by Mike Resnick
Mike Resnick
Shaka II
***
Some empires never die, but are reborn eternally...
In the early nineteenth century, the famous and infamous Shaka carved a mighty Zulu kingdom out of the patchwork tribes in Southern Africa. Before his death, he organised vast armies of warriors whose assegais brought terror to an entire subcontinent, expanded his patrimony from a tiny principality to a broad and fertile domain. Then he was cut down, and his empire, under inferior leadership, eventually fell to the Boers and the British. But for how long?
***
Dec. 2009, publ. PS Publishing, 978-1-84863-059-8, £12.00, 94pp, hardcover.
***
PROLOGUE
Before Shaka, we were no more important than the ants on the ground.
In 1816 A.D., Zululand was the size of a very large farm, extending almost two miles in every direction from the central kraal. The dominant tribes in southern Africa were the Matabele and the Shona.
Then came Shaka, who claimed the kingship of the Zulus. He reigned for only twelve years, yet when he was assassinated in 1828, the Zulus controlled an empire far larger than the country of France, and more than two million men had died opposing the creation of that empire.
The Zulus remained South Africa’s dominant tribe for the rest of the century, but one by one they lost their wars against the British and the Boers, and suddenly found themselves dominated within their own homeland by the Xhosa.
75 years after Shaka’s death our primacy was gone, and for another century we were dominated, in turn, by white men, brown men, and black men. The white men controlled our land and the Indians controlled our economy, and when they were finally removed from power, that power was claimed not by the Zulus, but by the Xhosa.
For years then, for decades, for more than two centuries, even after Man moved out into space and onto other worlds, every time a baby boy was born to a Zulu family, his parents and relatives and neighbors would gather around and stare at him, wondering: Are you the One? Are you finally the One who will restore our former glory, who will reclaim what was Shaka’s and what was ours?
And one day, though of course we didn’t know it at the time, he was among us.
1.
His name was Robert ole Buthelezi, and there didn’t seem to be anything special about him as a small child. Quite the contrary, in fact. It took him four years to speak, eight to read. A lonely child whose father ignored him and whose mother worked long hours and turned her children over to the care of various relatives, he became totally self-sufficient at an early age. He was a clumsy youngster, and sometimes when he ran his knees would give out and he’d go sprawling. He had no interest in school, and his grades reflected that.
On the whole he was an unimpressive child, with nothing much to recommend him. I say ‘nothing much’, because there were a few things that stand out in my memory.
When he would fall, or otherwise hurt himself, he never cried or asked for help. Not once.
When he fell sick-and he was sicker than most children-he never complained about the treatment, and some of those treatments would have had other children screaming in fear or pain or both.
He made terrible blunders in his classrooms. But he never made the same one twice. He didn’t act like an earnest young man who was compelled to learn, but he retained everything he saw and heard. Everything.
He was without compassion. The suffering of a neighbor’s pet, or a relative in a hospital, left him cold. But if he had no compassion for others, he had none for himself, either; self-pity was simply not in his lexicon. It wasn’t that he was stoic, but rather that he simply ignored discomfort and even pain. One got the distinct impression that pain, even his own, simply didn’t interest him.
I remember the day-he had just entered his teens-that three older boys who didn’t like his arrogant attitude lay in wait and pounced on him. He fought back as best he could, but they left him lying in the street, barely conscious, blood pouring from a dozen wounds. He finally got shakily to his feet, refused all medical aid, and decided that he had to become stronger. Beginning the next morning, long before he was healed, he began running five miles before breakfast. His feet bled, and he passed out from exhaustion, but when he was revived he continued on his journey until the five miles were completed. He repeated the procedure every morning, and one day we began to notice that he was covering the ground at a rapid pace without ever taking a deep breath.
He began swimming in the ocean, unmindful of sharks, and built his strength and stamina through force of will, much as he had with his running. He never asked for company, but if anyone wanted to run or swim with him he never objected, though he would soon leave them far behind.
After he had spent half a year building up his body, he called out the three older boys who had beaten him up. I didn’t see the fight, but I know that all three boys were rushed to the intensive care unit after it was over.
He vanished before the authorities could find him, and since we didn’t hear from him for the next ten years most people assumed he was dead. I was one of the ones who didn’t. There was something about him, even as a boy, some aura that said whatever else he might become, he would never be a victim.
Soon people forgot all about him, and the cycles of life continued. Day followed night, summer followed spring, the long rains followed the parched dry weather, and all was as it should be.
And then one day I heard a single loud knock at my door. I walked over and opened it-and found myself facing Robert ole Buthelezi.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in, my brother?” he said, an amused smile on his face.
2.
We were not brothers in the truest sense. My name is John Madondo, and my Zulu name, which I chose not to use, was John ole Buthelezi, which means, literally, “John, son of Buthelezi”. Robert is also a son of Buthelezi, but we did not have the same mother, and in fact Buthelezi never married either of them, which is not the shameful event that it would be in Western society. Many Zulus chose not to marry, and a number of Zulu men had multiple wives. In fact, we had four other half-brothers and three half-sisters that we knew about, and never doubted that there were others as well.
“Come in,” I replied when I had recovered from my surprise at seeing him. “Many thought you were dead, but somehow I knew you were alive.”
“There were days I would have bet money on the other side,” he said, walking over and sitting on my favorite lounge chair. His tall frame made it look like a child’s chair. “You left to become a teacher when I was still a child. Are you teaching now?”
“Yes,” I said. “I came back to Natal after receiving my degree.”
“It is a land with no present and less future.”
“All the more reason to educate those who most live here,” I answered.
“It is good that you should think so,” he said, looking around at my simple furnishings, “because clearly you are not growing wealthy from your profession.” He paused. “Have you any tea?”
“Tea, coffee, beer, whatever you like,” I said.
“Tea,” he answered.
I went to the kitchen, made the tea, poured two cups, and returned with it. “Where have you been?” I asked.
“Away,” is all he answered.
“Johannesburg?” I suggested.
A smile. “There is more to the world than South Africa. Men have reached the stars, and you still live in a four-room hovel and teach children who dress in rags.”
“The rags do not define them,” I said.
“Are you satisfied with your work?” he asked. Then: “With your life?”
“They need me,” I replied. “I just wish I made more of a difference.”
“Perhaps someday you will,” he said.<
br />
“Perhaps.” I secretly doubted it, and decided it was time to change the subject. “What has brought you back?” I asked.
“The world-the real world-thinks that we are a backwater, barely worthy of their notice. If we are to reclaim our former glory, to stride across the planet like gods, there is much to be done, and I have no time to waste.”
I expected him to smile, or chuckle, to do something, anything, to show me that he was joking, but his expression never changed.
“Are we to stride across the planet like gods?” I asked at last.
“Oh, yes,” he said with certainty. “That much is written in the Book of Fate.”
“I have never seen that,” I said.
“You have flawed vision,” he replied.
“Who wrote this passage that I have not seen?” I continued.
“I am writing it even as we speak.”
“Have you a place to stay?” I asked.
“No,” he answered. “I had hoped to stay with my older brother.”
“And have you any money?”
He reached into a pocket and pulled out some coins. “Less than a rand.”
“No luggage?”
“I travel light.”
“So you are homeless, destitute, without a rand to your name, and with only the clothing on your back,” I said. “And you are going to bring us back the primacy we possessed when Shaka walked the land five centuries ago.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “Will you stand in my way?”
“No,” I said. “Why should I?”
He smiled. “You see? I have one acolyte already.”
“I am not an acolyte,” I said firmly. “I am an unhostile observer, nothing more.”
He shrugged. “Semantics.”
“So,” I said, “will you establish your kingdom here in my living room, and eventually conquer the dining room and kitchen?”
He stared at me, so silently and coldly that for a moment I thought he was going to get to his feet and attack me. Then he shrugged.
“You can join me now,” he said, “or you can join me later, when you have no choice in the matter. But do not ever make fun of me again.”
It was a simple statement, simply delivered, but for the first time in my adult life I was frightened.
“I apologize, Robert,” I said. “Seriously, what are your plans?”
“There is to be an election next month,” he said.
“You are mistaken,” I told him. “The President has another year and a half to serve.”
He stared at me again and I fell silent. “It is a minor office,” he said. “Clerk of Records in Natal. But I must start somewhere, and I need not think about the presidency for another year.”
I had thought I knew him, but I was amazed by the audacity of his ambition-not running for Clerk of Records, but planning on running for the presidency in a mere eighteen months. I was afraid if I commented on it, I would receive another hate-filled glare and sullen silence, so I decided to change the subject.
“Where have you been for the past decade?” I asked.
“In the world of the ibhunu,” he said. In the Zulu language, calling a white man ibhunu is like calling a black man nigger in English.
“There are very few white men left here,” I said. “Where did you go?”
“Europe,” he said. “Then America. Then further afield.”
“How much farther can you go than America?” I asked.
“Just as there is a world beyond South Africa, there is a solar system beyond the world, and a galaxy beyond the solar system.”
“You’ve been out there?” I asked, impressed.
“I spent four years in the American Space Fleet,” he replied.
“Did you see action against…against whatever they were, those things that attacked our colonies on Io and Ganymede?”
He nodded. “They had technology that was far superior to ours. Of course, we have it now.”
“How did you defeat them?” I asked. “I know that for a year all the news coming from the front was bad, and then one day it was over and we were victorious.”
“They were fools,” he said, a look of contempt on his face. “They sent a signal asking for more munitions. We tracked the signal and wiped out their home world. Their remaining ships surrendered.”
“Where was their home world?” I asked. “Most of the experts thought it must circle Centauri.”
“It was the sixth planet circling Wolf 359,” he answered.
I frowned. “That can’t be. Wolf is a Class M star. Nothing can live in orbit around a Class M star.”
“Nothing does now,” he said meaningfully. “You should not be so quick to believe European and American astronomers. What we killed would give you nightmares for the rest of your life. You should be grateful such things can’t evolve on a Class G star.”
“Did they give you nightmares?” I asked.
He looked almost amused. “I am not like you,” he said.
It wouldn’t be long before I learned just how unlike me he was.
3.
When he was a child, he always found a way to get what he wanted. He never cried, never screamed, never threatened-but somehow things would always work out for him. His methods were subtle. The children who stood in his way never showed up cowed or beaten…but twice they never showed up again at all.
Robert told me that his opponent for the office he wanted was Hector ole Kunene, a nondescript little civil servant who was being given the job as payment for his loyalty to the party over the years. Both sides agreed that he deserved the office, and he was running unopposed.
“Will you run as an independent, then?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I have a party.”
“Oh?”
“The Zulu Party.”
I frowned. “There is no Zulu Party,” I said.
“There is now.”
“Shall I assume you are its only member?” I asked with a smile.
“You would be mistaken,” he said seriously. “You are also a member.”
“I am?” I said, surprised.
He nodded. “I must repay you for the generosity you have shown me tonight,” he said. “You will come to Ulundi with me and be my assistant.”
“I have a job and a home right here.”
“Leave them,” he said with a look of contempt. “Come with me and you shall be rewarded beyond your expectations.”
“I am happy where I am,” I said. “I love the children I teach, and Ulundi is a crowded, filthy, dangerous city.”
That amused smile again. “Do you think Ulundi is my destination? It is merely a brief stop along the way, nothing more.”
“Pretoria?” I asked, amazed at his raw ambition.
“Soon.”
“And beyond that?”
“We shall see.”
“Every twenty years or so someone envisions himself as the new Shaka,” I said. “Yet thirty-five million Zulus are still living in Natal Province, and we are still without power of any kind-military, political, or economic. Why should anyone believe you are the One we have been waiting for?”
“I do not claim to be anyone’s reincarnation,” he said. “And as a Zulu, you should know that his name was Tchaka, not Shaka, which is the Europeans’ corruption of it.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” I persisted. “Why should we believe in you? What have you done thus far to inspire confidence?”
“I am just beginning,” he said.
“And have accomplished nothing.”
He reached into a pocket and tossed something to me. “Here is the nothing I have accomplished.”
They were medals. More to the point, they included three of the highest medals the American Space Fleet had to offer.
“This is very impressive,” I said. “I had no idea. We heard nothing of this here in Natal.”
“It was nothing,” he said. “I could fight or I could die. I chose not to die. But it
will impress the voters, who have always been more concerned with bravery than accomplishment.”
“Winning these medals was a major accomplishment,” I corrected him. “A splendid one.”
“Well,” he said, “let us hope the public is as easily beguiled by them as you are.”
“These three,” I said, indicating the three medals for Outstanding Bravery. “What particular actions were they for?”
“This one,” he said, “was for attacking the enemy’s flagship while in a small shuttlecraft.” He snorted contemptuously. “As if I had a choice. The shuttle was three thousand miles away from the mother ship when the enemy suddenly appeared between us.”
“And the other two?”
He shrugged. “I’ve no idea. You would have to ask the man I took them from.”
“You stole them?” I asked.
“Only after he attacked me in a drunken rage and I killed him. If he was brave enough to win them, and I was brave enough to defend myself and take them away from him, then I won them by proxy.” A quick smile. “And I will make sure no one asks me about their origin during the campaign.”
“You have only one month before the election,” I noted. “Perhaps it will not come up.” Then: “When will you go to Ulundi to begin campaigning?”
“As soon as you take me there,” he replied.
“I can’t,” I said. “I told you-I have a job and responsibilities.”
“Forget them,” he said. “You are working for me now.”
“I am?” I said with a smile. “When is payday?”
“Soon,” he said with no show of embarrassment.
“Soon,” I repeated sardonically.
“And often.”
I knew I should refuse, that I should put him on public transport to Ulundi the next morning and show up at my job, as boring and poorly paid as it was, but I must confess that I was curious to watch him campaign-he always had such control of his emotions that I wanted to see how he whipped a crowd into a frenzy while remaining cool and collected himself. Then, too, if he was successful, if he actually gained a modicum of political power, there was the possibility that I could do more good for more people than just teaching one impoverished group of children. I would miss them, and I hoped they would miss me, but if things worked out, maybe I could help them more in Ulundi than in the classroom.
