Flyaway

Byrne laughed shortly. 'Not yet.' He indicated a crescent-shaped dune we were passing., 'These are barchan dunes. They're on the move all the time, driven by the wind. Not very fast – but they move. All the sand is on the move, that's why there's no track here.'

Presently the isolated barchan dunes gave way to bigger sand structures, rolling hills of sand. The mountains of the Air had long disappeared below the horizon behind us. Byrne drove skilfully, keeping to the bottom of the valleys and threading his way among the dunes. I wondered how he knew which way to go, but he didn't seem worried. As we went he discoursed on the different types of sand.

'This ain't too bad,' he said. 'At least you can stop without getting into trouble. Fech-fech is the worst.'

'What's that?'

'Sometimes you get times of high humidity – high for the desert, anyway. At night in winter the moisture freezes out of the air and forms dew on the surface of the sand. That makes a hard crust on the top with soft sand underneath. Driving on that is okay if you keep moving, but if you stop you're likely to break through and go down to your axles.' He paused and said reflectively, 'Don't bother a camel none, though.'

Another time he said, 'A few years ago I was up north, round about Hassi-Messaoud where the oil-wells are. I came across a big truck – could carry a hundred tons. Russian, it was; used for carrying oil rigs about. The guys who were driving it were Russians, too, and they showed me how it worked. It had eight axles, sixteen big balloon tyres and you could let air out and pump air in by pressing buttons in the cab. They reckoned that with a full load they could jiggle things so that the weight on the ground per square inch was no more than that of a camel. A real nice toy it was.'

'Ingenious.'

'Yeah.' He laughed. 'But they were sloppy about it. They had five of the tyres on wrong way around. Anyway, a few weeks later I heard what happened to it. They were driving along and decided to stop for the night. So they stopped, had something to eat, and went to sleep. But they stopped on fech-fech and during the night the truck broke through. The Russians were sleeping underneath it and it killed them both. They never did get it out.'

A nice illustrative and macabre story of the dangers of the desert. Byrne said, 'Lousy stinkpots! Never have liked them except when I'm in a hurry, like now.'

After a while the sand dunes levelled off into a plain of sand, and presently Byrne said, 'The Tree!' On the far horizon ahead was a black dot which might well have been an optical illusion – a speck of dust on the eyeball – but which proved to be a solitary wide-spreading thorn tree. There was a well near the tree and the ground all about was Uttered with the olive-shaped pellets of camel dung. There were also several skeletons of camels, some still covered with hide, mummified in the dry, hot desert air.

Byrne said, 'We'll stop here for something to eat – but not near the well. Too many biting bugs.'

As we drove past, Paul, behind me, said, 'There's someone standing by the tree.'

'So there is,' said Byrne. 'Just one man. That's unusual here. Let's go see who he is.'

'He pulled over the wheel and we stopped just by the tree. The man standing there was not a Targui because he wore no veil and his skin was darker, a deep rich brown. He was shorter than the average Targui and not as well dressed. His gandoura was black and his head cloth in ill array.

Byrne got out and talked to the man for a few minutes, then came back to the truck. 'He's a Teda from the Tibesti. He's been hanging around here for three days waiting for someone to come along. He's heading east and he can't do the next stretch alone.'

'How did he g et here?'

'Walked. Only just made it, too. Did the last two days without water. Do you mind if we give him a lift as far east as we're going?'

It's your truck,' I said. 'And you're the boss.'

Byrne nodded and waved to the man, who came over to the Toyota. He was carrying a shaggy goatskin bag which Byrne said was a djerba, used for holding water. Byrne tapped the bag and asked a question, pointed to the well. The man answered and then, at a command from Byrne, emptied the contents of the bag on the ground.

'It's okay to drink that stuff if you have to,' said Byrne. Hut not unless. An addax antelope fell into the well a few years ago and it's been no goddamn good since.'

As we drove away I said, 'What's his name?'

'He didn't say. He said his name used to be Konti.'

I frowned. 'That's a funny thing to say.'

'Not really,' said Byrne. 'It means he's a murderer.' He seemed unperturbed.

I twisted around to look at the man in the back of the truck, whose name used to be Konti. 'What the hell…'

'It's okay,' said Byrne. 'He won't kill us. He's not a professional murderer. He probably killed somebody in a blood feud back home and had to take it on the lam. Maybe he reckons it's now safe to go back or he's got word his family has paid the blood money.'