AK

by Peter Dickinson

  Of course the second valley was harder, not in itself but because they were now so tired. They picked their way down, not fully aware of this, only finding that the slope stretched on and on. At least there was no gully in the bottom, but the climb up the slope seemed endless. They rested frequently, but the air now was almost freezing and they needed to move to keep warm. Between rest and rest the stars vanished and the sun rose, welcome for half an hour for its warmth on their chilled bodies, but soon an enemy again. By the time they reached the top it was well up.

  Shaking with the effort, they gazed south. There were no more hills. Below them, stretching beyond sight, lay the bush.

  “Look! There!” said Paul.

  The others had seen it before he spoke. Everywhere else the bush was its familiar dry-season colour, but there was one patch of pure dark green, close below the hills but several miles away to their left. No need to have had Papp as your uncle to know there must be water there. It seemed so close that it was difficult not to swig the last of the flask and just scamper to that wetness and greenness, but Paul’s Warrior training held. He let the others take a few sips, rinsing their mouths around before swallowing, and drank even less himself. Then they started down the now burning slope.

  By the time they reached the level they were exhausted again. Joy was gone, hope almost gone. Numbly they trudged on. Francis was nearly done for. He fell several times. Paul helped him up and put his arm around him to steady him, but still he stumbled. Paul would have carried him if he could, but knew he hadn’t the strength. Then Francis fell once more, tried to crawl to his feet, collapsed, and lay still.

  “Okay,” said Paul. “‘Bout a mile still. Jilli, you stay with Francis. I’ll fetch us some water.”

  She nodded and he poured the last of the water into the cooking pan and went on alone, carrying the empty flask. The trees were nearer than he’d realized, but desperate for water though he was he crouched by a bush and studied them for several minutes before going in. Anything could be waiting at a water hole—poachers, soldiers, a leopard. With his knife ready he inched his way into the grove. Above him a gang of parakeets skimmed squealing to a farther tree. A good sign—they’d shown no fret till he’d disturbed them. Still wary, he stole through the thick, mud-reeking shade.

  There were tracks, but too many to read. Between dusk and dawn hundreds—thousands—of creatures would be gathering here to drink. He followed a path they’d made, stopping every few paces to peer around and above. Above would be where a leopard might lie. Nothing, and no sound but the buzz and click of insects and the mutter of heat-stupefied birds among the leaves.

  The ground dipped to a hollow of trampled mud with an oily pool at its centre. A black snake was drinking at the far edge. He crept down, undid the flask cap, took two tablets from his pack, and dropped them in, then gently pushed the flask below the surface till the water flowed in. When the flask was two-thirds full he lifted it out and squatted there, waiting for the tablets to dissolve.

  There was something wrong. What? Too much stillness? Something he’d seen but not noticed? A smell? As if merely easing his neck he looked up and turned his head to and fro. Nothing. Nothing but silence and heat. Ah. Just beyond the muddy area above the snake were some broken branches lying in a vague heap—bits of badi bush, fat little leaves on grey stems. What were they doing in here? Badis had evolved to stand the tropic sun. Michael had shown him how the leathery leaves stored water without losing it to the air, while the roots went twice as deep as the height of the bush to find moisture. They actually needed the blaze and oppression of the sun to grow at all. You’d never find one under a tree.

  Swirling the flask, pretending to be just helping the tablets dissolve, he glanced casually at the pile again. There was something in there, a dark gleam. An eye? Too large. A gun? No, a camera! The branches were a hide! For an instant his heart leapt at the thought that Michael himself was lying there, watching the water hole, just as they’d done together on their visit to Papp. Nonsense, of course.

  He rose, drank a few mouthfuls from the flask, and stoppered it, but instead of turning back walked on around the pool as though he’d intended all along to be going that way. Passing the hide he peered down into the branches. From this angle the figure with the camera was obvious. One track shoe was right out in the open.

  “Mister, I seeing you foot,” he whispered.

  “Uh?” said a voice. “Hell. And anyway, what are you up to, out in these wilds, wearing a watch and speaking English and sterilizing your drinking water?”

  “Make him safe for to drink.”

  The hide quivered. With a grunt like a wild sow the man backed himself out and sat up. He was red-faced, bald, yellow-bearded.

  “Just what I mean,” he said. “Perfect little sequence, human at one with nature coming to the pool to drink, just like a lion or kudu, only he brings a plastic flask and pops tablets in it. Where are the rest of you? You can’t be on your own?”

  “My friends back in bush. Francis too tired, so I come fetch water.”

  “How far? How many? Why’d they send a kid on?”

  The right questions, thought Paul. His friends could be poachers or bandits. Either might murder a man for his good camera.

  “Francis fall down,” he said. “Too tired. We done cross hills. Jilli staying with him while I go bring water.”

  “Kids too? That the lot of you?”

  “Sure.”

  The man got up.

  “Let’s fetch your friends in,” he said. “Come and meet my girl. We’ll take the truck.”

  He led the way out on the far side of the grove. The truck was parked close against the trees with an awning spread out from its rear end. In its shade a woman was sitting in a folding chair, reading a book. Paul had expected her to be European, like the man, and indeed she was wearing khaki blouse and shorts, and sunglasses pushed up onto her hair. But the hair was glossy blue-black and her skin as brown as Paul’s.

  “You’ve missed dinner,” she said, not looking up.

  “Fell asleep,” said the man. “This is Sophia. I’m Joel Funk.”

  “I Paul.”

  Now the woman looked up.

  “Hi, Paul,” she said. “Where did you spring from?”

  “Says he’s come across the hills,” said Joel. “There’s a couple of other kids back there somewhere, one of them too done for to make it. Okay if I take the truck?”

  The woman looked at Paul for some while.

  “What’s the other side of the hills?” she said.

  “Bad bush. Up beyond that, marshes. Other side marshes, the Strip. Then only desert.”

  “Yes, I see. He’s on the level, darling.”

  “Thought so,” said Joel. “Come along, Paul.”

  At the sound of the approaching engine Jilli had tried to hide Francis, but was thrilled by the ride back to the water hole. By the time they reached it Sophia had a kettle boiling. She immediately took charge of Francis, feeling his pulse, then wrapping him in a light blanket and cradling him while she spooned sweet, tepid, milky tea between his lips. Meanwhile the other two squatted either side of her, sipping their tea from blue enamel mugs.

  “Don’t give them any more, Joel,” said Sophia.

  “They’ll take a bit to absorb that. Do you all speak English?”

  “Francis speaking damn good,” said Paul. “Me, okay. Jilli not been at school, so she speaking only a bit.”

  “I speaking damn good,” said Jilli. “Next on the BBC—World News. This is London.”

  She had the voice absolutely right. You would have thought there was a radio hidden beside her. Sophia and Joel laughed aloud.

  “Jilli must be Fulu, by the look of her,” said Sophia. You can’t be, Paul, or Francis.”

  “No. No tribes. Jilli, me, Francis, we be Nagala.”

  Jilli nodded. Paul
was pleased to see Sophia’s eyes widen. She made no comment, but turned and laid Francis carefully in the shade of the tent, covering him with another blanket.

  “I think he’ll be all right now,” she said. “Tell me what happened at Tsheba.”

  This time Paul felt his own eyes widen.

  “How you knowing?” he said.

  “I’m a journalist. My assignment with Joel is to make a television feature about the interrelation of people and wildlife in the aftermath of a long-lasting bush war, but I pick up anything I can. We got into Dangoum the day before the coup. We planned to start our work among the bush people northwest of Shidi, but that’s still a restricted area…”

  “I been there,” said Paul.

  “You have? Well, people like us need permits, and our main contact was arrested in the coup. When we started asking for him the new regime took an unhealthy interest in us, and it looked as if we might find ourselves deported and our vehicle confiscated, so we decided to head out in the general direction of Shidi, cross-country, and hope they were too busy to come looking for us. But while we were in Dangoum I began to pick up gossip about something nasty having happened at Tsheba, and now Joel comes into our camp with a kid who knows what’s north of the hills and speaks English and talks about being at school, not to mention a Fulu girl who can speak pure BBC, and they must have had a reason for making this pretty desperate journey … How did you cross the marshes?”

  Paul was starting to explain when Francis stirred and woke. Sophia fed him more sweet tea and Joel brought a pack of European cookies like the ones Paul had eaten in Michael’s flat. Jilli got out her own new clothes and put them on and imitated the way Sophia held her mug. Joel lent her some sunglasses and found her a chair to sit in and she chattered away about her plans. Paul watched them under his eyebrows. To trust, or not to trust? They’d trusted him, deciding he wasn’t bait sent by bandits to lure them out into an ambush. Joel got out a camera and filmed Jilli, clearly because she amused him, but Sophia took her more seriously and began to say almost what Michael had said, that she’d do much better if she learned to write and type. That decided him. He waited for a pause, then held up his hand to interrupt.

  “Sorry,” he said. “This man, going for find you permit, then they putting him in prison—this be Michael Kagomi?”

  “That’s right,” said Joel. “He’d set it all up, including a guide the other end…”

  “Papp?”

  “Jeez, Paul! You in the secret police?”

  “My father, Michael Kagomi.”

  “I didn’t know he was married,” said Sophia.

  “My mother, the war.”

  “Oh, I see. You’re one of those? I was thinking of doing a feature on kids like you, and how you’re settling.”

  “Francis too. When we finding him, we say Papp now be uncle for him. Michael same for me, only when war done end he saying to me, ‘Now I become father for you, and you same son for me.’ But you telling me for sure he be in prison?”

  “Nothing’s for sure after a coup. That’s just what we heard. We took a special interest in him, remember.”

  “They got him in these cells under old palace, you guess?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. I did that tourist bit last time I was in Dangoum. There’s only about a dozen cells down there, and they’ve got getting on a hundred top people detained. I should think it’s more likely the DDA—that’s the secret police, you know—have got him in one of their barracks somewhere.”

  “You think they going to kill him?”

  Sophia shrugged.

  “Difficult to tell,” she said, “but I shouldn’t think so. Even a thug like Boyo started off trying to make it look as if his regime was law-abiding, putting his enemies on trial on a variety of charges. And Basso-Iskani’s got the Dangoum conference to think of. It’ll be a big thing for him if he can persuade the OAU to go ahead with that. They’re sending observers in next week …”

  “Why these observers not saying to Basso-Iskani ‘Where be Michael Kagomi? Where be Dr. Agussa? What they gone do wrong?’”

  Sophia shook her head. Her smile was tired.

  “Maybe they’ll ask delicately, in private,” she said. “The OAU really need the conference to go ahead, you see, if they can get away with it in front of world opinion. Provided Basso-Iskani can keep things quiet, no popular uprisings, no newsworthy massacres, no Europeans or Americans getting hurt … that reminds me—you never told me what happened at Tsheba. They’re still managing to keep that hushed up.”

  Paul began, but his heart wasn’t in it. He kept thinking about what the DDA might be doing to Michael to get confessions out of him so that they could put him on trial. Soon Jilli took over, telling the story her way, dancing it, despite being seated in the chair, using her arms and hands and the movements of her long neck to express the explosion of horror among the peaceful farmers of the Strip.

  “Hold it,” said Sophia almost at once. “I’d like to get this on tape.”

  She set up a recorder and Jilli started again while Joel filmed her. She’d never seen a tape or a camera before, but she put on a real performance, like Judah acting Bible stories at the camp fire, adding details and decorations to the earlier version, living it over. Sophia clapped when she finished.

  “Great stuff,” said Joel. “Let’s hope we can get it out of the country. I’ll splice it into that stuff about the rock rabbits, maybe. Okay, so what happens next, now you’ve got this far?”

  “Maybe you go take Francis to Papp, along by Shidi?” said Paul. “This way, Papp knowing you be friends.”

  Sophia and Joel looked at each other.

  “We’ll have to think about it,” said Sophia slowly. “To be honest, we can’t afford taking sides in a situation like this. We’re pushing our luck already, leaving Dangoum without a permit to stop some crook of a bureaucrat pinching our truck and gear. If Mr. Papp is an enemy of the new regime …”

  “Papp done finish fighting,” said Paul. “He hang him AK up into top of old ghost tree. If Basso-Iskani leaving him alone, no trouble. Only I best say you this: One day Francis go become Prime Minister for Nagala. Michael Kagomi, my father, saying this.”

  They laughed, looking down at little Francis lying in his blanket, sleepily nibbling a cookie.

  “Okay,” said Joel. “It’s never any harm having a friend or two in high places. We’ll take Francis on to Mr. Papp. What about you two, then?”

  “Going to Dangoum,” said Paul. “See how for lift Michael Kagomi out from prison.”

  “Jeez, you have big ambitions, you Nagala,” said Joel.

  “Do you understand what you’re saying?” said Sophia.

  “You listen,” said Paul. “Don’t you go say this too difficult, too dangerous. I know. I knowing all that. But I saying to you, what for Michael Kagomi make me him son, if I don’t go try for him? Big chance I get killed. Big chance I don’t get to do nothing. Little, little chance I do something help my father. But this little chance, this all I see. This be where I must go try and try and try.”

  He had spoken quietly, as much to himself as to the others, looking straight out across the bush. Now he nodded emphatically and glanced up.

  “Let’s hope you make it,” said Sophia. “I hear he’s a very good man, Kagomi.”

  Next morning Jilli and Paul stood just below the crest of the next range of hills and watched the truck thread its way back sidelong down the northern slope. In less than two hours Joel had brought them a good three-days’ march. Over the crest and down lay the railway. Francis’s small hand waved from the window of the truck. He had woken feeling fine, and had fallen head over heels in love with Sophia the moment she’d opened her mouth and spoken the kind of English he approved of.

  Jilli, it turned out, was equally smitten. As the truck dwindled toward the brown, tree-sprinkled plain she sighed. />
  “What does Sophia do for work, Paul?”

  “She’s a journalist.”

  “Okay. When I get to Dangoum I’ll be a journalist too.”

  “Take you a bit of time. Much better than being a waitress, if you can make it, though.”

  “Waitress! Don’t you ever say that word to me again Do you know what a journalist does, Paul?”

  6

  The fire-circle was still there, unmistakable. It had taken Paul a while to find it, looking back across the plain towards the railway and trying to match the view with the one he remembered, when he had lain and kept watch that blazing morning when the war had ended, almost a year ago now. From the fire circle he found the termite’s nest, and from that the rock and the bean tree. You always buried an arms cache between three checkpoints, in case one got burned, or washed away in the rains, or something. The bush might seem unchanging, but nothing in it stayed the same for long.

  He paced the distances. They didn’t match up, and his heart sank till he thought, A whole year—I’ve grown—I’m stepping longer. He shortened his paces and found the meeting point. With his knife and spear stick he loosened the ground. The rains had softened the surface to slimy clay and then the sun had baked it back hard, hard as the wall of a hut, but as soon as he was through the first couple of inches he could feel that the soil had been disturbed. He hacked it into chunks with his knife and scooped it out with his hands. The deeper he dug the looser the earth became. It should have been backbreaking, bending into the pit in the heat of noon, hacking and scooping, but he had no need to rest. His heart sang with certainty. His hand knew when it could lay the knife aside and probe down through the loosened chunks and touch something different, the smoothness of a plastic sack, the sharp lines of trip wire binding it around. He stretched out on the scorching earth and lay still, feeling the parcel. It was a moment like an oracle, like a soft voice speaking in his head, telling him that in the whole of enormous Africa he had come to this one spot, these few inches, and found his treasure. My mother’s voice, he thought. She is saying that in spite of everything I will lift Michael free.