Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

Civilization is about creating children, protecting them till they reproduce, and making sure that each generation retains the behavior patterns that led to that civilization's being successful in the first place. Fail at any of these tasks, and your civilization is fodder for the dissertations of archaeologists.

Chinma looked around at the people in the room—the helpless soldiers, the scarcely less helpless caregivers—and he could only think of his village, watching from above as the soldiers came in their trucks and shot everyone down. At least there were no babies for them to toss in the air for target practice. That would probably come later, in the city, as the victorious Sudanese death squad searched for the rest of the Americans.

These soldiers would not speak the same language as those who massacred the Ayere people. Nor would they be of the same race, nor wear the same uniform. But their faces would be the same, the rage of bloodlust, the delight in evil.

This time, though, there was no tree for Chinma to climb.

He wouldn't climb it even if there were. This is why he had come back to Nigeria, he understood it now. It was a mistake for him not to die with his village. A mistake for the Ayere people to still have one survivor. And now the mistake would be rectified. It was only a shame that these others had to die with him.

The firing outside was growing closer.

He looked around at the soldiers—especially the ones that he and Mark had tended in overlapping shifts. Benny and Arty, Mark called them, not Captain Sandolini and Captain Wu. Walking up the stairs to this room had about done them in—they had no strength at all right now. Mark was pressing a damp cloth against Benny's face, trying to keep him a little cooler than the fever wanted him to be.

Chinma saw that Arty was moving his hand. It was at his side, and he was making faint squeezing motions and flapping his hand just a little as he did.

Chinma knelt beside him. "What do you want, Arty?"

Arty could not even open his eyes, but he could whisper one word: "Pistol."

"You are not strong enough to shoot," said Chinma.

"Pistol," repeated Arty.

"And I will not let you kill yourself with it," said Chinma, assuming that Arty merely wanted to avoid falling into enemy hands. But suicide was wrong—that was one thing that the ancestral gods and the Christian minister both agreed on. Pain was terrible, but not as bad as going to hell for having killed yourself, Chinma understood that.

"Pisssstol," Arty said more fiercely, then fell back slack, exhausted.

"What is he saying?" asked Mark, now interested.

"Pistol," said Chinma.

At that word, Benny's eyes opened. "Me too," he whispered.

Mark asked Benny, "Is your pistol in your room downstairs?"

"Locker," said Benny.

Chinma had no idea what that meant.

"Come with me, Chinma," said Mark. "Run."

Chinma followed Mark down the corridor to the stairs at the end. Mark practically flew down, but Chinma had not known many stairs in his life until he lived at the Malich house, and he didn't have the confidence Mark did in his ability to hit every third step and then hold on to the banister to make a fast turn around the landing and start down the next flight.

So when he got to the room where they had tended Cole's jeesh for the past two weeks, Mark already had Benny's locker open and was rummaging through it. "Got it," said Mark, holding up a pistol.

Chinma headed for Arty's footlocker as Mark ran to the window to look out.

"Here they come," he said.

Chinma found the pistol. "I have it."

Mark was already running for the door. Then he stopped so abruptly that Chinma ran into him. "Stupid stupid stupid," he said.

Chinma thought for a moment that Mark was calling Chinma stupid because he ran into him, and he was going to apologize but then Mark rushed back to Benny's footlocker, flung it open again, and this time came up with a small box. "Ammunition," he said.

Chinma did the same, while again Mark ran to the window. "Oh God, those poor students."

> Chinma ran up beside him and saw what was happening at the entrance to the campus. University students with clubs were running into a hail of bullets and swinging clubs at men with automatics. But they must have surprised the soldiers, because there were half a dozen of them on the ground, dead or unconscious, and even more before the last student died. Only two of the soldiers remained, the only ones standing.