Blackman' Burden na-1 Page 2
The programs originated in Tamanrasset and In Salah, in Zinder and Fort Lamy, and one of the smiths revealed that the mysterious waves that fed the device its programs were bounced off tiny moons which the Rouma had rocketed up into the sky for that purpose. A magic understandable only to marabouts and such, without doubt.
At the end of their period of stay the smiths, to the universal surprise of all, gave the mystery device to two sisters, kinswomen of Moussa-ag-Amastan, who were particularly interested in the teachers and lecturers who told of the new world aborning. The gift was made in the full understanding that all should be allowed to listen and watch, and it was clear that if ever the set needed repair it was to be left untinkered with and taken to Tamanrasset or the nearest larger settlement where it would be fixed free of charge.
There were many strange features about the smiths, as each man could see. Among others were their strange weapons. There had been some soft whispered discussion among the warriors in the first two days of their stay about relieving the strangers of their obviously desirable possessions—after all, they weren’t kinsmen, nor even Tuareg. But on the second day, the always smiling one named Abrahim el Bakr had been on the outskirts of the erg when a small group of gazelle were flushed. The graceful animals took off at a prohibitive rifle range, as usual, but Abrahim el Bakr had thrown his small, all but tiny, weapon to his shoulder and flic flic flic, with a sound no greater than the cracking of a ground nut, had knocked over three of them before the others had disappeared around a dune.
Obviously, the weapons of the smiths were as great as their learning and their new instruments. It was discouraging to a raider by instinct.
Then, too, there was the strangeness of the night talks their leader was known to have with his secret Kambu fetish which was able to answer him in a squeaky but distinct voice in some unknown tongue, obviously a language of the djinn. The Kambu was worn on a strap on Omar’s wrist, and each night at a given hour he was wont to withdraw to his tent and there confer.
On the fourth night, obviously, he was given instruction by the Kambu for in the morning, at first light, the smiths hurriedly packed, broke camp, made their goodbyes to Moussa-ag-Amastan and the others and were off.
Moussa-ag-Amastan was glad to see them go. They were quite the most disturbing element to upset his people in many seasons. He wondered at the advisability of making their usual summer journey to the Tuareg sedentary centers. He had a feeling that if the clan got near enough to such centers as Zinder to the south, or Touggourt to the north, there would be wholesale desertion of the Bela, and, for that matter, even of some of his younger warriors and their wives.
However, there was no putting off indefinitely exposure to this danger. Even in such former desert centers as Tessalit and In Salah, the irrigation projects were of such magnitude that there was a great labor shortage. But always, of course, as the smiths had said, if you worked at the projects your children had to attend the schools. And that way lay disaster!
The five smiths took out overland in the direction of Djanet on the border of what had once been known as Libya and famed for its cliffs which tower over twenty-five hundred feet above the town. Their solar powered, air cushion hover-lorries threw up their clouds of dust and sand to right and left, but they made good time over the erg. A good hovercraft driver could do much to even out a rolling landscape, changing his altitude from a few inches here to as much as twenty-five feet there, given, of course, enough power in his solar batteries, although that was little problem in this area where clouds were sometimes not seen for years on end.
This was back of beyond, the wasteland of earth. Only the interior of the Arabian peninsula and the Gobi could compete and, of course, even the Gobi was beginning to be tamed under the afforestation efforts of the teeming multitudes of China who had suffered its disastrous storms down through the millennia.
Omar checked and checked again with the instrument on his wrist, asking and answering, his voice worried.
Finally they pulled up beside a larger than usual wadi and Omar ben Crawf stared thoughtfully out over it. The one they had named Abrahim el Bakr stood beside him and the others slightly to the rear.
Abrahim el Bakr nodded, for once his face unsmiling. “Those cats’ll come down here,” he said. “Nothing else would make sense, not even to an Egyptian.”
“I think you’re right,” Omar growled. He said over his shoulder, “Bey, get the trucks out of sight, over that dune. Elmer, you and Kenny set the gun up over there. Solid slugs, and try to avoid their cargo. We don’t want to set off a Fourth of July here. Bey, when you’re finished with the trucks, take that Tommy-Noiseless of yours and flank them from over behind those rocks. Take a couple of clips extra, for good luck—you won’t need them, though.”
“How many are there supposed to be?” Abrahim el Bakr asked, his voice empty of humor now.
“Eight half-tracks, two armed jeeps, or land-rovers, one or the other. Probably about forty men, Abe.”
“All armed,” Abe said flatly.
“Um-m-m. Listen, that’s them coming. Right down the wadi. Get going, men. Abe, you cover me.”
Abe Bakr looked at him. “Wha’d‘ya mean, cover you, man? You slipped all the way round the bend? Listen, let me plant a couple quick land mines to stop ’em and we’ll get ourselves behind these rocks and blast those cats half way back to Cairo.”
“We’ll warn them as per orders.”
“Crazy man, like you’re the boss, Homer,” Abe growled. “But why’d I ever leave New Jersey?” He made his way to the right, to the top of the wadi’s bank and behind a clump of thorny bush. He made himself comfortable, the light Tommy-Noiseless with its clip of two hundred .10 caliber, ultra-high velocity shells resting before him on a flat rock outcropping. He thoughtfully flicked the selector to the explosive side of the clip. Let Homer Crawford say what he would about not setting off a Fourth of July, but if he needed covering in the moments to come, he’d need it bad.
The chips were down now.
The convoy, the motors growling their protests of the hard going even here at the gravel-bottomed wadi riverbed, made its way toward them at a pace of approximately twenty kilometers per hour.
The lead jeep—Skoda manufacture, Homer Crawford noted cynically—was some thirty meters in advance. It drew to a halt upon seeing him and a turbaned Arab Union trooper swung a Brenn gun in his direction.
An officer stood up in the jeep and yelled at Crawford in Arabic.
The American took a deep breath and said in the same language, “You’re out of your own territory.”
The officer’s face went poker-expressionless. He looked at the lone figure, dressed in the garb of the Tuareg, even to the turban-veil which covers all but the eyes of these notorious Apaches of the Sahara.
“This is no affair of yours,” the lieutenant said. “Who are you?”
Homer Crawford said very clearly, “Sahara Division, African Development Project, Reunited Nations. You’re far out of your own territory, lieutenant. I’ll have to report you, and also to demand that you turn and go back to your origin.”
The lieutenant flicked his hand, and the trooper behind the Brenn gun sighted the weapon and tightened his trigger finger.
Crawford dropped to the ground and rolled desperately for a slight depression that would provide cover. He could have saved himself the resultant bruises and scratches. Before the Brenn gun spoke even once, there was a Götterdammerung of sound and the three occupants of the jeep, driver, lieutenant and gunner were swept from the vehicle in a nauseating obscenity of exploding flesh, uniform cloth, blood and bone.
To the side, Abe Bakr behind his thornbush and rock vantage point turned the barrel of his Tommy-Noiseless to the first of the half-tracks. Already Arab Union troopers were debouching from them, some firing at random and at unseen targets. However, the so-called Enaden smiths were well concealed, their weapons silenced except for the explosion of the tiny shells upon reaching their target.
Afterwards, the five of them, standing at the side of the wadi, stared down at their work.
Elmer Allen muttered a bitter four-letter obscenity. He had once headed a pacifist group at the University in Kingston, Jamaica. Now his teeth were bared, as they always were when he went into action. He hated it.
Of them all, Bey-ag-Akhamouk was the least moved by the slaughter. He grumbled, “Guns, explosives, mortar, flame throwers. If there is anything in the world my people don’t need in the way of aid, it’s weapons.”
“Our people,” Homer Crawford said absently, his eyes—taking in the scene beneath them—empty, as though unseeing. He hated the need for killing, almost as badly as did Elmer Allen.
Bey looked at him, scowling slightly, but said nothing. There had been mild rebuke in his leader’s voice.
“Well,” Abe Bakr said with a tone of mock finality in his voice, as though he was personally wiping his hands of the whole affair, “how are you going to explain all this jazz to headquarters, man?”
Homer said flatly, “We were attacked by this unidentified group of, ah, gun runners, from some unknown origin. We defended ourselves, to the best of our ability.”
Elmer Allen looked at the once human mess below them. “We certainly did,” he muttered, scowling.
“Crazy, man,” Abe said, nodding his agreement to the alibi.
The others didn’t bother to speak. Homer Crawford’s unit was well knit.
He said after a moment, “Abe, you and Kenny get some dynamite and plant it in this wadi wall in a few spots. We’ll want to bury this whole mess. It wouldn’t do for someone to come along and blow himself up on some of these scattered land mines, or find himself a bazooka or something to use on his nearest blood-feud neighbor.”
II
The young woman known as Izubahil was washing clothes in the Niger with the rest but slightly on the outskirts of the chattering group of women, which was fitting since she was both a comparative stranger and as yet unselected by any man to grace his household. Which, in a way, was passingly strange since she was comely enough. Clad as the rest with naught but a wrap of colored cloth about her hips, her face and figure were openly to be seen. Her complexion was not quite so dark as most. She came from upriver, so she said, the area of the Songhoi, but by the looks of her there was more than average Arab or Berber blood in her veins. Her lips and nose were thinner than those of her neighbors.
Yes, it was strange that no man had taken her, though it was said that in her shyness she repulsed any advances made by either the young men, or their wealthier elders who could afford more than one wife. She was a nothing-woman, really, come out of the desert alone, and without relatives to protect her interests, but still she repulsed the advances of those who would honor her with a place in their house, or tent.
She had come out of the desert, it was known, with her handful of possessions done up in a packet, and had quietly and unobtrusively taken her place in the Negro community of Gao. Little better than a slave or Gabibi serf, she made her meager living doing small tasks for the better-off members of the community.
But she knew her place, was dutifully shy and quiet-spoken, and in the town or in the presence of men, wore her haik and veil. Yes, it was passing strange that she had found no man. On the face of it, she was getting no younger; surely she must be into her twenties.
Up to their knees in the waters of the Niger, out beyond the point where the dugout canoes were pulled up to the bank, their ends resting on the shore, they pounded their laundry. Laughing, chattering, gossiping. Life was perhaps poor, but still life was good.
Someone pretended to see a crocodile and there was a wild scampering for the shore. And then high laughter when the jest was revealed. Actually, all the time they had known it a jest, since it was their most popular one —there were seldom crocodiles this far north in the Niger bend.
There was a stir as two men dressed in the clothes of the Rouma approached the river bank. It was not forbidden, but good manners called for males to refrain from this area while the women bathed and washed their laundry, without veil or upper garments. These men were obviously shameless, and probably had come to stare. From their dress, their faces and their bearing, they were strangers—possibly Senegalese, up from the area near Dakar, products of the new schools and the new industries mushrooming there. Strange things were told of the folk who gave up the old ways, worked on the dams and the other new projects, sent their little ones to the schools, and submitted to the needle pricks which seemed to compose so much of the magic medicine being taught in the medical schools by the Rouma witchmen.
One of them spoke now in Songhoi, the lingua franca of the vicinity. Shamelessly he spoke to them, although none were his women, nor even his tribal kin. None looked at him.
“We seek a single woman, an unwed woman, who would work for pay and learn the new ways.”
They continued their laundry, not looking up, but their chatter dribbled away.
“She must drop the veil,” the man continued clearly, “and give up the haik and wear the new clothes. But she will be well paid, and taught to read and be kept in the best of comfort and health.”
There was a low gasp from several of the younger women, but one of the eldest looked up in distaste. “Wear the clothes of the Roumal” she said indignantly. “Shameless ones!”
The man’s voice was testy. He himself was dressed in the clothing worn always by the Rouma, when the Rouma had controlled the Niger bend. He said, “These are not the clothes of the Rouma, but the clothes of civilized people everywhere.”
The women’s attention went back to their washing. Two or three of them giggled.
The elderly woman said, “There are none here who will go with you, for whatever shameless purpose you have in your mind.”
But Izubahil, the strange girl come out of the desert from the north, spoke suddenly. “I will,” she said.
There was a gasp, and all looked at her in wide-eyed alarm. She began making her way to the shore, her unfinished washing still in hand.
The stranger said clearly, “And drop the veil, discard the haik for the new clothing, and attend the schools?”
There was another gasp as Izubahil said definitely, “Yes, all these things.” She looked back at the women. “So that I may learn all these new ways.”
The more elderly sniffed and turned their backs in scorn, but the younger stared after her in some amazement and until she disappeared with the two strangers into one of the buildings which had formerly housed the French Administration officers back in the days when the area was known as the French Sudan.
Inside, the boy strangers turned to her and the one who had spoken at the river bank said in English, “How goes it?”
“Heavens to Betsy,” Isobel Cunningham said with a grin, “get me a drink. If I’d known majoring in anthropology was going to wind up with my doing a strip tease with a bunch of natives in the Niger River, I would have taken up Home Economics, like my dear old mother wanted!” They laughed with her and Jacob Armstrong, the older of the two, went over to a sideboard and mixed her a cognac and soda. “Ice?” he said.
“Brother, you said it,” she told him. “Where can I change out of these rags?”
“On you they look good,” Clifford Jackson told her. He looked surprisingly like the Joe Louis of several decades earlier.
“That’s enough out of you, wise guy,” Isobel told him. “Why doesn’t somebody dream up a role for me where I can be a rich paramount chief’s favorite wife, or something? Be loaded down with gold and jewelry, that sort of thing.”
Jake brought her the drink. “Your
clothes are in there,” he told her, motioning with his head to an inner room. “It wouldn’t do the job,” he added. “What we’re giving them is the old Cinderella story.” He looked at his watch. “If we get under way, we can take the jet to Kabara and go into your act there. It’s been nearly six months since Kabara and they’ll be all set for the second act.”
She knocked back the brandy and made her way to the other room, saying over her shoulder, “Be with you in a minute.”
“Not that much of a hurry,” Cliff called. “Take your time, gal, there’s a bath in there. You’ll probably want one after a week of living the way you’ve been.”
“Brother!” she agreed.
Jake was making himself a drink. He said easily to Cliff Jackson, “That’s a fine girl. I’d hate her job. We get the easy deal on this assignment.”
Cliff said, “You said it, nigger. How about mixing me a drink, too?”
“Nigger!” Jake said in mock indignation. “Look who’s talking.” His voice took on a burlesque of a Southern drawl. “Man when the Good Lawd was handin‘ out cullahs, you musta thought he said umbrellahs, and said give me a nice black one.”
Cliff laughed with him and said, “Where do we plant poor Isobel next?”
Jake thought about it. “I don’t know. The kid’s been putting in a lot of time. I think after about a week in Kabara we ought to go on down to Dakar and suggest she be given another assignment for a while. Some of the girls working out of our AFAA office don’t do anything except drive around in recent model cars, showing off the advantages of emancipation, tossing money around like tourists, and living it up in general.”
On the flight upriver to Kabara, Isobel Cunningham went through the notes she’d taken on that town. It was also on the Niger, and the assignment had been almost identical to the Gao one. In fact, she’d gone through the same routine in Segou, Ke-Macina, Mopti, Goundam and Bourem, above Gao, and Ansongo, Tillaberi and Niamey below. She was stretching her luck, if you asked her. Sooner or later she was going to run into someone who knew her from a past performance.