Chapter 21
"This will tell you what to do," said the Empress, feeling at her hip for a weapon. There was nothing there.
Ashamed, Nshalla turned to Gmoulaye and said, "Come on. Leave her."
"Stay!" The Empress turned to the plane and put her foot on the lower rung of the cockpit ladder.
Before Nshalla could react to this new command she felt a hand grab her wrist, and heard Gmoulaye say, "What is that noise?" She cocked her head to listen and heard crashing from the trees at the top of the hill.
Sajara burst over the brow of the hill and made straight for them. Nshalla heard the Empress utter a piercing shriek, and from the corner of her eye saw her scrambling up the plane ladder. Immobile, like Mnada at her side, she watched the god approach, his head raised, tongue flickering, scattering leaves and twigs and dust in a great cloud, from which he seemed to emerge. His coils moved from side to side in a hypnotic motion difficult to look away from.
"Run!" shouted Gmoulaye.
Nshalla panicked. "Where?" She held on to Gmoulaye, but Gmoulaye tried to release herself from Nshalla's grip.
Sajara did not slow as he neared. Nshalla let go of Gmoulaye and turned to run. Sajara was right behind them.
The last thing Nshalla saw as she glanced over her shoulder was an open mouth blotting out everything in view, a cream-coloured mouth with a red tongue. Then she was knocked over, Mnada and Gmoulaye rolling at her side. Sajara's jaws appeared, then a slit of green and sky, and then nothing.
Blackness: Sajara had swallowed them all.
The overpowering stench of plastic made her retch as blindly she hit out, striking Gmoulaye, the tongue, and the jaws. The air seemed to be a fluid in which she might drown. Something massive and wet hit her, and she felt herself bundled down Sajara's throat. It was the blackness that made her panic. She kicked and hit and screamed.
The wet gullet of the snake gave way to something hard yet flexible, like perspex. Propelling movements in the walls stopped. Gmoulaye was groaning words nearby.
Nshalla felt herself bumped and jogged as Sajara moved. Gravity meant she could at least sit upright. Then Mnada touched her, and they both hugged one another, sobbing, wheezing like asthmatics.
In fact the air was breathable. After they had communicated to one another in a series of sobs and gasps, Nshalla began to feel her panic slip away, aware that she was not being digested and that the chamber in which they lay was oxygenated and only damp. The shock of being surrounded by wet snake jaws was subsiding. However, it was totally black, and darkness was a state of which she was afraid.
They had been swallowed whole. Sajara, lacking limbs, had done what any real snake would have done.
Nshalla remembered the kits they had bought in Semguine. Rummaging in her pack she found a halogen torch, which she switched on. Knowing that snake organs were flattened, matching the serpentine physique, she was surprised to see transparent chambers, one of which they occupied. The route back up to the gullet and mouth had however been blocked by a thick flap of bioplas, opaque and clearly too difficult to remove or damage, even though it was far from being an airtight fit. They were trapped.
Gmoulaye echoed her thoughts. When she spoke, her voice had a snappy echo, like that of a bathroom. "We have been eaten alive and doubtless we will soon be consumed."
"Nonsense," Nshalla replied, irritably. "This isn't a real snake, it's an artificial deity. It came to capture us."
"Where are we going?"
"How should I know?"
They lapsed into silence. Emboldened by the fact that she could see, Nshalla decided she would not be victimised even by a forty metre serpent god. She told the still mute Mnada, "We won't be beaten. Not after what we've been through."
"How can we escape a god?" Mnada asked.
Nshalla felt her panic returning. Harshly she said, "They are gods, yes, but they aren't magical. Gods are states of mind. Ataa Naa Nyongmo is a state of mind that I believe in, and likewise, Onyame, who Gmoulaye believes in, is a state of mind. Our gods are abstract." She took a deep breath, then continued, "These new gods made by the virtual people don't work in that way. That's just silly. They have bodies, like you and me, and they can be beaten. Now be quiet."
Gmoulaye did not want to be quiet. "When you saw Sajara's vat in Araouane, you said that the gods would be unstoppable."
"I was wrong. Now shut up, I'm thinking."
Nshalla crawled down to the end of the chamber and began tapping the polycarbonate there, looking for an escape. She shone the torch through, and to her surprise saw a number of white objects in the adjacent chamber.
"Eggs," she said.
"Eggs?" Gmoulaye repeated.
"Sajara is probably a hermaphrodite. That makes sense. He would want to have every advantage possible."
Nshalla began to wonder if she could make use of this discovery. After all, they were inside a chamber and there was nothing to stop them being active; no digestive juices, no intestinal transputer worms or guardian nematodes of metal that might restrict their activities. Problems could start though if they got violent, attacking Sajara from the inside. And what would they do if they did escape? How could Sajara fail to notice such a feat?
But they had their kits and their wits.
"Female snakes deposit their eggs early if they're stressed," she mused. "Supposing we could make Sajara do that?"
"How?" Gmoulaye asked.
"By stressing him."
"How?" repeated Mnada.
"Don't interrupt my train of thought," Nshalla told them. "Sajara is carrying a clutch of eggs. He's been modelled on an oviparous species, and we can use that. If we were inside the eggs we'd be jettisoned. Sajara might not notice us. Look, they're only a chamber away."
"That is an idiotic plan," Gmoulaye said.
"Obviously you've got a better one," said Nshalla, immediately falling back on a rejoinder so often used when arguing with Mnada.
Gmoulaye had not. "Maybe I will think of something," she said.
"Or maybe you won't," Nshalla replied, caring nothing for Gmoulaye's feelings. She just wanted to get out. "Don't you understand? Sajara would see eggs—not us."
Gmoulaye said nothing.
Nshalla returned to investigating the egg chamber with her torch. Because she was in contact with the floor, her feet and knees felt continual vibrations, and she realised this was from the movement of Sajara, as his ribs, spine and muscles powered forward motion. Any extra vibrations, such as those caused by an attempt to enter the egg chamber, might not be spotted. She noticed the polycarbonate of the chamber wall was of varying thickness; some portions bent under the pressure of her hands. The thicker parts were congested with sensors.
She returned to investigating her pack. By pooling resources, Nshalla eventually found herself with a selection of tools, including a knife, another more powerful torch, and some camping gear, including tablets and, most important of all, a range of handy chemicals. Part of Nshalla's education had covered chemistry. She hugged the plastic box with its dozen vials.
"What are you doing?" Mnada asked her.
"Stress," she said.
With the knife she began to cut a hole in the polycarbonate, but it was tougher than she expected, hardened perhaps by internal chemical processes initiated after the formation of the serpentine god. As her body was jogged and turned she hacked away at the plastic, until, after an hour and a lot of rests, she had a hole big enough to squeeze through.
"I don't want to make this too big," she told Gmoulaye.
"Why not?"
"Once we've climbed through I'm going to try to reseal it—after I've set up a little chemical reaction."
Gmoulaye grunted, but a spark of interest seemed to have been generated within her, and she began to watch more closely what Nshalla was doing, and after a while even offered suggestions.
Nshalla told them to climb through into the egg chamber. This was smaller than the one in which they had arrived, and the pair had to contort their limbs, so that claustrophobia became a real probability.
"Start hacking a hole in an egg," Nshalla told them, "but only big enough to climb through. Quickly, now, I'm going to set this reaction going."
"The air's stale in here," Mnada complained.
Nshalla hurried. Doubtless the egg chamber was not being maintained as the other, and possibly was deoxygenated. She took the bottle of dyleine and added her entire stock of vatic acid. Immediately, noxious black gas began to evolve. Internal sensors would soon feel that.
Nshalla squeezed through the hole, then sealed it with a silver heat-blanket. Now the ride was bumpier. Mnada was inside an egg—it contained air, the nuclei necessary for bioplas formation and a range of proto-AI transputers. Gmoulaye was almost into hers. Nshalla frantically hacked at one of the remaining eggs, but its shell was tougher than the others. She noticed that it was labelled with a single pictsym character: inutile.
In other words, infertile.
So these eggs really were intended to create little Sajaras in the outside world. Nshalla cursed and pulled herself around to the last remaining egg.
Inutile.
There was no going back. The egg shells were like dense polystyrene, inflexible, with only room for one. She was trapped.
"Get inside," she told Gmoulaye, pushing her into the second egg.
"But you—"
"I'll just have to take my chances if the eggs are deposited."
"But—"
"It's starting!" Nshalla hissed.
The gas was taking effect. Sajara's movement was becoming erratic, and a contraction was jostling the eggs around. A sticky fluid smelling of acetylene began to ooze from nozzles set in the chamber wall like the ends of hypodermic needles. The furthest inutile egg had been forced towards Sajara's cloacal opening and was about to be ejected, although Sajara still seemed to be moving.
Ten minutes later, three eggs remained inside the god. Nshalla tried to jostle Mnada's egg so that it would be next. She succeeded. Five minutes passed, and the egg was outside. But she was soaked with chemicals, and breathing was becoming difficult. Her head throbbed and her eyes streamed with tears.
Two eggs remained, one inutile, one containing Gmoulaye. Nshalla ignored Gmoulaye's pleas for her to try and move with the egg, forcing it to the opening. A wave of contractions forced Gmoulaye's egg out. But the final egg moved with the flow, and Nshalla was knocked and bumped out of Sajara's body, gasping for air, half conscious, hardly able to see. Her body struck rough ground.
For some minutes she lay simply gasping for air, not caring if Sajara had noticed her, not caring where Gmoulaye might be, or Mnada. Her sight was an undifferentiated swamp of sky blue and forest green.
Somebody ran up and pulled her to her feet.
"Quick, hide in these trees," said Gmoulaye.
"I can't see," Nshalla gasped. "Guide me there."
Gmoulaye took her arm and half guided, half pulled her into a patch of cool shade. Nshalla collapsed, still breathing with difficulty.
Some time passed. On the wind she smelled pine resin and damp humus, but also the more puzzling—though much fainter—odours of cigarettes and Szechuan fried chicken.
"Where are we?" she asked.
Gmoulaye crouched at her side. "In a wood, outside a great city set in a bowl in the landscape."
"Where is Sajara?"
"Slithering towards the city, but slowly."
Nshalla thought, then said, "It must be Fes."
"I think so."
"Is Mnada here?"
"She cannot be far behind. All she has to do is follow Sajara's trail of destruction to find us."
"We can't guarentee she'll do that," Nshalla said. "We'll have to go back to find her."
"You stay here," Gmoulaye replied. "I will hide you under some branches while I go and hunt for her. Don't move."
"Give me water."
Gmoulaye handed over a cannister of water from her pack, then departed. Nshalla, her ears sensitised because she still could not see, listened as the crunching of branches lessened, until all was silent except for bird song and the faint, yet somehow comforting, sound of Arabian styled electronic music.
It must be Fes. They had arrived, but they remained in danger.
As the minutes ticked by, turning into what seemed hours, Nshalla's sight returned. She had wept copious tears and her stained clothes were spotted with tiny, clean patches where salt water had struck.
Still no Gmoulaye.
The sun was sinking when Gmoulaye led Mnada into the grove of pine trees. Nshalla was now comfortable, though suffering from a headache. She embraced her sister.
"What now?" Mnada asked.
"We're safe for a while," Nshalla replied. "We should walk around the city so that we're well away from Sajara's track. He might come back to search for us."
Gmoulaye said, "Some of the southern and western quarters of Fes have been razed by the gods. They are enraged. We should make for northerly or eastern parts."
"Lead on," said Nshalla.
Chapter 22
As they walked north around the city of Fes, they heard its complex audio emanations. From the east, away from residential areas, bass-heavy souk-dub riffs thumped, tinged with Arab inflection, oscillating with tinkling finger cymbals, the buzzing bendir, and multiply sampled oud vibrations. These dub riffs were born in the older souks that had expanded somehow
inward
into themselves through the creeping agency of musical themes from the fading West, via acoustically modelled EthnickTrance, the GlobalCut style of those corporations who managed the leap into the Pacific Rim, and early twenty first century drum'n'bass. The bass riffs themselves were like animals, leaping from roofs and walls, expanding into those courtyards shaped, albeit accidentally, to allow resonance, dying in other areas, transmitted sonically by the pulsing air and culturally by the aether. In the oldest souks the cultural aura was so intense these dub leviathans merged and mutated without human aid, or even influence, becoming audio amalgams that evolved eventually into self-perpetuating creatures of pure frequency, impervious even to the most rigorous Fourier analysis, mysteriously free, apart from and yet entangled with the aether through their source in longitudinal vibrations.
And this was why nobody now slept in certain districts of the city, for this music was impossible to turn off. It was alive, yet nobody could touch it. Nor did most want to.
Nshalla took over leadership of the trio as they walked toward the city walls. "We must find somewhere to rest up," she said, "somewhere quiet. Then we'll decide how to approach Muezzinland."
Entering through the Bab Es Siba gateway, they encountered a world of bewildering design. In the Islamic ban on the representation of natural forms Fes had found an aether style of intricate abstraction, lending pointillist sparkle to the walls of the more significant buildings, yet always swirling, always emerging from depth, as if from the earliest origins in Madinah, and Makkah.
They sat for a while as their minds became used to the sensory battering. Evening vendors paused and chattered in staccato New-Oriental, offering everything from golden toe-rings to cakes of cream and frozen sherbert, while more suspicious characters dressed in dusty jellaba and fraying babouche offered them hunks of CisAtlasian Black, packets of speed, and ampoules of bacteria modified to deliver chemically pure doses of DMT to certain parts of the brain. All this they ignored.
The people themselves seemed to shine with aether transmissions, their images strong, solid, and yet of great variety, though it was difficult to sense subtlety because of the cultural intensity. Beneath them, Nshalla knew, lay individuals of cultural security, and for a moment she was deeply envious.
There were no vehicles in the streets, for all had been banished to the outer perimeter, leaving only pedestrians and the riders of mules, horses and solar speedboards. In Rue Mohammed Diouri, a quiet passage of guest houses and furniture shops, they found the Hotel Salam-Zalagh, where they booked in, taking a family room on the top floor.
As Nshalla awaited her evening meal she looked out over the city from her balcony. The accumulation of symbolic images pinging through the air was distracting at times, but she found herself getting used to it. She could not turn off her senses, but she could marshall them. When muezzin voices wailed out of brass loudspeakers set high under images of the crescent moon, waves of tiny pictsym intertwined with sensuous Arabic letters were emitted, to float, fall, then brush the heads of those below. Five times a day the streets were littered with these exudations.
She looked further away, spotting the vast Kairouyyin Mosque, the Sultan's Palace, Dar El Makhzen in its twenty acres of garden, the old city of Fes El Bali, and then, most important of all, the vast and crumbling walls of the University.
Her heart raced as she tried to make out its form, for somewhere within lay Muezzinland, concealed by sonic webs falling from balloons designed to direct souk-dub toward the east. Muezzinland! A place invisible from Hotel Salam-Zalagh, but undoubtedly present. As she tried to make out distant detail she became aware of two great green pillars, and she wondered what these might portend.
Mnada and Gmoulaye came to join her. "Look," she said, pointing out the University and the pillars. "Muezzinland is over there somewhere. The University grounds are huge. We'll have plenty of opportunity to creep around."
"Do not be so sure," said Gmoulaye. "If this truly is the secret heart of the Aetherium, it will be a place guarded like no other."
"We can overcome anything," Nshalla said, thrilled by the view she had of her goal. "We escaped a god today. We
can
get there."
Again she looked out over the city. Far away, the profusion of glowing symbols merged to form a pale mist, but closer she could see self-scrolling Arabic words culled from the sutras of the Q'ran, hanging above mosques like neon cylinders. Nearer still she saw the fluttering auras of ancient buildings, and, closest of all, a wrinkled face suspended between two genetically altered birds, that sang the oud theme from the long dead composer's most famous symphony. Somehow this extraordinary profusion of culture comforted her, as if it might act as camouflage.
And then, a terrible vision.
From her balcony Nshalla could see most of the city. Tonight the sky was clear, stars shining, the milky way just visible against the sodium glow. Yet the milky way seemed to be expanding across the sky, as if a jug of stars and nebulae had been spilt across the heavens, east to west, north to south.
The glow became featured, two dark spots… four dark spots and a black corona. A face.
It was the Empress. Nshalla gasped and shrank down behind the wooden barrier of the balcony, pulling Mnada with her. She peered over the edge. The heavens were filled with the face of her mother, dark eyes seeking this way and that, lips pursed, brow furrowed; an expression both of worry and of hate. This awesome vision turned Nshalla into a helpless wreck, unable to look away, too frightened to move, hoping against hope that those searching eyes would not see her at the hotel.
After an eternity, the face faded. She became aware of Gmoulaye's nagging voice repeating, "What's the matter, Nshalla? Mnada? What is it?"
Nshalla pulled them both into the room and slammed shut the window. "Didn't you see it? A—"
"I didn't see anything," Gmoulaye said.
Nshalla stopped speaking. Then she said, "Nothing?"
"Nothing."
Mnada said in a weak voice, "There was a great face in the sky. It was the Empress."
Gmoulaye frowned, but insisted that she had seen nothing.
"Mother is looking for us," Nshalla whispered. "She knows we're here. That face was designed so only we would see it."
Gmoulaye said nothing.
Mnada started whimpering. Nshalla comforted her, saying, "We're safe here. If she's looking for us, that means she doesn't know where we are." She took a few deep breaths to force the fear from her mind. "We should be able to hide out long enough. Yes, I think we can do that."
"What should we do?" Mnada asked.
"Get to the Muezzinland entrance as soon as possible. Those green pillars will be where we'll begin."
"I agree," said Gmoulaye, her voice determined, as if she had made a decision. "That feels right to me. Tonight I will implore Al-Uzza to guide me to the right place."
Nshalla slept just a few hours that night, the aetherial face constantly at the fore of her mind's eye, waking or dreaming. For Mnada it must have been a hundred times worse. Mnada did not sleep at all.
At dawn they were all awake, fidgeting, wondering what the day might bring. A tension seemed to fill the aether, as if an electromagnetic storm was approaching. Uneasy with their lack of knowledge, Nshalla questioned a maid about the University area.
The maid provided some useful information. "Recently the whole zone's been shut down. It always was a funny old place. Big and rambling. They brought forward the summer exams to last month because of what they called essential maintenance works. Sometimes, at night, you can see sparks and symbols rocketing up from the old buildings. I don't go near it, myself."
Nshalla asked for a precise date, learning that it coincided with the attack on Mengoub, a fact that caused her to speculate on her mother's relationship with the rest of the Aetherium. "What about the recent attack on the south-west of the city?" she asked.
"Nobody knows what happened," the maid replied. "All of a sudden the Fes fathers were under attack. Hundreds died. They still don't know who was responsible."
Nshalla refrained from naming names. After tipping the maid for her help, she returned to tell the others her news.
"Let's go," Mnada said.
Nshalla looked at her sister. Her face was as pale as the moon. Her eyes stared and she did not blink. "Are you feeling all right?" she asked.
Mnada did not answer. Unsteadily she walked down to the foyer, then out into the street. Unnerved, Nshalla followed.
Again she said, "Mnada? What's wrong?"
An aetherial transformation began.
Nshalla stepped back into the hotel doorway as her sister grew a metre in height and became dark, like a storm cloud. Mnada swayed, put the palms of both hands to her temples, then let out a cry that began as a subsonic bass thrum and rose through octave after octave to the wailing shriek of an animal. The street was deserted in seconds. Nshalla saw faces staring out of windows.
"The shapeshifter!" Gmoulaye said.
Nshalla grabbed her friend. "The what?"
"The shapeshifter is returning!"
Nshalla returned her gaze to the giant form before her. Mnada had become a skeletal woman with flashing red hair, gnashing teeth and glowing eyes, a figure rotating like a top in its desire to escape some inner torment. Small arrows with heads shaped like the Empress' face darted from her head. Her fingernails became filthy, greasy claws that dug into her own flesh and cut skin. Blood dappled the pavement.
And still Mnada grew taller. Now she was as tall as a tree.
Gmoulaye pulled Nshalla behind a desk sited in the reception hall. "Khadir must be dead," she said. "Mnada has accepted back the pain and chaos she pushed out when he was created." She nodded, as if accepting a terrible fate. "Khadir is indeed dead."
"He can't be," Nshalla cried. "We need him."
"He is dead, have no doubt of it."
"But Mnada!" said Nshalla. "If we can't get her back to normal, we're lost. She could do anything. Oh, why now, why
now?
"
"The Empress will certainly see this," Gmoulaye added.
There was nothing they could do. Mnada lurched off towards the University, fifteen, even twenty metres tall, black as a coal, leaving a smell of ozone and a clutching paranoia that even Nshalla could sense.
"What do we do now?" she asked Gmoulaye.
Gmoulaye closed her eyes for a minute, as if communing with Al-Uzza. "We should wait," she advised. "Mnada is beyond us. We could go to your room and look out over the city."
But Nshalla wanted nothing other than to be away from the hotel. They grabbed their belongings and departed. The city was aflame with talk of the black monster, a shapeshifter tall one minute, squat the next, a filthy woman with greasy hair, smelling of the sewers, or else an elegant negro with eyes of fire.
Initially they walked at random through the streets of Fes. When once Nshalla saw Mnada's deformed head above the rooftops, anvil shaped and steely grey, she led the way through a maze of covered passages hung with hairy dragons and twitching chicken legs, alleys that stank of rancid soya and decaying spice tins. This was the edge of the Cantonese Quarter. All-night halal bars were closing, sushi joints too, and all the glittering cafes serving Palestinian coffee and psychoactive sweets. In this melange of colour and light Nshalla hoped they could become lost, invisible.
They heard talk of deities. "Another divine spirit has come to attack us," barmen said as hastily they pulled down their shutters.
Nshalla was struck by this talk. Could Mnada be the equivalent of a god? Perhaps Gmoulaye had been right, and Mnada had somehow humanised herself by creating Khadir.
If this was true Mnada would make straight for Muezzinland.
"We've got no choice," she told Gmoulaye. "We must head for the University. I know it's a huge risk, but we have to follow Mnada."
Gmoulaye agreed, though she was unhappy. Nshalla did not blame her. For herself, she was devastated that Khadir, whom she had come to trust as an invaluable friend, was dead. She hoped Gmoulaye was wrong, but she knew her hope was in vain.
Realising all the main thoroughfares would be scanned by Fes-o-cams, Nshalla decided to skulk through alleys and across courtyards. But they did not have a map and could only estimate the direction. They set out with some trepidation, pausing at every corner to check the way ahead, loitering when they were stared at by passers by, until, after two hours, they could see spinning weather stations atop University spires, silhouetted against the cloudless sky. Their goal was close.
Now Nshalla could see the upper halves of two green pillars. Something about them shouted out
entrance.
They were now in those districts destroyed by the gods, and often they had to pick their way across rubble and through dangerously leaning walls. There was nobody about. Nshalla noticed that even the great walls of the University had been knocked aside in the divine flight.
"There!" whispered Gmoulaye.
Nshalla looked between groves of pine to see a lawn on which the two pillars stood. Behind and to the sides of the pillars the air was like a desert atmosphere, curling and writhing as if under immense heat, but the objects refracted by this tumultuous air made no sense. They seemed to be immense white buildings, forests, even stretches of cloudy sky.
"Is that Muezzinland?" Nshalla asked.
Gmoulaye pointed to pieces of white plastic leading up to the space between the two pillars. "Snake egg fragments," she whispered.
So it was Muezzinland. And Mnada was already inside.