Mack Reynolds - The Best Ye Breed

“I’ve often wondered where it was located,” Bey murmured.

Kenny laughed and said to Cliff, “Man, you’re lucky we didn’t take the other route, southwest to Kidal and then north through Bidon Cinq and Poste Weygand. The Tuaghi call the route between Tamanrasset and Kidal the Land of Fear and Thirst. That’s where you get the simoons , or perpetual sandstorms, which blow all day, every day. During the day hours, you can’t eat. As soon as you open a tin of food, even though you’re inside your vehicle, it’s smothered in sand. The only possible way you can get something to eat, during the day hours, is to munch on some bits of dried bread, by squeezing your body up against the car on the lee side. Even then, you can feel the sand gritting between your teeth.”

They had by-passed In Salah, to keep from being spotted by anyone who might recognize El Hassan and his closest advisers, and shortly passed Hi Tahaidour, going through the famous Bois pétrifié, one of the largest petrified forests in the world.

Cliff gaped at the circumference of the boles of trees which had fallen millennia ago.

Bey chopped out a short laugh. “Something, eh? The whole Sahara was once tropical in vegetation. And not so long ago as all that, either. They’ve got cave and cliff paintings throughout the desert, something like those Cro-Magnon cave paintings in southern France and northern Spain. They portray not only men but such animals as giraffes, mammoths and hippopotami.”

Homer Crawford said, “It’s something that must give a boost in morale to Ralph Sandell, over there at Bidon Cinq, with his afforestation project. I hope the hell he’s all right. Supporting reforestation of the Sahara is going to be one of the biggest feathers in El Hassan’s cap, if we can keep it going.”

Bey said, “I told Isobel to have Guémamaa send one of his first organized goum camel patrols with a really reliable mokkadam over to guard Sandell’s seedlings and transplants. Later, we’ll send other goums to the rest of the afforestation projects, but Ralph’s trees are the most exposed.”

Homer said,“I hope the hell you told Jimmy Peters to issue them ample funds. We don’t want any of our people sponging on the project, not to speak of looting or having our camelmen enjoying a quick unwelcome roll in the hay with the local girls—if any hay’s available in those parts. Or girls, for that matter.”

“I did.” Bey nodded.

The sun burned down outside in such wise that it was impossible to look out through the windows without their very dark sun glasses. The white sand reflected the light like mirrors.

There was no road, properly speaking. Roads are impossible in most of the central Sahara. It is seldom that a vehicle spots the tracks of another car or truck before it. The sand has blown over them in less than half an hour. Instead, the French engineers who originally surveyed the routes, placed a steel petroleum barrel approximately every half a kilometer, filled with stones so that they wouldn’t blow away. One drives across the Sahara by going from one steel drum to the next. And woebetide the man who gets off the track and becomes lost in the erg or on the reg.

In the old days, when the French controlled the area, they made it a rule that no vehicle could leave one town, or military post, for another without reporting. The officials would then radio ahead that the vehicle was on its way. If they didn’t show up on schedule, the French sent out aircraft to search for them. Sometimes they found them.

Out of a clear sky, Kenny said, “Where’re we going to have our capital city? We’ve got to have some seat of government, where we can have embassies, welcome trade missions, that sort of thing.”

They all thought about it.

Bey said, “I’m in favor of keeping on the move, the way we did when we were infesting Tamanrasset. That way, no potential enemy ever knows where El Hassan might be. A tent city. Oh, house trailers and that sort of thing too, for outsiders who couldn’t exist without airconditioning, refrigerators, and all that. But something that could be moved every week or so, or even more often.”

Homer shook his head. “You can’t run a viable government, in this age, on the move. In no time flat, we’re going to be so deep in paperwork and all the secretaries and clerks and what not that goes with it, that we couldn’t possibly haul them all around. Personally, I’m in favor of Tamanrasset.”

Cliff looked over at him and said, “Why that hole? We’re going to be getting into IBM machines and everything else before we’re through. Why not, say, Dakar? It’s a relatively modern city.” He smacked his lips. “Restaurants, nightclubs and all.”

Homer shook his head. “Tamanrasset is centrally located, so far as we’re concerned. And it’s remote. Hard to get at, isolated in the middle of the Sahara. Timbuktu, or even Lhasa, Tibet, wouldn’t be much more inaccessible to those we’d rather not see. Including the armed forces of enemies.”

Bey said, in rebuttal, “A division of paratroopers could be vomited down on Tamanrasset a couple of hours after they left whatever base they started from. We’re figuring on a permanent force of some one thousand men, as the core of our army—if that’s what you could call it. They wouldn’t last minutes before a division of paratroopers. Hell, these days an airborne division even carries along heavy tanks and artillery.”

Homer accepted that, but said, “Our thousand men wouldn’t wait. We’d all melt into the erg. You saw what happened at Fort Laperrine to Colonel Ibrahim’s motorized regiment, and they were desert-trained troops. How would you like the logistics problems of supplying a full division of paratroopers in the Ahaggar Sahara? They need seas of oil, endless supplies, food being only one. A division soaks up water like a sponge. Where would it come from? The few wells and springs about Tamanrasset? Or would they have to fly it in? Can you imagine flying in enough water for twenty thousand men? You’d have your work cut out flying enough tankers to give your soldiers water to brush their teeth with. And meanwhile, the moment that first parachute blossomed out, we’d be on our way to some other town a few hundred miles off.”

He looked over at Cliff. All four of them were sitting in the spacious front seat of the hoverlorry.

“Dakar? Now there we’d be sitting ducks, right on the sea. They could drop elements to block the railroads and the paved highways in Senegal, and we’d never get our people out. Besides that, even if we weren’t attacked, we’d be bedeviled by multitudes of newsmen and foreign delegations until they ran out of our ears, and one of our deals is to keep El Hassan and his government mystery figures. We wouldn’t remain mysteries overnight, in a big center such as Dakar, Algiers, Casablanca, or wherever—if and when we take them, and thus far we haven’t as yet taken a single major city.”

Pools, lakes, oceans of mirage shimmered and danced before them continually. The sun reflected off the dancing mirages and shot through their eyes, in spite of the sun glasses. At times, the landscape ahead was so covered with mirage that they had the impression of driving across a gigantic beach toward a surf which retreated endlessly with the outgoing tide—a tide which moved faster than one could drive.

“What’re we going to do once we get up into Chaambra country?” Cliff said, his voice sour. “I’m beginning to think Bey was right. We should have brought along at least a couple of hundred of our best Tuaghi in some of those captured Arab Union trucks.”

Homer shook his head. “With that many men, we’d wind up in a pitched battle with Abd-el-Kader’s clan and all the rest of the Chaambra to boot. We’ll play it by ear. Question around until we find where his encampment is, then decide what to do. It might entail nothing more than snaking into his camp early some morning and rescuing Elmer and getting the hell out without a shot being fired.”