by Mike Resnick
“You are still too young,” I said. “You must trust me until you are older, and better able to make those decisions.”
“The facts will not change.”
“No, but you will.”
“But how can I know that change is for the good?” he asked. “What if you are wrong, and by listening to you until I become like you, I will be wrong too?”
“If you think I am wrong, why have you come back?”
“To listen, and decide,” he said. “And to speak to the computer again.”
“I cannot permit that,” I said. “You have already caused great mischief among the tribe. Because of you, they are questioning everything I say.”
“There is a reason for that.”
“Perhaps you will tell me what it is?” I said, trying to keep the sarcasm from my voice, for I truly loved this boy and wished to win him back to my side.
“I have listened to your stories for many years now, Koriba,” he said, “and I believe that I can use your method to show you the reason.”
I nodded my head and waited for him to continue.
“This should be called the story of Ndemi,” he said, “but because I am pretending to be Koriba, I shall call it the story of the Unborn Lion.”
I plucked an insect from my cheek and rolled it between my fingers until the carapace cracked. “I am listening.”
“Once there was an unborn lion who was very anxious to see the world,” began Ndemi. “He spent much time talking about it to his unborn brothers. ‘The world will be a wonderful place,’ he assured them. ‘The sun will always be shining, and the plains will be filled with fat, lazy impala, and all other animals will bow before us, for there shall be no animal mightier than us.’
“His brothers urged him to stay where he was. ‘Why are you so anxious to be born?’ they asked him. ‘Here it is warm and safe, and we never hunger. Who knows what awaits us in the world?’
“But the unborn lion would hear none of it, and one night, while his mother and brethren slept, he stole out into the world. He could not see, so he nudged his mother and said, ‘Where is the sun?’ and she told him that the sun vanishes every evening, leaving the world cold and dark. ‘At least when it comes back tomorrow, it will shine on fat, lazy impala that we will catch and eat,’ he said, trying to console himself.
“But his mother said, ‘There are no impala here, for they have migrated with the rains to the far side of the world. All that is left for us to eat is the buffalo. Their flesh is tough and tasteless, and they kill as many of us as we kill of them.’
“ ‘If my stomach is empty, at least my spirit will be full,’ said the newly born lion, ‘for all other animals will look upon us with fear and envy’
“You are very foolish, even for a newly born cub,' said his mother. ‘The leopard and the hyena and the eagle look upon you not as an object of envy, but rather as a tasty meal.’
“ ‘At least all of them will fear me when I am fully grown,’ said the newly born lion.
“ ‘The rhinoceros will gore you with his horn,’ said his mother, ‘and the elephant will toss you high into the trees with his trunk. Even the black mamba will not step aside for you, and will kill you if you try to approach it.’
“The mother continued her list of all the animals that would neither fear nor envy the lion when he grew up, and finally he told her to speak no more.
“ ‘I have made a terrible mistake by being born,’ he said. ‘The world is not as I pictured it, and I will rejoin my brothers where they are warm and safe and comfortable.’
“But his mother merely smiled at him. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, not without compassion. ‘Once you are born, whether it is of your own choosing or mine, you cannot ever go back to being an unborn lion. Here you are, and here you shall stay’“
Ndemi looked at me, his story finished.
“It is a very wise story,” I said. “I could not have done better myself. I knew the day I first made you my pupil that you would make a fine mundumugu.”
“You still do not understand,” he said unhappily.
“I understand the story perfectly,” I replied.
“But it is a lie,” said Ndemi. “I told it only to show you how easy it is to make up such lies.”
“It is not easy at all,” I corrected him. “It is an art, mastered by only a few—and now that I see that you have mastered it, it would be doubly hurtful to lose you.”
“Art or not, it is a lie,” he repeated. “If a child heard and believed it, he would be sure that lions could speak, and that babies can be born whenever they choose to be.” He paused. “It would have been much simpler to tell you that once I have obtained knowledge, whether is was freely given or not, I cannot empty my mind and give it back. Lions have nothing to do with that.” He paused for a long moment. “Furthermore, I do not want to give my knowledge back. I want to learn more things, not forget those that I already know.”
“You must not say that, Ndemi,” I urged him. “Especially now that I see that my teachings have taken root, and that your abilities as a creator of fables will someday surpass my own. You can be a great mundumugu if you will just allow me to guide you.”
“I love and respect you as I do my own father, Koriba,” he replied. “I have always listened and tried to learn from you, and I will continue to do so for as long as you will permit me. But you are not the only source of knowledge. I also wish to learn what your computer can teach me.”
“When I decide you are ready.”
“I am ready now.”
“You are not.”
His face reflected an enormous inner battle, and I could only watch until it was resolved. Finally he took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I am sorry, Koriba, but I cannot continue to tell lies when there are truths to be learned.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Kwaheri, mwalimu.” Good-bye, my teacher.
“What will you do?”
“I cannot work on my father's sharnba” he said, “not after all that I have learned. Nor do I wish to live in isolation with the bachelors at the edge of the forest.”
“What is left for you?” I asked.
“I shall walk to that area of Kirinyaga called Haven, and await the next Maintenance ship. I will go to Kenya and learn to read and write, and when I am ready, I will study to become an historian. And when I am a good enough historian, I will return to Kirinyaga and teach what I have learned.”
“I am powerless to stop you from leaving,” I said, “for the right to emigrate is guaranteed to all our citizens by our charter. But if you return, know that despite what we have been to one another, I will oppose you.”
“I do not wish to be your enemy, Koriba,” he said.
“I do not wish to have you as an enemy,” I replied. “The bond between us has been a strong one.”
“But the things I have learned are too important to my people.”
“They are my people too,” I pointed out, “and I have led them to this point by always doing what I think is best for them.”
“Perhaps it is time for them to choose what is best.”
“They are incapable of making that choice,” I said.
“If they are incapable of making that choice, it is only because you have hoarded knowledge to which they have as much right as you do.”
“Think very carefully before you do this thing,” I said. “Despite my love for you, if you do anything to harm Kirinyaga, I will crush you like an insect.”
He smiled sadly. “For six years I have asked you to teach me how to turn my enemies into insects so that I may crush them. Is this how I am finally to learn?”
I could not help but return his smile. I had an urge to stand up and throw my arms around him and hug him, but such behavior is unacceptable in a mundumugu, so I merely looked at him for a long moment and then said, “Kwaheri, Ndemi. You were the best of them.”
“I had the best teacher,” he replied.
And with that, he turned and began the
long walk toward Haven.
The problems caused by Ndemi did not end with his departure.
Njoro dug a borehole near his hut, and when I explained that the Kikuyu did not dig boreholes but carried their water from the river, he replied that surely this borehole must be acceptable, for the idea came not from the Europeans but rather the Tswana people far to the south of Kenya.
I ordered the boreholes to be rilled in. When Koinnage argued that there were crocodiles in the river and that he would not risk the lives of our women simply to maintain what he felt was a useless tradition, I had to threaten him with a powerful thahu—that of impo-tency—before he agreed.
Then there was Kidogo, who named his firstborn Jomo, after Jomo Kenyatta, the Burning Spear. One day he announced that the boy was henceforth to be known as Johnstone, and I had to threaten him with banishment to another village before he relented. But even as he gave in, Mbura changed his own name to Johnstone and moved to a distant village even before I could order it.
Shima continued to tell anyone who would listen that I had forced Ndemi to leave Kirinyaga because he was occasionally late for his lessons, and Koinnage kept requesting a computer that was the equal of my own.
Finally, young Mdutu created his own version of a barbed-wire enclosure for his father's cattle, using woven grasses and thorns, making sure he wrapped them around the fenceposts. I had it torn down, and thereafter he always walked away when the other children circled around me to hear a story.
I began to feel like the Dutch boy in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale. As quickly as I put my finger in the dike to staunch the flow of European ideas, they would break through in another place.
And then a strange thing happened. Certain ideas that were not European, that Ndemi could not possibly have transmitted to the members of the village, began cropping up on their own.
Kibo, the youngest of Koinnage's three wives, rendered the fat from a dead warthog and began burning it at night, creating Kirin-yaga's first lamp. Ngobe, whose arm was not strong enough to throw a spear with any accuracy, devised a very primitive bow and arrow, the first Kirinyagan ever to create such a weapon. Karen)a created a wooden plow, so that his ox could drag it through the fields while his wives simply guided it, and soon all the other villagers were improvising plows and strangely shaped digging tools. Indeed, alien ideas that had been dormant since the creation of Kirinyaga were now springing forth on all fronts. Ndemi's words had opened a Pandora's box, and I did not know how to close it.
I spent many long days sitting alone on my hill, staring down at the village and wondering if a Utopia can evolve and still remain a Utopia.
And the answer was always the same: Yes, but it will not be the same Utopia, and it was my sacred duty to keep Kirinyaga a Kikuyu Utopia.
When I was convinced that Ndemi was not going to return, I began going down to the village each day, trying to decide which of the children was the brightest and most forceful, for it would take both brilliance and force to deflect the alien ideas that were infecting our world and turning it into something it was never meant to be.
I spoke only to the boys, for no female may be a mundumugu. Some, like Mdutu, had already been corrupted by listening to Ndemi—but those who had not been corrupted by Ndemi were even more hopeless, for a mind cannot open and close at will, and those who were unmoved by what he had to say were not bright enough for the tasks a mundumugu must perform.
I expanded my search to other villages, convinced that somewhere on Kirinyaga I would find the boy I sought, a boy who grasped the difference between facts, which merely informed, and parables, which not only informed but instructed. I needed a Homer, a Jesus, a Shakespeare, someone who could touch men's souls and gently guide them down the path that must be taken.
But the more I searched, the more I came to the realization that a Utopia does not lend itself to such tellers of tales. Kirinyaga seemed divided into two totally separate groups: those who were content with their lives and had no need to think, and those whose every thought led them further and farther from the society we had labored to build. The unimaginative would never be capable of creating parables, and the imaginative would create their own parables, parables that would not reaffirm a belief in Kirinyaga and a distrust of alien ideas.
After some months I was finally forced to concede that, for whatever reason, there were no potential mundumugus waiting to be found and groomed. I began wondering if Ndemi had been truly unique, or if he would have eventually rejected my teachings even without exposure to the European influence of the computer. Was it possible that a true Utopia could not outlast the generation that founded it, that it was the nature of man to reject the values of the society into which he is born, even when those values are sacred?
Or was it just conceivable that Kirinyaga had never been a Utopia, that somehow we had deluded ourselves into believing that we could go back to a way of life that had forever vanished?
I considered that possibility for a long time, but eventually I rejected it, for if it were true, then the only logical conclusion was that it had vanished because the Europeans' values were more pleasing to Ngai than our own, and this I knew to be false.
No, if there was a truth anywhere in the universe, it was that Kirinyaga was exactly as it was meant to be—and if Ngai felt obligated to test us by presenting us with these heresies, that would make our ultimate victory over the lies of the Europeans all the more sweet. If minds were worth anything, they were worth fighting for, and when Ndemi returned, armed with his facts and his data and his numbers, he would find me waiting for him.
It would be a lonely battle, I thought as I carried my empty water gourds down to the river, but having given His people a second chance to build their Utopia, Ngai would not allow us to fail. Let Ndemi tempt our people with his history and his passionless statistics. Ngai had His own weapon, the oldest and truest weapon He possessed, the weapon that had created Kirinyaga and kept it pure and intact despite all the many challenges it had encountered.
I looked into the water and studied the weapon critically. It appeared old and frail, but I could also see hidden reservoirs of strength, for although the future appeared bleak, it could not fail as long as it was used in Ngai's service. It stared back at me, bold and unblinking, secure in the rightness of its cause.
It was the face of Koriba, the last storyteller among the Kikuyu, who stood ready to battle once again for the soul of his people.
8
WHEN THE OLD GODS DIE
{MAY 2137}
Ngai created the Sun and the Moon, and declared that they should have equal domain over the Earth.
The Sun would bring warmth to the world, and all of Ngai's creatures would thrive and grow strong in the light. And when the light vanished and Ngai slept, He ordered the Moon to watch over His creations.
But the Moon was duplicitous, and formed a secret alliance with the Lion and the Leopard and the Hyena, and many nights, while Ngai slept, it would turn only a part of its face to the Earth. At such times the predators would go forth to maim and kill and eat their fellow creatures.
Finally one man, a mundumugu, realized that the Moon had tricked Ngai, and he made up his mind to correct the problem. He might have appealed to Ngai, but he was a proud man, and so he took it upon himself to make certain that the flesh-eaters would no longer have a partnership with the darkness.
He retired to his boma and allowed no visitors. For nine days and nine nights he rolled his bones and arranged his charms and mixed his potions, and when he emerged on the morning of the tenth day, he was ready to do what must be done.
The Sun was overhead, and he knew that there could be no darkness as long as the Sun shone down upon the Earth. He uttered a mystic chant, and soon he was flying into the sky to confront the Sun.
“Halt!” he said. “Your brother the Moon is evil. You must remain where you are, lest Ngai's creatures continue to die.”
“What is that to me?” responded the Sun. “I canno
t shirk my duty simply because my brother shirks his.”
The mundumugu held up a hand. “I will not let you pass,” he said.
But the Sun merely laughed, and proceeded on its path, and when it reached the mundumugu it gobbled him up and spat out the ashes, for even the greatest mundumugu cannot stay the Sun from its course.
That story has been known to every mundumugu since Ngai created Gikuyu, the first man. Of them all, only one ignored it.
I am that mundumugu.
It is said that from the moment of birth, even of conception, every living thing has embarked upon an inevitable trajectory that culminates in its death. If this is true of all living things, and it seems to be, then it is also true of man. And if it is true of man, then it must be true of the gods who made man in their image.
Yet this knowledge does not lessen the pain of death. I had just come back from comforting Katuma, whose father, old Siboki, had finally died, not from disease or injury, but rather from the awful burden of his years. Siboki had been one of the original colonists on our terraformed world of Kirinyaga, a member of the Council of Elders, and though he had grown feeble in mind as well as body, I knew I would miss him as I missed few others.
As I walked back through the village, on the long, winding path by the river that eventually led to my own boma, I was very much aware of my own mortality I was not that much younger than Siboki, and indeed was already an old man when we left Kenya and emigrated to Kirinyaga. I knew my death could not be too far away, and yet I hoped that it was, not from selfishness, but because Kirinyaga was not yet ready to do without me. The mundumugu is more than a shaman who utters curses and creates spells; he is the repository of all the moral and civil laws, all the customs and traditions, of the Kikuyu people, and I was not convinced that Kirinyaga had yet produced a competent successor.
It is a harsh and lonely life, the life of a mundumugu. He is more feared than loved by the people he serves. This is not his fault, but rather the nature of his position. He must do what he knows to be right for his people, and that means he must sometimes make unpopular decisions.
