Looking for the Mahdi Read online

  For Norman, my friend, my partner,

  and my champion of a divine madness.

  Table of Contents

  * * *

  Author’s Note

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  Acknowledgments

  copyright

  …By the pen and that which it writes therewith,

  Thou are not, for thy Lord’s favour unto thee, a madman.

  And lo! Thine verily will be a reward unfailing.

  And lo! Thou are of a tremendous nature

  And thou wilt see and they will see

  Which of you is the demented…

  —The Holy Qur’an

  Surah LXVIII,

  Al-Qalam

  Verses 1-6

  Author’s Note

  * * *

  The country of Khuruchabja is imaginary, and should not be considered representative of any existent country, its peoples, language, culture or religious beliefs. With the exception of historical personages and occurrences, all characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious; any similarity to actual events or to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintended.

  All quotes from the Koran used in this book are adapted from the 1930 English-language translation, The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an, by Mohammed Marmaduke Picthall.

  ONE

  * * *

  My name is Kahlili Bint Munadi Sulaiman. I’m a journalist. Or I was. I still work for GBN, Global Broadcasting Network, where I’ve been for nearly sixteen years, mostly doing feed-ins for the bubbleheads as a Staff Broadcast Editor. I don’t know if you could properly call what I do now “journalism.”

  I did my fair share of field correspondence during the Khuruchabjan War, securing a brilliant reputation for myself by blipping high-speed feeds for simultaneous reports out of a battered PortaNet while doing all the exciting bullet-dodging and “human interest” stories on dying children I ever wanted. If you do a really bang-up job, you get promoted to a nice safe desk, where nothing more dangerous happens than the Government tries sneaking a tap on your Netlines. Most field reporters I know consider promotions the kiss of death by boredom, but while it’s great for swapping a few anecdotes at the Press Club, I had no desire to go back into the field. I was quite happy with my dull, boring career as an anonymous broadcast editor behind a nice big desk and my feed-in Net.

  Which was a shame, according to GBN’s editor in chief, Arlando. He had been pushing for years to get me to go back into the field and cover the Middle East, saying I had all the “right stuff” for field reporting in that part of the world. Let me try to explain it in the simplistic terms our viewing audience can understand: I’m ugly. Among other things. Arlando meant it as a compliment. But while being simply ugly was one of my foremost journalistic qualifications for that particular kind of field work, it’s also why I did feed-ins for the prettily coifed and polished bubbleheads.

  I’m the brains that writes the words delivered with such perfect accents by the earnest-looking immaculate blonds. I’m the questions that elegant silver-haired anchormen with the penetrating eyes interrogate heads of state with. I’m the puppeteer.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining; I liked my job. I even like bubbleheads, those who’re good at it. GBN wasn’t the top News Network, networks battering each other for ratings position just to survive ever since Turner had blown us all off the map and made us reconsider our strategies over the last few decades. But we were still prestigious enough to be able to hire talent. It still takes a certain amount of skill, savvy, and grace under pressure to be a decent bubblehead; looks aren’t necessarily all you need.

  When bubbleheads do their job well, you wouldn’t even know I exist, which suits me fine. I like anonymity. I wasn’t so ugly as to be noticeable; I mean it wasn’t like you’d puke to look at me. I’m short, but I’m not a dwarf, and if I hadn’t controlled my weight strenuously on a steady diet of cigarettes and bad coffee, the traditional haute cuisine journaliste for the last umpteen million years, I’d have been what you could regard as “squat.” By the time other girls in my junior high school started comparing the lace on their training bras, I was being taken to the doctor and given a long, complicated rationale involving my mother’s hormone imbalance during pregnancy, which didn’t make me feel the least bit better about my tits being wasp-sting size and unlikely to ever get much bigger.

  When I started working, I had very long hair and wore plenty of eye makeup and big shiny earrings, because without them, it was difficult for most people to discern my sexual orientation. Even then, I sometimes got some suspicious looks. I was a quite normal heterosexual female trapped in the body of a bull dyke.

  But it came in handy during the war in Khuruchabja. It hurt to cut my hair short (I kept the braided remains tied with a pink ribbon in my undie drawer for years before I finally threw it out), but with a scrubbed face above a suit and tie, stop plucking the fine mustache on my upper lip and drop my voice so it rumbled slightly, and I was routinely addressed as “sir,” no questions asked.

  As a woman, I was as homely as a mud fence, but as a man, the same features were judged as “craggy,” or “distinguished”; not at all handsome, but the kind of face you’d expect a dusty, weather-beaten field reporter to have, a trustworthy but forgettable face. A face that GBN could use for live reports on the eight o’clock news and you’d never think twice about it. This is Kay Bee Sulaiman in Bumfuck, Khuruchabja, reporting live for GBN Network News. Yeah, right, now you remember me. Thank you, it was an interesting experience, but I didn’t want to be a man for the rest of my life.

  Women may have come a long way, baby, but there are still parts of the solar system left where being male is a definite advantage. There were no women field reporters in Khuruchabja, except me. It’s hard to do decent reporting if you’re covered head to toe with fifteen yards of heavy red wool and banned from all male company except immediate family. Khuruchabja took its misogynist religious laws very seriously, and I continually ran the risk of being sliced and diced into tiny pieces if found out. But it was worth it, in the end. Paranoia keeps your edge sharp, and I always got the kind of stories to feed the bubbleheads a steady diet for high ratings. When I came home I retired my masculine camouflage, accepted my little awards, hung them up on the wall behind my nice safe desk and gratefully disappeared.

  Feed-in editing is relatively easy work, if exhausting. GBN’s Net is constantly absorbing huge amounts of information twenty-four hours a day, everything from live blips transponded directly by GBN field correspondents from PortaNets via our own secured independent satellites, to old-fashioned AP modem services from over a thousand network bureaus and hopeful freelancers glowing endless green lines of text across the bottom of the Net. Print editors read in three or four lines of copy simultaneously to edit the mass inventory down to digestible lumps. Holo editors splice the hot blipped-in raw footage pouring in from hordes of maniacal correspondents into shape for replay seconds later. Everyone coordinates with the engineers to mesh all this chaos into one seamless whole. Our motto is “You Are There, Global News As It Breaks,” since instant news and live cover
age makes it that much harder for certain governmental parties to censor out what they don’t like.

  The idea is not only to have quality news coverage, but to have it first. You wouldn’t think that a two-minute lead over your competition would mean network life or death, but that’s where the news has gotten to. For years, GBN struggled just to keep in the race. Then we struck pay-dirt, leapfrogging into second place by not only having up-to-the-minute worldwide coverage, broadcast internationally, but depending on the signal decoder in your holoset, having the news brought to you in your choice of a dozen languages, not dubbed or subtitled, but with simultaneous anchors. Which means a lot of bubbleheads, all of them at least bilingual or trilingual.

  Then we feed the bubbleheads, either simply letting them read off the standard monitor, with editors just whispering a few names and places in their ears so they pronounce the foreign words and names with some degree of accuracy, or directly by audio lines into tiny mikes implanted next to bubblehead tympanic membranes.

  Some of the older bubbleheads do have real talent, and we let them do what they want, ask a few incisive off-the-cuff questions. A little honest spontaneity isn’t bad on occasion. The smart ones like developing their own style, and usually read off the monitor. But we vigorously discourage prima donnas. The hell with what their union contracts say. The days of Dan Rather and Diane Sawyer superstardom with multimillion-dollar salaries are long gone. Those bubbleheads whose main capability is simply hitting the marks without flubbing their lines, which is the majority, prefer audio, a sort of delayed parrot response, sometimes right down to the intonation. That way they don’t have to think too hard. All they have to concentrate on is looking and sounding like the interchangeable professionals they are.

  I was so ass-deep in bubblehead swamp, murmuring sweet nothings into the delicate shell-like ear of Tricia Kwong, GBN’s seven to eleven in the morning English coanchor, I didn’t notice when the alligators started biting.

  “Arlando’s waiting for you, Munadi,” Penley said in a tone that indicated he was repeating himself for at least the third time. “Unplug and get up there.”

  “What?”

  “The boss wants to see you. In his office. Now.” Penley was already screwing his pickup into one ear, squinting at my Net while he jacked in, and took over feeding Baby. On holo, Tricia continued looking straight into the camera, adlibbing through the few seconds of changeover without batting an eyelash or dropping a beat. True bubblehead pro.

  Arlando was everyone’s concept of a terrific boss: If you were doing a good job, you never saw him. He made his wants and needs known through the Net, few face-to-face conferences necessary. Only if you screwed up, or if a ton of shit was hovering overhead, would you be called to see him up close and personal. In the privacy of the elevator on the way up, I made a quick sniff at my armpits and tried patting my hair back into shape.

  Arlando looked even more nervous than I felt. He stood up as I knocked and entered. Two other men were with him in his office.

  “Kay Bee Munadi… Sulaiman,” Arlando said to the shorter of the two. That in itself was unusual. On those extremely rare occasions when I did any domestic reportage that required a name on it, I always used the name “Kay Munadi.” I hadn’t used the “Sulaiman” in a decade. I turned, holding out my hand as the boss continued, “Cullen Laidcliff.” Laidcliff stood up, smiling tightly, and gripped my hand with more force than necessary. I had him pegged in two seconds. Government. Probably Fed narc or CDI midlevel stooge. I smiled my iciest company’s-coming smile and didn’t bother taking him up on his handshake challenge.

  “John Halton.” Arlando said, and I had to turn to shake the other man’s hand. I’ve described myself; you might have some understanding of my instant reaction:

  Jesus Christ on a bicycle, he’s gorgeous…

  Too gorgeous…

  Certainly too good-looking to even look at someone like me…

  Most likely just another plastic bubblehead…

  Egotistical, narcissistic, talentless, probably gay…

  I hate him.

  All this went through my head in the time it takes to shake a man’s hand. His grip was warm, firm without being confrontational, and he held it just a fraction longer than required, smiling affably. He turned me on. I despised him for it.

  Introductions over, John Halton sat slightly removed from the rest of us, an observer sitting by the door. Bubblehead for sure, I was convinced. I sat down, casually glanced at the Government stooge, then at Arlando. “So what’s up?” I asked cheerfully. If you exude confidence, maybe the shit will miss.

  “How’s your Markundi?” Arlando asked.

  That surprised me. Markundi is a complex patois of Arabic influenced by Persian and Northern Pashto, an obscure dialect I hadn’t used in ten years. “Rusty. I haven’t spoken Markundi since I left Khuruchabja. But I don’t think it’d take me too long to do some brushing-up…” I was thinking they needed an interpreter.

  “That’s okay,” Laidcliff broke in, waving the problem away with a flick of an impatient wrist. “John’s Markundi is perfect.”

  Perfect. Not good, not fluent… perfect. It’s not like Markundi is your garden-variety college-level language course, either. I couldn’t help glancing at Gorgeous George. He was still smiling that bogus little smile and had dropped his gaze down to examine the back of his hands resting on his knees. He didn’t seem ’umble, just completely outside the conversation.

  “That a fact,” I said, for lack of any other intelligent response. Arlando was looking peculiarly uncomfortable.

  “We need someone who speaks passable Markundi Arabic and is familiar with Khuruchabja, especially someone who knows their way around the locals’ particular cultural idiosyncrasies,” Laidcliff was saying, with the nasally tone of someone who obviously considers any culture other than his own “quaint” and inferior. “You’ve been there, you know the ropes, and you won’t attract undue attention, you being an Arab yourself.”

  “I’m an American,” I said coldly.

  “I meant of Middle Eastern extraction.” He grimaced.

  “I’m as American as you are.” I wasn’t going to give this bigot the satisfaction. “One hundred percent, born in the U.S.A.” He snorted, but let it pass.

  “In any case, we need someone the natives will trust, at least to some extent.”

  “‘We’?” I asked. He had to be the fucking CDI.

  Laidcliff smiled his greasy, Govemment-clown smirk. “Someone unconnected with any official Government organization,” he clarified, without clarifying anything.

  “What for?”

  “To deliver a package.”

  By now the usual Jeez-what’d-I-do-wrong nervousness had gone, and I was, I confess, thoroughly pissed off. Even if this patronizing jerk was too young to remember the Khuruchabjan War or the effect his employer’s meddling had had there, I wasn’t, and I remembered it all too well. So did Arlando, so it surprised me he was sitting still for this shit.

  “No problem,” I said, eyes wide and innocently obtuse. “I’ll be happy to look up the number for Federal Express’s Overnight Delivery. Give me a couple minutes, I’ll go get it for you.”

  Laidcliff scowled. “I’m not amused,” he said.

  “You’re not Queen Victoria, either,” I snapped back, and stood up. “And I’m certainly not a delivery boy, I’m a journalist. Khuruchabja isn’t Jupiter; mail your goddamned package.” I jerked a thumb at the bubblehead. “Or send him. After all, his Markundi is perfect—what the hell do you need me for?”

  “You’ve got a valid passport,” Arlando said.

  That made absolutely no sense, until the bubblehead looked up and said quietly, “I’m the package.”

  To be a decent journalist, you’ve gotta know a lot about a lot, and put puzzles together fast. I could practically feel the tumblers clicking into place in my brain. John Halton was not a bubblehead. He was, no pun intended, Government property.

  He was loo
king at me now, that same unassuming smile in place. I kept staring at him with my mouth hanging open while the Government weasel lectured.

  “The Exalted Pillar of Allah, His Most Excellent Lawrence Abdul bin Hassan al Samir al Rashid has had some trouble keeping his congregation in line after some recent and rather unpleasant ecclesiastical confrontations in Khuruchabja. Larry needs a good bodyguard who can also double as a military advisor, someone whose impartiality and loyalty he can absolutely rely on.”

  “So”—Laidcliff grinned and nodded his head in Halton’s direction—“we’re giving him John. But it would be rather… indiscreet for our Government to deliver him directly. I think you’ll agree we can’t just stick a few stamps on his forehead and drop him in the nearest mailbox. You’re to take Johnny here as baggage up to the Clarke Orbital Station where we’ll have documents ready that can pass Khuruchabjan scrutiny with flying colors. You’ll stay at the Hilton for a week before you both fly to Nok Kuzlat. Spend another week or two doing a little sightseeing. Take a vacation, have a good time. Then you leave, John stays.” Laidcliff smirked. “You can even do a story or two while you’re there, on the local rug factory or something, make it look good.”

  I’d never seen a fabricant up close and personal before; not that many people ever had. Those few I had seen were usually filmed hovering protectively around the President and other lesser dignitaries, their human Secret Service partners seeming clumsy and feeble by comparison. My naked curiosity kept me busy gaping at Halton to pay too much attention to the creep. But it started sinking in, anyway. “Why me? Not me, but why a journalist, for crissakes? I could just walk out of here, plug a story like this on the Net and watch GBN’s ratings go out the roof!”

  Laidcliff had folded his arms, looking at me as smug as a cat. “You wouldn’t get three steps,” he said arrogantly.

  I felt my face go cold, then flushed. “You fascist little fuck—” I said, or started to say before Arlando cut me off.