Border, Breed Nor Birth

V

Guémama, nephew of Melchizedek the Amenokal of the Ahaggar Tuareg confederation and fighting chief of the Kel Rela clan of the Kel Rela tribe, brought his hejin racing camel to an abrupt halt with a smack of his mish’ab camel stick. He barked, “Adar-ya-yan,” in command to bring it to its knees, and slid to the ground before his mount had groaned its rocking way to the sand.

The Tarqui was jubilant. His dark eyes sparked above his teguelmoust veil and he presented himself before Homer Crawford with the elan of a Napoleonic cavalryman before his emperor. Were red leather fil fil boots capable of producing a clicking of heels, that sound would have rung.

Crawford said with dignity, “Aselamu, Aleikum, Guémama. Greeting to you.”

“Salaam Aleikum,” the tribesman got out breathlessly. “Your message spreads, O El Hassan. My men ride to eastward and westward and never a tent from here to Silet, from In Guezzam to Timissao but knows that El Hassan calls. The Taitoq and the Tégéhé Mellet ride!”

Homer Crawford was standing before the hovercraft. The Amenokal’s tribesmen had set up two large goat leather tents for his use and the three Americans had largely withdrawn to their shelter. Crawford was aware of the dangers of familiarity.

Cliff Jackson, who as usual had been monitoring the radio, came from the hover-lorry and growled, “What’s he saying?”

“The tribesmen are gathering as per instructions,” Homer said in English.

Jackson grunted, somewhat self-conscious of the Targui’s admiring gaze. The Tuareg is the handsomest physical specimen of North Africa, often going to six foot of wiry manhood, but there was nothing in all the Sahara to rival the build of Homer Crawford, not to speak of the giant Cliff Jackson.

Crawford turned back to the Tuareg chieftain. “You please me well, O Guémama. Know that I have been in conference with my viziers on the Roumi device which enables one to speak great distances and that we have decided that you are to head all the fighting clans of the Ahaggar, and that you will ride at the left hand of El Hassan, as shield on shoulder rides.”

The Targui, overwhelmed, made adequate pledges of fidelity, flowering words of thanks, and then hurried off to inform his fellow tribesmen of his appointment.

Isobel emerged from her tent. She looked at Homer obliquely, the sides of her mouth turning down. “As shield on shoulder rides,” she translated from the Tamaheq Berber tongue into English. “Hm-m-m.” She cast her eyes upward in memory. “You aren’t plagiarizing Kipling, are you?”

Crawford grinned at her. “These people like a well-turned phrase.”

“And who could turn them better than Rudyard?” she said. Her voice dropped the bantering tone. “What’s this bit about making Guémama warchief of the Tuareg? Isn’t he on the young and enthusiastic side?”

Cliff scowled. “You mean that youngster? Why, he can’t be more than in his early twenties.”

Crawford was looking after the young Targui who was disappearing into his uncle’s tent on the far side of the rapidly growing encampment.

“You mean the age of Napoleon in the Italian campaign, or Alexander at Issus?” he asked. Isobel began to respond to that, but he shook his head. “He’s the Amenokal’s nephew, and traditionally would probably get the position anyway. He’s the most popular of the young tribesmen, and it’s going to be they who do the fighting. Having the appointment come from El Hassan, and at this early point, will just bind him closer. Besides that, he’s a natural born warrior. Typical. Enthusiastic, bold, brave and with the military mind.”

“What’s a military mind?” Cliff said.

“He can take off his shirt without unbuttoning his collar,” Homer told him.

“Very funny,” Cliff grumbled.

Isobel turned to the big Californian. “What’s on the radio, Cliff?”

“Let’s go get a cup of coffee,” he said. “All hellza-poppin.”

They went into the larger of the two Tuareg tents, and Isobel poured water from a girba into the coffeepot which she placed on a heat unit, flicking its switch. She said sarcastically, from the side of her mouth, “A message, O El Hassan, from the Department of Logistics, subdepartment Commissary of Headquarters of the Commander in Chief. Unless you get around to capturing some supplies in the near future, your food is going to be prepared over a camel dung fire. This heat unit is fading out on me.”

“Don’t bother me with trivialities,” Homer told her. “I’ve got big things on my mind.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “Hm-m-m. Such as what?”

“Such as whether to put my face on the postage stamps profile or full.”

She said, under her breath, “I shoulda known. Already, delusions of grandeur.”

“Holy mackerel,” Cliff protested. “Aren’t we ever serious around this place? You two will wind up gagging with the firing squad.”

Crawford chuckled softly but let his face go serious. “Sorry, Cliff. What’s on your mind?”

Cliff said impatiently, “From the radio reports, the Arab Union is consolidating its position. El Hassan is being discredited by the minute. Your followers were in control for a time in Mopti and Bamako, but they’re falling away because of lack of direction. The best way I can put reports together, the Reunited Nations is in complete confusion. Everybody accusing everybody of double-dealing.”

Isobel said dryly, “Any other good news?”

Cliff said glumly, “Rumors, rumors, rumors. Half the marabouts in North Africa are proclaiming a jedah in support of the Pan-Islam program of the Arab Union. Listen, Homer, we’ve got to get the backing of the Moslem leaders.”

Homer Crawford grunted. “We need Islam in this part of the world like we need a hole in the head. That’s one of the things already wrong with North Africa.”

“What’s wrong with Islam? It was probably the most dynamic religion ever to sweep the world.”

“Was is right,” Crawford growled, now on one of his favorite peeve subjects. “The Moslem religion exploded out of Arabia with some new concepts that set the world in ferment from India to Southern France. For all practical purposes Islam invented science. Sure, the Greeks had logic and the Romans had engineering—without applying the Greek-style logic. But the Arabs amalgamated the two concepts to yield experimental science. They were able to take the intellectual products of a dozen cultures and weld them into one. For a hundred years or so it looked as though they had something.”

When he hesitated for a moment, Isobel said, ques-tioningly, “And …”

“And they couldn’t get away from that Q’ran of theirs. They took it seriously. They started off in their big universities, such as those at Fez, being the greatest scientists and scholars the world had ever seen. But the fundamentalists won out, and in a couple of hundred years the only thing being taught at Fez was the Q’ran. To even suggest that all necessary information isn’t contained therein is enough to get you clobbered. Islam became the most reactionary force to suppress progress in the civilized world. In fact, by this period in world history, we don’t even think of the Moslem world as particularly civilized.”

Cliff said defensively, “The Bible doesn’t encourage original thinking either. A fundamentalist…”

“Sure,” Crawford interrupted. “Those elements who take the Bible the way Islam took the Q’ran wind up in the same rut. But as a whole, Europe was sparked enough by the original Islamic explosion that the Renaissance resulted, with what world results we all know. Be-”

There was a roar of confusion outside. A blasting of guns, a shrieking of Ul-Ul-Ul-Allah Akbar!

Crawford came to his feet unhappily. “Another contingent of Tuareg,” he said. “I’ll have to give them a quick welcoming to the colors speech.”

The guns outside continued their booming.

“Confound it,” he growled, “I wish I could break them of that habit of blasting away their ammunition. They’ll have better targets before the week is out.”

He pushed open the tent flap and, followed by Isobel and Cliff, emerged into the stretch of clearing between his tents and the hovercraft, and the growing Tuareg encampment. His diagnosis had been correct. A contingent of possibly two-score Tuareg camelmen had come a-galloping up, shaking rifles above their heads in a small scale gymhana, or fantasia, as the Moors called them.

“At least it’s a larger group than usual,” Cliff said from behind. “But at this rate, it’ll still take a month for us to equal the Arab Legion in Tamanrasset.” He added in disgust, “And look at this bunch of ragamuffins. Half of them are carrying muzzle-loaders.”

The booming muskets and the cracking rifles suddenly began to fall off in intensity and the camelmen and the hordes of Tuareg women and naked children who had swarmed from the tents to greet them were falling silent. Here and there a hand pointed upward.

Homer, Cliff and Isobel swung their own eyes up to the sky in dreaded anticipation. The hover-lorry was camouflaged to blend in with the sands and rock out-croppings of this area, but it was possible that an aircraft might have determined that this was El Hassan’s base, possibly through some act of a traitor, in which case…

They found the spot in the sky that the tribesmen were pointing out. It seemed to move slowly for a military craft, but for that matter it might be a helio-jet and considerably more dangerous, so far as they being spotted was concerned, than a fast-moving fighter.

Guémama was barking to his men to take cover. Two days before Crawford had checked out several of the more bright-eyed on the flac rifle and now three of them ran to where it was set up at a high point.

But hardly had the confused milling got under way than it fell off again. Movement stopped, and the Tuareg faced the approaching dot in the sky.

“Djinn!”

“Afrit!”

Cliff had darted back into the tent. Now he emerged with binoculars.

“What the devil is it?” Crawford snapped. Desert-trained eyes were evidently considerably more effective than his own. He couldn’t see what the tribesmen were gaping at.

“It’s the smallest heliohopper I’ve ever seen,” Cliff snorted. “It’s so small practically all you can see are the rotors and the passenger. He doesn’t even look as though he’s got a seat.”

Guémama came hurrying up, his eyes wide beneath his teguelmoust. “El Hassan! A witchman … come out of the sky!”

Homer said evenly, “It is nothing. Only post men ready to obey my commands.”

Guémama hesitated as though to waver out another protest, but then spun and hurried off military-like, glad to have an order to obey to keep his mind from the impossible.

“I’m beginning to have a sneaking suspicion …” Crawford began without finishing. “Come on Isobel, Cliff. We’re going to have to make the most of this.”

Rex Donaldson, ex-field man for the African Department of the British Commonwealth, dropped the lift lever of his heliohopper and settled to the ground immediately before Homer Crawford, who stood there flanked by Isobel Cunningham and Cliff Jackson. Further back and in the form of a crescent were possibly two or three hundred Tuareg of all ages and both sexes.

Donaldson, in the garb of a Dogan juju man consisting of little more than a wisp of cloth about his loins, played it straight, not knowing the setup. On the face of it, he had just flown out of the sky personally. The size of his equipment so small as to be all but meaningless.

He unstrapped himself from the thin, bicyclelike seat expressionlessly folded the rotors of his tiny craft back over themselves and the engine, collapsed the whole thing into a manageable packet of some seventy-five pounds, the seat now becoming a handle, and turned to face Crawford.

Donaldson screwed his wizened face into an expression of respect and made a motion of obeisance. Then he waited.

Isobel said, “El Hassan bids you speak.”

That was the tip-off, then. Crawford had already revealed himself to these people as El Hassan. Very well.

Donaldson spoke in Arabic, not knowing the Tama-heq tongue. “Aselamu, Aleikum, El Hassan. I come to obey your wishes.”

A sigh had gone through the Tuareg. “Aiiiii.” Wallahi, even the djinn obeyed El Hassan!

With dignity, Homer Crawford said, “Keif halak, all in my house is yours.”

Rex Donaldson inclined his small bent body again, in respect.

Crawford said in English, “Let’s not carry this too far. Come on into the tent.”

Ignoring the Tuareg, who still gaped but held their distance, the four English-speaking Negroes headed for the larger of the two tents that had been set up for El Hassan.

As they passed Guémama, who stood slightly aside from the other Tuareg with his uncle Melchizedek, the Amenokal, Crawford nodded and said, speaking to them both, “A messenger from my people to the south. Continue with your newly arrived warriors, O Guémama.”

Cliff Jackson had picked up the folded heliohopper and was now carrying it easily.

Guémama looked at the device and blinked.

Crawford refrained from laughing at his commander of irregulars. “It is not a kambu device. My people deal not in magic. It is but one of the many of the things the new ways bring. One day, Guémama,” Homer’s face remained expressionless, “perhaps you will fly thus.”

The teguelmoust hid the other’s blanch.

In the tent, Homer turned to the Bahaman and motioned to what seating arrangements were available.

Isobel said, “I’ll get some coffee.”

Cliff blurred, “Holy mackerel, if Donaldson here can drop in on us out of a clear sky, what keeps anybody else from doing it? Somebody with a couple of neopalm bombs in the way of calling cards.”

The dried up little man grimaced in his equivalent of a grin and said, “Hold it, you chaps, I want to notify the others.”

“The others? What others?” Crawford said.

Donaldson ignored him for a moment, unslung the small bag he carried over one shoulder and dipped into it for a tiny two-way radio. He pressed the buzzer button, then held it up to his mouth. “Jack, Jimmy, Dave. Here we are. Took donkey’s years, but I found them. You chaps zero-in here.” He left the device on and set it to one side, then yawned and settled himself to the rug-covered ground, crosslegged, Dogon style.

Homer Crawford, even as he sat down himself on a footlocker, in lieu of a chair, rapped, “How did you find us? Who did you just radio? Where’d you come from?”

“I say, hold it,” Donaldson chuckled sourly. “First of all, I’ve come to join up. I thought as far back as that time we cooperated in quelling the riots in Mopti that you ought to do this—proclaim yourself El Hassan. When I heard you’d taken the step, I came to join up.”

“Oh, great,” Cliff said. “What took you so long? We hardly get here, to our ultra-secret hideout, than here you are.”

Isobel came with the coffee and handed it around silently. Then she, too, settled to the rug which covered the sand of the floor.

Rex Donaldson turned to Cliff, and there was a wrinkle of amusement in the older man’s eyes. “I took so long because I needed the time to recruit a few other chaps I knew would stand with us.”

Crawford rapped, “That’s who you just radioed?”

“Of course, old boy. I’d hardly bring the opposition down on us, would I?”

“Where are they?”

“In a couple of hovercraft, similar to your own, possibly twenty kilometers to the southwest.”

“You still haven’t told us how you found us.”

The little man shrugged. “After tendering my resignation to Sir Winton, I considered the possibilities, which narrowed down very quickly when I heard the Arab Legion had taken Tamanrasset.”

“Why?” Isobel said.

Donaldson shot a glance at her. “Because, my dear, unless El Hassan is able to retake Tamanrasset, his movement has come a cropper.” He turned his eyes back to Crawford, who was nervously running his hand through his hair. “I knew you had done considerable work in this area, so your whereabouts became obvious, seeing that Tamanrasset is in Tuareg country. It was simply a matter of finding what Tuareg encampment was your base, and since your quickest manner of gathering supper would be to swing the Amenokal to your banner, I headed for his usual encampment this time of year.”

Cliff looked at Homer Crawford. “If Rex found us so easily, so will anybody else.”

Isobel put in. “Not necessarily. Mr. Donaldson has information that most of El Hassan’s opponents wouldn’t.”

Homer came to his feet unhappily and began pacing. “No, Isobel. Ostrander, for instance, has all the dope Rex has and is just as capable of working it through to a conclusion. It takes no great insight to realize El Hassan has to either put up or shut up when it comes to Tamanrasset. That’s possibly why some of the other elements interested in North Africa have so far refrained from action against the Arab Union. They want to see what El Hassan is going to do—find out just what he has on the ball.”

Rex Donaldson looked at him interestedly, “And? What are your plans?”

Homer Crawford’s face worked. “My plans right at present are to stay alive, and you finding me so easily isn’t heartening. However, it brings to mind some other problems which need solving, too.”

The rest of them fell silent, looking at him. His usual casual humor had dropped away, and his personality gripped them.

He stopped his pacing and frowned down at them.

“El Hassan is going to have to remain on the move. Always. There can be no capital city, no definite base, and it’s going to be a poor idea to sleep twice in the same place.” He shook his head emphatically as though to deny rebuttal, which they hadn’t actually made. “El Hassan’s enemies mustn’t know his location within twenty miles.”

“Twenty miles!” Cliff blurted.

Crawford stared at him, but unseeingly. “Yes. At least half a dozen of our opponents posses nuclear weapons.”

Donaldson demurred, sourly. “A nuclear weapon hasn’t been exploded for donkey’s years and …”

“Of course not,” Homer snapped. “Nor would anyone dare, anywhere else except in the wastes of the Sahara. A nuclear explosion in the Ahaggar would not go undetected and a controversy might go up in the Reunited Nations. But who could prove who had done it? And who, actually, would care if in the explosion a common foe of all was eliminated? But let the Arab Union, or possibly the Soviet Complex, or even others, learn definitely where El Hassan is and a bomb could well devastate twenty square miles seeking him out.” Crawford shook his head. “No, we’ve simply got to keep on the move.”

Donaldson said, even as he nodded agreement, “And what other problems were you talking about?”

“Oh?” Homer said. “Well, keeping on the move will serve to add mystery to the El Hassan legend. It isn’t good for this Tuareg encampment, for instance, to see too much of El Hassan. A leader claiming domination of half a continent looks small potatoes in a desert camp of a few score tents. On the move, showing up here, there, the other place, for only a day or two at a time, is another proposition.”

He thought a moment. “Remember DeGaulle?”

“How could we forget?” Rex Donaldson said wryly.

“He had one angle that couldn’t be more correct. He said a leader had to keep remote, ever mysterious. He can’t afford to have real intimates. Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin—none of them had a real friend to their name. The nearest to friends that Adolph the Aryan ever had, his old comrades of the beerhall days, such as Rhoem, he butchered in the blood purge. And Stalin? He managed to do away with every Old Bolshevik he knew in the days before the Party came to power.”

Cliff was staring at him. “Hey,” he said. “The one other thing one of these mystical leader types needs is a belief in his own destiny. To the point of clobbering all his intimates if he thinks they stand in his way.”

Homer broke into a sudden short laugh. “Any qualms, Cliff?”

Cliff growled, “I don’t know. This dream of yours is growing. Where it might end—I don’t know.”

As they were talking the cries of Ul-Ul-Ul-Allah Akbar! had broken out again.

“Heavens to Betsy,” Isobel said. “Another contingent of camelmen?”

But this time the newcomers were three in number and rode in air-cushion hover-lorries, the twins of that used by Homer Crawford.

Rex Donaldson brought them up to the tent, saying, “I didn’t think you chaps were quite so close.”

Homer, Cliff and Isobel faced the new recruits. The three were dressed in khaki bushshirts, shorts and heavy walking shoes—British style. Two were so obviously relatives that they could have been twins except for an age discrepancy of two or three years. They were smaller than the Americans present, almost chunky, but their faces held education and cultivation. The third was slight of build, almost as wiry as Rex Donaldson, and seemed ever at ease.

The small, bent Bahaman made introductions. “Gentlemen, let me present El Hassan—Homer Crawford to you—formerly of the Reunited Nations African Development Project, formerly of the United States of the Americas.” His face twisted in his sour grimace of a grin. “Now running for the office of tyrant of North Africa.

“And these are two of his original and most trusted adherents, Isobel Cunningham and Cliff Jackson.” Donaldson turned to the newcomers. “John and James Peters—that’s Jack and Jimmy, of course—recently colleagues of mine with the African Department of the Commonwealth, working largely in the Nigeria area.”

Homer shook hands, grinning. “You’re a long way from home.”

“Farther than that,” the one labeled Jack said without a smile changing the seriousness of his face. “We’re originally from Trinidad.”

Donaldson said, “And this is David Moroka, late of South Africa.”

The wiry South African said easily, “Not so very late. In fact, I haven’t seen Jo-burg since I was a boy.”

He was shaking hands with Isobel now. “Jo-burg?” she said.

“Johannesburg,” he translated. “I got out by the skin of my teeth during the troubles in the 1950s.”

“You sound like an American,” Cliff said when it was his turn to shake.

“Educated in the States,” Moroka said. “Best thing that ever happened to me was to be kicked out of the land of my birth.”

Homer made a sweeping gesture at the floor and the few articles of furniture the tent contained that could be improvised as chairs. “I’m surprised you’re up here instead of in your own neck of the woods,” he said to the South African.

Moroka shrugged. “I was considering heading south when I ran into Jimmy and Jack here. They’d already got the word on the El Hassan movement from Rex. Their arguments made sense to me.”

Eyes went to the brothers from Trinidad and Jack Peters took over the position of spokesman. He said, seriously, as though trying to convince the others, “North Africa is the starting point, the beginning. Given El Hassan’s success in uniting North Africa, the central areas and later even the south will fall into line. Perhaps one day there will be a union of all Africa.”

“Or at least a strong confederation,” Jimmy Peters added.

Homer nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps. But we can’t look that far forward now.” He looked from one of the newcomers to the other. “I don’t know to what extent you fellows understand what the rest of us have set out to accomplish, but I suppose if you’ve been with Rex for the past week you have a fairly clear idea.”

“I believe so,” Jack nodded, straight-faced.

Homer Crawford said slowly, “I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. If you join up, you’ll find it’s no parade. Our chances were slim to begin with, and we’ve had some setbacks. As you’ve probably heard, the Arab Union has stolen a march on us. And from what we can get on the radio, we have thus far to pick up a single adherent among the world powers.”

“Powers?” Cliff snorted. “We haven’t got a nation the size of Monaco on our side.”

Moroka shot a quick glance at the big Californian.

Isobel caught it and laughed. “Cliffs a perpetual sour-puss,” she said. “However, he’s been in since the first.”

The South African looked at her in turn. “We were hardly prepared to find a beautiful American girl in the Great Erg,” he said.

Something about his voice caused her to flush. “We’ve all caught Homer’s dream,” she said, almost defensively.

David Moroka flung to his feet, viper fast, and dashed toward Homer Crawford, his hands extended.

Automatically, Cliff Jackson stuck forward a foot in an attempt to trip him—and missed.

The South African, moving with blurring speed, grasped the unsuspecting Crawford by the right hand and arm, swung with fantastic speed and sent the American sprawling to the far side of the tent.

Homer Crawford, old in rough-and-tumble, was already rolling out. Before the inertia of his fall had given away, his right hand, only a split second before in the grip of the other, was fumbling for the 9 mm noiseless holstered at his belt.

Rex Donaldson, a small hand gun magically in his hand, was standing, half-crouched on his thin, bent legs. The two brothers from Trinidad hadn’t moved, their eyes bugging.

Moroka was spinning with the momentum of the sudden attack he’d made on his new chief. Now there was a gun in his own hand and he was darting for the tent opening.

Cliff yelled indignantly, “Stop him!”

Isobel, on her feet by now, both hands to her mouth, was staring at the goatskin tent covering, against which, a moment earlier, Crawford had been gently leaning his back as he talked.

There was a vicious slash in the leather and even as she pointed, the razor-sharp arm dagger’s blade disappeared. There was the sound of running feet outside the tent.

Homer Crawford had assimilated the situation before the rest. He, too, was darting for the tent entrance, only feet behind Moroka.

Donaldson followed, muttering bitterly under his breath, his face twisted more as though in distaste than in fighting anger.

Cliff, too, finally saw light and dashed after the others, leaving only Isobel and the Peters brothers. They heard the muffled coughing of a silenced gun, twice, thrice and then half a dozen times, blurting together in automatic fire.

Homer Crawford shuffled through the sand on an awkward run, rounding the tent, weapon in hand.

There was a native on the ground making final spasmodic muscular movements in his death throes, and not more than three feet from him, coolly, David Moroka sat, bracing his elbows on his knees and aiming, two-handed, as his gun emptied itself.

Crawford brought his own gun up, seeking the target, and clipping at the same time, “We want him alive.”

It was too late. Two hundred feet beyond, a running tribesman, long arm dagger still in hand, stumbled, ran another three or four feet with hesitant steps, and then collapsed.

Moroka said, “Too late, Crawford. He would have got away.” The South African started to his feet, brushing sand from his khaki bush shorts.

The others were beginning to come up, and from the Tuareg encampment a rush of Guémama’s men started in their direction.

Crawford said unhappily, looking down at the dead native at their feet, “I hate to see unnecessary killing.”

Moroka looked at him questioningly. “Unnecessary? Another split second and his knife would have been in your gizzard. What do you want to give him, another chance?”

Crawford said uncomfortably, “Thanks, Dave, anyway. That was quick thinking.”

“Thank God,” Donaldson said, coming up, his wrinkled face scowling unhappily, first at the dead man at their feet, and then at the one almost a hundred yards away. “Are these local men? Where were your bodyguards?”

Cliff Jackson skidded to a halt after rounding the tent. He’d heard only the last words. “What bodyguards?” he said.

Moroka looked at Crawford accusingly. “El Hassan,” he said. “Leader of all North Africa. And you haven’t even got around to bodyguards? Do you fellows think you’re playing children’s games? Gentlemen, I assure you, the chips are down.”