Chapter 1

Nwn
From far off, it looked like an ellipse mounted on a cross.
Close up, it was a female form, arms outstretched, head
capacious enough to contain the womb. The day she asked its
name, her grandmother Nwt turned an incredulous smile on
her. " Ankh. Life." Ast asked where it came from. "Home," her
grandmother said. Then her face hardened as if the answer had
closed a window on it.
Only once did Ast push to know the reason beneath the great
soul's withdrawal. Nwt answered her with a question: " Do you
know that our people were sold into slavery That question
raised more intractable questions in Ast's mind. Who sold us?
What did such a betrayal mean? Was it dead history? Or did it
still have the energy of news, with power to shape the future?
At first she tried to find answers to the questions unsettling the
balance of her soul where she was born. Then she grew past hoping answers could be found. She understood they would have to
be created.
That was the key- creativity. But such crimes had shaped the
country she was born in that she wasn't sure creative beginnings
could survive there. True, the shaping crimes had yielded tremendous wealth. And certainly, wealth had given springs to a
dynamic, innovative drive. But this vast energy was wasted in the
same power lust that had deepened the destruction of Africa
and turned her ancestors into captives in a country crowing
freedom. She knew she would return.

Chapter I: Nwn

OSIRIS RISING
On the way to that decision a storm of an encounter had awakened memory in her. The whirl turned about a book, Joumey to
the Source. On the surface it narrated one man's search for lost
origins. But below that search lay a slier story, centered on the
way the author used the truths he found.
At the book's symbolic core wriggled a conversion merging soul
and society. An African woman, transported to America to slave
for European settlers on Amerindian land emptied through genocide, attempted flight six times. How she intended to reach Africa
she did not say. In spite of torture after recapture she kept trying.
For that, and for her refusal to abandon remembered ways, other
captives called her the African.
The African escaped a seventh time. She was recaptured on the
Atlantic coast. This time the slaveowners had her eyes taken out.
After her blinding she tried escape no more. In time her given
name became a memory. In more time it was forgotten. The
African woman settled down to being another slave in America.
The author of Journey to the Source was a descendant of this
African woman broken to make an American. The gist of his tale
was that in America the African woman's descendants had not
just survived: they had thrived.
The book made a profoundly unsettling impression on Ast. She
thought the woman's story could have been central to the book in
other than symbolic ways. But the author had worked it toward
the periphery. In its place at the book's heart he had woven a tale
of a quintessential American family rising, immigrant style, from
penniless obscurity to success and fame. Of this triumph he
offered his personal experience as proof.
The ritual of self`-betrayal disturbed Ast. She saw unexplored
meaning in the denaturing violence done to the African to shape

would probe the healing possibilities of a reversal, an opening of

murdered eyes. Why should vision be denied corning generations
descended from this woman who tried seven times despite
despair to retrieve a stolen future?
The encounter with the author came in Ast's second year at college. She was elected to the Campus Speakers' Committee. A
year previously, the committee had invited the author of Journey
to the Source. His book was hot then. His agent wrote saying
he was overbooked, but would come when his tour schedule
made it possible. In a year the publishing industry targeted a
fresh sensation. The author came.
He was a frank, enthusiastic speaker, eager to share his take on
reality. In his view the American experience was a permanent ritual of failure and success. The key to successful living was to
choose dreams with sure anchors in the present world.
His dream? To write a hugely successful book. With Journey
to the Source, he admitted, he'd hit the elephant's eye. Now he
had a larger story to tell. An American story. Perhaps the
American story. For between the conception and the
achievement of his dream he had discovered the essence of the
American lifestyle, its rootedness in the art of practical
compromises with the possible.
He had needed money to fund research, travel and living
expenses in the years of gestation. Being black, he laughed, he'd
inherited no money. Ditto ditto, he laughed again, he knew no
one to borrow from. "And at that time I couldn't get a bank loan
with ideas as collateral." So he turned to Occident, the best
funded magazine in America. The rest, he recalled, was history.
The Editor at Occident found the project promising He would
fund it and publish the resulting book if the author made certain
changes in the outline. He offered detailed suggestions based on
a realistic appraisal of the magazine's readership. The key to a
successful launch would be accurate knowledge of audience
sensibili-

her to the American mold. On starting the book, she had

assumed a promised explanation of the blinding She had hoped
the author

Chapter I: Nwn
OSIRIS RISING
ties, preferences and aversions. This knowledge should be
integrated into key aspects of the book: structure, narrative, characterization, description, dialogue, imagery, diction, theme. The
aim was not just to avoid rubbing the readership the wrong way; it
was also to exploit opportunities for stroking it. The author
accepted these premises.
That meant a number of textual changes. In the original typescript he had followed the unrevised trajectory of historical data.
Now he called that a failure of craft. The central character was
modeled on a captive called Esi Mansa, who kept trying to find a
way back to Africa until her European-American captors killed
her. The killing was peculiarly gruesome, and plantation slaves
were driven to the site to note what would happen to captives who
kept dreams of African destinations alive.
The Editor at Occident pointed out that historical truth,
followed too faithfully, could blunt literary effect. That would
be clearly counter-productive. Th6 key consideration was the
book's likely impact on the American readership. Readers, he
was certain, would be alienated. The book, failing to strike
responsive cords, would fail- unless this and similar passages
could be changed.
The author made the suggested changes. The woman was
rounded out from a sympathetic character into a quirky figure
with streaks of hereditary madness in her psyche. Her hope of
returning to Africa was transformed from the expression of a
dream common to the enslaved, into the obsession of a mind singularly out of touch with surrounding reality. The slaveowners did
not kill her. The trajectory of history was refined. They merely
blinded her, and that by accident. After that she settled down,
resigned, to produce children bonded to the American future.
There were further suggestions. European-Americans in the

pean-Americans were rounded out into humane, sympathetic

characters readers could identify with. The cruelest EuropeanAmericans in the final version of Journey to the Source brutalized
Africans not because they were Europeans bent on exploiting
Africans, but because they were lonely, twisted, marginal men.
In sum, there was a sustained effort to present European-American characters not as slaveowners bent on violating human rights
for profit, but as lovable human beings managing clumsily or
gracefully their share of suffering and joy in the universal transition between birth and death.
The author ended the public presentation with praise for all the
European-Americans who had helped him write the book. A
masterly performance. At the end he stayed for an hour of
informal conversation in the adjoining lounge.
Most of the audience, sated, drifted away. There was just a
group of twelve left with the author. He joked about gurus and
disciples, then answered questions about his working habits,
finances, the legal underside of fortune and fame.
Ast was among the last to raise a question. "Did it upset you to
have to make so many sacrifices to get the book out?"
"Compromises," he said, "not sacrifices. I said, like every writer,
I agreed to change my initial draft. Listen, there's no reason why
compromises should upset me any more than breathing does. You
do what you have to do to continue living. In the publishing
world, that's life."
"Still, there was something special about the changes you were
forced to accept, wasn't there?
"No one put a gun to my head. I went to the magazine, see? We
had a discussion, then I agreed to change parts of the book. Look,
as a writer I was the one interested in getting my book out. Maybe
I don't get what you mean by special changes. Here, now, can we
get more specific?

original typescript were mostly cruel, insensitive characters. Now

the author saw this too as a failure of craft. In the final draft,
Euro-

OSIRIS RISING
"You were asked to shift from historically accurate information
to something inaccurate but acceptable to some readers."
"I see. You're worried about information packaging."
"Packaging?" Ast queried.
" Yes, Packaging. What you call historical truth is nothing
but raw material. As long as it's not processed it's no use to
anybody. Even when processed. It'll only trap dust on some shelf
unless it's attractively packaged."
"It's our -history, but you make it sound like a commodity in the
supermarket"
The author's smile broke into a slight laugh, gentle in spite of
its sarcasm. "My dear saint," he said, "a commodity is precisely
what our history is. Everybody's history, everybody's present. You
and I don't live in some peasant society where such matters
are still obscure. We've been here for centuries, and hey, this is
the late twentieth. Whatever has any value is a commodity.
Your sweet soul is a commodity. If it's poorly packaged no one
notices it. It stays invisible."
"Are we to see human beings as commodities too?"
"Right on. It's not a matter of what we choose to see. It's what
is. We're Products. How do you suppose we got here in the
first Place? As commodities. That's how we survive, live, thrive.
Here in America. Now."
" That's so close to saying we're still slaves here."
" I wouldn't be that simplistic. Slaves had no say in their
packaging and sale. That's a key difference. There's freedom in
the power to participate in our own packaging. We bargain about
conditions of sale. That's empowerment. Any more questions?"
Ast had no more questions. She no longer felt puzzled by the
author of Journey to the Source. There was a certain truth to his
vision of life, but it owed its force to something peculiar and
specific: the circumstance of living in America. T h e e v e n i n g
sharp-

Chapter I: Nwn
ened her need to arrive at other destinations, to give more vital
truths a chance to shape her life.
Years previously, she might have feared depression after such an
encounter. Now she was surprised by a calmness, a feeling like
floating in infinity In such moments she heard again the quiet
voice of her grandmother Nwt, first friend of her soul'
Nwt taught her to read, as her fourth birthday gift. At ten Ast
wanted a bicycle. Nwt promised her one if she'd let her teach her
to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Her Parents called the bargain mad, but it opened doors to her soul.
The pact was set to last a year. When it ended her grandmother
did not push her. It was she who asked to continue. Part of Nwt's
fascination was her secrecy, the sense that her quiet appearance
was a cover for something so vital it .needed darkness to survive'
Into that secrecy the lessons became an opening. When Ast'
taking off from meanings of letters, images, words and sentences'
asked
her grandmother what had first led her onto such unusual mindpaths, the hermetic Nwt became a clear, open source.
Ast found out it was Nwt who had resisted the family's desire, at
her birth, to name her after some European saint, and given her the
African Ast, most intelligent divinity, as namesake. Ast liked the
sound. When she understood its meaning she fell in love with it.
Conversations with Nwt turned into voyages. Crossing space and
time, the growing Ast stayed up nights with ancestors thousands of
years gone puzzling over the motion of stars, wind, flood.
Connections. Wonder turned to knowledge of measurable time.
She watched kindred priests divide the year into seasons departing
and returning, the day into twelve hours going, night into twelve
tirelessly coming. Her mind met ancestral priestesses,
companions caring for green fields on Hapi's riverbank, turning
desire into myth, naming the myth Sekhet law, perfect place,
evergreen fields of the wandering soul returning home.

OSIRIS RISING
Chapter 2
She looked through spirit at Nwn, boundless potential yet in its
disorganization seemingly void of hope. Jehwty the divine writer
energized her mind for life. She tried, fighting revulsion, to understand Set, stormy lager, desert outcast, exiled from love by the
accident of a body blistered by sunlight, driven desperate by
laughter, discovering the terrible power of revenge in the freedom
to fill the passage of hurt time with games of war.
She saw Asar off on the first of humanizing journeys, carrying
not weapons of destruction but ideas to support new life, images
to feed love of universe. From a world awakening she fell down
the abyss of Set's intoxicating deception, the destruction of
Asar. Bereaved in soul, she followed her namesake in
persevering sorrow, saw her raise the fruit of years of patient
effort, and learned to contain sorrow for the murdered, using the
energy of mourning to build new strength for future achievement.
Never would the murdered return. But the future stayed alive
with possibility, ready for the rise of power crossed with knowledge, compassion, balance: Hrw triumphant, steady between Jehwty and the Maet sisters. She saw time, saw herself in its passage,
saw its passage in herself, felt in her soul its energizing flow.
Before the last of her withdrawals Nwt left Ast maps for the
journeys of the soul. Mourning, Ast studied on her own when help
and companionship seemed far. In college she found unexpected
love from inspired mentors. She took World History for her
first degree, then shifted closer home, to Egyptology, for the
second. Her doctorate focused on Kemt; she wrote her thesis on'
identity and social justice in the philosophy of Ancient Egypt. By
graduation time her search for knowledge of self, of self within
universe, had led her through a flow of changes, some so
generous with knowledge they made pain worthwhile in the
end. The search accelerated her decision: to return.

Nwt

Selecting clothes and books to pack, Ast was surprised by a

sadness crossing the excitement of the corning journey. It passed
as quickly as it had come. The urge to return outgrew nostalgia
long ago. Yet she remembered a time when her energy ebbed at
the idea of goals so far ahead. Sometimes she'd feared the
energy she needed for motion might never come.
It came in an unsigned article, mimeographed on yellowed
paper, the text clean on the single page, its only identifying mark
set at the top of the page: the ankh.
Above her clothes she packed her must-take books. She had
wanted to slip the article in among the books, but the neat words
caught her eyes again, surprising in their uncanny force.
Who We Are and Why
In a people's rise from oppression to grace, a turning
point comes when thinkers determined to stop the
downward slide get together to study the causes of
common problems, think out solutions and organize
ways to apply them.

Chapter II: Nwt

OSIRIS RISING
For centuries now our history in Africa has been an
avalanche of problems. We've staggered from disaster to
catastrophe, enduring the destruction of Kemt, the
scattering of millions ranging the continent in search of
refuge, the waste of humanity in the slave trade
organized by Arabs, Europeans and myopic, crumbhungry Africans ready to destroy this land for their
unthinking profit. We have endured the plunder of a
land now carved up into fifty idiotic neocolonial states in
this age when large nations seek survival in larger federal
unions, and even fools know that fission is death.
It may look as if all we ever did was to endure this
history of ruin, taking no steps to end the negative slide
and begin the positive turn. That impression is false.
Over these disastrous millennia there have been
Africans concerned to work out solutions to our
problems and to act on them. The traces these makers
left are faint, because in the continuing triumph of
Africa's destroyers the beautyful ones were murdered,
the land poisoned. Now, wherever future seed seeks to
take root it strikes sand.
Still, even in defeat the creative ones left vital signs.
They left traces of a moral mind path visible to this day,
provided we learn again to read pointers to lost ways.
Then, connected with past time and future space through
knowledge recovered, thinking Africans seeking one
another in this common cause will meet the best of
humanity for the work ahead: ending the past and
current rule of slavers.
We are not after the slave-foreman power that, under
the killers' continuing rule, is blind ambition's hollow
prize. We are after the intelligent understanding of all
our realities, not simply the politics of power. We are

In the Plane her exhaustion lost its nervous edge, and she slept.
Twice she was awakened for meals. The first time her thoughts
turned to the meaning of this crossing. From past researching name
Cinque circled into consciousness, raising fears. What would she
find once inside her dream? Cinque too, the dancing name reminded
her, had reversed the crossing. But his concern was not to reverse the
slavers' logic that had transported him over the ocean. What he wanted
was to change his personal fate. And if he could build his freedom on
someone else's enslavement, he was ready.
Ast wanted to follow her soul to a different outcome, a reversal of
the crossing and its motivation, both. Yet she suspected that in its ten
thousand disguises Cinques zombie corpse still ruled Africa; that those
working to remember the dismembered continent were still fugitives
in need of sanctuary from the storm troopers of destruction. How
much longer?
The second time she was awakened, her mind turned to Asar.
Was the article his signal that his leaving with no farewell had been
no abandonment but the answer to a necessary call? Was any
Justification Possible for the abandonment of a friend in love
Exhausted again she drifted into unfinished sleep.
Light on her eyelids woke her. She looked outside and saw the dawn.
In its new light she sighted land below, floating closer.
Outside the Plane the morning air soothed her. She'd filled out the
arrival form before the landing, and the passport check was quick.
In a -quarter of an hour her suitcase came, and she moved to the
customs area where three inspectors stood checking travelers'
luggage. They let the suitcases of several white men in suits pass
unexamined, but one young man in faded clothes under a generous
head of hair got frisked.
Behind the line of inspectors stood an official in a beige safari suit
topped by a checkered scarf. His brown shoes, sporting gilt

after intelligent action to change these realities. For we

intend as Africans, to retrieve our human face, our
human heart, the human mind our ancestors taught to
soar. That is who we are and why.
10

Chapter11: Nwt

chains across leather uppers, shone. At one point he stepped forward and leafed through papers in the young man's luggage. They
were about records, drugs, film equipment He resumed his remote
stance. The customs officer waved the traveler on.
Waiting her tum, Ast tried to set her watch by an electronic clock
above the last counter. It was stuck at 02:07. Her tum came. An
inspector, flipping through her suitcase with perfunctory speed,
slowed down on corning to the books.
"Why, is there an index?" Ast asked him.
"Yes," he said, taking out her books. Ancient Egyptian Literature. He put it back. Africa, A General History. Silently, he rearranged the books. He was about to close the suitcase when a
folded sheet dropped. It slid along the tiled floor on a low draft,
rose in a little dance, then stopped against the right shoe of the
man in the beige safari suit.
He stared at it but did not stoop to pick it up. It was the
inspector who stepped back from the customs line, pivoted on a
foot and stooped in the same movement to pick up the errant
sheet. He brought it back to the still open suitcase and
spread it open. Already, holding it down with his left hand, he
was reaching out with his right to beckon the next traveler
forward. But he noticed something that froze his right hand and
brought it slowly down. He turned the sheet over, raised it,
squinted at it.
The man in the beige safari suit stepped forward. Wordlessly the
inspector turned the sheet over to him. His eyes focused on the
symbol, then scanned rapidly down the page. When he raised his
eyes it was to look apprehensively at Ast. He came to her and
whispered: "Im afraid you'll have to come with me."
"Where?" Ast asked

Ast slung her travel bag over her left shoulder, picked up her
typewriter, and wheeled the suitcase toward the door.
The door was padded with thick leather bolted down with diamond-shaped studs of polished brass. On reaching it the man in
the beige safari suit stopped. Ast looked for a handle, saw none. In
its place there was an electronic panel.
The man in the beige safari suit positioned his body between Ast
and the panel on the door. He pressed several buttons, seven, Ast
thought, from the movement of his elbows. A wait. A long buzz.
Two short beeps. The door opened inward. The man motioned Ast
forward, then followed. Behind them the door closed.
Inside, the absence of sound was so complete that Ast's ears
began to supply their own sound, a thin whistle just this side of
hearing, fugitive when she concentrated on it, returning the
moment she forgot it.
What the interior lacked in sound it made up for in visual business. Behind Ast, above the plush door, was set a large rectangular
screen flanked by two smaller square monitors. Before her the
wall was occupied by a series of dark glass panels each pierced by
four small, square apertures. Projection rooms, she guessed.
Below them stood four magnetic computer tape units, two on each
side of an aluminum door. In the unit on the extreme right the reels
were turning. Similar units stood along the left wall, lined up close
together. Ast counted nine. Along the right wall stood five processing units, four of them under what looked like a horizontal city
street map divided into four connected sectors. The map above the
fifth Ast recognized. It was a map of the country she had come to.
Points of light kept up a nervous, kinetic dance on the computers: green, amber, red, blue. On the tape units the points were
unblinking: red, red, red, red, then green. The map showed patches
of brilliant light and sharp shade, with some twenty spots circled
in crimson distributed over the screen.

13

"Here," the man in the beige safari suit said, pointing to a closed
door behind him, to his left. Ast turned to follow him as .he
marched to the door. "You'll have to bring your luggage," he said.

12

ChapterII: Nwt

OSIRIS RISING
Ast saw three other men in the large room. All were in safari
suits, one green, one blue, one brown. Each wore a checkered
scarf, yellow and black, loosely tucked under his suit collar. It
could not have been for warmth. The room, though airconditioned, was not cold.
The man sitting at the farthest console, the one in green,
reversed his swivel chair, then let it slide sideways on the
carpet. Three meters from his terminal he stopped and waited
until Ast and her guard reached him. Instead of making a quarter
turn to face them, he did a three-quarter turn. His buttons
rippled as they caught the fluorescent light. Even at rest they
continued to shine, at a subdued intensity.
"What's it?" he asked.
Ast's guard handed him the article. Despite the bright light
he squinted at the sheet. He did not read the words either. His
eyes raced diagonally across the page, stopping at the bottom.
"Another," he said irritably. Ast's guard offered no comment.
"You found it on her?"
"Yes, sir."
"I thought you were at the arrivals
counter." "Yes, sir, She came in from New
York."
"With this?" Ast's guard nodded. "You may go," the man in
green said. He reversed his chair, then directed it sideways until
he was back at his terminal. He hunched over the control panel,
then beckoned to Ast. She walked over to him. He indicated two
chairs in front of the tape units. "Bring one and sit down, here,"
he said, pointing left.
"What's happening?" Ast asked as she sat.
"We do the questioning," he said, flipping a switch. A whistle

" What flight?"

Ast gave him her ticket. He opened it, checked the number and,
directing his voice at a mike set below the screen, read out in a
flat tone: " PA 073, origin New York." He looked at her again.
"You're an American?"
" African American."
" Profession?"
" Assistant prof."
,
"
Which
university
"
Emerson."
"
Subject?" "
History."
" Motive?"
" I'd like to teach here."
" Even though you have a position at
Emerson?" " I didn't renew my contract."
The man sighed. His voice had been getting softer. Now it hardened. " When did you get this?"
" Couple months
ago." " Where?"
"
In
the
USA." " What
town?"
"Camden, Mass."
" Do you know where it came
from?" " 'The postmark said Hapa."
" You know the sender."
" No, there was no accompanying letter."
"At least you have an idea who might have sent it?"
" I don't," Ast said.
The Interrogator's voice rose. "Don't you think it strange that
somebody you don't know should send you things in the mail?"
"No," she said. "Happens all the time. Corporations, magazines,

split the stillness. He turned a dial. The whistle stopped.

"Just arrived?
"Yes."
`~

14

Chapter II: Nwt

OSIRIS RISING
churches, clubs. They make up mailing lists from phone books,
sales slips, college publications. What's wrong?"
The man in the green safari suit did not answer her. He touched
a button to his left. Another red light went on, tiny, sharp.
DD's office," came a voice so clear it sounded extra close. The
man in green donned headphones. A white light went on.
"Hello, Airport A 1 here. Just got a zero zero one from customs
here." Pause. "One of those, yes. Only one. Origin New York. Origin, not destination. Origin. Yes, brought a copy. Woman. Professor. That's why I called. Standing orders don't cover this case. We
need supplementary direction. Is the DD there? Urgent. Try. Now.
Yes, now. Out of the question. See, everything must be cleared
today. Otherwise we'll simply have to let her go. Would you take
responsibility for the consequences? Yes, try. Ill be waiting. He
switched off the intercom light but kept the headphones on.
The wait lasted forty-three minutes. In that time Ast tried
once more to get an explanation from the man in green, but he
focused resolutely on his console, secured his headphones, and
ignored her.
She had wished for a different welcome. She would have spent
the first days in quiet solitude, then made enquiries about where to
go to live, to work, perhaps to love.
To love. She hoped in this place, new to her yet so ancient in
her consciousness, to finder presence close enough in spirit to
make the strangest environment familiar; a companion along
paths she'd be traveling for the first time, though she'd long
known she'd come to them.
Where might she find him now? In ~the bureaucracy? No, not
Asar. It was natural to imagine the other, Seth, a bureaucrat. He'd

be the straightforward one of finding the fastest track to the top. But
what route for Asar?
Farming? She could imagine him in a cooperative farm group, but
he'd often said it would take an eon to convert people back to the
intelligence of ways lost in such pain. A factory? With his education he
would be pushed into some graveyard of the soul, a managerial niche or
the insane asylum. Teaching? Possibly. Yet his belief in the existing
educational system was not great. To work within it he would have to
locate some area of hope, some interstice where an innovative teacher
might work to Wm a few students away from what he laughingly called
the system's alienating viruses. Working in the educational system in
preparation for the remaking of a devastated continent, a people
destroyed: that was possible, barely.
What level? She could imagine him deciding against the higher
reaches, judging them incurably committed to the servicing of
European power. He might enter some lower area of the formal
system with forgotten room for fresh ideas, new habits. Primary
school? Adult education? Worker education? Nursery school she could
not imagine. He had a diffidence toward children. He seemed
convinced of some deep inadequacy regarding them. Until he got over
that he would not make a nursery teacher, even if this society would
allow him to do that work.

A new sound, bright and crisp, cut into the room, charging the still
air with tension. Ast opened her eyes. The white light was back on,
and the man in green was siting straight, talking with a rapid, anxious
insistence. The initial answering sound must have blasted his
eardrums. He took the headphones off as if they'd stung him. He
repeated information he'd given the first time, then paused to listen,
forgetting to use his headphones.

17

been headed that way all along. If he faced a challenge, it would

16

OSIRIS RISING
ChapterII: Nwz
The voice that came over sounded vaguely familiar. Ast wondered why. She knew only two people in this country. One, Asar,
she could not imagine in anybody's security service. The other,
yes. But he was only a few years out of university. Could ambition
have climbed so high so fast?
The long- distance conversation crackled alive. "Where did the
zip- zip-one come from?"
" New York, sir."
" An American, or a student coming home?"
"American."
" White? Black?"
"She says African American."
"Profession?"
" University professor."
"Discipline?"
" History."
" Is he on holiday "
A woman, sir."
"Damn. How many copies of the article did she have on her?"
"One."
"Did you ask who sent it to her?"
" She said it came like that, sir. In the mail."
"You couldn't find out any more from her?"
"If we could detain her indefinitely to assist with our investigation,
sir. But the standing order, sir... She's an American, sir "
" What's her name?"
"Ast."
"Oh." Sharp surprise, hurriedly muffled.
"Anything wrong, sir?"
"No. Look, you have fast transport there
"Six dispatch riders."
" I mean cars."

18

" 4 BMWs."
" Good. Put the suspect in the fastest. Detail two riders.
Destination HQ. No stops. And listen: no accidents."
" Yes, sir."
"Immediately."
" Yes, sir."
The others in the room had been quiet as corpses during the
exchange. But as soon as the red light blinked out the man in the
blue safari suit stood up smartly and came to stand at attention
beside the man in green, who swiveled to face him.
" DD," he said, an eyebrow tilted.
The one in blue smiled but said nothing.
" He wants car 214 to take her with two dispatch riders to HQ."
" When, sir?"
" Immediately. Sounds as if he'll interrogate her himself."
He shook his head. " Take her to the car."
" Yes, sir." The man in blue turned to Ast: " Let's go." Near the
door he halted a meter short. Ast stopped behind him. The door
opened. The man stepped out, wheeling Ast's suitcase. She followed. In the customs area all the new arrivals were gone, but the
man in the beige safari suit was still there. He shot the man in
blue an inquisitive look.
" HQ," the man in blue whispered, in haste. " DD." The eyes of
the man in beige narrowed. He turned his attention back to the
nonexistent line, looking at his watch.
The man in blue led Ast out not through the airport lobby but the
opposite way, as if returning to the planes. On the tarmac he turned
left for a forty-meter walk past a plush lounge with loud air- conditioners on and the front door open. Raised gold lettering outside
the door caught Ast's eye:
VVIP LOUNGE.

19

Chapter II: Nwt

OSIRISRISING
Ast followed the man in blue toward three cars and four motorcycles parked in the shade under a long concrete roof projecting
from the end of a hangar. In one car a driver in navy blue
uniform was seated at the wheel, eyes closed. The man in blue
tapped on his windshield He stepped out and saluted.
DD's orders," said the man in blue. " This lady and her
baggage must reach him at HQ at top speed. Two riders."
" Yes sir," the driver said. He honked along blast. Two riders
and another driver came from behind the hangar. The man in blue
said: " We only need the riders and you." The second driver
walked sheepishly toward the man in blue, saluted him, then
took Ast's suitcase from him.
"Put it in car 214," the man in blue said. The first driver took the
suitcase and put it in the trunk. The riders, in dark blue uniform,
trouser cuffs tucked into long boots, brought their machines
purring forward, one in front of the other. The man in blue sat in
the back seat with Ast, and car 214 took off at a crazy speed.
Corning out of the airport it ran into a small jam in the making.
" Turn on the siren," the man in blue
said. " Yes, sir," the driver answered.
An instant crescendo of sound rose above the engine's murmur.
At once, cars on the road swerved to the shoulders and stopped,
leaving a clear lane. The motorcycle ahead shot down the middle,
car 214 followed ten meters behind, and through the rear window
Ast saw the second motorcycle maintaining its regulatory distance
so faithfully it seemed for moments perfectly stationary.
The car sped across an open plain dotted with slender trees.
Twenty kilometers inland, the country turned to forest. Deep shadows cast along the road by overhanging foliage made the world
outside seem cooler. Twice Ast saw a family of butterflies rise in

Past the fiftieth kilometer marker the forest did not end. It
changed subtly. Her ears popped. The car had been climbing up a
gradient so gentle that only now did she notice the rise. The road,
lifting in a spectacular climb, twisted out of three wide, semicircular bends, then crested over a breath-giving view out through the
right window.
Below lay the forest, a cool, green carpet, utterly calm, as if the
world had always been this way. But beyond, unexpectedly, the
speeding car hit sparse territory, open grassland, patches of brown
earth opening onto an enormous white wasteland far ahead to the
east. Behind and below, at land's edge, lay the capital city. At
this distance it looked small, its dwarfed buildings tendering
their whiteness skyward. From this height the city looked flimsy,
temporary against the calm presence of forest and sea. On either
side it spread along the shoreline, its twin spans extended like
wings to help it fly abroad.
Beyond the cleared space, the forest vegetation changed, adding
color to the fantastic green below. Here, atop foliage so green it
seemed to have woken today, were trees bearing sprays of
flowers: pale blue veering into full violet, light yellow, pink, a
speck of blue again, and, below the trees, the recurring surge of
red hibiscus bowls. And then, with only the warning given by the
grim hilltop vision that had so swiftly receded, the green country
changed to an administrator-made desert of concrete pavement
on razed earth. This emptiness, she thought in sudden
heartbreak, answers some paranoid need, but whose? She saw
the shell of an answer ahead, in a monumental upthrust of pale
concrete and gleaming metal that she knew at once was where her
captors were taking her.
The car slowed down almost to a stop, inched forward, rose and
fell over humps built into the road. Beyond the humps it picked up
lost speed, making directly for a metallic gray gate set in a long

graceful unison up a shaft of yellow sunlight joining the road

ahead to the sky above the canopy of forest leaves.

20

OSIRIS RISING
concrete wall. She had expected the security headquarters to be
imposing. This was chilling.
There were no identifying signs. The blank wall stretched out
on both sides of the gate, relieved only by a series of silvery
metal guard towers jutting above the high concrete at fixed
intervals from the central gate.
, gate,
Ast had expected the car to slow down as it approached the
but the driver maintained the same speed as on the highway.
When the car got within fifty meters of the wall, the gate began to
rise, its motion so smooth it had an uncanny beauty. A shade
above the car's height it stopped. The car sped under it. Turning
immediately to look at the road from behind the wall, Ast saw
the gate drop shut with noiseless speed, an electric guillotine.
From within, it presented exactly the same aspect as from
without: an unrelieved sheet of silvery metal. No visible lock, no
hinges, nothing to suggest that the metal had not always
been integrated into the masonry.
Ast turned round. The car had come to an enormous park, a
weird yet familiar-looking place. Here were strictly disciplined
lawns under rectangular hedges and barbered bushes, forced into
an absolute symmetry. She saw five helicopters in a row on the
far border of the park. Two stood near the center, and up in the
clear sky one, just arriving, began a cacophonous descent that
made flowers near the center lean back and tremble.
Behind her stretched the wall. In front stood a huge replica of a
medieval European castle complete with turrets and battlements.
The buildings to the left and right of the castle, at right angles to
it, constructed in the same style, were slightly lower. A fan
work of concrete roadways each wide enough for two cars
crisscrossed the enclosed landscape. At regular intervals the

recent tubes in a continuous line at a height of two meters along

curving side walls tiled a uniform white. As the car progressed,
slowly now, grill-shaped gates opened ahead. The moment it
passed they closed behind it. These gates were themselves noiseless, but each time they closed there came a small metallic ping, as if
the car had entered a giant cash register.
The white tiling ended. The car stood before a granite wall with
a high, narrow white door set into it. Wordlessly the chauffeur
went round to the trunk and took out Ast's suitcase. The man in
the blue safari suit nodded to her to follow the chauffeur.
The white door opened as the chauffeur reached it. Entering it,
he put the suitcase down just inside the doorway, to the right,
Then, in a respectful attitude, as if this was as far as he dared go,
still slightly bowed, he backed out.
Ast wondered in which direction to go. In front she saw five
doors spaced only a couple of meters apart. Above them rose
beige walls surmounted by meter-high panels of smoked glass.
The ceiling was of scrabbled asbestos. She picked out television
cameras set in four corners, their objective lenses shining dully
where walls met the ceiling. She turned, expecting to see the
man in the blue safari suit just behind her. All she saw were his
trouser cuffs and shoes. He had quietly deposited her typewriter
on top of the suitcase, and the high, white door was already
closing between them. She was alone.
She went toward the center. No window. The only sound was
the low hum of an invisible air- conditioner. She walked
diagonally to

ChapterII: Nwt
roads ended Hush against closed entrances.

22

The car turned right along the broadest connecting road. After a
three- quarter circle it shot up the last of the entryways. The car
approached a steel gate like the one it had come through. The gate
opened. The car entered without having to~ slow down, and the
gate closed instantly behind it.
The car entered a tunnel, dark at first, then garishly lit with

ChapterII: Nwt
OSIRISRISING
the right, stopped under the corner television lens, and looked
directly up into it. Nothing but a periodic blink, a pearly gray mist
passing over the bluish lens again and again.
She crossed to the left corner. Same situation. She ignored
the two cameras behind her, concentrating her attention on
what seemed to be another set of doors in front of her. She
couldn't determine what kind of material they were made of:
wood, Formica, Plexiglas or iron. She tapped on one. It sounded
like aluminum. Solid. On the doors, no lettering. She pushed
against each in turn. No give. She looked up at fine smoked glass
panels. The light in the room grew dimmer.
Someone was playing with her. It would be best not to provide
the hidden manipulator with any entertainment. She hoped to
force some sort of self-revelation, no matter how limited, from
the player. Selecting a relatively well-lit spot, she opened her
suitcase, took out a notebook, then a denim shirt to insulate her
back against the air-conditioning, and sat down to read her notes
on themes in Ancient Egyptian intellectual history.
The voice came before she'd read a page. "Tired of looking? An
incongruous voice in this place: playful, almost happy. Again, it
sounded familiar. Ast decided not to answer.
The hidden interrogator repeated the question. Ast looked up at
the camera in the right corner, shook her head, then went back to
her notebook. The light brightened, then dimmed.
"You can answer back," the voice said. Again, familiar. It added:
"You can talk from any point. I'll hear you."
" What's the name of this game?" Ast asked.
The answer was a muffled clicks. A new voice took over. Far
from playful, it sounded on edge. "Your name, please."
" I gave all that information at the airport."

" Ast."
" Surname or first name?"
" Neither. Just my name:
Ast." " Nationality?"
No answer.
" In which country were you
born?" " The USA."
"
Is
your
passport
American?" " Yes."
" Age?"
"
Twentyseven."
"
Profession?"
" Professor."
" What do you
teach?" " History."
" Which university
"Emerson."
" Are you here as a
tourist " No."
" What is your motivation for corning
here?" " Research and teaching."
" Do you plan to take a job
here?" " Hope to."
" No university here can compete with Emerson, you know"
" No need to. Now can I ask you a couple of questions?
" That depends. Try."
" What kind of place is this?"
" Sorry, I can't answer that."
" What is it you're searching for?"
"I can't answer that, sorry."
Click. Silence. About ten minutes. The first voice again. Now
Ast felt certain she knew this voice.

" We keep separate files here," the new voice said. "Please cooperate." Deep breath. "Your name, please.

24

OSIRIS RISING
It said: "Go to the second door on your left." She went. "Come
In.
"It's locked," Ast said.
"Not really. Blocks are all in the mind, you know."
Ast touched the door. It opened. She'd expected to enter a
room. Instead, she found herself in an elevator. The door slid shut
behind her. She turned, expecting to find buttons to press.
There were none. No light either. Even the low sound had been
cut off. Her only perception was that the elevator was off on a
strange flight, first up, then down. Then it stopped.
A door opened behind her. Walking out of the elevator she was
momentarily blinded by arc lamps. She closed her eyes and stood
still. The lamps eased their heat, then blinked out. She opened her
eyes. She had arrived in a kind of TV control room, lavishly
equipped, an infinitely more expensive blowup of the airport security bureau. There was no one, only monitors, computers, and an
enormous penecircular desk. No chair, but the missing arc of the
desk seemed made to receive the user's seat.
She walked over the thick blue carpet. The carpet fibers at each
step closed over her moccasins. She walked on the long left side.
Ahead, the wall was covered with electronic clocks stating times
in London, Paris, Geneva, Bonn, Washington, Tel Aviv, Johannesburg and Tokyo. At a lower level, just beneath the clocks,
stretched an electronic world map with four cities lit: Washington,
London, Tel Aviv and Johannesburg. The rest of the world was
in darkness.
Below the world map there were three more maps. The first was
an administrative map of the country Ast had barely arrived in, the
second a route map with road, rail, water and air lines marked in
red, black, blue and white. The map farthest to the right she recog-

ChapterII: Nwt
On the route map, luminous red dots marked selected towns.
There were five dots around the capital. Ast was intrigued to find
more dots near two places: nine around Manda, six near Dara.
The wall on the right was lined with a triple row of giant television screens, one above the other, their frames the only separators
between them. No controls, no dials were visible. Underneath the
screens stood a phalanx of computers, two of them with whirling
tapes in their windows.
She had turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees and was
facing the elevator doors. She knew she should not let the place
depress her with its sumptuous claustrophobia. She wanted to rest
her back. She chose the curtained wall. Sitting on the carpet, she
leaned back and closed her eyes.
At once she felt the atmosphere change. Something had come
between her and the luminous wall of maps and television screens
across the room. It hovered in front of her, a silent shadow. She
opened her eyes.

" Asta" the figure before her said.

" Not Asta," she corrected him. " Ast."
" Yes, Ast." He called out the name softly, an eerie sigh.
Ast studied him. The man had been fleshy as an undergraduate.
But now a new dimension had been added to his mass, filling him
out, as if a study of his body had been conducted, then tight wads
of meat forced into all areas under unfilled skin. The result looked
monstrously solid, and the thought came unbidden to her: he must
be choking packed so tight. Yet the smile on his massive face
looked far from uncomfortable, connecting overdeveloped jaws
with the heavy muscles on his huge, short neck.
Welcome to my country, he said, his voice strangely soft.
So
youre
the DD.
, So

27

nized as one of the capital city. It looked like the one at the
airport, except that it was even larger.

26

ChapterII: Nwt
OSIRIS RISING
" Yes, Asta," he answered, his smile expanding out of control. " I
am the DD. I trust you're not surprised."
" I take it that means Deputy
Director." " Dead right."
" Of what?"
" You are the first to ask. Everyone else is satisfied with just the
letters: DD."
" Is there some taboo about it?"
" Possibly," he mused. " Security is the fastest track, you know.
There's a mystique about it. Power. The ability to make things
happen. Also some fear, from those on the periphery of life. Security is the center."
" And Seth Spencer Soja is Deputy Director of The
Center." " Right, Asta."
" The second fastest runner on the fastest track."
The smile vanished from the DD's meaty visage. "
Second?" " I assume there's someone above the Deputy."
" Ah, that," he laughed the old expansive laugh. " No. It's really
like being a university vice-chancellor."
" So as far as defacto power goes, you're Number One." He
nodded, then stared down at the carpet, smiling. " And now
Number One wants to interrogate Number nine zillion point
nine. What for?"
" You know what for," he said with a hint of irritation " Come
away from the wall. I'll have a chair brought in for you. We're
going to continue this conversation."
He took a step toward the desk. Simultaneously, a high
armchair covered with gray leather, balanced on a column at the
hub of an aluminum ring, rose out of the carpet behind him,
advanced right up to him, then halted. He lowered himself into

hand long, carrying small, identical alphanumeric keypads above

which Ast, as she rose, saw a set of direction keys.
The DD looking at Ast under lowered eyelids, touched a button'
No noise. The chair turned smoothly left, pivoted a hundred and
eighty degrees. The DD's finger rose smoothly, came down on the
next button. The chair slid forward, silent. The rounded front of
the desk faced the curtained wall. The DD was headed toward the
desk, but a meter short the chair changed course, then slowed
down to slide round the curve of the desk to the opening behind' In a
moment the DD was manipulating controls on the desk.
The curtain parted, baring a revelation. The wall was a single
sheet of glass, tinted a light blue-gray. Through it a wide expanse
of sky hung visible.
Ast walked halfway up to the desk. She heard a click behind her'
Turning, she saw a small sofa advancing from an open elevator.
No one was pushing it. Ast peeped around it. All there was to see
was an object like a chrome rifle butt, balanced above two lateral
limbs of slender stainless steel.
Under the sofa the robot had four more legs advancing in a
smooth rhythm, no two lifting off from the carpet at once' It lowered the sofa onto the carpet with amazing ease. Then it moved
back, butt first, into the open elevator. The elevator door closed.
"Sit down," the DD said. His voice sounded far off.
Ast turned round, and was surprised to see that while she was
watching the robot, the DD's desk had pivoted half way round'
and now also faced the screens.
" Tired?" the DD asked her. "
Rather," she answered.
" Relax," he said. " You're absolutely safe here."
" Is that the formula for everyone you interrogate she asked`
" Nobody gets interrogated here," he said. "Interrogations are
done in another wing. Believe me, they're not this comfortable"

29

it. Evidently the ring rode on wheels, invisible because of the

carpet's thickness. The arms were unusually long, with forward
projections about a

28

OSIRIS RISING
"Y ou are extremely well outfitted."
"Thanks. Our security equipment is state- of-the-art. The service
is the best developed sector in the country, a regional model."
" Very nice," Ast said. " But why am I
here?" " For your own protection"
" The only threat Im under is from you."
" A hasty conclusion," the DD said with forced patience. " What
happened at the airport
'
" You watched it live, on your heavy iron."
The DD said: " A subversive document was found on you."
" It said I was a one-woman commando come to overthrow the
government you're hired to protect."
" Let's not oversimplify realities. That article is subversive."
" In what sense?"
" The one in your Possession, you know, is only one of a series.
There's a coordinating intelligence behind them working to
achieve a given objective. The tenor of the articles leaves no doubt
about that objective: to discredit the present authority. No one sets
about discrediting a government so systematically for the fun of it.
The ultimate aim is to overthrow it. It's my work to block that aim.
Not sooner or later. Now."
"A grand conclusion, leaning on shaky premises. The article is
" The one
questionand
of humane."
interest to us is: who sent it to you?"
merely
intelligent,
" I've answered that question over and over: it arrived in the mail.
No signature' no return address. Do you find that hard to believe?
" Even so" ' the DD said, " surely you have an idea who sent it."
" No, I don't."
" Well, I do."
" So why harass me?"
" Our major Problem here is stability. There is nothing anyone
can do to develop a country like this without stability Now in Brit-

30

Chapter II: Nwt

ain, Germany, France or America, internal stability is not a
headache. They have a consensus about preserving the system.
No one in his right mind wants to destroy it. Here the situation is
different. Our system is new. There are people posing radical
challenges to it. Not simply attacking its inefficiencies. They
want to abolish it, to replace it with something no one has ever
seen. Destabilizers. Our work is to identify, locate, isolate and
neutralize them."
" Meaning, you kill people."
" Not necessarily. Some elements can be neutralized short of
physical liquidation. Say a young soldier eager to change the system is given a fellowship to go study something in Britain, Sweden, America. If at the end of his trip he decides to return, he
comes back with a broader vision. He's no longer a destabilize r
" But for those who refuse to change
" In any viable system incorrigible challengers get eliminated."
" You used to call Asar that. An incorrigible challenger."
" He hasn't changed. Neither have I."
" Correct me if Gm wrong. You're preparing a license to kill him
when you can arrange it."
" Im not interested in discussing Asar, per Se, you know."
" Why then the elaborate show?"
He ignored the sarcasm. "You're a stranger here. What strangers
often fail to realize is that this country is a minefield I don't want
you, an innocent, wandering blindly over it."
" A threat."
" No. Gm offering you something you need:
protection." " Isn't that what the gangster said to the
shopkeeper
"Gm serious," said the DD. "Listen to me. If you have any inten-

tion of getting in touch with Asar, drop it. There is nothing he can
do for you except drag you into trouble."
" Why? Is he a guerrilla holed up in the mountains, waiting for
the death squad to attack?"

31

Chapter II: Nwt

OSIRIS RISING
"He came back here to work in the educational system," the DD
said. " If he had credible plans he'd have gone to some top university abroad, say Emerson, to spin theories understood by three
other academics, worldwide. He chose to come here, to work at
the lowest of our tertiary institutions."
" Where?"
" It's a teacher training college in a village called Manda. A
pretty place for a tourist to spend two hours getting brown. But no
place for an African intellectual with options."
" And I thought teacher training a key vocation in Africa. Or
anywhere," Ast said.
" Ideally, maybe," the DD said relaxedly. "But in Africa everything is at the opposite pole from the ideal. The way our system is
structured, the best brains try first to get out. If they fail, they go
into other fields, not teaching. Teacher training colleges here were
set up to absorb border-line cases. Kids unable to make it into secondary schools. Or into the university. There've been some superficial changes, but teaching remains a dog's job. I hope you didn't
come here with the crazy notion of working as a teacher."
" It's precisely what I aim to do."
" Let me free you from that mistake. You need an apartment. In
the capital they're impossible to find unless you pay a year's rent
in advance. I can let you have an apartment as good as any in
Paris or London."
" Ah, you also own real estate?"
" It's not necessary. We have apartments and villas at our disposal. I control them. Part of the job."
" Thanks, but..."
He cut her short. " Take time to decide. The apartment you pick
will be fully furnished, all amenities and appliances included.

scholar. We can give you an endowment from our research

imp rest. Do all the historical digging you want. Publish your
findings where you want. Keep your copyright. There are no
strings. The duration is unlimited. Every year you may want to
spend six months here doing research, six months back in the
US, teaching and publishing, seeing your killer cv. grow
alongside your bank account. Just give the word when you're
ready."
" Wow," she said.
" It's a practical offer," he said. " Think about it."
" I have," she answered. " I've got different plans."
" You know," the DD said, " it's irrational to close out options
before you have to. You never know. If and when you change
your mind," he said, " get in touch with me. Here's my card."
" Is the interrogation over?"
" Under the circumstances," the DD asked, " don't you think the
word interrogation is rather graceless
" I didn't come here on my own gas," she said.
" Granted. But look at the positive side. We've been chatting.
Ask any question. I'l1answer it."
" Right now there's just one question on my mind. I doubt you'd
want to answer it."
" Ask," he said, opening out his
arms. " Why Asar?"
The question took the wind out of the DD. His hands, expansively spread out a moment before, came back down in a movement so slow it looked pained. Keeping the thumbs pressed
together, he let the ends of the fingers separate, then come
together again. His lips moved, but instead of talking he pressed
a button on the control panel before him. A moment later, on
the wall to Ast's right, the fourth television screen in the third
row down flickered to life.

33

You'll have a cook, a car, a chauffeur and a servant, plus a gardener if you choose a villa. You already have a reputation as a

32

Chapter II: Nwt

OSIRIS RISING
First a black and white grid shimmered as if it were about to go
out. But it steadied itself into a remarkably sharp net of fine lines.
Over this a light blue blur, dancing like an amoeba in a state of
grace, spread until it resolved itself into a map of the country,
neatly isolated from the ocean and the environing continent.
Finally, superimposed on the map and in fiery contrast to its cool
blue tint, came a scattering of orange spots.
At first there were only a few, but steadily their number
increased, and their distribution took on a clustering pattern. In a
while there were no single spots left on the map, only clusters of
varying sizes, from small groups of five or six spots near the borders to two huge clusters, both along the coast. The larger the
clusters got, the more luminous the spots seemed to grow, so that
when the accretion of spots finally stopped, the two largest
clusters glowed intensely, like holes opening into some fiery
furnace.
"Now let's correlate that with the urban grid," the DD said,
pressing a switch. The screen above the live one also lit up to
show a simple outline map of the country, with black dots
marking key towns. " As you notice, the highest concentration is
in Manda. The capital is next. The third in size, almost straight
up north from Manda, is Dara. That surprised us, until we hit
on the explanation." He switched off the upper screen but the
lower screen stayed lit, its orange clusters brighter now in the
relative dimness.
" The concentration in the capital you can understand," the DD
said, in the manner of a professor giving a boilerplate lecture. "
But why such a high concentration in Manda, a fishing village
with a teachers' college attached? That rang a bell. Each of
those dots represents a cache. Subversive literature. Nothing

" From who?"

" Kemt. Ancient Egypt. Ankh means life."
" I see," the DD said, looking put upon. " Interesting Interesting"
It took him a moment to retrieve the lost thread of his thoughts.
"Now look carefully at the monitor," he said, pressing another
button. All the clusters seemed to converge at the center before
turning into one brilliant spot of white light. The screen went
dead, but a moment later the one to its left came alive.
At first what it presented looked like a video game. The same
orange spots were there again, but this time they advanced
dancing in slow motion from some point deep in the machine's
interior. As soon as one point reached its position on the screen
another came floating forward.
"Note the time sequence. The articles were first sighted at
Manda, then in the capital, then over the rest of the country. That
indicates the capital is only a relay station, that Manda is the
source, and that there's a subversive nucleus there." He switched
off the image.
Ast said: " From what Ive seen, the articles contain verifiable
facts and reasoned opinions."
" Truth is never so simple," the DD said. "You obviously don't
know that the symbol you call the an is an old one here. You can
see it in various forms in the pagan fertility cults still surviving
here, and in some of the sculpture. But in the form printed on the
articles it was used by a dangerous secret society that tried at one
time to destroy all existing social and political institutions here:
monarchy, the aristocracy, slavery..."
" The secret society tried to destroy slavery, you said?" Ast
asked, slowly.
" You mustn't think slavery was an inhuman practice in Africa."
" I almost forgot. You belong to the African slavery was
beautiful school of thought."

35

random. An organized series of articles bearing the sa.me sign."

" The ankh," Ast said.
" Auk" the DD said, blinking " Is that what it's called
" Ankh," Ast repeated. Its a symbol from Kemt."

34

Chapter II: Nwt

OSIRISRISING
He brushed her sarcasm aside. " The point is that that secret
society was subversive of the established order. The fellows
behind the articles now are no different. Anarchists.
Communists."
" That seems a pretty lame threat now,don't you think?"
" We still have to defend Africa against subversion."
" That makes you a subcontractor in the defense of Europe and
America."
" We're involved here too," the DD said in a professorial tone.
" The modem world is an interdependent system. The communists
tried to destroy its balance. Besides, African traditions are
against subversion. In our traditional societies each class had a
status. So did every individual. That was harmony. But the secret
society that used the an sign or whatever you call it didn't even
have an internal hierarchy. It was bent on leveling society,
beginning with itself. That's against human nature," he added,
his voice rising as if decibels could convince a stubborn
opponent. " Organization means hierarchy. Can you imagine any
kind of civilization with no hierarchy?
" A hierarchy practicing slavery, selling people to Europeans,
Arabs. It sure needed replacement."
" No social system is perfect. The constructive thing is to work
within the system, eliminating specific abuses. Instead, this new
group attacks the system fundamentally. As if nothing changed
after the abolition of slavery, not even after independence." .,
" There's plenty of evidence that the independence game only
stabilized European and 'American'-control."
" It's a layman's misunderstanding to consider independence a
revolt against white power. We- the authorities in Africa- we
accept the framework established by the Western powers. There

" The system itself, then, remains the same?" Ast asked.
" Of course it's been modernized. What do you achieve by overthrowing a working system
" Even if it's unjust?"
\You know, justice is a vague concept, meaningless except to
intellectuals. From whose point of view is a system just or unjust?
Look, the new world order is a system of cooperation, division of
labor, mutual respect among those whodeserve respect."
" You believe that?"
" Of course. Forme it's not an abstract idea. It's the reality of
my life," he smiled. " Every year I travel abroad to purchase the
latest security equipment. Britain, France, USA, Israel. No one
therediscriminates against me on account of my color."
" You're personally satisfied with the system."
" You bet. It works." Switching off the last image, he walked
toward her. " Now it's time to show you round the premises."
She'd expected the tour to start with a walk through the huge
complex, but after a quick elevatordescent the DD took her along
a corridor thatled to a high glassdoorway. The glassdoors
opened on their own as he approached them. He halted just
within the entrance, bowing and pointing to the world outside as
if it were a gift he was offering her.
Afterthe air-conditioning inside, sunrays made the skin on
Ast's arms tingle. The light was so strong she wanted to close her
eyes. The sky was cloudless. A single bird flew toward the
left, its motion almost frozen against the vast expanse of
space. The ground `before her as she stepped out was paved
with pale concrete. The flagging stretched for hundreds of
meters. It was from it that the glare came, hot, hurtful to the eyes,
unavoidable.
" Where are the trees and flowers she
asked. " Trees? What flowers
the DD
asked.
" There must have been vegetation here once," she said.

was only one thing wrong with colonialism. It denied responsible

Africans participation in managing the system. At the elite level.
Independence solved that."

36

Chapter II: Nwt

OSIRIS RISING
" Lots. When I took over it was still here. I had it cut
down.," " Why?"
" A civilian question," the DD laughed. " It's backward thinking
to have a jungle near the country's most sensitive security
installations. Look at this now. Nothing can hide here."
" What do you call people so insecure they see a garden as dangerous?" she asked him.
" Environmentalist talk," the DD said. " It's the job of a security
service to eliminate potential hazards. Those trees were here
because people hadn't adjusted to the importance of this complex.
The old secret service people were amateurs, recruited from the
civil service. They had no conception of what a real security
headquarters shouldlook like. You know, this place started as a
simple presidential rest house."
" It looks like a terrible expense just for one person's rest," Ast
said.
" Moralist talk," the DD chuckled " You think it was built from
state funds. It wasn't It was a gift from the Kaiserlever Corporation, our biggest multinational. There's nothing cleverer than a
multinational corporation, you know," he said, his voice
softening. " They operate like states, except they don't have to
carry overheads and care for large populations. All cutting
edge, business, that's what a multinational is."
" State power without responsibilities, only profits. That's what
gang life is about, isn't it?"
" Multinationals aren't gangs," the DD chided. " They're
cleverer. You know what Kaiserlever did here? They studied the
situation just after independence. At the time people thought the
leader was a revolutionary. He talked that way. Academics
predicted he would nationalize the economy, drive out foreign

K aiser lever didn't panic. They brought in a psychological warfare specialist. His name was Cripps. It took him one week to
report that the key to the situation here was not social, economic
or political, but psychological. Concentrate on the leader. He
was commissioned to do a secret action study of the leader. He
finished it in three months.
" The point of the Cripps Memo was to guide the new president
in a direction favorable to Kaiserlever and the free market, by
helping him defeat his colleagues' attempts to turn the party into a
disciplined collectivist organization. At that time the party was
discussing what to do with salaries and perks of activists newly
elected to national office. Party members who'd formerly lived on
low pay as schoolteachers and trade unionists were suddenly
drawing salaries ten to fifty times what they were used to. The
younger fellows wanted all earnings put into a Party Fund, from
which collectively determined stipends would be paid out, the rest
going into political and social work programs. No personal gifts to
be accepted by any party official.
" That's when this complex was built, as a private holiday estate
complete with hunting lodge, polo grounds, stables, a private
casino and a yacht basin just a mile off, down in the valley. The
package was presented to the new president as a gift, a token of
personal esteem, by Kaiserlever.
" The timing was brilliant. Twice in six months the new
president had come down with nervous exhaustion because he
didn't delegate power. That made him hypersensitive to his
urgent need for rest. The gift was a knockout blow. When some
party member auggested that in line with party guidelines it
should be turned over to the State, she was jailed. Since then, the
security priority has been crystal clear. The President's peace of
mind above everything."
" So at the cost of destroying the environment, the risks were
reduced."

business and tum the country into a socialist state. If you

listened to his speeches, you might think they were right.

38

Chapter II: Nwt

OSIRIS RISING
" Not reduced," the DD said. " Eliminated. The trees were
sentimental rubbish. Look at it practically. Peace of mind for an
African president now means making sure people cannot get to
him. Here that problem is solved. There's no way anyone can get
here unless we bring them ourselves."
The flat hilltop ended in an embankment overgrown with grass
and running, as far as Ast could see, along the entire rim of the
concrete- covered expanse. Below the embankment the hillside
was also bare of trees. At the bottom of the valley lay a large
sheet of water, dead still at this distance.
" Is that a lake?" Ast asked. " The near side seems too straight to
be natural."
" It's a yacht basin," the DD said. " That bank is a
wharf." " Did it come together with the chateau?"
" The yacht basin, yes. It used to be a small river. Kaiserlever
dredged it to make the basin."
" I suppose they supplied a yacht to go with the
basin." " No, they didn't," the DD said, amused.
" So the yacht basin remained
yachtless?" " Wrong."
" Don't say the first President went and bought a yacht just
because a multinational corporation put a basin under his nose."
" The grateful nation, through its representatives, offered it to
the President from the national budget. The President was born
poor," the DD said. " But he got used to the high life."
" Where's the yacht? I see nothing in the
basin." " It's out on the Maji River right now."
" Is the current President on it?"
" Now you're prying into secrets of state."
" Excuse me. But tell me, even though the yacht basin is in

" I should think locks are damned

expensive." " They don't come cheap."
" How does a government justify spending on this kind of coninstruction
" Justify? To whom?"
" Public opinion, let's say."
" Meaning what? Another abstraction. I thought you realized
that before your doctoral exams."
" You don't think ordinary people are blind to such a waste of
national resources, do you?"
" Frankly, the importance of what you call the ordinary people is
greatly exaggerated," the DD said. " Ordinary people don't overthrow governments. Competing elite groups do." He turned the
conversation back to the presidential estate. " The Kaiserlever gift
to the first President set a national pattern. Smaller companies
couldn't offer estates and river basins. But they gave apartments,
cars, video and audio equipment. Hotels reserved suites for the
President's relatives and friends. Gratis."
" What happened to the property when the President was overthrown?"
" Something natural. The Security Service found itself in
defacto possession. The President had slipped into the habit o f
using us to manage official gifts. Made it easier to solve
problems of public accountability. Throughout coups and
changes that situation has remained constant. Our holdings keep
growing."
" Why? No one leams?"
" Businessmen and corporations have continued giving gifts to
each President. We've continued taking delivery. There's also the
State Housing Corporation. It gives us several units from every lot
It builds."
" 'that sounds illegal."
" You're funny when you want to be," the DD said.

the valley, isn't this valley way above sea level?"

" The river was dredged. Locks were constructed."

40

OSIRIS RISING
" Suppose a Director of the Housing Corporation refused to
cooperate?" she asked.
"
Directors
always
cooperate." " Or else..."
" There's no need for threats."
" They're just born withthe itch to cooperate."
" Well, directorships are presidential appointments. People who
climb that high have no suicidal instincts left."
About midpoint on an oversize concrete slab the DD stopped.
" Give me your hand," he said.
" Why on earth?" she asked.
" We're going down," he said, adopting a weird pose: left foot
raised above the slab he was on, weight shifted wholly to the
right, a slight bend to the body.
" You're agile for someone your size," she said.
" Thanks for small mercies," he answered " Stand close unless
you want a nasty jolt." He hadn't finished when the slab began a
vertical fan. It slid slowlydown at first, then gained speed.
Ast tried to judge thedistance by looking up at the hole above
the shaft. It had shrunk into a tiny patch of sky, perfectly .square,
uncannily motionless against the rapiddescent of her body. She
felt her ears ready to pop. The slab sloweddown, then halted
" We've arrived," the DD
said. " Where?"
" Step out and find out."
" Can't see a thing in this hole," she said. But he flicked a
switch on the wall behind him, and thedarkness yielded to a
surfeit of fluorescent brilliance. What it revealed numbed her. A
cold bum ran down her spine,down the marrow of her left thigh.

et

Chapter II: Nwt

Shedid not cry out. Her mouth was dry. She could hear the
voice of the Deputy Director of Security. It expressed the pleasure
of an

42

achiever. Each syllable hungdistinct. She might have been listening at the end of kilometers of cold wire.
More lights. Here was far more light than necessary just to see
the place and what it contained. It was electric, fluorescent light
again, intense enough to outdo sunlight. What it illuminated was
an enormous cavern three stories high, a vaulted space whose farthest limits remained hidden because its edges were lined with
military machinery: two rows of armored cars to the left, several
rows of khaki-painted jeeps at the far end, and a line of tanks,
about twenty, hued up along the right wall. Between the tanks,
brown and green crates were piled up in straight stacks.
Along the center of the cavern ran two rows of square steel pillars. They were thick at the base, but as they touched the high
vault,distance lent them slenderness. In between rows of armored
cars on the left and thedouble column of steel pillars in the center,
Ast counted fourteen helicopters, four of them huge. Between the
pillars and the tanks on the right, there was enough space for a
combat jet and a bigger plane with no identifying marks.
" What's this, an army base?" she asked.
" The presidential garage," the DD said. " Part of
it." " Where's the rest?"
" This mountain has lots of underground
space." " Why underground
" Enemy satellites, spies."
He led herdown the center of the cavern, past the helicopters on
the left. Closer now to the armored cars, she saw the identifying
sign on each: white hand clasping black against a background of
stars and stripes. Under th
e legend:
(PEOPLE TO PEOPLE: US AID

"So this destructive hardware gets chalked down as the U.S.

helping Africa."

43

OSIRIS RISING

ChapterII: Nwt

" That's what it is," the DD countered."

" Tanks, armored cars, military helicopters. Some help."
" They create and maintain stability. Nothing is possible without
that. The subversives know that, so they're always trying to create
instability. We have-to be ready for them. And we are. We are," he
repeated the phrase, as if he hadn't put sufficient conviction
behind it the first time. " We are." He took out an electronic message pad from his pocket and punched out a long series of numbers on it, taking care to keep the keyboard hidden from her.
They were back in front of the elevator. Its door opened. The
DD went to the left corner, away from the door. Again shifting
his entire weight onto one foot, he stood in that unexpectedly
acrobatic attitude, like a man about to fall.
The slab began its ascent and he brought his foot down. All the
way up the DD was silent, but his smile was eloquent of some
secret triumph, deeply savored.
'
Above ground the light no longer seemed so sharp. The sun had
lost heat, and its rays felt pleasanter to the skin. The DD walked
briskly, so Ast did not have to shorten her step. She'd expected
him to lead her back to the central lobby area, but he crossed the
concrete wonderland diagonally, leaving the lobby entrance to the
left. He stopped before a small aluminum door which slid open,
disappearing sideways into the left wall. He ushered `her into a
small waiting room, the lighting soft and hidden. The aluminum
door closed behind them.
In the center of the waiting room, under a lucent amber globe,
stood a five-sided glass and metal table surrounded by five leather
armchairs. Into the right wall were set what looked like three elevator doors. The other walls showed three giant photographs.
One, opposite the aluminum door, was of a waterfall. The one to

The DD stood behind an armchair " Sit down," he said, indicat_

ing the one opposite him. Ast sat. " I've given you enough infer_
mation to help you reach a rational decision. " Take your time. 1111
give you a chauffeur to take you to the city I suggest you go to the
Southern Hilton. It's quiet, clean, comfortable, safe. Everything
you need will be paid for. I'11 see to that." He took a gold-plated
yale key from a trouser pocket and held it out to her. " Show this
to
the desk clerk. It's the key to a tenth floorsuite."
She didn't reach for the key. He acted as if her refusal had not
registered. He Put the key on the glass table, as close to her as he
could without leaning. " I'11be corning to see you soon," he said.
" I won't be going to the Hilton."
" Take the key," he said confidently. " You'll change your mind."
at sheleft the key on the table, and he let it stay there. " How
do t out?" she asked him.
or' An elevator opened, and they entered it. It rose
"'"" " " ""
Painedwill
silence
walked over
the wall behind her and she
' where
you he
be going?"
the toDDasked.
'd rather get back to the airport," she said. " I didn't complete
so arrival formalities."
afterthat?"
II find a place I can afford."
e elevator came to a halt. When the door opened, Ast was
sur_ ed to recognize her original point of entry into the
security
lex' She could see no motorcycles, but she saw the same port
BMW car, the same chauffeur, the same escort in the
e
.
suit.
ey'll take you back, then," the DD said, raising an index fin_
summon the car. The man in the blue safari suit walked
him while the chauffeur brought the car to a stop just
the DD. " Got herluggage?"
' '

the left was a bird's eye view of a great tropical forest split by
a huge brown river. The last showed a snowy mountain under a
twilit sky.

44

Chapter3

Reknit
hi

eZeahe oo

The moment the car hit the highway the chauffeur turned to
stare at Ast, wonder on his face.
" Watch the road," the security escort warned him. ASLlooked
at the escort's face. The astonishment there was deeper than
the chauffeur's. But throughout the ride back to the airport neither
he nor the chauffeur talked to her. When the car stopped in the
airport hangar area the escort got out, trotted to ASL's side of the
car, and opened the door for her. The chauffeur gave her a furtive
look as she left the car, but still said nothing. On the face of the
escort too, the old aggressive look was gone. In its place there was
something close to humility, and his words carried anapologetic
note. " please come this way," he said. " It's more direct."
The customs inspector seemed surprised to see ASL back, and
inexplicably happy. " You're back," he said, tapping her typewriter
hesitantly.
" Yes," she smiled, "Gm back."
" It's okay," the escort said, putting ASL's suitcase down on the
counter. "She can go. Sorry for the inconvenience," he said to
ASL,

OSIRIS RISING
,,In the boot, sir," the man in the blue safari suit answered`
,,Good. Take her to the airport. See to it that all formalities are
completed."
,,
" Yes, sir. What shall we do after that, sir?
,,
,,Let'her go where she wants. Report to your duty station.
,,Yes. sir? As the man in the blue safari suit went tooPen a rear
dgo

sDhesTn2s

s tolhe :s%;s: his face. He

was smiling.

46

as he turned to go to the Security Room.

The inspector placed the suitcase on a pushcart. ASL added her
bag and typewriter, then went to the informationdesk.
" Can I help you?" the woman at the desk asked.

OSIRISRISING
" I need a place to stay," Ast said.
" The best hotels are the Hilton, the Safari and the Teranga"
' Ast said: " What I need is a clean, affordable Place."
" Clean but affordable," the woman sighed. " Try the HaPi."
" Happy?"
" H-a-p-i. That's the way she spells it, the
owner." " Could you find out if they have
rooms?"
A quarter of an hour later the telephone connection came
through. There were rooms. Up above the information desk the
fancy electronic clock said 11:09. It too had not changed since the
first time Ast saw it. She pointed up at it.
The woman shrugged: " On
holiday." " Since when?"
" Last year."
After getting directions on the phone, Ast Pushed her luggage
toward an electronic exit. The glass doors remained shut even
after she pushed her cart right up against them. She turned
round and
sought amanual gate.
Out in front of the arrivals building she saw a line of waiting
taxis and went to the head. The driver put her luggage in the front
seat and waited for her to get seated in the back.
" To the Hapi, please," she
said. " Hilton, o Kay
" The Hapi," Ast repeated.
" Fine," the driver said,looking puzzled. Ast squeezed sideways
to find room for her legs. " This taxi's small," she said.
The driver laughed. " Long legs. We don't have big taxis here.
~
Datsun, Toyota, Hyundai Pony. You're a black American" '
" Does it show?"
" Ilike American taxis. Big, wonderful
cars." " You've been to America?"
" Not yet."

Chapter. III: Rekhit

" But you know about American taxis."
" Films. Me and my friends, we watch all American films,
videos. Keita, that's my friend, he watches how the stars dress.
To copy the latest. Akwasi, my second friend, he likesmusic. I
watch American cars. Hey, you Americans are lucky."
At the airport entrance where hours earlier the security car had
turned right, the taxi turned left. A concrete billboard by the road
proclaimed: WELCOME TO HAPA. A hundred meters past the
billboard the taxi rattled violently as if its springs had fallen out.
The roadbed was not simply pitted with potholes. So much of it
was worn away that where Ast expected isolated craters she saw
thereverse tiny islands of tar ringed with sand and laterite, survivors from forgotten repairs.
Over a bridge across a large open sewer the taxi ran more
smoothly. An iron frame stood on each side of the bridge, but
the uprights had been sawed off,leaving only rusty stumps.
Beyond the sewer bridge the buildings were dominated by a
large warehouse bearing a huge red sign that said: NATIONAL
TRADING CORPORATION. There was a queue outside it,
though the building was closed. The taxi reached a roadblock,
stopping behind a truck being searched by two men in battlegreen uniform carryingmachine guns. They searched the taxi
next, in total silence, then waved it on.
" What are they searching
for?" " Enemies," the driver
said.
" Enemies?" Ast thought she hadn't heard right.
" Yes." Nothing in the driver's tone indicated humorous intent.
" Some dangerous people are against the government. Clever people." He ran through a red light.
" That was dangerous," Ast said.
.

" If I stop there," the driver answered coolly, "I stay forever.
Traffit light broke down."

49