Muezzinland (15 page)

Chapter 12

To the north of Araouane, half a kilometre from the edge of the settlement, Nshalla and Gmoulaye happened across a dead tree forked into two lightning-charred branches, from which a dead white ram hung on a wire. This was what they had wanted to find.

"So," Nshalla whispered. Gmoulaye strained to hear. "We've found the second symbol of the Songhai people. This is where we'll find the human shamen, and this is where I'll prove Assane is working to create Sajara."

"You will?" queried Gmoulaye.

"I will."

But it was not as easy as that. With Nshalla a hero, the problem of followers had to be addressed. Much of the difficulty could be circumvented by working at night, but even that was becoming difficult, since they were now known across Araouane. Anything unusual became local gossip—and there were music dives and net lounges in Araouane, which meant nocturnal revellers. Nshalla took to wearing the veil, while Gmoulaye followed her friend at a distance, also veiled. By changing their clothes, keeping away from children and meths-swigging doorway-sleepers, and by refusing to say exactly what their plans were, they confused enough of the locals to ensure covert actions remained possible.

But they got caught.

There was activity at night around the forked tree. From their vantage point underneath the remains of a thorn bush, Nshalla watched as three wrinkled men uttered invocations in the plaintive form of Songhai verse, designed to bring hawatif. From the aether a group of virtual people materialised, each dancing out of a wreath of stars then stepping upon the earth, where their softly glowing feet, as if electrostatically charged, spat tiny storms of coloured motes. One of them was Assane.

Luckily the two observers were well hidden. When the shamen began to converse with the hawatif, however, Neo-Oriental was not the language used, and Nshalla had to engage the record mode on her transputer so it could translate from the Mande tongue. She watched the conversation emerge in real-time on screen:

Assane Atangana:
Will Sajara manifest tomorrow night?

First shaman:
Yes, dancing priest, if you will be our link, for the mould is ready, the bioplas is moist, and the control applications are installed.

Assane Atangana:
Sajara speaks through my mouth. He is ready to come amongst you. Be strong. Initialise the applications. Check the optical drives.

Second shaman:
The optical drives are checked.

Assane Atangana:
Are the partitions set for ThunderVoice and RainbowHide?

Second shaman:
Each application has 512 Tb RAM.

Assane Atangana:
Have the aether aerials reached their optimum size?

Third Shaman:
They will grow no more, dancing priest, and we have stopped feeding them.

Assane Atangana:
Then here is the final covenant. If you sacrifice, it will rain!

At this, the three shamen took long thorns from pouches at their belts and held them up. Nshalla raised her head to see what they might do. With quick strikes each pierced the skin at his wrist so that streams of blood fell. Gmoulaye nodded, as if appreciating the finesse of what they were doing. Nshalla, who had only seen tribal sacrifices on-screen, shuddered.

From the aetherial heavens a rain of laser disks fell, each coruscating with an individual rainbow, each trailing a column of miniature serpents that settled like smoke and smelled of the desert whirlwind. Out of the laser disk shower a single, vast rainbow emerged, until the clouds of dark probability were blown away, and real stars appeared in the real night sky.

The hawatif were gone.

The shamen were left like children awed at the visit of a fabulous uncle. For some minutes they seemed dazed.

But it was then that one of them noticed Nshalla and Gmoulaye; and thorns were just the simplest of the weapons they carried. Nshalla found herself looking at the muzzle of a MiniUzi, modified to fire poisoned pin clouds. She raised her hands.

The first shamen spoke, but it was Mande, unintelligible to Nshalla. She replied in New-Oriental. "We were just watching. We didn't do anything."

"We will leave now," Gmoulaye added.

The shaman switched to New-Oriental. "Stay still. Do not move. You have spoiled our ritual, you foreigners."

"I'm Musa Jinni," Nshalla said. "You must remember me, I saved Araouane from the Hira."

"Twice," said Gmoulaye.

"We are not interested in the vagaries of so-called heroes. Come with us. We must lock you up while we decide what to do."

"But—"

"No arguments."

They were taken into the desert, where, a kilometre out, a small concrete hangar lay partially concealed by shifting sands. Into this empty building they were thrust. They watched through a door of metal bars as the three shamen returned to Araouane.

For the entirety of the next day they waited in the hangar. Their lavatory was a hole in the ground, their bed was the floor. No food was brought. They kept desert vermin out by kicking them away, but sand-termites and the occasional lizard were harder to oppose. The outside world seemed to pass them by.

Dehydration began to take its toll.

Gmoulaye heard the drumming of many doumdoumba. She recognised some of the rhythms, but their translation brought a grim expression to her face and she divulged nothing. At length, pressed by a peevish Nshalla, she said that a tribal event was being prepared.

"Our execution?" asked Nshalla.

"More a trial," Gmoulaye replied.

"We have to escape. If only we were illusionists like Msavitar."

"We are not."

But that gave Nshalla an answer. "Illusion. You could do it. You could become your tribal totem. Go into a trance, become the beast, then frighten the men when they come for us."

"I cannot," Gmoulaye replied haughtily. "It is a religious experience, not to be taken lightly."

"But you were the one wanting to escape when I was musing. You'll
have
to do it. Your totem is the elephant, isn't it?"

Gmoulaye looked disgusted.

Nshalla said, "I'm sorry, I really am. But you'll have to change yourself. When the men come, you attack, and we'll escape. I'll smack you out of the trance. We'll go back to the tent, collect out packs, and run."

"And Budur? And the trail of small boys who will follow us?"

Nshalla shrugged. "What about them? I thought you wanted to escape. Oh, Gmoulaye, let's not argue now. You've
got
to become the elephant."

Gmoulaye thought in silence for fully five minutes. She stood up, took off and handed over her clothes, bangle and her ear-rings, so that she was naked as an animal, then began a slow, almost melancholy bouncing dance, from one foot to the other, clapping her hands since she had no drum. Her gaze was raised to the roof. She began to sing in her native tongue. Nshalla watched, fascinated, but apprehensive.

Soon the dance became a medium paced trance. Gmoulaye bounced around the cell, clapping, singing, chanting, never ceasing, until after what seemed hours Nshalla noticed that her posture was changing.

The transmutation was precise. In the depths of Gmoulaye's mind an identity with the tribal totem, the trumpeting elephant, had been made, spreading like water through a sponge into all parts of her mind. This identification, eradicating her conscious self, acted upon the biograin hierarchies in her secondary lobes so that what she believed about herself—that she
was
an elephant—was transmitted through the aether to the biomagnetic lobes of Nshalla; and to anybody else who would see her. Nshalla now saw a loping figure, half woman half elephant, with grey hide, a bulky head, massive tusks and flapping ears. She hunched down on newly formed limbs. She swung her trunk. She had convinced her self that she was not herself. And because Nshalla knew in advance that an elephant would appear, the effect was all the more convincing. Then the beast saw Nshalla.

With a deafening bellow the beast attacked. Unprepared, Nshalla jumped backwards, banging her head on an empty crate. Quick as thought she jumped upon it then grasped two bars of the window above, drew her legs up, then her torso, so that the furious elephant below found nothing to strike. Nshalla pulled herself up, to crouch on the window ledge. The foul stench of the elephant's breath rose up into her nostrils.

For fifteen minutes the stalemate lasted. Then one of the shamen entered the ante-chamber just outside the main hangar door. He saw the elephant, gasped and unlocked the door, fumbling for his gun.

The elephant launched itself at him, so that the man was thrown against the bars, beaten and slashed. The elephant ran out. Nshalla followed.

The elephant was gone. Realising that her plan was now out of control, Nshalla wondered what to do. She found and followed Gmoulaye's human tracks, brushing them out as she did with a dead branch. They led downhill into a shallow valley, disappearing into a thorny tangle of bushes.

"Gmoulaye? Are you there?"

Something was alive in there. She could hear cracked breathing. This could be dangerous.

She circled the bushes trying to find a clearer view. Seeing a shadow, she leaned closer.

There lay a macabre figure. She knew that it was Gmoulaye. But something had happened. The shape partook both of elephant and human form, but it lay in pieces, shards of human body, shards of a tiny elephant body, separated by clear air. Shocked, Nshalla stepped back. She looked again. There was no blood.

She forced her way into the bush and examined what lay before her. Soon, she realised that what she perceived was a human meaning. Something had happened to Gmoulaye's mind, and what she now saw was symptomatic of that event. If this aether-transmitted reality possessed a coherent meaning only for Gmoulaye, then Nshalla was sunk, but if she could herself understand it then Gmoulaye might be rescued from her trance state.

It was at times like this that a neutral transputer or clever animal was useful, for it was possible that she, a friend, was a part of Gmoulaye's frozen and fragmented meaning. But all she had was herself.

So what was the meaning of this fragmented body? Nshalla thought back to those warm, stuffy days when she had been educated at the palace in Accra. Various tutors had worked with her and Mnada, teaching her the physics of the aether, and something of its metaphysics. She considered what she saw, and with awe realised that she was looking into the profoundest depths of Gmoulaye's consciousness, as an astronomer would look back in time at the most distant galaxies. She too was looking back in time, back to when human consciousness first evolved.

All she could think of was collecting the pieces. Gmoulaye had metaphorically fallen apart. She needed love, coherence, as she had when the static-box had induced a sensorium crash.

Repelled by what she was doing, as if she was being forced to collect chunks of cold flesh, Nshalla sat beside the shapes. Trauma had caused this to happen. Squeamish, she had to wait awhile to get used to the idea. Then she reached out and tried to encompass the whole with her arms. The shards rolled together as if made of mercury, forming clumps.

Nshalla felt dizzy, nauseous. The reality of her body's senses was at odds with the reality experienced by her mind, since this latter was so bizarre. In reality, Gmoulaye's body was a whole. A deep part of Nshalla knew this. But she could not force herself to overcome her aether augmented mind. Her brain could not be turned off like a lamp.

She persevered, hugging the shapes until they became one. She wanted to vomit, but she managed to control her stomach. She was winning. The figure she hugged was melting into a woman, losing its elephant characteristics, losing its edges and gouges, becoming whole. When Nshalla realised this, the process became faster. Feedback was helping her heal Gmoulaye.

Nshalla felt that she had learned something about human existence. Physical touch was central to existence. As a symptom and an expression of love it was fundamental to growth and to existence itself. Closeness was not only natural, it was essential, and all cultures that denied this were inhumane.

As evening became night, Gmoulaye began to escape her coma. She muttered isolated words, but these Nshalla did not understand. She brought the neck of a waterskin to Gmoulaye's lips and made her drink, which seemed to help.

The trauma had been fundamental, yet transient. Gmoulaye's central identity had been overridden, but not damaged. She was safe, and through the night she recovered.

Because they had not been in Araouane for some time, Nshalla decided to return to their tent by way of the workshop. The door was ajar, and, surprised, she peered in, half expecting to see Mnada.

It was the three shamen.

They took her to the spiral vat. Now it was filled with multi-coloured bioplas.

"Sajara comes tonight," said one of the shamen. "After you have seen our power we will prepare your court, where your misdeeds will be judged."

"That's not fair," said Nshalla.

"We mind the laws here. What we say is fair, is fair. Just because we are not moslems does not mean we are barbarians."

Nshalla felt her time was slipping away. "Why are you doing this? Is Assane forcing you to?"

"We are Songhai. To give Sajara the new life he craves is our desire. How could it be otherwise?"

Nshalla twisted and turned in her frustration. "You don't understand. A bad woman—my mother—is behind all this. She wants to make a god for her own ends. You're all being used."

"A god?"

"Yes!"

The shamen looked at his kin, then turned back to say, "But there are so many gods being made in and around the Sahara."

Momentarily bemused, Nshalla stared, before hearing Gmoulaye ask, "How many?"

"Perhaps one, or two, four, eight, more, more, more!"

They stood in silence. It had never occurred to Nshalla that more than one god was being manufactured.

"In an oasis to the north," the shaman continued, "the Bambara people are making four of the deities of their pantheon. Soon, the Sahara will be alive with miraculous gods, from far west to furthest east, from the north down here to the south."