Putting It Together; Turning Sow's Ear Drafts into Silk Purse Stories Part 11

"No," said Kamau bitterly. "The experiment was a success. They know they can clone an elephant, so why continue to pay for his upkeep when they can line their pockets with the remaining funds of the grant?"

"Is there no one you can appeal to?" I demanded.

"Look at me," said Kamau. "I am an 86-year-old man who was given his job as an act of charity. Who will listen to me?"

"We must do something," I said.

He shook his head sadly. "They arekehees ," he said. "Uncirc.u.mcised boys. They do not even know what amundumugu is. Do not humiliate yourself by pleading with them."

"If I did not plead with the Kikuyu on Kirinyaga," I replied, "you may be sure I will not plead with the Kenyans in Nairobi." I tried to ignore the ceaseless hummings of the laboratory machines as I considered my options. Finally I looked up at the night sky: the moon glowed a hazy orange through the pollution. "I will need your help," I said at last.

"You can depend on me."

"Good. I shall return tomorrow night."

I turned on my heel and left, without even stopping at Ahmed's enclosure.

All that night I thought and planned. In the morning, I waited until my son and his wife had left the house, then called Kamau on the vidphone to tell him what I intended to do and how he could help. Next, I had the computer contact the bank and withdraw my money, for though I disdained shillings and refused to cash my government checks, my son, who was wealthy, had found it easier to shower me with money than respect.

I spent the rest of the morning shopping at vehicle rental agencies, until I found exactly what I wanted. I had the saleswoman show me how to manipulate it, practiced until nightfall, hovered opposite the laboratory until I saw Kamau enter the grounds, and then maneuvered up to the side gate.

"Jambo, mundumugu!"whispered Kamau as he deactivated enough of the electronic barrier to accommodate the vehicle, which he scrutinized carefully. I backed up to Ahmed's enclosure, then opened the back and ordered the ramp to descend. The elephant watched with an uneasy curiosity as Kamau deactivated a ten-foot section of the force field and allowed the bottom of the ramp through.

"Njoo, Tembo,"I said.Come, elephant.

He took a tentative step toward me, then another and another. When he reached the edge of his enclosure he stopped, for always he had received an electrical "correction" when he tried to move beyond this point. It took almost twenty minutes of tempting him with peanuts before he finally crossed the barrier and then clambered awkwardly up the ramp, which slid in after him. I sealed him into the hovering vehicle, and he instantly trumpeted in panic.

"Keep him quiet until we get out of here," said a nervous Kamau as I joined him at the controls, "or he'll wake up the whole city."

I opened a panel to the back of the vehicle and spoke soothingly, and strangely enough the trumpeting ceased and the scuffling did stop. As I continued to calm the frightened beast, Kamau piloted the vehicle out of the laboratory complex. We pa.s.sed through the Ngong Hills twenty minutes later, and circled around Thika in another hour. When we pa.s.sed Kirinyaga-the true, snow-capped Kirinyaga, from which Ngai ruled the world-90 minutes after that, I did not give it so much as a glance.

We must have been quite a sight to anyone we pa.s.sed: two seemingly crazy old men, racing through the night in an unmarked cargo vehicle carrying a six-ton monster that had been extinct for more than two centuries.

"Have you considered what effect the radiation will have on him?" asked Kamau as we pa.s.sed through Isiolo and continued north.

"I questioned my son about it," I answered. "He is an important government official, and he says that the contamination is confined to the lower levels of the mountain." I paused. "He also tells me it will soon be cleaned up, but I do not think I believe him."

"But Ahmed must pa.s.s through the radiation zone to ascend the mountain," said Kamau.

I shrugged. "Then he will pa.s.s through it. Every day he lives is a day more than he would have lived in Nairobi. For as much time as Ngai sees fit to give him, he will be free to graze on the mountain's greenery and drink deep of its cool waters."

"I hope he lives many years," he said. "If I am to be jailed for breaking the law, I would at least like to know that some lasting good came of it."

"No one is going to jail you," I a.s.sured him. "All that will happen is that you will be fired from a job that no longer exists."

"That job paid my bills," he said unhappily.

The Burning Spear would have no use for you,I decided.You bring no honor to his name. It is as I have always known: I am the last true Kikuyu.

I pulled my remaining money out of my pouch and held it out to him. "Here," I said.

"But what about yourself,mzee ?" he said, forcing himself not to grab for it.

"Take it," I said. "I have no use for it."

"Asante sana, mzee,"he said, finally taking it from my hand and stuffing it into a pocket.

We fell silent then, each occupied with our own thoughts. As Nairobi receded further and further behind us, I compared my feelings with those I had experienced when I had left Kenya behind for Kirinyaga. I had been filled with optimism then, certain that we would create the Utopia I could envision so clearly in my mind.

The thing I had not realized is that a society can be a Utopia for only an instant-once it reaches a state of perfection it cannot change and still be a Utopia, and it is the nature of societies to grow and evolve. I do not know when Kirinyaga became a Utopia; the instant came and went without my noticing it.

Now I was seeking Utopia again, but this time of a more limited, more realizable nature: a Utopia for one man, a man who knew his own mind and would die before changing. I had been misled in the past, so I was not as elated as the day we had left for Kirinyaga; being older and wiser, I felt a calm, quiet cert.i.tude rather than more vivid emotions.

An hour after sunrise, we came to a huge, green, fog-enshrouded mountain, set in the middle of a bleached desert. A single swirling dust devil was visible against the horizon.

We stopped, then unsealed the elephant's compartment. We stood back as Ahmed stepped cautiously down the ramp, his every movement tense with apprehension. He took a few steps, as if to convince himself that he was truly on solid ground again, then raised his trunk to examine the scents of his new-and ancient-home.

Slowly the great beast turned toward Marsabit, and suddenly his whole demeanor changed. No longer cautious, no longer fearful, he spent almost a full minute eagerly examining the smells that wafted down to him. Then, without a backward look, he strode confidently to the foothills and vanished into the foliage. A moment later we heard him trumpet, and then he was climbing the mountain to claim his kingdom.

I turned to Kamau. "You had better take the vehicle back before they come looking for it."

"Are you not coming with me?" he asked, surprised.

"No," I replied. "Like Ahmed, I will live out my days on Marsabit."

"But that means you, too, must pa.s.s through the radiation."

"What of it?" I said with an unconcerned shrug. "I am an old man. How much time can I have left-weeks? Months? Surely not a year. Probably the burden of my years will kill me long before the radiation does."

"I hope you are right," said Kamau. "I should hate to think of you spending your final days in agony."

"I have seen men who live in agony," I told him. "They are the oldmzees who gather in the park each morning, living lives devoid of purpose, waiting only for death to claim another of their number. I will not share their fate."

A frown crossed his face like an early morning shadow, and I could see what he was thinking: he would have to take the vehicle back and face the consequences alone.

"I will remain here with you," he said suddenly. "I cannot turn my back on Eden a second time."

"It is not Eden," I said. "It is only a mountain in the middle of a desert."

"Nonetheless, I am staying. We will start a new Utopia. It will be Kirinyaga again, only done right this time."

I have work to do,I thought.Important work. And you would desert me in the end, as they have all deserted me. Better that you leave now.

"You must not worry about the authorities," I said in the same rea.s.suring tones with which I spoke to the elephant. "Return the vehicle to my son and he will take care of everything."

"Why should he?" asked Kamau suspiciously.

"Because I have always been an embarra.s.sment to him, and if it were known that I stole Ahmed from a government laboratory, I would graduate from an embarra.s.sment to a humiliation. Trust me: he will not allow this to happen."

Kamau's face became a battlefield, his terror of returning alone warring against his terror at spending the rest of his life on the mountain.

"It is true that my son would worry about me," he said hesitantly, as if expecting me to contradict him, perhaps even hoping that I would. "And I would never see my grandchildren again."

You are the last Kikuyu, indeed the last human being, that I shall ever see,I thought.I will utter one last lie, disguised as a question, and if you do not see through it, then you will leave with a clear conscience and I will have performed a final act of compa.s.sion.

"Go home, my friend," I said. "For what is more important than a grandchild?"

"Come with me, Koriba," he urged. "They will not punish you if you explain why you kidnapped him."

"I am not going back," I said firmly. "Not now, not ever. Ahmed and I are both anachronisms. It is best that we live out our lives here, away from a world we no longer recognize, a world that has no place for us."

"You and he are joined at the soul," said Kamau.

"Perhaps," I agreed. I laid my hand on his shoulder. "Kwahari,Kamau."

"Kwaheri, mzee,"he replied unhappily. "Please ask Ngai to forgive me for my weakness."

It seemed to take him forever to activate the vehicle and turn it toward Nairobi, but finally he was out of sight, and I turned and began climbing mighty Marsabit.

It was easier to let Kamau believe that some mystic bond existed between Ahmed and myself than try to explain the real reason I chose to remain there. For the truth I had finally perceived was that I had searched for Ngai too high up and too far away. Indeed, I had looked for Him on the wrong mountain.

Men of lesser faith might believe Him dead or disinterested, but I knew that if Ahmed could be reborn after all others of his kind were long dead, then Ngai must surely be nearby, overseeing the miracle. I would spend the rest of the day regaining my strength, and then, in the morning, I would begin searching for Him again on this new mountain.

And this time, I knew I would find Him.

Discussion of the second draft of "The Land of Nod"

This time I concentrated on the keeper (Kamau) and the elephant. There was some good stuff, but it still lacked the resonance I wanted, because they had nothing to play off of-I was so interested in them that I forgot that Koriba's conflict was not with them, but with modern Kenya as personified by his son.

But I was getting close.

No, you can't tell it by reading the second draft. It's lopsided, out of whack, not unfocused but rather wrongly focused.

But all the elements were there now. The start was unchanged. He still ends up on the mountain with Ahmed. Kamau has character. I've fleshed out a couple of sections of Nairobi. And I knew that if I could just mesh that with Edward from the first draft, I might have something worthwhile...

THE LAND OF NOD.

by Mike Resnick Once, many years ago, there was a Kikuyu warrior who left his village and wandered off in search of adventure. Armed only with a spear, he slew the mighty lion and the cunning leopard. Then one day he came upon an elephant. He realized that his spear was useless against such a beast, but before he could back away or find cover, the elephant charged.

His only hope was divine intervention, and he begged Ngai, who rules the universe from His throne atop Kirinyaga, the holy mountain that men now call Mount Kenya, to find him and pluck him from the path of the elephant.

But Ngai did not respond, and the elephant picked the warrior up with its trunk and hurled him high into the air, and he landed in a distant thorn tree. His skin was badly torn by the thorns, but at least he was safe, since he was on a branch some twenty feet above the ground.

After he was sure the elephant had left the area, the warrior climbed down. Then he returned home and ascended the holy mountain to confront Ngai.

"What is it that you want of me?" asked Ngai, when the warrior had reached the summit.

"I want to know why you did not come," said the warrior angrily. "All my life I have worshiped you and paid tribute to you. Did you not hear me ask for your help?"

"I heard you," answered Ngai.

"Then why did you not come to my aid?" demanded the warrior. "Are you so lacking in G.o.dly powers that you could not find me?"

"After all these years you still do not understand," said Ngai sternly. "It isyou who must search forme ."

My son Edward picked me up at the police station on Biashara Street just after midnight. The sleek British vehicle hovered a few inches above the ground while I got in, and then his chauffeur began taking us back to his house in the Ngong Hills.

"This is becoming tedious," he said, activating the shimmering privacy barrier so that we could not be overheard. He tried to present a judicial calm, but I knew he was furious.

"You would think they would tire of it," I agreed.

"We must have a serious talk," he said. "You have been back only two months, and this is the fourth time I have had to bail you out of jail."

"I have broken no Kikuyu laws," I said calmly, as we raced through the dark, ominous slums of Nairobi on our way to the affluent suburbs.

"You have broken the laws of Kenya," he said. "And like it or not, that is where you now live. I'm an official in the government, and I will not have you constantly embarra.s.sing me!" He paused, struggling with his temper. "Look at you! I have offered to buy you a new wardrobe. Why must you wear that ugly oldkikoi ? It smells even worse than it looks."

"Is there now a law against dressing like a Kikuyu?" I asked him.

"No," he said, as he commanded the miniature bar to appear from beneath the floor and poured himself a drink. "But thereis a law against creating a disturbance in a restaurant."

"I paid for my meal," I noted, as we turned onto Langata Road and headed out for the suburbs. "In the Kenya shillings that you gave me."

"That does not give you the right to hurl your food against the wall, simply because it is not cooked to your taste." He glared at me, barely able to contain his anger. "You're getting worse with each offense. If I had been anyone else, you'd have spent the night in jail. As it is, I had to agree to pay for the damage you caused."

"It was eland," I explained. "The Kikuyu do not eat game animals."

"It wasnot eland," he said, setting his gla.s.s down and lighting a smokeless cigarette. "The last eland died in a German zoo a year after you left for Kirinyaga. It was a modified soybean product, genetically enhanced totaste like eland." He paused, then sighed deeply. "If you thought it was eland, why did you order it?"

"The server said it was steak. I a.s.sumed he meant the meat of a cow or an ox."

"This has got to stop," said Edward. "We are two grown men. Why can't we reach an accommodation?" He stared at me for a long time. "I can deal with rational men who disagree with me. I do it at Government House every day. But I cannot deal with a fanatic."

"I am a rational man," I said.

"Are you?" he demanded. "Yesterday you showed my wife's nephew how to apply thegithani test for truthfulness, and he practically burned his brother's tongue off."

"His brother was lying," I said calmly. "He who lies faces the red-hot blade with a dry mouth, whereas he who has nothing to fear has enough moisture on his tongue so that he cannot be burned."

"Try telling a seven-year-old boy that he has nothing to fear when he's being approached by a s.a.d.i.s.tic older brother who is brandishing a red-hot knife!" snapped my son.

A uniformed watchman waved us through to the private road where my son lived, and when we reached our driveway the chauffeur pulled our British vehicle up to the edge of the force field. It identified us and vanished long enough for us to pa.s.s through, and soon we came to the front door.

Edward got out of the vehicle and approached his residence as I followed him. He clenched his fists in a physical effort to restrain his anger. "I agreed to let you live with us, because you are an old man who was thrown off his world-"

"I left Kirinyaga of my own volition," I interrupted calmly.