by Mike Resnick
Jeremy shut his eyes as he considered this revelation. Achole and Ibo. Elizabeth would have had about as much in common with Paul as if she’d been a nice Jewish girl who fell in love with Moammar Quadafi.
“Sorry,” he muttered. At this rate, he’d have to make a tape or something: “Jeremy Harris—His Greatest Apologies!” and play it as needed.
A hippo grunted, much closer than before, and Jeremy peered into the dark, trying to spot it with no success. They weren’t carnivores, but they killed a lot of people who got in their way at nights.
Elizabeth spat on the ground, all the chic, all the European gone from her for a moment. “We had such plans. He was going to establish the best medical clinic in Africa, and I would be a high-profile spokeswoman or fund-raiser, probably both. We were going to be a bridge between the nations, Paul and I—and since he was the man, and that counts for more than you can imagine on this continent, we set up shop in his country.” She sighed, and her shoulders looked bony, not elegant, not any more. “I tried. I did my best. I stuck it out long enough to be called a useless Achole bitch.”
“By him?”
“By everyone. Including him.”
Jeremy wanted to reach for the letter, but managed to control himself. “Then what?”
“I applied to medical school myself. My O-levels were good. I’d taken a First in university. Given Harvard’s admission policies, I knew I could get in as a special student, then move on to med school. When I was done, I took my money and built the relief camp, and cajoled a few doctors into coming back to Uganda, and sold space to a few people like you, who were willing to pay to work here for whatever their personal reasons.” She paused. “It was important to me when the camp became a reality. I collected all my clippings and sent them to Paul.”
“Where is he now?”
“Nigeria. Or maybe hell, for all I know. There’s not much difference between the two. I read last month that there’s yet another revolution there; maybe they’ll shoot him this time.” Again she poked at the fire.
Jeremy watched her face in the flickering firelight. All I ever saw before tonight was the model’s looks and the cool, competent exterior, he mused. I guess we’re all of us trapped inside our bodies. Even someone as beautiful and accomplished as Elizabeth,
“Nigeria will do just fine without him,” she concluded after a long silence. “It doesn’t need a savior.” She stared into the fire again. “I just wish I knew why Uganda is cursed.”
“Uganda’s not unique,” replied Jeremy. “All the African countries have AIDS.”
“We’re unique,” she said adamantly. “First Amin, then the other butchers, and now this. You know, Kenya has a high HIV incidence, almost as high as ours—but their people aren’t dying like ours. I’ve even heard former colonials in Nairobi, sitting at their lily-white bars and restaurants, complaining about it. They thought AIDS would return Kenya to them, but hardly anyone’s dying and they feel cheated! And here, right next door, in the most beautiful, fertile land on the continent, we’re lost entire villages.” A look of fury spread across her face. “It’s just not fair!”
“Maybe we should learn from other countries instead of resenting them,” said Jeremy, while deep within him a tiny voice protested in outrage.
“Their time will come,” she replied. “What we need is more information. Sooner or later, we’re going to find out what it is about non-progressors that makes them fight the disease better. Sooner or later, we’re going to find someone with natural immunity…”
“God help the poor sucker,” said Jeremy. “You’ll make a lab rat out of him for sure.”
A rich lab rat. A celebrity lab rat. There’d be fortunes to be made from an AIDS vaccine—if you’d lost enough of your soul to charge what the market would bear. The market, of course, being guys like him, not women like the ones lying two huts over, fighting off fever and the long defeat of their lives.
“Or her,” she replied. “Who knows? Maybe this old woman’s mother is the one. She’s certainly lived long enough.”
“So where is she?”
“Who knows?” Elizabeth frowned. “I’ve been away a long time. My clothing’s wrong, my accent’s wrong, even my magic’s wrong. They don’t trust me.”
They sat in silence by the flickering firelight for a few more moments. Finally Elizabeth yawned, stretching like one of the children. Jeremy smiled at her. I’m sorry that you hurt, but I like you even better now that I know you’re human. Maybe he and Elizabeth could adopt each other or something. He could be Uncle Jeremy to any children she would eventually have. If he lived long enough to see her meet a man with more sense than Paul. Not wisely, but too well, Jeremy thought. That went for both of them.
“I really am going to bunk in the truck,” he said, picking up his sleeping bag. “The hut’s too stuffy for me, even if does get cold out here, and this way I can keep an eye on things.”
“While you’re sound asleep?” asked Elizabeth. He’d rather hoped she’d be too sleepy to be sarcastic.
“Good night,” he told her and trudged wearily toward the battered truck. He spread out his bedding on the back of the truck. If anything tried to get him, he’d at least hear it coming, and he still had the pistol, just in case.
* * *
Jeremy jolted instantly awake, his heart pounding, his body drenched. But this wasn’t fever.
Something was watching him.
He forced himself back into stillness, keeping his eyes shut. His hand, hidden beneath his head, gently released the safety on the pistol. Leopard or bandit or whatever, whatever tried to attack him was going to be very, very surprised, and then very, very dead.
Steady there. Play possum. He slowly opened his eyes. When they adjusted to the darkness, he glanced stealthily about. A tiny blot of shadow detached itself from the doorway of the sick woman’s hut and paused, staring at the truck.
Dammit, those kids had no business wandering around here at night! He’d seen the fence around the old man’s grave. Maybe the local scavengers would like live meat for a change. The children seemed eager to provide it.
You know perfectly well why their mothers can’t watch the kids, he told himself. They’re sick or they’re dying. Probably both. Never mind what Elizabeth had said about miracles. The fact that her parents had survived the madness of Idi Amin had made her a cock-eyed optimist.
He’d give the kid five minutes, Jeremy decided. Five. If it didn’t do its business in the bush or wherever, then go back into the hut, he personally would escort it back to its mother.
Wait. Don’t move.
The shadow detached itself from the shelter of the hut and moved out into the clearing, toward the fenced-in grave. It squatted there, and Jeremy could see the tremors that shook it. No, shook her. Had one of the little ones been a girl? He couldn’t remember. There’d been so many children, each to be greeted with a grin and a loop of scarlet ribbon as long as supplies held out, that sometimes he didn’t look at them as the individuals they were—or that they would grow into if they lucked out and lived.
This was a girl, barely four feet tall. Much too small to be out alone. He gathered himself to leap down from the truck and take the child in charge.
Not yet.
The child’s shoulders shook. Why, she’s crying for her father! Jeremy’s own eyes filled. He blinked frantically, and when his sight cleared, he found that the child had turned around.
And it was no child.
It had the face of a withered old woman—with eyes that seemed filled with love and compassion.
This is crazy! Africa’s finally got to me. I must be hallucinating. How can you look at a pair of eyes, especially in that ancient face, and read compassion or anything else into them?
A cough came from the darkness of the forest, a cough and a rush of paws, followed by a squall of pure rage as the child with the ancient face beat at the predator with a club. Finally Jeremy could make out her attacker: a small, scrawny leopard, made bold
by its hunger.
No time for waiting now. Jeremy grabbed for the pistol, aimed as best he could, and fired.
The explosion woke up the village. Jeremy built a huge fire and reconnoitered, pursued by Elizabeth’s ironic comments about mighty hunters. A trail of blood and pawprints led back to the bush and vanished there. Upon returning, he insisted on seeing all the children and counting them, and trying fruitlessly to determine which of them had been the one that had beaten off the leopard.
Gradually, the infants stopped screaming. The sick woman in the hut stopped moaning for “Bibi.” She even consented to drink some broth and put on a T-shirt that had been donated by Elizabeth.
Finally the village quieted down and went back to sleep. After a long, long while, so did Jeremy. If anyone ventured outside, he didn’t hear it—or anything else.
In the morning, he found that the truck’s radio and spark plugs were missing.
“Why would anyone take them?” he asked Elizabeth. “It’s not as if this was telephone wire or something they could use for ornaments. The radio’s no good to anyone without a power source, and the plugs are totally useless—unless someone thought they’d look cute stuck through his ears.” He paused. “If they don’t turn up, we’re in deep shit: no transportation and no way of calling for help.”
“All we can do is ask,” replied Elizabeth wearily.
She walked over to the old woman’s hut and entered it.
“Good morning,” she said with a smile as the old woman looked up from the daughter-in-law she had been tending.
“Jambo, Memsaab,” responded the woman.
“That is a very formal greeting. I would much rather you called me Elizabeth.”
“But you are always formal, and don’t call me by my name,” the old woman pointed out.
“I apologize, Maroka,” said Elizabeth. “I did not mean to offend.”
“I am sure you did not.” Maroka reached out and touched Elizabeth’s arm gently. “You are a good person, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth finally looked down at the younger woman—and almost did a double-take. Her eyes were alert and animated, and she was no longer covered with sweat. Elizabeth reached out a hand, feeling for signs of the fever, and finding none.
“Has she eaten?”
“Yes, Elizabeth,” answered Maroka. “She has had posho and milk. She asked for pombe, but I decided she should not have any until tomorrow.”
Elizabeth examined the young woman for another few minutes, then straightened up. “It’s amazing,” she said at last. “My medicine has never been able to do this before.”
“Your medicine did not save her,” said Maroka. “It was Bibi’s magic.”
“Bibi came here last night?” asked Elizabeth.
“Yes.”
“Where is she now?”
“Hiding,” answered Maroka. “She is shy of strangers. She will be back after you have left.”
Elizabeth glanced out the door, wondering where Bibi might be. Then her eyes fell on the truck, and she remembered the purpose of her visit.
“There is a problem, Maroka,” she said. “This morning we have found that certain things are missing from the truck. We must have them back, or the truck will not run.”
“A monkey took them, Elizabeth,” suggested Maroka. “Or perhaps a baboon.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you have many other villages to visit, and nobody in this village would want to keep you from your work. We know it is important.”
Elizabeth frowned. In a culture where no one ever spoke harshly or said anything unpleasant, Maroka’s answer was the closest she would come to: “Because we don’t want you here, and would never do anything to keep you from leaving.”
“We still have food and medicine to give you,” said Elizabeth.
“We have food, so it is best that your food go to a less fortunate village,” replied Maroka. “And we have no need of your medicine. Bibi’s magic is much stronger.”
“I really want to meet her,” said Elizabeth, “and learn about her magic.”
“I think she is afraid of you.”
“Please help me,” said Elizabeth earnestly. “She is an old woman who will probably never travel ten miles from here. Whatever magic she performs is needed all across Uganda.”
Maroka paused and considered what she had heard. “That is true,” she said at last. “I will tell her what you said, Elizabeth.”
“Thank you.”
“But I do not think she will come.”
“Please ask her anyway,” said Elizabeth. She inspected the younger woman one more time and then left the hut. She rejoined Jeremy, who was still rummaging under the hood of the truck, searching for further damage.
“Well?” he asked. “Does she know where our spark plugs and radio are?”
“I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so,” said Elizabeth.
“It took you fifteen minutes to come to that conclusion?” he asked sardonically.
“It took fifteen seconds,” she said. “The rest of the time we talked about medicine. Or magic.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“That young woman—the one I thought would be dead by today—is one hundred percent better.”
“What did you give her?” asked Jeremy.
“Nothing I haven’t given hundreds of other patients,” said Elizabeth, frowning. “I’m thrilled that she’s recovering—but everything I know about medicine says she shouldn’t be.”
“And they think it’s magic?” asked Jeremy. “Even though they saw you administer the medications?”
“Evidently Bibi came by last night and laid a spell on her,” said Elizabeth.
“A spell?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “A leaf. A plant. Some kind of flower. I don’t know what. But Maroka’s convinced that she’s the one who saved the young woman.” Elizabeth frowned. “Hell, for all I know, Maroka’s right. That’s why I want to find her, even more than I want to find our spark plugs. If this woman has stumbled on some kind of miracle cure, I want to know about it.”
“Maybe they’re right,” said Jeremy. “Maybe it is magic.”
“Nonsense!” she snapped. “There’s no such thing!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jeremy. “To create penicillin out of bread mold seems like magic to me. Or to take a piece of silicon and make it think faster and more accurately than a man, that’s magic too. You’re too concerned with process, Elizabeth, when it’s the result that counts. If the old lady’s mother can cure people by magic or any other means, I’d bring her a batch of sick people instead of trying to steal her secrets.”
“I don’t like what you’re accusing me of, Jeremy,” said Elizabeth sharply. “All I want to know is what she’s doing to make them well—if indeed she’s doing anything at all—and then I want to find out how to synthesize it, bottle it and distribute it.”
“Maybe it can’t be done.”
“You give me the facts, and I’ll do it.”
“To quote Don Quixote, facts are the enemies of truth.”
“That’s romantic drivel,” said Elizabeth. “Facts are all there is.”
“Not around here,” he replied.
“Oh?”
He smiled. “Ask the villagers: There’s magic, too.”
“Are you trying to be argumentative?” she demanded.
“Some unseen old lady may be going around curing people of AIDS,” answered Jeremy. “All you’re concerned with is how she does it, and all I’m concerned with is getting her to do it again. Now, if that’s argumentative…”
“No,” replied Elizabeth thoughtfully. “No, I suppose it isn’t, really. You’ve got a vested interest in being cured; I’ve got one in finding out how to cure people. Our approaches are bound to differ.”
“I grew up on Peter Pan and Mother Goose and Mowgli and Oz, and you grew up with facts and figures and slaughtered villages,” replied Jeremy. “Of course our approaches are different.”
“You simply will not understand!” she said irritably.
“No,” he admitted. “But show me a cure and I might believe.”
She angrily turned away from him and strode off into the village, where a clap of her hands summoned all the children from their huts. Those few who were wearing clothes twisted them as they stood in a ragged, uneasy line, expecting the worst from the two strangers, one white and one black.
“All right, believer,” said Elizabeth to Jeremy. “You can tell them what we lost.” It would be a stretch in kitchen Swahili, but walking back to the relief camp was a far less attractive alternative.
A few adults gathered around to chuckle in amusement at Jeremy’s awkward descriptions of the things that were missing. The children’s eyes simply widened and they looked from one to another.
Then Elizabeth walked up and down the row of children, studying each in turn. Finally she stopped before the tallest of the boys, who had long since outgrown his Michael Jordan t-shirt and was wearing a filthy, tattered Muhammed Ali t-shirt from another era.
“You know, don’t you?” she said. “I can see it on your face. You know who took those things.”
The boy’s bare feet scuffed in the dust. He muttered something.
“I can’t hear you,” said Elizabeth.
“Bibi took them.”
“His mother?” interjected Jeremy, puzzled.
“Perhaps,” answered Elizabeth. “In formal Swahili, bibi can also mean grandmother.”
“You mean Maroka?” asked Jeremy, surprised.
There were indignant protests from the healthier of the two wives, who had come out to watch. From Maroka there was only a haughty lift of the head.
Elizabeth turned back to the child. “I want you to tell me where our things are. We can’t go home without them.”
More sidelong, wary glances, child to child.
Elizabeth left the boy and stopped in front of a girl who was no more than six or seven years old. She didn’t say a word, just stared at her. The girl kicked the red dirt nervously with her bare feet and refused to meet Elizabeth’s gaze.
“Do you know?” Elizabeth finally asked her.
