The Outlaw (23 page)

"Look!" said a voice. "Look there! Am I going mad, or do dead Dogon breathe?"

Akonio recognized the voice. It was one of the university doctors.
Don't check my pulse,
he thought.
Don't check my pulse.
He heard footsteps in the sand, felt the doctor kneel down beside him, felt two gentle fingers on his wrist.
Play dead,
he thought.
Play dead, play dead.

"He's still alive," said the doctor.

Here goes.
Akonio Dolo opened his eyes, sprang to his feet, and rent the heavens with a bloodcurdling Dogon war cry. The doctor yelped and fell over backward.

In front of Akonio stood a dozen guards, three tutors, a magistrate, and a growing crowd of students. Behind him, solid and impenetrable, loomed the east wall of the mosque.

The time for playing dead was past. The time had come to die properly. Snorting earth and blood from his nostrils, Akonio strode forward, and the crowd shrank back in alarm.

It was Sheikh al-Qadi who broke the Dogon's spell. "What are you waiting for?" he roared. "
Seize him!
"

As the guards surged forward, Akonio Dolo turned and ran full tilt toward the wall of the mosque. He leaped high, grabbed the lowest of the cedar sticks, and muscled up until he was standing on top of it. Up and up he climbed from stick to stick, faster and faster, a dazzling combination of leaps, swings, and muscle-ups.

"Look at him go!" exclaimed the magistrate.

"He's a born climber," murmured the doctor. "A true Dogon."

"Students!" cried the sheikh. "Form an inner and an outer circle all around the mosque. Quickly! Don't let him get away!"

The students scattered to obey, but all the while they kept their eyes fixed on their clambering classmate. Silhouetted against the lightening sky and flowing like water up the minaret, he seemed somehow heroic—a solitary soul on his way to heaven.

"Guards!" cried the sheikh. "Don't stand there like donkeys. Climb up and bring the Dogon down!"

Slowly, awkwardly, the guards began to pick their way up the wall in pursuit of Akonio Dolo.

The boy thief had already reached the pinnacle of the minaret. He squatted on top, rested his chin on his hand, and gazed at the sun as it climbed above the horizon. The east side of the minaret turned a glorious rose red.

"Dolo!" roared the sheikh. "What did you do with the gold?"

Akonio tore his gaze away from the rising sun and looked down at the sheikh. "I took it to Dogon country," he called. "It took me six separate journeys to shift it all!"

The sheikh raised his hands imploringly toward the minaret. "Where did you hide it, Akonio?"

"In the cliffs of Bandiagara! In a secret chamber nineteen ghalva northeast of Tireli."

Sheikh al-Qadi turned to the doctor and whispered, "Go and tell the stable boy to prepare the fastest stallion."

"You'll need the key!" shouted Akonio.

"And where is that?"

"The key can only be found by a Dogon. It takes a Dogon to know a Nommo!"

"Talk sense, boy!"

"Fine!" Akonio Dolo stood up on the pinnacle of the minaret. "How's this for sense? God is great!"

"He's going to jump!" yelled the doctor, starting forward.

Akonio lifted his arms high above his head. "Professor al-Qadi!" he shouted. "You were right all along! You always did say I would come to no good!"

"Akonio!"

It was too late. The boy kicked off the minaret and straightened his body into a headlong dive. Like monkey bread from a baobab tree he fell, and like monkey bread he broke open on the ground.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Qadi ibn Abdullah kneeled down next to the boy. The doctor kneeled on the other side and shook his head. This time there was no need to take a pulse.

Al-Qadi shrugged off his torn outer garment and laid it gently over the body. "Seventeen years old," he murmured. "Am I to blame, doctor?"

"Certainly not. He did this to himself."

"We should bury him straightaway."

"Of course."

"What's a Nommo?"

"I have no idea."

Moktar
Hasim smiled to himself. He was on a roll. In the last hour he had scanned three whole manuscripts into the computer, and there was time for yet another before lunch.

He picked up the next manuscript and glanced at the ancient leather cover—another old mathematics treatise from the Abu Bakr collection. Fourteenth century, at a guess. Moktar reached for his keyboard and quickly entered the details:
TMP_172089 /Abu al-Kabari /Introduction to Magic Squares.
He gently undid the leather-lace ties, opened the manuscript to the first page, and lowered the lid of the scanner.

There were two scanners in this department. Moktar's machine stood by the door and his colleague Ahmed's by the window.

"Hey, Mokmok," cried Ahmed. "What are the nine golden rules?

"Listen up, Dogon," said Moktar. "If you recite the rule book once more, I'll feed it to you."

Ahmed's smile did not fade. He lifted his plump fists in the air and counted on his fingers. "Rule One, keep manuscripts
clean.
Rule Two, do not turn pages
roughly.
Rule Three, do not
slide
manuscripts. Rule Four, do not
lean
on manuscripts. Rule Five, do not
stack
manuscripts. Rule Six—"

"Rule Six, don't call me Mokmok," interrupted Moktar. "Rule Seven, open your scanner. Rule Eight, close your fat Dogon mouth. Rule Nine, do some work for a change. Haven't you noticed that for every manuscript you scan, I scan two?"

"That, my friend, is because you always choose the little ones," said Ahmed, wagging his index finger.

Moktar lifted the heavy lid of his scanner and positioned the next page of his manuscript. The yellowing parchment was as brittle as rice paper, and its edges had been nibbled by termites.
Gently does it,
thought Moktar, lowering the lid.
Don't want to cause any more damage.

"Stop!" Ahmed's voice in his ear made Moktar jump. "Let me see that."

Moktar whirled round. "Mind your own business! Don't you have any work of your own? Why must you be creeping around and peering over my shoulder like a djinn?"

"Let me look at that page," said Ahmed.

"Look at your own," said Moktar. He turned back to his machine and pressed
SCAN.

Ahmed reached over and lifted the lid. "There," he whispered. "In the margin, next to that magic square, someone's done a little drawing."

"Great snakes, you're right!" cried Moktar. "Alert the director! Rouse the mayor! Rally the journalists! I can see the headlines now:
SCHOOLBOY DOODLE DISCOVERED IN MATH TEXTBOOK!
"

"No need to be sarcastic," said Ahmed. He stepped in front of Moktar and squinted down at the manuscript. "This is incredible," he breathed.

Moktar pushed his colleague aside and took a closer look. The tiny picture wasn't incredible at all. It looked like something a small child would draw—a goggle-eyed fish standing on two little legs.

Ahmed's eyes were shining. "It's the key," he whispered.

"What key? What are you babbling about, man?"

"'It takes a Dogon to know a Nommo,'" quoted Ahmed softly.

It takes a Dogon to know a Nommo.
Those weird words stirred a distant memory in Moktar's mind—a legend from the Golden Age of Timbuktu. "What's a Nommo?" he whispered.

Ahmed pointed at the tiny fish-man. "That is," he said. "And I'll bet you a week's wages that this little Nommo was drawn by Akonio Dolo himself."

Akonio Dolo. Moktar remembered the story. Dolo was a Dogon student in Timbuktu who tunneled into a vault beneath the great Sankore mosque and got away with stacks of gold.
Gold that was never found.

"They found a mathematics manuscript in Dolo's room," said Ahmed, "but they probably didn't give it a second look. And even if they did, who would pay any attention to such a daft doodle?
It takes a Dogon to know a Nommo.
"

Moktar licked his lips. "You think this is the manuscript they found in Dolo's room?" he said.

"Right on, Mokmok." Ahmed hunched low over the manuscript. "Dolo must have drawn the Nommo to highlight this magic square. It's the key, I tell you."

"What key?"

"The key Dolo talked of before he died, the key to the location of the stolen gold. It's what we've all been waiting for, Mokmok. It'll be the find of the century. Two million mithqals! Just think of all the good that could be done with such a—
oof!
"

Moktar brought the heavy lid of the scanner down hard onto his colleague's head, then lifted it again. He yanked the precious manuscript out from under Ahmed's nose and wiped it with his sleeve. The paper was bloody but legible.

"Forgive me, friend," murmured Moktar. "I just broke rules one and three."

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. Quick as a flash Moktar dragged the desk in front of the door.

The handle jiggled. "Hello?" It was Austin Wiseman, the American project director. "Ahmed? Moktar? I heard a crash. Are you all right?"

"We're fine," said Moktar. He rolled the parchment tight and put it in his inside jacket pocket.

"Why is this door jammed, Moktar? What's going on?"

Moktar crossed the room quickly, opened the window, and kicked the mosquito netting off the window frame. He began to climb out, then paused.
The computer!
This page of the manuscript had already been scanned. If he wanted sole possession, he had to delete it from the computer.

Wiseman had his shoulder against the door and was shoving hard, prying it open inch by inch. Moktar strode to the computer, seized the mouse, and searched for the newly scanned image.

"Moktar, what are you doing in there?"

Double click. Double click.
TMP_172089/2.

"Talk to me, Moktar!"

Right click.
DELETE.

"Let me in!"

Are you sure you want to delete TMP_172089/2? Yes.

Professor Wiseman was short but strong. He heaved on the door and the barricade gave way. Into the room he rushed, and the first thing he saw was the body of Ahmed Rodin.

Double click. Empty Recycle Bin? Yes.

"Ahmed!" cried the professor, throwing himself down beside the young Dogon and feeling for a pulse. "
ça va,
Ahmed?"

Moktar strolled to the window and hoisted himself onto the ledge. "So, how is he?"

"Not good," said Wiseman. "What happened here?"

"We found something interesting," said Moktar. "I didn't feel like sharing it."

"What is it?"

"That would be telling."

Wiseman shook his head. "I trusted you, Moktar. I never dreamed you would turn out to be this..." He trailed off.

"This what?" said Moktar. "This greedy? This courageous? This un-Islamic? This imaginative? This what, Professor?"

"This disloyal."

Moktar curled his lip. "My people have a saying, Professor. Loyalty is for contented dogs, discontented wives, and half-contented fools.
Adieu.
"

He jumped off the ledge and disappeared from view. An instant later Professor Wiseman reached the window, but his eyes took a moment to adjust to the noonday glare and he did not see which way Moktar had gone. On both sides of the deserted street the glorious mud-brick architecture of Timbuktu shimmered in the sun.