Mothership

by Bill Campbell

  All the restraint he had imposed on his emotions melted swiftly in the heat of Amma’s embrace. His hands peeled the asokaba from her waist, then travelled upward to untie the turban from her head, so that he could experience the sensation of her kinky hair brushing against his palms.

  But as Babakar’s fingers pulled at the knot of the turban, Amma uttered a low cry that had nothing to do with passion or pleasure. Her hands shot up to Babakar’s, and with surprising force held them away from her head. The points of her fingernails dug talon-like into his flesh.

  “No!” she hissed. “You must not touch my turban.”

  “Why?” Babakar asked in bewilderment.

  Amma did not reply immediately. She lay silent, her body taut and rigid next to Babakar’s, her hands pinioning his wrists like clamps of steel. Then, with a shudder, she released her hold and wriggled from beneath him. Sitting up, she hooked her arms around drawn-up knees, then spoke in a flat tone.

  “I did not tell you everything that happened when the deserters took me,” she said. “I fought them. They became angry, and one of them decided to teach me not to defy them. He took a brand from their cook-fire, and pushed it at my face. I turned away … and the flame burned the top of my head. There are scars … it is horrible. You must not see it. You must not!”

  Babakar reached out and pulled Amma down to his broad chest. She yielded easily, and nestled passively against him.

  “Yet another outrage that the Sussu must answer for,” he said bitterly. “Would that I’d killed as many of them for you as I did for … my other family.”

  Then his tone turned gentle.

  “My feelings for you are not so shallow that I would turn from the sight of what the Noba did to you,” he said. “But if you prefer that I not see it, I will never again put my hand near your turban.”

  Amma leaned forward and covered Babakar’s lips with hers. His arms tightened around her; she returned his embrace with an ardor beyond any he had experienced before. Their love was consummated in a fierce flow of passion that left Babakar spent and drowsy.

  So deep was the slumber he soon fell into that he was not disturbed when Amma extricated herself from his embrace, hastily donned her asokaba and quietly slipped out of their dwelling, being especially careful not to rustle the rectangle of cloth that hung across the doorway. Nor did he waken when, only an hour before the rising of the sun, she returned.

  Amma seemed strangely subdued as she and Babakar walked to the wassa-field in the morning. Her fingers hung lifelessly in his grasp, and her eyes were downcast. Babakar wondered if he had unknowingly done something wrong the night before. Surely, Amma had enjoyed their lovemaking as much as he … or had she?

  Possibly she now recalled the depredations of the Noba who had ravished her, which she may have forgotten during the ecstasy of the night. Babakar wanted to assure Amma that she was secure with him. But if she had indeed begun to forget the horrors of the past, it would be foolish for Babakar to bring them once again to the forefront of her mind.

  Suddenly, he recalled the strange warning of Kuya Adowa ….

  Then the sight that met his eyes when they reached the field swept aside all the conflicting thoughts that roiled through Babakar’s mind.

  The field was ruined. All the burgeoning wassa-sprouts were gone, bitten off to jagged, pitiful stumps that barely protruded above the line of the soil. Amid the destruction lay the mocking signatures of its perpetrators: scores of small, cloven hoofprints scattered among the rows of ravaged plants.

  Goats? thought Babakar. No, that could not be. There were no goat herds this far south of the Gwaridi-Milima Mountains.

  When he knelt to look more closely at the damage, he realized that the prints had come in a long, disorderly line from the west, then departed in the direction of neighboring fields after they had eaten their fill of his wassa. There were other, fresher tracks that told him that the animals had later returned the way they had come. That way led them to the Tassili. Babakar knew there were no wild goats in the Tassili. There was not enough forage in the wasteland to support their voracious appetites.

  But there were … gazelles.

  The mystery deepened. Babakar’s brow furrowed in confusion. Never before had the elusive, graceful antelopes of the desert ventured this far from their wasteland environs. Never, at least, in the generations of time the griots could recall, and those seemed to stretch back forever.

  Yet what tradition said could never happen, had. The evidence lay grazed to the ground at his feet.

  Shaking his head in despair, Babakar stood up and turned to Amma. She stared downward with a wooden, unseeing expression.

  Gods, thought Babakar. She’s even more affected by this than I am ….

  Recalling her frightened reaction of the previous morning, he gingerly placed his arm around her shoulders.

  “Amma,” he began haltingly. “I don’t understand how this happened, but somehow we must overcome it. The land is useless to us now; there is not time to plant another crop. We can go to Gao, or some other city, and hire our services to some Merchant Lord. It’s only a step above slavery, but it’s better than starving ….”

  “So, Babakar, they got you, too,” a voice behind them interrupted.

  Babakar turned to face two of his fellow farmers—Mwiya iri Fenuka and Atuye iri Sisi, whose fields lay closer to Gadou than his.

  “The gazelles destroyed your crops, too?” Babakar returned. “Did they get everybody?”

  “Mine, not his,” Atuye said sourly.

  Like Babakar, Atuye was an ex-soldier, hard-muscled and battle-scarred. Mwiya, a stocky man of middle age, seemed even more agitated than Atuye, even though it was Mwiya’s crop that had been spared.

  “It’s like that throughout this whole area,” Mwiya said. “The creatures struck haphazardly. You know Atuye, here, and I are neighbors, our fields side-by-side. Yet mine still stands as it did yesterday, and Atuye’s looks like yours.”

  “We thought you might have seen something, since yours is the last field in the direction the gazelles came from,” Atuye said.

  Babakar shook his head.

  “I slept through it all, curse the luck,” he said.

  “What about you?” Atuye growled, turning to Amma.

  Amma started, her shoulders tensing beneath Babakar’s arm.

  “Nothing,” she replied quickly. “I know nothing.”

  “Are you sure?” pressed Atuye.

  “What in Motoni’s name is wrong with you, man?” Babakar exploded, taking a step forward. “Amma couldn’t have seen anything. She was with me all night.”

  Atuye stood his ground, though he couldn’t fail to notice the clenching of Babakar’s fist, or his willingness to use it.

  “All I know is that when we went to old Kuya Adowa this morning to ask if she could help us, she told us to seek the answers to our questions from your new woman,” Atuye said.

  Something close to fear held Babakar in a cold grasp as he again recalled the tynbibi’s visit, and her warning … angrily, he shook the feeling off.

  “You would take the word of a half-mad old woman over mine?” he challenged.

  Atuye and Mwiya stood in silence. They knew, of course, what had happened to Babakar’s family during the war, and Atuye had witnessed the man’s ferocity in battle. It was unlikely to the point of absurdity that the Babakar iri Sounkalo he and Mwiya knew could be involved in the mysterious destruction of the fields.

  But the woman … was her obvious nervousness due to fear … or guilt?

  The tension between Babakar and Atuye was threatening to erupt at any moment into physical conflict. Wisely, Mwiya averted it.

  “Calm down, Babakar,” he said. “Of course we believe you. But you and Atuye are not the only ones to have suffered because of these marauding gazelles. We’ve got serious questions here, and somehow we must find the answers to them.”

  “You can depend on that,” Atuye added.

  “We fought side
-by-side against the Sussu, Atuye,” Babakar said quietly. “But anyone who seeks to harm Amma is as much my enemy as they were.”

  Atuye’s heated reply was quickly cut off by Mwiya.

  “I understand, Babakar,” he said. “We must talk of this later, though. Tonight, the Council of Elders meets in Gadou. Will you come?”

  “To Motoni with the Elders!” Babakar snarled. “Will they save us from the gazelles the way they saved us from the Sussu?”

  “I am sorry you take that attitude,” said Mwiya. “You may well regret it before this matter’s done.”

  When Babakar did not respond, the visitors returned to the road that led to Gadou. Babakar turned to Amma, who had said nothing since her reply to Atuye.

  “We will leave tonight,” he told her. “There is nothing for us here now.”

  “No!” Amma said vehemently. “If we go tonight, the old woman’s suspicions will be proven correct—at least to people like Atuye. We must wait a day, maybe two, before departing. By then, they’ll have other things to think about.”

  “What other things?”

  “The gazelles.”

  Babakar dug his fingers into her arm.

  “What do you know of the gazelles?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” Amma said, glaring full into the big man’s eyes.

  Contritely, Babakar released his hold on her arm. Before he could say anything further, Amma spun on her heel and strode stiff-backed and silent to their dwelling. Babakar followed—but only after one last, despairing glance at his twice-ruined wassa-field.

  Amma remained uncommunicative while they gathered their few belongings, mostly Babakar’s. As they ate a supper of millet cakes and thin stew, Babakar spoke encouragingly of the possibilities that awaited them in the cities of the south. He could put his war-skills to use as guardsman to a Merchant Lord, or even the Emperor, he reasoned. And the Merchant Lords were always seeking women to peddle their goods for them beneath the huge, multicolored awnings of the market squares.

  Since the time of the First Ancestors, the market had been the province of women, and an attractive one like Amma would find little difficulty finding a place in a square. Perhaps the loss of their crop was not as disastrous as it seemed, he reassured.

  Amma was indifferent to his enthusiasm. After the sun sank in a crimson blaze beyond the horizon, and they prepared to retire for the night, she rebuffed Babakar’s advances, keeping her asokaba wrapped firmly in place as she curled close to the edge of the sleeping-mat.

  When Babakar reached to touch her shoulder, the skin felt cold before she flinched away. It was as though the fire and tenderness of the night before had never happened.

  Anger stirred in Babakar as his ardor ebbed. Then the flash of resentment faded as quickly as it had come. The abuse Amma had endured since the coming of the Sussu might have driven another person over the brink of madness. The destruction of the wassa-field by the gazelles must have seemed to her yet one more in an endless series of calamities.

  Though she might prefer to battle the demons of the past alone this night, Babakar vowed that when morning came, Amma would know that she need never again face them alone. Thus resolved, he drifted into a deep slumber that remained undisturbed when Amma slid quietly from the sleeping-mat and melted into the shadows outside the doorway ….

  Hard hands shook Babakar out of sleep. His eyes flew open; bleary darkness and shadowy shapes swam before him as he was hauled roughly to his feet. Alertness came in a rush as the intruders hustled him out of the doorway to his dwelling.

  “What is this?” he shouted hoarsely.

  The indignant words that were to follow died in his throat at the sight that greeted him in the moonlight.

  Starkly silhouetted in the pale glare stood Kuya Adowa. Her hand was clenched firmly on the tira-pouch dangling between her breasts, and her face bore an expression of wrath and hatred. Behind her, several of the neighboring farmers stood in a tight circle, surrounding … Amma.

  They were armed with staves and long daggers. Two of them carried torches. Quick glances to his left and right confirmed that it was Mwiya and Atuye who firmly pinioned Babakar’s arms.

  Enraged, Babakar surged strongly against his captors’ grasp.

  “Damn you!” Babakar shouted. “You dare to invade a man’s house and drag his woman from her bed? Are you Songhai or Sussu?”

  That insult stung Atuye into delivering a sharp blow to the side of Babakar’s head.

  “You know damn well she wasn’t in your house, iri Sunkulu,” Atuye growled as Babakar staggered. “We caught her on her way from the field of Falil iri Nyadi.”

  Babakar froze, his instinct to continue struggling overridden by shock. He had assumed that Amma had been torn from his side moments before he had been awakened.

  “Amma … is this true?” he asked.

  She did not reply. Her head was bowed; he could not see her eyes.

  Abruptly, Kuya Adowa spoke.

  “Let him go,” she said. “This isn’t his fault.”

  “What isn’t my fault?” cried Babakar.

  “You should have come to the Council of Elders, Babakar,” Kuya Adowa said with a note of pity in her voice.

  “Why?”

  “We decided that the farmers whose fields had escaped destruction would guard their crops tonight to drive away the gazelles, should they return. Falil, here was one of those who kept watch. Tell Babakar what you told us, Falil.”

  Falil, whose age could not have been more than eighteen rains, stepped shyly from the knot of people around Amma. His eyes seemed to reflect the moonlight in his dark face as he spoke.

  “I watched my family’s field from a tree that grows near it, so that I’d be better able to see the gazelles coming,” he said. “For a long time, nothing happened. I was about to fall asleep when I heard something coming into the field. I thought it might be the gazelles. But when I looked, I saw her.”

  He jerked his head toward Amma, not daring to look at her. His fear of her was obvious.

  “She didn’t see me, though,” Falil continued. “I was about to climb down and ask her what she was doing in my field, when she pulled her turban off her head. I saw the moonlight flash off something on her head. Then she took off her asokaba and rolled on the ground ….”

  With a bellow of outrage, Babakar leaped at the youth. Atuye and Mwiya had not released their hold on him, though, and they dragged him back.

  “She didn’t see me!” Falil cried, his eyes wide with fright. “She rolled and rolled, and she changed. When she got back to her feet, she wasn’t a woman anymore. She was a gazelle!”

  “This is madness!” roared Babakar. “Have you people lost your senses, to listen to stories a child wouldn’t believe?”

  “I know what I saw!” the younger man flared. “She was a gazelle. She raised her head and gave a cry like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Then she stood still … for how long, I do not know. Then I heard a rumble of hooves, and a rustle in the wind, and suddenly a whole herd of gazelles was in the field. There were scores of them, eating our millet. I should have climbed down and yelled at them to scare them off. But I was afraid. If you had seen how she changed ….

  “At last they were done, and they ran off to the west … all of them but her. She rolled on the ground again after the others were gone, and when she stood up, she was a woman again. She put on her turban and asokaba, and walked away from the field. I climbed down from the tree and ran to the field of our neighbor. We caught her as she came down the road to this house, then took her to Kuya Adowa. The rest, you already know.”

  Babakar shook his head in disbelief. He looked pleadingly at Amma, but she would not return his gaze.

  “Kambu,” Kuya Adowa whispered. “An animal imbued with the power of a spirit-being beyond the realm of man. They control the actions of the animal they invade, and they can assume the shape of humankind and speak the language of men. They read our thoughts, and tell us what they know we would most
like to hear. Yet even though they may look human, they are not.”

  Her voice shook with fury and fear as she continued.

  “Babakar! Your woman is a kambu. A kambu cannot love. She means only evil for you. If not, then why didn’t her creatures spare your field?”

  “No,” Babakar groaned. “No! I cannot believe it ….”

  “Yes!” screamed Kuya Adowa.

  Her spidery black hand reached up and tore the turban from Amma’s head. Babakar gasped. It was not a bare, fire-seared scalp that lay revealed in the stark moonlight, as Amma had led him to expect. Her head was covered by a cap of kinky back hair, as that of any woman of Songhai would be. Sprouting from the front of her skull, however, were two small, spiraled horns … the horns of a female desert gazelle.

  A wave of despair swept over Babakar. He recalled Amma’s words of only a night before: “You must not touch my turban ….”

  “Amma,” he said with a sob, wondering if even her name was a lie. She had not mentioned it before he told her of his first Amma.

  For the first time that night, Amma’s eyes met his. Her face, even beneath the spiraled horns, still absorbed him in its loveliness.

  “One of the Sussu you killed during the way was the son of a sabane—a powerful sorcerer, a master of the Black Talk,” she told him. “The father used his skills to discover the slayer of his son. Then he used the Black Talk to bind me to his will; to use me to force my people to carry out his vengeance.

  “I resisted, but his power was too strong. The effort it took to bind me killed the sabane, but the power of his Black Talk remains. I am compelled to carry out his command: to call my people like locusts to destroy your crops and starve you to death. The sabane was mad with grief. He wanted all of your people to suffer for your deed.”