Time s Eye(Time Odyssey 1) - By Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,3

but he had adorned it with a strictly nonregulation Stars and Stripes, an animated flag rippling in a simulated breeze. His HUD, head-up display, was a thick visor that covered most of his face above the nose, black to Bisesa's view, so that she could only see his broad, chomping jaw.

"I can tell you're checking me out, despite that stupid visor," Bisesa said laconically.

Abdikadir, a handsome Pashtun, glanced back and grinned. "Spend enough time around apes like Casey and you'll get used to it."

Casey said, "I'm the perfect gentleman." He leaned a bit so he could see her name tag. "Bisesa Dutt.What's that, a Pakistani name?"

"Indian."

"So you're from India? But your accent is - what, Australian?"

She suppressed a sigh; Americans never recognized regional accents. "I'm a Mancunian. From Manchester, England. I'm British - third generation."

Casey started to talk like Cary Grant. "Welcome aboard, Lady Dutt."

Abdikadir punched Casey's arm. "Man, you're such a cliche, you just go from one stereotype to another. Bisesa, this is your first mission?"

"Second," said Bisesa.

"I've flown with this asshole a dozen times and he's always the same, whoever's in the back. Don't let him bug you."

"He doesn't," she said equably. "He's just bored."

Casey laughed coarsely. "It is kind of dull here at Clavius Base. But you ought to be at home, Lady Dutt, out here on the North - West Frontier. We'll have to see if we can find you some fuzzy-wuzzies to pick off with your elephant gun."

Abdikadir grinned at Bisesa. "What can you expect from a jock Christian?"

"And you're a beak-nosed mujahideen," Casey growled back.

Abdikadir seemed to sense alarm in Bisesa's expression. "Oh, don't worry. I really am a mujahideen, or was, and he really is a jock. We're the best of friends, really. We're both Oikumens. But don't tell anybody - "

They ran into turbulence, quite suddenly. It was as if the chopper just dropped a few meters through a hole in the air. The pilots became attentive to their instruments, and fell silent.

With the same nominal rank as Casey, Abdikadir, an Afghan citizen, was a Pashtun, a native of the area. Bisesa had got to know him a little, in her short time at the post. He had a strong, open face, a proud nose that might have been called Roman, and he wore a fringe of beard. His eyes were a surprising blue, and his hair a kind of strawberry blond. He said he inherited his coloring from the armies of Alexander the Great, which had once passed this way. A gentle man, approachable and civilized, he accepted his place in the informal pecking order here: although he was prized as one of the few Pashtuns to have come over to the UN's side, as an Afghan he had to defer to the Americans, and he spent a lot more time copiloting than piloting. The other British troops called him "Ginger."

The ride continued. It wasn't comfortable. The Bird was elderly: the cabin reeked of engine oil and hydraulic fluid, every metal surface was scuffed with use, and there was actually duct tape holding together splits on the cover of Bisesa's inadequately padded bench. And the noise of the rotors, just meters above her head, was shattering, despite her heavily padded helmet. But then, she thought, it had always been the way that governments spent more on war than peace.

When he heard the chopper approach, Moallim knew what he had to do.

Most of the adult villagers ran to ensure their stashes of weaponry and hemp were hidden. But Moallim had different ideas. He picked up his gear, and ran to the foxhole he had dug weeks ago, in preparation for a day like this.

Within seconds he was lying against the wall of the hole with the RPG tube at his shoulder. The hole had taken hours to dig, before it was deep enough for him to get his body out of the way of the back blast, and to get the elevation he needed with the RPG. But when he was in the hole and had pulled a little dirt and loose vegetation over his body, he was really quite well hidden. The grenade launcher was an antique, actually a relic of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but, well maintained and cleaned, it still worked, was still lethal. As long as the chopper came close enough to his position, he would surely succeed.

Moallim was fifteen years old.

He had been just four when he had first encountered the helicopters of