He drew it up next to the still agonized Abd-el-Kader and got out accompanied by Bey-ag-Akhamouk. Silently and without undue roughness they picked up the fallen clan chief and put him into the back of the hover-lorry, ignoring the crowd.
Homer Crawford came up and said in English, “All right, let’s get out of here. Don’t hurry, but on the other hand don’t let’s prolong it. One of those Ouled Touameur might collect himself to the point of deciding he ought to rescue his leader.”
Abe looked at him disgustedly. “Like, where’d you learn that little party trick, man?”
Crawford yawned. “I said I didn’t know anything about swords. You didn’t ask me about judo. I once taught judo in the Marines.”
“Well, why didn’t you take him sooner? He like to cut your head off with that cheese knife before you landed on him.”
“I couldn’t do it sooner. Not until he knocked the sword out of my hand. Until then it was a sword fight. But as soon as I had no sword, then in the eyes of every Chaambra present I had the right to use any method possible to save myself.”
Bey-ag-Akhamouk looked up at the sun to check the time. “We better speed it up if we want to get this man to Columb-Béchar and then get on down over the desert to Timbuktu and that meeting.”
“Let’s go,” Homer said. The second hovecraft joined them, driven by Elmer Allen, and they made their way through the staring, but motionless, crowds of Chaambra.
IV
Once the city of Timbuktu was more important in population, in commerce, and in learning than the London, the Paris or the Rome of the time. It was the crossroads where African traffic, east and west, met African traffic, north and south; Timbuktu dominated all. In its commercial houses accumulated the wealth of Africa; in its universities and mosques the wisdom of Greece, Rome, Byzantium and the Near East—at a time when such learning was being destroyed in the Dark Ages of Europe.
Timbuktu’s day lasted but two or three hundred years at most. By the middle of the twentieth century it had deteriorated into what looked like nothing so much as a New Mexico ghost town, built largely of adobe. Its palaces and markets had melted away to caricatures of their former selves, its universities were a memory of yesteryear, its population fallen off to a few thousands. Not until the Niger Projects, the dams and irrigation projects, of the latter part of the twentieth century did the city begin to regain a semblance of its old importance.
Homer Crawford’s team had come down over the Tanezrouft route, Reggan, Bidon Cinq and Tessalit; that of Isobel Cunningham, Jacob Armstrong and Clifford Jackson, up from Timbuktu’s Niger River port of Kabara. They met in the former great market square, bordered on two sides by the one time French Administration buildings.
Isobel reacted first. “Abe!” she yelled, pointing accusingly at him.
Abe Baker pretended to cringe, then reacted. “Isobel! Somebody told me you were over here!”
She ran over the heavy sand, which drifted through the streets, to the hovercraft in which he had just pulled up. He popped out to meet her, grinning widely.
“Why didn’t you look me up?” she said accusingly, presenting a cheek to be kissed.
“In Africa, man?” he laughed. “Kinda big, Africa. Like, I didn’t know if you were in the Sahara, or maybe down in Angola, or wherever.”
She frowned. “Heaven forbid.”
Abe turned to the others of his team who had crowded up behind him. It had been a long time since any of them had seen other than native women.
“Isobel,” he said, “I hate to do this, but let me introduce you to Homer Crawford, my immediate boss and slave driver, late of the University of Michigan where he must’ve found out where the body was—they gave him a doctorate. Then here’s Elmer Allen, late of Jamaica—British West Indies, not Long Island—all he’s got is a master’s, also in sociology. And this is Kenneth Ballalou, hails from San Francisco, I don’t think Kenny ever went to school, but he seems to speak every language ever.” Abe turned to his final companion. “And this is our sole real African, Bey-ag-Akhamouk, of Tuareg blood, so beware, they don’t call the Tuareg the Apaches of the Sahara for nothing.”
Bey pretended to wince as he held out his hand. “Since Abe seems to be an education snob, I might as well mention the University of Minnesota and my Political Science.”
Jake Armstrong and Cliff Jackson had come up behind Isobel, and were now introduced in turn. The older man said, “A Tuareg in a Reunited Nations team? Not that it makes any difference to me, but I thought there was some sort of policy.”
“I was taken to the States when I was three,” Bey said. “I’m an American citizen.”
Isobel was chattering, in animation, with Abe Baker. It developed they’d both been reporters on the school paper at Columbia. At least, they’d both started as reporters; Isobel had wound up editor.
Since their introduction, Homer Crawford had been vaguely frowning at her. Now he said, “I’ve been trying to place where I’d seen you before. Now I know. Some photographs of Lena Horne, she was…”
Isobel dropped a mock curtsy. “Thank you, kind sir, you don’t have to tell me about Lena Horne, she’s a favorite. I have scads of tapes of her.”
“Brother,” Elmer Allen said dourly, “how’s anybody going to top that? Homer’s got the inside track now. Let’s get over to this meeting. By the cars, helio-copters and hovercraft around here, you got more of a turnout than I expected, Homer.”
The meeting was held in what had once been an assembly chamber of the officials of the former Cercle de Tombouctou, when this had all been part of French Sudan. It was the only room in the vicinity which would comfortably hold all of them.
Elmer Allen had been right; there was something like a hundred persons present, almost all men but with a sprinkling of women, such as Isobel. More than half were in native costume running the gamut from Nigeria to Morocco and from Mauritania to Ethiopia. They were a competent-looking, confident-voiced gathering.
Homer Crawford knocked with a knuckle on the table that stood at the head of the hall and called for silence. “Sorry we’re late,” he said, “particularly in view of the fact that the idea of this meeting originated with my team. We had some difficulty with a nomad raider, up in Chaambra country.”
Someone from halfway back in the hall said bitterly, “I suppose in typical African Development Project style, you killed the poor man.”
Crawford said dryly, “Poor man isn’t too accurate a description of the gentleman involved. However, he is at present in jail awaiting trial.” He got back to the meeting. “I had originally thought of this being an informal get-together of a score or so of us, but in view of the numbers I suggest we appoint a temporary chairman.”
“You’re doing all right,” Jake Armstrong said from the second row of chairs.
“I second that,” an unknown called from farther back.
Crawford shrugged. His manner had a cool competence. “All right. If there is no objection, I’ll carry on until the meeting decides, if it ever does, that there is need of elected officers.”
“I object.” In the third row a white haired but Prussian-erect man had come to his feet. “I wish to know the meaning of this meeting. I object to it being held at all.”
Abe Baker called to him, “Dad, how can you object to it being held if you don’t know what it’s for?”
Homer Crawford said, “Suppose I briefly sum up our mutual situation and if there are any motions to be made —including calling the meeting quits—or decisions to come to, we can start from there.”