Gawain, page 2
“Hello?” that first voice came to her now as the system shifted itself to channel eight. “Who are you?”
“You asked for help?” Yasmin fell back into Farsi. “I came.”
“What are you?” he asked in a more fearful voice.
“Justice.”
It took time for the gate to be opened as Yasmin stood well outside, watching the raiders flee. Her magical Japanese computers tracked several radio signals and helpfully plotted them on a map for her, growing slowly less sure as time passed and the distance reached kilometers.
The gate turned out to be an ancient tractor trailer, turned sideways inside a trench such that it appeared to rest on the ground from the outside. She listened with audio sensors as two mechanics screamed obscenities at each other because the engine would not start.
Time passed.
A figure came over the top of a nearby wall on a rope ladder, dropping down from the fighting platform alone.
Well, not alone, but the dozen or so people who had clustered around him stayed put up there with small arms and a pintle-mounted machine gun aimed at her.
Yasmin turned Gawain to watch him approach.
Her.
Yasmin dialed in the magnification and it was a woman’s face. Hard and ancient, but she suspected that the women of Aynalo that Yasmin had grown up with had almost never gone out into the sun. Nor had they ever really gone hungry.
This woman was a wolf to the well-fed lapdogs of Yasmin’s past.
Yasmin reached up and attached the sword to her shoulder again. Not to free up her hand for combat, but to appear less threatening, perhaps.
If a faceless fighting robot seven meters tall could appear friendly.
The woman stopped ten meters away and studied Yasmin and Gawain.
She gave the appearance of lean height, much like Yasmin had. Perhaps fifty years old, but Yasmin felt that she could be a decade off either direction easily from the wrinkles and pinched skin. The stranger wore faded tan robes similar to the type that Yasmin once had, right up to the day that she began to live in Gawain.
The fighting compartment let her wear pants and a shirt, with her robes stuffed into a small gear box behind her where she kept snacks and a canteen of fresh tea. Even the hijab was stowed, since Gawain’s helmet precluded such a thing, even as it served almost the same purpose.
“Do you have a name?” the woman asked simply, staring up at her.
On a hip the stranger wore a holster for a pistol, but had nothing else to protect her, save for those folks in the wall.
Audacity itself to come down here. But the same calm certainty that Ardashir would have appreciated.
“Yasmin Shir-Del,” she answered.
“You are the woman on the radio?” the stranger asked, rocked back on her heels in surprise.
“I am,” Yasmin nodded, knowing that Gawain would replicate the movement.
“How did you come to be close enough to interrupt the attack?”
Yasmin noted that the woman hadn’t introduced herself, but she also supposed that some people might see the appearance of Gawain in terms similar to a djinn emerging to grant three wishes, if you had a soul to sell in the bargain.
“My friends and I are traveling from the northwest,” Yasmin said. “Eventually, we want to visit Herat, but Behrooz seeks to build trade and friendship across the plateau as he goes.”
“So it is not just you in that thing?” the woman asked.
“It is just me,” Yasmin replied carefully, wondering if the ones on the fighting platform in the distance were preparing some sort of ambush. She dialed up her sensors to detect any weapon using electromagnetics or lasers to lock onto Gawain. “They travel in a slower vehicle behind me while I scout.”
“You speak Farsi well,” the woman said. “But that is not a Persian machine.”
“It is not,” Yasmin agreed. “I was born in Aynalo, near the ancient border to Iraq and Kurdistan. We located an American arms depot that had survived and were able to salvage some equipment. I heard your call for help on the radio and came to assist.”
Yasmin focused most of her attention on the walls, but they were not doing anything suspicious right now.
“Who were the raiders?” Yasmin asked the woman bluntly.
“A tribe of violence from the south,” the old woman replied. “They have traded with us in the past, but a new leader has emerged and taken them over. He seeks to build up his power all through this region.”
Yasmin pondered that knowledge, unsure what to offer. Except that she knew the answer.
She had taken up the sword for a reason.
“How may I help?” she asked.
“You bring trade?” the woman asked.
“Behrooz is the trader,” Yasmin corrected her. “I am his protector.”
“I see,” the woman said.
She paused for a long moment as if in thought.
“With your permission, I would like to collect all the weapons and equipment that survived, so that we can take them back inside the walls to prepare for the next attack,” she continued.
“My permission?” Yasmin asked, surprised now.
“You drove them off, Yasmin Shir-Del,” she said. “That makes this technically yours by rite of conquest.”
“There is no conquest,” Yasmin said, turning now to quote Behrooz’s foundational argument. “If the wars are not over by now, then they may never be over until the last of us are dead.”
“I see,” the old woman said with a quick bow of her head. “I am Nahal Ghorbani Sayyida. Would you care to join us for some tea?”
Sayyida.
It was an ancient and noble title that marked the woman as a descendant of the great Prophet Himself, Peace Be Upon Him, and his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib through the grandsons, Hasan and Husayn from Muhammad's daughter Fatimah.
Yasmin wondered if it was a trap, but like Behrooz, the future required one to take risks. Exiting the armor would be one, but Yasmin had been trained in close combat by Ardashir to a level that the old man found satisfactory, which was high praise indeed for such a perfectionist.
“It would be my pleasure,” Yasmin said. “ibn Rustah will require several hours to join us, so I will let them know.”
“ibn Rushah?” the Sayyida asked, obviously recognizing the ancient scholar’s name.
“Another war machine captured from the Americans and repurposed,” Yasmin assured her. “Be not afraid when it arrives, as it moved slowly and is unarmed.”
“As you say,” the woman said in apparent agreement.
She turned now and started to walk towards the gate. Yasmin took a step, but walked with slow deliberation, since her legs were so much longer.
“Channel eight,” she instructed the computer after turning off the outside speakers. “Behrooz?”
“Here,” he replied instantly. “What news?”
“I drove off an attack by destroying three vehicles,” Yasmin said. “Forty fled for now, headed away from you to the east and then south. The locals have invited me into their walls for tea, after a woman came out and introduced herself. Ask Ardashir if the name Nahal Ghorbani Sayyida has resonance.”
“He’s here,” Behrooz replied.
“It does not,” Grandfather came on the line a moment later. “But that means nothing. Do they appear honorable?”
Yes, that would be the first thing he asked, the once-mighty Ardashir of the Desert.
“So far,” Yasmin said, going on to describe the conversation, including the part where the woman walked out onto the desert floor alone to talk.
“It is well,” Grandfather agreed. “Have tea with them, but make sure that Gawain is disabled before you depart. What is our arrival?”
“Five hours,” Behrooz spoke up. “The terrain is rough enough here that I cannot push any more than I am without risking a tread. But we will get there.”
“Exercise care and manners, Yasmin,” Grandfather commanded. “We will see you for dinner.”
“Dinner,” she agreed.
Up ahead, the mechanics had finally gotten the truck to start and were backing it up in the trench. That was a lovely way to make a drawbridge, when the gate would open, only to reveal a pit wide enough to swallow any vehicle suddenly trying to race through the gap.
Gawain could step over it easily enough, or just step down and then back up again, but Grandfather had said that the mechanoids were rare, even in the richest times. Wheeled trucks were so much easier to build and repair.
Or turn into war machines.
Ghorbani waited as the gate got fully opened, and then stepped across a small ledge on one side. A bridge was run out by hand and Yasmin gingerly stepped onto it, aware of how heavy an American Excalibur was. But it held.
Inside, it reminded her of ancient castles. The walls encompassed a vast area, butting up against the side of a mountain on her left and stair-stepping down to the dry river bed across the back.
Audio sensors picked up the sound of goats and sheep bleating, as well as people moving around. She could see garden beds out in the open, which surprised her, but Yasmin was used to the hydroponics of Aynalo or the all-terrain greenhouse coming up behind her.
Was the radiation low enough here that things could be grown safely in open air and eaten?
She turned to the onboard Geiger counter and realized that the background count of the northwest that she was used to was much lower here. Either the wars had passed this place by, or the weapons used had already faded, leaving her with hope that there might be other places where people could live safely in the open.
Tehran had been annihilated, she was sure, merely because the Americans had been angry and evil.
There were a few vehicles tucked in among all the huts and buildings she could see around her. The space in here almost reminded her of an ant nest she had read about, but most of the people were up on the walls now.
Watching.
Armed, but nobody was pointing a weapon at her directly. Such would be poor manners, to invite a guest in for tea and then threaten them without cause.
Tea was a ritual, after all. Many cultures had turned it into art, as well as culture. Combat, even, in the right circumstances, or treaties.
Yasmin found a spot on her right, where the platform on the inside of the walls was high enough, and backed Gawain into place. She confirmed that everything was locked down with a password and began the shutdown sequence.
The original Gawain, once Behrooz had repaired it and she had brought him to life, had been an electronic blank slate. Reset to factory standards and awaiting purpose that she had provided.
Yasmin watched the Sayyida approach, climbing the stairs to get to the platform. Gawain signaled readiness, so Yasmin triggered the back hatch to open and then let the system power to standby.
She didn’t trust that the raiders had truly fled, so she should be ready to return to battle in an eyeblink.
Sunlight came into the suddenly-dark fighting compartment as the back panels unlocked and swung a little. Yasmin began the process of climbing out of her harness, pausing to grab clothes from the storage locker as she hung her helmet.
There was no space in here to get fully dressed, unless she really had to, so she just pushed the panel the rest of the way open and blinked as the Sayyida stood nearby watching.
Yasmin emerged into the terrible daytime heat, suddenly sweating after so many hours, so many days, so many weeks in climate controlled loveliness.
The Sayyida wore similar robes as Yasmin pulled her own over her head and grabbed a belt. The woman lacked the hibaj, but had a hood up for now.
Yasmin felt naked without either her hijab or her helmet, so she took the time to make sure her braided hair was pulled back and then covered it as instructed to show piety.
Stepping out, she found that they were of a height together.
The older woman blinked in surprise.
“You are younger than I expected,” Ghorbani said carefully.
“I was trained as a warrior by my Grandfather,” Yasmin said. “He fought in many of the old wars.”
“Where is he now?” Ghorbani asked.
“Coming, along with Behrooz,” Yasmin nodded. “They should arrive in the late afternoon, when I last checked.”
Yasmin looked around. Ghorbani had several others with her now. Interestingly, the ratio of female to male looked to be two or maybe even three to one. She paused to close the back hatch without locking it. Enough to keep grit and dust out, but available in a hurry.
The older woman gestured and Yasmin fell in beside her, armed men and woman around them trailing as they went down the nearby stairs to the floor of the compound as the truck pulled back into place across the gate.
Ghorbani led her to a building off to one side. Not the largest, as that had the appearance of an ancient office building Yasmin remembered from pictures.
No, this had the feel of a home. Nicer than the ones around it, painted recently enough to still be a bright teal color with white trim, when most of the rest was the color of sand and stone.
A guard stood beside the door. The others around them stopped outside and Yasmin found herself alone with the woman in a small salon like her parents might have kept. Large central room with a kitchen area on the left and a collection of mismatched couches and chairs on the right.
Nahal Ghorbani Sayyida gestured her to the kitchen table with steel chairs and Yasmin sat. The older woman busied herself with the tea while speaking.
“You mentioned Aynalo in the northwest,” she said as she worked. “I had thought that region abandoned and unsafe.”
“Grandfather helped create a fortress inside a mountain fifty years ago,” Yasmin said. “When the wars were at their peak and he could see the future. They stole an early fusion reactor and brought families and engineers inside to run it. My village has been there since.”
“And your friend with the slow vehicle?” Ghorbani pressed.
“An American war machine he repaired in Kurdistan and stripped all the weapons off of,” Yasmin offered. Better to have that on the table now.
“The desert is not safe,” Ghorbani turned a stern eye this way.
Yasmin shrugged.
“That is why he has me,” she answered.
“But you are still a child.”
“I am counted an adult among my village,” Yasmin countered, not bothering to explain how Grandfather and Behrooz had blackmailed the old goats into allowing it originally. And she was not returning to Aynalo for many years, if she ever did. “A warrior.”
Yasmin already understood that.
“And you came to our aid against the raiders,” Ghorbani nodded gratefully.
“I have taken up the sword,” Yasmin replied enigmatically.
British Arthur reborn, perhaps. Pull a sword from a stone and set out to rebuild ancient Persia into a place, instead of a sad memory.
“And you are traveling to Herat?” Ghorbani asked. “Did I hear that correctly?”
“Indeed,” Yasmin agreed. “Behrooz seeks the far eastern points on this mission, drilling wells and planting things as he goes.”
“Wells?” Ghorbani turned sharply. “What kind of wells?”
“Water,” Yasmin replied in an uncertain tone.
Then she had a flash of insight. Those raiders drove internal-combustion vehicles. She had automatically assumed biodiesel, but Persia had once been known for petroleum.
“Do you have oil here?” Yasmin pressed now, suddenly curious.
“That is why the raiders came.” Ghorbani finished her work and sat now as the water boiled. “This place was a small pumping station in the old times. When the war came, they barricaded themselves in as best they could. Others came later and turned it into proper village, but we still pump oil out of the ground and refine it to a certain extent. Trade it with other villages in the south for food.”
“Interesting,” Yasmin leaned back. “My mechanoid and ibn Rustah have fusion reactors that run on cracked water. But there are places in the south with civilization?”
“Have you lived underground your whole life?” Ghorbani asked, surprised.
“Except in the afternoons, when I would got to the top of the mountain and watch the desert,” Yasmin said. “That was where I saw the all-terrain greenhouse.”
“The what?”
“Behrooz covered the entire top deck of his machine with plastic domes to keep moisture in,” Yasmin explained with a warm smile at the memory. “He has planters and pots filled with all sorts of plants that he grows. Edible, medicinal, functional. He came to Aynalo and traded seeds and dried fruit. The mission is to do the same in several other places until a network can be assembled and Persia rebuilt.”
“You would need to bring an army,” the older woman noted. “Raiders like Dehkordi would rather take than build.”
“That is my purpose,” Yasmin sat straighter. “I am an army.”
“You?” Ghorbani asked, apparently careful not to sound mocking. “What are you, Yasmin? Sixteen?”
“Seventeen,” Yasmin replied. “And an adult with an American war robot. I will stop them.”
The older woman sobered at the tone of Yasmin’s voice. Leaned forward a little and studied her.
Yasmin expected a response of some sort, but the kettle began to whistle, so Ghorbani rose and silently prepared a pot of tea instead. She returned a few moments later with two mugs and set the pot between them to steepe.
“A water well deep enough to draw clean water would greatly improve our ability to survive here,” Ghorbani said delicately. “Ours were dug by hand. Could your friend do such a thing?”
Yasmin smiled.
“He could,” she said. “Would happily do so, too, if you asked him. We seek news and friends. But what can you tell me of the raiders?”
Yasmin stood on the platform not far from Gawain with a handheld radio that she had been using to talk to Behrooz as he approached.
The Sayyida stood next to her, rigid with shock. The other defenders of the place had cried in surprise and fear until Yasmin assured them that ibn Rustah was friendly.
Ghorbani turned to Yasmin, the whites of her eyes visible.
“You asked for help?” Yasmin fell back into Farsi. “I came.”
“What are you?” he asked in a more fearful voice.
“Justice.”
It took time for the gate to be opened as Yasmin stood well outside, watching the raiders flee. Her magical Japanese computers tracked several radio signals and helpfully plotted them on a map for her, growing slowly less sure as time passed and the distance reached kilometers.
The gate turned out to be an ancient tractor trailer, turned sideways inside a trench such that it appeared to rest on the ground from the outside. She listened with audio sensors as two mechanics screamed obscenities at each other because the engine would not start.
Time passed.
A figure came over the top of a nearby wall on a rope ladder, dropping down from the fighting platform alone.
Well, not alone, but the dozen or so people who had clustered around him stayed put up there with small arms and a pintle-mounted machine gun aimed at her.
Yasmin turned Gawain to watch him approach.
Her.
Yasmin dialed in the magnification and it was a woman’s face. Hard and ancient, but she suspected that the women of Aynalo that Yasmin had grown up with had almost never gone out into the sun. Nor had they ever really gone hungry.
This woman was a wolf to the well-fed lapdogs of Yasmin’s past.
Yasmin reached up and attached the sword to her shoulder again. Not to free up her hand for combat, but to appear less threatening, perhaps.
If a faceless fighting robot seven meters tall could appear friendly.
The woman stopped ten meters away and studied Yasmin and Gawain.
She gave the appearance of lean height, much like Yasmin had. Perhaps fifty years old, but Yasmin felt that she could be a decade off either direction easily from the wrinkles and pinched skin. The stranger wore faded tan robes similar to the type that Yasmin once had, right up to the day that she began to live in Gawain.
The fighting compartment let her wear pants and a shirt, with her robes stuffed into a small gear box behind her where she kept snacks and a canteen of fresh tea. Even the hijab was stowed, since Gawain’s helmet precluded such a thing, even as it served almost the same purpose.
“Do you have a name?” the woman asked simply, staring up at her.
On a hip the stranger wore a holster for a pistol, but had nothing else to protect her, save for those folks in the wall.
Audacity itself to come down here. But the same calm certainty that Ardashir would have appreciated.
“Yasmin Shir-Del,” she answered.
“You are the woman on the radio?” the stranger asked, rocked back on her heels in surprise.
“I am,” Yasmin nodded, knowing that Gawain would replicate the movement.
“How did you come to be close enough to interrupt the attack?”
Yasmin noted that the woman hadn’t introduced herself, but she also supposed that some people might see the appearance of Gawain in terms similar to a djinn emerging to grant three wishes, if you had a soul to sell in the bargain.
“My friends and I are traveling from the northwest,” Yasmin said. “Eventually, we want to visit Herat, but Behrooz seeks to build trade and friendship across the plateau as he goes.”
“So it is not just you in that thing?” the woman asked.
“It is just me,” Yasmin replied carefully, wondering if the ones on the fighting platform in the distance were preparing some sort of ambush. She dialed up her sensors to detect any weapon using electromagnetics or lasers to lock onto Gawain. “They travel in a slower vehicle behind me while I scout.”
“You speak Farsi well,” the woman said. “But that is not a Persian machine.”
“It is not,” Yasmin agreed. “I was born in Aynalo, near the ancient border to Iraq and Kurdistan. We located an American arms depot that had survived and were able to salvage some equipment. I heard your call for help on the radio and came to assist.”
Yasmin focused most of her attention on the walls, but they were not doing anything suspicious right now.
“Who were the raiders?” Yasmin asked the woman bluntly.
“A tribe of violence from the south,” the old woman replied. “They have traded with us in the past, but a new leader has emerged and taken them over. He seeks to build up his power all through this region.”
Yasmin pondered that knowledge, unsure what to offer. Except that she knew the answer.
She had taken up the sword for a reason.
“How may I help?” she asked.
“You bring trade?” the woman asked.
“Behrooz is the trader,” Yasmin corrected her. “I am his protector.”
“I see,” the woman said.
She paused for a long moment as if in thought.
“With your permission, I would like to collect all the weapons and equipment that survived, so that we can take them back inside the walls to prepare for the next attack,” she continued.
“My permission?” Yasmin asked, surprised now.
“You drove them off, Yasmin Shir-Del,” she said. “That makes this technically yours by rite of conquest.”
“There is no conquest,” Yasmin said, turning now to quote Behrooz’s foundational argument. “If the wars are not over by now, then they may never be over until the last of us are dead.”
“I see,” the old woman said with a quick bow of her head. “I am Nahal Ghorbani Sayyida. Would you care to join us for some tea?”
Sayyida.
It was an ancient and noble title that marked the woman as a descendant of the great Prophet Himself, Peace Be Upon Him, and his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib through the grandsons, Hasan and Husayn from Muhammad's daughter Fatimah.
Yasmin wondered if it was a trap, but like Behrooz, the future required one to take risks. Exiting the armor would be one, but Yasmin had been trained in close combat by Ardashir to a level that the old man found satisfactory, which was high praise indeed for such a perfectionist.
“It would be my pleasure,” Yasmin said. “ibn Rustah will require several hours to join us, so I will let them know.”
“ibn Rushah?” the Sayyida asked, obviously recognizing the ancient scholar’s name.
“Another war machine captured from the Americans and repurposed,” Yasmin assured her. “Be not afraid when it arrives, as it moved slowly and is unarmed.”
“As you say,” the woman said in apparent agreement.
She turned now and started to walk towards the gate. Yasmin took a step, but walked with slow deliberation, since her legs were so much longer.
“Channel eight,” she instructed the computer after turning off the outside speakers. “Behrooz?”
“Here,” he replied instantly. “What news?”
“I drove off an attack by destroying three vehicles,” Yasmin said. “Forty fled for now, headed away from you to the east and then south. The locals have invited me into their walls for tea, after a woman came out and introduced herself. Ask Ardashir if the name Nahal Ghorbani Sayyida has resonance.”
“He’s here,” Behrooz replied.
“It does not,” Grandfather came on the line a moment later. “But that means nothing. Do they appear honorable?”
Yes, that would be the first thing he asked, the once-mighty Ardashir of the Desert.
“So far,” Yasmin said, going on to describe the conversation, including the part where the woman walked out onto the desert floor alone to talk.
“It is well,” Grandfather agreed. “Have tea with them, but make sure that Gawain is disabled before you depart. What is our arrival?”
“Five hours,” Behrooz spoke up. “The terrain is rough enough here that I cannot push any more than I am without risking a tread. But we will get there.”
“Exercise care and manners, Yasmin,” Grandfather commanded. “We will see you for dinner.”
“Dinner,” she agreed.
Up ahead, the mechanics had finally gotten the truck to start and were backing it up in the trench. That was a lovely way to make a drawbridge, when the gate would open, only to reveal a pit wide enough to swallow any vehicle suddenly trying to race through the gap.
Gawain could step over it easily enough, or just step down and then back up again, but Grandfather had said that the mechanoids were rare, even in the richest times. Wheeled trucks were so much easier to build and repair.
Or turn into war machines.
Ghorbani waited as the gate got fully opened, and then stepped across a small ledge on one side. A bridge was run out by hand and Yasmin gingerly stepped onto it, aware of how heavy an American Excalibur was. But it held.
Inside, it reminded her of ancient castles. The walls encompassed a vast area, butting up against the side of a mountain on her left and stair-stepping down to the dry river bed across the back.
Audio sensors picked up the sound of goats and sheep bleating, as well as people moving around. She could see garden beds out in the open, which surprised her, but Yasmin was used to the hydroponics of Aynalo or the all-terrain greenhouse coming up behind her.
Was the radiation low enough here that things could be grown safely in open air and eaten?
She turned to the onboard Geiger counter and realized that the background count of the northwest that she was used to was much lower here. Either the wars had passed this place by, or the weapons used had already faded, leaving her with hope that there might be other places where people could live safely in the open.
Tehran had been annihilated, she was sure, merely because the Americans had been angry and evil.
There were a few vehicles tucked in among all the huts and buildings she could see around her. The space in here almost reminded her of an ant nest she had read about, but most of the people were up on the walls now.
Watching.
Armed, but nobody was pointing a weapon at her directly. Such would be poor manners, to invite a guest in for tea and then threaten them without cause.
Tea was a ritual, after all. Many cultures had turned it into art, as well as culture. Combat, even, in the right circumstances, or treaties.
Yasmin found a spot on her right, where the platform on the inside of the walls was high enough, and backed Gawain into place. She confirmed that everything was locked down with a password and began the shutdown sequence.
The original Gawain, once Behrooz had repaired it and she had brought him to life, had been an electronic blank slate. Reset to factory standards and awaiting purpose that she had provided.
Yasmin watched the Sayyida approach, climbing the stairs to get to the platform. Gawain signaled readiness, so Yasmin triggered the back hatch to open and then let the system power to standby.
She didn’t trust that the raiders had truly fled, so she should be ready to return to battle in an eyeblink.
Sunlight came into the suddenly-dark fighting compartment as the back panels unlocked and swung a little. Yasmin began the process of climbing out of her harness, pausing to grab clothes from the storage locker as she hung her helmet.
There was no space in here to get fully dressed, unless she really had to, so she just pushed the panel the rest of the way open and blinked as the Sayyida stood nearby watching.
Yasmin emerged into the terrible daytime heat, suddenly sweating after so many hours, so many days, so many weeks in climate controlled loveliness.
The Sayyida wore similar robes as Yasmin pulled her own over her head and grabbed a belt. The woman lacked the hibaj, but had a hood up for now.
Yasmin felt naked without either her hijab or her helmet, so she took the time to make sure her braided hair was pulled back and then covered it as instructed to show piety.
Stepping out, she found that they were of a height together.
The older woman blinked in surprise.
“You are younger than I expected,” Ghorbani said carefully.
“I was trained as a warrior by my Grandfather,” Yasmin said. “He fought in many of the old wars.”
“Where is he now?” Ghorbani asked.
“Coming, along with Behrooz,” Yasmin nodded. “They should arrive in the late afternoon, when I last checked.”
Yasmin looked around. Ghorbani had several others with her now. Interestingly, the ratio of female to male looked to be two or maybe even three to one. She paused to close the back hatch without locking it. Enough to keep grit and dust out, but available in a hurry.
The older woman gestured and Yasmin fell in beside her, armed men and woman around them trailing as they went down the nearby stairs to the floor of the compound as the truck pulled back into place across the gate.
Ghorbani led her to a building off to one side. Not the largest, as that had the appearance of an ancient office building Yasmin remembered from pictures.
No, this had the feel of a home. Nicer than the ones around it, painted recently enough to still be a bright teal color with white trim, when most of the rest was the color of sand and stone.
A guard stood beside the door. The others around them stopped outside and Yasmin found herself alone with the woman in a small salon like her parents might have kept. Large central room with a kitchen area on the left and a collection of mismatched couches and chairs on the right.
Nahal Ghorbani Sayyida gestured her to the kitchen table with steel chairs and Yasmin sat. The older woman busied herself with the tea while speaking.
“You mentioned Aynalo in the northwest,” she said as she worked. “I had thought that region abandoned and unsafe.”
“Grandfather helped create a fortress inside a mountain fifty years ago,” Yasmin said. “When the wars were at their peak and he could see the future. They stole an early fusion reactor and brought families and engineers inside to run it. My village has been there since.”
“And your friend with the slow vehicle?” Ghorbani pressed.
“An American war machine he repaired in Kurdistan and stripped all the weapons off of,” Yasmin offered. Better to have that on the table now.
“The desert is not safe,” Ghorbani turned a stern eye this way.
Yasmin shrugged.
“That is why he has me,” she answered.
“But you are still a child.”
“I am counted an adult among my village,” Yasmin countered, not bothering to explain how Grandfather and Behrooz had blackmailed the old goats into allowing it originally. And she was not returning to Aynalo for many years, if she ever did. “A warrior.”
Yasmin already understood that.
“And you came to our aid against the raiders,” Ghorbani nodded gratefully.
“I have taken up the sword,” Yasmin replied enigmatically.
British Arthur reborn, perhaps. Pull a sword from a stone and set out to rebuild ancient Persia into a place, instead of a sad memory.
“And you are traveling to Herat?” Ghorbani asked. “Did I hear that correctly?”
“Indeed,” Yasmin agreed. “Behrooz seeks the far eastern points on this mission, drilling wells and planting things as he goes.”
“Wells?” Ghorbani turned sharply. “What kind of wells?”
“Water,” Yasmin replied in an uncertain tone.
Then she had a flash of insight. Those raiders drove internal-combustion vehicles. She had automatically assumed biodiesel, but Persia had once been known for petroleum.
“Do you have oil here?” Yasmin pressed now, suddenly curious.
“That is why the raiders came.” Ghorbani finished her work and sat now as the water boiled. “This place was a small pumping station in the old times. When the war came, they barricaded themselves in as best they could. Others came later and turned it into proper village, but we still pump oil out of the ground and refine it to a certain extent. Trade it with other villages in the south for food.”
“Interesting,” Yasmin leaned back. “My mechanoid and ibn Rustah have fusion reactors that run on cracked water. But there are places in the south with civilization?”
“Have you lived underground your whole life?” Ghorbani asked, surprised.
“Except in the afternoons, when I would got to the top of the mountain and watch the desert,” Yasmin said. “That was where I saw the all-terrain greenhouse.”
“The what?”
“Behrooz covered the entire top deck of his machine with plastic domes to keep moisture in,” Yasmin explained with a warm smile at the memory. “He has planters and pots filled with all sorts of plants that he grows. Edible, medicinal, functional. He came to Aynalo and traded seeds and dried fruit. The mission is to do the same in several other places until a network can be assembled and Persia rebuilt.”
“You would need to bring an army,” the older woman noted. “Raiders like Dehkordi would rather take than build.”
“That is my purpose,” Yasmin sat straighter. “I am an army.”
“You?” Ghorbani asked, apparently careful not to sound mocking. “What are you, Yasmin? Sixteen?”
“Seventeen,” Yasmin replied. “And an adult with an American war robot. I will stop them.”
The older woman sobered at the tone of Yasmin’s voice. Leaned forward a little and studied her.
Yasmin expected a response of some sort, but the kettle began to whistle, so Ghorbani rose and silently prepared a pot of tea instead. She returned a few moments later with two mugs and set the pot between them to steepe.
“A water well deep enough to draw clean water would greatly improve our ability to survive here,” Ghorbani said delicately. “Ours were dug by hand. Could your friend do such a thing?”
Yasmin smiled.
“He could,” she said. “Would happily do so, too, if you asked him. We seek news and friends. But what can you tell me of the raiders?”
Yasmin stood on the platform not far from Gawain with a handheld radio that she had been using to talk to Behrooz as he approached.
The Sayyida stood next to her, rigid with shock. The other defenders of the place had cried in surprise and fear until Yasmin assured them that ibn Rustah was friendly.
Ghorbani turned to Yasmin, the whites of her eyes visible.
