The Best Ye Breed

XVI ISOBEL CUNNINGHAM

Isobel Cunningham was less than happy. Matters were getting out of hand by the hour. She desperately needed the presence of the team and especially Homer Crawford.

It was unbelievable how rapidly things were progressing. Whole tribes that she had never even heard of were coming over to El Hassan en masse. Nations which she knew little more about than their names, were overthrowing their military dictatorships, or their pseudo-socialistic regimes and declaring for El Hassan. And Tamanrasset was the center to which all delegations streamed. She and Jimmy Peters and Doctor Smythe were working like Trojans and none slept for more than a few hours at a time, but seemingly they made little more than a dent on the required work.

The elderly Doctor Smythe put them both to shame. Already matters medical had gotten beyond the point where he, himself, had time to treat patients. Half of Fort Laperrine was already a hospital, staffed almost exclusively with blacks who had taken their medical educations in lands beyond Africa. Smythe now devoted his full energies to administration. When new medical groups centered in on Tamanrasset, seeking instructions from El Hassan, he sent them to other areas to establish hospitals and clinics. To Timbuktu, to Mopti, to Niamey in Niger, to N’Djamena on the shores of Lake Chad. Planes were coming in almost daily with medical and other supplies through the efforts of such pro-El Hassan organizations as the Africa For Africans Association.

Isobel had taken a walk, in an effort to achieve a bit of relaxation, through Tamanrasset, the day before. To her astonishment, she had run into an improvised hospital going up on the edge of the souk. She had never even heard of it. She had approached a white smocked negro doctor, who, in the open, was treating a child that had been bitten by a sand scorpion. The five year old’s fingers were swollen and stiff. Red streaks were visible all the way to its shoulder.

Isobel said, “Who are you?”

And the doctor had replied impatiently, without looking up, “I’m busy.”

Isobel, miffed, had said, “I’m El Hassan’s secretary.”

“I don’t care if you’re the Virgin Mary.” The other came erect and glowered at her. He was a nice looking young man, very sincere. “If there’s anybody in charge around this madhouse get them to requisition some sort of insecticide spray, in the DDT tradition. There’re enough poisonous insects in this damned town to kill off half the human race.” He turned back to his diminutive patient, who was whimpering.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Isobel said, and left.

But in spite of the administrative load on her shoulders she had found time to wonder about Major Ryan and his contingent of mercenaries. Possibly it was woman’s intuition that caused her to feel a twinge of apprehension about the twenty-four whites and one green bereted black who had come out of the desert supposedly seeking employment as bodyguards.

This morning she had arisen at dawn and checked over some odds and ends before the others of the rapidly growing administrative staff had turned up.

When she returned to her quarters, it was to find Megan McDaid, in negligee, at the table in the dining room, enjoying coffee and the local native sweet bread. Isobel wondered wearily how long it had been since she, herself, had been robed in a negligee. She couldn’t remember.

Meg smiled as she looked up at her. “Good morning,” she said. “As a doctor, I prescribe that you get some rest.”

Isobel looked rueful and got a cup and saucer from the side board. She sat down opposite the Irish girl and poured some of the thick coffee for herself, adding sugar liberally in the North African tradition.

She said, “I can see myself in this part of the world, Doctor…”

“Meg,” the other said.

“All right. I’m Isobel. I can see myself here but I wonder why you would ever leave green Ireland for the end of the Earth.”

Meg made a face and said, “Women aren’t popular in the medical field on the Emerald Isle. Bryan and I were hoping to accumulate enough of a nest egg to immigrate to Canada or the United States, where women aren’t ashamed to take off their brassieres in front of another woman, or a man doesn’t give a damn who removes his appendix, just so it’s removed.”

Isobel laughed sympathetically.

Meg said, out of a clear sky, “Isobel, you’re obviously opposed to our coming. Why?” Even as she spoke, inwardly she disliked herself for the position she occupied. But she had already rationalized and now felt she might pick up something, informally, that might be of use to Bryan and Sean, to be used against this brute El Hassan, when he finally appeared on the scene.

Isobel sipped her coffee and looked at the other young woman over the top of her cup. “You’re white and have no place in the new Ifriqiyah,” she said.

Meg frowned. “But there are thousands of whites helping develop North Africa. Mining engineers, oil technicians…”

Isobel was nodding. “But they have no place in North Africa, really, beyond a temporary one. In fact, they all hate it. I wonder if you have ever seen one of these oil camps. They consist of rows of boxlike houses, each with its air-conditioning unit, toilet, shower, bed, armchair, and desk. European food is provided in the mess hall. European news-papers, paperback books and magazines are flown in by the company aircraft. European music and shows are on the radio and TV sets. The only luxuries missing are European women. A week’s vacation every month takes care of that. They are flown back to the Mediterranean cities, or even as far as Paris, and taken to luxury hotels which cater almost exclusively to them. They are engaged, these engineers, mechanics, clerks, administrators and executives, in making their living. They’re not living in the desert from religious, idealistic, or patriotic motives. Isolated within their air-conditioned huts, waiting for the company plane with their fresh supply of orange juice and canned beer, they have no more feeling for the desert around them than the submariner has for the ocean outside the hull of his craft. They can’t wait to get back to their homes, families, and to their civilization. They have no interest in bringing civilization to Ifriqiyah.”

Meg frowned at her thoughtfully.

Isobel shrugged and said, “It’s not the only unloved place to which the white man goes in search of his god, money. The same applies to the far north. The area around Point Barrow, in most northern Alaska, is similar. It is Esquimo country, and the Esquimo would live nowhere else happily. The white man’s camps there are the equivalent of those in the Sahara with cold and snow rather than heat and sand. And none can wait to leave the north behind and return with his fantastically high pay to his own land.”

Meg shook her head, trying to assimilate it. “But how long do you intend to remain… Isobel? You yourself are an American, aren’t you? And used to the comforts of… civilization.”

Isobel sighed, finished her coffee and readied herself to come to her feet. She said, “I imagine I’ll be here for the rest of my life. The job is a big one. I was born in America, but racially I am an African. I have the El Hassan dream, to bring my people out of the Dark Ages. We can’t expect others to do it. The white man comes to North Africa solely to exploit it, in one way or the other.”

She stood and looked down at the attractive Irish girl and wound it up by saying, “I understand that Ireland, in her day, also had to fight to gain her independence.”

Meg looked at her emptily. Both of her grandfathers had died in the Black and Tan fighting with the British.

For some reason, unbeknownst even to herself, Isobel had forbidden the white soldiers of fortune to leave the limits of Fort Laperrine but had given Lon Charles freedom to go where he would in Tamanrasset. Her excuse was that he was a black and in no danger, but that she was unable to guarantee the safety of whites. Which wasn’t true. There were quite a number of European and American journalists, diplomatic representatives, and trade delegations in the area now and more coming in weekly. Most of these refrained from going into the the native areas and remained in their little ghetto on the outskirts of town of western tents, trailers and campers, contemptuous of what they considered the filth of the Saharan center. But the brave, usually accompanied by some of Guémama’s men as guards, occasionally roamed the streets, bringing no more reaction than curiosity and not much of that since whites, including traders, missionaries and even tourists had still sometimes come to Tamanrasset even after the evacuation of the French.

Now, on her way back from town to check out a matter with one of the local bashaws, she ran into the green bereted American. He had obviously been in one of the two or three cafés Tamanrasset supported and where beer and even the atrocious tasting date wine was available. Alcoholic drink was forbidden the good Moslem, but all Moslems are not good ones, and, besides, in this part of the Sahara, all did not follow Islam. Some tribesmen were pagans, and a few even Christians, converted by the missionaries who had plowed millions of dollars, francs and pounds into this area, for the sake of a handful of converts.

The call on the pasha had been routine. Word had come to her that he was shaking down the peddlers of kif in the souk. While she, as well as Homer and the others of the inner El Hassan group, had no brief for what the Americans called marijuana; they took no stand against it. Cannabis sativa had been used as an escape from reality since it had wended its way to this part of the world from far China, so remote in history as to be unrecorded.

The bashaw had been aghast. He assured the Sitt Izubahil that for as long as the memory of man his family had leveled a tax on all local sale of kif.

No more, she had told him coldly and hoped that it would not be necessary to bring the matter to the attention of El Hassan whose love for the people was such that he could not condone their being exploited.

Sooner or later, she thought sourly, as she left him, they would have to have a showdown with these racketeers. It should add immeasurably to the prestige of El Hassan in the eyes of the people, their victims.

Lon Charles had removed his beret and said, “Top of the afternoon, Miss Cunningham.” He looked back over his shoulder at the town and grinned. “It’s a long way from Newark.”

She laughed and said, “How did you know? But it was Teaneck, not Newark.”

He grinned again and put his battered beret back on his head, in protection from the sun. She herself wore a sun helmet.

“Jersey is Jersey,” he said. “You can tell.”

She said, “Are you heading back for the fort? Why don’t you walk along with me?”

He fell into step beside her.

She said, “You’re as far away from home as I am. Have you ever returned…” she indicated his green beret “… since Vietnam?”

He shook his head. “No. No, there’s nothing for an uneducated black in the States.” He thought about it. “And nowhere else for that matter. I was seventeen when I took up soldiering, and I’m still at it.”

She said, “It’s possible for even a black to get an education, Lon. You’ve got an inferiority complex.”

He chuckled and said, “It’s not an inferiority complex. I am inferior. Look at that Megan McDaid. She’s not half my age and she’s a doctor.”

Isobel shot a look at him from the side of her eyes as they walked along. She said, “So is Jimmy Peters and so is Doctor Smythe. For that matter, so is El Hassan. I’ve got a master’s degree. The fact that you’re black hasn’t anything to do with your intelligence.”

He shook his head again. “You’re only partly right. Sure some of us can fight our way up to where we’ve got as good an education as whitey. But, face it, on an average the black can’t compete with a white, or even a Jap or Chink, for that matter.”

She scoffed. “Lon, you’re believing the other guy’s propaganda. When our Nordic friends and other whites were running around in animal skins and squatting round campfires gnawing on half cooked bones, civilization was beginning here in Africa. Most of the fundamentals originated right here on this continent.”

He stared at her. “Man, you have flipped. Civilization started in Babylonia, in Greece, and later Rome.”

It was her turn to shake her head. “Have you ever heard of Egypt? The ancient Egyptians came down the Nile from Nubia, from Ethiopia. They were blacks. Whitey’s been trying to explain it away ever since; he simply can’t bear the idea. The Greeks were johnnies-come-lately, not to speak of the Romans, and they inherited most of their civilization from the Egyptians. The sciences, the arts, engineering, mathematics, astronomy, so forth and so on, all went through their infancy in Egypt. Even the Tigris-Euphrates civilizations were later. Practically all of the big breakthroughs in man’s development were made either in Africa or in Asia. From all the anthropologists can tell us, man himself originated somewhere to the southeast of here.”

Lon Charles was scowling. “The Egyptians weren’t blacks,” he said.

“No? What were they, then? Where did they come from? The very first signs of their culture were found in the upper reaches of the Nile. Take a look at their statues, with their thick lips, their flattish noses. They were blacks then and are still predominately blacks in spite of all the whites that have mixed with them after the various conquests. Their civilization lasted for thousands of years before it fell to white armies. Admittedly, the white race has produced the best soldiers, the greatest inventors of new weapons, up to and including nuclear ones. The Egyptians were never much for the military. But it wasn’t just Egypt. During the Dark Ages of Europe, Timbuktu, only a few hundred miles from here, surpassed the Rome, London or Paris of the time. Its universities and libraries were preserving the classics of Greece and Rome while the religious fanatics of Europe were erasing such works so they could use the parchment for inscribing crackpot supposedly holy books.”

“I never looked at it that way,”Lon said grudgingly.

“That’s what El Hassan is all about,” Isobel told him. “We’re trying to bring the blacks up to their rightful place in the world, a place the other races have usurped from us. We weren’t born to be the slaves of others, they shot us into that position with their superior weapons and their dedication to conquest.”

The sergeant said slowly, “They kind of like this El Hassan cat around here, don’t they?”

Isobel said, “Yes. The El Hassan movement is the dream.”

They had reached the fort.

Lon said, “I’d like to talk to you some more about this some time, Miss Cunningham.”

She grinned at him. “Isobel,” she said. “We Jerseyites have to stick together, Lon.” Then she looked at him and said, “You’re not as uneducated as you put on. How did you have any ideas on the origins of civilization? Whether or not I agree with them.”

“You get a lot of time to read, layin’ around in hospitals, or prison camps, or even barracks, between scraps,” he told her.

They separated at the gate and Isobel headed for the administration building, dreading whatever new crises might have accumulated in the hour she had been away.

She wished, all over again, that Homer, Kenny, Bey and Cliff would get back—and Elmer Allen with them. They’d been gone a couple of weeks now. As prearranged, there had been no communication. They were equipped with fairly efficient transceivers, but in the world of espionage-counter-espionage that prevailed today, you could never know whether or not your messages were being intercepted. And Homer wanted no word to go ahead that he was on his way to Elmer’s rescue. Surprise meant everything. North Africa was awash these days with rumors about El Hassan and all that pertained to him but in the last forty-eight hours in Tamanrasset they had received some broadcasts that they’d had difficulty in interpreting. The religious movement of the mahdi had been in the ascendency only a few days ago, now it seemed to be in collapse. Why?

A voice said, “Ah, good afternoon, Mademoiselle Cunningham.”

She turned to find Captain Raul Bazaine. He smiled his gallant Frenchman’s smile and touched the duckbill of his desert cap in an easy salute, making a slight bow.

“Good afternoon, Captain,” Isobel said, turning and continuing on her way toward the administration building, knowing that he would fall in step beside her.

When he did, she said, “Are your quarters adequate—considering the circumstances?”

He smiled ruefully. “I am a soldier, Mademoiselle. Even a roof is sometimes a luxury.”

Isobel said, “If you would rather, we can speak French.”

“Ah, no. I consider English a most beautiful language.”

In spite of his tendency toward what Meg McDaid would probably call blarney, Isobel didn’t mind the other’s company. It was something of a relief to speak to an educated person outside the El Hassan circle, for a change.

She said, in an easy mockery, “I thought that you French considered your language the only cultivated and beautiful one extant.”

He held his right hand over his heart as though in dismay. “Oh, no… Isobel. English had the most beautiful phrase any language in the world.”

She looked at him. “It has? What?”

“Cellar door.”

She laughed and said, “You fool.”

He laughed too and said, “How long do you think it will be before it will be possible to have an audience with El Hassan?”

She shook her head and made a moue. “We have no idea of just when he might return.”

He eyed her and cocked his head a little. “Return? Then he is away?”

She covered quickly, and perhaps too quickly, since there was a questioning look in his eye. “As I’ve already told you, El Hassan has withdrawn into the erg to a secluded spot where he and his closest aides can confer without hindrance.”

He dropped the subject and looked about the enclosed parade ground and the building which surrounded it. “It must be a dreary place for such a beautiful, vivacious young lady. What do you do for entertainment?”

“Work,” she said. “When you are involved in an inspirational program such as that of El Hassan, work becomes recreation.”

They had arrived at her destination and come to a halt.

“Ah,” he said, smiling his charm again. “But isn’t there an American saying beginning all work and no play …”

And she smiled at him again, mockingly. “Yes, but this particular work is far from dull. Good afternoon, Captain.”

He made a face of great sadness. “But never-the-less, Madamoiselle, if you find yourself in need of a bit of relaxation—I am most available.”

He touched his finger to his cap again in salute, and turned and headed back for where the soldiers of fortune had pitched their tents.

She looked after him in deprecation. “I’ll just bet you’re available,” she murmured under her breath.