I started to toss the moddy back into my briefcase, when I had a flash of insight: The manufacturer hadn’t depicted the Prophet, after all. The visions of Wise Counselor or Dark Lightning weren’t pre-programmed vignettes written by some cynical software scribbler. The moddy was psychoactive. It evaluated my own mental and emotional states, and enabled me to create the illusion.

In that sense, I decided, it wasn’t a profane mockery of the religious experience. It was only a means of accessing my own hidden feelings. I realized I’d just made a world-class rationalization, but it made me feel a lot better. I chipped the moddy in again.

After a moment of dizziness, Audran saw that he was reclining on a couch, drinking a glass of lemon sherbet. Facing him on another couch was a handsome man of middle years. With a shock, he recognized the man as the Apostle of God.

“As-salaam alaykum,” said the Prophet.

“Wa alaykum as-salaam, yaa Hazrat,” replied Audran. He thought it was odd that he felt so comfortable in the Messenger’s presence.

“You know, “said the Prophet, “there is a source of joy that leads you to forget death, that guides you to an accord with the will of Allah.”

“I don’t know exactly what you mean, “Audran said.

Prophet Muhammad smiled. “You have heard that in my life there were many troubles, many dangers.”

“Men repeatedly conspired to kill you because of your teachings, O Apostle of Allah. You fought many battles.”

“Yes. But do you know the greatest danger I ever faced?”

Audran thought for a moment, perplexed. “You lost your father before you were born.”

“Even as you lost yours,” said the Prophet.

“You lost your mother as a child.”

“Even as you were without a mother.”

“You went into the world with no inheritance.”

The Prophet nodded. “A condition forced upon you, as well. No, none of those things were the worst, nor were the efforts of my enemies to starve me, to crush me with boulders, to burn me in my tent, or to poison my food.”

“Then, yaa Hazrat,” asked Audran, “what was the greatest danger?”

“Early in my season of preaching, the Meccans would not listen to my word. I turned to the Sardar of Tayefand asked his permission to preach there. The Sardar gave permission, but I did not know that secretly he plotted to have me attacked by his hired villains. I was badly hurt, and I fell unconscious to the ground. A friend carried me

out of Tayefand lay me beneath a shady tree. Then he went into the village again to beg for water, but no one in Tayef would give him any.”

“You were in danger of dying?”

Prophet Muhammad raised a hand. “Perhaps, but is a man not always in danger of dying? When I was again conscious, I lifted my face to Heaven and prayed, ‘O Merciful, You have instructed me to carry Your message to the people, but they will not listen to me. Perhaps it is my imperfection that prevents them from receiving Your blessing. O Lord, give me the courage to try again!’

“Then I noticed that Gabriel the Archangel lay upon the sky over Tayef, waiting for my gesture to turn the village into a blasted wasteland. I cried out in horror: ‘No, that is not the way! Allah has chosen me among men to be a blessing to Mankind, and I do not seek to chastise them. Let them live. If they do not accept my message, then perhaps their sons or their sons’ sons will.’

“That awful moment of power, when with a lifted finger I might have destroyed all of Tayefand the people who lived there, that was the greatest danger of my life.”

Audran was humbled. “Allah is indeed Most Great,” he said. He reached up and popped the moddy out.

Yipe. Wise Counselor had sifted through my subskullular impulses, then tailored a vision that both interpreted my current turmoil and suggested solutions. But what was Wise Counselor trying to tell me? I was just too dull and literal-minded to understand what it all meant. I thought it might be advising me to go up to Friedlander Bey and say, “I’ve got the power to destroy you, but I’m staying my hand out of charity.” Then Papa would be overcome with guilt, and free me of all obligations to him.

Then I realized that it couldn’t be that simple. In the first place, I didn’t have any such power to destroy him. Friedlander Bey was protected from lesser creatures like me by baraka, the almost magical presence possessed by certain great men. It would take a better person than I to lift a finger against him, even to sneak in and pour poison in his ear while he slept.

Okay, that meant I’d misunderstood the lesson, but it wasn’t something I was going to worry about. The next time I met an imam or a saint on the street, I’d have to ask

him to explain the vision to me. In the meantime I had more important things to do. I put the moddy back in my briefcase.

Then I loaded the file on Abu Adil and spent about ten minutes glancing through it. It was every bit as boring as I was afraid it would be. Abu Adil had been brought to the city at an early age, more than a century and a half ago. His parents had wandered for many months after the disaster of the Saturday War. As a boy, Abu Adil helped his father, who sold lemonade and sherbets in the Souk of the Tanners. He played in the narrow, twisting alleys of the medtnah, the old part of town. When his father died, Abu Adil became a beggar to support himself and his mother. Somehow, through strength of will and inner resources, he rejected his poverty and miserable station and became a man of respect and influence in the medmah. The report gave no details of this remarkable transformation, but if Abu Adil was a serious rival to Friedlander Bey, I had no trouble believing it had happened. He still lived in a house at the western edge of the city, not far from the Sunset Gate. By all reports it was a mansion as grand as Papa’s, surrounded by ghastly slums. Abu Adil had an army of friends and associates in the hovels of the medmah, just as Friedlander Bey had his own in the Budayeen.

That was about as much as I’d learned when Officer Shaknahyi ducked his head into my cubicle. “Time to roll,” he said.

It didn’t bother me in the least to tell my data deck to quit. I wondered why Lieutenant Hajjar was so worked up about Reda Abu Adil. I hadn’t run across anything in the file that suggested he was anything but another Fried-lander Bey: just a rich, powerful man whose business took on a gray, even black character now and then. If he was, like Papa — and the evidence I’d seen indicated that’s just what he was — he had little interest in disturbing innocent people. Friedlander Bey was no criminal mastermind, and I doubted that Abu Adil was, either. You could rouse men like him only by trespassing on their territory or by threatening their friends and family.

I followed Shaknahyi downstairs to the garage. “That’s mine,” he said, pointing to a patrol car coming in from the previous shift. He greeted the two tired-looking cops who got out, then slid behind the steering wheel. “Well?” he said, looking up at me.

I wasn’t in a hurry to start this. In the first place, I’d be stuck in the narrow confines of the copcar with Shaknahyi for the duration of the shift, and that prospect didn’t excite me at all. Second, I’d really rather sit upstairs and read boring files in perfect safety than follow this battle-hardened veteran out into the mean streets. Finally, though, I climbed into the front seat. Sometimes there’s only so much stalling you can do.

“What you carrying?” he said, looking straight out the windshield while he drove. He had a big wad of gum crammed into his right cheek.

“You mean this?” I held up the Complete Guardian moddy, which I hadn’t chipped in yet.