The Atlantis Guard

by S. A. Beck

  Without another word, he turned and went back to the medical tent. He immediately moved to an examination table. A long line of patients stood before it. The first in line was a woman carrying a tiny baby. With expert care, the doctor put it on a scale and started taking notes. Then he gave the infant an injection.

  Jaxon’s attitude toward this brusque man softened. This was what they’d been keeping him from. She could forgive him for being curt.

  “Well, let’s get this done,” Jaxon said with a sigh.

  They walked down one of the rows of tents. The tents nearer the medical station bore the Doctors Without Borders logo and were made of new canvas. Inside each, they saw a dozen or more people, most lying on new blankets that had obviously been issued by the charity. They lay as still as statues, utterly worn out from their ordeal. Jaxon peered at each face, looking for the features of her people. The refugees peered back, some curious, others hopeful, but most without any expression at all.

  “These people have been through too much,” Salif said, shaking his head sadly. “With all the rebel groups in Mauritania, no place is safe. The rebels will come into a village and demand food and money at gunpoint. Then the government soldiers come and punish the villagers for helping the rebels.”

  They continued. Although the camp was clean, it stank of unwashed bodies and the smell of sickness. There was little conversation, the only sounds being coughs and sighs and the wailing of infants. A small crowd of the healthier adults had gathered to follow them.

  “Ask them if they’ve seen any of our people around,” Jaxon told Salif. She found herself whispering. This place creeped her out.

  Salif talked to them for a minute. One older man, clutching a naked toddler at his side, replied and pointed further into the camp.

  Jaxon looked where he indicated, and her heart fell. Doctors Without Borders obviously hadn’t brought enough tents, because beyond the tidy rows of their shelters sprawled a chaotic mass of tents and lean-tos made of any material the refugees could scrounge. She’d seen this section of the camp coming in, but now that she was closer, it looked even worse. No wonder the doctor had immediately asked what they were bringing. Their team was stuck in the middle of nowhere. Any supplies must take ages to get here, and they hadn’t arrived with enough. Now they had to wait for more.

  It didn’t look like some of these people could wait very long.

  The old man led them along. He looked of Arab descent, with olive skin and lean features made leaner through malnutrition. He talked amiably to Salif in Arabic.

  “This man says he lived in a village in the central part of Mauritania and had many of our people as neighbors. The village healer was one of the People of the Sea. It sounds like we had a good reputation there.”

  “Ask him what happened.”

  Salif talked with him a minute as the man hobbled down the sandy lane. Now that there was a conversation people could understand, more had gathered around. As the old man spoke, several others cut in to add something. After a minute, Salif translated.

  “All of these people tell the same story. The police and army came to their villages or farms looking for our people, saying the People of the Sea were enemies of the state and trying to overthrow the government and take power for themselves. Since our people have a good reputation, most Arabs and Tuaregs did not believe them. So the authorities told them that anyone who sheltered us would be arrested too. Some of our people managed to run away or hide. The rest were taken.”

  Jaxon felt a cold knot in the pit of her stomach.

  Vivian asked the question Jaxon was afraid to ask. “Where were they taken?”

  “They do not know,” Salif said. “Perhaps our people will.”

  Chapter 9

  They had entered the shabbier part of the camp and passed along narrow paths between tents made with blankets or plastic sheeting. Even so, the place looked clean and organized. A circle of women cooked bread on a piece of sheet metal placed on a small fire. A group of younger women dug a latrine off to one side. Others cared for children or fanned old people who lay prostrate in the heat. Anyone who had the energy to work was working. While the arrival of Doctors Without Borders was certainly a blessing, these people were helping themselves too.

  Suddenly Jaxon stopped in her tracks. One large tent, made of several bedsheets sewn together, was open at the front. Inside she saw several of her people.

  She counted about twenty of them, all women and children except for one old man who looked half dead. When they saw Jaxon and Salif, they looked up in surprise. Some of the women and children rose. The others, too weak to move, sat and stared.

  Salif exchanged words with several of them in Arabic. The women started wailing, and Salif began to cry too. Jaxon’s own eyes began to tear up even though she didn’t know what they were saying. The looks on their faces said enough.

  Several women came over and embraced Jaxon. They touched her Western clothing and asked her questions.

  “Salif, tell them about me, and tell them we’re going to take them to safety in Timbuktu.”

  He did, and after another minute of conversation, they were invited into the tent to sit down. Remarkably, one of the women pulled out a nearly empty tin of tea, pulled out the last leaves from the bottom, and put them in a kettle on top of a campfire near the entrance to the tent.

  “They’re going to serve us tea?” Jaxon said, amazed.

  Salif smiled. “We are in their home.”

  “We can’t drink the last of their tea!”

  “It would be rude to refuse their hospitality, honey,” Vivian said. “That’s how people are here. It’s one of the reasons I love this part of the world.”

  As cups of tea got passed around, the Atlantean refugees told their story. Salif translated.

  “I’m afraid they do not know much more than the villagers we spoke to before. It came suddenly. There was no announcement from the government. Armed officers from either the police or the army showed up at each village and town and announced that our people were traitors. There was no time to prepare. It had all been done in secret and timed to happen all at once all over the country. Not even the local government people knew of this until they were given their orders the day before. The only ones who escaped were those who had friends in the armed forces who warned them that night. Even so, as you can see, they didn’t have time to leave with anything more than the clothes they wore and a few essentials. They have been walking through the desert for days. Some have died along the way.”

  Jaxon bit her lip.

  “How many are in this camp?” she asked.

  “Just those you see here and another small tent,” Salif said.

  “It’s going to be a tight squeeze, but we can probably get them all in the two Land Rovers,” Vivian said. “It’s better to take them all now while we can. We don’t want to give those policemen time to change their minds.”

  “Do they have any idea where the others were taken?” Dr. Yamazaki asked.

  Salif shook his head. “Only rumors. One sympathetic police officer said they were all to be taken to a camp just north of Tidjikja. That is in the center of the country. It is a lonely place. There is desert all around.”

  “A camp,” Jaxon said, trembling. “Like a concentration camp?”

  Salif’s usually smiling face darkened. “Perhaps, yes.”

  “We need to get them out of here,” Jaxon said. “Are they willing to come?”

  “I have already asked. Yes, they will.”

  “But why didn’t they fight back?” Jaxon asked, suddenly angry. “They’re stronger and faster and have powers they could have used.”

  Salif’s face hardened. “We should go.”

  Dr. Yamazaki pulled out her medical bag.

  “Before we go, I’ll give them each a quick medical examination. Vivian, can you help? I’m sure you have some field medical training. Salif, will you translate?”

  “Of course. One moment, please.”

&nbs
p; Salif took Jaxon aside. “Remember what I told you in the Land Rover?”

  “About not revealing our powers to outsiders? Yeah, what’s up with that?”

  “It is dangerous to be different.”

  Jaxon bit her lip. She knew a bit about that, and she was beginning to understand a whole lot more. Salif went on.

  “When people see you as different, it is easy for bad people to say you are the enemy. This has happened before in other places with other peoples. You must remember that this is a dangerous region. The governments here rule by fear and force. With so many bandits and Islamic militias, I suppose they have to, but to keep their power, they know it is best to make an enemy who everyone can blame for their problems. Sadly, right now they are using us.”

  “But why? We never harmed anyone.”

  “No, but we are different and always have been. We have a reputation as sorcerers. Even though we hide our abilities, people whisper of them. They know we can do things no normal man or woman could, and while some look at us as blessed healers like that old Arab man who led us here, others think we have made a pact with the Devil.”

  “That’s silly.”

  “There is no good magic in Islam. Only the Devil works magic. If they see a human being doing something that looks like magic, many people will think that person is in league with dark forces.”

  “But we’ve never hurt anybody. Why should they fear us?”

  Salif shook his head sadly. “Have you forgotten your history? Atlantis fell because we lost the way. We began to fight one another, and we began to be arrogant and violent to other peoples as well. The Arabs and the Europeans and the Black Africans may have forgotten the stories we preserve, but they have remembered that those who do what seems to be magic are to be feared. Our griot told me this. It was one of his most important lessons.”

  Jaxon blinked. She didn’t know much about history, but she did know that witches had been burned in the past because the authorities thought they cast spells. Even some early scientists had been attacked for doing what seemed to be impossible. People got thrown in jail for saying the Earth revolved around the sun. One night on the trip across the Sahara, Dr. Yuhle had told them a story about how the first people to fly a balloon in France back in the eighteenth century had landed near a village, and the villagers had attacked the balloon with pitchforks, thinking it was a monster. The scientists had barely escaped with their lives.

  So was all that some sort of race memory from a time when Atlanteans, with all their superior powers and special abilities, had lorded it over the rest of the world? Were they really feared because of the sins of the past?

  Jaxon sat and watched Dr. Yamazaki give each Atlantean a medical exam. She felt a bit useless. She couldn’t talk to her people and couldn’t help them with their dehydration or illnesses. At least she could get them out of here.

  The exams took a couple of hours, and during all that time, only one member of Doctors Without Borders came to see what was going on. A nurse popped her head in the tent, had a quick technical conversation with Dr. Yamazaki, and hurried off. With thousands of people to take care of, the organization left the Atlantis Allegiance to do their thing.

  Once she was finished, Dr. Yamazaki sat down for another cup of tea.

  “So there are twenty-seven Atlanteans in all, almost all women and children as you can see. Most are suffering from dehydration and exhaustion and borderline malnutrition. Other than that, there are a few cholera cases, some eye infections, and one older woman with a serious heart condition. I can treat the cholera and the infections, but there’s nothing I can do for the heart case. She has a couple of months at most. There’s also someone I suspect has cancer of the liver. There’s nothing I can do about that either.”

  Jaxon was shocked at how detached the scientist sounded while talking about these people, her people. Then she realized that, like the rude French doctor they’d spoken to when they arrived, that sort of detachment was probably the only way to stay sane in a job like this.

  “Perhaps we can do something back in Timbuktu for those two cases,” Vivian said without much hope in her voice. “It’s getting late, and we’re going to need to get going. I don’t want to drive through the dark.”

  “But there are 27 of them. How are they all going to fit?”

  Salif chuckled. “Haven’t you seen our public buses? They can ride on the roof and cling to the sides.”

  “All the way?” Jaxon gaped.

  The Atlantean shrugged. “It’s better than staying here.”

  It took only a few minutes for the Atlantean refugees to gather their meager possessions and head to the Land Rovers.

  There they found the two policemen from the checkpoint waiting for them.

  “Hello, where going?” the older one said in bad English. The younger one stood next to Jaxon, too close. He gave her a smile, and she glowered back at him.

  Salif said something in Arabic, and the older guard snapped an angry reply. Salif pleaded, sounding conciliatory, but the man only clicked his tongue in disgust and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

  Salif turned to Jaxon. “He wants a bribe.”

  “What? That’s illegal!” Jaxon spun on the older guard and jabbed a finger in his chest. “Wait until the head of Doctors Without Borders hears about this.”

  Jaxon stormed off toward the medical tent.

  “No, wait!” Vivian called after her. Jaxon ignored her. She’d had enough of this. Her people were suffering out here in the desert, and all the local cops could do was ask for bribes?

  Shouldering her way past a couple of nurses, she found the head doctor bent over an examination table setting a broken leg.

  “The guards are demanding a bribe to let us leave,” Jaxon told him.

  “Pay it then,” the doctor muttered as he coated the leg with plaster.

  “What?”

  “I said pay it. Otherwise they won’t let you go,” he replied, adjusting his position so he could put some more plaster on a different part of the leg. He didn’t even look at Jaxon.

  “But it’s illegal!”

  “So’s genocide. And that’s what you’re trying to save your people from. That’s what you said, isn’t it? So pay the damn bribe and stop bothering me.”

  “What’s your problem, anyway?”

  The doctor stood up straight and looked at her for the first time.

  “If you don’t pay the bribe, they won’t let you go. Then they’ll cause trouble for me and my team. I have a few thousand people to take care of here. You want to interfere with that just because you don’t want to spend any of Daddy’s money?”

  Jaxon snarled. “Daddy’s money? It’s not Daddy’s money. You don’t know a thing about me!”

  “I know you have no idea what you’re doing. You still think you’re in some suburban shopping mall. Damn Americans think their money can get them anything they want. Well, use your money to buy your way out of the trouble you got yourself into and leave me alone. I’m busy.”

  The doctor bent over his work again. Jaxon sputtered, trying to form words. After a moment, she threw her hands in the air and stormed out of the tent.

  “How did that go, honey?” Vivian asked when she returned. The two cops were still there. The Atlanteans had sat down, looking glum and resigned. Jaxon realized they thought they weren’t going to get to leave.

  “He said to pay the bribe.”

  “We have to, honey. Otherwise they’ll give him trouble.”

  “He said that too.”

  Jaxon shook her head, feeling foolish. Daouda Ndiaye’s words came back to her.

  Don’t make the same mistake many Americans make, thinking that money can solve all life’s problems. Some problems can’t be solved with money but only with wisdom and cooperation.

  Jaxon sighed. She realized that as annoying as the doctor was, she had once again judged him too harshly. He had a hard job to do, and her being stubborn would only make it harder.

&nbs
p; “How much do they want?” she asked Salif.

  This led to a long haggle in Arabic before Salif turned back to her. “Two hundred dollars, in dollars. They want hard currency. It’s better than the West African franc, which is worth less and less each month.”

  Jaxon sighed and pulled out her money belt, a special belt with a zipper pouch that went under her shirt. Vivian had given it to her, saying it was a good way to stop pickpockets. As she did so, Vivian moved to get between her and the cops. Jaxon realized this was to keep them from seeing how much money she had. Asking for two hundred bucks was taking most of the money she had on her, but not all. If they saw more, they’d probably ask for more.

  She handed over the money, and the guards walked off, chuckling.

  The Atlantis Allegiance crammed everyone into the Land Rovers. Every adult had a child or two sitting on their lap, and the younger, healthier people sat on the roof or stood on the running board and gripped the roof rack.

  Soon they set out into the desert, the laughing cops waving them goodbye. The Land Rovers moved slowly to keep the people on top of the vehicles from falling off. Once they got out of sight of the refugee camp, Jaxon felt better. She never wanted to see a place like that again.

  She looked around at her fellow Atlanteans. None of them seemed happy or grateful to be on their way. In fact, a couple of them started crying. One old woman looked longingly out the back window.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked Salif in a whisper.

  “They are sad to be going further from their homes. They are leaving their husbands and sons behind.”

  Jaxon bit her lip. She had been expecting a joyful ride home, with everyone singing and clapping. Now she realized what a silly dream that had been. She’d been expecting to buy their happiness and make herself happy by doing so. Once again the griot’s words came back to her.

  Some problems can’t be solved with money but only with wisdom and cooperation.

  Where was she going to find the wisdom to protect her people from so many enemies?