Muezzinland (8 page)

Chapter 6

The roads failed almost as soon as they left the forest. They were now crossing trackless Sahel savanna, tinder dry, in places black where fires had raged, elsewhere shimmering with heat haze. Msavitar's vague memory was now entirely useless, and he confessed that he was in unknown territory. They had to rely on his and Gmoulaye's land skills in combination with the compass on Nshalla's belt transputer. Particularly galling was their lack of resources. Gmoulaye shared her weapons with Nshalla. They had enough water for six days, but any delays would cost them dear, and food would have to be obtained from the land.

Nshalla entertained mixed feelings about Msavitar. Knowing now that he was a liar and a traitor, she despised him, yet she did not regret saving his life, and she could not forget that he had saved them from the second agent, and from the harsh land to the south. Yet still he was obsequious, glancing at her like a desert fox, and when on occasion she had reason to be rude to him she enjoyed it.

As a company they were not much to speak of. Gmoulaye was short with Nshalla, Nshalla was short with Msavitar, and Msavitar sulked.

The burning days passed by. Gmoulaye dug roots from the earth, gathered wild rice and ears of the cereals dani and gansi. From bees she stole honey. Twice they came across the remains of villages, their fields long since trampled by elephants, and here some beans, sweet potatoes and earthpeas grew wild. They were also able to retrieve cashew nuts from high branches.

They did not allow Msavitar a watch. Nshalla and Gmoulaye took it in turns, and the fatigue this produced next day did not help their mood.

After four days they noticed an occupied village in the distant east, just a collection of mud huts, but at least sign of life. For some time they debated the wisdom of showing themselves, deciding eventually to give the place a miss. They were making fair time. Ouahigouya was two days off.

On the fifth day they saw more villages. Passing close to one they became surrounded by curious farmers, but none could speak New-Oriental and their guttural lingo was incomprehensible. They walked on.

That night the stars burned in the sky. As she kept watch Nshalla gazed upward, watching for space junk falling like meteors, for weather auto-balloons, and, at dawn and dusk, for fast moving satellites. She watched the sky alot but even she had seen only one aeroplane, a jet with pastel blue lamps flying high, making west. She wondered who the pilot might be. Some king, empress or dictator most probably. Only they had access to such marvels.

Next afternoon they made Ouahigouya. It was a large town partly built of stone, though elsewhere the mud bricks seemed sturdy enough. Chickens, oxen and goats roamed freely. To the north lay a more sedate area, but they could find nothing looking like an inn. They were surprised at the number of churches littering the town, all white paint and gigantic crosses. Questioning a priest, they discovered that they were in the land of United Catholic Burkina.

It was Msavitar who spotted a curiosity in the central market. He pointed out two solar motor bikes leaning against a mud wall, and the trio paused to investigate. They were Le Haute-Volta Trois models from the early 'twenties, one sporting a sidecar, both featuring solar powered engines but none fitted with transputer control.

Eagerly Msavitar turned to Nshalla. "This will aid us much, gracious lady! On these bikes we can speed north to Timbuktu, saving many days."

Nshalla saw the wisdom of the idea, but Gmoulaye remained unconvinced. Nshalla told her, "We've got a long, dry road ahead. These bikes will save us walking."

"They are broken down wrecks," Gmoulaye replied.

Nshalla was not to be stopped. "You sit in the sidecar. I've ridden motor bikes through the palace passages. The Sahel will be easy in comparison."

"Good, good!" Msavitar said. "Oh, yes, I also can ride."

They bargained with the owner of the bikes, then tried their engines. Both were operational, spluttering into life with a noise like cows belching, whining like a cloud of mosquitos when they warmed up. Nshalla was encouraged by this turn of good fortune.

United Catholic Burkina took a day to leave. The second day they spent riding through the Mossi country of Yatenga, a peaceful, almost deserted land of semi-nomadic herders. However they could not ride fast, since the ground had many sharp dangers for unwary tyres. A squally storm from the south made them shelter under an overhanging cliff. It lasted ten minutes. Afterwards, they slipped and slid their way north, aware that they had begun the last stretch before Timbuktu. A two week stretch, yes, but still the last one.

By the third day they had reached the land of Mali Southpeace. In earlier centuries Mali had been a poverty stricken desert of a land, but now it was worse, for nestling between the bare cliffs and sandstone mesas they saw toxic dumps that stained the land green, nuclear slag heaps, and oily lakes that even the fierce Aphrican sun could not evaporate. This blasted land smelled bad, and they hurried through it as fast as they could.

Yet Nshalla was struck by a curious observation. Despite the fact that nobody, not even Fulani herders, lived in this land, there was a plethora of aether aerials. Since Ouagadougou she had noticed the thinning of these aerials—the propagators of the aether—and had associated her observation with the low population density. It made sense. Fewer people meant less aerials. But here, dozens of small black aerials littered the land.

She paused to examine one. Typically, aether aerials emerged from small green pods, having been grown, like biograins, in hydroponic tanks. They varied across the globe. Aphrican aerials needed to survive drought and heat; Icelandic aerials suffered from ice, and had to be designed and evolved accordingly. But these… these were different.

"I don't understand," she said, half to herself.

"Understand what?" Gmoulaye asked.

"Why are there so many aether aerials?"

"Why shouldn't there be?"

Nshalla scanned the land to its horizon, then said, "Aether aerials are symbiotic with biograins. Abstractly speaking, that is. You can't have one without the other."

"So?"

"Who needs all these aerials around here?"

Nshalla examined the ground in detail, expecting to find the marks of people. Wherever aerials massed there were always eyes. But here there were no eyes, implying no connections with local webs. Why then the aerials?

A voice whispered in her ear. "Hawatif! Hawatif!"

She span around, but saw nobody. A ghost had called upon her, like the spider ghost in Ashanti. Perhaps she had a guardian spirit? She noticed that Msavitar was peering across the land, as if suspicious of an enemy.

They moved on, until, as dusk fell, they made camp against a sandstone cliff shining scarlet in the setting sun. Gmoulaye collected wild pumpkin, velvet bean and dani, but the stink that came out of the pot made them sick, and they resorted to their rations, throwing the half cooked food away. They sat amongst the tussock grass, pondering the land.

Before the light went, a man approached. Speaking in broken New-Oriental he claimed the profession of peripatetic geomancer. Gmoulaye knew a little of this art and was able to impress the man with her knowledge. In return for a certain prophylactic that she carried in her belts he promised to read that night the tracks of the jackal, and in the morning tell their fate. "The Golden Jackal was the first child of the Creator Amma and the Earth," he explained, relating Dogon myth.

That night, as she kept watch, Nshalla saw the man hopping across the sand, hunched over, using a solar torch to light his way.

Next day he returned to tell them, "You must bear more to the east. Great slag heaps that cause the weeping skin and the white eye lie northwards, while to the east lie lakes of brown tar that fume in the sun, and cause finches, egrets, and even the vultures to drop dead from the sky, plummeting like stones." Then he handed them a hollow horn stuffed with leaves and bark, saying, "These medicines will prevent you getting lost in the bush."

They thanked him. He smiled, but then raised his head to listen. His expression turned to horror. "The locusts!"

They hid alongside the motor bikes in a deep crevice. A swarm of locusts flew down, darkening the sky, but they were nothing like the locusts Nshalla had seen; these were brushed aluminium insects with thrashing antennae, and they ignored what vegetation lay around to concentrate their attention on fragments of debris. As the swarm moved on, the land cleared, until the four were able to stand again under the sun. All trace of their fire had gone. So had Nshalla's bedroll and Gmoulaye's dagger. Eaten.

"They are the swarm of evil," the geomancer said. "They ignore moist green leaves and eat only plastic and metal. They are unnatural, the spawn of evil spirits."

Nshalla asked, "Where do they come from?"

"Far away. They came with the poles."

"The poles?"

It was his word for aether aerial. He continued, "When Amma fertilises the earth with his rain, the little black poles grow up from pods in the earth. They make the locusts. They make other things, like the hyena men, and the rampaging steel elephants."

Again the voice in Nshalla's ear. "Hawatif!"

Unnerved, she tried to ignore it. "Have you seen these things?"

The man hid his eyes and bent low. "They were not created by Amma. I am of the Dogon. We come from the mating of Amma and the Earth. Amma's twins made the plants. Amma is the Creator. But these new things, they are an abomination from the north, they are not from Amma!"

The north, Nshalla mused: Muezzinland? "Have you heard of a city called Timbuktu?" she asked.

"No. I must go now. If the locusts are about, something has disturbed the spirits hereabouts."

He departed as suddenly as he came, leaving Nshalla to ponder what she had heard. A number of elements had coalesced in her mind to create an unpleasant picture. The locusts were not real, but they could act upon reality, a state of affairs suggesting aether influence. Most likely they were autonomous technological detritus that had migrated from the autumnal West. The lack of people and proliferation of aerials suggested an aether directed towards non-human ends. Could a process of evolution be at work, instigated by the polluted environment, sustained by nuclear energy sources, symbolically organising itself into a mockery of the blasted West? Nshalla quailed. She had been taught that the aether was neutral. This experience, like that of Ouagadougou, suggested otherwise. The world was more complex than she had imagined.

Nshalla noticed that Msavitar was whispering to the new transputers he had bought in Ouahigouya's markets. He seemed pleased with his acquisitions, studying the maps in particular.

"Cost a lot, did they?" Nshalla asked.

"Much haggling," he replied. "Timbuktu is maybe sixteen, seventeen days off. We will make it, I promise on the honour of my esteemed family."

They continued to ride north, making good progress. That night hyenas with spectral forms upon their backs prowled around the camp, sniffing and whimpering, but they did not attack. Their eyes shone pale.

They were now in Greater Gavoland, a strip of land extending south and westward from Gao on the River Niger. On the night of the sixth day out of Ouahigouya, Nshalla had a vivid dream concerning her mother. The Empress Mnada, huge, hot and heavy, splashed around in a river, devouring everything that came her way as if she were afflicted by terrible hunger. Msavitar failed to kill her with his javelins. The javelins were devoured. Then Nshalla's childhood nanny failed to kill the Empress with her fanged dogs. The dogs were devoured. In the morning, her sister Mnada went to the river and put a spell upon her mother, paralysing her. Nshalla woke just as the river waters rose bubbling around the Empress' nostrils.

The discontent engendered by this dream Nshalla used to attack the hapless Msavitar. "We didn't ask you to follow us this far," she said. "We don't need you, and I'm not employing you. No cowries from
me.
"

"But you need a man. This land is dangerous."

"Are you saying I can't look after myself?" Gmoulaye asked, a threatening frown on her face.

Msavitar hesitated. "Not exactly. But the male of the species has the superior musculature in the chest. That would be useful if we are attacked by lions."

"Are you joking?" Nshalla retorted. She grasped for the strongest denial she could think of. "We should have left you in Ouahigouya. We're going to Timbuktu and we can manage by ourselves."

He simply was not to be put off. "Timbuktu is on my maps. I will guide you, as I promised, oh, so many days back in Ashanti."

Nshalla fumed. "You're not leaving Timbuktu with us."

He replied smoothly, "So you
would
like me to accompany you to that city. Well, when I get you there we will discuss what is to happen afterwards."

Descending into silent fury, Nshalla turned her back on him. She just wanted him gone. His oily manner only made him more insufferable. She felt that what her father had told her made him an appalling criminal, to be got rid of at all costs.

They rode on. Two days later they entered Islamic Macina, a Fulani country of herders. The people were reticent. Most knew no words of New-Oriental, but those that did offered nothing by way of hospitality. Nshalla received the impression that the Fulani wanted them to leave as soon as possible. Even their dwarf cattle looked the other way. Coming across an abandoned well, they refilled their waterskins and moved on.

Two further days brought them to another border, and with great relief they entered Dogon Mali. This was the country that had Timbuktu as its capital.

Hyenas followed them. They were the nocturnal variety, ridden by ephemeral forms, hyenas real, without doubt, yet partaking of an aetherial menace. They licked their chops and snapped their teeth, as if cracking imaginary bones, and then they flapped their tongues as if licking out the marrow. Nshalla wondered if they were being toyed with. Yet the beasts never attacked.

Two days into Dogon Mali found them amid hyena men.