

Ammar smiled and nodded. "Yes, your old team, the flowers of the monastery. They're all still alive." He paused and then frowned. "Orzora died last year though, a swift but painful death. Before that, we were beginning to hope that the absolute need for the anti-aging drugs was a myth."

I shook my head. "It's no myth. The triggers are not as swift as with the males. Females aren't considered as big a threat. But the human body can no longer age gracefully. There's too much embedded code in the genome. I'm speaking of ancient first-millennium history, Bel'dar and his son."

Ammar blinked. "His son?"

I nodded. "Abdul Wahid Sami."

Ammar gasped and whispered, "You're not joking?"

"No. From what we've been able to piece together, the foundation for the genetic manipulations were laid much earlier than is publicly taught. We think that's how Bel'dar exterminated the remaining humans outside his control."

Understanding came to Ammar's expression. "So, all the dark science was already in place. It just needed the chaos of global warfare to be unleashed."

"It was a kind of super-virus," said Chanah, "one that opened up the DNA for reprogramming. They inoculated their own citizens and female slaves, and then unleashed plagues in the year 36 against the few remaining organized outposts. That was the end of the crystal data. From what we can piece together from the restricted archives, a decade later the government at the capital had the human genome addicted to the anti-aging drugs, and also had pushed the birth ratio to three girls to one boy. They then spread a very specialized sterilization virus all over the world. It attacked all the remaining unmodified humans."

Ammar nodded, looking at Chanah in sorrow.

Chanah shrugged her shoulders. "When you can breed and your enemy can not, time becomes an absolute and invincible weapon. The Wild Times continued for another two and a half centuries, but it was all internal strife. It took that long for the government to settle into its present form."

Ammar addressed his next question to me. "So how long do the girls have?"