16. Foreign Lesion

---  UNEXPECTED TENTACLE SESSION 16  ---
---          FOREIGN LESION          ---
---            (17/10/96)            ---
/( {--That's my new sign for (start of) tangent folks!
)\ {--Similarly, end of tangent.
	As you may remember, we were left in a shocked state after
discovering the shattered body of our commrade and dear friend the Rev.
Michael Peters. Perhaps bewildered minds need reminding of our purpose in
blindly running to an unfamilier country, which led to this undeserved
tragedy.
	We were traveling to SW Morocco in order to view certain caves
,discovered near Aiuiy tar Assa by our late(?) benefactor(?) William
Tatler, pertaining to a certain ritual involving a mask of apparently
Africian origin, but found at a native Americian burial site (originally).
	Due to the political situation in Morocco, we had to travel down
the Spanish protectorate and, after camping by the road side one evening,
our lives changed permenantly for the worst.
/( --Background to Morocco, c.1925--
	Morocco was split into Spanish and French protectorates, both
claiming control over Morocco and hence a mutual animosity existed between
the two 'countries.' Around the time of our visit, these two sides are
close to war - when else would we go sight seeing?
	We entered from a port in the Spanish half (East), intending to
drive down to the caves (SW, just inside the Spanish protectorate.) The
French part apparently had excellent rail communications, but no such luck
in the Spanish part.
	As you can see from the map, our route had to go along the East
side of the mountain range - adding a significant distance to the journey.
	The capital of the French part was Rabat.
	The capital of the Spanish part was Tetouan.  
)\

	The Rev. hadn't returned from his watch that night, his body found
by the next bleeding slowly on the ground. His left shoulder was torn,
apparently from a bite by a mouth about 3' wide - despite the local
absense of carnivores fitting this description, we paniced and left the
area rapidly - comforting our casualty the best we could, his wisphered
moanings being indecipherable in the noice permeating our van. A cloud of
dust was noticable far off to our left...
	During the early moring, we finally arrived Chechouare, the
nearest town and tried to make our way to the nearest hospital. Picture
your typical 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' Cairo street scene - clearly
another course of action was needed.
	Communicating with the (mainly Spanish) locals in Jeremiah's form
of Arabic (derived from his studies of ancient Sanscrit documents)
surprisingly seemed to fail. Perturbed, we decided to try English - if
only we'd let the Prof try communicating, we'd have got there far sooner
("P-L-E-A-S-E D-I-R-E-C-T M-E T-O T-H-E N-E-A-R-S-T H-O-S-P-I-T-A-L M-Y
D-E-A-R F-E-L-L-O-W" said slowly and loudly.) Luckily a local spoke a
smattering of English and we managed to communicate the urgency of the
situation; the good Doctor being lead away to the nearest Doctors and the
remaining members of the party respectively driving, shoving people out of
the way and lying semi-conscious.
	After seeing to the Rev treatment, we decided that the best we
could do was purchase surplies and actually find out something about the
Country we're in.
	Bang. Bang... Bang. A convoy of army vehicles drove through the
twon, people parting respectfully out the way - an obvious case of double
standards. Asking a local policeman, it turns that an uprising had occured
at Moyens Atlas, preventing our journey passing through Kenifra. Our only
course of action was to attempt to cross the border into the French
protectorate.
	Father Michael lapsed into coma during the night, but was stable -
although the hospital here couldn't look after him for any period of time.
We decided to transport him to the next place, Oezzara - a small city
which should therefore have the necessary facilities. during our journey,
we again spied dust blowing to our left - no time to investigate. 
	On arrival, Father Michael was still in a coma, but the bite mark
on his shoulder had mysteriously healed, leaving an ugly scar stretching
from the left of his abdomn to the base of his neck. We decided that
we'd have to continue our journey - transport by plane, back to England,
for Father Michael was only possible from the French protectorate - we
figured this would also be enough to get us across the border and after
getting surplies of liquid food to inject into the prostrate reverend, our
destination was Souk el Arbaa du Rharb, a city on the border.
	The guard demanded a far amount for a visa's (quite probably far
more than than the visa's cost, isn't bribary a wonderful thing.) and we
entered the French part of Morocco, now journeying to Rabat (with its
airport) and hopefully a train-line down to the south.

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