all off as a big joke."
"Huh, indeed!" Isobel answered him. "Proposing, or propositioning? If either of you two Romeos ever rattle the doorknob of my room at night again, you're apt to get a bullet through it."
Jake winced. "Wasn't me. Look at my gray hair, Isobel. I'm old enough to be your daddy."
"Sugar daddy, I suppose," she said mockingly.
"Wasn't me either," Cliff said, criss-crossing his heart and pointing upward.
"Huh!" said Isobel again, but she was really in no mood for their usual banter. "Listen," she said, "what're we accomplishing with all this masquerade?"
Cliff had found the French brandy. He poured three stiff ones and handed drinks to Isobel and Jake.
He knew he wasn't telling her anything, but he said, "We're a king-size rumor campaign, that's what we are. We're breaking down institutions the sneaky way." He added reflectively. "A kinder way, though, than some."
"But this ... what did you call it earlier, Jake?... this Cinderella act I go through perpetually. What good does it do, really? I contact only a few hundreds of people at most. And there are millions here in Mali alone."
"There are other teams, too," Jake said mildly. "Several hundreds of us doing one thing or another."
"A drop in the bucket," Isobel said, her piquant sepian face registering weariness.
Cliff sipped his brandy, shaking his big head even as he did so. "No," he said. "It's a king-size rumor campaign and it's amazing how effective they can be. Remember the original dirty-rumor campaigns back in the States? Suppose two laundry firms were competing. One of them, with a manager on the conscience-less side, would hire two or three professional rumor spreaders. They'd go around dropping into bars, barber shops, pool rooms. Sooner or later, they'd get a chance to drop some line such as did you hear about them discovering that two lepers worked at the Royal Laundry? You can imagine the barbers, the bartenders, and such professional gossips, passing on the good word."
Isobel laughed, but unhappily. "I don't recognize myself in the description."
Cliff said earnestly, "Sure, only few score women in each town you put on your act, really witness the whole thing. But think how they pass it on. Each one of them tells the story of the miracle. A waif comes out of the desert. Without property, without a husband or family, without kinsfolk. Shy, dirty, unwanted. Then she's offered a good position if she'll drop the veil, discard the haik, and attend the new schools. So off she goes—everyone thinking to her disaster. Hocus-pocus, six months later she returns, obviously prosperous, obviously healthy, obviously well adjusted. Fine. The story spreads for miles around. Nothing is so popular as the Cinderella story, and that's the story you're putting over. It's a natural."
"I hope so," Isobel said. "Sometimes I think I'm helping put over a gigantic hoax on these people. Promising something that won't be delivered."
Jake looked at her unhappily. "I've thought the same thing, sometimes, but what are you going to be with people at this stage of development—subtle?"
Isobel dropped it. She held out her glass for more cognac. "I hope there's something decent to eat in this place. Do you realize what I've been putting into my tummy this past week?"
Cliff shuddered.
Isobel patted her abdomen. "At least it keeps my figure in trim."
"Um-m-m," Jake pretended to leer heavily.
Isobel chuckled at him in a return to good humor. "Hyena," she accused.
"Hyena?" Jake said.
"Sure, there aren't any wolves in these parts," she explained. "How long are we going to be here?"
The two men looked at each other. Cliff said, "Well, we'd like to finish out the week. Guy named Homer Crawford has been passing around the word to hold a meeting in Timbuktu the end of this week."
"Crawford?"
"Homer Crawford, some kind of sociologist from the University of Michigan, I understand. He's connected with the Reunited Nations African Development Project, heads one of their cloak and dagger teams."
Jake grunted. "Sociologist? I also understand that he put in a hitch with the Marines and spent kind of a shady period of two years fighting with the FLN in Algeria."
"On what side?" Cliff said interestedly.
"Darn if I know."
Isobel said, "Well, we have nothing to do with the Reunited Nations."
Cliff shook his large head negatively. "Of course not, but Crawford seems to think it'd be a good idea if some of us in the field would get together and ... well, have sort of a bull session."
Jake growled, "We don't have much in the way of co-operation on the higher levels. Everybody seems to head out in all directions on their own. It can get chaotic. Maybe in the field we could give each other a few pointers. For one, I'd like to find out if any of the rest of these jokers know anything about that affair with the Cubans over in the Sudan."
"I suppose it can't hurt," Isobel admitted. "In fact, it might be fun swapping experiences with some of these characters. Frankly, though, the stories I've heard about the African Development teams aren't any too palatable. They seem to be a ruthless bunch."
Jake looked down into his glass. "It's a ruthless country," he murmured.
* * * * *
Dolo Anah, as he approached the ten Dogon villages of the Canton de Sangha, was first thought to be a small bird in the sky. As he drew nearer, it was decided, instead, that he was a larger creature of the air, perhaps a vulture, though who had ever seen such a vulture? As he drew nearer still, it was plain that in size he was more nearly an ostrich than vulture, but who had ever heard of a flying ostrich, and besides—
No! It was a man! But who in all the Dogon had ever witnessed such a juju man? One whose flailing limbs enabled him to fly!
The ten villages of the Dogon are perched on the rim of the Falaise de Bandiagara. The cliffs are over three hundred feet high and the villages are similar to Mesa Verde of Colorado, and as unaccessible, as impregnable to attack.
But hardly impregnable to arrival by helio-hopper.
When Dolo Anah landed in the tiny square of the village of Irèli, the first instinct of Amadijuè the village witchman was to send post haste to summon the Kanaga dancers, but then despair overwhelmed him. Against powers such as this, what could prevail? Besides, Amadijuè had not arrived at his position of influence and affluence through other than his own true abilities. Secretly, he rather doubted the efficacy of even the supposedly most potent witchcraft.
But this!
Dolo Anah unstrapped himself from the one man helio-hopper's small bicyclelike seat, folded the two rotors back over the rest of the craft, and then deposited the seventy-five pound vehicle in a corner, between two adobe houses. He knew perfectly well that the local inhabitants would die a thousand deaths of torture rather than approach, not to speak of touching it.
Looking to neither right nor left, walking arrogantly and carrying only a small bag—undoubtedly housing his gris
