Linksshifter II

The Source of All Blessings

"No," I said, "I don't believe you. You're wrong, and there's nothing there; you've got a hartebeest or a sitatunga, or something – what you don't have is a moose-giraffe that's been dead for eight thousand years." I tossed the sloppy, smeary internet-to-hand-refilled-Chinese-imitation-laser-printer slice of grainy black-and-white nothing back onto the table, and picked up my coffee again. Girma was lying to me, again, and about something important. Whoever was up in the Bahr el Zeraf, they couldn't be chasing this "shivatherium"; the Sudd was a world apart from the Sahara, but as much as it was, people had been living in the Nile valley and exploring those swamps for a long, long time. Something that big wasn't something they'd just miss. But even so, it might not matter – if he was paying enough, and enough up front, I'd let him tell me to go play game warden on the moon.

"Khalil, Khalil," Girma said, rocking back in his chair and rolling the remains of his vodka slushie around in the bottom of his glass, "look, I know things may be different up north now, but surely you can see the real problem: these people here, they thought they had it bad with the white people back during the war and before, but the Saudis now, it's like they're kicking them when they're down. Some sheikh comes in, pays off the local boss, poaches the best game from the Ez Zeraf reserve and doesn't even pay any locals to carry gear or do security, that's going to get the people mad, and it's going to make my job harder. It's hard enough having to be out here and not knowing when the expense reports are going to clear, or when the men are going to get paid, but to do actual operations in the field? Up north? Near your border, where the rebels have tanks? No way. We stay home, no rural trouble to disturb the payments, and the men don't cause trouble.

"And look," he said, pointing at me with the rim of his glass, "there is this thing besides. My wife's cousin Hibaaq, she went to Sweden, and now her daughter Leila is in biology at her university, and has a grant written to look for this thing." He slopped down a heavily-forwarded email, printed on the same streaky printer, and pointed at the .se domain on some of the addresses at the top, smudging it with the tip of his finger. "But the stupid scientists need to get their shots before they come to Africa, and they are still in a cooldown period; if we can stop this hunting party for another week, the Swedes will show up and the Saudis will go home, because more than anything they need to make nice with Europe, pretend they are grown-up people as long as someone in the West is looking. And if we don't, and the Saudis kill the last Sivatherium, we will hear no end of it: South Sudan can't protect its own resources, unstable failed state, what is UNMISS doing, what is the AU-MNF doing, no UN funds until the African Union cleans up its act. And then some old white man with a bowel blockage in the Daily Mail or the Wall Street Journal will suggest going back to colonialism, and things will really get ugly."

I sipped my coffee, not impressed. Was Girma seriously that bad at paying attention? What the hell was South Sudan but a colony – a colony split between Chinese corporations and the American military, which of course were fronts for the Chinese military and American corporations. Near on the whole continent was going that way – and in the parts that weren't, a lot of the time you risked getting shot for stepping on whatever some illiterate beardo decided was haram this week. The frontier up by the Sea of Giraffes combined the worst of both worlds, and if Girma wanted me to go up there and fix his problem, sooner or later he was going to have to give me some money, and not just a long whine about his problems. "I'm hearing a lot of culture," I said, "and not a lot of business. If you've got a job for me, you've got a job for me, and you get paid for doing jobs – I don't have unlimited UN credit at these places like some people, I have to pay my meals cash and carry."

Girma shrugged. "Come on, Khalil, you know we take care of you. Five hundred British pounds up front to take the job, a thousand when it's done."