by Mike Resnick
“It’s not a matter of convincing them,” says Doctor. “The funds have dried up. Every program is hurting these days.”
“Please…”
“All right,” says Doctor. “I’ll set up a meeting. But it won’t do any good.”
I hear it all, but I do not understand any of it. Before it got white today I dreamed of a place filled with Barnabys, and I am sitting in a corner, my eyes shut, trying to remember it before it all drifts away.
We keep doing the lessons each day, but I can tell that Sally is unhappy, and I wonder what I have done to upset her.
This morning Sally opens my cage door and just hugs me for a long time.
“I have to talk to you, Barnaby,” she says, and I see her eyes are making water again.
I touch the grapes that say, “Barnaby likes to talk.”
“This is important,” she says. “Tomorrow you will leave the lab.”
“Will I go outside?” I ask.
“You will go very far away.”
“To a zoo?”
“Farther.”
Suddenly I remember God.
“Will I go to heaven?” I ask.
She smiles even as her eyes make more water. “Not quite that far,” she says. “You are going to a place where there are no labs and no cages. You will be free, Barnaby.”
“Are there other Barnabys there?”
“Yes,” she says. “There are other Barnabys there.”
“Doctor was wrong,” I say. “There will be more fun for Sally and Barnaby.”
“I cannot go with you,” she says.
“Why?”
“I have to stay here. This is my home.”
“If you are good, maybe God will let you out of your cage,” I say.
She makes a funny sound and hugs me again.
They put me in a smaller cage, one with no light in it. For two days I smell bad things. Most of my water spills, and there are loud noises that hurt my ears. Sometimes People talk, and once a man who is not Bud or Doctor gives me food and more water. He does it through a little hole in the top of the cage.
I touch his hand to show him that I am not angry. He screams and pulls his hand away.
I keep signing, “Barnaby is lonely,” but it is dark and there is no one to see.
I do not like my new world.
On the third morning they move my crate, and then they move it again. Finally they lift it up and carry it, and when they set it down I can smell many things I have never smelled before.
They open the door, and I step out onto the grass. The sun is very bright, and I squint and look at People who are not Sally or Doctor or Bud.
“You’re home, boy,” says one of them.
I look around. The world is a much bigger place than the lab, and I am frightened.
“Go on, fella,” says another. “Sniff around. Get used to the place.”
I sniff around. I do not get used to the place.
I spend many days in the world. I get to know all the trees and bushes, and the big fence around it. They feed me fruits and leaves and bark. I am not used to them, and for a while I am sick, but then I get better.
I hear many noises from beyond the world—screams and growls and shrieks. I smell many strange animals. But I do not hear or smell any Barnabys.
Then one day the People put me back in my crate, and I am alone for a long time, and then they open the crate, and I am no longer in the world, but in a place with so many trees that I almost cannot see the sky.
“Okay, fella,” says a Person. “Off into the forest with you now.”
He makes a motion with his hands, but it is a sign I do not recognize.
I sign back: “Barnaby is afraid.”
The Person pets me on the head. It is the first time anyone has touched me since I left the lab.
“Have a good life,” he says, “and make lots of little Barnabys.”
Then he climbs into his cage, and it rolls away from me. I try to follow it, but it is much too fast, and soon I can no longer see it.
I look back at the forest and hear strange sounds, and a breeze brings me the sweet smell of fruit.
There is no one around to see me, but I sign “Barnaby is free” anyway.
Barnaby is free.
Barnaby is lonely.
Barnaby is frightened.
I learn to find water, and to climb trees. I see little Barnabys with tails that chatter at me, but they cannot sign, and I see big kittens with spots, and they make terrible noises and I hide from them.
I wish I could hide in my cage, where I was always safe.
Today when the black goes away I wake up and go to the water, and I find another Barnaby.
“Hello,” I sign. “I am a Barnaby too.”
The other Barnaby growls at me.
“Do you live in a lab?” I ask. “Where is your cage?”
The other Barnaby runs at me and starts biting me. I shriek and roll on the ground.
“What have I done?” I ask.
The other Barnaby runs at me again, and I screech and climb to the top of a tree. He sits at the bottom and stares at me all day until the black returns. It gets very cold, and then wet, and I shiver all night and wish Sally was here.
In the morning the Barnaby is gone, and I climb down to the ground. I smell where he has been, and I follow his scent, because I do not know what else to do. Finally I come to a place with more Barnabys than I ever imagined there could be. Then I remember that Sally taught me counting, and I count. There are twenty-three of them.
One of them sees me and screams, and before I can make any signs all of them charge at me and I run away. They chase me for a long time, but finally they stop, and I am alone again.
I am alone for many days. I do not go back to the Barnabys, because they would hurt me if they could. I do not know what I have done to make them mad, so I do not know how to stop doing it.
I have learned to smell the big kittens when they are still far away, and to climb the trees so they cannot catch me, and I have learned to hide from the dogs that laugh like Sally does when I make somersaults, but I am so lonely, and I miss talking, and I am already forgetting some of the signs Sally taught me.
Last night I dreamed about Fred and Wilma and Barney and Dino, and when I woke up my own eyes were making water.
I hear sounds in the morning. Not sounds like the big kittens or the dogs make, but strange, clumsy sounds. I go to see what is making them.
In a little clearing I see four People—two men and two women—and they have brought little brown cages. The cages are not as nice as my old cage, because you cannot see in or out of them.
One of the men has made a fire, and they are sitting on chairs around it. I want to approach them, but I have learned my lesson with the Barnabys, and so I wait until one of the men sees me.
When he doesn’t yell or chase me, I sign to him.
“I am Barnaby.”
“What has it got in its hands?” asks one of the women.
“Nothing,” says a man.
“Barnaby wants to be friends,” I sign.
A woman puts something up in front of her face, and suddenly there is a big pop! It is so bright that I can’t see. I rub my eyes and walk forward.
“Don’t let him get too close,” says the other man. “No telling what kind of diseases he’s carrying.”
“Will you play with Barnaby?” I ask.
The first man picks up a rock and throws it at me.
“Shoo!” he yells. “Go away!”
He throws another rock, and I run back into the forest.
When it is black out, and they sit around the fire, I sneak as close as I can get, and lay down and listen to the sounds of their voices, and pretend I am back in the lab.
In the morning they throw rocks at me until I go away.
And then one day, after they throw the rocks at me and I go for water, I come back and find that they are gone. They were not very good friends, but they were the only o
nes I had.
What will I do now?
Finally, after many days, I find a single Barnaby, and it is a female. She has terrible scars on her from other Barnabys, and when she sees me she bares her teeth and growls. I sit still and hope that she will not go away.
After a long time she comes closer to me. I am afraid to move, because I do not want to frighten her or make her mad. I ignore her and stare off into the trees.
Finally she reaches out and picks an insect off my shoulder and puts it into her mouth, and soon she is sitting beside me, eating the flowers and leaves that have fallen to the ground.
Finally, when I am sure she will not run away, I sign to her, “I am Barnaby.”
She grabs at my hands as if I was playing with a fruit or an insect, then shows her teeth when she sees that I am not holding anything.
She is really not any smarter than Roger, but at least she does not run away from me.
I will call her Sally.
Sally is afraid of the other Barnabys, so we live at the edge of the forest, where they hardly ever come. She touches me, and that is very nice, but I find that I miss talking and thinking even more.
Every day I try to teach her to sign, but she cannot learn. We have three baby Barnabys, one after each rainy season, but they are no smarter than Sally, and besides I have forgotten most of the signs.
More and more People come to the forest in their brown cages. My family is afraid of them, but I love talking and listening and thinking more than anything. I always visit their camps at night, and listen to their voices in the darkness, and try to understand the words. I pretend I am back in the lab, though it is harder and harder to remember what the lab is like.
Each time there are new People I show myself and say “I am Barnaby,” but none of them ever answers. When one finally does, I will know that he is God.
There were many things I wanted to ask him once, but I cannot remember most of them. I will tell him to be nice to Sally and the other two People at the lab—I forget their names—because what has happened to me is not their fault.
I will not ask him why he hated me so much that he made me special, or why People and Barnabys always chase me away. I will just say, “Please talk to Barnaby,” and then I will ask if we can do a lesson.
Once, when I was a very bright fellow, there were many things I wanted to discuss with him. But now that I have left the world, that will be enough.
INTRODUCTION TO “A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE”
Nick DiChario
When Mike asked me to introduce a story from his Kirinyaga collection, I couldn’t have been more excited. Kirinyaga is one of my favorite books in the genre, and one of those rare classics that transcends the field. When people who don’t read science fiction tell me it’s because they “just can’t get into it,” I hand them a copy of Kirinyaga, and I don’t have to say, “Try this, it’s not really science fiction, so I think you’ll like it,” I can say, “Try this, it’s what science fiction is all about, and I know you’ll love it.”
So the first thing I did when Mike emailed me a copy of “A Little Knowledge” for review was delete the file, pull my treasured hardcover off the shelf, and read it cover-to-cover. The stories can certainly be read and appreciated individually, but I prefer to read them as one long story, languishing in their emotional progression, enjoying the whole as something greater than the parts.
Still, after many years and many readings, “A Little Knowledge” remains among my favorites. Like the other stories in the book, it’s about Koriba’s struggle to keep the Kikuyu traditions alive in his utopian Kirinyaga as the forces gather against him; but unlike the other stories, where Mike uses parables to illuminate the heart of the matter, the stories themselves are the heart of it. Only through stories, Mike tells us in this tale, can we come to know ourselves and others. Facts alone are not enough. Facts may present the surface of things, but the truth lies hidden somewhere underneath.
“There is poetry in my stories, a tradition to them. They reach out to our racial memory, of the way things were, and the way we hope to make them again,” Koriba tells his young apprentice Ndemi as his Kikuyu utopia is crumbling around him. Mike might have been referring to all the Kirinyaga stories when he channeled these words through our troubled Koriba, and all of us who dream that stories can somehow change the world. I can’t really state this as a fact. But I like to think it’s the underlying truth.
One of the charms (there aren’t many) in the Kirinyaga stories is that Koriba tells African fables to make his points. Given the structure of that artificial world, there had to come a day when someone argued that fables are not facts, and backed his arguments up with facts from the only computer on the planet. And when that someone is his chosen successor, Koriba finds out that “A Little Knowledge” can be a dangerous thing. This was a 1995 Hugo nominee for Best Novelette. (1995 was a very good year for me. I also had a Hugo winner with “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge,” a Hugo nominee with “Barnaby in Exile,” and I was also nominated for a Hugo as Best Editor.)
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN animals could speak.
Lions and zebras, elephants and leopards, birds and men all shared the earth. They labored side by side, they met and spoke of many things, they exchanged visits and gifts.
Then one day Ngai, who rules the universe from His throne atop Kirinyaga, which men now call Mount Kenya, summoned all of His creations to meet with Him.
“I have done everything I can to make life good for all My creatures,” said Ngai. The assembled animals and men began to sing His praises, but Ngai held up His hand, and they immediately stopped.
“I have made life too good for you,” He continued. “None among you has died for the past year.”
“What is wrong with that?” asked the zebra.
“Just as you are constrained by your natures,” said Ngai, “just as the elephant cannot fly and the impala cannot climb trees, so I cannot be dishonest. Since no one has died, I cannot feel compassion for you, and without compassion, I cannot water the savannah and the forest with my tears. And without water, the grasses and the trees will shrivel and die.”
There was much moaning and wailing from the creatures, but again Ngai silenced them.
“I will tell you a story,” He said, “and you must learn from it.
“Once there were two colonies of ants. One colony was very wise, and one colony was very foolish, and they lived next to each other. One day they received word that an aardvark, a creature that eats ants, was coming to their land. The foolish colony went about their business, hoping that the aardvark would ignore them and attack their neighbors. But the wise colony built a mound that could withstand even the efforts of an aardvark, and they gathered sugar and honey, and stockpiled it in the mound.
“When the aardvark reached the kingdom of the ants, he immediately attacked the wise ants, but the mound withstood his greatest efforts, and the ants within survived by eating their sugar and honey. Finally, after many fruitless days, the aardvark wandered over to the kingdom of the foolish ants, and dined well that evening.”
Ngai fell silent, and none of His creatures dared ask Him to speak further. Instead, they returned to their homes and discussed His story, and made their preparations for the coming drought.
A year passed, and finally the men decided to sacrifice an innocent goat, and that very day Ngai’s tears fell upon the parched and barren land. The next morning Ngai again summoned His creatures to the holy mountain.
“How have you fared during the past year?” He asked each of them.
“Very badly,” moaned the elephant, who was very thin and weak. “We did as you instructed us, and built a mound, and gathered sugar and honey—but we grew hot and uncomfortable within the mound, and there is not enough sugar and honey in all the world to feed a family of elephants.”
“We have fared even worse,” wailed the lion, who was even thinner, “for lions cannot eat sugar and honey at all, but must
have meat.”
And so it went, as each animal poured out its misery. Finally Ngai turned to the man and ask him the same question.
“We have fared very well,” replied the man. “We built a container for water, and filled it before the drought came, and we stockpiled enough grain to last us to this day.”
“I am very proud of you,” said Ngai. “Of all my creatures, only you understood my story.”
“It is not fair!” protested the other animals. “We built mounds and saved sugar and honey, as you told us to!”
“What I told you was a parable,” said Ngai, “and you have mistaken the facts of it for the truth that lay beneath. I gave you the power to think, but since you have not used it, I hereby take it away. And as a further punishment, you will no longer have the ability to speak, for creatures that do not think have nothing to say.”
And from that day forth, only man, among all Ngai’s creations, has had the power to think and speak, for only man can pierce through the facts to find the truth.
* * *
You think you know a person when you have worked with him and trained him and guided his thinking since he was a small boy. You think you can foresee his reactions to various situations. You think you know how his mind works.
And if the person in question has been chosen by you, selected from the mass of his companions and groomed for something special, as young Ndemi was selected and groomed by me to be my successor as the mundumugu—the witch doctor—to our terraformed world of Kirinyaga, the one thing you think above all else is that you possess his loyalty and his gratitude.
But even a mundumugu can be wrong.
I do not know exactly when or how it began. I had chosen Ndemi to be my assistant when he was still a kehee—an uncircumcized child—and I had worked diligently with him to prepare him for the position he would one day inherit from me. I chose him not for his boldness, though he feared nothing, nor for his enthusiasm, which was boundless, but rather for his intellect, for with the exception of one small girl, long since dead, he was by far the brightest of the children on Kirinyaga. And since we had emigrated to this world to create a Kikuyu paradise, far from the corrupt imitation of Europe that Kenya had become, it was imperative that the mundumugu be the wisest of men, for the mundumugu not only reads omens and casts spells, but is also the repository for the collected wisdom and culture of his tribe.
