Galileo's Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition

by Gardner Dozois

  “Good morning,” she said when she saw me sitting a short distance away from her.

  “Good morning, Memsaab Witherspoon,” I replied.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “It is morning.”

  “I mean, what hour and minute is it?”

  “We do not have hours and minutes on Kirinyaga,” I told her. “Only days.”

  “I should look at Mr. Samuels.”

  “He is still alive,” I said.

  “Of course he is,” she replied. “But the poor man will need skin grafts, and he may lose that right leg. He’ll be a long time recovering.” She paused and looked around. “Uh . . . where do I wash up around here?”

  “The river runs by the foot of my hill,” I said. “Be sure you beat the water first, to frighten away the crocodiles.”

  “What kind of Utopia has crocodiles?” she asked with a smile.

  “What Eden has no serpents?” I said.

  She laughed and walked down the hill. I took a sip from my water gourd, then killed the fire and spread the ashes. One of the boys from the village came by to take my goats out to graze, and another brought firewood and took my gourds down to the river to fill them.

  When Joyce Witherspoon returned from the river some twenty minutes later, she was not alone. With her was Kibo, the third and youngest wife of Koinnage, the paramount chief of the village, and in Kibo’s arms was Katabo, her infant son. His left arm was swollen to twice its size, and was badly discolored.

  “I found this woman laundering her clothes by the river,” said Joyce Witherspoon, “and I noticed that her child had a badly infected arm. It looks like some kind of insect bite. I managed through sign language to convince her to follow me up here.”

  “Why did you not bring Katabo to me?” I asked Kibo in Swahili.

  “Last time you charged me two goats, and he remained sick for many days, and Koinnage beat me for wasting the goats,” she said, so terrified she had made me angry that she could not think of a lie.

  Even as Kibo spoke, Joyce Witherspoon began approaching her and Katabo with a syringe in her hand.

  “This is a broad-spectrum antibiotic,” she explained to me. “It also contains a steroid that will prevent itching or any discomfort while the infection remains.”

  “Stop!” I said harshly in English.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You may not do this,” I said. “You are here to minister to the pilot only.”

  “This is a baby, and it’s suffering,” she said. “It’ll take me two seconds to give it a shot and cure it.”

  “I cannot permit it.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “I read your biography. You may dress like a savage and sit in the dirt next to your fire, but you were educated at Cambridge and received your postgraduate degrees from Yale. Surely you know how easily I can end this child’s suffering.”

  “That’s not the point,” I said.

  “Then what is the point?”

  “You may not medicate this child. It seems like a blessing now—but once before we accepted the Europeans’ medicine, and then their religion, and their clothing, and their laws, and their customs, and eventually we ceased to be Kikuyu and became a new race, a race of black Europeans known only as Kenyans. We came to Kirinyaga to make sure that such a thing does not happen to us again.”

  “He won’t know why he feels better. You can credit it to your god or yourself for all I care.”

  I shook my head. “I appreciate your sentiment, but I cannot let you corrupt our Utopia.”

  “Look at him,” she said, pointing to Katabo’s swollen arm. “Is Kirinyaga a Utopia for him? Where is it written that Utopias must have sick and suffering children?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Well, then?”

  “It is not written,” I continued, “because the Kikuyu do not have a written language.”

  “Will you at least let the mother decide?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “The mother will think only of her child,” I answered. “I must think of an entire world.”

  “Perhaps her child is more important to her than your world is to you.”

  “She is incapable of making a reasoned decision,” I said. “Only I can foresee all the consequences.”

  Suddenly Kibo, who understood not a word of English, turned to me.

  “Will the European witch make my little Katabo better?” she asked. “Why are you two arguing?”

  “The European witch is here only for the European,” I answered. “She has no power to help the Kikuyu.”

  “Can she not try?” asked Kibo.

  “I am your mundumugu,” I said harshly.

  “But look at the pilot,” said Kibo, pointing to Samuels. “Yesterday he was all but dead. Today his skin is already healing, and his arms and legs are straight again.”

  “Her god is the god of the Europeans,” I answered, “just as her magic is the magic of the Europeans. Her spells do not work on the Kikuyu.”

  Kibo fell silent, and clutched Katabo to her breast.

  I turned to Joyce Witherspoon. “I apologize for speaking in Swahili, but Kibo knows no other language.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I had no difficulty following it.”

  “I thought you told me you only spoke English.”

  “Sometimes you needn’t understand the words to translate. I believe you were saying, in essence, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ ”

  The pilot moaned just then, and suddenly all of her attention was focused upon him. He was coming into a state of semi-consciousness, unfocused and unintelligible but no longer comatose, and she began administering medications into the tubes that were already attached to his arms and legs. Kibo watched in wonderment, but kept her distance.

  I remained on my hill most of the morning. I offered to remove the curse from Katabo’s arm and give him some soothing lotions, but Kibo refused, saying that Koinnage steadfastly refused to part with any more goats.

  “I will not charge you this time,” I said, for I wanted Koinnage on my side. I uttered a spell over the child, then treated his arm with a salve made from the pulped bark of the acacia tree. I ordered Kibo to return to her shamba with him, and told her that the child’s arm would return to normal within five days.

  Finally it was time for me to go into the village to bless the scarecrows and give Leibo, who had lost her baby, ointment to ease the pain in her breasts. I would meet with Bakada, who had accepted the bride price for his daughter and wanted me to preside at the wedding, and finally I would join Koinnage and the Council of Elders as they discussed the weighty issues of the day.

  As I walked down the long, winding path beside the river, I found myself thinking how much like the European’s Garden of Eden this world looked.

  How was I to know that the serpent had already arrived?

  ###

  After I had tended to my chores in the village, I stopped at Ngobe’s hut to share a gourd of pombe with him. He asked about the pilot, for by now everyone in the village had heard about him, and I explained that the European’s mundumugu was curing him and would take him back to Maintenance headquarters in two more days.

  “She must have powerful magic,” he said, “for I am told that the man’s body was badly broken.” He paused. “It is too bad,” he added wistfully, “that such magic will not work for the Kikuyu.”

  “My magic has always been sufficient,” I said.

  “True,” he said uneasily. “But I remember the day when we brought Tabari’s son back after the hyenas had attacked him and chewed off one of his legs. You eased his pain, but you could not save him. Perhaps the witch from Maintenance could have.”

  “The pilot had broken his legs, but they were not chewed off,” I said defensively. “No one could have saved Tabari’s son after the hyenas had finished with him.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” he sai
d.

  My first inclination was to pounce on the word “perhaps” but then I decided that he meant no insult by it, so I finished my pombe, cast the bones and read that he would have a successful harvest, and left his hut.

  I stopped in the center of the village to recite a fable to the children, then went over to Koinnage’s shamba and entered his boma for the daily meeting of the Council of Elders. Most of them were already there, grim-faced and silent. Finally Koinnage emerged from his hut and joined us.

  “We have serious business to discuss today,” he announced. “Perhaps the most serious we have ever discussed,” he added, staring straight at me. Suddenly he faced his wives’ huts. “Kibo!” he shouted. “Come here!”

  Kibo emerged from her hut and walked over to us, carrying little Katabo in her arms.

  “You all saw my son’s arm yesterday,” said Koinnage. “It was swollen to twice its normal size, and was the color of death.” He took the child and held it above his head. “Now look at him!” he cried.

  Katabo’s arm was once again a healthy color, and almost all of the swelling had vanished.

  “My medicine worked faster than I had anticipated,” I said.

  “This is not your medicine at all!” he said accusingly. “This is the European witch’s medicine!”

  I looked at Kibo. “I ordered you to leave my boma ahead of me!” I said sternly.

  “You did not order me not to return,” she said, her face filled with defiance as she stood next to Koinnage. “The witch pierced Katabo’s arm with a metal thorn, and before I could climb back down your hill the swelling was already half-gone.”

  “You disobeyed my command,” I said ominously.

  “I am the paramount chief, and I absolve her,” interjected Koinnage.

  “I am the mundumugu, and I do not!” I said, and suddenly Kibo’s defiance was replaced by terror.

  “We have more important things to discuss,” snapped Koinnage. This startled me, for when I am angry, no one has the courage to confront or contradict me.

  I pulled some luminescent powder, made from the ground-up bodies of night-stalking beetles, out of my pouch, held it on the palm of my hand, raised my hand to my mouth, and blew the powder in Kibo’s direction. She screamed in terror and fell writhing to the ground.

  “What have you done to her?” demanded Koinnage.

  I have terrified her beyond your ability to comprehend, which is a just and fitting punishment for disobeying me, I thought. Aloud I said, “I have marked her spirit so that all the predators of the Other World can find it at night when she sleeps. If she swears never to disobey her mundumugu again, if she shows proper contrition for disobeying me today, then I shall remove the markings before she goes to sleep this evening. If not . . .” I shrugged and let the threat hang in the air.

  “Then perhaps the European witch will remove the markings,” said Koinnage.

  “Do you think the god of the Europeans is mightier than Ngai?” I demanded.

  “I do not know,” replied Koinnage. “But he healed my son’s arm in moments, when Ngai would have taken days.”

  “For years you have told us to reject all things European,” added Karenja, “yet I myself have seen the witch use her magic on the dying pilot, and I think it is stronger that your magic.”

  “It is a magic for Europeans only,” I said.

  “This is not so,” answered Koinnage. “For did the witch not offer it to Katabo? If she can halt the suffering of our sick and our injured faster than Ngai can, then we must consider accepting her offer.”

  “If you accept her offer,” I said, “before long you will be asked to accept her god, and her science, and her clothing, and her customs.”

  “Her science is what created Kirinyaga and flew us here,” said Ngobe. “How can it be bad if it made Kirinyaga possible?”

  “It is not bad for the Europeans,” I said, “because it is part of their culture. But we must never forget why we came to Kirinyaga in the first place: to create a Kikuyu world and re-establish a Kikuyu culture.”

  “We must think seriously about this,” said Koinnage. “For years we have believed that every facet of the Europeans’ culture was evil, for we had no examples of it. But now that we see that even a female can cure our illness faster than Ngai can, it is time to reconsider.”

  “If her magic could have cured my withered arm when I was still a boy,” added Ngobe, “why would that have been evil?”

  “It would have been against the will of Ngai,” I said.

  “Does not Ngai rule the universe?” he asked.

  “You know that He does,” I replied.

  “Then nothing that happens can be contrary to His wishes, and if she could have cured me, it would not have been against Ngai’s will.”

  I shook my head. “You do not understand.”

  “We are trying to understand,” said Koinnage. “Enlighten us.”

  “The Europeans have many wonders, and these wonders will entice you, as they are doing right now . . . but if you accept one European thing, soon they will insist that you accept them all. Koinnage, their religion only allows a man to have one wife. Which two will you divorce?”

  I turned to the others. “Ngobe, they will make Kimanti attend a school where he will learn to read and write. But since we do not have a written language, he will learn to write only in a European language, and the things and people he reads about and learns about will all be European.”

  I walked among the Elders, offering an example to each. “Karenja, if you do a service for Tabari, you will expect a chicken or a goat or perhaps even a cow in return, depending on the nature of the service. But the Europeans will make him reward you with paper money, which you cannot eat, and which cannot reproduce and make a man rich.”

  On and on I went, until I had run through all the Elders, pointing out what they would lose if they allowed the Europeans a toehold in our society.

  “All that is on the one hand,” said Koinnage when I had finished. He held his other hand out, palm up. “On the other hand is an end to illness and suffering, which is no small achievement in itself. Koriba has said that if we let the Europeans in, they will force us to change our ways. I say that some of our ways need changing. If their god is a greater healer than Ngai, who is to say that he may not also bring better weather, or more fertile cattle, or richer soil?”

  “No!” I cried. “You may all have forgotten why we came here, but I have not. Our mandate was not to establish a European Utopia, but a Kikuyu one!”

  “And have we established it?” asked Karenja sardonically.

  “We are coming closer every day,” I told him. “I am making it a reality.”

  “Do children suffer in Utopia?” persisted Karenja. “Do men grow up with withered arms? Do women die in childbirth? Do hyenas attack shepherds in Utopia?”

  “It is a matter of balance,” I said. “Unrestricted growth would eventually lead to unrestricted hunger. You have not seen what it has done on Earth, but I have.”

  Finally it was old Jandara who spoke. “Do people think in a Utopia?” he asked me.

  “Of course they do,” I replied.

  “If they think, are some of their thoughts new, just as some are old?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then perhaps we should consider letting the witch tend to our illnesses and injuries,” he said. “For if Ngai allows new thoughts in His Utopia, He must realize they will lead to change. And if change is not evil, then perhaps lack of change, such as we have striven for here, is evil, or at least wrong.” He got to his feet. “You may debate the merits of the question. As for myself, I have had pain in my joints for many years, and Ngai has not cured it. I am climbing Koriba’s hill to see if the god of the Europeans can end my pain.”

  And with that, he walked past me and out of the boma.

  I was prepared to argue my case all day and all night if necessary, but Koinnage turned his back on me—on me, his mundumugu!—and began carrying his son back
to Kibo’s hut. That signaled the end to the meeting, and each of the Elders got up and left without daring to look me in the face.

  ###

  There were more than a dozen villagers gathered at the foot of my hill when I arrived. I walked past them and soon reached my boma.

  Jandara was still there. Joyce Witherspoon had given him an injection, and was handing him a small bottle of pills as I arrived.

  “Who told you that you could treat the Kikuyu?” I demanded in English.

  “I did not offer to treat them,” she replied. “But I am a doctor, and I will not turn them away.”

  “Then I will,” I said. I turned and looked down at the villagers. “You may not come up here!” I said sternly. “Go back to your shambas.”

  The adults all looked uneasy but stood their ground, while one small boy began climbing up the hill.

  “Your mundumugu has forbidden you to climb this hill!” I said. “Ngai will punish you for your transgression!”

  “The god of the Europeans is young and powerful,” said the boy. “He will protect me from Ngai.” And now I saw that the boy was Kimanti.

  “Stay back—I warn you!” I shouted.

  Kimanti hefted his wooden spear. “Ngai will not harm me,” he said confidentially. “If He tries, I will kill him with this.”

  He walked right by me and approached Joyce Witherspoon.

  “I have cut my foot on a rock,” he said. “If your god will heal me, I will sacrifice a goat to thank him.”

  She did not understand a word he said, but when he showed her his foot she began treating it.

  He walked back down the hill, unmolested by Ngai, and when he was both alive and healed the next morning, word went out to other villages and soon there was a seemingly endless line of the sick and the lame, all waiting to climb my hill and accept European cures for Kikuyu ills.

  Once again I told them to disperse. This time they seemed not even to hear me. They simply remained in line, neither arguing back as Kimanti had, nor even acknowledging my presence, each of them waiting patiently until it was their turn to be treated by the European witch.