He longed to see Steven, his son. It had been years; that, too, wasn’t fair. Governments and powers must have their way, but certainly it wouldn’t upset their dynastic realms to allow the fulfilling of one man’s sentiments. How old was the boy now? Old enough to have children of his own? Perhaps, amazingly, grandchildren for Ernst? Steven might have a son; he might be named Ernst, after his funny, old grandfather.

“How unusual it would be, to bounce a grandchild upon this palsied knee,” he thought. “I doubt if ever a grandchild has been cuddled in all the history of this city. Surely Kebap could not accurately identify his own grandparents. Would they be anxious to claim him? He is, after all, somewhat of an objectionable child. And he has had only nine years to develop so remarkably offensive a manner. It is truly an accomplishment — all emotional considerations aside, one must give the wretched boy his due.

“There is something about him, though, that obsesses me. If there were not, I should without hesitation inflict some kind of permanent injury upon him, to induce him to leave my peace unspoiled. I detect an affinity. I cannot dispute the possibility that I, myself, may be the lad’s own father. What a droll entertainment that would be. I shall have to explore the possibility with him tomorrow. Indeed, the more I consider it, the better the idea becomes. I hope I can remember it.”

He heard the rattling of M. Gargotier drawing the steel gate across the door and windows of the small cafe. The sound was loud and harsh, and it made Ernst feel peculiarly abandoned, as it did every night. Suddenly, he was aware that he sat alone in a neglected city, a colony despised by the rest of the world, alone on the insane edge of Africa, and no one cared. He heard the click of a switch, and knew that the Fee Blanche’s own sad strings of lights had been extinguished. He heard M. Gargotier’s slow, heavy steps.

“M. Weinraub?” said the proprietor softly. “I will go now. It is nearly dawn. Everything is locked up. Maybe you should go, too, eh?” Ernst nodded, staring across the avenue. The proprietor made some meaningless grunt and hurried home, down the street.

The last of the whiskey went down Ernst’s throat. Its abrupt end shocked him. So soon? He remembered M. Gargotier’s last words, and tears formed in the corners of his eyes. He struggled to order his thoughts.

“Is that the whiskey? I need some more whiskey,” he said aloud. There was an unnatural, cracked quality to his voice that alarmed him. Perhaps he was contracting some disgusting rot of the city. “There had better be some more whiskey,” he thought. “It isn’t a matter of courtesy any longer. I require a certain quantity of the stuff to proceed through this. Gretchen would get it for me, but I cannot find Gretchen anywhere. Steven would get it for me, but I haven’t seen Steven in years. One would think that someone in my position would command a bit more devotion.”

He wondered about his sanity for a moment. Perhaps the day’s excitement, perhaps the liquor, had introduced a painful madness into his recollections. He realized that, in point of fact, he had never been married. Gretchen, again? Where had that name come from? Who could she be? Steven, the fantasy son? Ernst’s father’s name had been Stefan, perhaps there was some connection.

He called to M. Gargotier. “More whiskey, straight, no water.” He wanted to believe that there was still some darkness left, but he could already make out the lines of the hotel across the street, just beginning to edge clearly into view from the mask of nighttime.

“I have never traveled anywhere,” he admitted in a whisper. “I did not come from anywhere.” He sat silently for a few seconds, his confession hanging in the warm morning air, echoing in his sorrowing mind. Will that do? he wondered. He looked in vain for M. Gargotier.

He could almost read the face of the clock across the street. He picked up his glass, but it was still empty. Angrily, he threw it toward the clock. It crashed into pieces in the middle of the street, startling a small flock of pigeons. So it was morning. Perhaps now he could go home. He rose from his creaking latticed chair. He stood, wavering drunkenly. Wherever he turned, it seemed to him that an invisible wall held him. His eyes grew misty. He could not move.

“No escape,” he said, sobbing. “It’s Courane that’s done this. Courane and Czerny. He said they’d get me, the bastards, but not now. Please.” He could not move.

He sat again at the table. “They’re the only ones who know what’s going on. They’re the ones with all the facts,” he said, searching tiredly for M. Gargotier. He held his head in his hands. “It’s for my own good, I suppose. They know what they’re doing.”

His head bowed over the table. Soon he would be able to hear the morning sounds of the city’s earliest risers. Soon the day’s business would begin. Not so very long from now, M. Gargotier would arrive again, greet him cheerfully as he did every day, roll back the steel shutters and bring out two fingers of anisette. Now, though, tears dropped from Ernst’s eyes onto the table’s rusting circular surface. They formed little convex puddles, and in the center of each reflected the last of the new morning’s stars.

This is what George had to say about “The Plastic Pasha”:

“It’s about Marîd Audran’s kid brother (I’ve mentioned in the books that their mother sold the younger brother when they were young). He’s grown up now and become the ruler of Algeria. I don’t think Marîd ever meets him, though. The story’s about the official acceptance of the brain-wiring technology in the Islamic world…Somebody comes up with a personality module of the perfect Islamic governor, and that leads to a battle over who is qualified to wear it….”

George had also told me that the personality moddy was that of Thomas Jefferson — one of George’s personal heroes — thus leaving the reader with the rather puzzling question of who’s really in charge here?

George’s relationship with his own brother was stormy and difficult, and they finally became estranged about three years before George’s death. I don’t know how, or if, that would have translated into this story, or which of the characters we’ve met so far, in the few pages that he wrote, is the protagonist, if any.

George finally began work on this story the week of April 15, 2002; I got this fragment off his computer’s hard drive after he died.

— Barbara Hambly

TO THE NORTH OF THE CITY OF BEKHAOUT WAS A narrow pass through the mountains to the coastal lowlands and the sea. Around the city to the east, west, and south was a wide hardscrabble plain, and not far from the ancient fortified walls flocks of sheep foraged where sun-scorched grass still grew. They grazed unaware of the day’s significance, although some would be selected as sacrifices to mark the Great Feast, celebrated throughout the Islamic world as the culmination of the year’s pilgrimage to Makkah.

A fresh wind blew fine grit and sand first from one direction, then another. Two men in khaki uniforms held a struggling black ram, while a third man hobbled it with ropes. A fourth man, much older than the others, watched with shrewd eyes. In his youth he had stood tall and straight, but now he was bent over, leaning on a stout wooden staff. He wore a clean white shirt buttoned to the neck, with its shirttails flapping over black trousers, a white robe over them, leather sandals on his feet, and on his head the turban of a scholar of the Qur’ân. “This is a good animal,” the old man said in a dry, hoarse voice.

“It’s the finest ram on the plain of Bekhaout, Imam Abbas,” one of the uniformed men said. He and his fellows had begun to decorate the animal with long satin ribbons of scarlet, blue, yellow, and green.