Muezzinland (24 page)

Chapter 17

Khadir returned on the evening before they were due to set out. Although he was a demi-god his mental state was so pure he possessed no illusionist capabilities, and so to disguise himself among the camel herders, merchants and itinerant LSD hawkers he wore a great black cloak and a Sufi style hat. He still looked odd, but at least the problem of naked green flesh was overcome. His folded wings made him look as though he was carrying a rucksack.

Nshalla found herself pleased to see him, for he represented a kind of security in the wildness around them, a defence against the Empress. Gmoulaye was as suspicious as ever. The revelation was Mnada. Nshalla watched, considerably surprised, as the pair chatted as if they had known one another for years. And Nshalla noticed another thing. Khadir, quite how she did not know, resembled Mnada in a way she could not pinpoint. She guessed they must have met and bonded in the psychic vacuum of the Saharan interior. There were similarities of gesture. A mode of speech. Khadir spoke Gan as if he had been born in Ghana; Nshalla had checked the P/RIM/STANDARD database to discover that according to legend he could speak all the languages of the Earth.

What was he? Accumulation of software with a self-symbol? Hunk of bioplas with a particularly powerful transputer on-line? She could not tell. But he liked them and wanted to help.

Chaos was let loose as they departed Mengoub.

It began with a silvery taste in the air—the precursor of a mental storm. Nshalla looked about, trying to peer between town buildings to see what lay on the horizon, but all she could see was a red mist gathering like blood evaporating off the sand, and then, as they arrived at the edge of the town, tell-tale dust whirlwinds indicating a major squall.

"We'd better wait here awhile," she said.

Khadir stood upon his toes and scrutinised the approaching storm.

He disagreed with Nshalla. "We are under attack."

"Us?" Mnada said.

"Mengoub, certainly," Khadir replied.

"Mother," Nshalla said.

Then stone fragments and dust were whirling through the air on a great blast of sound, and Nshalla's mouth was full of sand. She fell. Hands over eyes to save them from closing of their own accord, she tried to guage where everyone was. In the sudden confusion she could not. Successive blasts forced air over her, hot as an oven, and above the noise she heard buildings crashing.

There were other, stranger noises. The sound of an animal's soft footfall, intimate to her ears even above the din, and the noise of a babbling brook. Yet the sand was dry.

Khadir took her hand. She screamed, not sure for a moment who had caught her. He pulled her into the lee of a thick stone wall, the remains of which sheltered her from the ongoing collapse. To her left lay Mnada, weeping, to her right Gmoulaye knelt with a defiant expression upon her face. Khadir crouched behind them like a great green safety net, his arms and wings outstretched, his eyes, repelling the dust, alert for signs of troops or armoured vehicles.

Nshalla knew little concerning weapons. She did not know what had hit Mengoub. All she could think of was her mother.

"There is an aetherial component to this attack," Khadir told them. "I will make a temporary screen around you, though it will be difficult with Mnada here."

"Why?" Mnada asked.

"Your mind screams out who you are."

The air close to Nshalla changed, became like milk in water, soft curls of translucent illusion wafting around them, and Nshalla was reminded of the envelope created by Mnada at Bouraga Oasis in response to Assane Atangana's probings.

Shadow shapes skimmed by amidst the choking dust-devils. To try and calm herself, Nshalla crouched down with her head to the sand, listening to the chaos surrounding Mengoub. With her eyes shut her ears became more discriminating, and she heard voices, screaming and shouting and yelling, and even some gunfire. So there must be people to fire at. Nshalla quailed. Uniquely on the West Aphrican coast her mother maintained no standing army, since her power was founded on force of personality, and, Nshalla now knew, her membership of the Aetherium. But the lack of such a resource was no bar to her making a strike. Soldiers would doubtless flock to her banner.

So Nshalla felt sick as she imagined the power of her mother's arm, as it reached across half a continent to trouble them here in a small town.

Without warning a flood swept them from behind the wall into the confusion of exploding masonry and whirling dust. Khadir made a great effort and lifted Nshalla and Gmoulaye from the torrent, flying low then dropping them like sodden lambs into a thorny pillow of cultivated herbs. Nshalla looked up to see his otherworldly shape, winged like a Christian angel, or a devil, dark against the brown air, dropping like a hawk, then re-emerging seconds later with its prey.

He was at their side.

"This is like no attack I can remember," he said. "We have to escape this awful place."

"Help us!" Nshalla cried.

"I will. But our attackers have cunning. The people of Mengoub are terrified, scrambling hither and thither through the ruined streets that already mark the inner town. I cannot make out what is causing the attack—perhaps some technological trick."

"Can't you help us?" Nshalla said. She found herself willing him into miraculous action.

"The problem is that the moment we leave this chaos, we will be seen. I must think awhile."

"Please hurry."

Nshalla went to Mnada and comforted her. Her sister seemed stunned by the speed and violence of the attack. She held Mnada in her arms. "It'll be all right," she said. "Khadir will save us."

"It's mother," Mnada replied. "It's mother."

"She won't have you," Nshalla insisted.

From some nearby building a geyser of rock and stone erupted, scattering fragments over the whole area. "Duck!" Khadir yelled, and they all dropped, heads to the sand, Nshalla covering her face with her cloak. Even through the cloth she could smell the characteristic odour of sparks made by metal on stone. The air stank of destruction. Chunks of stone whizzed by, and they sounded like banshees.

"Our salvation lies in running before the storm," Khadir said. "We must find some kind of flying vehicle. Mengoub has an air strip."

"Are you leaving us?" Mnada asked, clearly frightened.

"Temporarily. I will return with an escape vehicle. Trust in me. I may be a scholar philosopher, but I have biceps of carbonfibre and thighs bigger than those of Atlas himself. Do not move!"

He was gone. Nshalla glanced up to see him ascend, and she found herself inspired with an almost religious fervour. He was, after all, the messenger of God. And she believed in him.

Still the assault on Mengoub continued. Nshalla let her ears do the work. She dared not expose her eyes for long to the maelstrom of dust and sand that whirled around them.

She heard flowing water, but it seemed distant, as if from some far flung quarter of the town—the camel market, or the street of leather workers close to where Sajimira lived. The whirring of fragments was like an aerial display, the larger chunks each with their own tone and timbre. Explosions shook the ground; muffled and bassy far off, violent cracks nearby. Yet no more guns. No vocal thunk of a bazooka throwing out a shell. No hiss of gas. This was probably the iron fist before the troops were ordered in. They still had time.

A wind blew up, hot and suffocating, and Nshalla writhed on the ground under its pressure, until it passed. She was left gulping air, then coughing as the sand got into her throat and made her choke. They were all choking. The wind had passed like a malevolent entity, searching for something, someone, gripping tiny individuals to choke them, then continuing on its way. Nshalla was visited with the mental image of a single whirlwind, a phenomenal spiral exploring the town, taking in living debris then spitting it out.

The chaos, the noise and hot air were making her panic. "Hurry up, Khadir, hurry up."

He answered her prayer. There was a thunking sound, and then a slim shadow like an elongated pear settled behind them. A 'copter.

Nshalla ran over, Mnada and Gmoulaye following, crouched down to avoid being knocked down by blasts from all sides.

Khadir sprang out of the machine and landed before them. "Get in!" he yelled. "It is a four seater. Belts on quickly!"

Nshalla jumped into the front seat next to the pilot's. Before her lay a gleaming control panel of orange and gold, and with a sinking heart she recognised the aetherial node of a psycopter.

The others were belting up in the back. Khadir was at her side. "It's a psycopter," she told him. "How did you get it here?"

"I don't know. It responded to me."

This was an unexpected problem. Psycopters were rare, and this one probably belonged to a local sheikh. Without realising it Khadir had convinced the machine to fly here, but leaving Mengoub air space would be more difficult, since over the years it would have become attuned to the aetherial presence of its master.

Behind her, Gmoulaye groaned, then said, "I sense trouble, Nshalla. We had better depart quickly, before it is too late."

"Go, go," Nshalla told Khadir. "Go north."

With a lurch the psycopter rose, its dual rotors humming, and then the tail swung around and they were pushed into their seats as the Pro-Rhythmic Servomechanisms kicked in, taking their feedback instructions direct from the aether and their course setting from the direction of Khadir's gaze.

"It recognises you as the pilot," Nshalla said, "but the moment it thinks something is wrong it'll stop. We've got to fool it somehow."

"Very well," Khadir said.

Psycopters were notoriously difficult to fly, an invention typical of the Pacific Rim; astonishing but impractical. With the aether a holistic pattern composed of innumerable electromagnetic waves, it only took a mentally ill passenger or somebody with a really strong grudge to bring down a psycopter. Their personalities were like those of dogs, faithful to the point of obstinacy. Nobody ever forced a psycopter into cheating its master.

They always had names.

And that gave Nshalla an idea.

"Find out what its name is," she told Khadir. As she spoke she took her hand-transputer and used an optical cord to connect it to the onboard manual ROM. It was registered to one Sheikh Haziz-Violet.

Gmoulaye wailed. "Look behind us!"

Nshalla turned in her seat and peered through the smoke-stained perspex oval that was the rear window. Below her, Mengoub was rubble and smoke. A battalion of troops stood a kilometre off, but they were detached from the main attack and even seemed disconcerted, if their disarray was anything to go by. But what Gmoulaye had seen was a single abstract whirlwind following them. Nshalla recognised it, but could not place it.

"Faster!" she yelled.

It was like a tornado composed of black arrows, thousands of them, spinning in a hierarchy of levels so that, although light passed through, it was fractured into blurs of colour, and the whole attained shape, plasticity, so that it was not just rotating air, but an
entity.
The aether gave it menace. It effervesced danger. The arrows were sharp as razors.

"What is it?" she asked Khadir.

"I am fairly certain that it is Ng—"

A gust of wind buffetted the psycopter and they were thrown to their left. For the first time Nshalla heard the voice of the aetherial node that was reaching out to feel the quality of Khadir's mind.

"Where are we going?" it asked in a petulant voice. "This isn't my usual way."

"What's it called?" Nshalla hissed.

"Loun," Khadir replied, also keeping his voice down.

Nshalla spoke to the psycopter. "Oh, Loun," she said, "I'm in danger. My husband Sheikh Haziz-Violet only married me yesterday, and already Mengoub is destroyed and I'm in danger. He only wants me to be safe."

"Safe?" asked the psycopter. "Where?"

Momentarily at a loss, Nshalla stared down at the map on her transputer screen. "Semguine," she said, before realising it was only the next town along.

The psycopter shuddered as it changed course. The servos disengaged, but engine power was turned on full.

Nshalla felt her body forced back into her seat. "Sorry," she told the others. "It was the first name I saw. At this speed we'll be there in minutes."

Khadir glanced back. "We will outrun Ngala, don't worry."

"Ngala?" Nshalla queried.

"Yes, Ngala. The whirlwind creator spirit, who is represented in the world by an abstract spiral. We have just been attacked by the four gods of the Bambara people. The water was of Faro, the river god, while the suffocating wind was of Teliko, arid and deadly. We were lucky not to have been noticed by the Earth goddess Muso Koroni, who stalked by our fragile wall on the padded feet of a leopard. Luckily for you all I had come back to speak with you, following our meeting at Araouane during the creation of Sajara the Rainbow-Serpent."

"You were looking for us?" Nshalla said, dumbfounded.

"Yes. I said I would check your stories. Now the gods are loose in the world and there is an unimaginable future ahead. You saw what they did to the town of Mengoub."

"But what did you find when you checked our stories?" asked Gmoulaye.

Khadir replied, "Some things interesting, some things terrible."