Kirinyaga Page 7

  “I will do that whether you pay me or not,” I answered.

  “You will not charge me?” he asked.

  “I will not charge you.”

  “Thank you, Koriba!” he said fervently.

  I stood and stared at the blazing hut, trying not to think of the smoldering body of the little girl inside it.

  “Koriba?” said Njoro after a lengthy silence.

  “What now?” I asked irritably.

  “We did not know what to do with the buffalo hide, for it bore the marks of your thahu, and we were afraid to burn it. Now I know that the marks were made by Ngai and not you, and I am afraid even to touch it. Will you take it away?”

  “What marks?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  He took me by the arm and led me around to the front of the burning hut. There, on the ground, some ten paces from the entrance, lay the strip of tanned hide with which Kamari had hanged herself, and scrawled upon it were more of the strange symbols I had seen on my computer screen three days earlier.

  I reached down and picked up the hide, then turned to Njoro. “If indeed there is a curse on your shamba” I said, “I will remove it and take it upon myself, by taking Ngai's marks with me.”

  “Thank you, Koriba!” he said, obviously much relieved.

  “I must leave to prepare my magic,” I said abruptly, and began the long walk back to my boma. When I arrived I took the strip of buffalo hide into my hut.

  “Computer,” I said. “Activate.”

  “Activated.”

  I held the strip up to its scanning lens.

  “Do you recognize this language?” I asked.

  The lens glowed briefly.

  “Yes, Koriba. It is the Language of Kamari.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It is a couplet:

  I know why the caged birds die—

  For, like them, I have touched the sky.”

  The entire village came to Njoro's shamba in the afternoon, and the women wailed the death chant all night and all of the next day, but before long Kamari was forgotten, for life goes on and she was, after all, just a little Kikuyu girl.

  Since that day, whenever I have found a bird with a broken wing I have attempted to nurse it back to health. It always dies, and I always bury it next to the mound of earth that marks where Kamari's hut had been.

  It is on those days, when I place the birds in the ground, that I find myself thinking of her again, and wishing that I was just a simple man, tending my cattle and worrying about my crops and thinking the thoughts of simple men, rather than a mundumugu who must live with the consequences of his wisdom.

  3

  BWANA

  {DECEMBER 2131-FEBRUARY 2132}

  Ngai rules the universe, and on His sacred mountain the beasts of the field roam free and share the fertile green slopes with His chosen people.

  To the first Maasai He gave a spear, and to the first Kamba He gave a bow, but to Gikuyu, who was the first Kikuyu, He gave a digging stick and told him to dwell on the slopes of Kirinyaga. The Kikuyu, said Ngai, could sacrifice goats to read their entrails, and they could sacrifice oxen to thank Him for sending the rains, but they must not molest any of His animals that dwelt on the mountain.

  Then one day Gikuyu came to Him and said, “May we not have the bow and arrow, so that we may kill fisi, the hyena, in whose body dwell the vengeful souls of evil men?”

  And Ngai said that no, the Kikuyu must not molest the hyena, for the hyena's purpose was clear: He had created it to feed upon the lions' leavings, and to take the sick and the elderly from the Kikuyus' shambas.

  Time passed, and Gikuyu approached the summit of the mountain again. “May we not have the spear, so that we can kill the lion and the leopard, who prey upon our own animals?” he said.

  And Ngai said that no, the Kikuyu could not kill the lion or the leopard, for He had created them to hold the population of the grasseaters in check, so that they would not overrun the Kikuyus' fields.

  Finally Gikuyu climbed the mountain one last time and said, “We must at least be allowed to kill the elephant, who can destroy a year's harvest in a matter of minutes—but how are we to do so when you have allowed us no weapons?”

  Ngai thought long and hard, and finally spoke. “I have decreed that the Kikuyu should till the land, and I will not stain your hands with the blood of my other creatures,” announced Ngai. “But because you are my chosen people, and are more important than the beasts that dwell upon my mountain, I will see to it that others come to kill these animals.”

  “What tribe will these hunters come from?” asked Gikuyu. “By what name will we know them?”

  “You will know them by a single word,” said Ngai.

  When Ngai told him the word by which the hunters would be known, Gikuyu thought He had made a joke, and laughed aloud, and soon forgot the conversation.

  But Ngai never jokes when He speaks to the Kikuyu.

  We have no elephants or lions or leopards on the Eutopian world of Kirinyaga, for all three species were extinct long before we emigrated from the Kenya that had become so alien to us. But we took the sleek impala, and the majestic kudu, and the mighty buffalo, and the swift gazelle—and because we were mindful of Ngai's dictates, we took the hyena and the jackal and the vulture as well.

  And because Kirinyaga was designed to be a Utopia in climate as well as in social organization, and because the land was more fertile than Kenya's, and because Maintenance made the orbital adjustments that assured us that the rains would always come on schedule, the wild animals of Kirinyaga, like the domestic animals and the people themselves, grew fruitful and multiplied.

  It was only a matter of time before they came into conflict with us. Initially there would be sporadic attacks on our livestock by the hyenas, and once old Benima's entire harvest was destroyed by a herd of rampaging buffalo, but we took such setbacks with good grace, for Ngai had provided well for us and no one was ever forced to go hungry.

  But then, as we reclaimed more and more of our terraformed veldt to be used as farmland, and the wild animals of Kirinyaga felt the pressure of our land-hungry people, the incidents grew more frequent and more severe.

  I was sitting before the fire in my boma, waiting for the sun to burn the chill from the morning air and staring out across the acacia-dotted plains, when young Ndemi raced up the winding road from the village.

  “Koriba!” he cried. “Come quickly!”

  “What has happened?” I asked, rising painfully to my feet.

  “Juma has been attacked by fisfl? he gasped, striving to regain his breath.

  “By one hyena, or many?” I asked.

  “One, I think. I do not know.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Juma ovfisi}” asked Ndemi.

  “Juma.”

  “I think he is dead.” Ndemi paused. “But you are the mundumugu. You can make him live again.”

  I was pleased that he placed so much faith in his mundumugu— but of course if his companion was truly dead there was nothing I could do about it. I went into my hut, selected some herbs that were especially helpful in combating infection, added a few qat leaves for Juma to chew (for we had no anesthetics on Kirinyaga, and the hallucinogenic trance caused by the qat leaves would at least make him forget his pain). All this I placed into a leather pouch that I hung about my neck. Then I emerged from my hut and nodded to Ndemi, who led the way to the shamba of Juma's father.

  When we arrived, the women were already wailing the death chant, and I briefly examined what was left of poor little Juma's body. One bite from the hyena had taken away most of his face, and a second had totally removed his left arm. The hyena had then devoured most of Juma's torso before the villagers finally drove it away.

  Koinnage, the paramount chief of the village, arrived a few moments later.

  afamboy Koriba,” he greeted me.

  “fambo, Koinnage,” I replied.

  “Something must be done,�
� he said, looking at Juma's body, which was now covered by flies.

  “I will place a curse on the hyena,” I said, “and tonight I shall sacrifice a goat to Ngai, so that He will welcome Juma's soul.”

  Koinnage looked uneasy, for his fear of me was great, but finally he spoke: “It is not enough. This is the second healthy boy that the hyenas have taken this month.”

  “Our hyenas have developed a taste for men,” I said. “It is because we leave the old and the infirm out for them.”

  “Then perhaps we should not leave the old and the sick out any longer.”

  “We have no choice,” I replied. “The Europeans thought it was the mark of savages, and even Maintenance has tried to dissuade us—but we do not have medicine to ease their suffering. What seems barbarous to outsiders is actually an act of mercy. Ever since Ngai gave the first digging stick to the first Kikuyu, it has always been our tradition to leave the old and the infirm out for the hyenas when it is time for them to die.”

  “Maintenance has medicines,” suggested Koinnage, and I noticed that two of the younger men had edged closer to us and were listening with interest. “Perhaps we should ask them to help us.”

  “So that they will live a week or a month longer, and then be buried in the ground like Christians?” I said. “You cannot be part Kikuyu and part European. That is the reason we came to Kirinyaga in the first place.”

  “But how wrong could it be to ask only for medicine for our elderly?” asked one of the younger men, and I could see that Koin-nage looked relieved now that he himself did not have to pursue the argument.

  “If you accept their medicine today, then tomorrow you will be accepting their clothing and their machinery and their god,” I replied. “If history has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that.” They still seemed unconvinced, so I continued: “Most races look ahead to their Utopia, but the Kikuyu must look back, back to a simpler time when we lived in harmony with the land, when we were not tainted with the customs of a society to which we were never meant to belong. I have lived among the Europeans, and gone to school at their universities, and I tell you that you must not listen to the siren song of their technology. What works for the Europeans did not work for the Kikuyu when we lived in Kenya, and it will not work for us here on Kirinyaga.”

  As if to emphasize my statement, a hyena voiced its eerie laugh far off in the veldt. The women stopped wailing and drew closer together.

  “But we must do something!” protested Koinnage, whose fear of the hyena momentarily overrode his fear of his mundumugu. “We cannot continue to let the beasts of the field destroy our crops and take our children.”

  I could have explained that there was a temporary imbalance as the grasseaters lowered their birthrate to accommodate their decreased pasturage, and that the hyenas' birthrate would almost certainly adjust within a year, but they would not have understood or believed me. They wanted solutions, not explanations.

  “Ngai is testing our courage, to see if we are truly worthy to live on Kirinyaga,” I said at last. “Until the time of testing is over, we will arm our children with spears and have them tend the cattle in pairs.”

  Koinnage shook his head. “The hyenas have developed a taste for men—and two Kikuyu boys, even armed with spears, are no match for a pack of hyenas. Surely Ngai does not want His chosen people to become meals for fisi”

  “No, He does not,” I agreed. “It is the hyenas' nature to kill grasseaters, just as it is our nature to till the fields. I am your mundu-mugu. You must believe me when I tell you that this time of testing will soon pass.”

  “How soon?” asked another man.

  I shrugged. “Perhaps two rains. Perhaps three.” The rains come twice a year.

  “You are an old man,” said the man, mustering his courage to contradict his mundumugu. “You have no children, and it is this that gives you patience. But those of us with sons cannot wait for two or three rains wondering each day if they will return from the fields. We must do something now!”

  “I am an old man,” I agreed, “and this gives me not only patience, but wisdom.”

  “You are the mundumugu” said Koinnage at last, “and you must face the problem in your way. But I am the paramount chief, and I must face it in mine. I will organize a hunt, and we will kill all the hyenas in the area.”

  “Very well,” I said, for I had foreseen this solution. “Organize your hunt.”

  “Will you cast the bones and see if we shall be successful?”

  “I do not need to cast the bones to foresee the results of your hunt,” I replied. “You are farmers, not hunters. You will not be successful.”

  “You will not give us your support?” demanded another man.

  “You do not need my support,” I replied. “I would give you my patience if I could, for that is what you need.”

  “We were supposed to turn this world into a Utopia,” said Koin-nage, who had only the haziest understanding of the word, but equated it with good harvests and a lack of enemies. “What kind of Utopia permits children to be devoured by wild animals?”

  “You cannot understand what it means to be full until you have been hungry,” I answered. “You cannot know what it means to be warm and dry until you have been cold and wet. And Ngai knows, even if you do not, that you cannot appreciate life without death. This is His lesson for you; it will pass.”

  “It must end now” said Koinnage firmly, now that he knew I would not try to prevent his hunt.

  I made no further comment, for I knew that nothing I could say would dissuade him. I spent the next few minutes creating a curse for the individual hyena that had killed Juma, and that night I sacrificed a goat in the middle of the village and read in the entrails that Ngai had accepted the sacrifice and welcomed Juma's spirit.

  Two days later Koinnage led ten of the village men out to the veldt to hunt the hyenas, while I stayed in my boma and prepared for what I knew was inevitable.

  It was in late morning that Ndemi—the boldest of the boys in the village, whose courage had made him a favorite of mine—came up the long, winding path to visit me.

  “fambo, Koriba,” he greeted me unhappily.

  “fambo, Ndemi,” I replied. “What is the matter?”

  “They say that I am too young to hunt for fisi” he complained, squatting down next to me.

  “They are right.”

  “But I have practiced my bushcraft every day, and you yourself have blessed my spear.”

  “I have not forgotten,” I said.

  “Then why can I not join the hunt?”

  “It makes no difference,” I said. “They will not kill fisi In fact, they will be very lucky if all of them return unharmed.” I paused. “ Then the troubles will begin,”

  “I thought they had already begun,” said Ndemi, with no trace of sarcasm.

  I shook my head. “What has been happening is part of the natural order of things, and hence it is part of Kirinyaga. But when Koinnage does not kill the hyenas, he will want to bring a hunter to Kirinyaga, and that is not pan of the natural order.”

  “You know he will do this?” asked Ndemi, impressed.

  “I know Koinnage,” I answered.

  “Then you will tell him not to.”

  “I will tell him not to.”

  “And he will listen to you.”

  “No,” I said. “I do not think he will listen to me.”

  “But you are the mundumugu!'

  “But there are many men in the village who resent me,” I explained. “They see the sleek ships that land on Kirinyaga from time to time, and they hear stories about the wonders of Nairobi and Mombasa, and they forget why we have come here. They become unhappy with the digging stick, and they long for the Maasai's spear or the Kamba's bow or the European's machines.”

  Ndemi squatted in silence for a moment.

  “I have a question, Koriba,” he said at last.

  “You may ask it.”

  “You are the mundumugu” he
said. “You can change men into insects, and see in the darkness, and walk upon the air.”

  “That is true,” I agreed.

  “Then why do you not turn all the hyenas into honeybees and set fire to their hive?”

  “ Because yzW is not evil,” I said. “It is his nature to eat flesh. Without him, the beasts of the field would become so plentiful that they would soon overrun our fields.”

  “Then why not kill just those fisi who kill us?”

  “Do you not remember your own grandmother?” I asked. “Do you not recall the agony she suffered in her final days?”

  “Yes.”

  “We do not kill our own kind. Were it not for fisi, she would have suffered for many more days. Fisi is only doing what Ngai created him to do.”

  “Ngai also created hunters,” said Ndemi, casting me a sly look out of the corner of his eye.

  “That is true.”

  “Then why do you not want hunters to come and kill fisi?”

  “I will tell you the story of the Goat and the Lion, and then you will understand,” I said.

  “What do goats and lions have to do with hyenas?” he asked.

  “Listen, and you will know,” I answered. “Once there was a herd of black goats, and they lived a very happy life, for Ngai had provided them with green grass and lush plants and a nearby stream where they could drink, and when it rained they stood beneath the branches of large, stately trees where the raindrops could not reach them. Then one day a leopard came to their village, and because he was old and thin and weak, and could no longer hunt the impala and the water-buck, he killed a goat and ate it.

  “ ‘This is terrible!’ said the goats. ‘Something must be done.’

  “ ‘He is an old leopard’ said the wisest of the goats. ‘If he regains his strength from the flesh he has eaten, he will go back to hunting for the impala, for the impala's flesh is much more nourishing than ours, and if he does not regain his strength, he will soon be dead. All we need do is be especially alert while he walks among us.’

  “But the other goats were too frightened to listen to his counsel, and they decided that they needed help.