Left of Africa

by Hal Clement

  The boy rather suspected that the boatmen had Sargon pretty well sized up in spite of not understanding his language; on one occasion, when one of them told the story of the frog and the ox for which Aesop of Samos would be getting credit a year or two later, the whole crew laughed uproariously and more than one glanced meaningly at the Ninevite.

  By the time the boat reached the head of the Delta Gizona could follow Egyptian conversation and make himself understood without any difficulty to the boatmen. None of them seemed to find this surprising; after all, it was their own language he was learning, and any fool could speak Egyptian, they felt. Gizona recognized this attitude and made use of it, making remarks which betrayed his ignorance of ail things Egyptian and letting the boatmen explain to him. Sometimes they disagreed with each other, but he was no longer bothered by that; he simply let them argue and picked what sense he could out of what was said.

  He relayed everything he learned to Nimshi and Sargon, but for a long time none of it seemed to have any bearing on their search for gold. Sargon grew quite impatient; the boat was too small for an active man to remain contented for long unless something very worth while were going on to make up for the enforced idleness. He kept telling Gizona to drive the conversation with the boatmen in some useful direction, but never had any constructive suggestion on how to do this. Gizona grew quite impatient at his complaints, but never dared say anything.

  It was Nimshi who finally eased the strain by making a useful suggestion. Gizona liked the idea because it was very similar to what he had been doing all along, so he could give himself part of the credit. Sargon didn’t like it because he couldn’t, but he lost the ensuing argument and Gizona went back to the boatmen and awaited an opportunity to try the plan out.

  This came soon enough, since one or another of the crew was always asking the boy what he thought of some new thing they had taught him about their country. Tonight, when the question came, he was hesitant to answer.

  "What’s the matter, boy?" the owner of the boat asked. "Don’t you think that having a flood each year is the right way to renew the field?"

  "I— I don’t know about that. It was just that everything about Egypt is different from what I thought."

  "What do you mean? What did you expect?"

  "Well, where I came from, people used to tell wonderful stories about Egypt. They said it was the richest land in the world, and the soil was so wonderful that crops grew without tilling, and all the houses had gold and silver on the walls even on the outside, but nobody stole it because everybody had so much. Since I came I haven’t seen any silver at all except what my master had to pay you with, and the fields look just like any others only flatter, and people work in them just as hard."

  The boatmen laughed at this description of their land, and Gizona caught Nimshi’s glance for a moment and nodded very slightly. Things were under way.

  "That’s a good story, young one," an older boatman said when he was able to stop laughing. "As a matter of fact, it’s not entirely false; there’s just one thing wrong with it." Gizona tensed as he heard these words, and Nimshi, who was watching him closely, reacted in the same way.

  "What’s that?" the boy asked.

  "You have it in the wrong country. I’ve heard your story many times from people who had talked to sailors, and there is such a place; but it’s far to the west. The great sea into which the Nile flows finally comes to an end far to the west, and has a narrow channel passing between two great rocks which are the biggest rocks in the world. Beyond those rocks is another sea, and on the shores of that sea is a great city, which is full of gold and silver as you have said."

  "What is the name of the city?"

  "Some call it Gades and some call it Tartessos."

  "But-but they are two different cities! Gades is on the coast as you say, but Tartessos is a little way up a nearby river. They aren’t covered with gold, either, at least Tartessos isn’t. I’ve never been in Gades."

  "You mean you’ve been in Tartessos?" the boatmen stared in disbelief.

  "Sure. I lived there for a while. It’s just another town, pretty much like Sai— docks and ships, markets and artisans. I guess all towns are pretty much alike." He sounded rather disappointed, and for once wasn’t acting. The boatmen had startled him at least as much as he had startled them.

  The oldest of the Egyptians was staring at him, and now spoke slowly.

  "I have heard much of far cities, and have seen much of Sai. All I have heard and seen makes a liar out of you, boy. Do you think we are children, to be fooled by children’s stories?"

  Gizona was startled once more; lying had been so completely out of his thoughts at the moment that he had never even dreamt of the possibility that the Egyptians might not believe him.

  "But it’s the truth! I’m not telling stories!" he gasped.

  "So says every story teller. Do you mean to say that there is no gold in Tartessos?"

  "Sure, there’s some. There are gold and silversmiths there, and mines in the country around. It’s not all over gold, though, the way I thought Egypt was."

  "I’ll admit you are a very good tale-teller," the boatman replied calmly. "If I hadn’t known better all my life I might think your story was true." "And if you had come to Tartessos telling me that the houses of Egypt weren’t made of gold I’d have known too much to believe you, too," retorted the boy. His anger was getting the better of his discretion. "I would have heard differently, and I would have seen Egyptian gold work-my master, who was a goldsmith in Tartessos, had articles made in Egypt. He sometimes used them for models. I’d have called you a liar, too, and you could never have made me believe that the gold in Egypt comes from a few mines just like that in Tartessos. Now that I have seen Egypt, I’m surprised you know what gold is!"

  "Better and better." The Egyptian was still calm. "You should tell stories in the squares of Membi; the young ones would believe you, and everyone would enjoy it. Perhaps, if a rich man listened, he would even toss you a bit of gold to show you that it is found in Egypt; or perhaps he would keep it, so that you would still be able to talk as you have tonight."

  Gizona had recovered his poise as the boatman spoke these words, and his next question was carefully planned.

  "You mean there really is gold found in Egypt? I saw none in Sai, which is a big city."

  "You were not in the great houses of Pharoah’s nobles. Gold comes from the mines in the Eastern desert, it is said; but most comes from the far south. Strange people, so the story goes, pay tribute to Pharoah with gold and elephants’ teeth. Your masters are soldiers; if they talk to others of their trade in the cities up the river they will find many who can tell of the gold of the south."

  "My masters cannot talk Egyptian. Are any of the soldiers who get the gold foreigners?"

  "It is said that they are. It is also said that the real land of gold is much farther south, and cannot be reached by soldiers on foot. Long, long ago— " the boatman’s voice was taking on the drone of the practiced story-teller-"the great Queen Hatshepsut sent men to the sea that lies across the Eastern Desert; and on this sea they boarded great ships and fared southward. And after many days they came to the land of Punt, where strange thin men met them. And they traded with the men of Punt, bringing back to the great Queen a rich cargo of gold and ivory, and strange animals and plants, and other precious things, so that he who led the men on the journey received much honor and wealth from the great Queen. And it is told that Queen Hatshepsut built temples whose pillars were of gold, and made statues and ornaments of gold, and set up golden tablets telling of this voyage to the south. It is also said that the great Pharoah Thothmes who came after her hated the Queen Hatshepsut, and broke her statues, and took her name from the tablets, and punished those who spoke good of the great Queen. But the story yet lives of Hatshepsut’s voyage to the Land of Gold, in the far south." The boatman fell silent. Gizona, concealing the interest the details of the story held for him, went back to his earlier subjec
t.

  "It looks," he said, "as though these wonderful Lands of Gold are always somewhere else. My people thought Egypt was one; you think the city of Tartessos is one. I wonder whether this story of yours might not turn out to be just as empty of truth."

  One of the Egyptians laughed aloud at this suggestion.

  "The story is very true," he said. "We all know it. We have all heard it many times. If you doubt, then listen in the market places of Membi, where we will be in two days, or of any other city in Egypt."

  "Why? Do they keep telling the same story? That wouldn’t make it any truer."

  "That is not what you will hear. All the world knows that Pharoah is gathering cargo for another great fleet on the Eastern Sea, and is going to send it southward for treasure just as the Great Queen did so long ago!"

  CHAPTER 10

  Nimshi took the story without interruption, and nodded at its end. "I never heard of Queen Hatshepsut," he said at the end, "but long ago King Solomon sent ships southward along the Red Sea, which I think must be the same as the Eastern Sea these boatmen talk of, and they also brought back much treasure. All the stories fit together."

  "That’s not the important part!" interrupted Sargon. "If Pharoah Niku is sending a fleet southward for gold, what are we doing on this river? We should be heading toward the Red Sea, and getting ourselves onto one of those ships!"

  "I was getting to that," the Judean responded quietly. "I was also going to point out that a ship would be the best way of carrying any treasure we managed to get. We cannot make plans, of course, until we find out what the ships and their crews are like but it seems to me very possible that we can turn this situation to great advantage. Gizona, you will keep talking to these Egyptians every chance you get. Find out all you can about this fleet-where it is being assembled, what it is carrying for cargo, whether the crews are Egyptians or foreigners— everything."

  The boy nodded; his own mind had taken him that far, and farther. He had every intention of finding out what he could; he was not so sure just how much of it he would pass along to the others. This might be the point at which his ability might be used to give him some real advantages over them; he would have to think this out.

  There was, of course, the awkward fact that Nimshi was learning a little Egyptian; Gizona would have to be very careful about actually lying in any of his reports. However, it should be possible to leave out an occasional titbit of information, and save it for his own use at the proper time. Gizona concealed a smile as he answered Nimshi.

  "Yes, I'll do all that. I must be careful, of course; we don’t want them getting suspicious, and turning another city guard onto us." Neither of the men had any objection to this point.

  As it turned out, there was nothing in the next few days that Gizona felt like keeping for his own use. He did learn a good deal-that the vessels of the fleet were to be Phoenician rather than Egyptian, and the point on the Red Sea where they were being fitted out. He learned where the route between the Nile and the Red Sea lay; they would have to stay with their boat to Membi, and then head back downstream along another branch of the Nile which hugged the eastern side of the delta. Before reaching the sea, however, they would have to go ashore and head eastward along a way used by merchants and soldiers since the time of the present Pharoah’s father, if not longer. Niku had, apparently, tried to dig a canal from the Nile to the Bitter Lakes along this route, but had given up. Gizona could not find out why from the boatmen; there were so many different reasons given that he could not decide which, if any, was the true one.

  However, even with part of a canal, they had several days’ journey to reach the Red Sea. None of the boatmen seemed to know when the expedition was leaving, but Nimshi and Sargon were able to make a shrewd guess on that point. It was now late summer; if the departure had been planned for the present year it would, probably, already have taken place. Sargon was positive of this, on the basis of his experience with the Carthaginian ships. Nimshi was not quite so sure, since he realized that the Red Sea might have a different weather pattern than the Mediterranean, but he was willing to use the idea until more information came in. At any rate, they would try to reach the port where the ships were as soon as they could; if it turned out that the expedition had already sailed, at least they would not be blaming themselves for having lagged. If they arrived months before the sailing, on the other hand, the time would not be wasted; it might take quite a while to get themselves included in the group, and the two soldiers could certainly put any spare time to use in maturing their underhanded plans.

  The three hurried, therefore. They left their boat-without, they hoped, leaving any suspicions with its crew-at the city which would some day be called Memphis. Gizona was now fluent in Egyptian, and had no trouble finding a boat which would take them down the eastern branch of the Nile-there was plenty of traffic between Upper Egypt and the Red Sea. The cargo did not smell like the hides of the other boat, so the downstream journey was rather more pleasant.

  From the time they landed, however, the trip became harder for Gizona. Both Nimshi and Sargon were experienced soldiers, and while much of their time had been spent on shipboard they were still accomplished marchers and in iron-hard physical condition. Gizona had done plenty of overland travel in his short life, but he did not begin to match these veterans in endurance. He was always thirsty and frequently both hungry and tired. Sargon regarded his troubles with impatience; Nimshi was rather more sympathetic-he was younger, of course, and may have remembered his own early marching days a little more clearly than the Ninevite.

  By the time the group had followed the well-travelled road through the wadis of the eastern desert for the few days it took to reach the Bitter Lakes, the boy’s wind had improved a little. His legs, painfully stiff after the first day at a pace set by Sargon, had loosened up a bit; but he was frankly looking forward to the end of the journey and had made up his mind that he preferred travel by water.

  This opinion did not seem to be shared by Sargon. There were plenty of boats on the lake, but he elected to follow its western shore southward on foot, and Nimshi did not argue the matter. Gizona was not asked how he felt about it. He simply followed along, thinking black thoughts.

  They left the lakes at their southern end and struck off toward the Gulf of Suez. There were many travellers on the same route-some in small groups, some in large caravans. Many of the latter carried supplies for the fleet, as Gizona learned by talking to the slaves who tended the oxen or, sometimes, carried burdens themselves. The smaller groups were of all sorts, traders and fishermen, soldiers and farmers, Egyptians, Greeks, Phoenicians, Assyrians— Egypt was not actually at war with anyone for the moment and men of all countries around the eastern Mediterranean were wandering more or less freely through her territories. Niku’s practice of hiring foreign soldiers for his bodyguard and even for the regular army only increased the numbers of "barbarians" in the land of the Nile.

  Naturally, Nimshi and Sargon were able to do some questioning of their own among many of these people. This made it necessary for Gizona to be even more careful if he planned to deceive the pair. As it happened, he had not yet heard anything that he felt worth keeping from them, so the problem didn’t arise; but he bore carefully in mind the risks he was running. He had always been the sort of person who devotes a good deal of thought to his own safety.

  A day or so before reaching the sea, they encountered a group of a dozen men who by their costume were plainly Phoenicians. They were all rather quiet, reserved fellows, but they did not seem suspicious. Nimshi had no trouble starting a conversation with them, and very little in finding out that they were part of the crew of one of the ships of Niku’s fleet. They - would say nothing of where they were going or why, but that seemed natural enough to Sargon and Nimshi. They were willing enough to talk about ships in general, though, and before very long one fact came out which disturbed Nimshi rather seriously.

  His plan had been to enlist on the crew of a galley
as a soldier, as he had done many times before for both Phoenicia and Carthage. It turned out that the fleet was not being composed of galleys, but of the tubby, roomy merchantmen with which Phoenicia had been covering the sea for no man knew how long. They were sailing ships, not rowers; their crews were small, and they had little need for extra hands.

  "But surely there will be a galley or two going along for protection!" exclaimed Sargon when this fact was mentioned. "Who ever heard of a whole fleet setting out with no fighting ships?"

  "It may be that you are right." The leader of the Phoenicians, a short, burly fellow who had given his name as David, cast a sidelong glance at the AsSyrian. "The protection of the fleet is not our affair. I am responsible for manning and commanding one ship, and each of the men I know in this connection has the same duty. If any others have the task of furnishing galleys, I do not know them. Why do you ask?"

  Nimshi could cheerfully have slipped a knife into Sargon’s tough hide at that point, but gave no sign of his anger at the Ninevite’s carelessness as he took over the conversation.