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 saleable.

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 ploughs 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."