Muezzinland (27 page)

Chapter 20

Marrakech had been laid waste.

"The gods are here somewhere," said Khadir, and even his voice was now grim enough to make Nshalla shiver.

"They are looking for us," Gmoulaye added.

"They're searching for me," said Mnada.

Khadir murmured, "Perhaps."

Marrakech was all wreckage and fires, craters and smoke. As they looked out across its ruined suburbs they saw the red trails of hunter-seekers, orange spittle from exploding sodium globes, and columns of twisted smoke. Later, as dusk became night, they crept out from the bushes in which they had hidden and stole down into the suburbs. Cirrus clouds wreathed the sky, but there was light enough for navigation. Nshalla felt as if she was walking underwater, surrounded by strange, rippling reflections, bright on the safe streets, dark on the unsafe. Elsewhere unexploded bombs and gobbets of bio-toxin were picked out in glittering white. Pits were black caverns, corpses faintly luminous.

At least the people of Marrakech had fought back.

"We have to act fast," said Gmoulaye. "We have to know what we are doing, and then do it. Do you agree?"

"Well, yes," said Nshalla, taken aback by Gmoulaye's fervour.

"There is a way," Gmoulaye continued. "Now I am a kahina, I know techniques of augury. The Great Mother has intimated to me that there is an old custom in these parts of annual pilgrimage to the koubba of the local holy man."

"Is there?"

Gmoulaye pointed north. "Somewhere over there is a little white building. That is the koubba of Shemiamzy—his grave. I shall visit that koubba and sleep nearby, and he will send me messages in my dreams."

Nshalla agreed without question. Desperation was gnawing at her. Gmoulaye seemed sure of herself. That night they slept in the open, Mnada whimpering and jerking like a dog. Nshalla could not sleep.

Gmoulaye remained in kahina mode next morning, as the smoke of burning Marrakech drifted over their camp. "I will lead you," she said.

Following Gmoulaye, they encountered a few old people and filthy children amongst the charred ruins, but they ignored them and were themselves ignored. At a blasted checkpoint they discovered the corpses of two soldiers rotting with time-lapse speed from mutated micro-organisms. Two pairs of autocarts lay under a beige tarpaulin. The first pair had been cannibalised, but the second pair worked, and still had fuel.

Nshalla said, "I'll drive one. Who's going to take the other?"

"I will," said Khadir.

"I'll come with you," Gmoulaye told Nshalla.

Khadir jumped upon his machine with haste and revved the engine. Nshalla did likewise. In seconds they were off, dust spitting behind them, street wreckage flying away under the fat rubber wheels. On these vehicles they were able to navigate the environs of Marrakech. The autocarts spoke just the local dialect, and so Nshalla was forced to drive by guesswork, but since there were only a few controls it was not impossible. They were thrown about because of the lack of roads. When once they were shot at they ducked and made off at top speed.

Plane, tank and buggy wreckage obstructed their way. Tongues of carbonised bioware lay twisted amongst titanium bones stretched across the road, all dotted with corpses, and there were many splotches of orange, red and yellow, indicating that candyfloss clouds of germs had passed by.

"There!" said Gmoulaye, pointing north.

At the end of a street half-destroyed they saw a pale cube, like a tiny house—the koubba. Here they made second camp, sitting quietly until the sun sank into blood red clouds. Self-dispersing weather balloons lay all around, scattered from the broken roof of a local warehouse, and in the hellish light they looked like the bloated corpses of recently killed camels. Khadir kept guard as they slept.

Gmoulaye remained confident next morning. "We will glide to Fes swift as snakes," she said, "and there enter Muezzinland. Inside we may make our futures, if we are brave, and if Al-Uzza wills it."

"I'm brave," said Nshalla, glancing at Mnada and thinking, she is not.

Khadir frowned. "Like
snakes?
" he queried.

"Like snakes," Gmoulaye confirmed.

It was as if the word had been the trigger: snakes as omens of bad tidings.

A gust of hot wind struck camp. Khadir was on his feet in a second. Nshalla, aware of danger, pulled Mnada to her feet. Teliko! she thought.

In desperation Khadir examined the debris around him. "Get in that balloon!" he hissed, pointing to one loosed by the gust. He began flapping his wings, so that clouds of dust billowed into the air, making it difficult to see more than a few metres. The smoke of battle began to swirl around them.

Nshalla heard the sound of crashing stone as walls all around began to tumble, and her mind was taken back to Mengoub. Her body shook. Mnada lay silent in her arms. Gmoulaye was somewhere behind her, flat on the ground, surrounded by fallen masonry.

The balloon drifted nearby, and in one clear-sighted moment Nshalla grabbed its tether and anchored it, tying it to a steel pipe in the ground. The great dirigible bobbed in the turbulent air.

Then Nshalla heard a voice. She looked out over the pile of rubble that concealed her and saw a terrible sight.

Khadir was on his knees, hands to his throat, trying to breathe the dense atmosphere of scorching wind, smoke and dust: Teliko had him in his grasp. And there stood a great black leopard, five metres at the shoulder, with razor claws and an aura of darkness: Muso Koroni was also here.

Khadir managed to speak out. "Let me go!"

"Worship me!" came Teliko's rustling voice.

"No god worships another," said Khadir.

"You are no god," Teliko insisted, "but a castaway in this world, neither one thing nor the other, aiding a poor band of vagrants. Worship me!"

"Never."

Muso Koroni approached Khadir. She unsheathed her claws and with one strike cut a nearby tree into slices. "You will do as we say," she told him, as the tree fell to the ground.

To this, Khadir made no reply.

Muso Koroni purred. "So you see our logic," she said. "Where are the two humans and the other?"

Khadir choked on dust and smoke, then replied, "They have gone north. You are too late. We knew you were here."

In the privacy of her mind Nshalla praised Khadir for his quick thinking.

Muso Koroni placed one claw at his throat—it was bigger by far than an oriental scimitar—then said, "You lie, you die."

To which Khadir replied, "You would not dare kill me."

The silence that followed made Nshalla realise this must be true. The gods needed Khadir alive. That made sense, for they presumably wanted Mnada alive.

"We will find them," said Muso Koroni. "All we need now is Nshalla and then we can enter Muezzinland. Khadir, you will come with us. Teliko, pick him up!"

Nshalla lay in shock. They wanted
her?
What about Mnada?

And Khadir was being taken away!

On jets of Saharan-hot air he was lifted, like a VTOL aircraft, his wings flapping in an effort to be rid of the forces controlling him, his head shaking from side to side with the intensity of his effort.

"
No!
" he shrieked. "Not me!"

"Show us your divine powers now," Muso Koroni laughed. She leaped away.

Nshalla was left to ponder the ebbing breeze, circling like a fading dust storm around the remains of their camp. Above her, the balloon bobbed.

That gave them a way out of Marrakech. Nobody, possibly not even a god, would think to search a weather balloon. She bundled Mnada inside, then went to find Gmoulaye. Gmoulaye had heard nothing of the conversation and was under the impression that Khadir awaited them in the weather balloon. Her body went limp when Nshalla told her the news. "Without him we are done for," she said.

Nshalla felt a thrill of terror pass through her. Here was Gmoulaye, the confident kahina who had predicted their successful arrival in Muezzinland, now saying there was no hope. And, amid the smoking ruins, with the whiff of the Bambara earth goddess still musky in the air, the latter option did seem more likely.

She pulled herself together and led Gmoulaye to the weather balloon. It had been designed to launch from the Atlas, carrying the nomadic robots living here, who would sell the data they collected for electronic rewards. A steel and polythene basket lay under the balloon, filled with glittering panels and complicated rows of buttons. This was no psycopter. She would have to learn how to fly it.

With the other two inside, Nshalla untied the tether and pressed the button marked ^. The balloon began to ascend, soon affording her a view over the ruined city. It was not all destroyed; the gods had come from the east, and many of the western suburbs still stood. But even from this distance she could see refugee camps and streets choked with human beings. She understood that the gods had destroyed in fury and in vengeance upon humanity.

She concentrated on the control panels and soon had the basics understood: altitude and attitude, stability, sensorium.

She lay down against the side of the basket. Mnada crawled over, and in minutes she was asleep, her head cradled in Nshalla's arms. A tear formed in the corner of Nshalla's eye.

"Let me tell you what Muso Koroni told Khadir," she said to Gmoulaye.

Gmoulaye frowned. "They had a conversation?"

Nshalla sighed and looked down at her sister. "They were asking where the two humans were, and the
other.
"

"The other… hmmm." Gmoulaye looked away, unwilling to catch Nshalla's gaze.

"What do you think of that?"

Gmoulaye thought for a moment, then replied, "I told you there might be a divine element to Mnada."

"You hinted that," Nshalla returned.

Gmoulaye was gracious enough to accept the correction. "As you say. It is looking more and more as if I was right. Mnada is above the human."

"Or below."

"What do you mean?"

Again Nshalla looked down at the head of her sister, glistening black skin framed in bleached hair, and she wondered what lay inside. "She may be other than human. Below human. Who's to say what the Empress created?"

"Speculation."

Nshalla wiped her eyes clear. "
Non-
human, maybe."

"I think you are speculating a stage too far. Mnada is human enough."

"Is she," Nshalla replied. "Is she…"

"There is more?"

Nshalla nodded. "The gods captured Khadir because during his lucid dream they discovered what he is. Your schizothymic diagnosis was correct. This Mnada is quiet and introverted. But this isn't the real Mnada. And Muso Koroni said all they lacked now was me."

"You?"

"Me."

Gmoulaye rushed out her next few sentences. "I sincerely believe your brain has not been tampered with. You were the control of the experiment. You are the norm. You have the best chance of surviving your own childhood."

Nshalla nodded. "Let's hope you're right."

"I am certain I am right."

"As certain as a person lacking some of the facts can be."

Gmoulaye made no answer.

The balloon swept on towards Fes, and in time Nshalla fell asleep.

She dreamed she was lying on her back watching glow worms on the brick arch of a culvert, Mnada asleep at her side, Gmoulaye dozing. All three of them seemed wrapped in an atmosphere of pine, as if the scent was a blanket. Violins played, far away.

At her side lay an electric torch attached by cable to its solar charger. On it was pictsymed the legend 'Phantom Matsui 5'. Nshalla picked up this device and, filled with curiosity, cleaned off some of the grime with her sleeve. Her surprise was great when a small gentleman dressed in a grey suit appeared from the torch. His face was yellow and his eyes were somewhat slitted. He grinned, showing pearly teeth.

"I am here, mistress," he said. "What is your desire?"

Nshalla was dumbfounded. The man was real, the metallised fabric of his suit catching stray beams of light, the odour of spearmint on his breath. "My desire?" she said.

"I can offer you three wishes," said the man.

"Hmmm," Nshalla said.

She looked down at Mnada, and the focus of her wishes immediately became apparent. "My first wish is simple," she said. "I wish for Mnada to have more confidence in herself, and in the things she does, and to be less frightened. Is that one wish?"

"Yes."

Nshalla glanced down at her sister. "She's running from two enemies, you see, from her mother and from the gods. That's why I wished her to have more confidence. Do you think it was a good wish?"

"I don't make judgements on account of it being stressful. And your second wish?"

Now into her stride, Nshalla took a long look at the reclining body of her sister. She seemed scrawny. Her bleached hair was in poor condition, greasy and dusty, and though her expression was beatific, her face was lined.

"My second wish," Nshalla said, "is for her to be less bony. I wish there was more of her, and that she was more beautiful."

Before her eyes Mnada was transformed into a healthy athlete of a woman, with radiant face, long eyelashes, and a thick mane of brown hair. Her nose became slightly flatter, and her skin darkened a shade.

"Good work," Nshalla said.

"Thank you. And now the final wish. Choose carefully, for when you speak I shall return into the torch, never to appear before you again."

Nshalla closed her eyes to think. What did she want most of all for her beloved sister? It had to be the truth. Identity.

She opened her eyes and, smiling despite the gravity of the occasion—for she felt joy born of doing good for Mnada—said, "I wish for Mnada, at the end of her searching, to find her identity. To find herself."

"Very well."

Like smoke into a tunnel the little gentleman departed, leaving the faintest trail of sparks to show where he had been. Exhausted, Nshalla lay back with her head beside her sister's, but there was one final, and not at all pleasant twist to the dream. Beside her, Mnada sat up. Nshalla opened her eyes to see above her a grotesque face, green, twisted, with hair bleached to white and the kind of eyes Nshalla had only seen in the faces of cartoon villains—shining, bloodshot, wholly vile.