“What is that?” asked Bokatu.
“They have seen us,” replied Enkatai.
“What makes you think so?”
“I have heard that scream in my dream—and always the moon was just as it appears now.”
“Strange,” mused Bokatu. “I have heard them many times before, but somehow they seem louder this time.”
“Perhaps more of them are here.”
“Or perhaps they are more frightened,” he said. He glanced above him. “Here is the reason,” he said, pointing. “We have company.”
She looked up and saw a huge baboon, quite the largest she had yet seen, following them at a distance of perhaps fifty feet. When its eyes met hers it growled and looked away, but made no attempt to move any closer or farther away.
They kept climbing, and whenever they stopped to rest, there was the baboon, its accustomed fifty feet away from them.
“Does he look afraid to you?” asked Bokatu. “If these puny little creatures could harm him, would he be following us down into the gorge?”
“There is a thin line between courage and foolishness, and an even thinner line between confidence and over-confidence,” replied Enkatai.
“If he is to die here, it will be like all the others,” said Bokatu. “He will lose his footing and fall to his death.”
“You do not find it unusual that every one of them fell on its head?” she asked mildly.
“They broke every bone in their bodies,” he replied. “I don’t know why you consider only the heads.”
“Because you do not get identical head wounds from different incidents.”
“You have an overactive imagination,” said Bokatu. He pointed to a small hairy figure that was staring up at them. “Does that look like something that could kill our friend here?”
The baboon glared down into the gorge and snarled. The tailless monkey looked up with no show of fear or even interest. Finally it shuffled off into the thick bush.
“You see?” said Bokatu smugly. “One look at the brown monkey and it retreats out of sight.”
“It didn’t seem frightened to me,” noted Enkatai.
“All the more reason to doubt its intelligence.”
In another few minutes they reached the spot where the tailless monkey had been. They paused to regain their strength, and then continued to the floor of the gorge.
“Nothing,” announced Bokatu, looking around. “My guess is that the one we saw was a sentry, and by now the whole tribe is miles away.”
“Observe our companion.”
The baboon had reached the floor of the gorge and was tensely testing the wind.
“He hasn’t crossed over the evolutionary barrier yet,” said Bokatu, amused. “Do you expect him to search for predators with a sensor?”
“No,” said Enkatai, watching the baboon. “But if there is no danger, I expect him to relax, and he hasn’t done that yet.”
“That’s probably how he lived long enough to grow this large,” said Bokatu, dismissing her remarks. He looked around. “What could they possibly find to eat here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps we should capture one and dissect it. The contents of its stomach might tell us a lot about it.”
“You promised.”
“It would be so simple, though,” he persisted. “All we’d have to do would be bait a trap with fruits or nuts.”
Suddenly the baboon snarled, and Bokatu and Enkatai turned to locate the source of his anger. There was nothing there, but the baboon became more and more frenzied. Finally it raced back up the gorge.
“What was that all about, I wonder?” mused Bokatu.
“I think we should leave.”
“We have half a day before the ship returns.”
“I am uneasy here. I walked down a path exactly like this in my dream.”
“You are not used to the sunlight,” he said. “We will rest inside a cave.”
She reluctantly allowed him to lead her to a small cave in the wall of the gorge. Suddenly she stopped and would go no further.
“What is the matter?”
“This cave was in my dream,” she said. “Do not go into it.”
“You must learn not to let dreams rule your life,” said Bokatu. He sniffed the air. “Something smells strange.”
“Let us go back. We want nothing to do with this place.”
He stuck his head into the cave. “New world, new odors.”
“Please, Bokatu!”
“Let me just see what causes that odor,” he said, shining his light into the cave. It illuminated a huge pile of bodies, many of them half-eaten, most in various states of decomposition.
“What are they?” he asked, stepping closer.
“Brown monkeys,” she replied without looking. “Each with its head staved in.”
“This was part of your dream, too?” he asked, suddenly nervous.
She nodded her head. “We must leave this place now!”
He walked to the mouth of the cave.
“It seems safe,” he announced.
“It is never safe in my dream,” she said uneasily. They left the cave and walked about fifty yards when they came to a bend in the floor of the gorge. As they followed it, they found themselves facing a tailless monkey.
“One of them seems to have stayed behind,” said Bokatu. “I’ll frighten him away.” He picked up a rock and threw it at the monkey, which ducked but held its ground.
Enkatai touched him urgently on the shoulder. “More than one,” she said.
He looked up. Two more tailless monkeys were in a tree almost directly overhead. As he stepped aside, he saw four more lumbering toward them out of the bush. Another emerged from a cave, and three more dropped out of nearby trees.
“What have they got in their hands?” he asked nervously.
“You would call them the femur bones of grass-eaters,” said Enkatai, with a sick feeling in her thorax. “They would call them weapons.”
The hairless monkeys spread out in a semi-circle, then began approaching them slowly.
“But they’re so puny!” said Bokatu, backing up until he came to a wall of rock and could go no farther.
“You are a fool,” said Enkatai, helplessly trapped in the reality of her dream. “This is the race that will dominate this planet. Look into their eyes!”
Bokatu looked, and he saw things, terrifying things, that he had never seen in any being or any animal before. He barely had time to offer a brief prayer for some disaster to befall this race before it could reach the stars, and then a tailless monkey hurled a smooth, polished, triangular stone at his head. It dazed him, and as he fell to the ground, the clubs began pounding down rhythmically on him and Enkatai.
At the top of the gorge, the baboon watched the carnage until it was over, and then raced off toward the vast savannah, where he would be safe, at least temporarily, from the tailless monkeys.
* * *
“A weapon,” I mused. “It was a weapon!”
I was all alone. Sometime during the Feeling, the Stardust Twins had decided that I was one of the few things they could not be objective about, and had returned to their quarters.
I waited until the excitement of discovery had diminished enough for me to control my physical structure. Then I once again took the shape that I presented to my companions, and reported my findings to Bellidore.
“So even then they were aggressors,” he said. “Well, it is not surprising. The will to dominate the stars had to have come from somewhere.”
“It is surprising that there is no record of any race having landed here in their prehistory,” said the Historian.
“It was a survey team, and Earth was of no use to them,” I answered. “They doubtless touched down on any number of planets. If there is a record anywhere, it is probably in their archives, stating that Earth showed no promise as a colony world.”
“But didn’t they wonder what had happened to their team?” asked Bellidore.
“There were many large carnivores in the vicinity,” I said. “They probably assumed the team had fallen prey to them. Especially if they searched the area and found nothing.”
“Interesting,” said Bellidore. “That the weaker of the species should have risen to dominance.”
“I think it is easily explained,” said the Historian. “As the smaller species, they were neither as fast as their prey nor as strong as their predators, so the creation of weapons was perhaps the only way to avoid extinction … or at least the best way.”
“Certainly they displayed the cunning of the predator during their millennia abroad in the galaxy,” said Bellidore.
“One does not stop being aggressive simply because one invents a weapon,” said the Historian. “In fact, it may add to one’s aggression.”
“I shall have to consider that,” said Bellidore, looking somewhat unconvinced.
“I have perhaps over-simplified my train of thought for the sake of this discussion,” replied the Historian. “Rest assured that I will build a lengthy and rigorous argument when I present my findings to the Academy.”
“And what of you, He Who Views?” asked Bellidore. “Have you any observations to add to what you have told us?”
“It is difficult to think of a rock as being the precursor of the sonic rifle and the molecular imploder,” I said thoughtfully, “but I believe it to be the case.”
“A most interesting species,” said Bellidore.
* * *
It took almost four hours for my strength to return, for Feeling saps the energy like no other function, drawing equally from the body, the emotions, the mind, and the empathic powers.
The Moriteu, its work done for the day, was hanging upside-down from a tree limb, lost in its evening trance, and the Stardust Twins had not made an appearance since I had Felt the stone.
The other party members were busy with their own pursuits, and it seemed an ideal time for me to Feel the next object, which the Historian told me was approximately 23,300 years old.
It was the metal blade of a spear, rusted and pitted, and before I assimilated it, I thought I could see a slight discoloration, perhaps caused by blood …
* * *
His name was Mtepwa, and it seemed to him that he had been wearing a metal collar around his neck since the day he had been born. He knew that couldn’t be true, for he had fleeting memories of playing with his brothers and sisters, and of stalking the kudu and the bongo on the tree-covered mountain where he grew up.
But the more he concentrated on those memories, the more vague and imprecise they became, and he knew they must have occurred a very long time ago. Sometimes he tried to remember the name of his tribe, but it was lost in the mists of time, as were the names of his parents and siblings.
It was at times like this that Mtepwa felt sorry for himself, but then he would consider his companions’ situation, and he felt better, for while they were to be taken in ships and sent to the edge of the world to spend the remainder of their lives as slaves of the Arabs and the Europeans, he himself was the favored servant of his master, Sharif Abdullah, and as such his position was assured.
This was his eighth caravan—or was it his ninth?—from the Interior. They would trade salt and cartridges to the tribal chiefs who would in turn sell them their least productive warriors and women as slaves, and then they would march them out, around the huge lake and across the dry flat savannah. They would circle the mountain that was so old that it had turned white on the top, just like a white-haired old man, and finally out to the coast, where dhows filled the harbor. There they would sell their human booty to the highest bidders, and Sharif Abdullah would purchase another wife and turn half the money over to his aged, feeble father, and they would be off to the Interior again on another quest for black gold.
Abdullah was a good master. He rarely drank—and when he did, he always apologized to Allah at the next opportunity—and he did not beat Mtepwa overly much, and they always had enough to eat, even when the cargo went hungry. He even went so far as to teach Mtepwa how to read, although the only reading matter he carried with him was the Koran.
Mtepwa spent long hours honing his reading skills with the Koran, and somewhere along the way he made a most interesting discovery: the Koran forbade a practitioner of the True Faith to keep another member in bondage.
It was at that moment that Mtepwa made up his mind to convert to Islam. He began questioning Sharif Abdullah incessantly on the finer points of his religion, and made sure that the old man saw him sitting by the fire, hour after hour, reading the Koran.
So enthused was Sharif Abdullah at this development that he frequently invited Mtepwa into his tent at suppertime, and lectured him on the subtleties of the Koran far into the night. Mtepwa was a motivated student, and Sharif Abdullah marveled at his enthusiasm.
Night after night, as lions prowled around their camp in the Serengeti, master and pupil studied the Koran together. And finally the day came when Sharif Abdullah could no longer deny that Mtepwa was indeed a true believer of Islam. It happened as they camped at the Olduvai Gorge, and that very day Sharif Abdullah had his smith remove the collar from Mtepwa’s neck, and Mtepwa himself destroyed the chains link by link, hurling them deep into the gorge when he was finished.
Mtepwa was now a free man, but knowledgeable in only two areas: the Koran, and slave-trading. So it was only natural that when he looked around for some means to support himself, he settled upon following in Sharif Abdullah’s footsteps. He became a junior partner to the old man, and after two more trips to the Interior, he decided that he was ready to go out on his own.
To do that, he required a trained staff—warriors, smiths, cooks, trackers—and the prospect of assembling one from scratch was daunting, so, since his faith was less strong than his mentor’s, he simply sneaked into Sharif Abdullah’s quarters on the coast one night and slit the old man’s throat.
The next day, he marched inland at the head of his own caravan.
He had learned much about the business of slaving, both as a practitioner and a victim, and he put his knowledge to full use. He knew that healthy slaves would bring a better price at market, and so he fed and treated his captives far better than Sharif Abdullah and most other slavers did. On the other hand, he knew which ones were fomenting trouble, and knew it was better to kill them on the spot as an example to the others, than to let any hopes of insurrection spread among the captives.
Because he was thorough, he was equally successful, and soon expanded into ivory trading as well. Within six years he had the biggest slaving and poaching operation in East Africa.
From time to time he ran across European explorers. It was said that he even spent a week with Dr. David Livingstone and left without the missionary ever knowing that he had been playing host to the slaver he most wanted to put out of business.
After America’s War Between the States killed his primary market, he took a year off from his operation to go to Asia and the Arabian Peninsula and open up new ones. Upon returning he found that Abdullah’s son, Sharif Ibn Jad Mahir, had appropriated all his men and headed inland, intent on carrying on his father’s business. Mtepwa, who had become quite wealthy, hired some 500 askari, placed them under the command of the notorious ivory poacher Alfred Henry Pym, and sat back to await the results.
Three months later Pym marched some 438 men back to the Tanganyika coast. Two hundred and seventy-six were slaves that Sharif Ibn Jad Mahir had captured; the remainder were the remnants of Mtepwa’s organization, who had gone to work for Sharif Ibn Jad Mahir. Mtepwa sold all 438 of them into bondage and built a new organization, composed of the warriors who had fought for him under Pym’s leadership.
Most of the colonial powers were inclined to turn a blind eye to his practices, but the British, who were determined to put an end to slavery, issued a warrant for Mtepwa’s arrest. Eventually he tired of continually looking over his shoulder, and moved his headquarters to Mozambique, where
the Portuguese were happy to let him set up shop as long as he remembered that colonial palms needed constant greasing.
He was never happy there—he didn’t speak Portuguese or any of the local languages—and after nine years he returned to Tanganyika, now the wealthiest black man on the continent.
One day he found among his latest batch of captives a young Acholi boy named Haradi, no more than ten years old, and decided to keep him as a personal servant rather than ship him across the ocean.
Mtepwa had never married. Most of his associates assumed that he had simply never had the time, but as the almost-nightly demands for Haradi to visit him in his tent became common knowledge, they soon revised their opinions. Mtepwa seemed besotted with his servant boy, though—doubtless remembering his own experience—he never taught Haradi to read, and promised a slow and painful death to anyone who spoke of Islam to the boy.
Then one night, after some three years had passed, Mtepwa sent for Haradi. The boy was nowhere to be found. Mtepwa awoke all his warriors and demanded that they search for him, for a leopard had been seen in the vicinity of the camp, and the slaver feared the worst.
They found Haradi an hour later, not in the jaws of a leopard, but in the arms of a young female slave they had taken from the Zaneke tribe. Mtepwa was beside himself with rage, and had the poor girl’s arms and legs torn from her body.
Haradi never offered a word of protest, and never tried to defend the girl—not that it would have done any good—but the next morning he was gone, and though Mtepwa and his warriors spent almost a month searching for him, they found no trace of him.
By the end of the month Mtepwa was quite insane with rage and grief. Deciding that life was no longer worth living, he walked up to a pride of lions that were gorging themselves on a topi carcass and, striding into their midst, began cursing them and hitting them with his bare hands. Almost unbelievably, the lions backed away from him, snarling and growling, and disappeared into the thick bush.
The next day he picked up a large stick and began beating a baby elephant with it. That should have precipitated a brutal attack by its mother—but the mother, standing only a few feet away, trumpeted in terror and raced off, the baby following her as best it could.
The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994 Page 57
