Dancing the Code Part 14

The sound of an engine close by startled him out of his reverie.

Tahir swore, angry both at being disturbed and at having been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he had not noticed the sound earlier.

If it had been an enemy, he could have been shot dead by now. He looked up the hillside, saw the sun glinting off the windscreen of a jeep. As the vehicle drew closer, he recognized his father's grey-bearded face in the pa.s.senger seat. There was a pair of binoculars in his hand.

He was shouting even before the jeep had stopped. 'Tahir! Tahir!

We must leave at once!'

Tahir frowned. 'Leave?' he said, when the jeep had pulled up.

Unconsciously, his hand moved to the safety catch of the Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. He glanced at his father's driver, a tall, taciturn man named Yamin; but the man merely grinned at Tahir and shrugged. He hadn't stopped the engine.

His father reached over the door and gripped Tahir by the arm. ' Al Al Harwaz Harwaz. The dancers in the desert.'

Tahir felt his shoulders relax. He had imagined his father being pursued by the entire Kebirian Army.

'Oh, that old fairy tale,' he said, letting his annoyance at the interruption come to the surface now that it was clear there was no danger. He looked into the old man's worn, tired face, made an effort not to be too harsh. 'You know, that reporter was quite angry with you for what you did. And I don't really blame her. It would have been better to at least let her take a sample from the body - what if the government are using chemicals against us? It is illegal - against the Geneva Convention. She might have been able to help.'

His father let him finish speaking, then said, 'Get in.' .

Tahir blinked. It had been a long time since his father had spoken to him like this. He opened his mouth to object, but the old man got there first.

'There is something that you need to see.'

Tahir looked at Yamin, who shrugged again. He said, 'We should not leave my car unattended. I will follow you.'

The trail was long and narrow, barely navigable. Tahir was kept busy steering, avoiding rocks big enough to break an axle and treacherous stretches of scree which would have sent his jeep sliding to the bottom of the valley. It occurred to him that they could be ambushed very easily: it only needed a couple of snipers hidden in the jumble of boulders at the base of the cliffs, for instance.

His father's jeep stopped abruptly, and Tahir almost ran into the back of it. He got out, ran forward to catch up with his father who was already climbing a steep, rocky slope.

'Stay with the cars,' he said to Yamin, who nodded.

He started up the slope after his father. The sun was already hot on the back of his neck as he climbed; the top of the ridge above him shimmered slightly. He paused to draw his flask from his jacket and took a swig of the cold, metallic-tasting water.

His father also stopped to rest; with a few quick strides, Tahir caught up with him.

'What is there to see?' he asked, but the old man said nothing, only pointed out across the mountains, a surreal geometry of sunlit rock and grey-black shadow.

And something else.

A mound.

It was about half a mile away, standing at the base of one of the mountains, above a plain covered in jumbled rocks. It was about three hundred metres high, crudely shaped, tapering to a point, more like a stalagmite than anything else. It appeared to be made of dried mud, but Tahir knew that was impossible.

He stared, and stared, and stared. Words like 'rocket base' and 'watchtower' ran through his head, but they refused to make any sense of what he was seeing. The only thing the mound reminded him of was a termite nest, and that didn't make any sense at all.

His father handed him the binoculars. 'Look to the left of the tower, at the bottom,' he said.

Tahir looked, saw what he should have seen with his unaided eyes: a canvas shroud, hiding the unmistakable shapes of helicopters. And by the edge of the shroud, two tiny figures in Kebirian Army uniforms.

Tahir clenched a fist. So this was where Benari's people were hiding!

'The thing that puzzles me,' he said aloud, 'is why they have made it so obvious. Whatever that tower is hiding, it still attracts attention.

Covering it in mud is no use.' But the old man only gripped his arm.

'Watch the soldiers, Tahir. Watch them closely.'

Tahir watched. After a moment he realized that the soldiers were not standing still. Their bodies vibrated from time to time, their arms or legs or even their heads moving so fast that the motion was a blur.

'No human being could do that,' said Tahir. 'What are they?'

'They're dancing the code,' murmured his father. 'It is as that poor man said.'

Tahir took the binoculars from his eyes, looked at the old man.

'Whatever they're doing, there has to be an explanation. A rational explanation, father - not a fairy tale. Either they have been drugged, or they have built robots, or - '

He was interrupted by a shout from below: Yamin. He looked down, saw a uniformed figure approaching the jeep. As Tahir watched, Yamin shouted again. The figure stopped where he was and raised his hands. Tahir hurried down the ridge, his boots slipping on the loose rock. As he neared the bottom he heard the stranger talking: '... from the United Nations. I request your hospitality until such time as I can contact my superiors.'

The United Nations, thought Tahir as he reached the jeeps. Maybe.

Maybe not. He examined the stranger. His uniform wasn't Kebirian; it looked English, or Italian, perhaps. He carried a heavy leather flight jacket over his arm, and looked thirsty and dusty.

Tahir raised his own gun, spoke briskly to the stranger. 'Show us your identification,' he said, 'if you are from the UN.' He allowed a little sarcasm to creep into his voice.

The officer reached slowly into a pocket of his uniform, produced a small plastic card. He threw it towards Tahir: it landed on the bonnet of the jeep. Tahir picked it up, scanned it, checked the photograph against the face in front of him.

'Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart,' he said slowly, but politely. The card looked genuine enough, and it would not do to offend the UN.

'You understand we will have to be careful - '

'No!' His father's voice, shouting from behind them. The old man had only just reached the bottom of the ridge. Tahir could hear the breath rasping in his lungs. 'No, Tahir! He is of the Dancers!'

Tahir turned, 'Father, I don't think - '

'Enough!' said the Sakir Sakir. 'There is only one way of dealing with this!'

And the old man drew his gun, the ancient British service revolver that he carried with him everywhere. As Tahir watched in consternation, he aimed it at the stranger and fired.

Catriona woke suddenly, as if someone had switched a light on.

She looked around her, she saw the cramped concrete walls of the gun turret, the breech of the anti-aircraft weapon through the middle, the Arab gunner curled against the far wall, asleep.

Where am I this time? she wondered.

Then she remembered. Vincent's camp. The raid. The aliens. And Jo.

Poor little Jo. She had been such a good good person. person.

Vincent was awake, crouched in the doorway. He looked back over his shoulder at her. 'They didn't come back,' he said simply.

Catriona nodded, crawled to the entrance, looked over Vincent's shoulder.

The sun was about an hour above the horizon, the sky blue.

Everything in the settlement was sharp and still: the tumbled and scorched ruins of the houses, the battered jeeps parked anyhow over the dusty streets.

Nothing moved.

'There must be somebody else out there,' said Catriona.

'They're probably hiding, like us,' observed Vincent. He cupped his hands and shouted a greeting in Arabic.

A faint echo danced on the rocks for a moment, then faded.

Vincent slipped down from the doorway, set off along the street. His footsteps seemed oddly loud. He pa.s.sed the remains of the creature he had shot down the previous night: it was formless now, a jumble of broken chitin embedded in a brown, tarry substance. He walked further up the street, called out again.

No response.

With an effort, Catriona forced her cramped muscles to propel her through the doorway, scrambled over the sandbags to the ground.

After a moment she became aware of the sound of a woman shouting.

She saw Vincent run forward, saw a figure in a chador emerge from behind one of the houses.

Good, thought Catriona absurdly. Now there'll be someone to cook my breakfast.

She set off down the road in the opposite direction to that which Vincent had taken. 'h.e.l.lo,' she called. Then she shouted it, shouted words of greeting in every other language she could think of.

Eventually a man and a small boy emerged from one of the houses.

They were apparently uninjured but the boy had a strange, fixed stare on his face. Catriona tried to speak to the father, but he only shook his head.

'Kebiriz.' He spat at Catriona's feet. 'You help Kebiriz.' His English was thickly accented, barely comprehensible.

'No I don't,' said Catriona.

'You all help Kebiriz!' The man was shouting now. 'You are American wh.o.r.e!'

Catriona drew a breath to yell back at the man, then looked at the fixed, sh.e.l.l-shocked eyes of the child and thought better of it. The events of the night had been enough to unbalance anyone's judgement.

'I'm English and I'm a journalist,' she said quietly. 'I'm here to help you.'

But the man only swore in Arabic, the intent of his words clear enough even though Catriona didn't recognize all of them. Then he walked down the street, carrying his son in his arms.

Catriona started back along the street towards the hospital.

By the time she got there, a small crowd had gathered. Vincent was standing on the bonnet of a wrecked jeep. He appeared to be counting the survivors. He glanced down at her, nodded, carried on counting.

Catriona sat down on the ground against the side of the jeep, suddenly very aware that she'd had two nights with little sleep. She closed her eyes, felt the growing heat of the sun on her face. Blurred thoughts began to chase themselves around her head. She saw Jo's face shouting something about the Doctor, bring the Doctor, but it was too late, the guard was dying, her eyes bulging with shock, the blood spreading on her chest. Slowly the woman fell to the ground, hit with the sound of a prison door slamming and a slight, terrifying moan.

- I took her shoes Jesus I took her shoes and she was dead I killed I took her shoes Jesus I took her shoes and she was dead I killed her and I stood over her unlacing her shoes and stole them her and I stood over her unlacing her shoes and stole them - -

The gun fired, jarring against her hand again and again and again.

Suddenly she was awake, dust stinging her face, the hard metal of the jeep digging into her back. She realized that Vincent was speaking.

'We cannot stay here,' he was saying. 'The Americans are certain to attack us again.'

The Americans? thought Catriona, struggling to clear her head.

What was he talking about?

'Death to the Americans!' shouted someone, perhaps the man Catriona had spoken to earlier.

'Vincent?' asked Catriona, pushing herself upright; but he was ploughing on.

'I will send a message to our friends in Libya, asking for their help.

They will send forces to avenge the crimes committed here. This wanton destruction of the free Arab people of Giltea will not go unavenged!'

A cl.u.s.ter of young men standing at the front of the small group jumped up, fists clenched. One fired a gun into the air. At the back of the crowd, Catriona noticed a woman wailing, beating the ground with her fists.

'Vincent!' called Catriona as he turned away from the crowd and walked up to her.

'I need a radio transmitter,' he said. 'There might be one in the garages.'