Firebird (31 page)

42

Next morning we had the camels going by fool’s dawn. There was a haze in the air and a cool wind from the north, and the sun came up weakly like a bloodshot eye. ‘Good,’ Ross muttered to himself as he urged his mount forward, ‘looks like the freak hot spell is over. The Divine Spirit be praised.’

‘So,
amnir
,
’
I said, reining in beside him, ‘did you learn anything in the Shining?’ When he glanced at me his eyes behind the glasses were full of amusement.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Did you?’

I glanced at Daisy and she reddened, and looked down shyly. ‘I suppose I did,’ I said. I considered telling them both I’d glimpsed that Daisy had the Shining power, but I rejected it. Ross had probably seen it already, and would reveal it in his own time. He placed his camel stick in his left hand next to his headrope, and removed his glasses. ‘It was a bad Shining,’ he said, ‘maybe there wasn’t enough of the Divine Water, or maybe I mixed it badly, I don’t know. I only got broken images, and there were...bad omens.’ He replaced his glasses and tapped his camel lightly with his stick. I flicked my headrope to urge Rusasa to keep up. ‘Does a tadpole headed guy mean anything to you?’ he asked. ‘A guy in a black suit with legs like a spider, and a sort of crest of hair hanging backwards? The guy has a Sekhmet tattoo...here.’ He pointed to his left wrist.

Wan Helsing,’ I said, ‘he’s the CIA chief of staff in Cairo. Why, you think he could be the ghoul?’

‘It’s possible. But why would the ghoul get itself tattooed? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘What else did you see?’

‘Just...well, I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole damn thing, Sammy. Something doesn’t feel right.’

‘What about the water?’ Daisy asked anxiously.

‘Ah, that’s one problem I did solve. Ever heard of the Zerzura Club?’

Daisy kicked her camel’s withers with her heels and it bucked up. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘it was a bunch of desert explorers set up in the 1930s whose object was to find the lost oasis of Zerzura. They never found it, but I’ve read a report suggesting it was tied up with the Jason Scholars — the predecessors of MJ—12.’

‘It was, but that’s not really the point. The Zerzura Club used motorcars and light aircraft for their exploration, and they left water dumps all over the desert in case they’d be needed in an emergency. Some of them are still there, and it happens there’s one on our way to the Sea Without Water.’

Daisy’s lips formed a roundel of surprise. ‘The 1930s!’ she gasped. ‘That’s more than sixty years ago. It’s not possible!’

Ross laughed. ‘Oh but it is. You see, years ago Mansur and I found one of the Club’s dumps near Burj at-Tuyur.

The water was still drinkable, and there were even tins of hard tack biscuits that could still be eaten. All the tins were stamped with the British Q M Department arrow, and the date 1937.’

‘Good Lord!’

‘The dump on our way is marked with a low cairn, and I don’t need Ibram’s map to find it.’ He tapped his head with the hook of his camel stick. ‘It’s all in here.’

At that instant, Ross’s camel let out a bellow of rage and jerked its head wildly. Its great body stiffened, the eyes under the thick brow occipits bulging from its head. Ross gripped the headrope and pulled back but the camel went berserk, leaping into the air with its limbs working like oars. For a second Ross hung on gallantly, then he lost his seat and fell with a thump on to a bed of stones. The camel dashed away into the distance in a trail of dust, jumping like a fire cracker until it keeled over, bursting both water bags. I rolled out of the saddle to help Ross. He was unconscious, his breathing heavy, and there was a cut on the side of his head where his skull had come into contact with a sharp stone. I hoisted him upright and Mansur dashed over with some water in a gourd, forcing it into Ross’s mouth.

‘What was it?’ Daisy asked. ‘What spooked the camel?’

Ahmad appeared with a stumpy grey snake and held it up to us by the tail, shaking his head. ‘A puff adder!’ he said. ‘A very bad omen!’

Suddenly Ross’s eyelids flickered and he opened his eyes. ‘Mansur?’ he stuttered. ‘What’s happened? Why is it dark?’

Mansur and I looked at each other and I waved a hand over Ross’s face. He didn’t even blink.

‘The Divine Spirit preserve us!’ Ahmad said grimly, ‘I said it was a bad omen. The
amnir’
s
gone completely blind!’

43

We discussed sending Ross back to Bahrayn, but we all knew that without him we’d have little hope of finding the Benben Stone, or the water dump he’d predicted we’d find. ‘I’ve seen this kind of blindness before,’ Ross said, ‘it doesn’t last for ever, but it takes some time to wear off. Until it does, the caravan must have a new leader. Sammy will take the lead from now on.’

‘But
amnir
,
’
I protested, ‘Mansur’s the senior one.’

‘I know,’ Ross said, ‘Mansur’s one of the best fighters in the tribe, but this needs more than that. It needs a touch of the Shining power and you’re the only one apart from me who has it. Don’t forget, you are Nawayr — “The Little Light”.’

After that I took the point, navigating on the dim beacon that I could feel flashing on the very edge of my consciousness. We rigged up a special camel borne stretcher called a
shibriya
for Ross to ride in, and I towed it behind my own camel. For four more days we struggled on through the wilderness, seeing nothing but the sunlight sparkling on the stones, and the ghosts of wind devils running helter skelter across the empty plains. The second day was blessedly cool, but the freak hot spell was not finished and on the third the sun returned with a vengeance, leaching our bodies dry. After the day of the Shining, there were no more
hattias
, and the camels went hungry of fresh grazing. They had to be fed on the barley we carried, and while it satisfied them it left their bellies dry: ‘Like you or I eating a bag of biscuits,’ Ahmad commented. The days were punctuated only by our few water halts, and the ration dwindled from a full gourd each to half a gourd. Once we found a cairn in the desert, covered in tribal brands, and once a lone yardang — a surreal mushroom shaped rock, fifty feet high. Another time Ahmad shot a huge monitor lizard which we ate that evening, eggs and all, and once Mansur found the tracks of an ostrich. ‘Ali occupied himself in picking up Stone hand axes and scrapers from the desert floor. These only provided momentary diversions from the thirst that racked us almost constantly — a craving for liquid that overwhelmed every other thought.

By the fourth day the drippers were empty and we rode bent over our saddle pommels, our mouths clogged with mucus and our lips so cracked and dry we could hardly speak. Halfway through the morning I halted my camel to stare at the horizon, where I could just make out the faintest shading of amber against the blue of the sky.

‘What is it?’ Ross asked from his
shibriya
.

‘A kind of muzzy thing on the skyline,’ I said, ‘could be a cloud of dust.’

‘No,’ Ross said, with certainty. ‘That’s no cloud of dust, it’s the Sea Without Water. We’re almost there.’

***

Ross said that the water dump lay just this side of the wall of dunes, and estimated that we’d get there before the time of the Afternoon Prayer. We perked up after that. There was no stop at midday, and we were too weak to walk. The camels carried us patiently, crooning and grumbling, their great legs working like pistons, their flat foot pads crunching on and on. By early afternoon the dunes of the sand sea had come into full focus — a vast wall of rippling silicon grains, flashing golden in the sun and blocking the western horizon. Not long afterwards I spotted a cairn, and turned the caravan slightly to the left towards it. It took almost an hour to get there and it seemed to last a lifetime. Nobody spoke. We rode doubled over our saddles, each of us obsessed with only a single image — cool, clear water. When we finally came up to the cairn, though, I was impressed with the tribesmen’s discipline. No one rushed madly to dig. Instead they couched their camels carefully on soft ground, hobbled and unloaded them, and only then walked casually over to the cairn. It was built of small blue granite boulders on one of which was an arrow painted in white paint. ‘This must be it,’ I growled through my parched lips, ‘that arrow is the old British government Quartermaster’s mark.’

‘Well,’ Ali said, rolling up the sleeves of his
jibba
, ‘we’ve got no shovels, so I guess we’ll have to use our hands.’

We all got stuck into the digging — even Daisy. Our efforts were feeble, because our energy had been sapped by moisture loss, but we were driven on by our thirst. Within half an hour my hand struck something hard and metallic and I cleared away the sand to find the top of a five gallon jerry can. ‘The Divine Spirit be praised!’ Mansur said. ‘The Shining never lies!’ I scrabbled in the sand frantically and the others weighed in, uncovering no less than ten jerry cans in a few minutes.

‘Thanks to the Divine Spirit!’ Ahmad said. ‘We’re saved.’

I hefted one of the cans out experimentally. It was heavy — as heavy as five gallons of water — and there was a reassuring slosh from the inside. Mansur helped me to lift it out of the pit. It was rusting on the outside and most of the paint had peeled off, but it appeared intact. I contemplated it for a moment, and the others gathered round expectantly. I wrestled with the hinged cap and found it stuck. Someone handed me a sharp stone and I struck the lip of the cap once. It flew back and there was a slight hiss of air. ‘Ali produced a gourd and I smiled, lifted the jerry can and poured. The water gurgled out cool and clear as the day it had been buried, more than sixty years ago. We mumbled thanks to the Divine Spirit with cracked lips, and squatted down on our haunches to partake of the holy sacrament of water. When everyone had drunk a gourdful we returned to the pit and began pulling out the rest of the cache, and only then did we realize that our celebrations had been premature. Of the nine other jerry cans in the dump, not one remained intact.

44

At first light, while the Hawazim made tea and crouched shivering round a desultory fire of smouldering camel dung, I climbed the face of the dune wall. The dune must have been four hundred feet high, a colossal barrier of sand rising to a razor edged crest. The prevailing wind came from the north, which meant that the gentler incline — the slip slope — lay on the opposite side. To get to the crest we would have to take the camels up a slope of about thirty three degrees — the maximum angle at which sand can remain stable. I worked my way up slowly, zigzagging across the face, probing for pockets of drum sand with my camel stick. I wondered if we’d be able to get the camels up here, but that wasn’t my main worry. The jerry can had saved our lives — thanks to the Divine Spirit — but now it was almost finished, and we were hardly better off than we’d been yesterday. There would be no water in the sand sea, and I doubted very much if there would be any at our destination. But we couldn’t go back either — not unless we slaughtered our camels and drank the juice out of their bellies.

I sighed as I laboured up the dune crest. Water equalled life, I thought — it was the eternal equation of the desert nomad’s existence. Finally I made the top of the crest and for a moment I stood there, leaning on my stick, getting my breath back. As far as the eye could see in every direction was a tangle of high dunes, some arranged into long rambling walls, others forming oblongs, squares and crescents, like a vast Stone Age village of roofless shacks. I gasped. It really was like looking across a great ocean of frozen waves that scintillated pink, orange, ochre and in places even turquoise and aquamarine. The dunes were oriented the same way as the one we’d just climbed so that the sharp leeward slopes faced us, giving the impression of an impenetrable series of fortifications. They were beautiful, too, exquisitely sculpted by the winds over millennia into sweeping concaves and convexes, knife—blade edges and trailing sashes, radiant in the sunlight with a magnificence and a grandeur that sent a fizz of wonder through my veins. No pyramid, no ancient Egyptian temple, I thought, could ever emulate this sublime natural architecture — moulded by the winds out of the bed of a sea that had existed here in the dinosaur age.

I stood there spellbound for a few moments, watching the mobile wafts of sand that sprayed like spume over the rippling crests, constantly sharpening them. In another guise, the sand sea was the wind made visible, just as iron filings on the head of a magnet were the palpable expression of magnetic force. In all that massive expanse of sand, there seemed not a gram of comfort for thirsty men and camels, but then my eye alighted on something green growing on the windward slope of the dune, and I dashed down to examine it, whispering a silent prayer.

Five minutes later I was back on the crest, leaping down the face in great strides, leaving a pattern of small craters where my feet had plunged into the sand. I jogged straight towards the others, squatted next to Ross and poked at the remains of the fire with my stick.

‘Well?’ Ross asked.

‘I can get us up,’ I said, ‘without falling in drum sand. But on the other side of this dune there are rows and rows of others. It’s like a maze.’

Ross pulled his saddlebag to him and fumbled for the two bits of Ibram’s map. ‘This thing’s useless to us now,’ he said. ‘It’s served its purpose — it showed us roughly in which part of the
Bahr
the Benben Stone lay. But it’s made to be used with a compass or sophisticated navigation equipment. Without the proper gear we can’t use it in the sands.’

‘There’s been a lot of digging in the place,’ Daisy said. ‘Perhaps there’ll even be some kind of track.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said, ‘if the site was obvious they could have located it from the air. They wouldn’t have needed the map. That suggests it has been covered up and completely concealed.’

‘Talking of the air,’ Mansur said, looking up at the sky, ‘we haven’t seen our chopper for four days. It’s odd that they left us alone so long.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘either they already know we’re here, or they’ve given up on the map. I wouldn’t stake my life on them giving up.’

‘What will we do with the Benben Stone if we find it?’ Daisy asked. ‘I mean, it must weigh a ton.’

Ross removed his glasses and blew on the lenses. I guess it was out of habit, since they were useless to him now. ‘Some people think the Stone was a meteorite that plunged into the desert thousands of years ago,’ he said.

‘It may have been made of meteoric iron, which was venerated in ancient times. If it was, it would probably have been cone shaped, because the front part of a meteorite gets melted and tapers down when entering the earth’s atmosphere. If the Stone
is
an iron meteorite, we’d be talking about something as high as a man with the weight of a truck. A crane could handle it, but we wouldn’t get far with nine camels.’

‘So what are we going to do?’

Ross put back his glasses and stared blankly towards the crest of the dune. ‘I’ll tell you that when we’ve found it,’ he said.

‘And if the map’s no good, how
will
we find it?’

He tapped his head with his forefinger. ‘I’ll know the place when I get there. Until then, you’ll have to trust me and Sammy to find a path through.’

‘Mansur’s one good eye flashed momentarily. ‘
Amnir
,’ he said, ‘unless we get water we won’t be going anywhere.’

I gave him a mischievous glance. ‘Oh, the water,’ I said, ‘I almost forgot. How much is left in the jerry can?’

‘Enough for a couple of gourdfuls each. It won’t last us a day.’

I considered it for a moment. ‘No,’ I said, ‘but it’ll last two hardy men two days. Here’s what I suggest, Mansur. Pick the two fastest camels in the troop and send two men back with them to al-Bahrayn with all the water we have left. If they ride night and day they can make it in two days. They’re to tell the rest of the
qom
to send a caravan here — to the cairn — with as much water and sour camel’s milk as they can spare. It’s to be here in six days’ time.’

Mansur’s face fell. ‘Six days! But we might be dead by then!’

I grinned. ‘Only the Divine Spirit knows that,’ I said, ‘but after all, we are the Ghosts of the Desert.’ I dug my hand into the pocket of my
jibba
and brought out the mottled green fruit, as large as a baseball, that I’d found up on the dunes. There was a murmur from the other tribesmen.

‘What is it?’ Daisy asked.

‘It’s a sweet desert melon,’ I said. ‘They’re very rare. Most desert melons are the bitter colocynth type — poisonous to humans — but the Divine Spirit has really smiled on us today. It must have rained here this year, because these things are growing on the slip slopes. Now, we’re not going to get water fat on melon pulp, but if we can find enough of them, we might just survive.’