Kilimanjaro: A Fable of Utopia

by Mike Resnick

  Ten years after the publication of Kirinyaga, the most-awarded science fiction book in history, comes this companion novella by 5-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick.

  The Kikuyu tribe of East Africa attempted to create a Utopia on the terraformed planetoid Kirinyaga, which was named for the mountain where their god lives. Things went wrong. Now, a century later, the Maasai tribe has studied Kirinyaga’s history, has analyzed their mistakes, and is ready to create a Maasai Utopia on the planetoid Kilimanjaro, named for the mountain where their god lives.

  This is the story of that experiment.

  Kilimanjaro: A Fable of Utopia Copyright © 2008 by Kirinyaga, Inc.

  Dust jacket Copyright © 2008 by]. K. Potter. All rights reserved.

  Interior design Copyright © 2008 by Desert Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.

  First Edition

  ISBN

  978-1-59606-199-6

  Subterranean Press

  PO Box 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  www.subterraneanpress.com

  For Carol, as always,

  and for

  Janis Ian, the kid sister I never had

  &

  Lesley Ainge, the granddaughter I never had.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  (2234 A.D.)

  1

  Sunrise on Kilimanjaro (2234 A.D.)

  2

  Morning on Kilimanjaro (2235 A.D.)

  3

  Mid-Morning on Kilimanjaro (2236 A.D.)

  4

  Noon on Kilimanjaro (2237 A.D.)

  5

  Afternoon on Kilimanjaro (2238 A.D.)

  6

  Twilight on Kilimanjaro (2239 A.D.)

  7

  Night on Kilimanjaro (2240 A.D.)

  8

  A New Dawn on Kilimanjaro (2241-2243 A.D.)

  PROLOGUE (2234 A.D.)

  THE most impressive sight in Africa is the snow-capped peak of mighty Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain on the continent. The greatest elephant that ever lived was killed on Kilimanjaro’s southern slopes, and my people believed that En-kai, our god, dwells at the summit. On a clear day it can be seen from more than seventy miles away. There was a time when the mountain was home to more than a million animals, as well as to the Maasai people. Elephants, rhinos, and buffalo rubbed shoulders beneath the acacia trees, while lions and leopards lay in wait for unsuspecting antelope by the water holes. Areas where the slopes flattened out were covered by our manyattas.

  But that was long ago.

  There are no more animals on the mountain, and precious few people. Today the Maasai live on another Kilimanjaro, and it is this Kilimanjaro that I have been tasked to tell you about.

  It was in the year 2122 A.D. that the Eutopian worlds were terraformed in orbit around Earth, and the Eutopian Council allowed seventy-three groups, each striving to create their own cultural Utopia, to charter the seventy-three worlds. Not all of the worlds fared as well as they had hoped. The Communist world went bankrupt; a Moslem world erupted into a brutal civil war; a fundamentalist Christian world waited for God to provide rather than tilling their fields and planting their crops and did not ask for help until most of them had starved to death. Other worlds had other problems. Some overcame them and flourished; some were overwhelmed and eventually abandoned.

  But there was one world that interested my people above all others, and that was Kirinyaga, the only Eutopian world settled by an African tribe—the Kikuyu. And since the Maasai have shared Kenya with the Kikuyu for millennia, we studied every aspect of the planetoid and its society, every triumph and every failure, determined to learn from their mistakes.

  In the early days, under the leadership of a man named Koriba, there were far more failures than triumphs. Indeed, it was only after Koriba returned to Kenya that Kirinyaga began to function cohesively…and yet, somewhere along the way, they had forgotten the purpose of the Eutopian worlds, which was to create a true cultural Utopia. Kirinyaga is now 112 years old and still thriving, but in truth it is thriving as an extension of Kenya, not as an independent world that is correcting all the inequities of Kenyan, or even Kikuyu, society.

  My people were finally awarded a Eutopian world in 2234 A.D., after many years, even decades, of lobbying. Since the Kikuyu had named their world for the mountain upon which their god dwelt, we decided to do the same—and no one can deny that Kilimanjaro is the more imposing mountain of the two, just as En-kai was thought to be a more powerful god than the Kikuyu’s Ngai.

  Upon receiving our charter, we worked closely with the terraformers, deciding upon the contours and make-up the landscape, which animals and birds to clone, which vegetation would cover the ground. We also decided, as I mentioned, that before we emigrated to Kilimanjaro we would make a thorough study of Kirinyaga’s history so we could avoid all of the mistakes that they had made.

  Understanding and pinpointing those mistakes is part of my job. I am David ole Saitoti, which means “David, son of Saitoti”, and I am, by profession, an historian. I was one of a half dozen assigned to study all aspects of Kirinyaga, and since I’m the only one who chose to emigrate to Kilimanjaro, I have been entrusted with the task of recording Kilimanjaro’s history.

  Merely inhabiting an empty world is a monumental chore. Turning that world into a Maasai Utopia is an even greater one. I do not expect to be able to write a daily diary, but I will codify the more important episodes in our early history as time allows.

  I don’t yet know exactly what shape our Utopia will take, but with all the examples we have to learn from, and especially from Kirinyaga, I know this much:

  This time we will do it right.

  1

  SUNRISE ON

  KILIMANJARO (2234 A.D.)

  THE Kikuyu were slaves to their tradition, and this was a mistake we were determined to avoid. One size doesn’t fit all, and neither does one way of life.

  The Maasai were among the last people on Earth to break with tradition, and for those who still chose to live the traditional pastoral lifestyle, we arranged for fully half of Kilimanjaro to be open grazing land.

  Before the coming of the Europeans, almost every African tribe used cattle as currency. A bride would cost so many cattle, a chief would penalize a wrongdoer so many cattle, and so on. For the Maasai the cattle were even more important, for most of us, and especially our elmoran—our young warriors—lived on a mixture of the blood and milk. When our religious ceremonies required it we would sacrifice a steer or a cow and cook and eat it, but their primary purpose was to serve as currency and to provide blood and milk.

  The Westernized Maasai cast aside their red blankets and began wearing slacks, shirts, dresses, and suits. They rid their heads of their red ocher paints, they traded their cattle for cash and their spears for briefcases. And yet they were Maasai too, and had to be accommodated.

  So we had manyattas for the traditionalists, and cities for the rest of us. There were some farms as well, for while many Maasai chose to exist solely on the milk, blood and meat of their cattle, others had grown used to a Western diet.

  There are five cities on our world. I have read much speculation concerning that number: some feel five is a mystic number to the Maasai, some say we had wanted to build more cities but were denied funding, and I have even read one so-called scholar who opined that we could count no higher than the five fingers on our hand. (Evidently he never realized that Maasai are born with two hands—or perhaps he had only one, and assumed that everyone else did also.)

  Anyway, the truth is much simpler than the speculations: the Maasai are comprised of five clans—the ilmakesen, il-laiser, il-molelian, il-taarrosero, and il-ikumai, and we built a city f
or each of them, though of course no one is restricted to the city of his clan.

  Immigration is encouraged, for we have a world to fill. Each potential new citizen is given an orientation course, for we don’t want anyone deciding once they arrive that this is not the Utopia they had hoped for. Part of that indoctrination is a holo of all aspects of life on Kilimanjaro, those that exist and those that are anticipated, so there will be no surprises. Another part is a documentary holo—a re-creation, actually, since nothing Western was allowed there, including cameras—of the first two decades of Kirinyaga’s history, so they can see how the best of intentions can go wrong, and hopefully understand that when certain laws and rules are made and enforced it isn’t done in an idealistic vacuum, but because we have learned from others’ mistakes.

  We are so sure that Kilimanjaro will prove to be the one world that actually fulfills its Utopian promise, that we have decided we need a policy to determine who will receive favored status for immigration once we have filled our empty plains and cities. In fact, this is the first major decision the Council of Elders will have to make.

  The Eutopian Council, which gave us our charter, gently hinted that they would like to see a democracy develop on Kilimanjaro, and perhaps someday it will, but only if it evolves out of the Maasai tradition, and that tradition is to bring all disputes to the elders of the tribe. Local problems are dealt with by local Councils, but since the problem of immigration concerns the entire world, in this case the Council is composed of one Elder from each of the five cities, and two from the land of the manyattas.

  The first question was: who may immigrate to Kilimanjaro once we have reached fifty percent of our capacity?

  The answer was simple: this is a Maasai world, so at that point only Maasai may immigrate.

  The next question was more difficult: who is a Maasai?

  Those who had always tended their cattle and lived in their huts on their manyattas are traditional Maasai, but these days, in the 23rd century of the Christian era, they comprise no more than twenty percent of our population. Most of the Maasai have moved to the great cities such as Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, Naivasha and Dodoma, and have interbred—is that the right word? It is the most accurate, though I think the Council prefers “intermarried”—with members of other races: the Kikuyu, the Luo, the Nandi, the Zanake, and more.

  The Council debated this for four days, and decided that anyone with one-half Maasai blood is a Maasai.

  That was when we began to see that no problem is that easily solved in Utopia.

  Joshua ole Saibull, who had been an attorney back on Earth, and whose mother was Indian, argued that this was a distinction that would disenfranchise future generations.

  When asked how, this is what he replied:

  “I myself am half Maasai. My wife’s father was a Rendille, and her mother a Maasai. So it is clear that we are each half Maasai, and this will also be true of our children.”

  “But,” he continued, “if at any time in the past thousand years any of my forefathers had a child by a woman who was not Maasai—and don’t forget that we used to raid the Kikuyu and other tribes and carry off their women—then a DNA test will show that I am less than half Maasai, possibly forty-nine percent, possibly forty-five percent, but definitely less than half. I am here, my wife is here, and I fully understand that no one is denying us the right to be citizens of Kilimanjaro. But my children and my grandchildren will also test out at less than fifty percent Maasai, and the day may come when Kilimanjaro has more people than it can handle. At that point will you force my children to leave the planet?”

  The Council of Elders replied that of course they would not.

  “Even if my children are only forty percent Maasai?” persisted Joshua.

  Even so, they assured him.

  “That is very considerate of you,” said Joshua, as if he were speaking to a jury, and in a way he was. “Now, what if a potential immigrant is forty-eight percent Maasai? Will you deny him the right to live on a Maasai world, while my forty-percent-Maasai children are allowed to stay?”

  The Council of Elders was still considering the ramifications of that argument when another one was presented to them.

  “My name,” said the supplicant, “is Kella Jimo, and prior to coming to Kilimanjaro I lived in Kenya’s Northern Frontier District until a long drought killed my cattle and dried up my wells.” He waited until the sudden whispering and buzzing had stopped. “Yes, I am a Samburu. And yet I claim I have every bit as much right to be here as any of you, for once the Samburu and the Maasai were a single tribe. We both spoke the language of Maa, we both worshipped En-kai, we both shared the same blood. If you take the DNA of any Samburu and trace it back, you will find we are pure Maasai, certainly moreso than Joshua ole Saibull or any others who have lived in the cities of Kenya and Tanzania and intermarried with other tribes. I therefore insist that by your own ruling the Samburu have as much right to Kilimanjaro as the Maasai.”

  They are still studying that one, too.

  However, while one might view these as time bombs that will explode many decades in the future, they are meaningless right now. We have a world to fill and more immediate problems to confront.

  One of our most pressing problems is the economy. The city dwellers use cash and credit; the pastoralists use cattle. The Council of Elders must fix the price of a single cow if there is ever to be any commerce between the two sets of citizens. The pastoralists will not save or invest money; the city dwellers have no place for cattle even if they were willing to keep them. Since we will not force either side to live in a way that is repugnant to them, we have to find a way to accommodate both sides.

  An historian’s job is not only to codify history but to learn from it, and what I have learned is that whatever price the Council of Elders sets, the city dwellers will claim that it is too high and the pastoralists will claim that it is too low.

  And yet, when the accusations are over, the Council will set a price, both sides will agree to it since there is no higher authority to appeal to, and that will be the end of another potential stumbling block on the road to our Utopia.

  Then there is the matter of language. When the Samburu said that his people and ours both spoke Maa, he was correct insofar as he went. But more than ninety-five percent of the Maasai speak Swahili, which is the lingua franca among the peoples of East Africa, and ninety percent speak English, which has occasionally been the official language of Kenya and is still the language of business, commerce, and diplomacy.

  What language are we to use? If we remain purists and speak only Maa, then no one offworld will understand us. If we speak English, we will be using the language of our former enemies. And if we use Swahili, we will be using neither our own tongue nor the language of the Eutopian Council and much of Earth itself. It is another problem we had not foreseen, but which we will soon have to solve. My guess is that since all three tongues are known to most of the people we will resolve the problem by ignoring it. If you speak a language that the party you are addressing understands, it makes no difference to the two of you what that language is; and if he does not understand it, common sense dictates that the two of you will experiment with other languages until you come to one you both comprehend.

  I find this an exciting time. These are merely growing pains, and I suspect we will have less of them than any of the other Eutopian worlds. One of my functions is to preserve our history, but an equally important one is to help our people learn from the failed histories of the other worlds.

  One of the things I’ve learned is that Kirinyaga and many of the other worlds relied too heavily on the assumed wisdom of a single man, such as Koriba. This will not happen on Kilimanjaro. Every citizen has something to offer, and it would be foolhardy of our leaders not to avail themselves of it.

  For example, the Maasai have produced some of East Africa’s finest medical doctors, and some of them have chosen to emigrate to Kilimanjaro, where each of the five cities has an
up-to-date hospital. Kirinyaga’s mundumugu may have been expected to cure every illness, but here the patient will see a trained specialist.

  We have lived in harmony with Nature for untold centuries, so we created two large game parks, filled with the clones of long-extinct hippos, rhinos, plains game, and just the right ratio of predators so that they neither multiply beyond the parks’ ability to feed them or fail to produce enough numbers to replace those who have fallen prey to the lions, leopards and hyenas. The parks are surrounded by a force field so that neither the herbivores nor the predators can ever get out to annoy or threaten the nearby pastoralists.

  Perhaps the most important thing we have done to improve the peoples’ lives is the near-total eradication of flies. The huts of the pastoralists are made of cattle dung, and the dung is also spread throughout the manyattas. This attracted myriad flies, which often carried disease. They were omnipresent and annoying, they tended to light on the eyes, and they blinded more than one Maasai child. Our chemists went to work, and now we have a planet without a single fly.

  Many have moved here already, and in two more days the last of the cities, the lakes and rivers, the grazing fields, and the manyattas will be complete. There is even a small church with a steeple out on the pastoralists’ lands, for those who have converted to Christianity. Just 48 hours from now our Utopia will be, as the Maintenance crew that built it says, open for business.

  I can hardly wait.

  2

  MORNING ON

  KILIMANJARO (2235 A.D.)

  WE have had so many applicants for citizenship that I’ve revised my opinion downward: we will be screening potential immigrants for the “purity” of their blood in less than ten years.

  The cities are already half full. It is more difficult to tell with the manyattas, since all the grazing land is available and the pastoralists have spread their herds out to cover it. I hope we do not have any problems getting them to share it as more newcomers arrive.