“What do you think?”
It was Ka’s job to know.
“Well”—Ka poked at the embers with a stick, sending sparks flicking skywards—“rivers get bigger, right, Saul?” That was what he remembered being told.
Saul shrugged. He was older than Ka and bigger, only not as clever. And Saul wasn’t his real name any more than Sarah was Sarah or Bec was actually Rebecca. But they’d fought with Ras Michael and those were their given names. The shoulder patches might have changed after they swapped sides at Aswan, yet the biblicals had stuck. Mostly because they’d been with Ras Michael for so long their original names were lost.
“Gets bigger? Says who?” Bec’s voice sounded aggressive but then it always sounded aggressive. Hers was still a real question.
“I do,” said Ka, more confidently. “Rivers start as streams and then get bigger on the way down the mountain. So they must begin small.”
“What mountain?” Zac asked.
“There’s always a mountain,” Ka said. “Or a hill. So if we find the start we can block it . . .”
“And just how do we do that?” Bec demanded.
It was Zachary who answered. “With ash,” he said, then blushed. “You build the dam with stones, put twigs behind it and then throw ash in the water. That blocks the small holes.”
“Okay,” Saul said heavily. “Suppose we decide to turn off the Nile . . .” His tone made it obvious how stupid he found that suggestion. “How do you suggest we get to where it starts?”
“Follow it,” said Sarah, as if that was blindingly obvious.
“Rivers wiggle,” Zac protested.
Sarah looked at Zac, trying not to be cross with the small boy. “Then we’ll just have to follow the wiggles, won’t we?”
“Not necessarily,” said Ka, then stopped. Only he’d said too much already. And Sarah was looking at him, openly interested.
Reaching into his shirt pocket, Ka pulled out the dark glasses. They were warm beneath his fingers. From the moment he’d found them, day or night, whatever the temperature in the desert they were always slightly warm. As if their temperature was controlled by a tiny spider’s web of gold threads that ran beneath the surface of the frame.
“Wow,” said Saul. “He’s got shades.”
Ka kept his temper.
“Where am I?”
“What . . . ?”
Flipping up one hand, Ka cut dead Sarah’s question. He could still see the others but now the fire had become a white blaze. A split second later, the flames fell into focus and it was the others who backed into shadow. And then in front of Ka’s eyes, the picture changed. Maybe it altered inside his head or maybe the new picture happened on the lenses. It was hard to tell.
All Ka knew was that suddenly he looked down at himself. A boy with too-big boots sitting at a crude fire beside a girl in a vest and combats. Opposite sat another heavier girl, a small boy hugging a gun, and a large boy who was clearly the eldest but whose poorly mended arm put him at an obvious disadvantage.
Around them were dotted other fires, other groups. Ka was slightly shocked at just how many fires there were. Further away began real tents, where the real soldiers slept, their campfires fuelled by gas, not scrub or camel dung. Beyond this, a slope began and at the bottom was a wide river. And though the water level was low, fat hippopotami still hung heavy near the muddy banks, ignoring the jackals that slunk out of the darkness to drink.
Black birds with white crowns roosted in the ruin of an old tomb, its broken walls split apart so long ago that it looked like a natural formation, an outcrop of crumbling mud brick.
Lions were meant to sneak down from the highlands, ridden by white-whiskered monkeys who spoke a real language and lived high on a cliff face, secure from humans. Ka could see neither of these.
Though he could see movement, away to his right, human movement where dry wadis fed from mountains that ran along the distant coast like a spine. Beyond this, a thin strip of towns and small cities separated the spine from more water than Ka could imagine.
RED SEA.
The letters lit across his vision, but he didn’t need to read them because the name was spoken softly into his ears. Which was as well because Ka hadn’t been taught reading, though he could remember anything if he knew it was important. And sometimes he remembered things anyway, just in case they turned out to be useful later.
So he knew, without being told, that the white markings on the bonnets of the 4 × 4s racing down the dried oueds towards their camp belonged to the government.
They left their fire banked up and burning brightly. Their rucksacks made a huddle under Saul’s old blanket. At ground level it looked like they were still there and sleeping.
Ka led them through the early morning, heading west. Pickets were stationed at regular spots around the camp, but those on guard duty sat talking or smoking kif, which they hid in their hands so that ends stayed hidden from the grown-ups. Who, if they were wise, stayed away. Two nights back a ten-year-old picket had fragged a one-bar, ostensibly for refusing to give the password. Word was, she’d tried to confiscate his cache.
“This way.” Ka slid down a gravel bank to where silver water spread away into forever. Reality was less far than it looked, but far enough. Now was where he learnt if he actually had control over the group or not.
“We have to cross the river,” said Ka, his voice calm. As if asking them to brave the water was a perfectly reasonable request. For a second, he wondered whether to mention the armed trucks racing across the desert on the other side of the camp, each one filled with a dozen heavily armed soldiers.
Saul might want to stay to fight and Ka could live with that. It mattered very little to him what Saul did, or where. But Sarah might stay too, and that mattered much more. Bec, as ever, would do what was the least effort.
“What about crocodiles?” Zac asked.
“There aren’t any,” Ka said firmly.
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
Obviously enough he was lying, because he could see at least three. Loglike flickers that grew brighter the harder he looked. Crocodilus niloticus, according to the glasses, five hundred paces away. With luck, the reptiles would remain asleep. Without luck . . . Well, that applied to everything.
“Come on,” insisted Ka. “Move it. And hold your weapon over your head so water doesn’t go down the barrel.”
“I can’t move it,” said Saul quietly. Sounding, for once, less than certain.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t swim.”
“Oh . . .” Ka hadn’t thought of that. “Anybody else?”
“I probably can,” Zac said brightly. He paused, suddenly aware that Ka, Sarah and Bec were staring at him. “I mean I’ve never tried but . . .”