Mack Reynolds: Blackman' Burden

There was a low gasp from several of the younger women, but one of the eldest looked up in distaste. “Wear the clothes of the Roumal” she said indignantly. “Shameless ones!”

The man’s voice was testy. He himself was dressed in the clothing worn always by the Rouma, when the Rouma had controlled the Niger bend. He said, “These are not the clothes of the Rouma, but the clothes of civilized people everywhere.”

The women’s attention went back to their washing. Two or three of them giggled.

The elderly woman said, “There are none here who will go with you, for whatever shameless purpose you have in your mind.”

But Izubahil, the strange girl come out of the desert from the north, spoke suddenly. “I will,” she said.

There was a gasp, and all looked at her in wide-eyed alarm. She began making her way to the shore, her unfinished washing still in hand.

The stranger said clearly, “And drop the veil, discard the haik for the new clothing, and attend the schools?”

There was another gasp as Izubahil said definitely, “Yes, all these things.” She looked back at the women. “So that I may learn all these new ways.”

The more elderly sniffed and turned their backs in scorn, but the younger stared after her in some amazement and until she disappeared with the two strangers into one of the buildings which had formerly housed the French Administration officers back in the days when the area was known as the French Sudan.

Inside, the boy strangers turned to her and the one who had spoken at the river bank said in English, “How goes it?”

“Heavens to Betsy,” Isobel Cunningham said with a grin, “get me a drink. If I’d known majoring in anthropology was going to wind up with my doing a strip tease with a bunch of natives in the Niger River, I would have taken up Home Economics, like my dear old mother wanted!” They laughed with her and Jacob Armstrong, the older of the two, went over to a sideboard and mixed her a cognac and soda. “Ice?” he said.

“Brother, you said it,” she told him. “Where can I change out of these rags?”

“On you they look good,” Clifford Jackson told her. He looked surprisingly like the Joe Louis of several decades earlier.

“That’s enough out of you, wise guy,” Isobel told him. “Why doesn’t somebody dream up a role for me where I can be a rich paramount chief’s favorite wife, or something? Be loaded down with gold and jewelry, that sort of thing.”

Jake brought her the drink. “Your clothes are in there,” he told her, motioning with his head to an inner room. “It wouldn’t do the job,” he added. “What we’re giving them is the old Cinderella story.” He looked at his watch. “If we get under way, we can take the jet to Kabara and go into your act there. It’s been nearly six months since Kabara and they’ll be all set for the second act.”

She knocked back the brandy and made her way to the other room, saying over her shoulder, “Be with you in a minute.”

“Not that much of a hurry,” Cliff called. “Take your time, gal, there’s a bath in there. You’ll probably want one after a week of living the way you’ve been.”

“Brother!” she agreed.

Jake was making himself a drink. He said easily to Cliff Jackson, “That’s a fine girl. I’d hate her job. We get the easy deal on this assignment.”

Cliff said, “You said it, nigger. How about mixing me a drink, too?”

“Nigger!” Jake said in mock indignation. “Look who’s talking.” His voice took on a burlesque of a Southern drawl. “Man when the Good Lawd was handin‘ out cullahs , you musta thought he said umbrellahs , and said give me a nice black one.”

Cliff laughed with him and said, “Where do we plant poor Isobel next?”

Jake thought about it. “I don’t know. The kid’s been putting in a lot of time. I think after about a week in Kabara we ought to go on down to Dakar and suggest she be given another assignment for a while. Some of the girls working out of our AFAA office don’t do anything except drive around in recent model cars, showing off the advantages of emancipation, tossing money around like tourists, and living it up in general.”

On the flight upriver to Kabara, Isobel Cunningham went through the notes she’d taken on that town. It was also on the Niger, and the assignment had been almost identical to the Gao one. In fact, she’d gone through the same routine in Segou, Ke-Macina, Mopti, Goundam and Bourem, above Gao, and Ansongo, Tillaberi and Niamey below. She was stretching her luck, if you asked her. Sooner or later she was going to run into someone who knew her from a past performance.

Well, let the future take care of the future. She looked over at Cliff Jackson who was piloting the jet and said, “What’re the latest developments? Obviously, I haven’t seen a paper or heard a broadcast for over a week.”

Cliff shrugged his huge shoulders. “Not much. More trouble with the Portuguese down in the south.”

Jake rumbled, “There’s going to be a bloodbath there before it’s over.”

Isobel said thoughtfully, “There’s been some hope that fundamental changes might take place in Lisbon.”

Jake grunted his skepticism. “In that case the bloodbath would take place there instead of in Africa.” He added. “Which is all right with me.”

“What else?” Isobel said.

“Continued complications in the Congo.”

“That’s hardly news.”

“But things are going like clock-work in the west. Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika.” Cliff took his right hand away from the controls long enough to make a circle with its thumb and index finger. “Like clockwork. Fifty new fellows from the University of Chicago came in last week to help with the rural education development and twenty or so men from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore have wrangled a special grant for a new medical school.”

“All… Negroes?”

“What else?”

Jake said suddenly, “Tell her about the Cubans.”

Isobel frowned. “Cubans?”

“Over in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan area. They were supposedly helping introduce modern sugar refining methods—”

“Why supposedly?”

“Why not?”

“All right, go on,” Isobel said.

Cliff Jackson said slowly, “Somebody shot them up. Killed several, wounded most of the others.”

The girl’s eyes went round. “Who … and why?”

The pilot shifted his heavy shoulders again.

Jake said, “Nobody seems to know, but the weapons were modern. Plenty modern.” He twisted in his bucket seat, uncomfortably. “Listen, have you heard anything about some character named El Hassan?”

Isobel turned to face him. “Why, yes. The people there in Gao mentioned him. Who is he?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Jake said. “What did they say?”

“Oh, mostly supposed words of wisdom that El Hassan was alleged to have said. I get it that he’s some, well you wouldn’t call him a nationalist since he’s international in his appeal, but he’s evidently preaching union of all Africans. I get an undercurrent of anti-Europeanism in general, but not overdone.” Isobel’s expressive face went thoughtful. “As a matter of fact, his program seems to coincide largely with our own, so much so that from time to time when I had occasion to drop a few words of propaganda into a conversation, I’d sometimes credit it to him.”

Cliff looked over at her and chuckled. “That’s a coincidence,” he said. “I’ve been doing the same thing. An idea often carries more weight with these people if it’s attributed to somebody with a reputation.”

Jake, the older of the three, said, “Well, I can’t find out anything about him. Nobody seems to know if he’s an Egyptian, a Nigerian, a MOR … or an Eskimo, for that matter.”