Muezzinland (20 page)

Chapter 15

They departed Taoudenni on the camel train and made east across the Hamada el Haricha, bound for Telig Oasis. The journey took all day. The hamada was in most places bare rock across which skeins of sand whisked, blown by a hot cheheli wind from the east, but one sign of human activity was the smell of the wind, rich and fruity, telling of isolated distilleries brewing psychoactive hooch from the remains of genetically mutated organisms left to fend for themselves by earlier generations. Every now and again Nshalla would notice green, orange and crimson stains on the rock, the only remains of these organic distilleries. Aether aerials eroded into perfect sinuosity by decades of sand stood proud from stone cairns like ritual monuments, while on the rocks, loose like the discarded skins of snakes, tangled optical cables lay.

Against the relentless cheheli they forged a way east, until, minutes after the sun set behind them in a blaze of crimson, they saw the quartz lamps of Telig Oasis.

The camel train leader refused to give himself a name because he was frightened of pursuit, or worse, from Taoudenni. Nshalla knew him only as the chief. Under his stewardship they camped inside the remains of a hut, far away from the main night fires, out of everybody's way. Gmoulaye, still reeling from her encounter with Al-Uzza, spent joyous hours contemplating and making ritual decorations from leaves, stones, and date stones. Nshalla just dozed.

Because they had lost little of their aether consciousness they felt few side effects from their return to submersion in the electromagnetic ocean. Nshalla felt overwhelmed by memories—by culture—and found it difficult to get to sleep. But at dawn she was her old self. One side effect of the lunar ritual was that they both began their periods in the same hour.

During the next three days the hamada changed into a more broken reg desert of gravel and sand, and their direction altered until they were travelling due north. En Nahrat Oasis was large, set at the tip of a seasonal lake, an area currently consisting of vast sebkha salt flats, and here they restocked with food and water, and bartered with salt bars for gold, spices, and other merchandise; including certain dangerous drinks. Nshalla, watching the nocturnal oasis from her hiding place inside a hut, noticed many people whose aether image seemed to sparkle and glow in unnatural, drug-induced parodies of self-image.

It was at En Nahrat Oasis that they began to pick up rumours of a woman travelling north on foot. Casual questioning revealed her to be dark robed, tall, saying nothing; perhaps three days ahead. Mnada surely. With the gods now loosed upon the world, Mnada was Nshalla's last hope of opposing her mother. She must be caught.

There followed nine days of trekking across the Aoukar erg. Relying on the wisdom of the stars, the train leader brought them without fault to Tnihaia Oasis.

Here, they were at last in a recognised country: Grizima. Six days travelling north took them through the depths of the Erg Chech and brought them to the largest palmerie of the vicinity, Grizim Oasis, hub of the desolate country.

Immediately Nshalla asked the locals about a foreigner making north. She learned that the woman had departed two days earlier. The woman was wary, considered by some at Grizim Oasis to be a spirit of the desert, perhaps a ghoul in disguise. This confirmed Nshalla's suspicions, and she was now able to put together a story. At some point around Araouane rumours of the shapeshifter had vanished, to be replaced with rumours of a woman. This confirmed that the shapeshifter had been Mnada. Yet something terrible must have happened in Mnada's mind if she was the source of the new rumours.

But because the camel train ended at Grizim Oasis they were stranded. Six days north west lay Chenachane Oasis, but there were no roads nor even tracks there, and nobody was interested in acting as a guide. Nshalla tried to interest the many marabout clerics who lived in and around the oasis, but they were too busy to help.

Gmoulaye decided what they must do. "The ancient Arabs were adept at astronomy," she said, "and we have observed how camel train leaders can navigate across shifting sands by means of stellar geometry. I shall do this. I shall meditate for a day outside the local mosque and absorb this aspect of Saharan culture. With luck, though I am a woman, my subconscious will guide us in the right direction."

It sounded risky. Nshalla had with trepidation noticed that, although Gmoulaye was able to follow local percussion patterns on a tam-tam drum and with finger cymbals, her singing remained rooted in the Ghanaian style, indicating that her cultural conversion did not apply at the core of her personality. This was to be expected, but to Nshalla's ears stellar navigation sounded more a skill of the subconscious than the waking mind, and thus was a dubious option.

Unfortunately it was the only option. A second day in Grizim Oasis found them no guides, no marabouts, and certainly no camel trains, unless they wanted to go east to Bou Ould Brini Oasis. The lone woman had vanished into the northern wastes of El Eglab, and this undoubtedly meant Chenachane Oasis.

"I suppose we've got to try," Nshalla told Gmoulaye, when the cultural absorption was complete. "You're sure you can do this?"

"No."

Nshalla shrugged. "We'd better go."

Dusk was approaching. They intended travelling during the cool of the night and sleeping during the day. A long night lay ahead.

When the first stars appeared, including Sirius, sacred to the Aphricans and greeted by Gmoulaye with joy, they set out. Their packs were filled with food and water, but they carried little else as everything had been lost in Taoudenni. The loss of Ashiakle's canoe was most grievous. But Nshalla was encouraged to find how much easier nocturnal walking was, and she hoped they would make up for lost time.

Humming to herself in an unidentifiable dialect, Gmoulaye led the way across the dunes. Nshalla dared not talk to her friend in case her concentration was broken. Lonely hours passed. But Gmoulaye hardly seemed to notice the stars, her gaze fixed ahead upon the horizon as if she was receiving aetherial messages from the heavens.

All around, the desert was at peace. They heard the calls of desert foxes, mice and nocturnal birds, while occasionally a distant rumble would announce engineering works inside dry riverbeds far to the south. In the sky mysterious lamps twinkled, marking stratospheric, ozone-producing balloons.

When dawn came, they rested. But as the beginning of a glow appeared in the east, they heard music. This music began as tinkling, metallic droplets laid over a celestial choir, and with it came a rain of light from the sky, falling like lazily refracted meteors, white, yellow and blue. It was an experience of synasthaesia; Nshalla tasted bread and wine. The music took up themes played on acoustically modelled instruments, pianos, violins and cellos, while the lights became rotating volumes of colour that transformed themselves according to the Fibonacci sequence into the forms of plants. Soon a floating field of sunflowers was above them, painted with vibrant enthusiasm. Then the music lost its melodic urgency and became cosmic once more, strings under choirs under trilling arpeggios, and they were buffetted by a wave of perfume, as of new blossom. The shapes and lights became rosy red, faded, then fell into a fuzzy vortex around the dawn glow.

"What was that?" Gmoulaye asked.

Nshalla shook herself out of reverie. "I think it was a neural visitation… some transputer webs use spare processing power to let their identities travel the globe on aether currents. They must have sensed our emotional turmoil, the little eddies of meaning disturbing the local aether. This land is deserted enough for such trifles to have been noticed."

"It was an omen of pure good," Gmoulaye said, as they watched the wreckage of many light drops seep into the sunrise, and heard the final coda of the music transpose itself into the clicks, rustles, chirrups and sighs of the awakening desert.

So Nshalla was sent to sleep.

And she dreamed of her sister. With bouncing, shiny red hair Mnada danced in video slow motion around her, kicking up sand, shaking her gandurah robe, watching with kohl darkened eyes that hid many secrets.

~

Following Gmoulaye's star intuition, they found Chenachane Oasis. It was almost deserted, home for a few extended families under the rule of a matriarchal grandmother. The trade route that had once existed now failed to bring camel trains, and all that remained for the ragged few was a life of weary agriculture. Nshalla and Gmoulaye were at first welcomed.

They soon discovered that Mnada had just left. Consequently, the people of the oasis considered bad spirits to be at work, with Nshalla herself the cause. They had just enough time to ascertain that Mnada was at most a day ahead, and to locate the position of the nearest oasis, Oum el Guedor, eight days away, before they departed.

As the night concluded they encountered a bacteria modifying station unrelated to Chenachane Oasis. It was built in the form of a steel mushroom, with a slender stem sunk deep into the rock below the desert sand, and, far above, a hemispherical work station arrayed with a thousand lamps. Around the base lay untidy huts. Gmoulaye decided they should sleep in one of the empty huts during the day.

Dawn came, and the sounds of people at work drifted down from above. Nshalla found it hard to sleep. Something was gnawing at the back of her mind.

She decided to peek out of the window. The desert was shimmering hot. Clouds of steam wafted down from vents in the bioware cauldrons above. But was that a figure slinking around a hut?

Nshalla gripped the sill of the window when she saw that it was Mnada. It was all she could do to keep silent. Quickly waking Gmoulaye, she went to the door and opened it. She saw nobody. People this isolated probably came down from their high laboratories once in a blue moon.

Gmoulaye muttered, "What's going on?"

"Mnada's here! Quick, follow me."

"Mnada?"

"Shushhh."

Nshalla led the way to the corner of the hut. No footprints. Not a sound. She crept on through the maze of huts.

Then she saw Mnada. Nshalla gave an involuntary squeal at this sighting. Mnada turned and saw her.

"Mnada," Nshalla said. She wanted to shout, but she dared not frighten off her flighty sister. "Mnada, it's all right. We've come to help you."

Mnada seemed hypnotised by the appearance of her sister. "Help? she muttered in a voice that was more of a croak. "Help me…"

"Yes, help you. Muezzinland is too far for you to find on your own. Come to me. I'll help you."

"Mother…"

Nshalla tried to sound authoritative. "Mother's not here. She can't find us."

Mnada was walking away.

"Come back!" Nshalla called. In desperation, she shouted, "Muezzinland is inside you! Look inside yourself, that's all you have to do!"

Mnada screamed and ran off at top speed.

Nshalla knew there was no point following. She needed a foolproof method of attracting then calming her sister. Mere talking was not enough.

In a tired voice she said, "We've got to follow her."

Gmoulaye shrugged. "Shall we go now, or leave it until dusk?"

Wordlessly they returned to the hut to collect their few possessions, then struck off into the desert.

But they were tired. They did not know how Mnada was navigating, but she seemed able to travel during the day. As noon approached, they fell exhausted into the shadowy lee of a north-facing cliff, where they drank and ate a few rations. Throughout the morning they had seen the tiny, dark figure of Mnada on the sands ahead, but they never caught up. It was as if Mnada was possessed by a spirit: inhuman endurance. Nshalla bitterly reflected on what that spirit might be a metaphor of. Mnada was driven, obsessed. Something bad had happened. More than ever she had to find and capture her sister. She began to consider plans for such a capture.

So the final stage of the chase wound across the Sahara. Sometimes, as dawn broke, they would see a tiny silhouette on the dunes ahead, dark with flapping cloak and rippling hair. The frustration of knowing that Mnada was at times only an hour ahead of them was almost unbearable. But it became clear that Mnada was moving at the same rate as they. She had no artificial aids. She was as vulnerable as they were. Yet they could not follow Mnada during the day because they relied on Gmoulaye's stellar intuition. They dared not simply follow Mnada because of their paltry supplies; they had to hope she too was hopping from oasis to oasis. Besides, if they lost sight of her they themselves could become lost.

It was during these days and nights that Nshalla realised how she would capture her sister. All that was needed was a shock that would immobilise her long enough for them to restrain her. There was one sure way to do this: present Mnada with herself.

Eight days after leaving Chenachane Oasis they dragged themselves into Oum el Guedour Oasis. Although the desert itself was more desolate than ever Nshalla could tell that they were entering inhabited areas, though as yet there were no defined countries. Around the oasis at a distance of a kilometre or so stood three mutation stations in the mushroom style, each built from sparkling steel, each a hundred metres high. Two belonged to VIFgmbh, the other to I-Shen-Tech. Workers on the latter enjoyed the sun under UV netting on the roof of their base, smoking roll-ups, preening their dreadlocks, and listening to a space-dub so heavy the sand around the mushroom jumped and vibrated.

At the oasis they were able to find water, but they had nothing with which to buy food, and none of the locals of the impoverished palmerie were willing to assist. With only dried rations, a few dates and their water they walked on, keeping the Mcherrah peak to their right, making for Boubout Oasis.

The six day journey was a trial. They had no way of knowing what the inhabitants of Boubout Oasis would be like, so they dared not eat all their rations. Sometimes they saw Mnada at dawn, setting off as they settled to sleep. Nshalla began to wonder how her sister was navigating. Did she know where she was going? It seemed that they were all following the same route, which was encouraging.