accounts of his unbalanced dreams. Who can doubt he has now lost all sense of reality?
‘Treason? Sorcery? Murder? The only question worth asking is where the fool got his body parts.’ With a contemptuous snort, he dashed my opium bottle to the ground. I watched as it hit a stone and shattered, and the precious juice of the poppy drained into the sand. Meekal stepped closer towards the Caliph. ‘Let us end this ridiculous interlude,’ he cried in a louder voice than before. ‘The Old One can be led off to a place where he can do no further harm to others or to himself. The rest of us can proceed about the business for which we are gathered.’
There was a perceptible draining away of tension. Someone laughed as I let my arm down just a little too fast, and the head fell to the ground, leaving me clutching a handful of hair. I stared down into the dead eyes. As if of its own motion, the head rolled down a slight dip in the sand and stopped beside the broken bottle. I stepped forward and bent to retrieve the head. Of a sudden, I overbalanced and fell on to my hands and knees. My stick was a few feet out of reach, and I struggled vainly to get back to my feet. Someone else in the crowd laughed. There was another laugh from somewhere else. I could now hear a soft giggling from many places within the crowd. Again, I tried to get up. Again, I failed. When I looked up from the ground, the Caliph was now sitting, a sour look on his face. One of his people was trying to whisper in his ear. As he leaned forward, the Caliph turned away. Meekal was strutting about, pointing at various slaves whose job it was to get things ready for the trek over to the demonstration.
‘I’ll kill you for this with my own hands,’ he said softly as he passed me by. ‘I’m sure I’ll find a way to make it slow and painful – even for you.’ I ignored him. The sun had now resumed its course and would soon be at the highest point. For what little it was still worth, I’d carry on. I forced myself back to my feet and stood forward again, and raised my stick for attention. I was ignored. I thought of turning and rapping my stick on the sounding board. But would anyone have paid attention then? Far over on my right, the carrying slaves were already on their feet, and were preparing to come forward to collect those who were to witness Meekal’s crowning achievement.
As I wavered, there was a commotion at the back of the main crowd. It was a matter of complaints and the displacement of one body by another, and then of the corresponding movements and complaints by those about the initial points of disturbance. It was nothing much at first – I even thought it was more of what seemed a concerted attempt to deny me my attention. But the sound and movement increased as someone pushed his way through the crowd closer and closer to the front.
‘The Old One speaks the truth!’ I heard a voice cry from an unexpected point along the front row of the crowd. I shaded my eyes and twisted my head to see if there might be better vision through some other cluster of tiny holes in my visor. But, if I couldn’t see him, there was no doubt it was Edward. ‘The Old One speaks the truth,’ he cried again. I saw him now. Dressed in the white riding costume of the Saracens, though with his short, blond hair uncovered, he crossed the sand that lay between me and the crowd and stood beside me. ‘With my own eyes, I saw all that he describes. I, Moslemah, a convert to the True Faith of the Prophet, also accuse Meekal of treason and sorcery!’
‘You’re a fucking idiot,’ I hissed at the boy in English as the chorus of shouts and argument swelled among the crowd. ‘I told you to get out of here. Why have you come back?’
‘I asked myself what you would have done in my place,’ he replied in Saracen. He raised his arms again for attention. But now Meekal was back from making his arrangements. He pushed Edward roughly away from me and looked straight at the Caliph.
‘This farce has been played out long enough,’ he called impatiently. ‘Whatever clothes he is wearing, this child is nothing more than a barbarian catamite. His conversion is as genuine as the Old One’s. Now his original owner is too worn out to play the manly part, he’s given his arse to the wanted traitor Karim – son of the traitor Malik, whose widow is, even now, awaiting questions about her own treasonable correspondence with the Empire and with the rebels.’ He pointed at a couple of guards, who’d been lounging on the edge of the crowd. ‘Arrest the Old One and his boy,’ he said with angry contempt. ‘Your Majestic Holiness, the demonstration awaits.’
I looked up at the sun. It was almost now at the zenith. It really was now or never. I stepped forward and took in a deeper breath than I thought my old lungs would ever accommodate.
‘Abd al-Malik,’ I shouted with firm urgency. ‘Abd al-Malik. You will not hear the word of man. Prepare now to hear the Word of Allah.’ The Caliph turned back to me. He raised an arm for silence. The crowd and all about were suddenly stilled. I walked back within the sound collecting zone. ‘The boy and I speak the truth,’ I called. ‘If you go within those walls, I swear that you will never come out alive. I watched all day yesterday as Meekal laid his trap for you. All this is the truth. And, as witness of the truth, I call on Allah, the Common Father of all men, to give a sign.’ I stopped and pointed dramatically up at the sky.
And now my heart froze. All day, every day for months, the sun had shone from a sky of unbroken blue. For the first time, I saw a little cloud barely the sun’s own diameter away from the sun. The shock drained all energy from my body. I watched and fought the inclination to let myself fall sobbing to the ground. Closer and closer the cloud drifted slowly towards the very edge of the sun. A half-mile away in the monastery, all had been set up on the assumption of bright sunshine. The sun would reach its zenith. The lenses would focus its beams on the piles of grey powder I’d placed in just the right positions. The powder would ignite, and would burn along the trails I’d laid to all the right places. Already, other lenses had started fires under the double kettle filled with the mixture. This would now be at boiling point – and would stay safely at boiling point unless. .. unless…
The cloud covered the sun. At once, the desert was plunged into shadow, and all the heat of the day was stopped. Still pointing up at the sky, I stood with shaking legs. Someone in the crowd was claiming that God had indeed sent His sign. No one paid attention. Meekal was already walking towards his own carrying chair. The Caliph was back on his feet, waiting for his people to move aside so he could step down from the platform. The cloud had covered the sun at its zenith, and seemed set to stay there until the zenith was past. I felt Edward lay a hand on my shoulder.
‘Come, Master,’ he said in English. ‘We tried our best. Karim tells me that we can-’
There was a sudden flash over on my left. I turned and looked into the bright mushroom of orange that had erupted above the walls of the monastery. I watched as it swelled and swelled – a hundred feet, no, two or three hundred – above the walls. Even with my visor to blot out much of the brightness, it was like staring straight into the sun itself at noon. I watched as the great ball of fire that swelled still greater at the top of the bright column seemed to move within itself – here dazzling, here relatively dark. It was like looking at the ridged contours of a brain illuminated from within.
I could only have seen this for the briefest moment. But time seemed to have stopped as I stood there, watching as all my finished mixture and the thousands upon thousands of gallons of its raw materials were converted into a second and momentarily brighter sun. Then I heard the roar of the explosion. It filled the whole desert around me, and sounded as loud in my bad ear as in the good. Even as I noted for the first time how atoms of light travelled faster than atoms of sound, and thought to frame some hypothesis to explain the difference, I felt something that can only be described as a great, invisible hand. It slapped me hard in all parts of my body, and, cupped in its gigantic palm, I was thrown back ten – perhaps twenty – feet before landing with a hard bump on the sand.
Ignoring any damage I may have suffered, I pulled myself into a sitting position and gasped for breath as I looked again at the orange ball a half-mile away across the desert. It had swelled still larger, but now appeared to be losing its definite shape and solidity. I watched it gradually fade into an immense cloud of dust and smoke that I thought would linger for ever above the now vanished walls of the monastery.
‘Master, Master – are you all right?’ I heard Edward cry as if from a great distance. I jumped as I felt his arms about my chest and he pulled me to my feet. Had I gone deaf in the noise? I clutched hold of him and looked feebly about for my stick. It was now that stones and other debris began raining down upon us. I heard the thud of objects in the sand around me, and more distant crunching and screams. I felt myself thrown back on to the sand, and now Edward’s body covering mine. Even as the hail continued of lighter stones that had been thrown higher in the blast, I struggled free and stood up. I looked around. I now saw the damage the explosion had caused, even this far away. The canopy had gone from the Caliph’s platform. The platform itself had turned over. Every carrying chair had been blown apart. All the horses had bolted. Large stones and other debris littered the ground as far as the eye could see. No one else was standing. Everyone I could see was huddled on the ground. No one moved. I couldn’t even tell if anyone else was still alive.
I saw my walking stick over by the shattered remains of the sound reflecting screen. I let go of Edward and
