by Mike Resnick
“She can speak,” said Jeremy with absolute conviction. “It’s just that no one can understand her language.”
“Oh?” said Elizabeth sardonically. “Just what language does she speak?”
“I don’t know,” murmured Jeremy. “It hasn’t been heard in three million years.”
“You’re sicker than I thought,” she said as he passed out again.
* * *
When he awoke, he felt good.
More than good. He felt better than he’d felt in years. For the first time since he’d contracted the virus, he felt ready to get up and seize the day.
And then, suddenly, the revelation hit him. He tried to sit up, but found he didn’t have the strength. A child looked in, saw him struggling, and called Elizabeth.
“What on earth is the matter with you, Jeremy?” she asked as she entered the hut.
“Nothing!” he said. “Absolutely nothing!”
She stared at him, puzzled.
“Don’t you understand?” he said excitedly. “There’s nothing wrong with me!”
“What are you talking about?”
“As soon as we get back to camp, I want you to run another blood test on me.”
She looked at him as if she expected him to foam at the mouth momentarily. “You don’t seriously believe that you’re no longer HIV positive, do you?”
“Just test me,” his voice reflecting his absolute conviction.
“There’s never been a single recorded case of a spontaneous cure, Jeremy.”
“It’s not spontaneous!” Jeremy said excitedly. “And no one records cures out here in the bush. She cured me, just like she’s cured so many others. That’s what she’s here for.”
“And just how do you think this old, illiterate woman, who is totally ignorant of all medicine and technology, cured your incurable disease?”
“She bit me.”
“You mean all I had to do all these months was bite you and you’d have become HIV negative?” said Elizabeth sarcastically.
“No. She had to do it.”
“She undoubtedly bit you because you scared her.”
A feeling of overwhelming fatigue swept over him, and he lay back on his pillow. “I feel very sorry for you,” he said.
“You feel sorry for me?” she repeated. “Why?”
“Because you know too many facts and too little truth,” he said as he struggled to remain awake. “You’ll test my blood, and because you don’t believe in Bibi, you’ll take two or three more samples before you acknowledge what your tests tell you.”
He could almost feel a rough, calloused hand run tenderly through his hair as he dropped off to sleep once more.
* * *
Jeremy was outside, chopping firewood, working up a sweat and feeling great about it, when Elizabeth called him over to her hut.
“What is it?” he asked when he arrived.
She held up the spark plugs, strung together on a thread of scarlet ribbon.
“What happened?”
“I left some costume jewelry outside the hut,” said Elizabeth. “She came during the night and accepted the trade.” She grimaced. “They cost me a cultured pearl necklace and a silver-plated bracelet.”
“I think both sides made a good trade,” said Jeremy.
He looked across the village, past all the huts, toward the bush.
Thank you, Bibi. I will probably never see you again, but I owe you my life, and I will dedicate it to helping your other children.
* * *
They had been back in camp for a day. Jeremy had put in a long morning tending patients and passing out food, and was sitting on a camp chair just outside his tent, reading a 10-month-old copy of The New Yorker, when Elizabeth appeared.
“I tested your blood,” she announced.
“And?”
“I couldn’t culture HIV from your blood if I had all the resources of the Mayo Clinic here.” She paused and stared at him. “You got your miracle, Jeremy. You’re clean. HIV negative.”
Suddenly tears welled up and spilled down his cheeks. For just an instant he thought he could feel Bibi’s hand tighten around his, a mother reassuring a child who has been desperately ill.
“I told you,” he said at last.
“I didn’t believe you then, and I don’t believe you now,” answered Elizabeth. “But whoever and whatever she is, she’s worth her weight in gold to us.” She paused thoughtfully. “She’s why they said that Kabute wouldn’t have died if they could have gotten him back home—because she was there waiting for him. And she’s probably why we saw that fatally ill woman’s lesions shrink and the thrush go away.”
Jeremy grinned. “‘Probably,’ hell! Of course it was her. And now I’m going to live. I’m going to live forever and ever!”
* * *
The next morning was cool and clear, and they decided to eat breakfast outside. The crackling of the eggs and bacon frying attracted a small troop of vervet monkeys, and a black African kite swooped down from a limb above the fire and swiped a piece of bread right out of Jeremy’s hand.
“They’re such rogues,” said Elizabeth as the kite flew away with its prize.
“Well, it’s nice to know that something on this continent isn’t endangered,” remarked Jeremy.
She watched the kite for another moment, then turned to Jeremy. “I’ve been giving Bibi a lot of thought.”
“And?” asked Jeremy.
“We’ve got to go back and find her,” answered Elizabeth. “I’d kill for the chance to have AIDS researchers examine her. I still don’t know that I buy your story about her curing you with a bite, but whatever happened, she obviously gave you some biochemical agent that kills the HIV virus.” She looked at Jeremy wryly. “It’ll never replace the Salk vaccine, but there’s simply no other explanation. I’ve got to find her and bring her to the camp.”
“She’s not a lab animal,” replied Jeremy seriously. “She’s got to remain free to do her job.”
“Her job?”
“She has other children to cure.”
“You’re not a child.”
“We’re all her children.”
“That again,” said Elizabeth with a sigh.
“You don’t have to believe it,” said Jeremy, protecting his bacon as the kite swooped down toward his plate. “It’s enough that I do.”
“You’re not being logical, Jeremy.”
“I was logical my whole life, and what did it get me, except some money I don’t need and an incurable disease?” replied Jeremy. “Why don’t you really look at Uganda sometime? This is a magical place, for all its problems. Spit a mango pit out the window of your Land Rover, and when you drive by six months later a mango tree has grown up. Amin and his successors virtually wiped out your wildlife, yet all the animals are returning. Terminally ill people suddenly get cured. So how can I not believe in magic?”
“There’s nothing magical about Bibi.”
“I think there is,” said Jeremy. “Leave her alone.”
“I can’t,” protested Elizabeth. “Not until I’ve studied her, and found out how she does it. We may never find anything like her again.”
“Think of her,” he said. “What kind of life do you think she’d have, shuttling from clinic to clinic, facing all those vampires in white coats that not even a mother could love?” He paused. “Let her stay in the bush. These people won’t tell. Besides, you have me: a certified HIV-negative volunteer at your disposal.” He stared unblinking into her deep brown eyes. “Let her go, Elizabeth.”
“You know I can’t. We could save millions of people.” She zeroed in for the kill. “Or isn’t that important to you, now that you’ve been cured?”
“You know that’s not true!” he snapped heatedly.
He was going to say more, tell her how unfair that statement was, how no true friend would ever even suggest it. But a little voice in his head intervened: Could she be right? Am I just pretending to believe in Bibi’s powers? Do I real
ly feel now that I’m cured that no one else matters?
He searched his soul, which he had not done for a long time, because he hadn’t especially liked what he had found there. This time he couldn’t find what he was afraid might be lurking in its darker recesses.
Well, I know it’s a lie, he thought with satisfaction; no sense trying to convince you, too.
“All I know is that we’re going to dig ten more graves tomorrow morning,” responded Elizabeth, “and ten the day after that, and ten the day after that, and we’re going to keep digging them until we’ve either beaten this disease or every last victim has died. Now, here’s a woman who may, just may, have a cure for it. Do you really think I can let her go?”
He stared at her for a very long moment. “No,” he said softly. “I know you can’t.”
“Then come with me while I search for her,” continued Elizabeth. “She helped you. Maybe she won’t be so frightened if she sees that you’re with me.”
He stared at his plate for a long moment, considering his answer. The kite hovered overhead, and finally settled for a scrap of bacon that had fallen in the dirt by the fire.
“All right, I’ll come,” he said at last. “But we won’t find her.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because you’re antithetical to her. She’s magic brought forth from the spirit of this land, and you’re science and logic and doubt educated thousands of miles away.”
“Science will save a lot more people than she can once I find out just what it is that she does,” said Elizabeth.
He shook his head sadly. “You still don’t see, do you?”
“See what?”
“Science needs her,” said Jeremy. “She doesn’t need science. Never has, never will.” He sighed deeply. “You and she are oil and water, and your worlds touch only briefly in passing. That’s why you’ll never find her.”
“We’ll see,” said Elizabeth grimly.
* * *
They spent the next three months following up every rumor, every imagined sighting of an old woman who performed feats of medical magic.
They scoured the Virunga Volcanos and came away empty-handed. They thought they found her tracks in the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon, but they never saw her. They stopped back at camp only long enough to take on fresh supplies, then went to the arid semi-desert in the north of the Karamojong country, and west to the aptly-named Impenetrable Forest. They spent a week at Murchison’s Falls, only to discover that the old lady they were tracking was a Buganda witch woman who was missing an eye and part of an ear.
Everywhere they went they questioned the local people. Far from showing the symptoms of the “Thinning Disease,” almost all of them glowed with health and fervently denied ever having seen anyone who remotely resembled Bibi. Jeremy got the distinct impression that they were secretly laughing at the two relief workers.
Finally Elizabeth admitted defeat and returned to camp. Jeremy tended the sick and the dying for another week, and then asked to see her privately.
“Well?” she said, when the two of them were alone in her tent.
“I’ve made up my mind,” he announced. “I’m leaving.”
“You mean you’re going home?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m staying in Uganda.”
“Then I don’t understand…”
“All we’re doing here is prolonging doomed lives,” said Jeremy. “I came here to save some.”
Suddenly Elizabeth’s eyes widened with comprehension. “You’re going out after Bibi!”
“That’s right.”
“But we’ve just spent three months looking for her. What makes you think you can find her?”
He didn’t want to answer that, for fear of hurting her, but finally he did. “I’ll be alone.”
“You think that makes a difference?” she said caustically.
“Yes, I do.” Okay, so you can’t be hurt if you don’t believe.
“You’re a fool!” she snapped. “Where will you go? In what direction will you look? How will you feed yourself?”
“I’ll get by,” he said. “And I won’t have to find her. She’ll find me.”
“You’ll starve to death, or run into a leopard or a hyena, or drink the wrong water or eat the wrong food,” said Elizabeth. “You can’t survive alone in the bush.”
“I didn’t realize you thought so little of me,” he said wryly.
“It’s because I think so much of you that I don’t want you dead.”
“It’s my decision—and if AIDS can’t kill me, neither will anything else this land has to offer.” He withdrew a handwritten document and placed it on her table. “This turns over all my investments to the camp.” Suddenly he grinned. “The Notary Public’s hut wasn’t open for business today, but I think it’ll stand up in court.”
Elizabeth walked to the door of the tent and looked out at the busy camp, then turned back to Jeremy. “You’re giving everything up for a dream. Won’t you reconsider?”
He shook his head. “If I reconsidered, I might agree that it was nothing but a dream and stay here. And then I’d miss the chance to help her perform her magic.”
“We don’t need magic,” she replied impatiently. “If this crisis is solved, it will be solved by science.”
“To me it’s all magic, and who’s to say that yours is any more potent than hers? Science couldn’t cure me, but Bibi could.”
“Damn it, Jeremy, you’re chasing a will-o-the-wisp. She’s just an old woman, not some mythical creature with awesome powers of healing.”
“She cured me with a bite,” he said. “How can I not believe in that?”
“We don’t know that that’s what cured you,” insisted Elizabeth. “She could have administered any number of medications while you were delirious.”
“She could have,” he agreed. “But she didn’t.”
Elizabeth paused and look at him sadly. “Isn’t there anything I can say?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Say ‘Good luck.’”
She was still staring at him silently as he left her tent.
* * *
Bibi walked through the bush, senses alert to the hidden presence of predators. There were so many children, far more than she dreamed possible. She could feel their cries, their hunger, their pain, and she knew that she had much work to do before she could rest again.
Suddenly she heard a twig break, and she crouched, ready to race to safety. A man was approaching noisily, making no attempt to hide his presence, frightening birds and monkeys with every step.
Her first inclination was to run, but some secret instinct made her stay—and then she saw a familiar face, a face that reflected the unselfish love that was written across her own.
“Hi, Mom,” said the man, holding a dried apricot out to her. “I’ve brought you a present.”
INTRODUCTION TO “THE LAND OF NOD”
Lou Anders
Mike Resnick’s Kirinyaga tales are not only among the best of his substantial oeuvre, but are among the best of science fiction narratives in general. Collectively, the Kirinyaga sequence makes up one of my personal top ten favorite science fiction novels of all time. I recommend it constantly, both to active readers of the field who have yet to experience it, and to newcomers looking for an accessible but quality introduction to science fiction’s relevance and power. The issues that the Kirinyaga stories explore—the battle between maintaining cultural identity and the changes that come with progress and globalization—are no less relevant today than they were when the tales were originally penned. Nor do the stories offer easy answers to complicated questions. The protagonist, Koriba, is a tremendous character, not in spite of but because of the fact that we can be equal parts admiring of and horrified by him. He commits horrible acts, some atrocities by our standards, but there are truths in his conviction that we cannot help but acknowledge. No matter that science fiction is the “literature of ideas,” it is still character that forms the
basis of all great and lasting works, and Koriba is one of the greatest characters in the history of the field. Of the stories he recounts across the Kirinyaga tales, the first and the last are the two that resonate the strongest with me, so I’m honored to introduce the concluding story here. There is something so tragic, and so appropriate, in this last tale of Koriba, when his exacting standards have reduced him to being a mundu-mugu of a tribe of one. “I am the last true Kikuyu,” Koriba says, and his ending is no less sad for his own failure to recognize it as such. Heart-wrenching, powerful, relevant, tragic, at times quite humorous, always engrossing—“The Land of Nod” is everything that typifies great science fiction.
The Kirinyaga stories needed a coda. The readers had been living with Koriba for almost a decade, and they had an interest in what happened to him after he turned his back on the world he tried to shape. What does a rebel do when there is no longer anything to rebel against, when he walks out of Eden? The answer was “The Land of Nod”, which was a Hugo nominee for Best Novelette in 1997.
THE LAND OF NOD
ONCE, MANY YEARS AGO, THERE was a Kikuyu warrior who left his village and wandered off in search of adventure. Armed only with a spear, he slew the mighty lion and the cunning leopard. Then one day he came upon an elephant. He realized that his spear was useless against such a beast, but before he could back away or find cover, the elephant charged.
His only hope was divine intervention, and he begged Ngai, who rules the universe from His throne atop Kirinyaga, the holy mountain that men now call Mount Kenya, to find him and pluck him from the path of the elephant.
But Ngai did not respond, and the elephant picked the warrior up with its trunk and hurled him high into the air, and he landed in a distant thorn tree. His skin was badly torn by the thorns, but at least he was safe, since he was on a branch some twenty feet above the ground.
After he was sure the elephant had left the area, the warrior climbed down. Then he returned home and ascended the holy mountain to confront Ngai.
“What is it that you want of me?” asked Ngai, when the warrior had reached the summit.
“I want to know why you did not come,” said the warrior angrily. “All my life I have worshiped you and paid tribute to you. Did you not hear me ask for your help?”
