Part 18 (1/2)

Now, rus.h.i.+ng through the streets of lower Baghdad, with a red furry demon on his tail, he wished he had stayed at home and helped his aunts weave some carpets.

Behind him was a crash as three or four wicker baskets of fruit crashed on to the cobbled ground. Adoon knew that right now the stallholder would be opening his mouth to yell at the miscreants and would quickly shut it again when he saw the demon. Instead, all Adoon heard was a strange noise, like a stick dragged across bricks, and a sharp scream from the stallholder. A scream so wracked with pain that Adoon found himself stopping and looking - and immediately regretting it.

The demon was standing opposite the stallholder, holding him against the wall. The stallholder was squirming, trying to kick out at the demon but Adoon realized he simply could not reach. After a few more seconds the stallholder stopped squirming and the red demon released him. Adoon stared for a moment longer as the stallholder crumpled in a heap at 137 the bottom of the wall, unmoving. Then he fled before the demon could register him.

He bolted up a flight of steps built on to a nearby block of sandstone houses. Keeping his head down so he could not be seen, he reached the top faster than he thought possible; around him flapped the a.s.sembled was.h.i.+ng of the ten houses that made up the block, drying under Allah's watchful gaze. No one else seemed to have seen the demon, and carefully Adoon poked his head over the parapet to look down into the street below. He could see the stallholder, who still had not moved, but there was no sign of the red demon.

Adoon tried to calm himself, stop his heart from beating so hard and loud - maybe demons could hear such things.

Maybe they could see through walls and roofs. Maybe they could reach up and s.n.a.t.c.h him down into the great pits below the desert where they came from. Maybe, just maybe, Adoon told himself, if he stopped maybe-ing and did something, he might get home to tell his family. His father would call out the local men and they would go on a demon hunt. Adoon could lead them. He could tell them of the merry chase he had led it, and they would praise him and make him the leader of the local men. Maybe little Jadia would notice him then instead of Mashuk.

Maybe he should get off the roof before the demon worked out where he was.

Adoon looked roughly in the direction of his home. If he could jump on to the lower roof at the back, he knew he could quickly get home - although roof-jumping was forbidden by all the boys' parents, it seemed the right thing to do now. See his mother scold him when he'd led the men to the demon and they'd killed it. And eaten it. And chopped all its bones up and showed them to Allah on Sat.u.r.day and .

'Oh, splendid. I mean, that's really going to look inconspicuous.' It was a man's voice but spoken with a strange tongue, as if he could not speak the language properly.

138.

'Shut up, Dok-Ter.' A woman, but her voice was similarly different.

Adoon poked his head over the nearest parapet and managed to stifle a cry. There, below, on the roof he had been planning to jump on to was a huge silver tent which had not been there yesterday. It was a strange tent: there were no bindings holding it to the stonework, and it was rigid - the wind was certainly strong enough for Adoon to know a tent ought to waver slightly. Who were these two (no, three - there was a second, younger man) people who had put a tent up so quickly? And why on top of this block of homes? As the newcomers moved, the sun glinted on them and Adoon got a second shock. Both the younger man and the woman had yellow hair! That they were strangers was obvious from their voices, but maybe these too were demons. Sand-demons, of course, to match their hair. Then the red, furry demons had to be night-demons, from when the sun went down and the skies lit up red. But, and this was an important consideration for what he would tell his father, were the sand-demons and the night-demons foes or friends with each other? A flap in the tent was pulled back (Adoon had not seen a flap there a second ago) and a red, furry demon came out. Unlike the one which had chased him, this one's red skin gave way to multicoloured fur, as if it had been rolled in wet mud, unlike the grey one he had so far managed to avoid. Still, it answered his questions - the two sets of demons were were together - and therefore both had to be stopped from whatever evil they planned for the beautiful city of Baghdad. together - and therefore both had to be stopped from whatever evil they planned for the beautiful city of Baghdad.

How exactly Adoon was to do this he was not sure, but he knew that the only way to find out was to get nearer the demons and discover their plans. He crawled up on to the edge of the parapet and lay flat. He could now clearly hear the older man arguing with the female sand-demon.

'What d'you mean, you don't know exactly where we are?'

'Exactly what I said, Dok-Ter. We took off so quickly to avoid Atimkos's meddling that I wasn't able to set the shuttle's coordinate properly. I've sung us back quite some 139 way in time but certainly not the forty thousand years I needed.'

'This is. . . unfortunate.' That was the bog-coloured furry night-demon. Adoon noted that it was clutching very tightly a silver club of some sort. It waved it at the female sand-demon and she placed her hands on her hips and laughed.

Adoon thought it was a rather nasty laugh, as you would expect of a sand-demon - cold and false. 'Really, Your Majesty,' she was saying, 'please don't bother threatening me. One thing the Cat-People certainly need right now are my powers to track the buoys. Killing me would be wasteful.'

'Yes,' said a new voice, another night-demon, 'maybe, but pleasurable nevertheless.'

Adoon peered over a bit more and saw the grey-streaked night-demon that had chased him returning to its compatriots. He was relieved that it had clearly decided against pursuing him.

'Unfortunately,' it continued reporting (Adoon could imagine that Bog-Colour was its leader), 'my recce was disturbed by an anthropoid-tom, a mere mewling.

Nevertheless it saw me.'

Bog-Colour nodded and hissed. 'Did you put it down?'

Grey-Streak looked away, presumably shamed. Adoon was glad he had disappointed Grey-Streak and indirectly its master, Bog-Colour. 'Hopefully we shall not be here long enough for such a puny specimen to interfere with our plans.'

The female sand-demon laughed again. 'Oh dear, we have made a mess of things already, litter-runt. Perhaps your reputation was undeserved?' Adoon almost winced as Grey-Streak lashed out at Laughing-Demon, but she was fast and caught the demon's furry arm. 'Now listen to me - I know what I am doing. I can track the buoys and you can't. Don't even think about ridding yourself of me. Trapped in Earth's past, your s.h.i.+p is no longer in orbit. The raw materials you require are more powerful back here than they were in 1994.

Imagine how strong they'll be forty thousand years earlier.'

140.

'Excuse me?' That was the little man with dark hair and clothes. 'Can I just ask what will stop the Cat-People disposing of you once they've got the power they want?'

Laughing-Demon did not look at him. Instead she continued staring at the red-demons, Bog-Colour in particular. 'Because with the merest note I can transform myself into a mobile RTC. I could freeze them for eternity, or reduce them to mewlings themselves. Believe me, DokTer, this alliance is one based only on mutual distrust and one-upmans.h.i.+p.'

'Oh. So long as I know,' said Dark-Hair.

Bog-Colour lowered her silver club. 'Indeed. But remember, we have the protective suits you instructed us to construct.'

Adoon had completely lost track by now. All he knew was that although the demons had come together from within the silver tent, they were not friends even if they were allies. If they were there to threaten Baghdad, then they could be thwarted. Something his father had once said about divide and conquer sprang into his mind - that had to be the solution. He decided it was time to get home, but he also wanted to see the silver tent closer up, then he would be getting as much information for his father as possible.

So, carefully and quietly, he started to crawl along the parapet, hoping the demons would not spot him. If just one of them looked directly upwards . . .

He froze. There were sounds he could not place, strange metallic noises. He lay flat but turned his head trying to get a look at the rooftop below but the angle was wrong. If he raised his head, he would be able to look down properly but he would be framed against the blue skyline; raising himself might cause enough of a shadow or movement that one of them might spot him. But he had to see. . .

'Dok-Ter! Look!' Adoon guessed that the male sand-demon had spotted him. There was nothing to lose, so he pushed himself upwards. Not only had the male sand-demon seen him, so now had another five of the red-clad furry night-demons. A jet-black one with a white neck was 141 pointing at him with a silver club. Adoon decided that the best thing to do was shout at the demons, tell them to leave Baghdad before they were sent away by the men of the city, before they were vanquished in fierce battle and burnt within their silver tent. He opened his mouth to yell a threat to them.

'Help!' was the best he could manage. Then Dark-Hair ran forward, pus.h.i.+ng Black-and-White's club aside.

'Don't hurt him,' he cried. 'He's done nothing to you.'

Adoon could not help but agree. He stretched his arms out to the side as he precariously got up and balanced on the parapet, then slowly began walking along it. By the time he reached the end where it was safe enough to jump on to the roof where the demons were grouped, Black-and-White was waiting for him, club pointing at him again.

'I think you ought to come over here,' said Dark-Hair.

Adoon complied as quickly as he could. 'Now, do exactly as I say and no one will hurt you.'

'Are you a demon, too?'

Dark-Hair smiled and Adoon felt a warm feeling flood through him. Everything was going to be all right. Dark-Hair, with his deep blue eyes, was going to look after him.

Adoon felt relaxed, almost light-headed. He wanted to . . .

no, he did already . . . he trusted Dark-Hair and felt safe.

'No, I'm not a demon. I'm your friend.'

Adoon looked at the male sand-demon questioningly.

'Yeah, mate,' it said. 'Yeah, I'm a friend too.'

'Have you quite finished setting up an Arabian kindergarten now, Dok-Ter?' Laughing-Demon pushed between Adoon's new friends. 'Can't we just kill this boy and get on with the hunt?'

'Certainly not! This poor boy is an innocent caught in your machiavellian schemes, Frowline Thor-Sun. Haven't you had your quota of killings today?'

Laughing-Demon stared Dark-Hair in the face. 'No. I have barely begun. Before nightfall, I imagine this city will be a few million displaced atoms floating with the wind.

The people will disappear with it.'