No barrier stood in the road here; no one waved them down.

But Bobby stopped: the school, the lorries and the soldiers to his left, the stone building, over which the president's flag flew, across the road to his right. The soldiers didn't look at the car. No one came out of the stone building. Beyond the Tor was bright woodland, extending to the horizon through a deepening smoke haze.

'Do we wait for them here?' Linda said. Bobby didn't reply.

'Perhaps there's no curfew,' Linda said.

A soldier was looking at them. He was shorter than the soldiers he stood with, near the open tailboard of a lorry. He was drinking from a tin cup.

'Perhaps the colonel got it wrong,' Linda said.

'_Did__ he?' Bobby said.

The soldier moved away from the group by the tailboard, shook out his tin cup, and walked slowly towards the ear. His head was shaved and bare. His stiff khaki trousers were creased below his paunch and down the round thighs that rubbed against one another. He sucked at the inside of his fat cheeks and bunched his lips and spat, carefully, leaning to one side to let the spittle drain out from his lips. He smiled at the ear.

Then they saw the prisoners. They were sitting on the ground; some were prostrate; most were naked. It was their nakedness that had camouflaged them in the sun-and-shade about the shrubs, small trees and lorries. Bright eyes were alive in black flesh; but there was little movement among the prisoners. They were the slender, small-boned, very black people of the king's tribe, a clothed people, builders of roads. But such dignity as they had possessed in freedom had already gone; they were only forest people now, in the hands of their enemies. Some were roped up in the traditional forest way, neck to neck, in groups of three or four, as though for delivery to the slave-merchant. All showed the liver-coloured marks of blood and beatings. One or two looked dead.

The soldier smiled, wet hand holding the wet tin cup, and came near the car.

Bobby, preparing a smile, leaned across Linda and, with his left hand freeing the wet native shirt from his left armpit, asked, 'Who your officer? Who your boss-man?'

Linda looked away from the soldier to the whitewashed stone building and the flag, the Tor and the smoking woodland.

The soldier pressed his belly against the car door and the smell of his warm khaki mingled with the smell of the sweat from Bobby's open left armpit and his yellow back. The soldier looked at Bobby and Linda and looked into the car, and spoke softly in a complicated forest language.

'Who your boss-man?' Bobby asked again.

'Let's drive on, Bobby,' Linda said. 'They're not interested in us. Let's drive on.'

Bobby pointed to the stone building. 'Boss-man there?'

The soldier spoke again, this time to Linda, in his language. She said irritably, 'I don't understand,' and looked straight ahead.

The soldier behaved as though he had been slapped. He gave a sheepish smile and took a step back from the car. He shook out his tin cup; he stopped smiling. He said softly, _'Don' un'erstan'. Don' un 'erstan'__.' He looked down at the body of the car, the doors, the wheels, as though searching for something. Then he turned and began to walk back to his group.

Bobby opened his door and got out. It was cool; the sweated shirt was chill on his back; but the tar was soft below his feet. He could see the prisoners more clearly now. He could see the smoke from the woodland beyond the Tor. Not haze, not afternoon cooking-fires: in that bush, villages were on fire. The rebuffed soldier was talking to his comrades. Bobby tried not to see. His instinct was to get back in the car and drive without stopping to the compound. But he controlled himself. Quickly, right hand swinging; he crossed the bright road into the dusty yard and the shadow cast by the stone building, and went through the open door.

As soon as he entered he knew he had made a mistake. But it was too late to withdraw. In the cool dark room, with its desks and chairs pushed to the walls, with the new photograph of the president on the green noticeboard, among old notices about rates and taxes and wanted criminals and other printed and duplicated lists, there was no officer, no policeman. Three soldiers with shaved heads were sitting below the window on the concrete floor, their caps on their knees. They all stood up as Bobby entered.

'I'm a government officer,' Bobby said.

'Sir!' one of the soldiers said, and they all stood to attention. 'Who your officer? Who your boss-man?'

They didn't reply and Bobby didn't know how, after his good start, to continue.

They saw his hesitation and they ceased to be nervous. They relaxed. Their faces became full of inquiry.

The soldier in the middle said, 'No boss-man.'

Bobby felt he had used the wrong word. He looked from the soldier in the middle to the soldier on the right, the fattest of the three, the one who had called him sir. 'You give pass here?' The fat soldier's cheeks rode up to his small liquid eyes. He waved his right hand slowly in front of his face, showing Bobby the palm.

'No pass,' the soldier in the middle said.

Bobby looked at him. 'Mr Wanga-Butere _my__ boss-man.' Smiling, he held his hands in front of him to indicate an enormous paunch, and he pretended to stagger under the weight. 'Mr Busoga-Kesoro my _big__ boss-man.'

They didn't smile.

'Busoga-Kesoro,' the fat soldier said, studying Bobby's face, and working his cheeks and lips as though gathering spittle. 'Busoga-Kesoro.'

'You no have curfew?' Bobby said.

'Car-few,' the fat soldier said.

The soldier in the middle said, 'Car-few.'

'What time you have car-few? Four o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock?'

'Five o'clock,' the fat soldier said. 'Six o'clock.'

Bobby held out his wrist and pointed to his watch. 'Four? Five? Six?'

'You give me?' the fat soldier said, and held Bobby's wrist. Black skin on pink: they all looked.

The fat soldier moved his thumb over the dial of the watch.

His eyes were friendly, womanish. His cheeks and lips began to work again.

The soldier in the middle unbuttoned the pocket of his tunic and took out a crushed, half-empty packet of cigarettes. It was the brand which, in the advertisements, laughing Africans smoked.

Outside, lorries were revving up. There was chatter and shouting. Boots grated on asphalt; cab-doors slammed. Lorries whined away in low gear.

'I no give you,' Bobby said. 'I no have no more.' He had made a joke. They all laughed.

'No have no more,' the fat soldier said, and let Bobby's wrist drop.

'I go,' Bobby said.

He walked towards the door. He had a view of the sunlit road, the dusty yard with its diagonal line of shadow, the insect-spattered front of his car.

'Boy!'

He stopped; it was his error. He turned, to face the dark room. It was the soldier in the middle who had spoken. He was holding out an unlit cigarette, very white, between his middle and index fingers.

'I give you cigarette, boy.'

'I no smoke,' Bobby said.

'I give you. Come, I give you.'

And Bobby walked from the door and the brightness towards the soldiers, preferring that what was going to happen should happen here, in the dark room, rather than in the open, before the others.

The soldier's hand was outstretched still, open, palm down, the cigarette perpendicular between the middle and index fingers. Then the fingers widened, the cigarette fell, and in that same movement of finger-widening the palm came up at Bobby's face, only clawing, it seemed, but then landing hard on his chin. The other hand tore at the yellow native shirt.

'I report you,' Bobby said, falling back. 'I report you.'

The other soldiers were behind him, to support him as he fell, to seize and twist his arms with practised hands; and it seemed then that the soldier in front of him was maddened not by his words but by the sound and sight of the torn shirt. He tore again and again at the shirt and the vest below the shirt, and with the right hand that had held the cigarette he clawed with clumsy rage at Bobby's face as though wishing to seize it by the nose, chin and cheeks alone.