nged today."

"To the sorrow of the Tuareg!" snapped Moussa-ag-Amastan.

The other looked at him. "Not always, old one. Surely in your youth you
remember when such diseases as the one the Roumas once called the
disease of Venus, ran rampant through the tribes. When trachoma, the
sickness of the eyes, was known as the scourge of the Sahara. When half
the children, not only of Bela slaves and Haratin serfs, but also of the
Surgu noble clans, died before the age of ten."

"Admittedly, the magic of the Roumas cured many such ills," an older
warrior growled.

"Not their magic, their learning," the smith named El Ma el Ainin put
in. "And, verily, now the schools are open to all the people."

"Schools are not for such as the Bela and Haratin," the clan chief
protested. "The Koran should not be taught to slaves."

El Ma el Ainin said gently, "The Koran is not taught at all in the new
schools, old one. The teachings of the Prophet are still made known to
those interested, in the schools connected with the mosques, but only
the teachings of science are made in the new schools."

"The teachings of the Rouma!" a Tuareg protested, carefully slipping his
glass of tea beneath his teguelmoust so that he could drink without his
mouth being obscenely revealed.

Omar ben Crawf laughed. "That is what we have allowed the Roumas to have
us believe for much too long," he stated. "El Hassan has proven
otherwise. Much of the wisdom of science has its roots in the lands of
Asia and of Africa. The Roumas were savages in skins while the earliest
civilizations were being developed in Africa and Asia Minor. Hardly a
science now developed by the Roumas of Europe and America but had its
beginning with us." He turned to the elderly chief.

"You Tuareg are of Berber background. But a few centuries ago, the
Berbers of Morocco, known as the Moors to the Rouma, leavened only with
a handful of Jews and Arabs, built up in Spain the highest civilization
in all the world of that time. We would be foolish, we of Africa, to
give credit to the Rouma for so much of what our ancestors presented to
the world."

The Tuareg were astonished. They had never heard such words.

Moussa-ag-Amastan was not appeased. "You sound like a Rouma, yourself,"
he said. "Where have you learned of all this?"

The smiths chuckled their amusement.

Abrahim el Bakr said, "Verily, old one, have you ever seen a black
Rouma?"

Omar ben Crawf, the headman of the smiths, went