I thought this was interesting, but nothing more than that. Uncle Teddy started to cry again.
“Please, don’t cry,” I said.
He held my hand then. “I’m sorry we couldn’t tell her you were alive. We couldn’t tell your children, not anyone, not even Father because we couldn’t be sure of his reaction. Mother was adamant about that. No one could know. Just Bobby and Mother and myself—and the doctors, of course. Now there’s just me.
“It was for the good of the country. Those were critical times. The eyes of the world were watching us. We could not afford hesitancy. We felt you would have wanted it that way. Do you understand?”
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway to stop Uncle Teddy from crying. He was clutching my arm very hard.
He traced the newspaper picture with his finger. “She was a strong woman, Sonny Boy. You would have been proud of her. I remember her standing right next to Lyndon, solid as a rock, little more than an hour after you were pronounced dead.”
I was very confused about Uncle Teddy calling me dead, and about what the woman in the picture had to do with any of it, so I closed the book and placed it on the floor. I remembered what Mother used to do to make me feel better, so I thought that maybe the same thing might help Uncle Teddy feel better too.
I pulled his bed covers up to his chin, brushed back his hair, kissed him on the forehead, and turned out his light. “Sleep well, child,” I said, and then I went back to my room. I was sure Uncle Teddy would be just fine in the morning. It had always worked for me.
DECEMBER, 2008
Dr. Morelande is the only one who comes to see me anymore. He says that Uncle Teddy is so busy he can’t find time to stop by. But I don’t think that’s exactly true. I think Uncle Teddy went on vacation with Mother and Dr. Armbruster, and he is having so much fun that he is not coming back at all.
Dr. Morelande has tried very hard to make this a good Christmas, but I am sorry to say I am not very happy. I am tired all of the time, and I can’t even move out of bed. Dr. Morelande asked me if I wanted anything for Christmas, but if I couldn’t have Mother or Uncle Teddy, then there was nothing to ask for.
But then I thought about it and thought about it for a long time, and I remembered the pictures Uncle Teddy had shown me many years ago. I told Dr. Morelande about the green photo album in Uncle Teddy’s room and asked him if he could find it for me. A little while later Dr. Morelande returned with the book.
Together we went through the pictures, and when we got to the one Uncle Teddy had shown me, the one with the man and the beautiful dark-haired woman, I made him stop.
“There is something I want for Christmas,” I told him. “There is something I want very much.”
I decided to tell Dr. Morelande about the passageways then. I didn’t think that I would get in trouble. I made him put me in my wheelchair and take me for a walk behind the walls. He argued with me at first, but I refused to be put off.
I told him exactly which path to follow. He wheeled me all the way down to the wall at the main entrance. I looked through the small opening. I was sure that the beautiful dark-haired woman would be standing at the door in her winter coat. I was disappointed that she wasn’t there. I thought that if I waited long enough she would certainly show up—she would come back like the winterberry, bright and strong even in the cold cold winter. There would be snowflakes in her hair, and she would say “Merry Christmas” in her lovely voice. So we waited.
Finally Dr. Morelande said that if I agreed to go to bed, he would wait for the woman, and bring her directly to me as soon as she arrived. I thought that this would be a good idea since I was so tired.
When she arrives, we will have many things to discuss. I have decided to make her my new friend. I think I will show her my book of writings. I think I will ask her about the white gown to show her that I have not forgotten, and then I’ll ask her about the children Uncle Teddy mentioned. I won’t tell her about the vacation place where everyone has gone without me, and not because I’m being sneaky, but only because I am very lonely and I would like her to stay with me for a while.
ISLANDS IN THE SEA
Harry Turtledove
Harry Turtledove first came to prominence as a writer of alternate world fantasy with The Misplaced Legion, the first volume in his multibook Videssos series of novels about the experiences of a Roman Legion translated to a world that runs on magic. Since then, he has explored the impact of altered historical events in a variety of works, including Agent of Byzantium, set in medieval times, the acclaimed Guns of the South, in which time travelers manipulate a southern victory in the American Civil War, and the first two volumes of The Great War saga, American Front and Walk in Hell, which envisions an America in which the United States and the Confederacy support opposing sides in World War I. His ambitious Worldwar series—which includes In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Striking the Balance, and Upsetting the Balance—projects an alternate World War II in which an alien invasion forges alliances between Axis and Allied opponents. Turtledove has also co-edited the anthology Alternate Generals. His many other works include the short-fiction collection Departures, the comic fantasy The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, and the linked novels Into the Darkness and Darkness Descending, epic tales of empire building set in a fantasy world where cataclysmic wars are fought with magic.
Islam exploded out of Arabia in the seventh century. The triumphant armies of the caliphs overthrew the Persian Empire and took Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa from the East Roman or Byzantine Empire. Muslim forces twice besieged Constantinople, in 674–78 and 717–18. In our history, the Byzantine capital held and the Byzantine Empire survived as Christianity’s eastern bulwark, holding Islam out of Anatolia and the Balkans for centuries to come and converting the Bulgars and Russians to faith in Christ. But what if the Empire had fallen in the eighth century instead of the fifteenth? The still-pagan folk to the north of Constantinople would have had new choices to make….
The Bulgar border guards had arrows nocked and ready as the Arab horsemen rode up from the south. Jalal ad-Din as-Stambuli, the leader of the Arab delegation, raised his right hand to show it was empty. “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, I and my men come in peace,” he called in Arabic. To be sure the guards understood, he repeated himself in Greek.
The precaution paid off. The guards lowered their bows. In Greek much worse than Jalal ad-Din’s, one of them asked, “Why for you come in peace, whitebeard?”
Jalal ad-Din stroked his whiskers. Even without the Bulgar’s mockery, he knew they were white. Not many men who had the right to style themselves as-Stambuli, the Constantinopolitan, still lived. More than fifty years had passed since the army of Suleiman and Maslama had taken Constantinople and put an end to the Roman Empire. Then Jalal ad-Din’s beard had not been white. Then he could hardly raise a beard at all.
He spoke in Greek again: “My master the caliph Abd ar-Rahman asked last year if your khan Telerikh would care to learn more of Islam, of submission to the one God. This past spring Telerikh sent word that he would. We are the embassy sent to instruct him.”