by Mike Resnick
There is a season for all things: for birth, for growth, for death. There is unquestionably a season for Utopia, but it will have to wait.
For the season of Uhuru is upon us.
INTRODUCTION TO “FOR I HAVE TOUCHED THE SKY”
Nancy Kress
Both in person and in print, Mike Resnick is a born storyteller. But here is an odd thing about his stories: The ones he tells in person are apt to be untrue (beating me in pool! Nude mud-rasslin’ against me!), while the ones he tells in print are completely true. So it is with “For I Have Touched the Sky,” my absolute favorite Mike Resnick story.
I have taught this story several times, in three different countries, and students always respond strongly to it. We debate Koriba’s controversial beliefs and their relevance to contemporary political issues. We study the story’s structure, which is a perfect example of “raising the stakes,” scene by scene, as the conflict between Koriba and Kamari escalates. We examine the ways in which the exposition both expands and counterpoints the dramatized scenes.
But before that, as each student reads the story for the first time, I watch their faces. I see them respond to the truth of Koriba and Kamari, to their solidity and believability, equals in intransigence in a deliberately unequal society. A few students tear up at the end. I understand; this is one of the few SF stories that has ever made my cry.
So don’t listen to anything Mike says in person, or at least listen to it selectively. Just read his stories, starting with this one.
This was the second Kirinyaga story I ever wrote, and though it didn’t win a Hugo, I think it’s the best of them. It’s been resold some 29 times all over the world, and it did win awards in Japan and Spain. It was a 1990 Hugo and Nebula nominee for Best Novelette, as well as topping the Science Fiction Chronicle Poll.
FOR I HAVE TOUCHED THE SKY
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN men had wings.
Ngai, who sits alone on His throne atop Kirinyaga, which is now called Mount Kenya, gave men the gift of flight, so that they might reach the succulent fruits on the highest branches of the trees. But one man, a son of Gikuyu, who was himself the first man, saw the eagle and the vulture riding high upon the winds, and spreading his wings, he joined them. He circled higher and higher, and soon he soared far above all other flying things.
Then, suddenly, the hand of Ngai reached out and grabbed the son of Gikuyu.
“What have I done that you should grab me thus?” asked the son of Gikuyu.
“I live atop Kirinyaga because it is the top of the world,” answered Ngai, “and no one’s head may be higher than my own.”
And so saying, Ngai plucked the wings from the son of Gikuyu, and then took the wings away from all men, so that no man could ever again rise higher than His head.
And that is why all of Gikuyu’s descendants look at the birds with a sense of loss and envy, and why they no longer eat the succulent fruits from the highest branches of the trees.
* * *
We have many birds on the world of Kirinyaga, which was named for the holy mountain where Ngai dwells. We brought them along with our other animals when we received our charter from the Eutopian Council and departed from a Kenya that no longer had any meaning for true members of the Kikuyu tribe. Our new world is home to the maribou and the vulture, the ostrich and the fish eagle, the weaver and the heron, and many other species. Even I, Koriba, who am the mundumugu—the witch doctor—delight in their many colors, and find solace in their music. I have spent many afternoons seated in front of my boma, my back propped up against an ancient acacia tree, watching the profusion of colors and listening to the melodic songs as the birds come to slake their thirst in the river that winds through our village.
It was on one such afternoon that Kamari, a young girl who was not yet of circumcision age, walked up the long, winding path that separates my boma from the village, holding something small and gray in her hands.
“Jambo, Koriba,” she greeted me.
“Jambo, Kamari,” I answered her. “What have you brought to me, child?”
“This,” she said, holding out a young pygmy falcon that struggled weakly to escape her grasp. “I found him in my family’s shamba. He cannot fly.”
“He looks fully-fledged,” I noted, getting to my feet. Then I saw that one of his wings was held at an awkward angle. “Ah!” I said. “He has broken his wing.”
“Can you make him well, mundumugu?” asked Kamari.
I examined the wing briefly, while she held the young falcon’s head away from me. Then I stepped back.
“I can make him well, Kamari,” I said. “But I cannot make him fly. The wing will heal, but it will never be strong enough to bear his weight again. I think we will destroy him.”
“No!” she exclaimed, pulling the falcon back. “You will make him live, and I will care for him!”
I stared at the bird for a moment, then shook my head. “He will not wish to live,” I said at last.
“Why not?”
“Because he has ridden high upon the warm winds.”
“I do not understand,” said Kamiri, frowning.
“Once a bird has touched the sky,” I explained, “he can never be content to spend his days on the ground.”
“I will make him content,” she said with determination. “You will heal him and I will care for him, and he will live.”
“I will heal him and you will care for him,” I said. “But,” I added, “he will not live.”
“What is your fee, Koriba?” she asked, suddenly businesslike.
“I do not charge children,” I answered. “I will visit your father tomorrow, and he will pay me.”
She shook her head adamantly. “This is my bird. I will pay the fee.”
“Very well,” I said, admiring her spirit, for most children—and all adults—are terrified of their mundumugu, and would never openly contradict or disagree with him. “For one month you will clean my boma every morning and every afternoon. You will lay out my sleeping blankets, and keep my water gourd filled, and you will see that I have kindling for my fire.”
“That is fair,” she said after a moment’s consideration. Then she added: “What if the bird dies before the month is over?”
“Then you will learn that a mundumugu knows more than a little Kikuyu girl,” I said.
She set her jaw. “He will not die.” She paused. “Will you fix his wing now?”
“Yes.”
“I will help.”
I shook my head. “You will build a cage in which to confine him, for if he tries to move his wing too soon, he will break it again and then I will surely have to destroy him.”
She handed the bird to me. “I will be back soon,” she promised, racing off toward her shamba.
I took the falcon into my hut. He was too weak to struggle very much, and he allowed me to tie his beak shut. Then I began the slow task of splinting his broken wing and binding it against his body to keep it motionless. He shrieked in pain as I manipulated the bones together, but otherwise he simply stared unblinking at me, and within ten minutes the job was finished.
Kamari returned an hour later, holding a small wooden cage in her hands.
“Is this large enough, Koriba?” she asked.
I held it up and examined it.
“It is almost too large,” I replied. “He must not be able to move his wing until it has healed.”
“He won’t,” she promised. “I will watch him all day long, every day.”
“You will watch him all day long, every day?” I repeated, amused.
“Yes.”
“Then who will clean my hut and my boma, and who will fill my gourd with water?”
“I will carry his cage with me when I come,” she replied.
“The cage will be much heavier when the bird is in it,” I pointed out.
“When I am a woman, I will carry far heavier loads on my back, for I shall have to till the fields and gather the firewood for my husband’s boma,” s
he said. “This will be good practice.” She paused. “Why do you smile at me, Koriba?”
“I am not used to being lectured to by uncircumcised children,” I replied with a smile.
“I was not lecturing,” she answered with dignity. “I was explaining.”
I held a hand up to shade my eyes from the afternoon sun.
“Are you not afraid of me, little Kamari?” I asked.
“Why should I be?”
“Because I am the mundumugu.”
“That just means you are smarter than the others,” she said with a shrug.
She threw a stone at a chicken that was approaching her cage, and it raced away, squawking its annoyance. “Someday I shall be as smart as you are.”
“Oh?”
She nodded confidently. “Already I can count higher than my father, and I can remember many things.”
“What kind of things?” I asked, turning slightly as a hot breeze blew a swirl of dust about us.
“Do you remember the story of the honey bird that you told to the children of the village before the long rains?”
I nodded.
“I can repeat it,” she said.
“You mean you can remember it.”
She shook her head vigorously. “I can repeat every word that you said.”
I sat down and crossed my legs. “Let me hear,” I said, staring off into the distance and idly watching a pair of young men tending their cattle.
She hunched her shoulders, so that she would appear as bent with age as I myself am, and then, in a voice that sounded like a youthful replica of my own, she began to speak, mimicking my gestures.
“There is a little brown honey bird,” she began. “He is very much like a sparrow, and as friendly. He will come to your boma and call to you, and as you approach him he will fly up and lead you to a hive, and then wait while you gather grass and set fire to it and smoke out the bees. But you must always”—she emphasized the word, just as I had done—“leave some honey for him, for if you take it all, the next time he will lead you into the jaws of fisi, the hyena, or perhaps into the desert where there is no water and you will die of thirst.” Her story finished, she stood upright and smiled at me. “You see?” she said proudly.
“I see,” I said, brushing away a large fly that had lit on my cheek.
“Did I do it right?” she asked.
“You did it right.”
She stared at me thoughtfully. “Perhaps when you die, I will become the mundumugu.”
“Do I seem that close to death?” I asked.
“Well,” she answered, “you are very old and bent and wrinkled, and you sleep too much. But I will be just as happy if you do not die right away.”
“I shall try to make you just as happy,” I said ironically. “Now take your falcon home.”
I was about to instruct her concerning his needs, but she spoke first.
“He will not want to eat today. But starting tomorrow, I will give him large insects, and at least one lizard every day. And he must always have water.”
“You are very observant, Kamari.”
She smiled at me again, and then ran off toward her boma.
She was back at dawn the next morning, carrying the cage with her. She placed it in the shade, then filled a small container with water from one of my gourds and set it inside the cage.
“How is your bird this morning?” I asked, sitting close to my fire, for even though the planetary engineers of the Eutopian Council had given Kirinyaga a climate identical to Kenya’s, the sun had not yet warmed the morning air.
Kamari frowned. “He has not eaten yet.”
“He will, when he gets hungry enough,” I said, pulling my blanket more tightly around my shoulders. “He is used to swooping down on his prey from the sky.”
“He drinks his water, though,” she noted.
“That is a good sign.”
“Can you not cast a spell that will heal him all at once?”
“The price would be too high,” I said, for I had foreseen her question. “This way is better.”
“How high?”
“Too high,” I repeated, closing the subject. “Now, do you not have work to do?”
“Yes, Koriba.”
She spent the next few minutes gathering kindling for my fire and filling my gourd from the river. Then she went into my hut to clean it and straighten my sleeping blankets. She emerged a moment later with a book in her hand.
“What is this, Koriba?” she asked.
“Who told you that you could touch your mundumugu’s possessions?” I asked sternly.
“How can I clean them without touching them?” she replied with no show of fear. “What is it?”
“It is a book.”
“What is a book, Koriba?”
“It is not for you to know,” I said. “Put it back.”
“Shall I tell you what I think it is?” she asked.
“Tell me,” I said, curious to hear her answer.
“Do you know how you draw signs on the ground when you cast the bones to bring the rains? I think that a book is a collection of signs.”
“You are a very bright little girl, Kamari.”
“I told you that I was,” she said, annoyed that I had not accepted her statement as a self-evident truth. She looked at the book for a moment, then held it up. “What do the signs mean?”
“Different things,” I said.
“What things?”
“It is not necessary for the Kikuyu to know.”
“But you know.”
“I am the mundumugu.”
“Can anyone else on Kirinyaga read the signs?”
“Your own chief, Koinnage, and two other chiefs can read the signs,” I answered, sorry now that she had charmed me into this conversation, for I could foresee its direction.
“But you are all old men,” she said. “You should teach me, so when you all die someone can read the signs.”
“These signs are not important,” I said. “They were created by the Europeans. The Kikuyu had no need for books before the Europeans came to Kenya; we have no need for them on Kirinyaga, which is our own world. When Koinnage and the other chiefs die, everything will be as it was long ago.”
“Are they evil signs, then?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “They are not evil. They just have no meaning for the Kikuyu. They are the white man’s signs.”
She handed the book to me. “Would you read me one of the signs?”
“Why?”
“I am curious to know what kind of signs the white men made.”
I stared at her for a long minute, trying to make up my mind. Finally I nodded my assent.
“Just this once,” I said. “Never again.”
“Just this once,” she agreed.
I thumbed through the book, which was a Swahili translation of Shakespeare’s poems, selected one at random, and read it to her:
Live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountains yields.
There will we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There will I make thee a bed of roses,
With a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.
A bed of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Then live with me and be my love.
Kamari frowned. “I do not understand.”
“I told you that you would not,” I said. “Now put the book away and finish cleaning my hut. You must still work in your father’s shamba, along with your duties here.”
She nodded and disappeared into my hut, only to burst forth excited
ly a few minutes later.
“It is a story!” she exclaimed.
“What is?”
“The sign you read! I do not understand many of the words, but it is a story about a warrior who asks a maiden to marry him!” She paused. “You would tell it better, Koriba. The sign doesn’t even mention fisi, the hyena, and mamba, the crocodile, who dwell by the river and would eat the warrior and his wife. Still, it is a story! I had thought it would be a spell for mundumugus.”
“You are very wise to know that it is a story,” I said.
“Read another to me!” she said enthusiastically.
I shook my head. “Do you not remember our agreement? Just that once, and never again.”
She lowered her head in thought, then looked up brightly. “Then teach me to read the signs.”
“That is against the law of the Kikuyu,” I said. “No woman is permitted to read.”
“Why?”
“It is a woman’s duty to till the fields and pound the grain and make the fires and weave the fabrics and bear her husband’s children,” I answered.
“But I am not a woman,” she pointed out. “I am just a little girl.”
“But you will become a woman,” I said, “and a woman may not read.”
“Teach me now, and I will forget how when I become a woman.”
“Does the eagle forget how to fly, or the hyena to kill?”
“It is not fair.”
“No,” I said. “But it is just.”
“I do not understand.”
“Then I will explain it to you,” I said. “Sit down, Kamari.”
She sat down on the dirt opposite me and leaned forward intently.
“Many years ago,” I began, “the Kikuyu lived in the shadow of Kirinyaga, the mountain upon which Ngai dwells.”
“I know,” she said. “Then the Europeans came and built their cities.”
“You are interrupting,” I said.
