The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century Read online

  “Which can only mean you did the same.” Niketas laughed drily. “I suspect you learned no more than I did.”

  “Only that Dragomir is fond of gold,” Jalal ad-Din admitted.

  Niketas laughed again, then grew serious. “How strange, is it not, that the souls of a nation ride on the whim of a man both ignorant and barbarous. God grant that he choose wisely.”

  “From God comes all things,” Jalal ad-Din said. The Christian nodded; that much they believed in common. Jalal ad-Din went on, “That shows, I believe, why Telerikh will decide for Islam.”

  “No, you are wrong there,” Niketas answered. “He must choose Christ. Surely God will not allow those who worship Him correctly to be penned up in one far corner of the world, and bar them forever from access to whatever folk may lie north and east of Bulgaria.”

  Jalal ad-Din started to answer, then stopped and gave his rival a respectful look. As he had already noticed, Niketas’ thought had formidable depth to it. However clever he was, though, the priest who might have been Emperor had to deal with his weakness in the real world. Jalal ad-Din drove that weakness home: “If God loves you so well, why has he permitted us Muslims dominion over so many of you, and why has he let us drive you back and back, even giving over Constantinople, your imperial city, into our hands?”

  “Not for your own sake, I’m certain,” Niketas snapped.

  “No? Why then?” Jalal ad-Din refused to be nettled by the priest’s tone.

  “Because of the multitude of our own sins, I’m sure. Not only was—is—Christendom sadly riddled with heresies and false beliefs, even those who believe what is true all too often lead sinful lives. Thus your eruption from the desert, to serve as God’s flail and as punishment for our errors.”

  “You have answers to everything—everything but God’s true will. He will show that day after tomorrow, through Telerikh.”

  “That He will.” With a stiff little bow, Niketas took his leave. Jalal ad-Din watched him go, wondering if hiring a knifeman would be worthwhile in spite of Telerikh’s warnings. Reluctantly, he decided against it; not here in Pliska, he thought. In Damascus he could have arranged it and never been traced, but he lacked those sorts of connections here. Too bad.

  Only when he was almost back to the khan’s palace to give the pleasure girl the trinket did he stop to wonder whether Niketas was thinking about sticking a knife in him. Christian priests were supposed to be above such things, but Niketas himself had pointed out what sinners Christians were these days.

  TELERIKH’S SERVANTS summoned Jalal ad-Din and the other Arabs to the audience chamber just before the time for mid-afternoon prayers. Jalal ad-Din did not like having to put off the ritual; it struck him as a bad omen. He tried to stay serene. Voicing the inauspicious thought aloud would only give it power.

  The Christians were already in the chamber when the Arabs entered. Jalal ad-Din did not like that either. Catching his eye, Niketas sent him a chilly nod. Theodore only scowled, as he did whenever he had anything to do with Muslims. The monk Paul, though, smiled at Jalal ad-Din as if at a dear friend. That only made him worry more.

  Telerikh waited until both delegations stood before him. “I have decided,” he said abruptly. Jalal ad-Din drew in a sudden, sharp breath. From the number of boyars who echoed him, he guessed that not even the khan’s nobles knew his will. Dragomir had not lied, then.

  The khan rose from his carven throne, stepped down between the rival embassies. The boyars muttered among themselves; this was not common procedure. Jalal ad-Din’s nails bit into his palms. His heart pounded in his chest till he wondered how long it could endure.

  Telerikh turned to face southeast. For a moment, Jalal ad-Din was too keyed up to notice or care. Then the khan sank to his knees, his face turned toward Mecca, toward the Holy City. Again Jalal ad-Din’s heart threatened to burst, this time with joy.

  “La illaha ill’Allah; Muhammadun rasulu’llah,” Telerikh said in a loud, firm voice. “There is no God but Allah; Muhammad is the prophet of Allah.” He repeated the shahada twice more, then rose to his feet and bowed to Jalal ad-Din.

  “It is accomplished,” the Arab said, fighting back tears. “You are a Muslim now, a fellow in submission to the will of God.”

  “Not I alone. We shall all worship the one God and his prophet.” Telerikh turned to his boyars, shouted in the Bulgar tongue. A couple of nobles shouted back. Telerikh jerked his arm toward the doorway, a peremptory gesture of dismissal. The stubborn boyars glumly tramped out. The rest turned toward Mecca and knelt. Telerikh led them in the shahada, once, twice, three times. The khan faced Jalal ad-Din once more. “Now we are all Muslims here.”

  “God is most great,” the Arab breathed. “Soon, magnificent khan, I vow, many teachers will come from Damascus to instruct you and your people fully in all details of the faith, though what you and your nobles have proclaimed will suffice for your souls until such time as the ulama—those learned in religion—may arrive.”

  “It is very well,” Telerikh said. Then he seemed to remember that Theodore, Niketas, and Paul were still standing close by him, suddenly alone in a chamber full of the enemies of their faith. He turned to them. “Go back to your Pope in peace, Christian priests. I could not choose your religion, not with heaven as you say it is—and not with the caliph’s armies all along my southern border. Perhaps if Constantinople had not fallen so long ago, my folk would in the end have become Christian. Who can say? But in this world, as it is now, Muslims we must be, and Muslims we shall be.”

  “I will pray for you, excellent khan, and for God’s forgiveness of the mistake you made this day,” Paul said gently. Theodore, on the other hand, looked as if he were consigning Telerikh to the hottest pits of hell.

  Niketas caught Jalal ad-Din’s eye. The Arab nodded slightly to his defeated foe. More than anyone else in the chamber, the two of them understood how much bigger than Bulgaria was the issue decided here today. Islam would grow and grow, Christendom continue to shrink. Jalal ad-Din had heard that Ethiopia, far to the south of Egypt, had Christian rulers yet. What of it? Ethiopia was so far from the center of affairs as hardly to matter. And the same fate would now befall the isolated Christian countries in the far northwest of the world.

  Let them be islands in the Muslim sea, he thought, if that was what their stubbornness dictated. One day, inshallah, that sea would wash over every island, and they would read the Qu’ran in Rome itself.

  He had done his share and more to make that dream real, as a youth helping to capture Constantinople and now in his old age by bringing Bulgaria the true faith. He could return once more to his peaceful retirement in Damascus.

  He wondered if Telerikh would let him take along that fair-skinned pleasure girl. He turned to the khan. It couldn’t hurt to ask.

  Susan Shwartz

  Susan Shwartz has been writing fantasy and science fiction for more than twenty years. She is the author of the extraplanetary adventure Heritage of Flight, as well as the Heirs to Byzantium alternate world fantasy trilogy, comprised of Byzantium’s Crown, The Woman of Flowers, and Queensblade. The Heirs to Byzantium series lays the groundwork for her recent Shards of Empire and its sequel Cross and Crescent, sword-and-sorcery epics set in the eleventh century at the twilight of the Byzantine empire, which explore the clash of cultures during the First Crusade. Shwartz has collaborated on the Star Trek novels Vulcan’s Forge and Vulcan’s Heart with Josepha Sherman, and on Empire of Eagles with Andre Norton, for whom she also compiled the tribute anthology Moon-singer’s Friends. She has edited the Arabesque anthologies and is a coeditor for the Sisters in Fantasy anthology series.

  SUPPOSE THEY GAVE A PEACE

  * * *

  Susan Shwartz

  TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER the war, and my damned sixth sense about the phone still wakes me up at 3:00 A.M. Just as well. All Margaret needs is for me to snap awake, shout, and jump out of bed, grabbing for my pants and my .45. I don’t have it anymore. She made me sell it as
soon as the kids were old enough to poke into the big chest of drawers. I don’t interfere when she makes decisions like that. The way things are going to the dogs, though, I’d feel a whole lot better about her safety if I had the gun.

  So I stuck my feet into my slippers—the trench foot still itches—and snuck downstairs. If Margaret woke up, she’d think I was raiding the icebox and go back to sleep. I like being up and alone in my house, kind of guard duty. I don’t do much. I straighten towels or put books back on the shelves—though with Steff gone, that’s not a problem anymore. I don’t like seeing the kids’ rooms so bare.

  Barry’s models and football are all lined up, and Margaret dusts them. No problem telling the boys from the girls in our family. Barry’s room is red and navy, and Steff’s is all blue and purply, soft-like, with ruffles and a dressing table she designed herself. Now that she’s at school, we don’t trip on clothes all over the place. And I keep reminding myself we ought to yank out the Princess phone she got when she turned thirteen. Light on the dial’s burned out, anyway.

  I wish she hadn’t taken down the crewelwork she did her freshman year. The flower baskets were a whole lot prettier than these “Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came” posters. But that’s better than the picture of that bearded Che-guy. I put my foot down about that thing, I can tell you. Not in my house, I said.

  I’m proud of our house: two-floor brick Tudor with white walls and gold carpet and a big ticking grandfather’s clock in the hall. Classy taste, my wife has. Who’d have thought she’d look at someone like me?

  Besides, dinner was pretty good. Some of that deli rye and that leftover steak . . .

  As the light from the icebox slid across the wall phone it went off, almost like it had been alerted. I grabbed it before it could ring twice.

  “Yeah?” I snapped the way I used to in Germany, and my gut froze. My son Barry’s in Saigon. If anything goes wrong, they send a telegram. No. That was last war. Now they send a car. God forbid.

  But Steff, my crazy daughter—every time the phone rings at night I’m scared. Maybe she’s got herself arrested in one of her goddamn causes and I’m going to have to bail her out like I did in Chicago. Or it could be worse. Two years ago this month, some kids were in the wrong place at the wrong time up at Kent. Damn shame about them and the National Guard; it’ll take us years to live it down. Hell of a thing to happen in Ohio.

  I thought my kid was going to lose her mind about it. The schools shut down all over the place, all that tuition money pissed away, and God only knows what she got into.

  Not just God. Margaret. Steff would call up, say “put Mom on,” and Margaret would cry and turn into the phone so I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I think she sent money on the sly-like, so I wouldn’t make an issue of it. You don’t send kids to college so they can get shot at. Steff would say you don’t send anyone anywhere so they can get shot at. She’s just a kid, you know. She doesn’t really believe all that stuff. The kids shouldn’t have been there. Anyone could tell you that.

  “Hey, that you, Joey?” The voice on the other end was thick with booze. “It’s Al. Remember me?”

  “You son of a bitch, what’re you doing calling this hour of night?” I started to bellow, then piped down. “You wanna wake up my whole damn family?”

  “Thought you’d be up, Joey. Like we were . . . the time when . . .”

  “Yeah . . . yeah . . .” Sure I remembered. Too well. So did Al, my old army buddy. It happens from time to time. One of us gets to remembering, gets the booze out—Scotch for me these days now that my practice is finally paying off—then picks up the phone. Margaret calls it “going visiting” and “telephonitis” and only gets mad at the end of the month when the bills come in.

  But Al wasn’t from my outfit at the Battle of the Bulge. Weren’t many of them left. Not many had been real close friends to start with: when you run away from home and lie about your age so you can go fight, you’re sort of out of place, soldier or not.

  Damn near broke my own dad’s heart; he’d wanted me to follow him into school and law school and partnership. So I did that on GI bills when I got out. Got married and then there was Korea. I went back in, and that’s where I met Al.

  “Remember? We’d run out of fuel for the tank and were burning grain alcohol . . . rather drink torpedo juice, wouldn’t you? And pushing that thing south to the 38th parallel, scared shitless the North Koreans’d get us if the engine fused . . .”

  “Yeah . . .” How far was Korea from Saigon? My son, the lance corporal, had wangled himself a choice slot as Marine guard. I guess all Margaret’s nagging about posture and manners had paid off. Almost the only time it had with the Bear. God, you know you’d shed blood so your kids don’t turn out as big damn fools as you. I’d of sent Barry through school, any school. But he wanted the service. Not Army, either, but the Marines. Well, Parris Island did what I couldn’t do, and now he was “yes sir”–ing a lot of fancypants like Ambassador Bunker over in Vietnam. At least he wasn’t a chicken or a runaway . . .

  “You there, Joey?” I was staring at the receiver. “I asked you, how’s your family?”

  “M’wife’s fine,” I said. How long had it been since Al and I spoke—three years? Five? “So’re the kids. Barry’s in the Marines. My son the corporal. Stationed in Saigon. The Embassy, no less.” I could feel my chest puffing out even though I was tired and it was the middle of the night.

  Car lights shone outside. I stiffened. What if . . . The lights passed. All’s quiet on the Western Front. Thank God.

  Al and the beer hooted approvingly.

  “And Steffie’s in college. Some damn radical Quaker place. I wanted her to stay in Ohio, be a nurse or a teacher, something practical in case, God forbid, she ever has to work, but my wife wanted her near her own people.”

  “She getting plenty of crazy ideas at that school?”

  “Steff’s a good kid, Al. Looks like a real lady now.”

  What do you expect me to say? That after a year of looking and acting like the big-shot debs my wife admires in the New York Times, my Steffie’s decided to hate everything her dad fought for? Sometimes I think she’s majoring in revolution. It wasn’t enough she got arrested in 1968 campaigning for McCarthy—clean up for Gene, they called it. Clean? I never saw a scruffier bunch of kids till I saw the ones she’s taken up with now. Long hair, dirty—and the language? Worse than an army barracks.

  She’s got another campaign now. This McGovern. I don’t see what they have against President Nixon or what they see in this McGovern character. Senator from South Dakota, and I tell you, he’s enough to make Mount Rushmore cry. I swear to God, the way these friends of Steff’s love unearthing and spreading nasty stories—this Ellsberg character Steff admires, you’d think he was a hero instead of some nutcase who spilled his guts in a shrink’s office, so help me. Or this My Lai business: things like that happen in war. You just don’t talk about them. Still, what do you expect of a bunch of kids? We made it too easy.

  I keep hoping. She’s such a good girl, such a pretty girl; one of these days, she’ll come around and say “Daddy, I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  Never mind that.

  Al had got onto the subject of jo-sans. Cripes, I hadn’t even thought of some of them for twenty years, being an old married man and all. What if Margaret had walked in? I’d of been dead. Sure, I laughed over old times, but I was relieved when he switched to “who’s doing what” and “who’s died,” and then onto current events. We played armchair general, and I tell you, if the Pentagon would listen to us, we’d win this turkey and have the boys home so damned fast . . .

  About the time we’d agreed that this Kissinger was a slippery so-and-so and that bombing Haiphong was one of the best things we could have done, only we should have done it a whole lot earlier . . . hell of a way to fight a war, tying General Westmoreland’s hands, I heard footsteps on the stairs.

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?” Margaret asked m
e.

  I gestured he called me! at the phone, feeling like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. My wife laughed. “Going visiting, is he? Well, let his wife give him aspirin for the hangover I bet he’s going to have. You have to go to the office tomorrow and . . .” she paused for emphasis like I was six years old, “you need your sleep.”

  She disappeared back up the stairs, sure that I’d follow.

  “That was the wife,” I told Al, my old good buddy. “Gotta go. Hey, don’t wait five years to call again. And if you’re ever in town, come on over for dinner!”

  God, I hope she hadn’t heard that stuff about the jo-sans. Or the dinner invitation. We’d eat cold shoulder and crow, that was for sure.

  FALL OF ’72, we kept hearing stories. That Harvard guy that Kissinger was meeting with Le Duc Tho in Paris, and he was encouraged, but then they backed down: back and forth, back and forth till you were ready to scream. “Peace is at hand,” he says, and they say it in Hanoi, too. I mean what’s the good of it when the commies and your own leaders agree, and the army doesn’t? No news out of Radio Hanoi can be any good. And the boys are still coming home in bags, dammit.

  Meanwhile, as I hear from Margaret, Stephanie is doing well in her classes. The ones she attends in between campaigning for this McGovern. At first I thought he was just a nuisance candidate. You know, like Stassen runs each time? Then, when they unearthed that stuff about Eagleton, and they changed VP candidates, I thought he was dead in the water for sure. But Shriver’s been a good choice: drawn in even more of the young, responsible folk and the people who respect what he did in the Peace Corps. But the real reason McGovern’s moving way up in the polls is that more and more people get sick and tired of the war. We just don’t believe we can win it, anymore. And that hurts.