by Ryder Stacy
Rockson asked, “Who is your doctor?”
“I’m the man who’s going to treat him. I’m a doctor, Rockson, in both Western medicine, and with my own tribal brand. I’ve developed them in a symbiotic way over the years, mixed them together. I promise you—it will help him.”
“He’s in your hands, pal. Do your thing.” They walked into the second tent, and Rock’s eyes opened wide when he saw what the inside of the tent was made of: elephant hide, stretched out on joined-together tusks of the whitest ivory. Evidently, these warriors had learned to use every part of the beast. It was perhaps the only way they could survive the hardships and barrenness of such a desert as surrounded them!
Rock was a little taken aback when the unconscious Sheransky was placed atop a long slab of wood, obviously a makeshift operating table, and Rahallah stripped down to leopard-skinned loincloth. The African ripped out two rattles, gourds with beans inside, which he proceeded to shake violently as he jumped up and down and raced around the prone body of Sheransky like a wild man. Rockson tried not to react. Maybe there was something in it all that he couldn’t fathom. The man was clearly not a charlatan.
Rahallah, his broad ebony face covered with sweat as he moved around, took out some powder from a skin bag and threw it over Sheransky’s head and chest. The powder was colored brown, black, and bright red, like blood. He nearly covered the stripped-to-the-waist patient with a thin layer of the powder, as if he was trying to bury him in sand at the beach. And then Rahallah began to howl at the top of his lungs:
“Oh, Lion God, please come and hear me. Save this wounded man. Give him the power of your beating, unstoppable heart. I, Rahallah, son of the Plains Lion, son of the Father of my tribe, beseech you. Let me hear your roar, Lion God. The roar that frightens even death.”
Rock stepped back, startled as Rahallah’s whole face suddenly tightened up into a snarling demonic appearance. Rahallah let out a roar that nearly gave his observer a heart attack. Then another higher-pitched roar as the black man reared back and then forward, screeching right over Sheransky’s motionless body. He did a complete go-round of the table, roaring like a lion with its ass on fire, and then stopped in his tracks.
“That’s the first part of the procedure,” he said, turning toward Rockson with just the hint of a smile. “Now the second part.” He quickly stepped back into his Egyptian fighting armor and sandals, and then walked back over with a small mobile table with one of the beam weapons atop it, and bandages and salves all over the thing on shelves.
“These lasers are not just for destruction,” Rahallah said as he picked a bronze-looking laser tube up and switched it on. A beam of light—blue and hard to look at, so pulsing was its perfect blueness—came out a foot and stopped. It actually burned the air as it heated molecules of oxygen in infinitesimal pops from the super-heat. “The lasers can be used for healing, Rockson. The heat of the sun is contained within this little beam. You saw what the beam could do.”
Rockson looked on anxiously as Rahallah lowered the beam-weapon toward the Russian Freefighter’s wounded arm and shoulder. He trusted the African, but . . . Sheransky’s face would be smoking ash if he made the slightest error in judgment. Rock tensed up, but he didn’t say a word or move a muscle as he was afraid he might distract the “doctor.” He just prayed real hard that Rahallah knew what the hell he was doing.
Rahallah lowered the blue laser toward the flesh, and with an incredibly deft touch, sliced it along the outside of the bandages, cutting them open like a razor, without touching the flesh below. He pried along the cut and looked in at the wound. “You’ve cleaned it well. That’s good. I’ll just use some of this—and—” He reached down and sprinkled liquid from a jar on the mobile table throughout the eight-inch wound, which Rock could see extended right down into the bone. He winced. He had never liked to actually see what was inside a man’s flesh. Although he sure as hell had seen it enough times.
Once the wound was thoroughly cleaned, Rahallah brought the laser tip down to the wound and inside it. There was a puff of smoke, which rose up out of the wound, as he pulled the laser quickly across it. Then he stopped, looked down, and started over again.
He was sealing up one layer of muscle at a time. Rock had witnessed a kind of laser surgery once back at C.C., but nothing like this. Rahallah was sewing the different layers closed with burning stitches with the expertise of a Hong Kong tailor. It took him only five minutes. And the wound was sealed with a burnt white line about a half-inch thick that ran the full length of the arm—closed with its own flesh as a bandage.
“Amazing,” Rockson said as Rahallah at last stood back, let the laser die, and let out a sigh of relief that it was over.
“I think—he’ll survive. That scar won’t look too great—but—I haven’t had any plastic surgery courses lately.”
“He’s not looking to win any beauty contests,” Rockson said. He suddenly felt terribly tired, as if he needed to sleep now that all the tension was over.
He’d been out in the sun too long, on the elephant too long. In the jet too long.
Rahallah had to grab him as he fell. “Quickly, put this brave man in bed,” Rahallah snapped. A dozen servants rushed to obey.
Sixteen
Rock awoke the next morning refreshed, finding himself on a long plush couch with a stiff animal-smelling blanket thrown over him. He remembered he had awakened once and eaten like a pig—and then passed out again! He got up, and was pleased to find that there was fresh water in a small bowl to wash with and to clean out his stinking breath. He’d forgotten his toothbrush, but his finger would do.
“You are look-ink for toot-brush?” a voice said hesitantly. Rockson turned to see an absolutely gorgeous raven-haired woman with high cheekbones and voluptuous rouged lips. She was beautiful, and wore only a flimsy pink robe with the same odd hieroglyphic symbols all over it. She held out a small toothbrush and a towel, and smiled coyly. Rockson couldn’t help but grin.
“If it’s going to be this much fun waking up every morning here, in wherever the hell I am, I’m going to stay here forever.” She giggled and raised her hand to her mouth, making her firm melon breasts, just barely hidden inside the gown, shake alluringly. Rock held his temptation in check. The man who had just come all the way from America to help guide the entire Neo-Egyptian army against Killov couldn’t just jump back into bed at the slightest provocation, could he?
He just took the toothbrush, not her. Rockson brushed his teeth and splashed some water on his face and neck. Then he got dressed, blushing a little under the watchful and appreciative gaze of the young woman.
“I’m Neferte,” she offered.
“And I’m Rockson, Ted Rockson. Rock, my friends call me.”
“Rock,” she said, rolling the word over her tongue in a most provocative manner.
“Oh Lord,” Rockson mumbled under his breath, and headed outside. The first thing he wanted to do was find out just what the hell was going on. He and Rahallah really hadn’t had a chance to discuss the situation and all its ramifications. He saw two elephants waiting as he came through the flap. Rahallah was sitting atop one, the other was empty. Rock gulped.
“Ah, there you are, Rockson. I wanted to let you sleep—yet I wanted to be here the moment you awoke. We have much to talk about—and very little time.” He shouted some sharp words to the second elephant, and it kneeled down.
“He’s your war elephant from now on. His name is Kral, in the closest approximation in English,” Rahallah explained. His English was filled with high British overtones as he had learned the language at Oxford in Britain, where the premier had him sent when in his late teens. Rahallah, among other talents, had turned out to be a scholar, and had majored in languages.
“My elephant?” Rockson echoed dumbly back. He walked hesitantly over to it as the immense half-armored animal turned its head and looked at him, not too overjoyed apparently with what it saw.
“He’s a full battle-class elephant, old an
d scarred. He carries total body armor—and a Class A laser cannon. He’s tough, all right. Just be nice to him and—”
Rockson jumped up atop the bent leg, and then grabbing the ear as he’d seen the others do, he pulled himself up by swinging onto the broad neck. The beast roared out, its trunk snapping up, and the whole back shook for a second as if it was thinking of throwing him off. A bucking elephant, that’s just what Rock needed right now.
“No! No!” Rahallah shouted over. “Never pull the ear of a prime bull elephant! You must grab the hair on the back of the neck near the ear, and pull yourself up.”
Rahallah gave some loud orders to the creature in Egyptian, and it suddenly stood up, whipping its snout around to sniff at Rock, who tried to seat himself comfortably atop its broad neck on a padding of cloth.
“Just sit back on him and sort of nudge him this way or that by moving your leg. Prime bulls think they know it all—and they probably do,” the black man said as he started his beast forward. “They pretty much take care of you. That’s why I gave you this one. There’s no time for you to learn to ride a younger one, they need more training. This one belonged to a general—he knows his job. Just don’t pull his ears.”
“Never again,” Rock said, raising his hand in Boy Scout promise as the elephant did indeed start forward with a loud harrumphing sound. The beast pulled alongside Rahallah’s animal, and they moved slowly down the main central clearance of the vast camp. Rock, evidently, was being shown around.
“These are all fighting men here, elephant divisions, infantry. They’re combat hardened—and ready to do whatever is necessary,” Rahallah said. Rockson could see that there were indeed acres of the troops. Men everywhere were practicing their fighting techniques. Some were doing sword work in long lines facing each other, first one side striking—then the other. Blow, counter-blow, counter-counter-blow. They looked as though they knew what they were doing.
Another group about fifty yards down was working with their long double-edged spears with fluted, almost hooklike ends that looked as if they could just rip apart anything that they touched. They practiced on stacks of thick palm trunks that had been set in the earth in holes. The swords were slamming into them, slashing away and ripping even these foot- and two-foot-thick segments into pieces in just a few blows.
But it was the sight ahead of them as they came over a dune that really caught Rock’s full attention. Two whole cavalries of elephants charging toward one another, their riders’ arms outstretched with long spears, slashing away at the air. There must have been fifty or more elephants on each side, all of them immense bulls in full body armor—steel mesh that came down around their legs and flanks. The elephants’ heads were helmeted as well, each one of their helmets a different grotesque shape. Welded out of solid metal, they formed hoods and death masks. Spike-augmented tusks were poking forward beneath the head armor.
The two groups came unceasingly toward one another as they waved their trunks, and man and animal alike screamed up a storm. Yet as they came to each other’s lines, the ranks somehow passed through, spears just missing opponents by inches.
“They’re just training—war games, I think your colloquial American expression goes. As if war could ever be a game.”
“Jesus,” Rock said as his mouth dropped open in amazement. “Who are those elephant fighters? I mean, where did this whole wild operation come from?”
“It’s a typically bizarre story, as are most in the post-nuke world,” Rahallah answered as they moved on to see yet more training facilities on both sides of them. “Somehow, remnants of the Egyptian army survived a few nuke strikes during the Great War a century ago. A bunch of them, nearly five hundred, survived intact. Because these men were in the midst of their own desert-war maneuvers, they found the cities destroyed when they went and looked—but some areas around the pyramids were untouched. So there they developed a culture, out in the desert, where the sand at least was less radioactive than the rest of their nation. They had been out testing very rudimentary weapons using lasers as mere sighting devices, nothing like these weapons of ours! But it was a start. Slowly, they adapted to what was around them, began dressing in the styles of the ancient pharaohs they found in the vast burial chambers unearthed by quakes, adopting their ways. The only culture that survived the war—as amazing as it is—was the truly ancient culture of the pharaohs. They just bypassed all that man had wrought for about five millennia—and started over.”
“But these weapons—and the elephants!”
“The weapons were developed by a group of scientists who had been along to study the laser-sighting weapons—several Americans, the rest Egyptian. They—and their children—continued to develop the lasers and enhance them. They learned to attach them to some elephants they had captured and trained. Out here in the shadows of the tombs of the pharaohs, they continued to develop their entire Egyptian culture. These are the Northern Egyptians—now inhabiting the banks of the whole northern part of the Nile. Killov has captured the Southern Egyptians—the followers of the Sun God, Amun. That is how he is spreading his dark words of destruction—as the Angel of Amun, as His Son, descended from heaven. An angel of death pretending to be one of life! And they believe him, or at any rate, they are too terrified to disobey. Already, he has taken two countries—the Sudan and Chad, and a good portion of Egypt! Libya may be his by fiat if the tribal leaders who are meeting today decide to surrender.”
“But how can he convert people so fast? I mean he doesn’t exactly have the pleasantest of ruling philosophies.”
“That’s exactly it,” Rahallah said from atop his rocking elephant. “His weapons are far more terrible and planet-threatening than even these laser weapons. Somehow Killov has acquired—through the priests of Amun who now comprise his top leadership and military staff—some kind of device that can levitate things—huge rocks, whole small mountains. He can raise them and smash them down on man and beast alike. He has killed thousands, perhaps tens of thousands already! He cares nothing for human life. Nothing—crushing whole villages like ants. That’s exactly how he rules, Rockson—through sheer unbridled terrorization of the populace.”
“Sounds like the Killov I know and love to hate,” Rockson said bitterly as his elephant let out a long gooselike honking sound. He wondered if he had done something wrong again.
“Killov hasn’t been able to find us out here in the middle of the desert so far. But that’s not for lack of trying. He’s had his units out all over the place, on search-and-destroy—the Southern Army uses camels and horses for that. He threw a few planes at us, but we managed to shoot them right out of the sky, as they were old props. So, for the moment, he’s confined to the ground. That’s our one bit of good fortune. He has to track us to find us. My general Tutankhamen has moved the camp five times in the last month. It’s all extremely mobile. But it’s only a matter of time. I know you have waged large-scale battle operations. I remember reading the reports that came in on the premier’s desk for many years of one Rockson victory after another against some Red Army convoy or battle group.
“In spite of myself, I must confess I always felt a certain admiration for you even though you were always the ‘enemy.’ Against vastly overwhelming manpower and firepower you seemed to manage to come out on top. And when we fought alongside one another for peace in Washington, I was honored.”
“I’m honored,” Rock replied, “but I must admit to being a little—make that very—apprehensive now.” Rock looked over at the black man. “I’ve never fought in a desert terrain like this—and I’ve never fought atop war elephants that could give King Kong pause to think.”
“Yes, King Kong,” Rahallah mused as if off in his own thoughts for a moment. “Excellent movie, excellent. Not the re-make, of course! Nonetheless, you have carried out large-scale combat maneuvers involving tens of thousands of men at a time in your career, if I’m correct.”
“Yes, I think it’s been known to happen,” Rockson said, a dozen m
emories of a dozen battles rushing through his head.
“Well then, you’re ahead of the rest of us. I know it will involve strategy, not just head-on collision with the Killov forces. We know—because several elephant battalions, nearly a hundred Class A elephants, have died, with five hundred men. This army looks large—but it’s perhaps three thousand men, no more, and barely a thousand war bulls. But if you see Killov crush an entire village with one of his damned levitating mountains,” Rahallah said, his voice suddenly growing cold and filled with rage, “you know we must act immediately.
“He is worse than any man,” the African prince went on. “The way he kills is not for power, nor wealth, the way other men kill. They at least can be controlled, bought off, so the human race can survive. No, he kills for pleasure, just to see it, to experience the pain and the agony of others!”
Suddenly Rock’s gut was filled with the most chilling sensation, as though he were going to puke out some of last night’s massive dinner, which was still digesting in his overfilled stomach. These men, the whole stinking country, all of Africa was counting on him, and he didn’t even know how to make the damned elephant he was riding go to the left or the right!
Seventeen
Rock inspected the rest of the camp as Rahallah led him on out through the concentric circles of sand-covered elephant-hide tents. There were four sprawling circles of them, encompassing the entire fighting force of General Tutankhamen’s warriors. Rahallah wanted him to see everything so any decisions Rockson made regarding their ultimate strategy would be made with complete knowledge of just what there was to work with. It was clear that the African didn’t want to take the responsibility for the large-scale operation solely on his own shoulders. Not many men would. Not that Rockson looked forward to being responsible for the life and death of thousands of men, not to mention the whole continent of Africa. But the difference, perhaps, between Rockson and other men was exactly in the fact that he was willing to shoulder the decision-making, and to take the risk of total failure.
