by Mike Resnick
Third, I could take Murumbi’s suggestion and open up the northern plains to the Maasai or the Wakamba, but this would make a mockery of all our efforts to establish Kirinyaga as a world for and of the Kikuyu. This I could not even consider, for I would not allow a war that would destroy our Utopia in order to create his.
For three days and three nights I searched for another alternative. On the morning of the fourth day, I emerged from my hut, my blanket wrapped tightly about me to protect me from the cold morning air, and lit my fire.
Ndemi was late, as usual. When he finally arrived, he was favoring his right foot, and explained that he had twisted it on his way up my hill—but I noticed, without surprise, that he limped on his left foot when he went off to fill my gourds with water.
When he returned, I watched him as he went about his duties, collecting firewood and removing fallen leaves from my boma. I had chosen him to be my assistant, and my eventual successor, because he was the boldest and brightest of the village children. It was Ndemi who always thought of new games for the others to play, and he himself was always the leader. When I would walk among them, he was the first to demand that I tell them a parable, and the quickest to understand the hidden meaning in it.
In short, he was a perfect candidate to commit suicide in a few more years, had I not averted that possibility by encouraging him to become my assistant.
“Sit down, Ndemi,” I said as he finished collecting the last of the leaves and throwing them on the dying embers of my fire.
He sat down next to me. “What will we study today, Koriba?” he asked.
“Today we will just talk,” I said. His face fell, and I added, “I have a problem, and I am hoping that you will provide me with an answer to it.”
Suddenly he was alert and enthused. “The problem is the young men who killed themselves, isn’t it?” he said.
“That is correct,” I answered him. “Why do you suppose they did it?”
He shrugged his scrawny shoulders. “I do not know, Koriba. Perhaps they were crazy.”
“Do you really think so?”
He shrugged again. “No, not really. Probably an enemy has cursed them.”
“Perhaps.”
“It must be so,” he said firmly. “Is not Kirinyaga a Utopia? Why else would anyone not wish to live here?”
“I want you to think back, Ndemi, to the days before you started coming to my boma every day.”
“I can remember,” he said. “It was not that long ago.”
“Good,” I replied. “Now, can you also remember what you wanted to do?”
He smiled. “To play. And to hunt.”
I shook my head. “I do not mean what you wanted to do then,” I said.
“Can you remember what you wanted to do when you were a man?”
He frowned. “Take a wife, I suppose, and start a shamba.”
“Why do you frown, Ndemi?” I asked.
“Because that is not really what I wanted,” he replied. “But it was all I could think of to answer.”
“Think harder,” I said. “Take as much time as you wish, for this is very important. I will wait.”
We sat in silence for a long moment, and then he turned to me.
“I do not know. But I would not have wanted to live as my father and my brothers live.”
“What would you have wanted?”
He shrugged helplessly. “Something different.”
“Different in what way?”
“I do not know,” he said again. “Something more…”—he searched for the word—“more exciting.” He consider his answer, then nodded, satisfied. “Even the impala grazing in the fields lives a more exciting life, for he must ever be wary of the hyena.”
“But wouldn’t the impala rather that there were no hyenas?” I suggested.
“Of course,” said Ndemi, “for then he could not be killed and eaten.” He furrowed his brow in thought. “But if there were no hyenas, he would not need to be fleet of foot, and if he were no longer fleet of foot, he would no longer be an impala.”
And with that, I began to see the solution.
“So it is the hyena that makes the impala what he is,” I said. “And therefore, even something that seems to be a bad or dangerous thing can be necessary to the impala.”
He stared at me. “I do not understand, Koriba.”
“I think that I must become a hyena,” I said thoughtfully.
“Right now?” asked Ndemi excitedly. “May I watch?”
I shook my head. “No, not right now. But soon.”
For if it was the threat of the hyena that defined the impala, then I had to find a way to define those young men who had ceased to be true Kikuyus and yet could not leave Kirinyaga.
“Will you have spots and legs and a tail?” asked Ndemi eagerly.
“No,” I replied. “But I will be a hyena nonetheless.”
“I do not understand,” said Ndemi.
“I do not expect you to,” I said. “But Murumbi will.”
For I realized that what he needed was a challenge that could be provided by only one person on Kirinyaga.
And that person was myself.
* * *
I sent Ndemi to the village to tell Koinnage that I wanted to address the Council of Elders. Then, later that day, I put on my ceremonial headdress, painted my face to look its most frightening, and, filling my pouch with various charms, I made my way to the village, where Koinnage had assembled all the Elders in his boma. I waited patiently for him to announce that I had important matters to discuss with them—for even the mundumugu may not speak before the paramount chief—and then I got to my feet and faced them.
“I have cast the bones,” I said. “I have read the entrails of a goat, and I have studied the pattern of the flies on a newly-dead lizard. And now I know why Ngala walked unarmed among the hyenas, and why Keino and Njupo died.”
I paused for dramatic effect, and made sure that I had everyone’s attention.
“Tell us who caused the thahu,” said Koinnage, “that we may destroy him.”
“It is not that simple,” I answered. “Hear me out. The carrier of the thahu is Murumbi.”
“I will kill him!” cried Kibanja, who had been Ngala’s father. “He is the reason my son is dead!”
“No,” I said. “You must not kill him, for he is not the source of the thahu. He is merely the carrier.”
“If a cow drinks poisoned water, she is not the source of her bad milk, but we must kill her anyway,” insisted Kibanja.
“It is not Murumbi’s fault,” I said firmly. “He is as innocent as your own son, and he must not be killed.”
“Then who is responsible for the thahu?” demanded Kibanja. “I will have blood for my son’s blood!”
“It is an old thahu, cast upon us by a Maasai back when we still lived in Kenya,” I said. “He is dead now, but he was a very clever mundumugu, for his thahu lives on long after him.” I paused. “I have fought him in the spirit world, and most of the time I have won, but once in a while my magic is weak, and on those occasions the thahu is visited upon one of our young men.”
“How can we know which of our young men bears the thahu?” asked Koinnage. “Must we wait for them to die before we know they have been cursed?”
“There are ways,” I answered. “But they are known only to myself. When I have finished telling you what you must do, I will visit all the other villages and seek out the colonies of young men to see if any of them also bears the thahu.”
“Tell us what we must do,” said old Siboki, who had come to hear me despite the pain in his joints.
“You will not kill Murumbi,” I repeated, “for it is not his fault that he carries this thahu. But we do not want him passing it to others, so from this day forward he is an outcast. He must be driven from his hut and never allowed back. Should any of you offer him food or shelter, the same thahu will befall you and your families. I want runners sent to all the nearby villages, so that by tomorr
ow morning they all know that he must be shunned, and I want them in turn to send out still more runners, so that within three days no village on Kirinyaga will welcome him.”
“That is a terrible punishment,” said Koinnage, for the Kikuyu are a compassionate people. “If the thahu is not his fault, can we not at least set food out for him at the edge of the village? Perhaps if he comes alone by night, and sees and speaks to no one else, the thahu will remain with him alone.”
I shook my head. “It must be as I say, or I cannot promise that the thahu will not spread to all of you.”
“If we see him in the fields, can we not acknowledge him?” persisted Koinnage.
“If you see him, you must threaten him with your spears and drive him away,” I answered.
Koinnage sighed deeply. “Then it shall be as you say. We will drive him from his hut today, and we will shun him forever.”
“So be it,” I said, and left the boma to return to my hill.
All right, Murumbi, I thought. Now you have your challenge. You have been raised to use the spear; now you will eat only what your spear can kill. You have been raised to let your women build your huts; now you will be safe from the elements only in those huts that you yourself build. You have been raised to live a life of ease; now you will live only by your wits and your energies. No one will help you, no one will give you food or shelter, and I will not rescind my order. It is not a perfect solution, but it is the best I can contrive under the circumstances. You needed a challenge and an enemy; now I have provided you with both.
I visited every village on Kirinyaga during the next month, and spent much time speaking to the young men. I found two more who had to be driven out and forced to live in the wilderness, and now, along with my other duties, such visits have become part of my regular schedule.
There have been no more suicides, and no more unexplained deaths among our young men. But from time to time I cannot help wondering what must become of a society, even a Utopia such as Kirinyaga, where our best and our brightest are turned into outcasts, and all that remains are those who are content to eat the fruit of the lotus.
INTRODUCTION TO “MWALIMU IN THE SQUARED CIRCLE”
Barry N. Malzberg
Herewith a maddening story, one which trembles on the cusp of one of the greatest epiphanies in literature and then either does or does not vault the river, you decide, you let me know. Setting on an audacious and barely credible premise the story takes itself seriously, follows it all the way, the author cannot be seen peering right and left to count the house or judge the reaction, the author is in fact invisible in a story whose purity and force takes it to the level of the greatest boxing fiction. Hemingway’s “Undefeated” was probably the best of them until this came along. A little later came Lucius Shepard’s “Beast of the Heartland,” Thom Jones’s “Sonny Liston Is A Friend Of Mine,” and “Sonny Liston Takes The Fall” by Elizabeth Bear, superb all of them, but not as original as Resnick’s story and all possibly to have been consciously influenced.
There is really nothing quite like this in its taking boxing beyond metaphor to the purity of the thing itself and it was astonishing to read in manuscript which I did over a decade and a half ago. (At my request I have read every Resnick story and novel before publication for thirty years now.) It is even more astonishing now; I read it on publication but not again until now, and it is even stronger than I thought. It is at a very high level. I will gild the lily no further.
We’ve known each other for over thirty years. He sent me a fan letter in the late seventies, I sent back a postcard (remember postcards, folks?) thanking him and asking him where he had been when this might have done me some good. We met in New York in 1980, he handed me the manuscript of The Soul Eater just under contract to New American Library and I responded a week later by predicting that he would be the most important writer to emerge from science fiction in the decade ahead. It was then that I asked to see everything he wrote, he obliged. I’ve never been disappointed and on many occasions (such as with the story at issue) I have been flabbergasted.
We’ve collaborated on a couple of short stories, more notably we have—as of this date—been writing for over a dozen years the 4500-word “Dialogues” for the Science Fiction Writers of America Bulletin and on the book adapted from those “Dialogues.” We’ve ranged freely over every subject conceivably related to the history of science fiction and the professional writing thereof; we fiercely agree on the importance and immutability of the Great Task and disagree on almost everything else. He takes Falsettos to be the Great American Musical. I shudder and look covertly for an exit. He thinks Stanley Weinbaum and “A Martian Odyssey” are aces. I don’t.
We do agree that Sophia Loren’s existence is proof of the existence of a Just and Merciful Deity.
A great writer. We’re lucky to have him.
Back in 1993 I was editing an anthology titled Alternate Tyrants, in which each story would show a famous pacifist—Gandhi, Martin Luther King, someone like that—being forced to take up arms or the equivalent. I decided to write a story for it myself, and I remembered Amin’s crazy challenge that is quoted at the start of the story. The first draft was very funny—it was a ridiculous premise…but then I saw a more meaningful and more powerful story to be told, and I scrapped the first draft and came up with “Mwalimu in the Squared Circle”, which was a 1994 Hugo nominee for Best Short Story.
MWALIMU IN THE SQUARED CIRCLE
While this effort was being made, Amin postured: “I challenge President Nyerere in the boxing ring to fight it out there rather than that soldiers lose their lives on the field of battle…Mohammed Ali would be an ideal referee for the bout.”
—George Ivan Smith
GHOSTS OF KAMPALA (1980)
As the Tanzanians began to counterattack, Amin suggested a crazy solution to the dispute. He declared that the matter should be settled in the boxing ring.
“I am keeping fit so that I can challenge President Nyerere in the boxing ring and fight it out there, rather than having the soldiers lose their lives on the field of battle.” Amin added that Mohammed Ali would be an ideal referee for the bout, and that he Amin, as the former Uganda heavyweight champ, would give the small, white-haired Nyerere a sporting chance by fighting with one arm tied behind his back, and his legs shackled with weights.
—Dan Wooding and Ray Barnett
UGANDA HOLOCAUST (1980)
NYERERE LOOKS UP THROUGH THE haze of blood masking his vision and sees the huge man standing over him, laughing. He looks into the man’s eyes and seems to see the dark heart of Africa, savage and untamed.
He cannot remember quite what he is doing here. Nothing hurts, but as he tries to move, nothing works, either. A black man in a white shirt, a man with a familiar face, seems to be pushing the huge man away, maneuvering him into a corner. Chuckling and posturing to people that Nyerere cannot see, the huge man backs away, and now the man in the white shirt returns and begins shouting.
“Four!”
Nyerere blinks and tries to clear his mind. Who is he, and why is he on his back, half-naked, and who are these other two men?
“Five!”
“Stay down, Mwalimu!” yells a voice from behind him, and now it begins to come back to him. He is Mwalimu.
“Six!”
He blinks again and sees the huge electronic clock above him. It is one minute and 58 seconds into the first round. He is Mwalimu, and if he doesn’t get up, his bankrupt country has lost the war.
“Seven!”
He cannot recall the last minute and 58 seconds. In fact, he cannot recall anything since he entered the ring. He can taste his blood, can feel it running down over his eyes and cheeks, but he cannot remember how he came to be bleeding, or lying on his back. It is a mystery.
“Eight!”
Finally his legs are working again, and he gathers them beneath him. He does not know if they will bear his weight, but they must be doing so, for Mohammed Ali—that is his nam
e! Ali—is cleaning his gloves off and staring into his eyes.
“You should have stayed down,” whispers Ali.
Nyerere grunts an answer. He is glad that the mouthpiece is impeding his speech, for he has no idea what he is trying to say.
“I can stop it if you want,” says Ali.
Nyerere grunts again, and Ali shrugs and stands aside as the huge man shuffles across the ring toward him, still chuckling.
It began as a joke. Nobody ever took anything Amin said seriously, except for his victims.
He had launched a surprise bombing raid in the north of Tanzania. No one knew why, for despite what they did in their own countries, despite what genocide they might commit, the one thing all African leaders had adhered to since Independence was the sanctity of national borders.
So Julius Nyerere, the Mwalimu, the Teacher, the President of Tanzania, had mobilized his forces and pushed Amin’s army back into Uganda. Not a single African nation had offered military assistance; not a single Western nation had offered to underwrite so much as the cost of a bullet. Amin had expediently converted to Islam, and now Libya’s crazed but opportunistic Quaddafi was pouring money and weapons into Uganda.
Still, Nyerere’s soldiers, with their tattered uniforms and ancient rifles, were marching toward Kampala, and it seemed only a matter of time before Amin was overthrown and the war would be ended, and Milton Obote would be restored to the Presidency of Uganda. It was a moral crusade, and Nyerere was convinced that Amin’s soldiers were throwing down their weapons and fleeing because they, too, know that Right was on Tanzania’s side.
But while Right may have favored Nyerere, Time did not. He knew what the Western press and even the Tanzanian army did not know: that within three weeks, not only could his bankrupt nation no longer supply its men with weapons, it could not even afford to bring them back out of Uganda.
“I challenge President Nyerere in the boxing ring to fight it out there rather than that soldiers lose their lives on the field of battle…”
The challenge made every newspaper in the western world, as columnist after columnist laughed over the image of the 330-pound Amin, former heavyweight champion of the Kenyan army, stepping into the ring to duke it out with the five-foot one-inch, 112-pound, 57-year-old Nyerere.
