Muezzinland (32 page)

Chapter 24

As Mnada indicated the form their plan should take, Nshalla wondered how long remained before the tug of her sister's subconscious once again interrupted this final stage of their struggle. Mnada spoke concisely, as if afraid that detail would drag her back into madness. "All the gods are here," she began, "though I haven't seen them. Yet I can feel them scratching at the back of my mind. We must scour Muezzinland, all three of us, looking with the eyes of hawks. We should look for Sajara and for the four gods of the Bambara pantheon, since we will recognise their forms better than the others. Sajara we know best of all, but he is the most dangerous. Though ultimately he is a hierarchy of interlinked software, here he is very real—a killer."

"We know all about Sajara," said Nshalla.

"Is that all we need to know?" Gmoulaye asked impatiently.

"You're so unsubtle," complained Nshalla. She stood, pulled Mnada to her feet. "C'mon, let's start the search. Shall we begin in the plains?"

Mnada nodded.

Nshalla now felt more like a human being. Muezzinland was not so bad. In fact, nothing had changed as far as she could tell, except that Gmoulaye had become more superstitious, more negative. But that was her nature—tribal woman. Nshalla and her sister were of royal stock, far better equipped to deal with a mere change in psychic perspective.

They searched until the sun was low in the west, but nothing even hinting at a deity appeared. Nshalla began to worry. In the outside world the Empress would be making her plans, perhaps even putting them into practice; and Muezzinland was very much her creation, despite Mnada's autonomy. Really, they were foreigners here.

Gmoulaye had an idea. With Mnada out of earshot, she said, "Princess Mnada knows where these gods are—"

"How can she? Has she led us there?"

"Let me
finish,
" snapped Gmoulaye. "Mnada's subconscious mind knows where the gods are, so we must let it come to the fore. Suppose we made her fall asleep? Her dreams might somehow tell us where to go."

Nshalla took a stick and slashed at some foliage. "I suppose it's better than no plan at all. How will you make her sleep?"

"There are herbs here."

"Herbs? This is the twenty second century! We stopped using herbs decades ago."

Gmoulaye frowned and said, "Regardless of the century, herbs work." She plucked a few leaves from a white flowering plant then added, "These are a suitable somnifacient. Boil some water while I raise the aura of the leaves."

Nshalla laughed, shaking her head. "Auras… what have I come to?"

"Just do it!" shouted Gmoulaye.

"Talk to me like that once more—"

"Shhh!" Gmoulaye hissed. "The princess is coming back."

Fuming, Nshalla turned to greet her sister. Out of spite for Gmoulaye she created a spark by snapping her fingers, so the tinder fragments on the sand burst into flame. "Don't worry, Mnada," she cooed, "we'll find the gods. Muezzinland is a small place, despite the strange internal refractions. We'll find them."

"I can't help thinking I know where they are," replied Mnada. She seemed like a lost child in need of guidance.

They persuaded her to drink, then awaited the results. The herbs worked, and Nshalla found herself torn between anger that Gmoulaye was right and relief that the plan was working. But an hour passed and nothing happened to indicate that any dreams might be forthcoming. Nshalla took her stick and began hacking back the undergrowth, slashing left, right, then left again in a rhythmic pattern designed to stop her thoughts from overpowering her.

I'm not violent, she kept telling herself.

Then she heard a noise, and looked back to the fire. Mnada was on her feet.

"It hasn't worked," she said as she ran back. "It hasn't worked, has it?"

"Quiet," Gmoulaye hissed. "Has your arrogance left you completely blind? She is sleepwalking. Don't you see she might simply lead us to the gods?"

Mnada was circling the fire, eyes open, yet vacant. It appeared to be a kind of somnambulism. Because Nshalla's natural suspicion of Gmoulaye's methods was tempered with her desire to find the gods and their interface, she decided to keep quiet, but the effort required was becoming too great to bear.

So they followed Mnada as she led them out into the depths of Muezzinland. The landscape changed around them as they walked in single file; Mnada leading, Gmoulaye bringing up the rear. They began in plains land, not unlike the ruddy landscape around Fes, before hilly ground approached, and in no time they were climbing mountain trails, the snowline around them, boulders marking a terrain shattered by frost and wind. Then, with the peaks behind them, it was back to plains land, and then the depths of a sandy desert. All this passed them by in a matter of minutes. Muezzinland lacked topological consistency.

With the desert crossed they entered less rugged land, and then pleasant wooded land. Nshalla began to see a pattern. This was a metaphor of their journey from Accra to Fes. They were in some way returning to Ghana. That frightened her.

But they located the gods.

Mnada stopped at a great baobab tree, twisted like a pile of black ropes, with a scored and pitted bole leading up to a dappled canopy of leaves. Her face became more animated, as if she was waking up.

"Here?" queried Nshalla.

"So it seems," Gmoulaye replied. "This tree may be the key."

Nshalla was about to claim superstitious nonsense when the tree opened up like a bad fruit, and a smoky air poured out, with the voices of men and women, hardly audible as if they had floated down from the stars, accompanying the spiritual vision. With the smoke dispersed they were left to peer into a tunnel.

Confidently, Gmoulaye led them inside the tree. Like Muezzinland, it possessed no geometry known to human beings.

"There!" said Mnada.

An extraordinary sight awaited them.

Despite poor ambient light, Nshalla could see all clearly. She stood in a cave with wooden walls, a polished floor under her feet, a ceiling of alabaster above, twinkling like a distant lake under the full and numinous moon. Around them floated twelve gods, each curled up like an embryo, glistening like the flotsam of the sea, dark as obsidian, curvaceous like buds of flesh. A kind of peace emanated from them. They were happy, satisfied. Yet they were all linked by umbilical cord to one great cord that ran out of the chamber. Somehow Nshalla knew the gods had been subdued by her mother, in much the same way as a narcotic eventually subdues the mind of a once animated individual. She felt crushed.

"What did you expect?" asked Mnada, bitterly.

Nshalla did not answer. Would the Empress always win? She remembered the cosmic face above Fes, and the answer,
oh yes!
entered her mind.

"It is not so bad," said Gmoulaye.

"Shut up, you ignorant peasant!" Nshalla yelled. "What do you know about anything here? You're just a stupid, superstitious nobody. Now let me and Mnada think about this, and if I hear one more syllable…" She ran out of words as her stuttering anger caused her mouth, then her whole body to shake.

Mnada took her aside. "Keep calm, sister," she said.

Gmoulaye anyway was not to be put off. "The answer is simple," she declared. "Clearly we are very close to the interface. All we have to do is follow the main umbilical to its end, and there deal with it. And then, perhaps, we are done in Muezzinland."

Nshalla felt a scream of frustration knotting her insides. With a physical effort she forced it down. She took a few deep breaths. Yes. Maybe they could follow the main umbilical.

"There's somebody missing," Gmoulaye said.

Nshalla looked again at the divine forms. There should be thirteen. There were the six gods of the Nuer people, there was Tanit, there Amma, and there, clustered together, floated the four gods of the Bambara pantheon. The rainbow serpent of the sky was missing.

"Sajara is off fighting his mmoatia," said Gmoulaye. "I think he must be out of the Empress' control. We might yet encounter him."

"Save your speculation," said Nshalla. "We'll deal with these gods first. Mother effectively has the world's most powerful software under her thumb, and that has to be stopped without delay."

Nshalla led the way, with Mnada at her side. The main umbilical cord led through a series of subterranean wooden caves, all different—polished, rough, painted, some even carved with mathematical symbols—until at a final cave they saw blue sky again, and smelled hot, perfumed air. Nshalla surveyed the land outside the cave, standing in its mouth, again feeling like a god, this time a god of stealth and cunning following a track to the bitter end.

"We will prevail!" she shouted to the sky.

The umbilical led down into wooded land. Setting a fast pace Nshalla pushed on, until at a valley she noticed that the cord was becoming darker and thicker. Sensing an end, she slowed, then stopped before a pool. The umbilical cord snaked through the mud at the pool's edge and disappeared underwater. Nearby, just over a reed-brushed dune, the sea soughed.

"What now?" asked Mnada.

"We follow on," said Nshalla.

"But—"

"Mnada, water is no bar to the divine. We are destined to find the end of this cord. Follow me and don't be afraid."

Nshalla did not look back as she leaped into the water, so vibrant was her confidence, so sure her feeling that the other two would follow. The pool was salty, but clear, and she could see to the bottom. Somehow the clarity of the water invigorated her, and she breathed long and deep.

Fish and weed caught her attention, but what really stood out was the crimson sea-anemone that covered fully a third of the pool bottom. This was the termination of the umbilical cord. It must be a device, input/output, a hotline both to frontline global software and to the Empress.

"We have it," she told the others. Puzzled, they looked at the sea-anemone.

Nshalla turned to see Mnada caressing her scalp with trembling hands, and suddenly everything was obvious.

The red wig worn by the Empress was her half of the interface. The real half, in the real world. Doubtless Mnada had been in line for this priceless technological artifact. All those synthetic hairs created a vast network through which the direction of the world's software would easily be achieved. Now Nshalla saw the attraction of the scheme. Knowing that virtual people could eventually make their own gods, the Empress had decided to direct those gods, understanding, through her privileged position and her unique access to modern technology, their relationship to the rest of the world's transputer systems. What a vision! But what an overwhelming personality the Empress must have to make it work. This explained so much: the style of governance, the secrecy, her position on the Aetherium. There was nobody in the world with the potential of Mnada, Empress of Ghana. And she, Nshalla, was the younger daughter of this monster.

Nshalla's enlightenment caused her confidence to achieve new heights, fuelled by fury, yet guided by understanding. Without thinking, without discussion or even a glance at Mnada, she sank to the bottom of the pool and attacked the anemone with her bare hands, pulling at the hundreds of poisoned tentacles, throwing them aside until they floated around her like a tattered halo of dried blood. After just a minute she was left with a stump, here and there a few torn tentacles. Suddenly afraid, she turned to see if her deed had affected Mnada, but her sister just floated in underwater space, her eyes vacant once more, her limbs loose, as if their joints had dissociated. Her mouth hung open.

Nshalla forged a way back to the top of the pool, Mnada and Gmoulaye caught up in her wake. They splashed about, then made for the pool side, where they dragged themselves through the stinking mud, through the reeds and papyrus and rushes, to the warm bank, where they rested.

"The Empress' reign is over!" Nshalla declared. "What was made I have destroyed. She can't come inside Muezzinland—she dares not. All we have to do now is escape."

"I think that is rather simplistic," said Gmoulaye.

"Oh,
do
you?" Nshalla returned.

"Yes. You have destroyed the interface on this side, but Sajara remains, as does Princess Mnada. Remember, we believe the princess carries something of Muezzinland in her head. The struggle is not yet over."

"We shall see," said Nshalla, contemptuously. It was about time she dealt with Gmoulaye.

"Besides, Muezzinland itself still exists. It is a scion of the Empress with independent life."

"
Is
it?"

"Leave Gmoulaye alone," warned Mnada. "Muezzinland is not simple. The interface has gone and we're free of mother, but she has other options. I know it."

"What options?"

Mnada shrugged. "I just know there must be some."