Win Some, Lose Some Read online

  “Let them,” I said with a shrug. “No law has been broken.”

  “We have killed a baby,” he replied. “They will come, and they will revoke our charter!”

  I shook my head. “No one will revoke our charter.”

  “Do not be too certain of that, Koriba,” he warned me. “You can bury a goat alive, and they will monitor us and shake their heads and speak contemptuously among themselves about our religion. You can leave the aged and the infirm out for the hyenas to eat, and they will look upon us with disgust and call us godless heathens. But I tell you that killing a newborn infant is another matter. They will not sit idly by; they will come.”

  “If they do, I shall explain why I killed it,” I replied calmly.

  “They will not accept your answers,” said Koinnage. “They will not understand.”

  “They will have no choice but to accept my answers,” I said. “This is Kirinyaga, and they are not permitted to interfere.”

  “They will find a way,” he said with an air of certainty. “We must apologize and tell them that it will not happen again.”

  “We will not apologize,” I said sternly. “Nor can we promise that it will not happen again.”

  “Then, as paramount chief, I will apologize.”

  I stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged. “Do what you must do,” I said.

  Suddenly I could see the terror in his eyes.

  “What will you do to me?” he asked fearfully.

  “I? Nothing at all,” I said. “Are you not my chief?” As he relaxed, I added: “But if I were you, I would beware of insects.”

  “Insects?” he repeated. “Why?”

  “Because the next insect that bites you, be it spider or mosquito or fly, will surely kill you,” I said. “Your blood will boil within your body, and your bones will melt. You will want to scream out your agony, yet you will be unable to utter a sound.” I paused. “It is not a death I would wish on a friend,” I added seriously.

  “Are we not friends, Koriba?” he said, his ebon face turning an ash gray.

  “I thought we were,” I said. “But my friends honor our traditions. They do not apologize for them to the white man.”

  “I will not apologize!” he promised fervently. He spat on both his hands as a gesture of his sincerity.

  I opened one of the pouches I kept around my waist and withdrew a small polished stone from the shore of our nearby river. “Wear this around your neck,” I said, handing it to him, “and it shall protect you from the bites of insects.”

  “Thank you, Koriba!” he said with sincere gratitude, and another crisis had been averted.

  We spoke about the affairs of the village for a few more minutes, and finally he left me. I sent for Wambu, the infant’s mother, and led her through the ritual of purification, so that she might conceive again. I also gave her an ointment to relieve the pain in her breasts, since they were heavy with milk. Then I sat down by the fire before my boma and made myself available to my people, settling disputes over the ownership of chickens and goats, and supplying charms against demons, and instructing my people in the ancient ways.

  By the time of the evening meal, no one had a thought for the dead baby. I ate alone in my boma, as befitted my status, for the mundumugu always lives and eats apart from his people. When I had finished I wrapped a blanket around my body to protect me from the cold and walked down the dirt path to where all the other bomas were clustered. The cattle and goats and chickens were penned up for the night, and my people, who had slaughtered and eaten a cow, were now singing and dancing and drinking great quantities of pombe. As they made way for me, I walked over to the caldron and took a drink of pombe, and then, at Kanjara’s request, I slit open a goat and read its entrails and saw that his youngest wife would soon conceive, which was cause for more celebration. Finally the children urged me to tell them a story.

  “But not a story of Earth,” complained one of the taller boys. “We hear those all the time. This must be a story about Kirinyaga.”

  “All right,” I said. “If you will all gather around, I will tell you a story of Kirinyaga.” The youngsters all moved closer. “This,” I said, “is the story of the Lion and the Hare.” I paused until I was sure that I had everyone’s attention, especially that of the adults. “A hare was chosen by his people to be sacrificed to a lion, so that the lion would not bring disaster to their village. The hare might have run away, but he knew that sooner or later the lion would catch him, so instead he sought out the lion and walked right up to him, and as the lion opened his mouth to swallow him, the hare said, ‘I apologize, Great Lion.’

  “‘For what?’ asked the lion curiously.

  “‘Because I am such a small meal,’ answered the hare, ‘For that reason, I brought honey for you as well.’

  “‘I see no honey,’ said the lion.

  “‘That is why I apologized,’ answered the hare. ‘Another lion stole it from me. He is a ferocious creature, and says that he is not afraid of you.’

  “The lion rose to his feet. ‘Where is this other lion?’ he roared.

  “The hare pointed to a hole in the earth. ‘Down there,’ he said, ‘but he will not give you back your honey.’

  “‘We shall see about that!’ growled the lion.

  “He jumped into the hole, roaring furiously, and was never seen again, for the hare had chosen a very deep hole indeed. Then the hare went home to his people and told them that the lion would never bother them again.”

  Most of the children laughed and clapped their hands in delight, but the same young boy voiced his objection.

  “That is not a story of Kirinyaga,” he said scornfully. “We have no lions here.”

  “It is a story of Kirinyaga,” I replied. “What is important about the story is not that it concerned a lion and a hare, but that it shows that the weaker can defeat the stronger if he uses his intelligence.”

  “What has that to do with Kirinyaga?” asked the boy.

  “What if we pretend that the men of Maintenance, who have ships and weapons, are the lion, and the Kikuyu are the hares?” I suggested. “What shall the hares do if the lion demands a sacrifice?”

  The boy suddenly grinned. “Now I understand! We shall throw the lion down a hole!”

  “But we have no holes here,” I pointed out.

  “Then what shall we do?”

  “The hare did not know that he would find the lion near a hole,” I replied. “Had he found him by a deep lake, he would have said that a large fish took the honey.”

  “We have no deep lakes.”

  “But we do have intelligence,” I said. “And if Maintenance ever interferes with us, we will use our intelligence to destroy the lion of Maintenance, just as the hare used his intelligence to destroy the lion of the fable.”

  “Let us think how to destroy Maintenance right now!” cried the boy. He picked up a stick and brandished it at an imaginary lion as if it were a spear and he a great hunter.

  I shook my head. “The hare does not hunt the lion, and the Kikuyu do not make war. The hare merely protects himself, and the Kikuyu do the same.”

  “Why would Maintenance interfere with us?” asked another boy, pushing his way to the front of the group. “They are our friends.”

  “Perhaps they will not,” I answered reassuringly. “But you must always remember that the Kikuyu have no true friends except themselves.”

  “Tell us another story, Koriba!” cried a young girl.

  “I am an old man,” I said. “The night has turned cold, and I must have my sleep.”

  “Tomorrow?” she asked. “Will you tell us another tomorrow?”

  I smiled. “Ask me tomorrow, after all the fields are planted and the cattle and goats are in their enclosures and the food has been made and the fabrics have been woven.”

  “But girls do not herd the cattle and goats,” she protested. “What if my brothers do not bring all their animals to the enclosure?”

  “Th
en I will tell a story just to the girls,” I said.

  “It must be a long story,” she insisted seriously, “for we work much harder than the boys.”

  “I will watch you in particular, little one,” I replied, “and the story will be as long or as short as your work merits.”

  The adults all laughed and suddenly she looked very uncomfortable, but then I chuckled and hugged her and patted her head, for it was necessary that the children learned to love their mundumugu as well as hold him in awe, and finally she ran off to play and dance with the other girls, while I retired to my boma.

  Once inside, I activated my computer and discovered that a message was waiting for me from Maintenance, informing me that one of their number would be visiting me the following morning. I made a very brief reply—“Article II, Paragraph 5,” which is the ordinance forbidding intervention—and lay down on my sleeping blanket, letting the rhythmic chanting of the singers carry me off to sleep.

  I awoke with the sun the next morning and instructed my computer to let me know when the Maintenance ship had landed. Then I inspected my cattle and my goats—I, alone of my people, planted no crops, for the Kikuyu feed their mundumugu, just as they tend his herds and weave his blankets and keep his boma clean—and stopped by Simani’s boma to deliver a balm to fight the disease that was afflicting his joints. Then, as the sun began warming the earth, I returned to my own boma, skirting the pastures where the young men were tending their animals. When I arrived, I knew the ship had landed, for I found the droppings of a hyena on the ground near my hut, and that is the surest sign of a curse.

  I learned what I could from the computer, then walked outside and scanned the horizon while two naked children took turns chasing a small dog and running away from it. When they began frightening my chickens, I gently sent them back to their own boma, and then seated myself beside my fire. At last I saw my visitor from Maintenance, coming up the path from Haven. She was obviously uncomfortable in the heat, and she slapped futilely at the flies that circled her head. Her blonde hair was starting to turn grey, and I could tell by the ungainly way she negotiated the steep, rocky path that she was unused to such terrain. She almost lost her balance a number of times, and it was obvious that her proximity to so many animals frightened her, but she never slowed her pace, and within another ten minutes she stood before me.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Jambo, Memsaab,” I replied.

  “You are Koriba, are you not?”

  I briefly studied the face of my enemy; middle-aged and weary, it did not appear formidable. “I am Koriba,” I replied.

  “Good,” she said. “My name is—”

  “I know who you are,” I said, for it is best, if conflict cannot be avoided, to take the offensive.

  “You do?”

  I pulled the bones out of my pouch and cast them on the dirt. “You are Barbara Eaton, born of Earth,” I intoned, studying her reactions as I picked up the bones and cast them again. “You are married to Robert Eaton, and you have worked for Maintenance for nine years.” A final cast of the bones. “You are 41 years old, and you are barren.”

  “How did you know all that?” she asked with an expression of surprise.

  “Am I not the mundumugu?”

  She stared at me for a long minute. “You read my biography on your computer,” she concluded at last.

  “As long as the facts are correct, what difference does it make whether I read them from the bones or the computer?” I responded, refusing to confirm her statement. “Please sit down, Memsaab Eaton.”

  She lowered herself awkwardly to the ground, wrinkling her face as she raised a cloud of dust.

  “It’s very hot,” she noted uncomfortably.

  “It is very hot in Kenya,” I replied.

  “You could have created any climate you desired,” she pointed out.

  “We did create the climate we desired,” I answered.

  “Are there predators out there?” she asked, looking out over the savannah.

  “A few,” I replied.

  “What kind?”

  “Hyenas.”

  “Nothing larger?” she asked.

  “There is nothing larger anymore,” I said.

  “I wonder why they didn’t attack me?”

  “Perhaps because you are an intruder,” I suggested.

  “Will they leave me alone on my way back to Haven?” she asked nervously, ignoring my comment.

  “I will give you a charm to keep them away.”

  “I’d prefer an escort.”

  “Very well,” I said.

  “They’re such ugly animals,” she said with a shudder. “I saw them once when we were monitoring your world.”

  “They are very useful animals,” I answered, “for they bring many omens, both good and bad.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “A hyena left me an evil omen this morning.”

  “And?” she asked curiously.

  “And here you are,” I said.

  She laughed. “They told me you were a sharp old man.”

  “They were mistaken,” I replied. “I am a feeble old man who sits in front of his boma and watches younger men tend his cattle and goats.”

  “You are a feeble old man who graduated with honors from Cambridge and then acquired two postgraduate degrees from Yale,” she replied.

  “Who told you that?”

  She smiled. “You’re not the only one who reads biographies.”

  I shrugged. “My degrees did not help me become a better mundumugu,” I said. “The time was wasted.”

  “You keep using that word. What, exactly, is a mundumugu?”

  “You would call him a witch doctor,” I answered. “But in truth the mundumugu, while he occasionally casts spells and interprets omens, is more a repository of the collected wisdom and traditions of his race.”

  “It sounds like an interesting occupation,” she said.

  “It is not without its compensations.”

  “And such compensations!” she said with false enthusiasm as a goat bleated in the distance and a young man yelled at it in Swahili. “Imagine having the power of life and death over an entire Eutopian world!”

  So now it comes, I thought. Aloud I said: “It is not a matter of exercising power, Memsaab Eaton, but of maintaining traditions.”

  “I rather doubt that,” she said bluntly.

  “Why should you doubt what I say?” I asked.

  “Because if it were traditional to kill newborn infants, the Kikuyus would have died out after a single generation.”

  “If the slaying of the infant arouses your disapproval,” I said calmly, “I am surprised Maintenance has not previously asked about our custom of leaving the old and the feeble out for the hyenas.”

  “We know that the elderly and the infirm have consented to your treatment of them, much as we may disapprove of it,” she replied. “We also know that a newborn infant could not possibly consent to its own death.” She paused, staring at me. “May I ask why this particular baby was killed?”

  “That is why you have come here, is it not?”

  “I have been sent here to evaluate the situation,” she replied, brushing an insect from her cheek and shifting her position on the ground. “A newborn child was killed. We would like to know why.”

  I shrugged. “It was killed because it was born with a terrible thahu upon it.”

  She frowned. “A thahu? What is that?”

  “A curse.”

  “Do you mean that it was deformed?” she asked.

  “It was not deformed.”

  “Then what was this curse that you refer to?”

  “It was born feet-first,” I said.

  “That’s it?” she asked, surprised. “That’s the curse?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was murdered simply because it came out feet-first?”

  “It is not murder to put a demon to death,” I explained patiently. “Our tradition tells us tha
t a child born in this manner is actually a demon.”

  “You are an educated man, Koriba,” she said. “How can you kill a perfectly healthy infant and blame it on some primitive tradition?”

  “You must never underestimate the power of tradition, Memsaab Eaton,” I said. “The Kikuyu turned their backs on their traditions once; the result is a mechanized, impoverished, overcrowded country that is no longer populated by Kikuyu, or Maasai, or Luo, or Wakamba, but by a new, artificial tribe known only as Kenyans. We here on Kirinyaga are true Kikuyu, and we will not make that mistake again. If the rains are late, a ram must be sacrificed. If a man’s veracity is questioned, he must undergo the ordeal of the githani trial. If an infant is born with a thahu upon it, it must be put to death.”

  “Then you intend to continue to kill any children that are born feet-first?” she asked.

  “That is correct,” I responded.

  A drop of sweat rolled down her face as she looked directly at me and said: “I don’t know what Maintenance’s reaction will be.”

  “According to our charter, Maintenance is not permitted to interfere with us,” I reminded her.

  “It’s not that simple, Koriba,” she said. “According to your charter, any member of your community who wishes to leave your world is allowed free passage to Haven, from which he or she can board a ship to Earth.” She paused. “Was the baby you killed given such a choice?”

  “I did not kill a baby, but a demon,” I replied, turning my head slightly as a hot breeze stirred up the dust around us.

  She waited until the breeze died down, then coughed before speaking. “You do understand that not everyone in Maintenance may share that opinion?”

  “What Maintenance thinks is of no concern to us,” I said.

  “When innocent children are murdered, what Maintenance thinks is of supreme importance to you,” she responded. “I am sure you do not want to defend your practices in the Eutopian Court.”

  “Are you here to evaluate the situation, as you said, or to threaten us?” I asked calmly.

  “To evaluate the situation,” she replied. “But there seems to be only one conclusion that I can draw from the facts that you have presented to me.”