"Practice.
"Air-raid practice? In the middle of the night? In down- town Bamako?"
"Yes. Our army. Practice. Do not worry."
"You think I believe that bullshit?"
"No talking!" They clamped her into handcuffs, hard.
They hurt. She laughed at them, inside.
They marched her downstairs, and into the courtyard. Then they prodded her into the back of a truck. Not a secret-police paddy wagon but a canvas-topped military truck daubed in dun-and-yellow desert camouflage. It had wooden benches inside for troops, and jerry cans of water and gasohol.
They shackled her legs to one of the support bars beneath the wooden bench. She sat there exulting. She didn't know where she was going, but it was going to be different now.
She sat sweating in the heat for ten minutes. Then they brought in another woman. White, blond. They shackled her to the opposite bench, and jumped out; and slammed the tailgate.
The engine started up with a roar. They jolted into movement.
Laura examined the stranger. She was blond and thin. and bony and wearing striped canvas prison garb. She looked about thirty. She looked very familiar. Laura realized that she and the stranger looked enough alike to be sisters. They looked at each other and grinned shyly.
The truck cleared the gates.
"Laura Webster!" Laura said.
"Katje Selous." The stranger leaned forward, extending both cuffed hands. They grabbed at each other's wrists and shook hard, clumsily, smiling.
"Katie Selous, A.C.A. Corps!" Laura said triumphantly.
"What?"
"I don't know what it means... . But I saw it on a list of prisoners."
"Ah!" Selous said. "Azanian Civil Action Corps. Yes,
I'm a doctor. Relief camp."
Laura blinked. "You're from South Africa?"
"We call it Azania now. And you, you're American?"
"Rizome Industries Group."
"Rizome." Selous wiped sweat from her forehead, a jail- bird's pallor. "I can't tell them apart, the multinationals.... "
She brightened. "Do you make suntan oil? That oil that makes you turn black?"
"Huh? No!" Laura paused, thinking about it. "I dunno.
Maybe we do, nowadays. I've been out of touch."
"I think you do make it." Selous looked solemn. "It's very important and wonderful."
"My husband used that stuff," Laura said. "He might have given Rizome the idea. He's very bright, my husband.
David's his name." Speaking of David made a whole buried section of her soul rise suddenly from the tomb. Here she was, chained in the back of a truck headed for God knew where, but with a few revivifying words she was part of the world again. The big sane world of husbands and children and work. Tears gushed suddenly down her face. She smiled at Selous and shrugged apologetically and looked at the floor.
"They kept you in solitary, eh," Selous said gently.
"We have a baby, too," Laura babbled. "Her name's Loretta."
"They had you longer than me," Selous said. "It's been almost a year since they took me from camp."
Laura shook her head, hard. "Did, uh..." She cleared her throat. "Do you know what's going on?"
Selous nodded. "I know a little. What I heard from the other hostages. The last two nights--those were Azanian air raids. My people. Our commandos, too, maybe. I think they hit some fuel dumps-the sky burned all night!"
"Azanian," Laura said aloud. So that was it. What she'd just lived through. An armed clash between Mali and Azania.
It seemed obscure and improbable. Not that an African war was unlikely, they happened all the time. Back pages in newspapers, a few seconds on cable news. But that they were for real, they took place in a real world of dust and heat and flying metal.
The South Africans weren't in the news much. They weren't very fashionable. "Your people must have flown a long way."
"We have aircraft carriers," Selous said proudly. "We never signed your Vienna Convention."
"Oh. Uh-huh." Laura nodded blankly.
Selous looked at her clinically, a doctor hunting for signs of damage. "Were you tortured?"
"What? No." Laura paused. "About three months ago they beat me up. After I wrecked a machine." She felt embarrassed even to have mentioned it. It seemed so inade- quate. "Not like those poor people downstairs."
"Mmmm ... yes, they've suffered." It was a statement of fact. Curiously detached, a judgment by someone who'd seen a lot of it. Selous glanced out the back of the truck. They were in the middle of Bamako now, endless nightmare land- scape of foul shacks and huts. Wisps of evil yellowish smoke rose from a distant refinery.
"Were you tortured, Dr. Selous?"
"Yes. A little. At first." Selous paused. "Were you assaulted?
Raped?"
"No." Laura shook her head. "They never even seemed to think of it. I don't know why...."
Selous leaned back, nodding. "It's their policy. It must be true, I think. That the leader of FACT is a woman."
Laura felt stunned. "A woman."
Selous smiled sourly. "Yes ... we of the weaker sex do tend to get around these days."
"What kind of woman would. .."
"Rumor says she's a right-wing American billionaire. Or a
British aristocrat. Maybe both, eh-why not?" Selous tried to spread her hands skeptically; her cuffs rattled. "For years
FACT was nothing much... mercenaries. Then quite sud- denly ... very organized. A new leader, someone smart and determined-with a vision. One of us modem girls." She chuckled lightly.
There didn't seem to be more to say on that topic. It was probably a lie anyway. "Where do you think they're taking us?"
"North, into the desert-I know that much." Selous thought it over. "Why did they keep you locked away from the rest of us? We never saw you. We used to see your maid, that's all."
"My what?"
"Your cellmate, the little Bambara informer from downstairs."
Selous shrugged. "Sorry. You know how it is in a cell block. People get crazy. We used to call you the' Princess.
Rapunzel, eh."
"People get crazy," Laura said. "I thought I saw my
Optimal Persona. But it was you, wasn't it, doctor. You and I look a lot alike. You came in and treated me after I was beaten, didn't you."
Selous blinked doubtfully. " `Optimal Persona.' That's very American.... Are you from California?"
"Texas. "
"It certainly wasn't me, Laura.... I've never seen you before in my life."
Long, strange pause.
"You really think we look alike?"
"Sure," Laura said.
"But I'm a Boer, an Afrikaaner. And you have that hybrid
American look."
They had reached an impasse. The conversation hung there as heat and dust boiled over the empty end of the truck. She was dealing with an alien. They had missed a connection somehow. Laura felt thirsty already and they were not even out of the city.
She struggled to pick up the thread.
"They kept me in solitary because they said I had atomic secrets. "
Selous sat upright, startled. "Have you seen a Bomb?"
"What?'
"There are rumors of a test site in the Malian desert.
Where the F.A.C.T. tried to build a Bomb."
"First I've ever heard of that," Laura said. "I saw their submarine, though. They said it had atomic warheads on- board. The sub did have some missiles. I know that much, because they hit and sank a ship I was on."
"Exocets?" Selous said gravely.
"Yes, that's right, exactly."
"But there could have been other missiles with a longer range, eh? Long enough to hit Pretoria?"
"I guess so. But it doesn't prove they were nuclear bombs."
"But if they take us to this test site, and we find a huge crater of sand melted into glass, that would prove something, wouldn't it?"
Laura said nothing.
"It ties in with something the warden told me once,"