Muezzinland (2 page)

Chapter 2

For the next seven days Nshalla and Gmoulaye walked on, seeing nobody except distant tribespeople herding goats, an occasional Eurasian in an electric buggy, and heliograph operators perched on hilltops owned by local solar cults. Once Nshalla thought she spotted a technician dismantling a particularly large aether aerial, but the figure was too distant to make out. Many days they saw nobody. Ghana this far out from Accra was empty of settled human life, with even villages absent.

The rhythm of travel began to seep into Nshalla's consciousness. Away from the continuous hubbub of people that she had endured in Accra, she found herself able to look at her country with new eyes. It was as if she had wiped a dewy morning window with the sleeve of her kente dress to look out at a clear world. The aether affected people's impressions of one another: Aphrica itself remained unaffected. All this came to Nshalla as a minor revelation.

To Gmoulaye nothing was unusual. She dug for roots, collected aubergines and mangoes, set up insect nets when one night they camped by the River Afram, sang many songs and told many tales.

Two days south of Ashanti City they began to encounter villagers. They were not harassed. Gmoulaye calmed the occasional boisterous child with gifts of crystallised honey inside eggshells from which she had sucked the yolks, and in this manner they were able to garner local knowledge from the parents. The villagers spoke a bewildering mixture of Akan, Twi and Fante tongues. Nshalla tried to disguise her heavy city accent, but mostly failed. Looking in a mirror she noticed that some subconscious fear—perhaps of discovery—had made her skin darken just enough to be noticeable, as the aether modulated her self-image. But the locals treated her at worst as a curious nobody. They did not recognise her. This in itself made Nshalla aware of the immense distance she had already journeyed, for in Accra not one person could fail to know who she was.

On the ninth day they began to follow the dirt track leading up to the city. They were still in woodland, but the plains were here lightly covered. The liberal influence of Ashanti was clear; amongst the trees and bushes grew permaculture thatches, great tangles of beanplants, dika trees heavy with mangoes, cocoa patches, and a variety of root plants, including potatoes. Nshalla sniffed but caught nothing of the odour of pesticide that she automatically associated with neat Accra gardens. She did see blood on the earth where fowls had been sacrificed to the earth goddess Asase Yaa. But strangest of all, nobody seemed to be tending these food sources.

"It is best to work with the land, not against the land," Gmoulaye pointed out.

Nshalla gazed north. A day off lay Ashanti City. Already they were walking on Ashanti Free Republic soil. Long ago the city had been fabulously rich, dripping with gold and scented palm oil. Now she hoped to find more gold, the Golden Library, and there some clue as to the location of Muezzinland. Perhaps her long journey was almost over.

~

They hoped the tenth day of their walk would end at the gates of Ashanti City. They followed the dirt track, passing local farmers and girls with water pots on their heads, resting at noon under a baobab tree. Along the road lay an endless row of eyes, the universal interface of the optical age, attached to bundles of fibre-optic cables laid underground by automoles.

As they prepared for their afternoon walk, a man approached them. He was gloriously dressed in yellow breeches, an orange sun-jacket and a straw hat in which a metal feather gleamed. From the satchel at his side he plucked a roll of goods, which he proceeded to talk up in a patois sited some way between Accra and Ashanti. "Much memory, ladies? Terabytes and terabytes to spare. Transputer disks? Collapsible aether aerials, grow into the ear, very discreet?"

"We do not want anything," Gmoulaye said.

The man seemed to be waiting for a response from Nshalla. She said, "I don't either. Be on your way."

They passed him. He favoured Nshalla with a grin, but the gleam in his eyes seemed full of malice.

Seconds later the storm hit.

The electromagnetic ocean received by Nshalla's biograin hierarchies fragmented into rainbow static. A blast of white noise struck her ears and she felt cold. She could see little behind the static, arranged in precise rows like television lines before her eyes, so she staggered towards a black shape that she thought might be a tree—and it was. She hugged it. She prayed to Ataa Naa Nyongmo that the disturbance, which she felt must emanate from a static-box, would not bring her to the point of sensorium crash.

A voice whispered in her ear. "Run away from the tree! I will guide you. Run now!"

Not knowing what else to do, Nshalla ran arms outstretched.

"Left, left… now straight on. Quickly!"

The static was receding. Her own senses were returning to her conscious mind. She stopped, panting, bent over.

"A few more steps and you'll be out of range."

She hobbled a few paces, then sank to the ground. The static vanished. Birds twittered, the wind soughed in the trees, and the sun warmed her skin.

She looked around for the source of the voice, but saw nothing.

She dared not venture back. Static-boxes, prohibited by the Aetherium across the globe, could cause permanent damage. Gmoulaye might this minute be a gibbering wreck under some bush. Torn between fear of the chaos she had experienced and a desire to search for her friend, she stood and, wincing when chaotic impulses twinged the edges of her senses, tried to follow the periphery of the static-box's range. But Gmoulaye was nowhere to be seen.

After five minutes she realised the box had been switched off, a subconscious thought brought on an electromagnetic wavecrest telling her so. She ran back down the road to where they had met the seller, but he and Gmoulaye were gone, only twisted footprints in the dust left to tell of the incident. "Gmoulaye! Gmoulaye!" she shouted.

Seeing a shadow staggering in a copse off the road, she ran. There was Gmoulaye.

Nshalla had never before seen a real victim of sensorium crash, but she knew what to do. Childhood lessons came to the fore of her mind. Gmoulaye was an earthy, tribal woman who would respond to stimulation. At the moment her senses were dazed, creating their own static and over-riding her mind's ability to make a coherent picture, but Nshalla knew techniques that should restore at least something of normality.

She coaxed the half-conscious Gmoulaye down, and lay next to her, enveloping as best she could the trembling body, whispering nonsense rhymes into her ear and kissing her. She stroked Gmoulaye's forehead, pulled her belts close so they would rub over her skin, all the time hugging and patting. Soon Gmoulaye curled into a ball, whispering to herself, eyes shut, drooling, feet twitching as if running in some nightmare. Nshalla continued her tactics. By imposing a safe, warm physical environment she hoped to augment the ability of Gmoulaye's mind to make order from sensory input. It seemed to be working. As the hour passed, Gmoulaye began to stretch, flutter her eyelids, and speak a few words.

Nshalla had also been looking for the mysterious vendor, but she saw nothing of him. He had risked much with just one burst of static. He would not try that again, but she felt he was still around, still dangerous. Gmoulaye must be moved.

Encouraging Gmoulaye to her feet, she located the road and they walked over. On the road, she first gave Gmoulaye a drink of water, then encouraged her to walk. A few hours remained of the afternoon and she had to be in Ashanti City by sunset. With the sun descending to her left she struggled along the road, a few curious locals watching her with aloof expressions, a mangy dog following like a vulture that had spotted prey. Was that gleam up ahead the walls of the city?

She entered a valley, the road dipping to its base. The sun was low now, dusk only an hour or two away. The valley was gloomy, finches chittering in bushes, a baboon troupe shouting somewhere high up. The trees seemed cloaked in shadows. She and Gmoulaye were alone.

Suddenly two men stepped from behind a boulder. Nshalla gasped. They were armed with machetes.

She laid Gmoulaye by the side of the road and ran to a tree. The men, grinning and glancing at each other, followed, but they parted company and crouched behind cover when Nshalla reached for her dart pistol. Cursing, desperate, Nshalla could only think of drawing them away from the still dazed Gmoulaye, then maybe shooting them or losing them in the bush. She ran off, glancing over her shoulder to see if they were following. They were.

Ten minutes of the chase passed before Nshalla saw that one man was returning to the road. She cursed again under her breath, fear making her palms sweaty. And she was tired.

The other man was closing, his machete gleaming in the last rays of the sun. Nshalla thought of yelling for help, but knew that nobody would hear. She ran into a culvert, hoping her pursuer would follow.

She readied the dart pistol, but knew she would only have one shot. Reloading took precious seconds. The pistol would be effective at close quarters, but it had limitations. Should she allow him to get close, or remain at a distance? One thump from those meaty fists and she could be unconscious.

She heard rustling. He was following! She wondered if he was a local idiot. Perhaps there was hope…

Hiding under a bush, she waited. There he was. She squirmed, aimed, and shot.

He fell, hit in the shoulder. The knockout venom had him cold in seconds. Wailing with relief and fear for Gmoulaye, she ran back, losing her way, recognising a lightning-shattered tree, then, eventually, making the road.

The man was gone, but so was Gmoulaye.

There came a hiss and a voice at her right ear. Nshalla span, expecting to see a black and shining face. Nobody.

Again the voice. "Run along to those trees! See the long, elegant tree, run to that one."

Nshalla did as she was bid. Though frightened and shaking in response to the terror of the chase, she understood that some spirit of the aether was directing her, as it had during the static-box attack. Most likely it was a rogue transputer, of course, but it might be something more wholesome.

"Go to the bushes. Look underneath."

Nshalla did, gasping with relief when she saw a sleeping Gmoulaye, safe, secure, unmolested. She woke her, administered more water and kisses, then dragged her to the road.

It was empty. The pair stumbled on. Dusk was becoming night.

Gmoulaye had come round. The sleep must have helped, though she was somewhat vague.

"Ashanti's not far off," Nshalla said, hoping this was true. "We'll make it by nightfall."

"Good. Did the men go away?"

"I dropped one, and the other vanished. I thought he'd taken you."

"I crawled to bushes," Gmoulaye said.

"A voice in my ear told me where you were," said Nshalla, "and it saved me during the static-box—"

"A voice?" Gmoulaye said, stopping and gripping Nshalla's shoulders. "A voice saved you and told you where I was?"

"Yes. Come on!"

They stood at the top of the valley. Nshalla looked along the track and saw a lemon coloured glow, like a giant lamp at the edge of her vision.

"The city walls," she said. "Look, Gmoulaye, we've made it!"

She pulled Gmoulaye along the road, but her friend chattered on as if in a world of her own. "Don't you see?" she said. "We've re-enacted the tale of Anansi the Spider."

"Re-enacted?"

Gmoulaye gasped and puffed as she explained. "There was a fire on the savannah, and all the animals were desperate to escape. The antelope was trying to find a way out of the conflagration when she head a voice, saying, 'Let me sit in your ear, so we can escape together.' It was Anansi, and she dropped down without waiting for invitation, for she knew a way out. Now, some time later the antelope had a little antelope, which wobbled on its legs, and tried to hide in bushes. Then some hunters came. The mother antelope leaped around to attract the hunters' attention, and they followed her, but because they could not catch her they returned for the baby. But she was not there, and so they left. The mother antelope also could not find her little one, but then the voice of Anansi returned to her ear, directing her to bushes surrounded by a dense mesh of spider webs. Underneath lay the baby antelope, saved by Anansi."

Nshalla nodded. "I heard the tale when I was a child… but a re-enactment?"

"There are two possible explanations. A local spirit may have been in the aether, perhaps the spirit of the tree under which the attack began."

"Or a transputer of the aether," Nshalla pointed out. "Autonomous entities do exist in the aether, even though they're weeded out by local Aetheria."

Gmoulaye seemed not to hear. "The other explanation is stranger, but more likely. I once knew a shaman who had the ability for lucid dreaming. Suppose some local trance traveller was dreaming like this, controlling and yet revisiting the dream of Anansi the Spider? The aether nearby would be affected by such a dream, and the dreamer's reality would for some time become actual, its meaning transfered to the biograin hierarchies of anybody within range and thus lodged in their subconscious minds. You saved me and yourself through the metaphor of the spider."

Nshalla thought little of this. "Who'd be likely to dream in the afternoon?"

"Anybody in light sleep," Gmoulaye replied. "You can hardly claim that today's noontime heat gave rise to no siestas."

This was a fair point. Nshalla grunted a noncommital response, but then said, "I believe transputers navigate the electromagnetic ocean. Perhaps I've got a guardian spirit."

Gmoulaye stopped and stared ahead at the walls of the city. For a moment she seemed transfixed by the spectral yellow luminescence, now only minutes away, or perhaps she strained to see shadowy figures walking back and forth like termites in front of a lamp. But she shook her head, then carried on walking. "The lucid dreaming idea explains how a
cultural
event took place. You are a city woman, Nshalla, with little grounding in the significance of tales. A whole cultural meaning was radiated. We re-enacted an ancient drama. Some shaman was in the world of dreams, revisiting Anansi the Spider."