Kirinyaga Read online

  “You will come no farther,” he announced, “or your numbers will frighten fisi away.”

  He let his red cloak fall to the ground and stood, naked and glistening, in the morning sunlight.

  “Now watch, my sheep, and see how a true king hunts.”

  He hefted his spear once, to get the feel of it, and then he strode off into the waist-high grass.

  Koinnage sidled up to me. “You promised that he would leave today,” he whispered.

  “So I did.”

  “He is still here.”

  “The day is not yet over.”

  “You're sure he will leave?” persisted Koinnage.

  “Have I ever lied to my people?” I responded.

  “No,” he said, stepping back. “No, you have not.”

  We fell silent again, looking out across the plains. For a long time we could see nothing at all. Then Bwana emerged from a clump of bushes and walked boldly toward a spot about fifty yards ahead of him.

  And then the wind shifted and suddenly the air was pierced by the earsplitting laughter of hyenas as they caught scent of his oiled body. We could see grass swaying as the pack made their way toward Bwana, yelping and cackling as they approached.

  For a moment he stood his ground, for he was truly a brave man, but then, when he saw their number and realized that he could kill no more than one of them, he hurled his spear at the nearest hyena and raced to a nearby acacia tree, clambering up it just before the first six hyenas reached its base.

  Within another minute there were fifteen full-grown hyenas circling the tree, snarling and laughing at him, and Bwana had no choice but to remain where he was.

  “How disappointing,” I said at last. “I believed him when he said he was a mighty hunter.”

  “He is mightier than you, old man,” said Koinnage's son.

  “Nonsense,” I said. “Those are just hyenas around his tree, not demons.” I turned to Koinnage's son and his companions. “I thought you were his friends. Why do you not go to help him?”

  They shifted uneasily, and then Koinnage's son spoke: “We are unarmed, as you can see.”

  “What difference does that make?” I said. “You are almost Maa-sai, and they are just hyenas.”

  “If they are so harmless, why don't you make them go away?” demanded Koinnage's son.

  “This is not my hunt,” I replied.

  “You cannot make them go away, so do not chide us for standing here.”

  “I can make them go away,” I said. “Am I not the mundumuguV

  “Then do so!” he challenged me.

  I turned to the men of the village. “The son of Koinnage has put a challenge to me. Do you wish me to save the Maasai?”

  “No!” they said almost as one.

  I turned to the young man. “There you have it.”

  “You are lucky, old man,” he said, a sullen expression on his face. “You could not have done it.”

  “ You are the lucky one,” I said.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “Because you called me old man, rather than mundumugu or mzee, and I have not punished you.” I stared unblinking at him. “But know that should you ever call me old man again, I will turn you into the smallest of rodents and leave you in the field for the jackals to feed upon.”

  I uttered my statement with such conviction that he suddenly seemed less sure of himself.

  “You are bluffing, mundumugu? he said at last. “You have no magic.”

  “You are a foolish young man,” I said, “for you have seen my magic work in the past, and you know it will work again in the future.”

  “Then make the hyenas disperse,” he said.

  “If I do so, will you and your companions swear fealty to me, and respect the laws and traditions of the Kikuyu?”

  He considered my proposition for a long moment, then nodded.

  “And the rest of you?” I asked, turning to his companions.

  There were mumbled assents.

  “Very well,” I said. “Your fathers and the village Elders will bear witness to your agreement.”

  I began walking across the plain toward the tree where Bwana sat, glaring down at the hyenas. When I got within perhaps three hundred yards of them they noticed me and began approaching, constantly testing the wind and growling hungrily.

  “In the name of Ngai,” I intoned, “the mundumugu orders you to begone!”

  As I finished the sentence, I waved my right arm at them in just the way I had demonstrated to Ndemi.

  I heard no whistle, for it was above the range of human hearing, but instantly the entire pack turned and raced off toward the woods.

  I watched them for a moment, then turned back to my people.

  “Now go back to the village,” I said sternly. “I will tend to Bwana.”

  They retreated without a word, and I approached the tree from which Bwana had watched the entire pageant. He had climbed down and was waiting for me when I arrived.

  “I have saved you with my magic,” I said, “but now it is time for you to leave Kirinyaga.”

  “It was a trick!” he exclaimed. “It was not magic.”

  “Trick or magic,” I said, “what difference does it make? It will happen again, and next time I will not save you.”

  “Why should I believe you?” he demanded sullenly.

  “I have no reason to lie to you,” I said. “The next time you go hunting they will attack you again, so many fisi that even your Euro pean gun cannot kill them all, and I will not be here to save you.” I paused. “Leave while you can, Maasai. They will not be back for half an hour. You have time to walk to Haven by then, and I will use my computer to tell Maintenance that you are waiting to be taken back to Earth.”

  He looked deep into my eyes. “You are telling the truth,” he said at last.

  “I am.”

  “How did you do it, old man?” he asked. “I deserve to know that much before I leave.”

  I paused for a long moment before answering him.

  “I am the mundumugu” I replied at last, and, turning my back on him, I returned to the village.

  We tore his house down that afternoon, and in the evening I called down the rains, which purified Kirinyaga of the last taint of the corruption that had been in our midst.

  The next morning I walked down the long, winding path to the village to bless the scarecrows, and the moment I arrived I was surrounded by the children, who asked for a story.

  “All right,” I said, gathering them in the shade of an acacia tree. “Today I shall tell you the story of the Arrogant Hunter.”

  “Has it a happy ending?” asked one of the girls.

  I looked around the village and saw my people contentedly going about their daily chores, then stared out across the tranquil green plains.

  “Yes,” I said. “This time it has.”

  4

  THE MANAMOUKI

  {MARCH-JULY 2133}

  Many eons ago, the children of Gikuyu lived on the slopes of the holy mountain Kirinyaga.

  There were many serpents on the mountain, but the sons and grandsons of Gikuyu found them repulsive, and they soon killed all but one.

  Then one day the last serpent entered their village and killed and ate a young child. The children of Gikuyu sought out their mundu-mugu and asked him to destroy the menace.

  The mundumugu rolled the bones and sacrificed a goat, and finally he created a poison that would kill the serpent. He slit open the belly of another goat, and placed the poison inside it, and left it beneath a tree, and the very next day the serpent swallowed the goat and died.

  “Now,” said the mundumugu, “you must cut the serpent into one hundred pieces and scatter them on the holy mountain, so that no demon can breathe life back into its body.”

  The children of Gikuyu did as they were instructed, and scattered the hundred pieces of the serpent across the slopes of Kirin-yaga. But during the night, each piece came to life and became a new serpent, and soon the Kikuyu
were afraid to leave their bomas.

  The mundumugu ascended the mountain, and when he neared the highest peak, he addressed Ngai.

  “We are beseiged by serpents,” he said. “If you do not slay them, then the Kikuyu shall surely die as a people.”

  “I made the serpent, just as I made the Kikuyu and all other things,” answered Ngai, who sat on His golden throne atop Kirinyaga. “And anything that I made, be it a man or a serpent or a tree or even an idea, is not repellent in My eyes. I will save you this one time, because you are young and ignorant, but you must never forget that you cannot destroy that which you find repulsive—for if you try to destroy it, it will always return one hundred times greater than before.”

  This is one of the reasons why the Kikuyu chose to till the soil rather than hunt the beasts of the jungle like the Wakamba, or make war on their neighbors like the Maasai, for they had no wish to see that which they destroyed return to plague them. It is a lesson taught by every mundumugu to his people, even after we left Kenya and emigrated to the terraformed world of Kirinyaga.

  In the entire history of our tribe, only one mundumugu ever forgot the lesson that Ngai taught atop the holy mountain on that distant day.

  And that mundumugu was myself.

  When I awoke, I found hyena dung within the thorn enclosure of my boma. That alone should have warned me that the day carried a curse, for there is no worse omen. Also the breeze, hot and dry and filled with dust, came from the west, and all good winds come from the east.

  It was the day that our first immigrants were due to arrive. We had argued long and hard against allowing any newcomers to settle on Kirinyaga, for we were dedicated to the old ways of our people, and we wanted no outside influences corrupting the society that we had created. But our charter clearly stated that any Kikuyu who pledged to obey our laws and made the necessary payments to the Eutopian Council could emigrate from Kenya, and after postponing the inevitable for as long as we could, we finally agreed to accept Thomas Nkobe and his wife.

  Of all the candidates for immigration, Nkobe had seemed the best. He had been born in Kenya, had grown up in the shadow of the holy mountain, and after going abroad for his schooling, had returned and run the large farm his family had purchased from one of the last European residents. Most important of all, he was a direct descendant of Jomo Kenyatta, the great Burning Spear of Kenya who had led us to independence.

  I trudged out across the hot, arid savannah to the tiny landing field at Haven to greet our new arrivals, accompanied only by Ndemi, my youthful assistant. Twice buffalo blocked our path, and once Ndemi had to hurl some stones to frighten a hyena away, but eventually we reached our destination, only to discover that the Maintenance ship that was carrying Nkobe and his wife had not yet arrived. I squatted down in the shade of an acacia tree, and a moment later Ndemi crouched down beside me.

  “They are late,” he said, peering into the cloudless sky. “Perhaps they will not come at all.”

  “They will come,” I said. “The signs all point to it.”

  “But they are bad signs, and Nkobe may be a good man.”

  “There are many good men,” I replied. “Not all of them belong on Kirinyaga.”

  “You are worried, Koriba?” asked Ndemi as a pair of crested cranes walked through the dry, brittle grass, and a vulture rode the thermals overhead.

  “I am concerned,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “ Because I do not know why he wants to live here.”

  “Why shouldn't he?” asked Ndemi, picking up a dry twig and methodically breaking it into tiny pieces. “Is it not Utopia?”

  “There are many different notions of Utopia,” I replied. “Kirin-yaga is the Kikuyu's.”

  “And Nkobe is a Kikuyu, so this is where he belongs,” said Ndemi decisively.

  “I wonder.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he is almost forty years old. Why did he wait so long to come here?”

  “Perhaps he could not afford to come sooner.”

  I shook my head. “He comes from a very wealthy family.”

  “They have many cattle?” asked Ndemi.

  “Many,” I said.

  “And goats?”

  I nodded.

  “Will he bring them with him?”

  “No. He will come empty-handed, as we all did.” I paused, frowning. “Why would a man who owned a large farm and had many tractors and men to do his work turn his back on all that he possessed? That is what troubles me.”

  “You make it sound like the way he lived on Earth was better,” said Ndemi, frowning.

  “Not better, just different.”

  He paused for a moment. “Koriba, what is a tractor?”

  “A machine that does the work of many men in the fields.”

  “It sounds truly wonderful,” offered Ndemi.

  “It makes deep wounds in the ground and stinks of gasoline,” I said, making no effort to hide my contempt.

  We sat in silence for another moment. Then the Maintenance ship came into view, its descent creating a huge cloud of dust and causing a great screeching and squawking by the birds and monkeys in the nearby trees. “Well,” I said, “we shall soon have our answer.”

  I remained in the shade until the ship had touched down and Thomas Nkobe and his wife emerged from its interior. He was a tall, well-built man dressed in casual Western clothes; she was slender and graceful, her hair elegantly braided, her khaki slacks and hunting jacket exquisitely tailored.

  “Hello!” said Nkobe in English as I approached him. “I was afraid we might have to find our way to the village ourselves.”

  “fambo”X replied in Swahili. “Welcome to Kirinyaga.”

  “Jarnbo,” he amended, switching to Swahili. “Are you Koinnage?”

  “No,” I answered. “Koinnage is our paramount chief. You will live in his village.”

  “And you are?”

  “I am Koriba,” I said.

  “He is the mundumugu” added Ndemi proudly. “I am Ndemi.” He paused. “Someday I will be a mundumugu too.”

  Nkobe smiled down at him. “I'm sure you will.” Suddenly he remembered his wife. “And this is Wanda.”

  She stepped forward, smiled, and extended her hand. “A true mundumugu? she said in heavily accented Swahili. “I'm thrilled to meet you!”

  “I hope you will enjoy your new life on Kirinyaga,” I said, shaking her hand.

  “Oh, I'm certain I will,” she replied enthusiastically, as the ship disgorged their baggage and promptly took off again. She looked around at the dry savannah, and saw a trio of maribou storks and a jackal patiently waiting for a hyena to finish gorging itself on the wildebeest calf it had killed earlier in the morning. “I love it already!” She paused, then added confidentially, “I'm really the one who got Tom to agree to come here.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded her head. “I just couldn't stand what Kenya has become. All those factories, all that pollution! Ever since I learned about Kirinyaga, I've wanted to move here, to come back to Nature and live the way we were meant to live.” She inhaled deeply. “Smell that air, Tom! It will add ten years to your life.”

  “You don't have to sell me anymore,” he said with a smile. “I'm here, aren't I?”

  I turned to Wanda Nkobe. “You yourself are not Kikuyu, are you?”

  “I am now,” she replied. “Ever since I married Tom. But to answer your question, no, I was born and raised in Oregon.”

  “Oregon?” repeated Ndemi, brushing some flies away from his face with his hand.

  “That's in America,” she explained. She paused. “By the way, why are we speaking Swahili rather than Kikuyu?”

  “Kikuyu is a dead language,” I said. “Most of our people no longer know it.”

  “I had rather hoped it would still be spoken here,” she said, obviously disappointed. “I've been studying it for months.”

  “If you had moved to Italy, you would not speak Latin,” I replied. “
We still use a few Kikuyu words, just as the Italians use a few Latin words.”

  She was silent for a moment, then shrugged. “At least I'll have the opportunity to improve my Swahili.”

  “I am surprised that you are willing to forego the amenities of America for Kirinyaga,” I said, studying her closely

  “I was willing years ago,” she answered. “It was Tom who had to be convinced, not me.” She paused. “Besides, I gave up most of those so-called amenities when I left America and moved to Kenya.”

  “Even Kenya has certain luxuries,” I noted. “We have no electricity here, no running water, no—”

  “We camp out whenever we can,” she said, and I placed a hand on Ndemi's shoulder before he could chide her for interrupting the mundumugu. “I'm used to roughing it.”

  “But you have always had a home to return to.”

  She stared at me, an amused smile on her face. “Are you trying to talk me out of moving here?”

  “No,” I replied. “But I wish to point out that nothing is immutable. Any member of our society who is unhappy and wishes to leave need only inform Maintenance of the fact and a ship will arrive at Haven an hour later.”

  “Not us,” she said. “We're in for the long haul.”

  “The long haul?” I repeated.

  “She means that we're here to stay,” explained Nkobe, putting an arm around his wife's shoulders.

  A hot breeze sent the dust swirling around us.

  “I think I should take you to the village,” I said, shielding my eyes. “You are doubtless tired and will wish to rest.”

  “Not at all,” said Wanda Nkobe. “This is a brand-new world. I want to look around.” Her gaze fell upon Ndemi, who was staring at her intently. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “You are very strong and sturdy,” said Ndemi approvingly. “That is good. You will bear many children.”

  “I certainly hope not,” she said. “If there's one thing Kenya has more than enough of, it's children.”

  “This is not Kenya,” said Ndemi.

  “I will find other ways to contribute to the society.”