"He's back," said Don, with a grin. He enjoyed seeing the effect of the scurrying feet on the newcomers.
"You call it Al Majnun," said Jo, after Don had explained. "The Madman. Really?"
"Don't worry," said Izem. "We're fairly sure it's just a malfunction in the ships' life support systems."
Then Sufian connected another pad, and the feet scurried back the other way, moving much faster. Don looked up. There couldn't be a connection between the two events, could there?
As Sufian continued working, the noise above them grew more frantic. Finally it settled against the wall at the end of the control panel, and sounded for all the world like someone thumping on the wall from the other side.
"That," said Don quietly, "is not the life support systems." He lifted a 9 mil out of his jacket and checked it. Mosha did the same.
"Wait," said Sufian, and walked over to the wall. The noise behind it stopped. Sufian examined an odd shaped pattern on the wall. He muttered something to Dassin in Imazighen, and they set to work on some raised areas within the pattern.
Finally he turned to Don and nodded. The others stepped well back, leaving Don and Mosha at the ready, weapons extended. Dassin backed away, and then Mosha slid the section of wall a few millimetres to one side. It toppled slowly out into the room, as Sufian retreated hurriedly along the wall.
There was something in the gap they had created, or part of something, but what was it exactly? It started to move away from the opening, and Jo called out in a soft voice. The movement ceased. She moved closer to the wall, until Don grabbed her arm. That was close enough.
"Come on out, little fella," she said quietly. "We want to say hello."
Something in the control panel emitted a series of beeps and chirps that reminded Jo of birds in a tropical forest. She quickly realised the noises only happened while she was speaking. The ship was translating for her.
She went down on her knees, mostly so she could see into the wall, but it seemed to trigger something in the creature on the other side. It flowed smoothly out of its hiding place, and Jo was reminded of an octopus sliding out from under a rock. It rose hesitantly until it was taller than any of them, taking the shape of a tall, skinny road cone.
It looked similar to the projection that had met her outside the ship that morning. Without the desert robes she could see it was a dull black, with hints of other colours. There was a faint smell of seaweed and salt. She wondered what it made of the smell of soaps and shampoos that overlay the smell of her skin.
Then the creature opened out and sank down, like an umbrella without a handle. Eventually it was two metres across with an ill-defined lump in the middle. Now they could see the slight ridges running from the middle to the sides that denoted arms, something like umbrella struts but much more flexible.
"I think its bowing to you," said Izem softly. Don didn't know what it was doing, but a position like that was perfect for a predator to spring onto its prey. He was seconds away from putting a tight group of three through the middle of its 'head'.
Then the creature rasped out a few of the beeps and chirps the control panel had uttered, in a voice that sounded like it hadn't been used in a very long time.
"Most reverent mother," said the control panel, startling Dassin, who was standing beside it.
The part that was possibly a head rose slowly to its former position, as the body contracted until it had the dimensions of a rather tall, and somewhat thickened at the base, fencepost.
Don and Izem exchanged a quick glance. This might be the breakthrough they were looking for. But how were they going to establish proper communication, and why was Jo a 'reverend mother'?
48
Kasbah of El Glaoui
Tinghir, Atlas Mountains
The historical Kasbah of El Glaoui had fallen into disrepair in the 1950s, but the father of Thami El Glaoui, 'Lord of the Atlas Mountains', had been fortifying a modern Kasbah near the old site since the political upheavals of the 1970s.
After the earthquakes, the Tinghir warlord had strengthened the defences and established a bodyguard of hand-picked men. It was, he thought, an impregnable stronghold.
It was in this state of mind that he woke, and mistook the shadowy figure in his bedroom for a servant. The first time he thought anything might be amiss was when the shadowy figure sat on the edge of his bed, which was not normal for a servant.
"Nice place you got here," said a very English voice.
At least, once he understood the gravity of the situation, the warlord didn't waste time screaming at the intruder to get out.
"Hassan, Hamid!" he bellowed, and his arm shot out toward a small bedside unit. He pulled the top drawer open, but it was empty.
"Looking for this?" said the figure, and held up a gold-plated Smith and Wesson. "Bit Elvis, don't you think? Bit toy town? All show and no go?"
The warlord looked toward the door, but the figure shook its head.
"Your two boys are indisposed. Don't worry though, they're still alive. At least they are so far, and your household staff are fine. Your guards at the gate got a bit too curious though, and you'll need to replace them.
"I'm glad you didn't have more soldiers on duty tonight. I hate unnecessary killings, don't you?"
The warlord sat up in bed, and studied his adversary for a moment. It was a difficult exercise, since the only light was a half moon through french windows that opened onto a terrace. His eyes flicked to the light switch by the door into the room. Somehow the Kasbah had power, at least enough for lighting. It seemed unlikely in these days after the earthquakes. Wind turbines and batteries perhaps.
"You want some light on the subject?" said the figure helpfully, but shook its head. "I don't think so. You and I are going to have a little talk, Thami – may I call you Thami? – and then you're going to help me save the world.
"The first thing I need is to see how flexible your thinking is. Simple question for you, Thami: are you going to join the resistance and fight the citadels, or are you going to play your little power games here until the citadels destroy you?"
"Go to hell!" said the warlord.
"Thought you might say that," said the shadowy figure, and pulled a dark rectangle out of his pocket.
"Know what this is?" it asked.
The warlord started, and then looked anxiously about the room.
"No, not here, my friend," said the figure holding the device. It stifled a laugh. "I'm hardly going to blow myself up to get at you, Thami. Really, you have far too high an opinion of yourself."
The figure folded back a safety catch, and pressed a small button on the side of the device. A thunderous roar filled the night, some distance away.
"Mayor's office. Large public building," said the man. "Figured there'd be nobody there at this time of night. That was a little demonstration for you, letting you know we can come and go as we please. We can do whatever we want, whenever we want.
"But nuking the Mayor's office is doing you a favour really, isn't it, Thami? You don't want anyone to have power in Tinghir but you."
The warlord laughed harshly. "You'll never get away with this. There'll be troops all over the place after that explosion."
The sounds of vehicles, and sporadic shouting, could indeed be heard at the centre of Tinghir, some kilometres away.
"But not here," said the figure, "because you don't want your little world disturbed, do you, Thami? You've told your seconds to handle anything like this themselves. We've done our homework."
The figure got up and went to the French windows, staying carefully in the moon shadow. "Ever been to the Ikelene mosque, just outside Tinghir, Thami?" it said. "I bet you have. Wonderful old place, and so important for the devout. We wouldn't want anything to happen to that, would we."
The warlord refused to answer, though his lips pressed furiously together. When he didn't speak his adversary moved on to a new topic.
"You tried to subjugate a village south-east of here recently, and
got your nose bloodied."
He had the warlord's attention now.
"That was us, or rather that was one branch of the resistance."
Neither of the two men said anything for a while. The noise from the city centre died away a little.
"Let's make a deal," said the shadowy figure, moving away from the French windows. He sat gently on the bed, an oddly intimate gesture as the two men faced each other.
"You leave the villages around Tinghir alone," he said, "and you change the way your troops treat your people. Not democracy, we know your black little heart wouldn't stand for that, but you treat your people fairly. And lastly you provide help when the resistance asks for it – something you should have been doing anyway, if you thought of anyone but yourself.
"In return, I won't blow up the Ikelene mosque. I also won't kill you and your family, and level the Kasbah El Glaoui to the ground. Though I'm not sure the scantily-clad young women on the floor below constitute a family.
"Now, just in case you think agreeing to a deal will give you time to beef up your security, and search the mosque for explosives, just think it through. Nothing you can do will stop my elite forces, and your troops are like children playing with toys in comparison. If we have to come back and sort you out, you'll be dead before you know we've arrived.
"Are we absolutely clear about this?"
The tone of his voice conveyed the utter certainty of what he was saying.
"You could have just asked," said Thami, sounding aggrieved.
"No, we could not," said the shadowy figure. "Our research shows you have a great deal of vanity, and pride, and arrogance. You always look to twist things your way, and you have a lot of bad habits to unlearn.
"Please be very clear about the following.
"You will not try to extort payment from us, and you will not try to play this situation to your advantage. But you will do the right thing, and help the resistance in any way you can, or you will die."
There was a long silence this time.
The warlord finally nodded.
The shadowy figure extended its hand, and the warlord, rather surprised, shook it.
"I believe people can change for the better," said the figure, "though ideas like that have been slipping from the world stage for the last few decades. If we beat the citadels, then Morocco will need new leaders, and I can promise you they won't be dictators. Remember that."
The man on the side of the bed paused for a moment, and then stood up.
"When you get a message relayed in my name, Lieutenant-Colonel Hunt of the British SAS, or you meet me again in person, you will do everything you can to fulfil the requests we make of you.
"Now, my team and I have a lot of ground to cover before dawn, so I will take my leave. One last thing, Thami El Glaoui, joining the resistance is certainly a case of joining the underdogs, but hoping the citadels will be merciful is signing your own death warrant. Think about it."
Then he was gone. Thami stayed where he was until he was sure the SAS team had left the property. Then he found his personal bodyguards and untied them, and went to arrange the burial of the soldiers at the gates.
Five hours later, a number of small specks on the flanks of the Atlas mountains paused as the first rays of the sun broke the horizon.
"Find shelter and wait until nightfall to make the LZ?" said the Lieutenant-Colonel's number two. Hunt nodded. The gyrocopters that had brought the small team in from Algiers were well camouflaged, but the team was still well short of them.
"Get Briggs up here will you?" he said, as his number two sent out men to find a place where the team could hide. When Briggs arrived, Hunt handed him a thick envelope.
"Get this to the radio station at Fezzou," he said, and Briggs saluted.
It was a lone assignment. Briggs would liberate a camel or donkey somewhere, and make his way over two or three days to his destination. If Hunt's team didn't make it back to Algiers, at least the meeting with Thami El Glaoui would be passed on to the resistance network.
49
Alien spacecraft
Atlas Mountains, North-west Africa
Jo wasn't sure if the creature in front of her was the same one projected at the airlock. She couldn't tell them apart, though this one wasn't wearing desert robes. The projection at the airlock had been courteous and helpful, and this one seemed to have the same intentions.
"We can start a discussion with our friend here later," said Don, lowering his 9 mil. He thought for a moment.
"It seems to have taken a shine to you, Jo. Maybe you could work on the translation side of things. We don't know if we can rely on the control panel to translate for us all the time, or as completely as we would like."
Sufian started to attach a third pad to another node, but the dark and superbly flexible creature behind him became very animated. It flowed back and forth like water in a bucket, while staying in the same place.
"Not do," said the control panel, as the creature hissed and chirped. "No make alert. No make see. They kill all."
Izem motioned Sufian away from the control panel, and the creature subsided. It seemed exhausted. Probably hasn't had this much excitement in a long time, thought Don.
"I think it's worried we might be sending out a signal to the citadels," said Sufian. "Something that would allow them to pinpoint our location."
"Are we?" said Don sharply.
"I don't think so," said Sufian. "We record background emf at the village when we work down here, and there's been nothing in the normal comms spectrum, or a good way either side of it."
"Maybe so," said Don, "but we don't know what sort of tracker technology the enemy have got. Our new friend here seems to be worried about something. I think we might get its okay in future.
"How much more do you have to do?" he said, and the IT man held up one finger for one more connection.
"Show our friend what you're going to do then, and we'll see what the reaction is."
Sufian carefully attached one more pad, but the creature didn't seem worried about that connection.
"Cover up your work," said Don. "Let it know we're finished."
Sufian laid the panel he'd removed loosely back over the connected pads, and the creature lost interest in the control panel.
Sufian brought up two displays on the monitor of his strange-looking computer. The first one looked like schematics of the ship, with an unknown script scattered about the diagram.
"Two languages, as I told you," said Izem, and Don nodded. "One for the eyes and one for the fingertips – or whatever passes for fingertips in the species that built this ship. Double processing, probably at the same time. I'm not sure if that makes them smarter than us or not."
"Don't extrapolate too far," said Don. "Dolphins have much larger brains than we do for the same body weight, but their brains seem to be taken up with sonar interpretation and 3D representations of their world."
The second display was a zoological categorisation of creatures that ranged from ones that might, perhaps, have been found somewhere on Earth, to others that looked outlandish and had clearly been designed a specific purpose.
Among them was the creature that had come out of the wall, but curiously it always appeared as one of a group of three distinct types. A larger creature in the group looked much more aggressive, and a smaller one seemed to be a special stage of the others, possibly a reproductive stage.
"Symbiosis?" said Jo thoughtfully, but no one else ventured an opinion.
"Anyway, we have to give 'Fred' here a name," said Don, and looked at Izem. "We can't call it 'The Madman' any longer, that might start an interplanetary war. Oops, someone's already started one of those."
He paused. "Got to laugh, haven't you," he said, with a bleak smile.
"Perhaps you could do the honours?" he said, looking at Izem again.
Izem thought for a moment.
"I Wadu," he said at last. "To be by oneself, in Tamazight, unless one of you thinks there are othe
rs of its kind on the ship?"
There was a collective shaking of heads. Jo knelt in front of the creature, now somewhat deflated and scarcely to waist height on her. It looked up at her with two small, dark eyes. There was no mouth, and she suspected breathing and eating functions were taken care of somewhere under the black hood, rather octopus-like.
"Do you have a name?" she asked, and the panel behind her beeped and chirped. There was no reply, and she was going to try again when there were a few rough, hesitant chirrups from the body in front of her.
"Arummi," said the control panel behind her.
"But that just means 'foreigner' in Tamazight," said Izem.
"Well it doesn't speak Tamazight," said Don, "so who gave it that name?"
The panel translated his words, and the creature raised itself slowly to its full height. The others stood back as it made its way to the control panel. It ignored Sufian's work and moved to a part of the control panel a little further along.
Standing on four of the limbs within its bell-like canopy, stooped over and working the panel with two or three more, it could have been mistaken for an old washerwoman bundled up against mid-winter cold.
The wall above it sprang to life, and a picture of an Imazighen woman looked down on them.
"That's you, Jo!" said Don in surprise, and it was. A slightly older woman than Jo, pale for a desert dweller, with her hair the way Jo now styled it to blend in with the village women.
"But that picture's at least two hundred years old!" said Izem. "Look at the henna work around her neck, and the tassels on the robes, and the way the cloth has been coloured with plant dyes. This is an old, formal attire."
"I think there's more to it than that," said Don. "Sure, I Wadu here has 'recognised' Jo, but I think his species hold females in special regard. For some reason I keep thinking of him as male.
Struggle for a Small Blue Planet Page 21