Part 1 (2/2)

Ditto my shoulders where the rucksack straps had rubbed through my Soochi blouse. And my lungs were raw from fuel fumes and threats screamed at Sven when he'd tried it on in the chopper.

See what easy living will do for you?

The chopper lifted, hung for a moment at head height spraying me with dirt and powdered sheeps.h.i.+t as Sven waved from the c.o.c.kpit, coughed black smoke from the engine cowling, banked and roared away. After a few seconds it lifted enough to clear the adobe wall at the south edge of the field.

I sat down on a lump of pumice to take stock.

After a few moments the sheep ambled back to investigate . I say investigate. They b.u.mped me a bit and blinked occasionally. One of them snuffled. Model of evolution, this lot.

Spurning modesty I changed into my only spare s.h.i.+rt, pulled on a pair of hiking boots and tied my stinking blouse and Liz Lewitt originals by their sleeves and laces respectively around the neck of the nearest sheep. Let the locals make what they will of that, I thought with savage amus.e.m.e.nt as I began to walk towards the village.

Lock up your sons and your fossils. Professor Bernice Summerfield was here - and you better believe it.

Well, the sheep believed it anyway.

From the air Dogubayazit had seemed no more than a ridge or two away.

Like h.e.l.l it was. Sven had the hands of a child molester and the unerring navigation skills of a malfunctioning Scud. I walked for two kilometres before I found the road. I walked along it for a kilometre or so. I fretted. I sweated. I swore a death oath to pilots in general and Norwegian ones named Sven in particular. I shouted abuse at the sheep and Jason. I stamped my feet. I nearly twisted my ankle twice. Half an hour later I left the road. After this the going got better. '

My temper didn't.

By the time I had walked another kilometre I was hot, dusty, thirsty and obsessively muttering, 'A bus, a bus, my kingdom for a bus', in progressively louder and angrier tones.

Just when I was absolutely sure I would die from heat prostration having never again heard the sweet sound of an internal combustion engine, there came from .behind me an alarming set of noises. Chugging. Rattling. The clash of grinding metal. The machine-gun rattle of almost continuous backfires. I looked back along the road. Something was coming.

The something in question was knackered to b.u.g.g.e.ry, lathered with dust, and covered with about a million wobbling wing mirrors bolted haphazardly to every outside surface. It was, nonetheless, unmistakably a jeep. It screeched to a stop beside me and a youngish guy took off a motorcycle helmet emblazoned with a really bad airbrushed portrait of Paul Weller from the Jam and peered at me. The lad had short, curly hair, old eyes and huge teeth in an even bigger grin. He pointed at me. 'Pretty view,' he said in broken English.

I glanced at the dusty grey hills sloping away from the road and shrugged with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. 'If you say so.'

He nodded happily.

I sighed. Time was when I could have blended inconspicuously with half a hundred alien species on worlds as distant as the Galactic Rim. Right now I might as well have been walking along the road with a sign round my neck saying: Tourist. Easy money. Please rip me off.

His grin widened. 'You go Ararat? You go Dogubayazit? I take. Five million Turkish lira only.' He added, optimistically in my opinion, 'I give very good bargain, yes?'

I shrugged. 'Five million huh? You see a suitcase anywhere?'

The lad frowned. 'Beg pardon?'

I shook my head. 'Never mind. Will you take dollars?' The grin was back in an instant; the lad almost quivered with joy. 'Yes. I take dollars. One hundred only. You get good bargain.'

'So you say.' I handed over half the money and climbed into the jeep. It rocked and the gears clashed horribly as the lad accelerated back along the road the way I had just come. I sat down suddenly on something sharp.

Grabbing the offending article I saw it was one of my Liz Lewitt originals.

The other, and my s.h.i.+rt, rested on the back seat.

I glared in outrage at the lad driving the jeep. 'You've been following me all this way? You watched me walk three kilometres in the wrong direction and you didn't offer me a lift?' Another thought struck me. 'You watched me change my clothes?'

He grinned. 'Pretty view.'

To this day I have no idea how I stopped myself killing him.

The lad's name was Dilaver. He drove on in silence broken only by the clas.h.i.+ng of gears and the muttering of distant guns.

Dogubayazit was (I use the past tense deliberately: check your World Atlas of Nuclear Explosions for more info) a village built on the ruins of a village.

The original had been largely destroyed twenty years before by the same border war which was currently raging - it seemed only the technology had changed, and that not much. The soldiers had bigger guns and they fired different slugs - but they'd still kill you. In many ways I was grateful that I had a guide through the troubles. Even if the silly boy did have the bad taste to like the Jam.

Present-day Dogubayazit was probably little different in all important respects from the original. A muddy main street bordered by two-storey concrete prefabs. Thin streets winding between wasted buildings, While the village was fairly clean everything was coloured by the ever-present dust so that the general impression was of a jumble of kids' building blocks which had been extruded from the ground. Colour was provided by stunted trees and scrawny gra.s.s growing in small gardens, together with clothes and sheets hanging from windows and flapping on was.h.i.+ng! lines. Noise came from transistor radios playing German industrial house music in three different languages, a scatter of dogs yapping incessantly at teasing children and the distant mutter of helicopters and gunfire carried on a fitful breeze. Nervous tension was provided by the villagers, who either sat or stood in their doorways and stared at us as we drove through the village. I say stared at us. Actually they were staring at me.

Dilaver noticed this in about ten seconds flat and grinned. 'Pretty view' my sainted aunt.

Leaving the dogs to argue over some old sc.r.a.ps, the children cl.u.s.tered around the jeep. Clas.h.i.+ng gears horribly the lad slowed down and waved at them. They pointed at me. Dilaver beamed.

I poked him in the shoulder. 'I'm not a b.l.o.o.d.y trophy you know.'

He immediately looked concerned. 'Pardon?'

I shook my head.

One of the scrawniest kids climbed into the jeep. I could tell she was a girl only by the fact she was wearing a dress. I picked her up and made as if to throw her out.

Dilaver said, 'My sister.' He pointed at me. 'Lady go Ararat. I take. She pay good.' He waved a fist full of dollars at the kids. Immediately about half a dozen more scrambled aboard.

'Hey son, I should warn you I puke in crowds.'

'Beg pardon?'

By this time the kids were chattering excitedly and leaping up and down on the seats and poking interestedly at my rucksack and running their fingers through my hair and hugging me. The lad gave one ten-year-old who was jumping on my s.h.i.+rt a backhander and he toppled from the jeep on to the road. I looked around in concern but he was up and running after us in a moment, yelling indignantly.

Dilaver flipped the kid the bird.

I poked the lad again. 'Is there somewhere to stay here?'

'Beg pardon?'

I removed a scrawny kid from my lap, pulled another off my rucksack, disentangled my hair from a third and gave my hair slide up as a casualty of war. 'Hotel. Motel. Bed and breakfast. Flophouse. Dive.'

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