Futures Near and Far

by Dave Smeds

  Bob presented me with a list of real-science ideas he thought might work as stories. Mostly, he was wrong. The thing is, real scientific developments are a bitch to use in place of raw material that rises from sheer imagination. Imagination can be tamed and manipulated. Real science fascinates me as non-fiction, and it’s fun to consider how it will affect our lives, but a given slice of technology or research all by itself does not supply characters, plot, conflict, and other elements necessary for a work of fiction. Bob himself had tried to think of scenarios to cope with this challenge, but none of them generated a spark in my brainstorming apparatus until he thrust forward one he called “Bookworm.”

  The real science goes like this: We have a common bacterium in our gut called E. coli. It’s most often mentioned when it escapes the digestive system and wreaks havoc in parts of the body it doesn’t belong in, but when it behaves itself it is benign. It happens that this little critter almost allows us to digest cellulose, as termites do. If there were ever a time when food was in short supply, people might find it advantageous to be able to convert cellulose into edible sugars. (Some might argue that it’s already damn useful as the major component of fiber in our diet.)

  In the milieu of “Bookworm,” the future is also a place in which books made of paper have long since fallen out of fashion (an almost unthinkable possibility back in 1986, prior to the development of the World Wide Web, smartphones, and ebooks). Precious archival volumes are kept in a place where oxygen, dust, and light will not decompose them: in a space station. One day a chunk of errant space debris appears at high velocity and wipes out the galley of the space station. The poor librarian is left foodless. Due to a tense political situation, a rescue party may not arrive for weeks.

  All is not lost. After all, the books are full of cellulose. The librarian need not go hungry after all. He has shelf after shelf of sustenance. Never mind that each volume is one-of-a-kind, the last repository of classic literature in its original publication medium.

  Imagine the choices. Shall he sacrifice Keats, or Shelley? Should he bother with Harold Robbins? No, probably not very fulfilling. Ah, but Thoreau, now there’s a rich meal. Dostoyevsky might present a little trouble going down, but surely the Betty Crocker Tenth Edition would provide a remedy.

  A new form of literary criticism is born. And it used to be no more than metaphor to say that bad writing produces indigestion.

  I never wrote “Bookworm.” I’m sure I would have enjoyed it, and I rather liked the idea of sticking close enough to it that I could justifiably list Bob as collaborator, because he has done me many a favor over the years and helping him get his byline on a piece of science fiction would please him. But my speculation had gone off on a tangent: Just why the hell would humans go to such extremes as to alter the digestive arrangement of the entire species? Why would the librarian have had that capacity? The answer that came to mind led me completely away from space stations, literary satire, and into a serious piece, which was what I was in the mood for anyway. I had a solid hard-sf premise to work with; I didn’t want to get too silly with it.

  “Termites” was my first sale to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, appearing in the May, 1987 issue. We’re already past the date of the main action, which takes place in 2011. That’s one of the frustrating aspects of writing near-future science fiction — all too soon it becomes alternate-reality fiction. Which is one reason I made the characters, and not the premise, the core of the tale. They keep “Termites” fresh — but if you are jarred by some of the assumptions herein, remember what a different Africa we were all looking at in 1986. A time before, for example, the AIDS epidemic had taken hold and not only burst the bubble of population explosion in the sub-Saharan region, but in some places sent birthrates plummeting below replacement level.

  One more thing, and it’s spooky. About the time the story saw print, I read an account of a biologist who actually created the very type of E. coli I mention in the narrative. He invented it in 1981, let it sit in his lab for a year, and when he realized what could happen if his sample were ever inadvertently released, he destroyed it.

  Had he not been so prudent, by this time McDonald’s might have already treated us to its new McChaff sandwich.

  TERMITES

  August, 2011

  When I first arrived in the Cherangani Hills of northwestern Kenya as a young woman, the mountains had been green and tawny, cloaked in lush bush, dotted with the cultivated plots of the Pokot tribe that I had come to study. Now I could hardly recognize the place where I had lived my life between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-eight. The drought had turned the Great Rift Valley into blistered, lunarlike terrain; the hills reminded me of Ethiopia back in the eighties — steep mounds unintended for human habitation, withered, eroded, and above all, dry. Greg stopped the Land Rover and let me examine the scenery more carefully. But it was no use.

  “I’m lost,” I said.

  He brushed a cloud of flies away from his face, callused fingers rasping against a four-day growth of tough, white beard. “I believe it’s around the next promontory,” he said, his clipped British inflections making the statement unequivocal, though in truth he knew the region far less than I.

  His confidence made me try one more time. “Yes. Yes, I think you’re right,” I said.

  When we rounded the flank of the hills, we saw the remnants of a village. All that remained of the huts were the firepits, the packed-earth floors, and ruptured holes where the branches that formed the walls had been anchored. And, of course, the sitting stones — it was improper for a man of the Pokot to sit on naked ground. In their stead were three hovels constructed of piled dung and animal hides, not true dwellings at all, merely places to get out of the sun. I saw a dozen or more people, all lying or sitting listlessly in the shade.

  We felt the impact of their eyes, but aside from the stares, most of them did not react to our arrival. A single boy stood and began to approach the Land Rover. He was suffering from the early stages of marasmus, his limbs painfully thin, stomach bloated, skin hanging slack from his bones so that his face resembled that of an old man and not, so I estimated, a boy well short of puberty. His only garment was a pair of threadbare, stained khaki shorts.

  Greg pulled out the .45 as we stopped rolling, keeping it in obvious view. But the boy emitted not even a flicker of belligerence; he was past those emotions. He gazed at us blankly, like a retardate. Only the fact that he had risen of his own accord gave me hope of obtaining a response from him.

  “Do you know KoCherop?” I asked. I used the Pokot dialect, though the words came haltingly, with a bittersweet tang. The boy, if he had been schooled, could speak English or Swahili, but use of his home tongue might ingratiate me. “Do you know where she is?”

  He turned his prematurely old eyes toward me, and I saw, to my surprise, a mind still capable of activity and calculation. “You are Chemachugwo,” he said, using my Pokot name, his voice raspy but energetic.

  “Yes.” I did not know him, but I was not surprised that he had guessed my identity. There were no other middle-aged white women alive who could speak his language.

  “I will tell you where to find KoCherop if you give me a piece of paper,” he stated.

  I hesitated a moment, then reached into a compartment under the seat and withdrew the bribe. I gave him a whole sheet. The boy ran his hands over it, apparently pleased with the rough, pulpy texture and sawdust-yellow color. He rolled it into a funnel, and with his empty hand pointed to a terrace plot far up the nearest mountain. “She is there.”

  I could make out a tendril of smoke. I signalled Greg to drive on.

  I could see the boy and his piece of paper in the side mirror for a full thirty seconds. Just before the dust and the turns in the track obscured him I saw him bite off the end of the funnel and begin to chew it. I wanted to weep, but the past few days had left me incapable of tears. It was the village, I told myself. It had been so much like the one in which I had built m
y hut, almost forty years back.

  The road narrowed and grew more steep, until the Land Rover would go no further. We faced a dilemma, for we couldn’t leave the vehicle unattended.

  “I’ll stay,” Greg said, handing me the .45. He pulled out one of the rifles for himself.

  I hadn’t reckoned on this development. I needed his plucky humor and stiff upper lip. But I had gone alone into the wilderness of East Africa before. I buckled on my holster and started up the path.

  Climbing these hills had been easier in younger days. I stopped often, until I could no longer bear to gaze out over the valley, where I had once watched the herdsmen and their cattle. The air became cooler, though not enough to compensate for my exertion. I estimated it would take me two hours to reach the terrace. I thought of KoCherop.

  January, 1978

  “Now we are like sisters,” she said, touching my belly. I jumped. The tattoo was still tender from the artist’s needle. She jerked back her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. I was just surprised.”

  “It will only hurt for a little while,” she said encouragingly. “Then you will be happy because you have become more beautiful.” She pointed at the spectacular, star-shaped design carved around her navel. The blood still congealed around it. “All the other girls will be jealous of me,” she said firmly. “Now that I am a woman, I will add more all along here.” She brushed her fingers up and down her midriff.

  I concealed my shiver. KoCherop — she still used her childhood name, Chesinen, at that point — had a sleek body and perfect, rich brown complexion. It needed no accentuation. Along with clitoridectomy, scarification was one of the practices that tempted me to drop my anthropologist’s reserve.

  “Many of the girls nowadays are leaving their bellies smooth,” I said.

  “Those girls must be looking for Kikuyu husbands,” she said with disdain. She smeared her face with red ocher and ghee, and offered to do the same for me. I accepted.

  She lavished it over my nose and cheeks. “Trust me. One day a handsome man with much land will look at your belly and admire what you have had done.”

  I chuckled, staring down at the tattoo. I had to admit it was pretty. It was a tiny butterfly, etched in six colors of ink, excellent artistry considering that it had been performed by a traveling craftsman. In my own way, I would enjoy owning it; otherwise I would never have done something so permanent to my body. But it most certainly had not been done to attract a husband. I had done it for my Pokot sister, because her father had become like my own, and because she, though ten years my junior, had made me feel instantly welcome in a sea of strange black faces.

  “Oh, no one will marry me,” I said. “I always burn the porridge.”

  August, 2011 continued

  I passed terrace after terrace of abandoned land. The farms extended far up the slope ahead of me, each family tilling parcels at not one but several elevations, the better to guard against crop failure. Some could be found as high as seven or eight thousand feet, among the peaks where, in former times, the mist would gather, moistening the land, dispelling the aridity of the Great Rift Valley. Now all I could see growing were gnarled hardwoods whose resins made them impossible to eat, or thorn thickets and brambles not worth the pain to molest. Dust crawled up my shoes and into the cuffs of my trousers.

  Breathless, aching in my calves, I reached the terrace that the boy had indicated. Nothing was left of the fields but irrigation channels waiting for water that had not come. KoCherop was seated on a flat stone beside a firepit. An empty porridge kettle sat over dying coals. Beside her was a gourd of water and a small sack of maize or millet.

  She stared at me with wide eyes, perhaps thinking that she had died and met a ghost. I spoke her name.

  She bowed her head. “I am called only Ko, now.”

  “Ko” means grandmother. Her full name meant Grandmother of Daughter of Rain, which she had adopted upon the birth of her first granddaughter. It was a declaration that Cherop was dead.

  KoCherop, in her typically Pokot way, did not display overt grief. It was enough to have made the statement. In a culture in which the lives of the women of the tribe revolve so deeply around those of their children that they rename themselves each time a new generation is established, no loss could have been sharper.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Lokomol told me.”

  “He sent you, didn’t he? I told him not to do that.” Her voice softened. “He is well? And the little ones?”

  “There is food in the refugee camp, for the moment. He wouldn’t accept help. But he did beg me to come to you.”

  “And you have come. What will you do now?”

  “Greg and I plan to take you to back to Kampala,” I said. “We want you to live with us.”

  “I live here,” she said, standing up. She had always been thin and spare; now the effect was more extreme, but the vigor — and determination — in her body was still obvious.

  “What happens when that sack is empty?” I asked, pointing at her food supply. It was nearly depleted already.

  She ground a toe into the dust, and dislodged a hidden stick. She tossed it in the firepit. “I am waiting for the government officials, coming to tell me that now I can eat dirt.”

  I started to speak, lost my momentum, paused.

  “What is there for me in Kampala, Chemachugwo?” she continued. “Do they have grindstones? Can you farm there?”

  “Can you farm here?” I found my tongue. “Do you remember the time you had the fever? I started to leave the hut one night, but you begged me not to go. Do you remember what you said?”

  She faced me for the first time. “You are not fair, Janet.”

  “You said you didn’t want to die alone. Have you changed your mind after all these years?”

  The flies were devils. KoCherop, with her African composure, paid them no mind, even when they sipped fluid from the rim of her eyelids. “Lokomol should not have sent you.”

  “But he did.” I reached out and clasped her shoulder. She leaned into my hand. “We won’t have to stay in the city all the time. You can come with us when I do my field work in the Ituri forest. The pygmies will call you a giant.”

  KoCherop, who was rather short, smiled faintly, then lost it. I could feel her tremble through my palm. “Yes. Yes, Janet, I will come. But give me one more night. I must say goodbye to Cherop.”

  I am ashamed to say that, for an instant, I did not believe her. I envisioned her hiding from us when the time came to leave. But if she did, I would have to respect that choice, so I told her where the truck was and climbed down the mountain.

  February, 1988

  KoCherop was giving her two-year-old son Lokomol a bath Pokot style: squirting water out of her mouth in a pencil-thin stream and scrubbing him with her fingers. The baby wailed, watching forlornly as the mud he’d so diligently splattered over his skin was rinsed away. Not far away his slightly older sister laughed at his discomfiture, while KoCherop’s three other children clambered up and down the acacia tree under which we sat.

  “You have been married half a year, Chemachugwo,” she said. “Why aren’t you pregnant?” I knew she was scolding me; she reserved use of my Pokot name for times when she wanted to lecture or argue.

  I paused, keeping my glance on Lokomol, marveling at how much he had grown in the year and a half since I had last visited my tribal friends. “Greg and I don’t plan to have any children just yet.”

  “You are over thirty years — well over. You could be a grandmother by now.”

  I thought of the crow’s feet in the corners of my eyes and the strands of gray hair that I’d found a couple of months back. I didn’t need KoCherop’s reminder.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Are you going to stop at five?”

  “Oh, no!” she said emphatically, sending Lokomol off to his siblings with an affectionate pat on the butt. “Seven, eight, nine — whatever luck brings me. I a
m already behind. KamaChepkech already has six,” she said of her younger sister.

  KoCherop was twenty-four years old.

  August, 2011 continued

  Morning arrived with the suddenness of the tropics. I, lying awake on the bed of the Land Rover, watched the sun illuminate the tracks of the snakes that had crawled past the vehicle in the night. I heard footsteps scuffing the path and my heart began to pound.

  KoCherop had come.

  She had brought her sack and her gourd. She stood like a statue, her wide, Nilo-Hamitic features impassive. She was dressed in the traditional style: a skirt of thick brown muslin covering her from the base of her rib cage to her knees, huge hoop earrings, and a cornucopia of bright, multi-colored beads in the form of belts, anklets, bracelets, armbands, a headband, and row after row of necklaces draping her collar, shoulders, and upper chest, leaving her breasts bare. This was her best outfit, and a rare sight in days when most Pokot women had long since begun to mimic Western fashions.

  “When we get to Kampala, they will know I am a Pokot,” she explained.

  I pursed my lips. They would know, all right.

  I saw her glance wistfully at the hills. “It will be temporary,” I said rapidly. “The rain will come. It has to come. Lokomol and his brothers will plant new crops. You can return then.”

  “And maybe my granddaughter will be born again,” she replied.

  I sighed. It was hard not to agree with her pessimism. The rain would come again — no doubt far more of it than the vegetationless soil could withstand — and some of the million Pokot refugees would reestablish their homes, but for vast numbers, the old way of life had ended forever.

  Greg grumbled up out of his sleep, saw KoCherop, and gave me a questioning glance.