"Destroyer 012 - Slave Safari.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

Despite his predicament, Lippincott was interested. "That's too simple," he said. "To build a great empire takes character. The Loni must have had it. They would not just roll over and play dead."

"No, you're right," the voice said. "They would have fought. But something got in the way. Your family's accursed slave trade. So the best of the Loni wound up shipped away to grow cotton for you. But I'll tell you a story. The Loni are going to return to power again. I hope that makes you feel better."

"It doesn't," Lippincott said, "but suppose you tell me how. Right now, the whole Loni tribe couldn't build a shoebox."

"Simple," the voice said. "I'm going to lead them back to power." He paused. "Really horrible thing you did to that girl. Not that it matters, Lippy. Not that she matters or that you matter. You'd have to pay a long time before the Lippincotts and the Forsythes ever got even. It doesn't matter. What matters is in the mountains." 't

Lippincott heard the hyena sounds and smelled the death smells of the Minister of Public Safety and felt a sudden great shock to his back, that came out his chest, and he fell forward on a spear that was through his body. When his head hit the Busati plain, he was dead, another small piece of fertilization, no more than an ancient Loni emperor or an ancient Loni child. Africa took him as one of its own, the earth as ever being the only truly equal opportunity employer in the history of man.

Walla, being more intelligent than either the Minister of Public Safety or Lippincott, was safely up the Busati River in his village. He had something to sell of far greater value than the last pieces of silver engraved with the old English "V" at the Busati Hotel. He had information; information was always salable.

Hadn't the clerk from the Ministry of Justice sold a copy of the files of the Busati secret police for gold-real gold-coins you could roll in your hands and buy fifty wives with or twenty cattle or shoes and plows and shirts and maybe even a radio for private use, instead of sharing it with the whole village?

So Walla told his brothers he was leaving the village and that his eldest brother should meet him over the border in Lagos, Nigeria in a month.

"You are selling tales, Walla?" asked the elder brother.

"It is best you do not know what I do," said Walla wisely. "Governments do terrible things to people who know things."

"I have often wondered why we have governments. Tribal chiefs never did terrible things to people who knew things."

"It is the white man's way."

"If the white man is not here anymore, and if, as the radio says, we are getting rid of everything white, why cannot we get rid of white governments?"

"Because the Hausa downriver are fools," Walla said. "They want to get rid of the white man so they can be white men."

"The Hausa have always been fools," said the elder brother.

In jeeps with massive supplies, the journey to Lagos would have taken a Busati army patrol a month. Walla, carrying a knife and no food, made the journey on foot in sixteen days.

Walla found a neighbor from his village and asked him for a good place to sell information.

"Not here," said the neighbor who was an assistant gardener at the Russian Embassy. "They were paying good last year but this year is terrible. The Americans are best again."

"The Chinese, are they good?" asked Walla.

"Sometimes they are good, but often they think it is enough to tell you funny stories in exchange for your information."

Walla nodded his head. He had heard these things of the yellow men back in Busati, how they would give a button or a book and think of that as payment, and then be surprised and angry when told that was not nearly enough.

"Americans are the best again," said the gardener, "but take only gold. Their paper is worth less each day."

"I will take gold and I will return here and see you. Your information has been -of value."

"See the cook at the American Embassy. He will tell you the price to ask."

The cook at the American Embassy promptly fed Walla and listened to his story, asking questions so that Walla would be well-prepared to negotiate.