Win Some, Lose Some

by Mike Resnick

  “It’ll be interesting,” commented Boyes.

  “More than that,” said Roosevelt enthusiastically. “It’ll be bully—just bully!”

  * * *

  The date was April 17, 1912.

  XIV.

  After returning home from the Congo, Theodore Roosevelt was denied the Republican nomination for President in 1912. Undaunted, he formed the Bull Moose party, ran as its presidential candidate, and was believed to be ahead in the polls when he was shot in the chest by a fanatic named John Schrank on October 14. Although he recovered from the wound, he was physically unable to campaign further and lost the election to Woodrow Wilson, though finishing well ahead of the seated Republican President, William Howard Taft. He lost what remained of his health in 1914 while exploring and mapping the River of Doubt (later renamed the Rio Teodoro) at the behest of the Brazilian government, and never returned to Africa. He died at his home in Sagamore Hill, New York, on January 6, 1919.

  John Boyes made and lost three more fortunes in British East Africa, spent his final days driving a horse-drawn milk wagon in Nairobi, and died in 1951.

  The Belgian Congo (later renamed Zaire) was granted its independence in 1960, and held the first and only free election in its history. This was followed by three years of the most savage inter-tribal bloodletting in the history of the continent.

  INTRODUCTION TO “THE MANAMOUKI”

  Connie Willis

  If you’ve met Mike Resnick, you know he’s a fun, funny, and expansive guy without a mean bone in his body (even if he does persist in calling me “The Female Person from Colorado.”) He’s a great storyteller and raconteur and probably the world’s leading expert on collie-raising, horse-racing, and Teddy Roosevelt.

  And if you’ve read him, you know he’s an expert on more than that, and that he’s written all kinds of novels and short stories on pretty much every subject under the sun—from elephants, the Devil, and hairy toads to literary critics, Old MacDonald’s farm, and the Wandering Jew. Oh, and the sun itself. And the Sugar Plum Fairy. You also know he’s renowned for yee-haw science-fiction Westerns, over-the-top adventures, and a raucous sense of humor.

  But you’ll never have read anything like his Kirinyaga stories. They’re totally different from anything else Mike writes, and even though they form a loosely-connected series, each one is completely different from the others.

  “The Manamouki” is probably my favorite, and the wise mundumugu Koriba is definitely my favorite character. He has the thankless job of governing the once nearly-extinct Kikuyu tribe in its protected off-Earth preserve—and of maintaining its stability and identity in the face of constantly threatening change.

  It is, of course, an impossible job, even for someone as patient and wise as Koriba, and no one knows it better than he does, which is why he’s such a good mundumugu. But when an enthusiastic young woman from Earth arrives, it’s clear even Koriba—and Kirinyaga—may have met their match.

  The story is subtle, ironic, and beautifully constructed, and even though the author tells you exactly what’s going to happen, you still don’t see it coming. “The Manamouki” is Mike Resnick’s writing at its best. It’s a masterpiece.

  During a trip to Kenya I heard the word “manamouki”. I speak some Swahili, but I’d never heard it before, so I asked for a translation. It meant “wife”…but later I found out that it meant “wife” in that particular context, but it actually meant “female property”, and applied equally to women, mares, sows, bitches, cows, and so on.

  Didn’t take long to put that together with a custom most Westerners find barbaric and come up with another Kirinyaga story. “The Manamouki” was a Hugo and Nebula nominee in 1991, and won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, as well as winning the Homer Award and topping the Science Fiction Chronicle Poll.

  THE MANAMOUKI

  MANY EONS AGO, THE CHILDREN of Gikuyu, who was himself the first Kikuyu, lived on the slopes of the holy mountain Kirinyaga, which men now call Mount Kenya.

  There were many serpents on the mountain, but the sons and grandsons of Gikuyu found them repulsive, and they soon killed all but one.

  Then one day the last serpent entered their village and killed and ate a young child. The children of Gikuyu sought out their mundumugu—their witch doctor—and asked him to destroy the menace.

  The mundumugu rolled the bones and sacrificed a goat, and finally he created a poison that would kill the serpent. He slit open the belly of another goat, and placed the poison inside it, and left it beneath a tree, and the very next day the serpent swallowed the goat and died.

  “Now,” said the mundumugu, “you must cut the serpent into one hundred pieces and scatter them on the holy mountain, so that no demon can breathe life back into its body.”

  The children of Gikuyu did as they were instructed, and scattered the hundred pieces of the serpent across the slopes of Kirinyaga. But during the night, each piece came to life and became a new serpent, and soon the Kikuyu were afraid to leave their bomas.

  The mundumugu ascended the mountain, and when he neared the highest peak, he addressed Ngai.

  “We are besieged by serpents,” he said. “If you do not slay them, then the Kikuyu shall surely die as a people.”

  “I made the serpent, just as I made the Kikuyu and all other things,” answered Ngai, who sat on His golden throne atop Kirinyaga. “And anything that I made, be it a man or a serpent or a tree or even an idea, is not repellant in My eyes. I will save you this one time, because you are young and ignorant, but you must never forget that you cannot destroy that which you find repulsive—for if you try to destroy it, it will always return one hundred times greater than before.”

  This is one of the reasons why the Kikuyu chose to till the soil rather than hunt the beasts of the jungle like the Wakamba, or make war on their neighbors like the Maasai, for they had no wish to see that which they destroyed return to plague them. It is a lesson taught by every mundumugu to his people, even after we left Kenya and emigrated to the terraformed world of Kirinyaga.

  In the entire history of our tribe, only one mundumugu ever forgot the lesson that Ngai taught atop the holy mountain on that distant day.

  And that mundumugu was myself.

  * * *

  When I awoke, I found hyena dung within the thorn enclosure of my boma. That alone should have warned me that the day carried a curse, for there is no worse omen. Also the breeze, hot and dry and filled with dust, came from the west, and all good winds come from the east.

  It was the day that our first immigrants were due to arrive. We had argued long and hard against allowing any newcomers to settle on Kirinyaga, for we were dedicated to the old ways of our people, and we wanted no outside influences corrupting the society that we had created. But our charter clearly stated that any Kikuyu who pledged to obey our laws and made the necessary payments to the Eutopian Council could emigrate from Kenya, and after postponing the inevitable for as long as we could, we finally agreed to accept Thomas Nkobe and his wife.

  Of all the candidates for immigration, Nkobe had seemed the best. He had been born in Kenya, had grown up in the shadow of the holy mountain, and after going abroad for his schooling, had returned and run the large farm his family had purchased from one of the last European residents. Most important of all, he was a direct descendant of Jomo Kenyatta, the great Burning Spear of Kenya who had led us to independence.

  I trudged out across the hot, arid savannah to the tiny landing field at Haven to greet our new arrivals, accompanied only by Ndemi, my youthful assistant. Twice buffalo blocked our path, and once Ndemi had to hurl some stones to frighten a hyena away, but eventually we reached our destination, only to discover that the Maintenance ship which was carrying Nkobe and his wife had not yet arrived. I squatted down in the shade of an acacia tree, and a moment later Ndemi crouched down beside me.

  “They are late,” he said, peering into the cloudless sky. “Perhaps they will not come at all.”

  �
��They will come,” I said. “The signs all point to it.”

  “But they are bad signs, and Nkobe may be a good man.”

  “There are many good men,” I replied. “Not all of them belong on Kirinyaga.”

  “You are worried, Koriba?” asked Ndemi as a pair of crested cranes walked through the dry, brittle grass, and a vulture rode the thermals overhead.

  “I am concerned,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I do not know why he wants to live here.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?” asked Ndemi, picking up a dry twig and methodically breaking it into tiny pieces. “Is it not Utopia?”

  “There are many different notions of Utopia,” I replied. “Kirinyaga is the Kikuyu’s.”

  “And Nkobe is a Kikuyu, so this is where he belongs,” said Ndemi decisively.

  “I wonder.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he is almost 40 years old. Why did he wait so long to come here?”

  “Perhaps he could not afford to come sooner.”

  I shook my head. “He comes from a very wealthy family.”

  “They have many cattle?” asked Ndemi.

  “Many,” I said.

  “And goats?”

  I nodded.

  “Will he bring them with him?”

  “No. He will come empty-handed, as we all did.” I paused, frowning. “Why would a man who owned a large farm and had many tractors and men to do his work turn his back on all that he possessed? That is what troubles me.”

  “You make it sound like the way he lived on Earth was better,” said Ndemi, frowning.

  “Not better, just different.”

  He paused for a moment. “Koriba, what is a tractor?”

  “A machine that does the work of many men in the fields.”

  “It sounds truly wonderful,” offered Ndemi.

  “It makes deep wounds in the ground and stinks of gasoline,” I said, making no effort to hide my contempt.

  We sat in silence for another moment. Then the Maintenance ship came into view, its descent creating a huge cloud of dust and causing a great screeching and squawking by the birds and monkeys in the nearby trees. “Well,” I said, “we shall soon have our answer.”

  I remained in the shade until the ship had touched down and Thomas Nkobe and his wife emerged from its interior. He was a tall, well-built man dressed in casual Western clothes; she was slender and graceful, her hair elegantly braided, her khaki slacks and hunting jacket exquisitely tailored.

  “Hello!” said Nkobe in English as I approached him. “I was afraid we might have to find our way to the village ourselves.”

  “Jambo,” I replied in Swahili. “Welcome to Kirinyaga.”

  “Jambo,” he amended, switching to Swahili. “Are you Koinnage?”

  “No,” I answered. “Koinnage is our paramount chief. You will live in his village.”

  “And you are?”

  “I am Koriba,” I said.

  “He is the mundumugu,” added Ndemi proudly. “I am Ndemi.” He paused. “Someday I will be a mundumugu too.”

  Nkobe smiled down at him. “I’m sure you will.” Suddenly he remembered his wife. “And this is Wanda.”

  She stepped forward, smiled, and extended her hand. “A true mundumugu!” she said in heavily-accented Swahili. “I’m thrilled to meet you!”

  “I hope you will enjoy your new life on Kirinyaga,” I said, shaking her hand.

  “Oh, I’m certain I will,” she replied enthusiastically, as the ship disgorged their baggage and promptly took off again. She looked around at the dry savannah, and saw a trio of maribou storks and a jackal patiently waiting for a hyena to finish gorging itself on the wildebeest calf it had killed earlier in the morning. “I love it already!” She paused, then added confidentially, “I’m really the one who got Tom to agree to come here.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded her head. “I just couldn’t stand what Kenya has become. All those factories, all that pollution! Ever since I learned about Kirinyaga, I’ve wanted to move here, to come back to Nature and live the way we were meant to live.” She inhaled deeply. “Smell that air, Tom! It will add ten years to your life.”

  “You don’t have to sell me any more,” he said with a smile. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  I turned to Wanda Nkobe. “You yourself are not Kikuyu, are you?”

  “I am now,” she replied. “Ever since I married Tom. But to answer your question, no, I was born and raised in Oregon.”

  “Oregon?” repeated Ndemi, brushing some flies away from his face with his hand.

  “That’s in America,” she explained. She paused. “By the way, why are we speaking Swahili rather than Kikuyu?”

  “Kikuyu is a dead language,” I said. “Most of our people no longer know it.”

  “I had rather hoped it would still be spoken here,” she said, obviously disappointed. “I’ve been studying it for months.”

  “If you had moved to Italy, you would not speak Latin,” I replied. “We still use a few Kikuyu words, just as the Italians use a few Latin words.”

  She was silent for a moment, then shrugged. “At least I’ll have the opportunity to improve my Swahili.”

  “I am surprised that you are willing to forego the amenities of America for Kirinyaga,” I said, studying her closely.

  “I was willing years ago,” she answered. “It was Tom who had to be convinced, not me.” She paused. “Besides, I gave up most of those so-called amenities when I left America and moved to Kenya.”

  “Even Kenya has certain luxuries,” I noted. “We have no electricity here, no running water, no—”

  “We camp out whenever we can,” she said, and I placed a hand on Ndemi’s shoulder before he could chide her for interrupting the mundumugu. “I’m used to roughing it.”

  “But you have always had a home to return to.”

  She stared at me, an amused smile on her face. “Are you trying to talk me out of moving here?”

  “No,” I replied. “But I wish to point out that nothing is immutable. Any member of our society who is unhappy and wishes to leave need only inform Maintenance of the fact and a ship will arrive at Haven an hour later.”

  “Not us,” she said. “We’re in for the long haul.”

  “The long haul?” I repeated.

  “She means that we’re here to stay,” explained Nkobe, putting an arm around his wife’s shoulders.

  A hot breeze sent the dust swirling around us.

  “I think I should take you to the village,” I said, shielding my eyes. “You are doubtless tired and will wish to rest.”

  “Not at all,” said Wanda Nkobe. “This is a brand-new world. I want to look around.” Her gaze fell upon Ndemi, who was staring at her intently. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “You are very strong and sturdy,” said Ndemi approvingly. “That is good. You will bear many children.”

  “I certainly hope not,” she said. “If there’s one thing Kenya has more than enough of, it’s children.”

  “This is not Kenya,” said Ndemi.

  “I will find other ways to contribute to the society.”

  Ndemi studied her for a moment. “Well,” he said at last, “I suppose you can carry firewood.”

  “I’m glad I meet with your approval,” she said.

  “But you will need a new name,” continued Ndemi. “Wanda is a European name.”

  “It is just a name,” I said. “Changing it will not make her more of a Kikuyu.”

  “I have no objection,” she interjected. “I’m starting a new life; I ought to have a new name.”

  I shrugged. “Which name will you take as your own?”

  She smiled at Ndemi. “You choose one,” she said.

  He furrowed his brow for a long moment, then looked up at her. “My mother’s sister, who died in childbirth last year, was named Mwange, and now there is no one in the village of that name.”

  “Then Mwange it sh
all be,” she said. “Mwange wa Ndemi.”

  “But I am not your father,” said Ndemi.

  She smiled at him. “You are the father of my new name.”

  Ndemi puffed his chest up proudly.

  “Well, now that that’s settled,” said Nkobe, “what about our luggage?”

  “You will not need it,” I said.

  “Yes we will,” said Mwange.

  “You were told to bring nothing of Kenya with you.”

  “I’ve brought some kikois that I made myself,” she said. “Surely that must be permissible, since I will be expected to weave my own fabrics and make my own clothes on Kirinyaga.”

  I considered her explanation for a moment, then nodded my consent. “I will send one of the village children for the bags.”

  “It’s not that heavy,” said Nkobe. “I can carry it myself.”

  “Kikuyu men do not fetch and carry,” said Ndemi.

  “What about Kikuyu women?” asked Mwange, obviously reluctant to leave the luggage behind.

  “They carry firewood and grain, not bags of clothing,” responded Ndemi. “Those,” he said, pointing contemptuously toward the two leather bags, “are for children.”

  “Then we might as well start walking,” said Mwange. “There are no children here.”

  Ndemi beamed with pride and strutted forward.

  “Let Ndemi go first,” I said. “His eyes are young and clear. He will be able to see any snakes or hyenas hiding in the tall grass.”

  “Do you have poisonous snakes here?” asked Nkobe.

  “A few.”

  “Why don’t you kill them?”

  “Because this is not Kenya,” I replied.

  I walked directly behind Ndemi, and Nkobe and Mwange followed us, remarking upon the scenery and the animals to each other. After about half a mile we came to an impala ram standing directly in our path.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” whispered Mwange. “Look at the horns on him!”

  “I wish I had my camera with me!” said Nkobe.

  “We do not permit cameras on Kirinyaga,” I said.

  “I know,” said Nkobe. “But to be perfectly honest, I can’t see how something as simple as a camera could be a corrupting influence to your society.”