Muezzinland (11 page)

Chapter 9

Moustapha led them without complaint through the gravel desert north of Timbuktu, and while he did not enthuse about them and their 'difficulty', by which he meant journey, neither did he seek to abuse or even discredit them. He treated them as relations. The name Muezzinland meant nothing to him.

As for the camels, they plodded across the desert at their standard speed. Their saddles were high prowed affairs, set with red and yellow cloths and carrying leather bags. Nshalla soon got used to hers. Gmoulaye found her clothes more of an irritation. If Moustapha wore his long gandurah robe with flair, Gmoulaye wore hers with petulance, complaining when the indigo dye came off on her skin, constantly at war with the sand that tickled her flesh and set her teeth on edge, kicking the camel with bare feet if it did anything to upset her.

Moustapha took it all in his stride. An old man, he had seen his fair share of discontents. "The sand is like a bed at night," he said. "The ships of the desert are like oases. We will eat dates."

To which Gmoulaye replied, "Do you serve them with anything other than sand and grit," which made him laugh out loud.

"I am more stolid," he replied. "My home is in Aoulef el Arab, in Algeria Centrale-Sable, and there we accept the inevitable."

"Then you travel the desert alot?" Nshalla asked.

"As a marabout it is my sacred task to spread the word of Allah far and wide."

"Have you heard any reports of shapeshifters?"

Through the slit in his headscarf he stared at her. "Why do you ask?"

It sounded as if he had seen something. Nshalla had intended explaining her reasoning, as she had to Captain Nfor, but instead she said, "I'm expecting to hear about one."

"There is more about you than meets the eye," Moustapha said. "There have been reports of a rogue shapeshifter around Timbuktu, but it is said the creature left yesterday."

"She made north, I think."

He seemed intrigued. "Correct. How do you know all this?"

"I suspect the shapeshifter is my sister. That's who I'm trailing. We've got to find her. It's a long story, but she's been released—or she's released herself—from a stifling place. Her identity crisis will manifest itself as chaotic patterns of personality. She'll assume many different identities." Nshalla shook her head. "Shapeshifters are always damaged people. We have to find and heal my sister."

Moustapha gazed north. "There are clusters of aether aerials at oases and palmeries, but little else in the desert. She will most likely make for more concentrated aether radiations. The reports I have heard speak of a shadow, a ghost in the night, stealing food and water, disturbing camels, shrieking and wailing."

Nshalla smiled. This desert shapeshifter could be some local, some mentally ill patient escaped from a padlocked room, but, in her heart, she knew it was Mnada. The facts fitted. The timing was right. Mnada had not yet found Muezzinland.

"Will she make for Sidi Maktar oasis?" she asked Moustapha.

"I cannot say. She is human. She will need to drink."

Nshalla said nothing more. Their first stop, Dayet en Naharat Oasis, was still two days away. As the sun set they made camp in a hollow.

The temperature dropped rapidly. The camels only carried tinderwood for cooking since it was not yet the season of nocturnal frosts, but even wrapped in her bedroll Nshalla was cold. Above her she saw for the first time the true colours of the stars, twinkling with subtle hues, every one different; and she understood why the Arabs loved astronomy. The clear air of the desert seemed to bring the stars closer. She could almost grasp them. To the sound of gurgling camel stomachs, she dozed off.

When she woke at dawn the end of her nose was cold. Her face ached. Moustapha was up, checking his camels, but Gmoulaye was still asleep. For breakfast they ate sweet olives and bitter pancakes, and brewed a can of coffee. Moustapha was good manners epitomised. He smoked tobacco, standing well away from them and looking in the other direction, which allowed them to complete their toilet without embarrassment.

The day passed as had the previous one. After a quiet night they carried on. Evening brought them to the first eyes planted in the semi-soft ground, set alongside clusters of aether aerials emerging from brown orbs like shoots from a coconut. A kilometre away, Nshalla saw glimpses of green.

Dayet en Naharat Oasis was a sunken area, a palmerie, and from the desert, even perched on their camels, they could only see the tops of its date palms. This was a Tuareg stronghold. Negro imrad vassals carried baskets of dry sand from the depths of the oasis and emptied them at the circumference. A few nonchalant Tuareg guards stood watching. Inside, through the lush foliage, Nshalla could see camels, houses, huts and dogs.

Moustapha turned to them. "You are black people," he said, "and will be treated with less respect than you are used to. Keep yourselves covered. If you are frightened, invoke purdah. But I am your guardian and as long as these people know that they will leave you unharmed."

Approaching, Moustapha called out in the Tamasheq tongue. The Tuareg seemed unconcerned, letting them enter the oasis without so much as a glance.

Nshalla felt nervous. This was an almost Biblical society. In the north it would be different—there would be cities—but here all was sand and harsh words and tough men smoking tobacco. Not a good place for Ghanaian women.

Moustapha found them a bedding place in a hut owned by an acquaintance of his. He advised them to bar the door. Nshalla felt like the enemy, but the night passed without incident. She heard guffawing men, crackling fires, and the plunking of cow-skin lutes, the swishing tico tioco, hand drums, and warbling flutes mixed into an exotic music.

They discovered next morning that nobody would even consider acting as guide to Sidi Maktar. "I fear you are own your own," Moustapha told them. "Go back to Timbuktu. A detour around the oasis would be tricky, and nobody here will attempt the open desert, full as it is with ghouls, voices, and other insane denizens."

"Are there no other options?" asked Gmoulaye.

"It's Sidi Maktar or a detour through the paltry oases of Eastern Mauretania."

Nshalla shrugged. "We're not to be put off."

Moustapha shook his head. He seemed upset. "I will lead you to Touerat Oasis, but you will never find a guide. I won't like to see you walk to your deaths."

"Just don't stop us," Nshalla warned.

"Is there an optical link from Touerat north to Araouane?" asked Gmoulaye.

"None," Moustapha replied. "Few oases of Dogon Mali are linked to their neighbours. You were thinking of calling for help? Touerat is linked back to this oasis, and this oasis back to Timbuktu, but other than that…"

They returned to their hut. On the way they passed the open window of a hut, and Nshalla was stopped short by an object entirely unexpected. Gmoulaye saw it too, and approached in amazement.

"Is it?" asked Nshalla.

"It is," Gmoulaye replied. "Ashiakle's canoe!"

The fifteen-centimetre canoe had been placed on an exposed ledge by the owner of the hut, along with local fetishes and some stone bowls.

"We must have it," Gmoulaye insisted, "it is an omen of good luck."

The owner of the hut, an old woman, told them that it had come to her in a bundle of trading objects, but she could not remember if it was recent. A price was agreed and the canoe was bought. It was gold plated, decorated with red copper and white neoprene. Gmoulaye carried it, vowing it would never leave her pocket.

A hot day led to a cool evening. Tired, lying on her back next to a camel, for a wind was blowing as if whisked up by a distant duststorm, Nshalla toyed with one of the transputers, protecting it from sand by putting it into its polythene bubble.

"Hawatif!"

The voice whispered close to her left ear. She jumped, startled. Nobody there.

"Hawatif."

Right ear.

Nshalla lay on her back with her eyes open, waiting.

From the air a shape materialised. Nshalla shrank against the camel.

The figure held out one hand. "Don't be afraid. We are with you, Nshalla."

It must be a dream. Nshalla waited for more. The figure, a slender man, was becoming solid even as she watched, rippling slightly like a defunct video screen, colours interlacing. He was tall, faint as if he was some metres distant, and he danced without ceasing to the beat of an inaudible djembe. Yet Nshalla could hear his whispering voice perfectly. Behind him rippled the form of a rainbow-coloured snake.

"At last you've come into short range," he said.

"Who are you?"

"An aetherial friend. Don't be frightened."

Nshalla saw nothing to be frightened of, though she was tense. "Don't make sudden moves," she said.

He danced on as he spoke. "I won't. I am a hatifa. I have been waiting for you. It was I, clothed as Anansi the Spider, who saved you from the static radiation at Ashanti City—"

"You? Saved?"

"Yes. And I distracted the aether locusts. There is much we hawatif want to tell you. A struggle is in progress, and you are on our side."

Nshalla felt this to be a little forward. "So you say. What is a hatifa exactly?"

"A voice in the desert, whose zone you have entered. The aether is changing. Your mother has a plan and we think you can discover what it is. It involves your sister. That is why you must find her as soon as possible. She must not be allowed to enter Muezzinland—"

"You know where it is?"

"We can only manifest in the Sahara," said the hatifa, "where our aether is located. We have some influence outside—"

"In other words no."

The hatifa smiled. "Mnada is not so far away."

"Who are you exactly?"

To this the hatifa replied, "Symbols cannot exist in a vacuum. When the aether appeared almost a century ago it was a vast tabula rasa, weak, yet able to accept hierarchies of meaning. Now it is full, full to bursting. Those hierarchies of meaning are evolving, because now they experience, not a tabula rasa, but a vivid, intense, cultural environment. A virtual evolution is in progress."

"But you?"

"We are virtual people. We are not like human beings, but we can simulate you very well. In fact, we can simulate you so well that we can deceive both you and ourselves. By experiencing this conversation I am deceiving myself into believing that I am real. That in essence is my function. If I do not deceive myself into believing that I am experiencing existence, I dissipate into the aether. My motivation comes from this deception. So perhaps I am real."

Nshalla said, "Go on."

"That is all. We perceive a threat to our environment. Your mother is part of that threat."

"How?"

"That is what we want to know."

Nshalla considered this revelation. It could be a trap. But the man seemed sincere, guileless. Transparent. Nshalla, remembering what Msavitar had admitted, felt that the man was telling the truth. But she wanted far more information.

She said, "A bad man told me that my mother wanted to make Mnada into her heir—her psychic image."

"That is a foul, immoral thing to do."

"And this man said that mother's plot was to do with our Aetheria."

The hatifa nodded. "This we suspected. Prepare yourself for a shock, daughter of the Empress of Ghana."

"What?"

"Your mother is very, very special. She is one of the five Aetheria members comprising the Aetherium. With them, she is reorganising the civilised world."

This was too much to believe. Nshalla could not comprehend it. She shook her head, looked away, then stared down at the sand. "So you say," she said. "So you say."

She looked up to find that the apparition had faded to leave just a name floating like black leaves in the wind: Assane Atangana. Her eyes ached. She was lying against the camel. Had it been a dream?

She felt as if she was in a fantasy. For years she had seen the Aetherium as a fabulous company of myth, hidden, shrouded by secrecy, directors of the Pacific Rim world and scourge of the rest. That she, Nshalla, should be so intimately related to the sanctified centre was too fantastic. She could not take it in. To accept it as a truth she would have to become part of a myth. Yet she was real. Normal. An ordinary woman from a backwater…

The rest of the night passed peacefully. The wind abated and the desert became silent, except for the yelping of sand foxes and the hissing of innumerable grains across one another. In the morning Nshalla saw hopping jerboas, and a lizard.

She said nothing about virtual Assane to the others. Still numb from his words she pondered in silence what he had divulged.

In the afternoon they reached Touerat Oasis. Moustapha found them safe accomodation in a store hut; situated next to an artesian well, it lay away from living quarters, and thus was quiet. They waited for Moustapha to return. From the back of the hut Nshalla could see the extent of the oasis. Not so large as Dayet en Naharat Oasis, it nonetheless seemed greener, and amid the date palms she could see cereal crops and ground-hugging cacti.

As dusk swept over the desert, Moustapha came to talk with them. "It is not good," he said. "Nobody will risk Sidi Maktar Oasis. They talk of mad voices, desert mirages that entrance and kill, and razor-beaked vultures. Everybody says it is insane. Please don't go, for you will become lost in the desert and die quickly."

Nshalla shook her head. "We have more desert lore than you might imagine," she said.

"This I cannot imagine," Moustapha replied. "You are foreigners. You are throwing your lives away. Nobody will pity you and relent. Nobody will be a guide."

"We have guides in unusual places," Nshalla said. "Don't stop us. We know what we're doing."

Gmoulaye glanced at her, and Moustapha caught something of her feelings. "Your friend thinks not," he said. "You are headstrong, Nshalla, imagining that you can do what the Tuareg can do."

Nshalla shrugged. "In the end, it's none of your affair."

"That is cruel!" he replied. "I helped you from the goodness of my soul. You owe it to me not to do this rash thing."