Robert Silverberg: Lion Time in Timbuctoo

But no one had ever managed it. Africa had kept itself independent of the great overseas powers. The Pasha of Egypt still held his place by the Nile, in the far south the Mambo of Zimbabwe maintained his domain amidst enough gold to make even an Aztec feel envy, and the Bey of Marrakesh was unchallenged in the north. And the strong western empires flourished as ever, Ghana, Mali, Kongo, Songhay—no, no, Africa had never let itself be eaten by Turks or Russians or even the Moors, though they had all given it a good try. Nor would it ever. Still, as he wandered among these outlanders Little Father felt contempt for him and his people drifting through the air about him like smoke. He wished that he could have made a properly royal entrance, coming upon the foreigners in style, with drums and trumpets and bugles. Preceded as he entered by musicians carrying gold and silver guitars, and followed by a hundred armed slaves. But those were royal prerogatives, and he was not yet Emir. Besides, this was a solemn time in Songhay, and such pomp was unbefitting. And the foreigners would very likely look upon it as the vulgarity of a barbarian, anyway, or the quaint grandiosity of a primitive.

Little Father downed his brandy in three quick gulps and held out the cup for more. It was beginning to restore his spirit. He felt a sense of deep well-being, of ease and assurance.

But just then came a stir and a hubbub at the north door of the reception hall. In amazement and fury he saw Serene Glory entering, Big Father’s main wife, surrounded by her full retinue. Her hair was done up in the elaborate great curving horns of the scorpion style, and she wore astonishing festoons of jewelry, necklaces of gold and amber, bracelets of silver and ebony and beads, rings of stone, earrings of shining ivory.

To Ali Pasha the prince said, hissing, “What’s she doing here?”

“You invited her yourself, Little Father.”

Little Father stared into his cup.

“I did?”

“There is no question of that, sir.”

“Yes. Yes, I did.” Little Father shook his head. “I must have been drunk. What was I thinking of?” Big Father’s main wife was young and beautiful, younger, indeed, than Little Father himself; and she was an immense annoyance. Big Father had had six wives in his time, or possibly seven—Little Father was not sure, and he had never dared to ask—of whom all of the earliest ones were now dead, including Little Father’s own mother. Of the three that remained, one was an elderly woman who lived in retirement in Gao, and one was a mere child, the old man’s final toy; and then there was this one, this witch, this vampire, who placed no bounds on her ambitions. Only six months before, when Big Father had still been more or less healthy, Serene Glory had dared to offer herself to Little Father as they returned together from the Great Mosque. Of course he desired her. Who would not? But the idea was monstrous. Little Father would no more lay a hand on one of Big Father’s wives than he would lie down with a crocodile. Clearly this woman, suspecting that the father was approaching his end, had had some dream of beguiling the son. That would not happen. Once Big Father was safely interred in the royal cemetery Serene Glory would go into chaste retirement, however beautiful she might be.

“Get her out of here, fast!” Little Father whispered.

“But she has every right—she is the wife of the Emir—”

“Then keep her away from me, at least. If she comes within five feet of me tonight, you’ll be tending camels tomorrow, do you hear? Within ten feet. See to it.”

“She will come nowhere near you, Little Father.”

There was an odd look on Ali Pasha’s face.

“Why are you smiling?” Little Father asked.

“Smiling? I am not smiling, Little Father.”

“No. No, of course not.”

Little Father made a gesture of dismissal and walked toward the platform of audience. A reception line began to form. The Russian was the first to present his greetings to the prince, and then the Aztec, and then the Englishman. There were ceremonial exchanges of gifts. At last it was the turn of the Turk. He had brought a splendid set of ornate daggers, inlaid with jewels. Little Father received them politely and, as he had with the other ambassadors, he bestowed an elaborately carved segment of ivory tusk upon Ismet Akif. The girl stood shyly to one side.

“May I present also my daughter Selima,” said Ismet Akif.

She was well trained. She made a quick little ceremonial bow, and as she straightened her eyes met Little Father’s, only for a moment, and it was enough. Warmth traveled just beneath his skin nearly the entire length of his body, a signal he knew well. He smiled at her. The smile was a communicative one, and was understood and reciprocated. Even in that busy room those smiles had the force of thunderclaps. Everyone had been watching. Quickly Little Father’s gaze traversed the reception hall, and in a fraction of an instant he took in the sudden flicker of rage on the face of Serene Glory, the sudden knowing look on Ali Pasha’s, the sudden anguished comprehension on that of the tall young Englishman. Only Ismet Akif remained impassive; and yet Little Father had little doubt that he too was in on the transaction. In the wars of love there are rarely any secrets amongst those on the field of combat.

Every day there was dancing in the marketplace. Some days the dancers kept their heads motionless and put everything else into motion; other days they let their heads oscillate like independent creatures, while scarcely moving a limb. There were days of shouting dances and days of silent dances. Sometimes brilliant robes were worn and sometimes the dancers were all but naked.

In the beginning the foreign ambassadors went regularly to watch the show. But as time went on, the Emir continued not to die, and the intensity of the heat grew and grew, going beyond the uncomfortable into the implausible and then beyond that to the unimaginable, they tended to stay within the relative coolness of their own compounds despite the temptations of the daily show in the plaza. New ambassadors arrived daily, from the Maori Confederation, from China, from Peru finally, from lesser lands like Korea and Ind and the Teutonic States, and for a time the newcomers went to see the dancing with the same eagerness as their predecessors. Then they too stopped attending.

The Emir’s longevity was becoming an embarrassment. Weeks were going by and the daily bulletins were a monotonous succession of medical ups and downs, with no clear pattern. The special ambassadors, unexpectedly snared in an ungratifying city at a disagreeable time of year, could not leave, but were beginning to find it an agony to stay on. It was evident to everyone now that the news of Big Father’s imminent demise had gone forth to the world in a vastly overanticipatory way.

“If only the old bastard would simply get up and step out on his balcony and tell us he’s healthy again, and let us all go home,” Sir Anthony said. “Or succumb at last, one or the other. But this suspension, this indefiniteness—”

“Perhaps the prince will grow weary of the waiting and have him smothered in a pillow,” Prince Itzcoatl suggested.

The Englishman shook his head. “He’d have done that ten years ago, if he had it in him at all. The time’s long past for him to murder his father.”

They were on the covered terrace of the Mexican embassy. In the dreadful heat-stricken silence of the day the foreign dignitaries, as they awaited the intolerably deferred news of the Emir’s death, moved in formal rotation from one embassy to another, making ceremonial calls in accordance with strict rules of seniority and precedence.

“His Excellency the Grand Duke Alexander Petrovitch,” the Aztec major domo announced.