Rukaiya was not converting alone. Everyone had known, of course, that the new Queen of Ethiopia would have to become a Christian (if she was not one already, as many Arabs were). Her own father, the day after Rukaiya's selection was publicly declared, had made his own announcement. He-and all his family-would convert also.
That had been a week ago. By the day of the wedding, well over half of the Beni Hashim had made the same decision, and a goodly portion of the other clans of the Quraysh as well. There were hundreds of people in the square-well over a thousand, by Antonina's guess-who were undergoing the rite alongside their new queen.
For all her sweltering discomfort, Antonina did not begrudge them that ceremony. True, she suspected that most of the converts were driven by less-than-spiritual motives. Canny merchants, seeing an angle. But not all of them. And not even, she thought, any of them-not completely, at least.
Arabia was a land where religion seethed, under the surface. Most Arabs of the time were still pagans, despite the great success which Jewish and Christian missionaries had found there. But even Arabia's pagans, she knew, had a sense that there was a supreme god ruling the many deities of their pantheons. They called that god Allah.
As the conversion ceremony wound its way onward, Antonina's mind began to drift. She recalled a conversation she had had with Belisarius, before he left for Persia.
Her husband had told her of a religion which would rise out of Arabia, in what had been the future of humanity. Islam, it would be called, submission to the one god named Allah. The religion would be brought by a new prophet not more than a century in the future. A man named Muhammad For a moment, she started erect, snapped out of her reverie by a specific memory of that conversation. Her eyes darted to Rukaiya, standing in the center of the square.
Muhammad will also be from the Beni Hashim clan of the Quraysh. And, if I remember right, will have a daughter named Rukaiya.
She realized that her choice of Rukaiya, in ways she had not even considered, had probably already changed history. The Beni Hashim of Muhammad's future had not been Christians, except for a few. After today, they would be. How would that fact affect the future?
She slipped back into memory.
"Will it still happen, now?" she had asked Belisarius. "After all that's changed?"
Her husband shrugged. "Who's to know? The biggest reason Islam swept the Levant, and Egypt, was because the Monophysites converted almost at once. Voluntarily, most of them. Muhammad's stark monotheism, I think, appealed to their own brand of Christianity. Monophysitism is about as close as you can get to Islam, within the boundaries of the Trinity."
Belisarius scowled. "And after centuries of persecution by orthodox Christians, I think the Monophysites had had enough. They saw the Arabs as liberators, not conquerors."
Antonina spoke. "Anthony's trying-"
"I know he is," agreed Belisarius. "And I hope the new Patriarch of Constantinople will be able to rein in that persecution." Again, he shrugged. "But who's to know?"
Standing in the square, sweating in her robes, Antonina could still remember the strange look which had come to her husband's face.
"It's odd, really," he'd said, "how I feel about it. We have already, just in what we've done these past few years, changed history irrevocably." He patted his chest, where Aide lay in his little pouch. "The visions Aide shows me are just that, now. I can still learn an enormous amount from them, of course, but they're really no more than illusions. They'll never happen-not the way he shows me, anyway."
His face, for a moment, had been suffused with a great sadness. "I don't think there will ever be a Muhammad. Not the same way, at least. He might still arise, of course, and be a prophet. But if Anthony succeeds, I think Muhammad will more likely be a force regenerating Christianity than the founder of a new religion. That was how he saw himself, actually, in the beginning-until orthodox Christians and the Jews rejected him, and he found an audience among pagans and Monophysites."
Antonina had been puzzled. "Why does that make you sad? I would think you'd prefer it. You're a Christian, yourself."
Belisarius' smile, when it came, had been very crooked. "Am I?"
She remembered herself gasping. And, just as clearly, could remember the warm smile in her husband's face.
"Be at ease, love. Christianity suits me fine. I've no intention of abandoning it. It's just-"
The look of strangeness, of strangewonder, was back on his face. "I've seen so much, Antonina," he whispered. "Aide has taken me millions of years into the future, to stars beyond the galaxy. How could the simple certainties of the Thracian countryside withstand such visions?"
She had been mute. Belisarius reached out and caressed her face.
