Shadow of the Giant

10

GRIEF

From: FelixStarman%backdoor@Rwanda.gov.rw

To: PeterWiggin%personal@hegemon.gov

Re: Only one question remains

Dear Peter,

Your arguments have persuaded me. In principle, I am prepared to ratify the Constitution of the Free People of Earth. But in practice, one key issue remains. I have created in Rwanda the most formidable army and air force north of Pretoria and south of Cairo. That is precisely why you regard Rwanda as the key to uniting Africa. But the primary motivation of my troops is patriotism, which cannot help but be tinged with Tutsi tribalism. The principle of civilian control of the military is, shall we say, not as preeminent in their ethos.

For me to turn over my troops to a Hegemon who happens to be not only white, but American by birth, would run a grave risk of a coup that would provoke bloodshed in the streets and destabilize the whole region.

That is why it is essential that you decide in advance who the commander of my forces will be. There is only one plausible candidate. Many of my men got a good look at Julian Delphiki. Word has spread. He is viewed as something of a god. His record of military genius is respected by my officer corps; his enormous size gives him heroic stature; and his partial African ancestry, which is, fortunately, visible in his features and coloring, makes him a man that patriotic Rwandans could follow.

If you send Bean to me, to stand beside me as the man who will assume command of Rwandan forces as they become part of the Free People's army, then I will ratify and immediately submit the issue to my people in a plebiscite. People who would not vote for a Constitution with you at its head will vote for a Constitution whose face is that of the Giant Julian.

Sincerely, Felix

Virlomi spoke on the cellphone with her contact. "All clear?" she asked.

"It's not a trap. They're gone."

"How bad is it?"

"I'm so sorry."

That bad.

Virlomi put away the phone and walked from the shelter of the trees into the village.

There were bodies lying in the doorway of every house they passed. But Virlomi did not turn to the right hand or the left. They had to make sure they got the key footage first.

In the center of the village, the Muslim soldiers had spitted a cow and roasted it over a fire. The bodies of twenty or so Hindu adults surrounded the roasting pit.

"Ten seconds," said Virlomi.

Obediently, the vidman framed the shot and ran the camera for ten seconds. During the shot, a crow landed but did not eat anything. It merely walked a couple of steps and then flew again. Virlomi wrote her script in her head: The gods send their messengers to see, and in grief they fly away again.

Virlomi walked near the dead and saw that each corpse had a slab of half-cooked, bloody meat in its mouth. No bullets had been spent on the dead. Their throats were split and gaping open.

"Close up. These three, each in turn. Five seconds each."

The vidman did his work. Virlomi did not touch any of the bodies. "How many minutes left?"

"Plenty," said the vidman.

"Then take every one of them. Every one."

The vidman moved from body to body, taking the digital shots that would soon go out over the nets. Meanwhile, Virlomi now went from house to house. She hoped that there would be at least one person living. Someone they could save. But there was no one.

In the doorway of the village's largest house, one of Virlomi's men waited for her. "Please do not go in, Lady," he said.

"I must."

"You do not want this in your memory."

"Then it is exactly the thing that I must never forget."

He bowed his head and moved aside.

Four nails in a crossbeam had served the family as hooks for clothing. The clothing lay in a sodden mass on the floor. Except for the shirts that had been tied around the necks of four children, the youngest only a toddler, the eldest perhaps nine. They had been hung up on the hooks to strangle slowly.

Across the room lay the bodies of a young couple, a middle-aged couple, and an old woman. They had made the adults in the household watch the children die.

"When he is finished by the fire," said Virlomi, "bring him here."

"Is there enough light inside, Lady?"

"Take down a wall."

They took it down in minutes, and then light flooded into the dark place. "Start here," she told the vidman, pointing to the adults' bodies. Pan very slowly. And then pan, just a little faster, to what they were forced to watch. Hold on all four children. Then when I enter the frame, stay with me. But not so close that you can't see everything I do with the child."

"You cannot touch a dead body," said one of her men.

"The dead of India are my children," she said. "They cannot make me unclean. Only the ones who murdered them are made filthy. I will explain this to the people who see the vid."

The vidman started, but then Virlomi noticed the shadows of the watching soldiers in the frame and made him start over. "It must be a continuous take," she said. "No one will believe it if it is not smooth and continuous."

The vidman started again. Slowly he panned. When he had focused on the children for a solid twenty seconds, Virlomi stepped into the frame and knelt before the body of the oldest child. She reached up and touched the lips with her fingers.

The men could not help it. They gasped.

Well, let them, thought Virlomi. So would the people of India. So would the people of the whole world.

She stood and took the child in her arms, raising him up. With no tension on the shirt, it came away easily from the nail. She carried him across the room and laid him in the arms of the young father.

"O Father of India," she said, loudly enough for the camera, "I lay your child, the hope of your heart, in your arms."

She got up and walked slowly back to the children. She knew better than to look to see if the camera was with her. She had to act as if she didn't know the camera was there. Not that anyone would be fooled. But looking toward the camera reminded people that there were other observers. As long as she seemed oblivious of the camera, the viewers would forget that there must be a vidman and would feel as if only they and she and the dead were in this place.

She knelt before each child in turn, then rose and freed them from the cruel nails on which they once hung shawls or school bags. When she laid the second child, a girl, beside the young mother, she said, "O Mother of the Indian house, here is the daughter who cooked and cleaned beside you. Now your home is permanently washed in the pure blood of the innocent."

When she laid the third child, a little girl, across the bodies of the middle-aged couple, she said, "O history of India, have you room for one more small body in your memory? Or are you full of our grief at last? Is this one body at last too many to bear?"

When she took the two-year-old boy from his hook, she could not walk with him. She stumbled and fell to her knees and wept and kissed his distorted, blackened face. When she could speak again, she said, "Oh, my child, my child, why did my womb labor to bring you forth, only to hear your silence instead of your laughter?"

She did not stand again. It would have been too clumsy and mechanical. Instead, she moved forward on her knees across the rough floor, a slow, stately procession, so that each dip and lurch became part of a dance. She propped the little body on the corpse of the old woman.

"Great grandmother!" cried Virlomi. "Great grandmother, can't you save me? Can't you help me? Great grandmother, you are looking at me but you do nothing! I can't breathe, Great grandmother! You are the old one! It is your place to die before me, Great grandmother! It is my place to walk around your body and anoint you with ghi and water of the holy Ganges. In my little hands there should have been a fistful of straw to do pranam for you, for my grandparents, for my mother, for my father!"

Thus she gave voice to the child.

Then she put her arm around the shoulder of the old woman and partly raised her body, so the camera could see her face.

"O little one, now you are in the arms of God, as I am. Now the sun will stream upon your face to warm it. Now the Ganges will wash your body. Now fire will purify, and the ashes will flow out into the sea. Just as your soul goes home to await another turn of the wheel."

Virlomi turned to face the camera, then gestured at all the dead. "Here is how I purify myself. In the blood of the martyrs I wash myself. In the stink of death do I find my perfume. I love them beyond the grave, and they love me, and make me whole."

Then she reached out toward the camera.

"Caliph Alai, we knew you out among the stars and planets. You were one of the noble ones then. You were one of the great heroes, who acted for the good of all humankind. They must have killed you, Alai! You must be dead, before you would let such things happen in your name!"

She beckoned, and the vidman zoomed in. She knew from experience with this vidman that only her face would be visible. She held herself almost expressionless, for at this distance any kind of expression would look histrionic.

"Once you spoke to me in the corridors of that sterile place. You said only one word. Salaam, you said. Peace, you said. It filled my heart with joy."

She shook her head once, slowly.

"Come forth from your hiding place, O Caliph Alai, and own your work. Or if it is not your work, then repudiate it. Join me in grieving for the innocent."

Because her hand could not be seen, she flicked with her fingers to tell the vidman to zoom away and include the whole scene again.

Now she let her emotions run free. She wept on her knees, then wailed, then threw herself across the bodies and howled and sobbed. She let it go on for a full minute. The version for western eyes would have captions over this part, but for Hindus, the whole shocking scene would be allowed to linger, uninterrupted. Virlomi defiling herself upon the bodies of the unwashed dead; but no, no, Virlomi purified by their martyrdom. The people would not be able to look away.

Nor would the Muslims who saw it. Some would gloat. But others would be horrified. Mothers would see themselves in her grief. Fathers would see themselves in the corpses of the men who had been unable to save their children.

What none of them would hear was the thing she had not said: Not a single threat, not a single curse. Only grief, and a plea to Caliph Alai.

To the world at large, the video would excite pity and horror.

The Muslim world would be divided, but the portion that rejoiced at this video would be smaller each time it was shown.

And to Alai, it would be a personal challenge. She was laying responsibility for this at his door. He would have to come out of Damascus and take command himself. No more hiding indoors. She had forced his hand. Now to see what he would do.

The video swept around the world, first on the nets, then picked up by broadcast media—high-resolution files were conveniently provided for download. Of course there were charges that the whole thing was faked, or that Hindus had committed the atrocities. But no one really believed that. It fit too well with the record that Muslims had created for themselves during the Islamic wars that raged in the century and a half before the Buggers came. And it was unbelievable to imagine Hindus defiling the dead as these had been defiled.

Such atrocities were meant to strike terror in the hearts of the enemy. But Virlomi had taken this one and turned it into something else. Grief. Love. Resolve. And, finally, a plea for peace.

Never mind that she could have peace whenever she wanted, merely by submitting to Muslim rule. The world would understand that complete submission to Islam would not be peace, but the death of India and its replacement by a land of puppets. She had made this so clear in earlier vids that it did not need to be repeated.

They tried to keep the vid from Alai, but he refused to let them block what he saw on his own computer. He watched it over and over again.

"Wait until we can investigate and see if it's true," said Ivan Lankowski, the half-Kazakh aide he trusted to be closest to him, to see him when he was not acting the part of Caliph.

"I know that it's true," said Alai.

"Because you know this Virlomi?"

"Because I know the soldiers who claim to be of Islam." He looked at Ivan with tears streaming down his cheeks. "My time in Damascus is done. I am Caliph. I will lead the armies in the field. And men who act this way, I will punish with my own hand."

"That is a worthy goal," said Ivan. "But the kind of men who massacred that village in India and nuked Mecca in the last war, they're still out there. That's why your orders are not being obeyed. What makes you think you can reach your armies alive?"

"Because I truly am Caliph, and if God wants me to lead his people in righteousness, he will protect me," said Alai.