MERRITT, West Virginia (CNN)—The fire which has been burning in abandoned coal seams beneath this small West Virginia mining town for the past fifty years suddenly erupted in violence as it moved into a narrow and previously unsuspected vein of anthracite lying just beneath the surface. More than one hundred people, including women and children, are known dead and hundreds more are reported injured. The town of Merritt itself is reported to be totally engulfed in flame. Longtime residents of the area are still wondering how such a rich coal vein so close to the surface could have been missed by coal prospectors for so long.
LONG BEACH, California (UPI)—A Liberian-registered oil tanker inexplicably ran aground this morning in Long Beach harbor and broke apart. The resultant explosion was heard as far north as Santa Barbara and south to the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, where engineers are having troubles of their own due to a recent shutdown of the plant for a complete safety inspection. Fortunately nothing but the dock the tanker ran into and a couple of nearby warehouses were consumed, but if the blaze from the burning tanker had been allowed to spread to a nearby tank farm owned by Standard Oil, officials say the entire harbor area could have been devastated. More than half the tanks were full of highly volatile aviation fuel, Standard Oil representatives reported.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNN)—Informed sources in the capital say that extreme conservative senators and representatives are demanding the President go public with a theory being propounded by certain members of the intelligence community here that the recent spate of seemingly random and natural disasters is actually part of an elaborate plan to weaken the country preparatory to military movements overseas by an as yet unidentified aggressor nation. While the majority of Congress continues to regard such a theory skeptically, the continuation of such disasters can only strengthen the hand of the extremists, sources report. The President was recently seen meeting with Michael Suffern, head of the CIA.
WOLBACH, Nebraska (AP)—Three grain elevators exploded here today, killing…
SHORT, Utah (UPI)—The flooding of a molybdenum mine here today killed…
CHARLESTON, South Carolina (UPI)—Two tractor-trailer rigs collided head-on outside this city this evening. The driver of the southbound truck, which was loaded with toxic chemicals, was killed instantly, along with…
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22
East of Morogoro, Tanzania—25 June
"Tell me something," Merry asked Olkeloki as the Land Rover hummed down the main highway, "once we've gone into this Out Of and done whatever's necessary to keep the shetani from coming through into our world, how do we get back?"
"It will not be easy," the old man told her. "But then, none of this since the beginning has been easy."
"What happens if we can't get back the same way? We find another weak place somewhere?"
"There is no other weak place. We must seal this one and return the same way. Otherwise we will be trapped in the Out Of."
"And this has never been tried before, right?" Oak didn't try to hide his concern.
"As a matter of fact, Joshua Oak, it is known that two men have traveled into the Out Of and returned. One was the great laibon whose face you saw in the mountain. The other—the other was my father."
"What happened to him?" Merry asked gently.
"I was too young to understand. It was explained to me when I was older that he returned to a spot different from where he had left. Sadly, that happened to be in the middle of Lake Victoria, which as you may known is the size of a small ocean. My father, the laibon Taikoisia, was a very great laibon indeed. Unfortunately he was also a very poor swimmer. Somehow he managed to reach the eastern shore near the village of Bukima, but it was clear to those who found him that he would not long survive. He gasped out what little he could to the villagers, and they in turn told my people the story. Then they left him alone on the shore to meet his lion. This was a very long time ago."
"Too bad," Oak murmured. "Maybe if they could have got him to a doctor…"
"No, my friend. As I said, this happened a long time ago. It would not have mattered. His heart and body were both worn out from his journey."
Not for the first time Oak wondered just how old Olkeloki was. He was about to ask when something loud and bright shot across the highway at treetop level to explode somewhere back in the woods. He fought to regain control of the wheel, cursing wildly.
"What the hell was that?" He finally brought the car to a stop in the drainage ditch that paralleled the road.
Kakombe grabbed his spear from the floorboard. "Shetani!"
"I think not." Like the rest of them, Olkeloki was staring intently through the windshield trying to see into the forest. "Surely they are not yet strong enough to move above so boldly in broad daylight. If they are, it means that we are already too late."
However, it was not shetani that had confronted them, but rather spirits of a radically different and more contemporary kind.
The terrified man who came up to the car drew back when he saw the odd collection of muzungu and Maasai inside. A second explosion that ripped into the earth a quarter mile up the road overcame his fear. Gesturing for them to join him, he promptly slid beneath the motionless Land Rover. Olkeloki and the others contented themselves with climbing out and huddling on the shady side of the vehicle.
Oak bent over to peer beneath the car. "Do you speak English? If you do, can you tell us what's going on?" A third explosion made him wince, but only momentarily. It was at least a mile away.
"The man turned his head to look at Oak. "Where do you come from that you don't know?"
"North," Olkeloki informed the man. "What is happening here?"
"It's the government. The military, actually. Each time this year they test their secret project. Everyone knows about it. Today is the day they test their new weapons. Instead of buying them from others they are trying to build them themselves."
"Build what?" Merry asked. A roar came from the vicinity of the city up the road and something screamed by overhead, trailing a white contrail. The streamlined shape hung in the air for a moment before veering sharply off to its left. A distant crump as the object impacted the ground echoed back to them.
"It should end soon," said the farmer.
"Rockets." Oak rose, scanned the sky. "Surface-to-surface missiles."
"Missiles, yes, that's what it is." The farmer started to crawl out from beneath the Rover. "Every year at this time they try to make them work. But our military people are not very good, because everything they shoot off lands everywhere except where it is supposed to." He glanced at the sky, then accepted a helping hand from Kakombe. "I think they are finished for this year."
Oak leaned back against the car, the tension oozing out of him. "And we thought they were shetani. Shit."
The farmer eyed them askance. "Shetani? That is a Makonde word. For spirit-things. There are no such things as shetani. That is just a name they give to the ugly carvings they make. Certainly you muzungu don't believe in them?"
"Certainly not," said Oak. "I was just kidding. Only a total fool would believe in something as absurd as spirits." He looked at Merry. "Isn't that right?"
"Oh, absolutely. You'd have to be a complete moron." Then she began to laugh. Oak laughed back at her, while Olkeloki was unable to restrain a dignified chuckle. Even the restlessly serious Kakombe smiled.
The farmer stared at them, wondering if perhaps it might have been more sensible to take his chances with the wayward rockets. "What are you all laughing at?"
This somber query caused Oak to slide down the side of the car. Tears were coursing down his cheeks. Merry was leaning against the hood and struggling to keep her balance.
"Crazy muzungu I understand," muttered the farmer, "but Maasai don't laugh. It is not funny." There was anger in the man's voice, which only made Oak laugh all the harder. "My neighbor Liliwa lost ten chickens and a cow last year when one of the missiles landed near his house!"
Mer
ry promptly lost control of her legs and had to sit down next to the hysterical Oak. Kakombe turned away. They would see his massive shoulders heaving up and down as he tried desperately to smother the laughter welling up inside him.
When they finally managed to get themselves under control again, they offered the disgruntled farmer a ride into town. Since the most recent attempt of the Tanzanian armed forces to independently enter the twentieth century had apparently fizzled out, the man reluctantly accepted. As they drew close to Morogoro they saw soldiers boredly taking down roadblocks and would-be ballistics experts fanning out across cornfields in search of their errant children.
From what they could see as they drove through town the city had been spared. A few distant plumes of smoke stained the perfectly blue sky like brown watercolor. Merchants were removing heavy planks from windows and doorways. Already the streets were full of people hurriedly going nowhere. As Merry had noted elsewhere, that look of empty urgency was characteristic of urban Tanzania.
The city itself was a dour collection of old stucco colonial buildings and a few feeble attempts at modernization. A sign in front of a chaotic construction site announced the ongoing construction of a six-story modern hotel. As with similar Communist-directed projects, those parts of the building that had been finished were already starting to fall down.
They drove slowly past the central market. The open-air square, which should have been a hive of local activity, was empty except for a few old men and women selling what modest produce they'd managed to sequester from sight of acquisitive government inspectors. Merry identified bunches of stunted bananas, a few pineapples, some unimpressive fish. The only vendor doing real business stood behind a stall selling used clothing, mostly battered and faded blue jeans and T-shirts he'd acquired God knew where. She saw one sweatshirt emblazoned with the legend "New York University." It was full of holes. She wondered what the dealer was asking for it.
More people, people everywhere now, clad in shorts and sandals and old shirts. Then out the western side of town and past the university, with its distant white buildings and single sleepy gate guard. Bicycles instead of cars.
"Wish I had a camera," Merry mused aloud as they drove past.
"You would not want to take picture here," the farmer told her. "Government facility, very dangerous."
Merry didn't believe him. "What—a school?"
"Last year," the farmer explained solemnly, "a visiting muzungu was arrested for taking pictures on university grounds. Police hold him for ten days. There is a big tamarind tree in front of the administration building. That's what the muzungu was taking picture of. But the police don't believe him. They absolutely cannot believe anyone would want picture of a tree." He sniffed derisively. "School is rotten anyway. Farming is better."
"Your children will never get ahead thinking that way." Merry, Oak had noted already, had many virtues, but diplomacy was not one of them.
"They would not get ahead by going there," the farmer shot back. "I tell you what kind of school that place is. Six months ago the government decides to make special grants. Morogoro University gets one hundred thousand shillings to spend any way it wants to. So the teachers, they argue and fight for weeks how to spend the money. You want to know what they finally decide to spend it on?"
"Books?" Merry guessed.
"Beer. One hundred thousand shillings worth of beer."
"That's terrible."
"You think is terrible? They drank all of it in three days. That I can teach my children myself. No, I will stick to my farm. I have corn and some papayas and I raise pigs for the non-Muslims to eat. Perhaps one day things will be better."
By the time their guest asked to be dropped off, he had become a friend. It was all they could do to beg off spending the night with the farmer and his family.
"We're on an important errand and we can't spare the time," Oak told him as he leaned out the driver's window. "Maybe we'll catch you on the way back."
"An errand." The farmer nodded knowingly. "I guessed as much. I knew you could not be just tourists. Not traveling with Maasai." He shook his head in wonder at the sight. "Two muzungu, a laibon, and an Alaunoni traveling together. I will not ask you the nature of your errand because I am not sure I want to know, but I will wish you good luck."
They shook hands all around and Merry overwhelmed the man by making him a gift of one of the disposable razors from her stock. He was still waving when Oak glanced in the rear-view mirror a couple of minutes later.
"There stands the heart and future of this country, if his government will recognize him. Typical third world country. They all want to build steel mills and new capitals and giant dams. Meanwhile the small farmers and businessmen go broke and are forgotten. Nothing personal, old man."
"I am not offended," Olkeloki replied. "None of it matters to the Maasai. We have grass and cattle. We do not need steel mills, dams, or farmers and businessmen. We never have and we never will."
"You're going to have to change," Merry told him. "Maybe not right away, but sooner or later the twentieth century is going to overwhelm Maasailand too. You can't ignore it and you can't just keep sending only your brightest kids to school."
"We will try to adapt and also to retain our traditions. That is all we can do."
Oak didn't really want to ask the inevitable question but found he was unable to keep from doing so. "What happens if the governments of Kenya and Tanzania decide to break up the open grasslands and make workers and civil servants and farmers out of the Maasai?"
"We will resist. If necessary, we will become workers and civil servants. But we will always stay Maasai, and we will never become farmers. To cut open the earth would be like cutting open our own bodies. If the old traditions are lost, we will make new traditions. The Maasai will never become a footnote in ethnographic histories.
"I know this must come to pass someday, and the sadness it will bring will lie heavy on many hearts. But not mine. I will be gone. I will not live long enough to see the open plains and wandering game vanish. That will be a problem for new laibon and younger ilmoran to cope with."
"How?" wondered an angry Kakombe. "How can a man be a warrior and fight for his way of life if they take away his spear and his land?"
Olkeloki had no simple answer for the senior warrior. It was quiet in the car for a long time.
"Well," Merry finally said into the silence, "there's always football."
"An all-Maasai football team. Now that's something I'd pay to see," chuckled Oak, feeling a little better.
"An interesting idea, my friends." The concept appeared to please the old man. "New traditions. He speaks of American football, Kakombe, and not the kind the village children play. Much hitting is involved, besides running and kicking. Throwing as well."
"Spears?" asked the senior warrior hopefully. "War clubs?"
"I fear not. An oblong ball is employed instead."
"Can we carry our knives when we play this game?"
"No," Oak told him, "but don't worry. If you can recruit a few more players like yourself you won't need 'em."
They had to drive through Mikumi National Park. Oak was worried about having to answer the questions of local authorities, but not for long. There were no local authorities. Only a pair of game wardens who didn't even bother to look up from their station as the Land Rover trundled past. Nor were there any gates; only signs. Gates would be useless, Olkeloki explained sensibly, because the elephants would either push them down or eat them.
For that matter they saw no tourists so far from Kenya. Only a few local Indians sipping tea inside an open-walled park boma. Outside the city, traffic vanished. They passed only an occasional truck as they began to climb through the river gorge that split the Rubeho Mountains.
"The Ruaha," Olkeloki informed them, indicating the river running far below the winding road. "It flows east from the Kipengere Range, past the place we must find, until it joins with the Rufiji. Together they enter the ocean near th
e isle of Mafia."
Eventually the road leveled out and ran straight across a high plateau. Villagers sat by the sides of the road selling bushel baskets full of the ripest tomatoes Merry had ever seen. Then on to Iringa, the first town they'd seen since leaving Arusha which boasted buildings that didn't appear on the verge of collapsing.
They filled the Rover's tanks and jerry cans at a small garage. Idle men drifted over to stare frankly at Oak and Kakombe. They avoided Kakombe's shadow and failed miserably to avoid looking at Merry Sharrow. There was no hostility in those stares; only a vast and unsatisfied curiosity.
Sitting against the wall of the garage, five men were trying to patch a tire. They were taking their time and making a major project of it.
"It will take them two, perhaps three hours," said Olkeloki. "Why hurry? They could do it faster, but then they would have nothing to do with themselves. So they linger over it. They have no work. They have no cattle. Their government gives them nothing to do. A terrible waste."
Outside Iringa they left the highway for a dirt track angling north. They passed through one small town, a second, and then there was nothing: no buildings, no people, no animals, for endless miles. Only thorn-tree and acacia forest and red dust. Finally Oak had to turn on the Rover's air conditioning. Olkeloki thought this a terrible waste of petrol but said nothing.
In this difficult and empty land they finally encountered Africa's toughest citizen. Not crocodile or rhino, neither elephant nor Cape buffalo, this scourge of the veldt and savanna was perhaps half an inch long, clad in steel-gray armor, and well-nigh invulnerable.
One of them found Merry and nearly sent her through the roof. Kakombe finally crushed it with the butt end of his knife.
"Tsetse fly." Olkeloki didn't have to inspect the remains to identify the attacker. "These do not carry the sleeping sickness which affects humans, but they are deadly to cattle. That is why there are no Maasai here. See." He ran a finger along the inside of the window. Tiny bulletlike shapes were bouncing off the glass. "They will attack anything that moves in search of blood. They think the car is alive. But if you stand still they will usually leave you alone."