The Best Ye Breed

VI EL HASSAN

They had only been gone a few days in their pursuit of the retreating Arab Union forces and Bey-ag-Akhamouk and Kenny Ballalou were astonished at the changes that had taken place in so short a time. They had left at night, with all the debris of furious battle littering the area, in particular, between Tamanrasset proper and Fort Laperrine. El Hassan’s Tuaghi and other tribesmen had attacked in force, while most of Colonel Ibrahim’s armor and other mechanized equipment was plunging out into the erg and reg in an effort to seize the waterholes upon which El Hassan’s people were dependent. The deciding factor was when the heratin sedentary workers and serfs, stirred up by infiltrated El Hassan propagandists, had erupted from the souks of Tamanrasset, armed largely with hoes, scythes, sickles, axes and other agricultural implements and stormed the fort. They had been cut down in swaths by the few machine guns the colonel had left to defend the area, but nothing could hold them.

The forces of El Hassan, those disciplined enough to take orders, were the only element that prevented a complete destruction of the overwhelmed Arab Union Legionaires.

But now, seemingly overnight, all bodies had been removed, and most signs of the recent combat were already erased, though large squads of native workers were everywhere, still patching, still rebuilding. Most of the material damage had been done on the outskirts of Tamanrasset, rather than on Fort Laperrine. The elements of the Arab Union left behind to hold the almost abandoned fort, had possessed a few motorized recoilless guns and had shelled the town, until overwhelmed. But even this damage was rapidly being repaired. The workers seemed in a holiday mood, despite the arduous labor to which they were subjecting themselves.

Kenny looked over at Bey, as they approached. He said, “Homer’s pulled another rabbit out of the hat. How’n the hell did he ever get these people to work so hard? Traditionally, they’re experts at goofing off.”

“Search me,” Bey said, looking around. “Possibly it’s because it’s the first time they’ve ever done something that would profit themselves. I don’t see the tents. Where are Homer and the rest?”

A Tuareg warrior was passing. Bey called out to him in Tanaheq, asking the whereabouts of El Hassan and his viziers. The other answered and Bey looked back at Kenny. “They’re inside the fort.” he said.

They pulled through the main gate, which was in the process of being repaired, and headed for the parade ground. Once Foreign Legionaires, Chasseurs d’Afrique, Spahis, and Tirailleurs d’Afrique had paraded here. Now it was as warm with Tuaghi, Teda, Ouled Tidrarin, Sudanese, Songhoi and even occasional Rifs from the far north, not to speak of representatives of various tribes that neither Kenny nor Bey recognized. All were armed, and armed with modern weapons of Soviet Complex design. On the face of it, El Hassan had taken little time to confiscate the captured modern equipment of the Arab Union and distribute it among his followers.

Bey asked questions again and they drove over to the former administration building of the fort and parked the hover jeep. There were quite a few other vehicles in the vicinity, ranging from additional jeeps, to heavy trucks and even several medium tanks. El Hassan had supplied his forces adequately with his military loot. Well, they both decided, inwardly, they’d need it.

They found Homer, Isobel and Cliff Jackson in the former officer’s mess, all three looking as though they hadn’t slept for as long as they could remember.

Homer Crawford and Cliff Jackson were dressed in military khakis, obviously liberated from the foe. Isobel wore a man’s shirt of the same material and had evidently taken two pair of khaki shorts, ripped them up and reconstructed them into a culotte, a divided skirt. On her figure, it looked fine. She was a pretty wisp of a girl, somewhere in her mid-twenties and seemingly couldn’t have been more out of place than in this Saharan background.

The three were seated at a long, heavy table, strewn with papers and dispatches and a battered typewriter which sat before Isobel. They looked up at the entrance of Bey and Kenny.

Homer ran a black hand back over his short wiry hair, in a gesture of weariness, and said, “I thought you two were pursuing that bastard Ibrahim.” But he looked relieved to see them, as did the other two.

“Consider him pursued, man,” Kenny said, slumping down onto a bench, and putting his Tommy-Noiseless on the table before him.

Bey said, “Guémamaa is escorting the survivors back.”

“Guémamaa!” Cliff Jackson blurted. “With those fanatic camelmen of his? If any of the prisoners get back here, they’ll be lucky.” The big Californian former UCLA athlete was the least sophisticated of the El Hassan crew and had a tendency to gush.

Bey sighed and said, “I told them that El Hassan had sent word that he wanted to put the prisoners to the question and find out everything he could about what the Arab Union was up to. They can’t wait to get back to watch the torture going on.”

“Oh, great,” Homer growled. “Now I’ll have to talk them out of that little pleasure. How many prisoners are there?”

“Possibly two hundred, including the wounded,” Kenny said.

Isobel winced. “No more than that?”

Bey looked over at her. “When they started from here, quite a few were wounded. There was insufficient room in their vehicles—those that they still had—for wounded, other than officers. They were carrying too much equipment. The others had to keep up as best they could. There was insufficient water, and in this part of the world, the sun we shall always have with us. We hung on their flanks and knocked off the stragglers, and sniped at the main column. Short of the Khyber Pass, this is possibly the best area in the world for guerrilla fighting. From time to time, they’d flip their lids and send the armored cars—they had two of them—or their jeeps to flush us out. The only casualties we took were probably tribesmen who laughed themselves to death. Finally, they gave those tactics up and put the armored cars to each flank and the jeeps to the front and rear to cover those on foot. Damn little good it did them. We continued to pick them off, one by one, or to overrun stragglers, two or three or so at a time.”

Bey took a deep breath. “It was pretty bad. The tribesmen had the time of their lives. It got a little sickening to Kenny and me.”

Homer said, understanding in his voice, “What finally happened, Bey?”

“Their officers seemingly went completely around the bend. They took to one of the larger wadis, probably figuring that they could make better time. We ambushed them. At first they wouldn’t surrender, probably figuring on being butchered. When Guémama and his boys came up, slavering at the mouth, they panicked completely and it was all over.”

Homer Crawford said, “How did Guémamaa work out?”

“Fine. He controls his men like a top sergeant.”

Kenny said, “What in the hell are you three doing in Western dress? What’re the Tuaghi going to say when they see you without a teguelmoust? With your faces, ah, obscenely revealed?”

Both Bey and Kenny still wore the complete Tuaghi attire, as had all of them, even Isobel, up until the present.

Homer shook his head and said, “This camp now represents a score of different tribes, some of which I’ve never even heard of. Some of them are blood-foes of the Tuaghi, or have been until the advent of El Hassan’s unifying movement. We can’t afford to present ourselves as favoring one element. From now on, all of El Hassan’s immediate staff will wear desert khakis and so will all of our armed forces, Tuaghi and otherwise. If any potential trooper doesn’t like the idea, he won’t be accepted into our service. We’ve got to break down these age-old traditions. Some of them are crazy. Wearing black wool burnouses, for instance, in this climate. Or Moroccan babouche slippers. They have no back to them. You walk by kind of shuffling forward. If you try to walk backward, the slippers fall off your feet. Or can you imagine trying to run at any speed in them? Or take the haik as worn in Morocco and Algeria. It so covers the woman’s head that she can’t hear well and only one eye is exposed. Can you imagine walking through modern traffic in a city in this outfit? They get hit like ten pins.”

Homer Crawford was bitterly definite. “No, the traditional clothes of the North African have to go!”

“Where’d you get your outfits?” Kenny said, unimpressed by this harangue.

“We liberated them from the Arab Union soldiers,” Cliff told him. “Except for those kaffiyeh headdresses of theirs, they wear the same clothes the British did when they were fighting Rommel or, for that matter, the same as the Israelis wear.”

“Well, you’re not going to outfit all of our armed forces with what you swiped from Colonel Ibrahim’s men.”

Homer laughed. “We’ve placed a sizeable order in Dakar by radio, along with other immediate necessities.”

He picked up a small brass bell from before him and rang it. A tribesman, garbed self-consciously in desert khakis, the same as those of Homer and Cliff, entered and came to attention, rather sloppily, but at least he made the attempt.

Homer said, “Locate my viziers, James ben Peters and Doctor Smythe and the juju man, Dolo Anah, and request their presence.”

The guard left.

Both Bey and Kenny were ogling Homer. “What in the hell do you mean, you ordered them from Dakar?” Kenny demanded. “With what ? We haven’t enough money between us to play a slot machine.”

Homer laughed and said, “Ask our Vizier of the Treasury,” and looked over at Cliff Jackson.

Jackson was a big man, even larger than Homer Crawford. Blacker than most American Negroes, he bore himself with the lithe grace of a giant cat. Under Homer’s orders, the Californian, whenever occasion allowed, stripped himself to the waist and wandered around the encampment bare-chested. The Tuareg, beautiful physical specimens in their own right, admired masculine strength. Their eyes followed this companion of El Hassan everywhere.

Cliff shook his head and said, “It’s the damnedest thing you ever saw. Since you two left, pounding after old Ibrahim, a dozen or more delegations have come from Common Europe, India, the United States of the Americas, and, for Christ’s sake, even South Africa. Half a dozen of them are trying to lay money onto us.”

Bey and Kenny were bug-eyeing him. “Money? What in the hell for?” Bey said.

“Well, for instance, the Swedes. They’re the only ones I’ve accepted anything from, so far. They laid ten million gold Kronen on us in advance payment for bauxite. They don’t have any bauxite of their own and they’ve got a king-size aluminum industry. They want in on the ground floor.”

“What ground floor?” Kenny demanded, unbelievingly.

“Well, it seems that Rio de Oro is ass-deep in bauxite, probably the biggest undeveloped fields in the world.”

“Where in the devil’s Rio de Oro?” Bey said.

Jimmy Peters had just entered. Originally from Trinidad, he was smaller than the American men and chunky of build. He wore old-fashioned spectacles and had an air of education and cultivation. Until he had joined El Hassan he had been with the African Department of the British Commonwealth. On his face could still be seen the lines brought on by the death of his brother, Jack, who had been as close to him as a twin. He was dressed in the new khaki uniform of the El Hassan forces.

Jimmy Peters was known for his all but photographic memory and said now, “The former Spanish Sahara was divided into two provinces, Rio de Oro, about 70,000 square miles, and Sekia el-Hamra, some 32,000 square miles. Population has been estimated everywhere from 27,000 nomads to 45,000, though I’ll be damned if I know how anybody could ever have counted them. The country’s fantastically rich in phosphates and particularly bauxite, possibly the richest deposits known. Morocco to the north, Algeria to the east, and Mauretania to the south, have all claimed the country since the Spanish pulled out. They never have made a permanent settlement, the area’s up for grabs.”

Isobel said, “What would we need with an encyclopedia, with Jimmy around?”

Had Jimmy Peters been lighter in complexion, he would have flushed, but he grinned his shy grin at her. They were all in love with Isobel Cunningham.

“But what of it?” Bey demanded. “We haven’t taken this Rio de Oro, at least as yet. So far as I know, we have no elements of our people in that area at all. Mauretania, yes, but not the former Spanish Sahara.”

Cliff said with a short laugh and a shake of the head, “Evidently, the Swedes are willing to wait. They want that bauxite so bad they can taste it.”

Homer said, “We’re being picky and choosey about whom we make deals with. We’re not out for the quick buck, we’re looking forward to the development of North Africa, for the benefit of the North Africans, not a bunch of multinational corporations.”

Rex Donaldson and Doctor Warren Harding Smythe entered. The heavy-set, gray haired doctor, whose feisty energy belied his weight, was, as usual, sputtering. “What… What!” he demanded. “Why am I torn away from my patients? I have enough work on my hands for a dozen doctors, a double score of nurses and…”

Bey said, “An Arab Union doctor should be here by tomorrow, Doctor Smythe, and two trained medicos with him.”

And Isobel said, “And we have also picked up radio signals that several of the other American Medical Relief teams are coming in, to ask questions about their continued operations in the areas where El Hassan’s followers have taken over. Surely, they’ll pitch in locally, while the emergency continues.”

Rex Donaldson, formerly of Nassau in the British Bahamas, formerly of the College of Anthropology, Oxford, formerly field man for the African Department of the British Commonwealth, was a small, bent man who usually operated in the Dogon country to the south, breaking down tribal barriers, prejudices against the new schools, and the ritual-taboos traditions of the area in general, was now on El Hassan’s immediate staff.

He looked at Bey and Kenny and said, “Hello, chaps. How did you make out with our chum, the colonel?”

“A bit bloodily,” Kenny said. “But he and the remains of his forces are coming in.”

Homer said, “Will everybody be seated about this table here? The cabinet of El Hassan is in session, or should we call it a djemaa el kebar, in the Arabic fashion?”

The others all moved up to places at the table, save the doctor, who stood glaring.

“Mr. Crawford,” he sputtered. “By no stretch of imagination can I be considered one of your cabinet. I have informed you, long since, that I am opposed to what you are trying to do. You are attempting to force these people into the 21st Century, overnight. They are not capable of assimilating such changes. I fear for their mental health under the pressures of what has been called Future Shock. I and the other teams of the American Medical Relief are here to fight disease, to build clinics and hospitals, and, above all, medical schools—not to change institutions that are not ready for change.”

Homer Crawford looked at him in exasperation and said, “Doctor, you contradict yourself. You wish to build medical schools, but who will be your students in them? Bedouins who cannot read or write? You speak of clinics. Very well, your American Medical Relief teams—and we admire their work—number a score or two in an area bigger than the United States. Your funds are far from unlimited and I understand that large elements in the American Congress, calling for financial retrenchments, wish to cut your appropriation down to a point that would make it meaningless. Then who will maintain these clinics and hospitals? Who will buy the medicines necessary to treat everything from endemic syphilis to ophthalmia, the eye disease almost universal among nomad children?”

Doctor Smythe stared at him in frustration.

Homer said, “I propose to name you Vizier of Health. Immediately, a university will be begun here in Tamanrasset. There will be a College of African Medicine. The instructors will be largely American blacks but we will also draw upon medically educated blacks from the former British and French colonies.”

“And who will finance this mad dream?”

Homer Crawford nodded in acceptance of the validity of that question and said, “We have recently received word that the Africa for Africans Association, to which Miss Cunningham and Mr. Jackson belonged, has been swung over to our support in New York, through the efforts of our Foreign Minister, Jake Armstrong. A million dollars has already been raised. Jake is placing ads in American Negro magazines and other publications, for American black doctors to come to Africa both as teachers and practitioners in the field. No matter what your feelings, Doctor, and we respect them, the cause of better health in North Africa will be better served if you take your position not as a simple general practitioner, but as the head of all medicine in the rapidly expanding domains of El Hassan.”

As he was speaking, a power reached out from the former sociologist, a psychic power, which he was unaware he wielded, but which was well known to all his immediate colleagues. His personality had suddenly dominated the room.

Such must have been the power once held by Joshua of Nazareth, by Mohammed, and, for the sake of evil, Hitler. Such must have been the power of personality of the young Alexander when he stood, surrounded by Parmenion, Ptolemy, Antepater and the others of the Companions, with the thirty thousand spearmen of the phalanx arrayed behind them, on the west bank of the Hellespont and looked over at the far shore of Asia Minor with Persia and India beyond. What must he have said in Greek? The equivalent of, “All right, boys. Forward. We’ll give them a bit of a show.”

Shaken by the raw psychic power, Doctor Warren Harding Smythe sank to the bench directly across from Homer Crawford. He got out, still attempting to maintain his rejection, “And from where would the resources come to sponsor all this?”

Homer said, “Doctor, North Africa is possibly the richest area in the world so far as undeveloped raw materials are concerned, including oil. We intend to exploit them. And for the sake of North Africa, not the so-called developed nations.”

The doctor, in a last resistance, said, trying to surface a sneer, “And how do I know that you will not use the proceeds of this abundance of raw materials for your own sakes?”

The others about the table laughed bitterly, or smiled sour smiles.

Homer said, “Doctor Smythe, the true revolutionist is an idealist, not an opportunist. Can you imagine a Jefferson, a Tom Paine, a James Madison, a Washington, being seduced by bribes or feathering their own nests through their eventual positions of power? Or Robespierre, Danton and Marat? They had greater things in mind than wealth. Or even Lenin and Trotsky. Those who came after, in Russia, yes. Those who hadn’t spent the long years in exile or prison as a result of their fight for the revolution which later came a cropper. But you couldn’t have bought Lenin with all the gold in Fort Knox.”

Homer Crawford shook his head. “No, Doctor. Do not look at the immediate staff of El Hassan if you are seeking out opportunists.”

It was getting a little heavy for Cliff Jackson. He said, “Hey, speak for yourself, Homer. If somebody offered me all the gold in Fort Knox…”

“Shut up,” Kenny growled at him.

Jimmy Peters pushed his glasses back on his nose and said, “That reminds me of something. Bribes. These American types, in particular, seem to be all intrigued with bribes. And the Italians too, for that matter. At any rate, I’ve been offered bribes three times.”

Homer scowled at him. “For what, in particular?”

The other shrugged in puzzlement. “I never quite figured it out. I came to the conclusion that they were just lining me up for future reference.”

Kenny said, “Take ’em.”

All eyes went to him.

He said, as though nothing was more reasonable, “Take all bribes offered. Except for Homer, of course; he can’t do it. Otherwise we take ’em and throw them in the kitty. We can use the money.”

Isobel was amused but she said, “What happens when the time comes that they expect you to deliver—whatever it might be they want?”

“The hell with them,” Kenny said, reasonably still. “Let ’em go whistle. Nobody asked them to bribe El Hassan’s closest colleagues.”