Chad Oliver

SHAKA!

Out of the deeps of space she came, a great metallic fish falling through the sky.

She was not built for primitive landings, that tremendous ship with the incongruous symbol of a laden camel on her gleaming bow; she was a creature of the vast night between the stars, and her normal port of call was the high sky. She was unused to winds and rain and the feel of grass and soil and rock against her taut hide. She carried landing shuttles, of course - graceful little spheroids that could drift down to a planet’s surface and come to rest as lightly as a feather. But she was not using them this time.

She wanted to be seen. She wanted to make a commotion. She wanted to call attention to herself.

She came down through the sky roaring and hollering with fire spurting from her tail. Femalelike, she made herself a dramatic entrance.

She touched down gently for all her bulk, settling with a grinding hiss into the yielding ground. She hit her target area right on the button, within inches of the spot the computers had calculated months ago.

She did no damage, but she was observed clearly enough. A volcano does not fall from the heavens without causing a stir.

A strange sweet-smelling breeze soothed her skin. A swollen yellow-blue sun beamed down and took the long chill out of her bones. She was soundless now, at rest, relaxed.

She waited for what had to come.

The people had no name for their world, and no concept of what a planet was. Their land - their territory - was Ernake, and they were the Anake. They knew there were other lands, and other peoples; some of them, in other times, had journeyed for many days, and they knew the land went on forever.

The Anake gather around the silent towering ship. They were filled with wonder, but they were not afraid. They had never seen anything like the ship before. They were aware that the thing had great power. Still, they were not stupid. They knew this place. This was where the round skyboats came. This was where they met the traders that flew out of the blazing sun. This was where they got good things. They made the connection.

The Anake were troubled. They did not fear the alien ship as long as it was quiet and motionless; in point of fact, they were not easily intimidated by anything. But they had enemies, the Kikusai, and the Kikusai were pressing them hard. It was difficult for the woodcarvers to find peace in which to work. It was dangerous to seek the firestones that the carvers blended with the dense, dark-grained woods.

They needed the carvings now, needed them more than in the olden days. They needed them to trade, and it was trade that made the Anake strong.

For many seasons, the traders had helped them. Useful things and new ideas had come to them from the skyboats. This time - although there had been no meeting arranged in advance, as was the custom - there might be a gift. Something big, something that was scaled to the size of this mighty visitor. Perhaps …

They could not know. They could not even try to guess.

They could only wait for the magic to happen. If it happened. The traders were funny sometimes. They had strange ways. They were not always like real people.

The Anake waited. All through the long afternoon of heat and stillness the ship did nothing. It was inert, but alive. It was aware, watching, but it took no action. The shadows lengthened and night winds whispered through the grasses. The great sun disappeared in a riot of color and there was only the little white sun that sometimes held back the darkness. The Anake built fires; the little sun burned with an uncertain heat.

They waited, not sleeping. In a lifeway that was not easy, the Anake had learned the value of patience.

The long silent hours passed and the stars moved and grew dim. The fires of the people died and the great fire in the sky returned, painting hot colors across the land.

There was … change … on the ship.

The Anake stared, expectantly.

The ship was ready.

A blurring on her smooth metal hide. Color: a perfect circle of heavy yellow. A thick pulsing beam, emerging from the circle and probing toward the ground.

Figures - dark, indistinct - floating down inside the beam.

Emerging.

The Anake stayed back, observing, giving them room.

One by one, men stepped out of the beam and stood in the brilliant sunlight. There were ten, then twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. They looked like no traders the Anake had ever seen. Some of them were dressed like Anake, right down to the wooden crestcombs in their hair. Some of them were dressed like Kikusai.

All of them carried shields and long iron-pointed spears.

The men from the ship formed two facing lines in the clearing, those made up like Anake on one side and those arrayed like Kikusai on the other. The lines were about thirty-five yards apart.

They yelled abuse at each other and made threatening - and occasionally obscene - gestures.

They began to fight.

There was no plan of attack, no coordination. An Anake would rear back, run a step or two, and heave his long, heavy spear at the Kikusai. The Kikusai would deflect the incoming spear with his tough oblong hide and then throw his spear.

There was a lot of sweat, a lot of profanity, and very little damage.

The men played out their charade for nearly an hour, then called the whole thing off. They retired to the shade cast by the towering ship and flopped down to rest. Flasks and sandwiches came down the beam. The men ate and drank.

The Anake - the real ones - were dismayed. They had seen nothing of interest, nothing new. This was the way they had always fought. Was this some kind of trader joke? They were not amused. They were tired and hungry and thirsty. They muttered together and fingered their spears. They spoke critically of the poor throwing technique of the men from the ship. They were restless. Still, they waited. The traders were hard to figure sometimes. It was well to be patient.

In the early afternoon, when the winds were weak and the brown dust-haze hung in the warm air, the men from the ship went into action again.

This time it was different.

This time they acted as though they meant business.

The Kikusai arranged themselves as they had done before, forming a long single line with their shields up and their great spears poised for throwing.

The Anake came out in a totally different formation. First, they knelt and took their long spears apart. The spears were made in three sections. There was a fairly heavy tapered butt, a socketed center shaft, and a foreshaft that ended in a six-inch iron point. By eliminating the center shaft and socketing the foreshaft directly into the butt, they created a different, shorter spear. You could not throw it accurately for any distance, but it had other uses.

While the Kikusai waited in their single line, the Anake turned their attention to their shields. Those shields, it was apparent, were not the simple devices they had seemed. By opening hidden latches, a portion of the shield was detached. The shield that remained was a new design: lighter, narrower, coming to a hooked point on the upper end, not quite as long as before.

With their equipment ready, the Anake moved into formation. They didn’t really have the manpower for the job - they needed a regiment - but they sketched it in.

First, a rectangle of fighting men, three deep.

On either side, separated from the rectangle and a little behind it, curved hornlike columns of men, situated to form a pincers.

In the rear, a square of reserves.

It was very hot and still. Sweat glistened in the sun.

The Anake shouted and advanced. As they moved, they kept up the noise. They did not run. They simply walked forward at a steady pace.

Some of the Kikusai loosed their spears with random throws. The advancing Anake deflected them easily with their maneuverable shields. The Anake threw no spears.

They just kept coming.

As the Anake warriors closed the distance, the Kikusai line wavered but held.

The solid rectangle of fighting men hit the center of the Kikusai line. The long spears of the Kikusai were useless in close combat. The Anake warriors hooked the Kikusai shields with their slender pointed shields, forcing them to one side.

The Anake went in with their short jabbing spears. The Kikusai had no defense. They were decimated.

The Kikusai who were still on their feet broke and fell back. The horns of the Anake formation closed around them, sealing them in.

The reserves came up.

Short, merciless spears thrust and ripped and tore. The brown dust was terrible. The heat hammered the clearing like a fist from hell.

When the dust finally lifted, the Kikusai lay in crumpled heaps where they had fallen. The tired, sweating Anake were bruised and exhausted and streaked with dirt, but they had not lost a man.

For a long moment suspended in time the tableau held. Then the Kikusai actors struggled to their feet, brushed themselves off, and mingled profanely with those who had played the victorious Anake.

The traders trooped wearily back to the pulsing yellow beam. They were … absorbed … into the ship. The beam vanished.

There was only the immense silent ship poised beneath a strange yellow-blue sun. There was only the cloudless vault of the sky and the first stirrings of wind.

And the real Anake, who had seen it all.

The real Anake, who could not leave.

The real Anake, who played no games but fought for survival against an enemy that was stronger than they knew.

The tremendous ship changed position. It did this almost without sound, almost without visible motion. It was rooted into the land and then it was free. There was space beneath it. There was a … blurring … around it.

There was no need now for fire and thunder and drama. There was no need and it would have been impossible. To start those engines would have seared the Anake to cinders.

The ship lifted. It was high in the sky before its thrusters flamed. Its roar was muted.

The ship was gone. Its task was finished.

Not a word had been spoken between the traders and the Anake. Nothing had been exchanged. Technically, there had been no instruction.

But communication can take many forms, and not all of them can be foreseen by distant laws.

The Anake had seen.

One in particular, a small tense man with bright and piercing eyes and a questing mind. He knew. He saw the possibilities.

While those around him babbled of food and drink and joked about small incidents of the mock battle, he stood alone.

He looked thoughtfully at the long spear he carried in his hand.

He stared at the deserted clearing, and he remembered.

The great lightship of Caravans, Unlimited, had left the system of Procyon far behind. Even in the coruscating gray abyss of not-space, it would take a long time before it could return. In any event, the ship had other ports of call to make; deep space travel was too complicated and too expensive to permit one-shot voyages. Like the laden camel that was its corporate symbol, the ship moved from oasis to oasis through a universe of desert. Like the caravans that once plied the Sahara sands of a long-ago Earth, it did what business it could along the way.

Alex Porvenir fiddled with his glass, not really wanting a drink. That wasn’t like him; he was no lush, but he enjoyed his Scotch and it usually relaxed him. He took out his pipe, cleaned the foul thing with elaborate and pointless care, and stuffed it with tobacco. He fired up a long wooden match - he had no luck with lighters - and lit the pipe. It tasted like burned grease, which was normal. About one pipe in twenty turned out to be worth the effort.

‘You don’t have the look of a man consumed with joy,’ Tucker Olton said, sipping his drink with gusto. ‘What’s the matter? I thought it all went off like a breeze.’

Alex Porvenir stared at his glass, watching the ice melt. He hated these moods of his, and they had been getting more frequent the last few years. When he had been Tucker Olton’s age, he had the galaxy by the tail. Oh, he had known just about everything. It was surprising what a man unlearned as he grew older. Alex was only forty, and physically he was sound enough. He could take Tucker, for instance, and Tucker was ten years younger. Alex was a tall, lean man and he was hard. He worked at it; he was one of those men who needed physical outlets to keep his mind from going stale. He had a theory about that : man had been a hunting animal for a million years before he had been anything else, and that was the kind of animal he was. He wasn’t designed to sit at a desk and push paper, not all the time. He needed a release, and the release came from the body rather than the brain. There was some gray in his hair, but his brown eyes were clear and sharp. Alex had a jaw on him; he could be stubborn.

Right now, he was troubled.

His thoughts were on Procyn V, and the Anake.

And the Kikusai.

‘I’m worried, Tuck,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the responsibility of playing God.’

Tucker Olton smiled. He knew Alex’s moods; they had been together for six years now, and they had gotten beyond the master-student relationship. ‘You’re taking yourself a trifle seriously, aren’t you? We’re just doing our job.’

‘I’ve heard that one before, I think.’

‘But what’s wrong? It was your plan, remember, and a damned good one. The boys acted out their little play perfectly. We must have communicated, unless the Anake have wood blocks between their ears. We broke no laws. The Caravans lawyers could go before the U.N. ET Council and win this one hands down.’

Alex puffed on his pipe. ‘I’m not worried about the technical end of it; I know my business. It’ll work. I’m not worried about the legal angle. That not my department. I regret using an old-fashioned word, but I’m worried about the morality of the thing.’

Tucker looked surprised. ‘But there’s no question there. We had to do it, no matter whose standards you apply.’

‘I learned you better than that, old son.’

‘Hell, this isn’t a fog-brained seminar in Advanced Ethics. That’s a real world we’re dealing with, and real people. We couldn’t just juggle our philosophies and do nothing. We did the best we could. The Anake are a good bunch, if you will excuse the value judgement. Forget about the profit motive if it makes you feel better. The Kikusai are bigger trouble than they know - those birds are on the verge of a conquest state that could take over a very big chunk of that planet, including the Anake. If we don’t act, the Anake will be slaves. It’s just that simple. It happens to be in our interest to preserve the Anake, but so what? That doesn’t make it wrong.’

Alex shook his head. ‘Right, wrong. I don’t profess to know. But try this one on for size. Suppose our little plan not only works, but works too well? Try the argument you just made on that one.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Come on, Tuck. Dredge up a smattering of history, or reflect a bit on our distinguished predecessor, Dr. Frankenstein. What exactly did we do?’

Tucker Olton felt that his knowledge was being challenged, and he didn’t like it. He spoke with cool precision, masking his annoyance. ‘We need the Anake because they are producing for us. They were being threatened by the Kikusai to the point where it was interfering with their artisans. Tactically, as we both noticed, the situation was similar to the one in southern Africa about eighteen hundred. You had a series of tribally-organized peoples with economies based on mixed farming and herding. They raided back and forth, with no vast amount of harm done. The warriors just lined up and heaved their long spears at each other. But then the Kikusai began to get organized, and their population increased. They began to expand their territory -’

‘Get back to Africa. You’re on Procyon V. What happened in Africa?’

Tucker smiled. ‘Shaka happened.’

Alex fiddled with his pipe. He couldn’t resist digging at Tucker a trifle. ‘Actually, Dingiswayo happened, then Shaka.’

‘I know that, dammit. But the new formation and the new weapons were Shaka’s. If it hadn’t been for Shaka, the Zulus would have been just a minor historical footnote.’

‘Maybe. But tell me about Shaka.’

Tucker sighed. Alex had a habit of asking questions when he already knew the answers. ‘Shaka made himself an army. He drilled the old age-set regiments until they would march off a cliff at his command. He taught them his new encircling tactics and he trained them to fight to the death. He created a fighting machine that was good enough - later - to handle British regular troops. The other tribes didn’t have a prayer. Shaka knocked some of them all the way to Lake Victoria, and that was a fair distance.’

‘And what happened to Shaka?’

Tucker shrugged. ‘He was a military genius. He was also a very peculiar gent. He became a dictator, in effect. He was something of a political mastermind; he destroyed the old tribal organization and converted it into a state system. When he wasn’t performing cute little tricks like executing thousands of citizens so the people would remember his mother’s funeral, he ruled fairly efficiently. He controlled over eighty thousand square miles before he was through. He terrorized southern Africa -’

‘What happened to Shaka?’ Alex repeated.

‘I don’t know,’ Tucker admitted. ‘Fire me.’

Alex poured himself another drink. ‘Look it up sometime. You might need to know.’

‘I’m beginning to get the drift.’

‘Two cheers for our side. Maybe there’s hope for you yet. Look, Tuck. We probably saved the Anake by sneaking in some new ideas - violating, of course, the spirit if not the letter of the law. And you’re right - if we hadn’t done it, the Anake would have gone under. But now what? Suppose a Shaka comes along among the Anake and puts it all together? Then the Kikusai are up the old creek. They are people too, remember. We have no right to exterminate them. That’s the trouble with tinkering with cultural systems - you always get more problems than you started with. And if I may return briefly to the old profit motive - since Caravans doesn’t pay me just to conduct social experiments and brood about them - how much carving do you think the Anake will do once they get caught up in the glories of military conquest?’

‘They’ll do plenty of carving. But they’ll be carving Kikusai.’

Alex smiled. ‘Still think it’s simple?’

‘It could be. We can’t spend our time worrying about every conceivable development.’

‘I figure that’s one reason why we’re here. Machines can calculate possibilities and probabilities. It takes a man to worry about the long shots.’

‘Maybe there will be no Shaka.’

‘Maybe not. But I’ll tell you this, old son. You’d better bone up on what happened to our friend Shaka. If his counterpart does show up, the two of us will have to stop him. And that might take some doing.’

There was an uncomfortable silence between the two men.

The lightship flashed on through the grayness of not-space, and across a universe that was as uncaring as the sands of the desert.

His name was Nthenge. A small, nervous man. Energy radiated from him; he was tense even when he slept, which was seldom. His eyes were his most notable feature: deep eyes, direct, glowing, hypnotic. He was thin; he had no time to put meat on his bones. His voice was high but compelling. When Nthenge spoke, others listened.

There had been a time when Nthenge was nothing special. He was just one of the Anake. A good warrior, a man of experience, a man to consult in village crises - that was all. If he was unusual in any way, it was because he had never married.

His name was not widely known, then. Those Anake who knew him generally preferred his brother, Kioko. Kioko was a family man and had a gentler spirit. Kioko was a woodcarver, and his long, fine hands were skilled in making the dark-grained woods come alive.

That was before the great ship had landed.

That was before Nthenge had seen, and understood.

They knew the name of Nthenge now. The Anake knew him, and the Kikusai.

Nthenge!

He was a scourge, a destroyer, a flame across the land. The Kikusai feared and hated him. The Anake feared and needed him.

The Anake followed him.

Had he not shown them the way? Had he not taken the ideas of the traders and turned them into an army against which nothing could stand? Had he not saved them from their enemies?

Nthenge!

He was fearless in battle, but he was more than that. He was a thinker, a planner, a man who did not move until he was sure.

And he was - hard.

There were those who disagreed with Nthenge, at first. They were no longer among the living; they had a way of taking mortal wounds in battle. There were those who plotted against Nthenge. They had a way of disappearing.

Nthenge!

He gave his people power. It was a heady brew. It made people forget, for awhile.

Forget under the yellow-blue sun …

Forget in the haze of brown dust that obscured a slaughter…

Forget when the sweet nights winds rustled through the grasses …

Forget what had been, and what might still be.

The people of the land of Ernake owed much to Nthenge.

He had shown them the way.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Carlos Coyanosa, ‘we have a problem.’

Alex Porvenir smiled and stoked up his pipe, which was as rancid as ever. ‘Which one did you have in mind?’

It was a familiar opening to a dialogue. Carlos Coyanosa, who was the senior Caravans representative aboard the lightship, always had a problem. It was his responsibility to oversee company policies - in some respects he outranked the captain - and that meant that problems were as much a part of him as his proverbial headache. Moreover, he had a habit of assuming that others knew precisely which problem he was dealing with at any given moment. In actuality, because of the mechanics of space travel and the nature of the enterprise, there were many situations unfolding concurrently. Just as a doctor has more than one patient - unless he is a very bad doctor indeed - a trading ship in space must interact with many clients on any given voyage. If cultural adjustments had to be made, that took time. A company could not afford to sit back and twiddle its corporate thumbs while waiting for a desired effect to take place. It was only on the tri-di that the traders dropped everything and concentrated on one situation to the exclusion of all others.

‘It’s Procyon V,’ Carlos said, smoothing his long black hair with the palm of his hand. ‘The Anake thing.’

‘What about it?’

‘Same old stuff, gentlemen. Our people filed the usual bare-bones report with the U.N. Trade Commission. They shot it over to the ET Council. The Nigerian representative smelled a rat. He went into a huddle with the man from Uganda, and they issued a formal protest. Our lawyers have tied the thing up, but they need more ammunition.’

Tucker Olton sighed. ‘The protest being?’

‘Their argument is that what we did is a clear case of cultural manipulation. They are raising the old bugaboo of colonialism in space. It’s good politics back home, of course. They say that the Anake did not give their consent to a basic change in their way of life. They say that we are out for a fast buck. They say we have trampled on the rights of the people.’

Alex nodded. ‘As an anthropologist, I agree with them. It is a clear case of cultural manipulation.’

‘I didn’t hear that,’ Carlos said.

‘Hear no evil, see no evil, evil go away. Right?’

‘Wrong. Damn, you know as well as I do that Caravans’ policy expressly forbids any action detrimental to the welfare of the people we’re dealing with -’

‘Sure, but who decides?’

‘You do, among others. Don’t wear your holy hat with me, Alex. You bank your pay just like I do.’

‘Let’s not get into that again,’ Tucker said.

Alex puffed on his pipe. ‘I concur. We’ll proceed on the assumption - mistaken, of course - that we’re all rational men. At any rate, we’re trying to do the best we can. I even happen to believe, for what it’s worth, that Caravans does more good than harm. Hell, for that matter colonialism wasn’t always the monster it was made out to be.’

‘I didn’t hear that, either.’

‘Right. We must be fashionable. There were some rotten things about colonialism. One of them was paternalism, which is what we’re guilty of right now. But there were a few small forgotten items - schools, roads, hospitals, political ideas, even some notion of human rights.’

‘This isn’t helping me at all,’ Carlos observed.

‘Okay, try this one on then. It doesn’t matter whether we did or did not manipulate the Anake culture. We did, but that’s another story. In any event, the Kikusai are the ones who are in trouble at the moment -’

‘Please. Don’t tangle it up more than it is already.’

‘Check. We’ll stay with the Anake; the ET Council is always worried about the wrong problem. Maybe there’s a lesson in that somewhere. Never mind. Look, Carlos, what you’ve got is a legal problem - legal and political. I can’t help you with public relations. The fact is that the exploration and utilization of interstellar space will be done by private outfits like Caravans or it won’t be done at all. Governments can’t risk tax revenues on space gambles; the sums involved are too immense, and the worthy citizens have enough troubles to cope with at home. Either we do it or Earth forgets it is part of a larger universe. If the PR boys can’t sell that one they should chop up their shingles.’

‘I’ll pass on your accolades. And the legal aspects?’

‘There I can help. From a strictly legal point of view, our hands are clean. We did not formally instruct the Anake in anything. We put on a little game to ease the tedium of life aboard ship. We made no threats, we offered no incentives. The change that occurred took place among the Anake - hell, it was entirely their decision, with no prodding of any sort from us. We did not even speak to them. We pulled out right after our fun charade. As for the welfare of the people, they are in better shape now than they were then. Survival is a fairly basic right, you know. In terms of money, Caravans has not yet realized any added income from its action. In fact, the supply of carvings has diminished. Friend, even I could argue this case.’

‘You may have to before we’re through.’ Carlos ventured a smile. ‘But it does sound pretty good when you put it that way. Thanks, Alex.’

‘Don’t mention it. If the real problems were as easy as the fake problems, I’d turn in my ulcer.’

Carlos excused himself and returned to his office to work on his report.

‘You’re really worried, aren’t you?’ Tucker said. ‘I thought you handled that nicely.’

Alex got some ice and poured himself a judiciously hefty portion of Scotch. He was tired and tense and needed to unwind. He flopped in a comfortable chair and took a long swallow of therapy.

‘The legal situation doesn’t alarm me, Tuck. We’re clear on that one, and that’s not my baby anyway. But you’ve seen the monitor reports. We’ve got to get back to the Procyon system before everything falls apart.’

‘You mean Nthenge?’

‘He’s the key to it. The Kikusai are getting a very bloody nose, and that’s our responsibility. The Anake are so wrapped up in playing soldier that the production of carvings is going down. Our moral problem is Nthenge. Our practical problem is to keep those carvings coming. You know, this is a very peculiar business we’re in. Caravans has to show a profit. In order to do that, we need relatively small products to transport - small items that will bring high prices. The modern equivalents of salt and gold. Handicrafts are ideal, because they are no longer produced on Earth. Those Anake carvings are one of our gold mines. It took a long time to find them and a long time to set the thing up. We can’t afford to lose them.’

And so?’

‘And so we go back when we can work it in. We stop Nthenge.’

Tucker grinned. ‘Nothing to it. We just introduce the Kikusai to some repeating rifles.’

‘What would I do without you?’

‘God knows. I vote we worry about it tomorrow. You need some sleep.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. Good night, Tuck.’

Tucker Olton waved and left.

Alex Porvenir collected the bottle of Scotch, two glasses, and a supply of ice. He walked through the silent corridor of the lightship and caught the tube to his room.

It was a pleasant chamber and spacious by crowded Earth standards. He had a bed big enough to accommodate his six-foot-plus frame with room to spare. He had three soft chairs and a battered foot-stool. There were two ancient priceless Navaho rugs on the floor. He had a computer terminal, a scanner, and some real books. He even had a genuine oversized bathtub in the john.

‘All the comforts of home,’ he muttered. In fact, is was home. For fifteen years, Alex had spent more time in space and on other worlds than he had on Earth.

He stripped off his shirt and poured a drink. He had tried a great many concoctions from a variety of different worlds and he had yet to find anything better than Scotch.

He picked up the communicator and pressed a number.

‘Helen? Were you asleep?’

‘A little.’ Her voice was drowsy, but the sound of it thrilled him as it always did.

‘Can you spare an hour or two?’

‘Do you need me?’

‘Two guesses.’

‘Then I’ll try to fit you into my busy schedule, love.’

‘My room or yours?’

‘You’ve got a bigger bed.’

‘Ten minutes?’

‘Make it five.’

Alex disconnected and poured a second drink for Helen. As Tucker had said, Nthenge could wait until tomorrow.

Alex smiled and felt some of the tension leave him. He had tried a great many things on a variety of different worlds, and he had yet to find anything better than a good woman.

Both suns were still in the sky, but the great yellow-blue fire had dipped close to the horizon. The air was hot and choked with brown dust kicked up by marching feet. Long shadows striped the village and brought no relief.

It was stifling inside the hut and the light was bad. Kioko had moved to his bench in the courtyard. One of his children played quietly in the dirt at his feet. Kioko frowned at the carving he held in his hands and tried to concentrate. The wood was dark and alive, flowing. But the firestone in the head of the ancestral figure was not right. It should glow softly with an inner radiance, shining through the eyes, as was the way with ancestral spirits. The firestone was clumsy, blatant. It had not become one with the wood. And there were so few firestones now, even for Kioko. He could not afford to make a mistake.

The noise from the soldiers bothered him. They were forever drilling and shouting commands. There was no peace, and today it was worse than usual. There was a sense of urgency and excitement in the square.

Reluctantly, Kioko replaced the carving on the bench. He picked up his stone-bladed knife and polished it absently. He sat back to watch.

Nthenge himself was there. Kioko studied his brother, remembering. Nthenge was the same and he was not the same. He had always been small and thin and consumed with a terrible restlessness. When they were children, Nthenge had twisted constantly in his sleep, and gotten up to think his long night thoughts. He had grown up hard and unyielding and without compassion. He had never danced with the girls, never laughed. He had always been strange, but now -

Kioko hardly knew him. Nthenge had power, and it had changed him. It had made him proud and arrogant and arbitrary. Kioko felt no kinship with his brother.

Nthenge faced his sweating troops and silenced them with a gesture of command. The painted wooden crestcomb in his hair was so big and elaborate that it almost dwarfed him. Kioko stifled a smile. It was dangerous to smile at Nthenge. He took himself very seriously indeed.

Nthenge harangued his men, his high voice piercing the still brown haze of the air. Kioko could not catch the words, but Nthenge sounded angry. That was standard these days.

Nthenge spoke for a long time, pacing up and down and shaking his fists at the sky. He was screaming before his speech ended, and then there was a sudden silence.

A soldier was brought before him. The man’s hands were bound behind his back. He fell before Nthenge and groveled in the dirt.

Kioko started to his feet but thought better of it. He could do nothing, of course. These executions were becoming commonplace. Execution for cowardice in battle, for plotting against Nthenge, for appearing in Nthenge’s dreams, for anything. Nthenge enjoyed them.

The bound soldier lay still, his face buried in the dust.

Nthenge kicked him in the head.

The man rolled and staggered to his feet.

Nthenge took one of the short spears from a trooper. He hefted it, took a grip on the foreshaft with both hands.

He swung it in a vicious arc and hit the man in the stomach with the heavy butt. The soldier doubled up in pain and sank to his knees.

Nthenge kicked him in the head again.

Nthenge backed off a step and gave a signal.

The man was picked up and thrown into the air. When his twisting body came down the soldiers caught it on the points of their spears.

The flopping, bloody body was hurled into the air again and again. A hundred hard metal points ripped its flesh.

When Nthenge gave the command to stop, the man was only a shredded chunk of bloody meat.

A disposal squad gathered up the remains in a blanket and carted the mess away for the scavengers.

Nthenge dismissed his troops.

It was growing dark now, and the night winds began to stir across the land. The dust settled and the breeze rustled through the thatch that hung down from the roofs of the Anake huts. A faint coolness crept down from the faraway mountains.

In the deserted square, Nthenge walked alone. His hands were clasped behind him in an unconscious parody of the soldier he had slain. He paced back and forth, back and forth, busy with the thoughts that never stopped.

Once, he looked in the direction of Kioko, hidden in the black shadows.

Kioko shivered. He reached out and touched the child playing at his feet. With his free hand, he stroked the polished stone blade of his carver’s knife.

The firestone in the head of his unfinished ancestor-figure gleamed with an icy flame in the gathering darkness.

The bubble of the landing shuttle drifted down out of the night sky. She showed no lights and was invisible against the backdrop of the stars.

She touched down without a sound and Alex Porvenir stepped out.

He was alone and his best friend would not have recognized him. He was dressed in Anake clothing, complete with a wooden crestcomb in his hair. His features had been subtly blurred. There was a slight phosphorescent glow to his body and his eyes shone in the dark.

‘Brother,’ he muttered, ‘if I run into the wrong guy in this get-up it could get interesting.’

He slipped through the night-damp grasses toward the Anake village, cursing the glow that radiated from him. He knew that Nthenge’s security was not what it might be, but nonetheless he felt about as inconspicuous as an illuminated dinosaur.

‘Wait until they hear about this one back at the U.N.,’ he whispered to himself. ‘They’ll have me drawn and quartered.’

Of course, this trip was strictly off the record. They had better not hear about it.

The village was asleep, including the sentries. The Anake were not night fighters, and neither were the Kikusai. It was only civilized peoples who lacked enough sense to take time off to sleep.

Alex found Kioko’s hut without difficulty. It was fortunate that Kioko was a relatively important man. That meant that he had a sleeping hut to himself, with his wives and children and the cooking quarters in a second hut.

Alex took a deep breath and walked through the open doorway of the hut.

He could see by his own glow. Kioko was alone, and asleep.

Alex stood over him and extended his arms. He did his level best to look like an ancestral spirit. He fought an insane urge to light his pipe that sat next to his ashtray aboard the ship. He could almost hear Helen laughing at him.

He composed himself.

‘Kioko’ he said in an urgent, level voice.

The sleeping figure stirred.

‘Kioko!’

Kioko sat up. His eyes widened. Alex could smell the man’s shocked surprise. It was one thing to believe in ancestral spirits. It was quite another to wake up and find one in the room with you.

‘Kioko, I want you to listen carefully to what I say.’

Kioko fumbled under his bed and produced a bowl that had some food remnants in it. He offered it with shaking hands. ‘Here is food, my father. I have no beer. Take it and go away.’

Alex could not understand him. He had memorized his speech and could not deviate from it. He did not speak the language of the Anake and of course translating equipment was not available. He did know that the people were constantly making small offerings of food to the ancestors; a tiny portion of each meal was set aside for them. He accepted the bowl and placed it on the floor. He extended his arms again.

‘Kioko, I want you to listen carefully to what I say.’

Kioko listened. He had no choice.

‘Kioko, the ancestors have been saddened. We have watched our people and we do not like what we see. Your ways are no longer our ways. We have come to you because you are the brother of Nthenge. Nthenge will not listen to us. You must listen. You must act. If you do not, the ancestors can no longer protect their people. The crops will fail. There will be sickness. The witches will destroy us all.’

Kioko tried to speak. Alex silenced him with a gesture and plunged on.

‘One man has brought our people close to destruction. That man is your brother. One man can stop him. That man is you. You, Kioko. We will help you. We will protect you. Our people must be free again and you must lead them. Listen, Kioko. This is what you must do …’

Alex finished his prepared speech and gave Kioko no chance to reply. He stalked out of the hut in what he hoped was a majestic manner.

Once outside, he ran through the silent village. The glow from his body made him feel as though he were moving in the beam of a spotlight.

He did not feel good about what he had done. He did not see what other choice had been open to him. He tried to put his misgivings out of his mind. He could live with his guilt. That was all.

He made it back to the landing shuttle undetected.

The spheroid lifted soundlessly toward the stars.

Within minutes, Alex Porvenir was back aboard the lightship.

Five days later - five anxious and expensive days while Caravans observers stayed glued to their monitors - Kioko acted.

He invited Nthenge to visit him in his home, stating that he had information that Nthenge should know. Normally, Nthenge would not have come. He was beyond that. If you wished to see Nthenge, you went to him. But Kioko was different. He was a brother of the same mother.

Nthenge came. As had been arranged, he came in the evening when the great sun went down but light still lingered between the shadows. He left his guard outside after they had inspected the hut. Nthenge did not lack courage, and he could not show fear before his own brother.

Nthenge entered the house.

Kioko said nothing. He embraced Nthenge in the traditional greeting between brothers.

Before Nthenge could speak, Kioko slipped his woodcarver’s knife from his tunic. He plunged the polished stone blade into his brother’s chest. Nthenge grunted with pain and surprise. Kioko yanked out the blade and cut his brother’s throat.

There was a lot of blood. Kioko’s hands were slippery.

In a daze, hardly comprehending what he had done, Kioko followed instructions. He picked Nthenge’s body up in his arms. The weight was negligible; Nthenge had no meat on his bones. Kioko walked out the door carrying the body of Nthenge. It was still warm. It dripped a bright red trail.

Kioko carried the body to his workbench and put it down.

He stood up straight. ‘I have done it,’ he said in a loud, strong voice. ‘I, Kioko, the brother of Nthenge. The Anake are free.’

There were many people crowded around the courtyard. They stood in total silence. There was no movement.

Then - motion.

Ancestral figures moved among the people. Their figures were blurred. They glowed as they walked. They touched the people - soldiers, guards, old men, women, children. They whispered the ancient blessings.

The ancestors gathered around Kioko. One by one, they embraced him.

The strange silence held.

There were old, old stories that told of the ancestors visiting a village of the people, but no living man had seen such a thing with his own eyes. When the ancestors had appeared - magically, as though dropped from the sky - they had collected a crowd in a hurry.

It was a night that would be long remembered. In time, it too would become legend.

The ancestors formed a tight little group when they had finished indicating their approval of Kioko.

They withdrew, silently.

Their glow vanished into the night.

Still, the people did not speak. They waited to hear what Kioko would say.

Kioko stood with his dead brother sprawled on the bench behind him. He searched for the words that would lead the Anake back.

He faced his people and began.

Aboard the lightship, far now from the world of Procyon V, Alex Porvenir fired up one of his smelly pipes and blew an angry cloud of smoke in the general direction of Tucker Olton.

‘It’s easy for us,’ he said. ‘We commit a murder and then we just pull out. We’re beyond the range of their concepts, to say nothing of their technology. We have achieved at least one age-old human goal: the perfect crime.’

‘We didn’t kill anybody,’ Tucker said. ‘You didn’t kill anybody.’

‘Sure,’ Alex snorted. ‘The ancestors did it. Don’t play the fool, Tuck. I’m a big boy now. I made the decision. I’ll take the responsibility.’

‘Kioko killed him,’ Tucker said doggedly.

‘What choice did he have after I bamboozled him? Kioko was just the instrument I used. That’s all.’

Tucker changed tactics. ‘Nthenge was no loss, Alex.’

‘No. I don’t think so either. But he was a human being. We are not gods. Who are we to sit in judgement?’

Tucker managed a grim smile. He understood the older man’s moods; he knew he was being used. He respected Alex enough to put up with it. ‘Two questions, Alex. If you see an evil - never mind its cause - and take no action, does that earn you a gold star in your hymn book? And how many lives did you save by the death of Nthenge?’

Alex poured himself a drink. ‘Maybe. Maybe.’

‘We’ve restored a balance in that situation. The Kikusai have learned a few tricks too, you know. Kioko is a decent man, and we’ve backed him up with our little ancestor squad. We can use the ancestors again if we have to. There will be a kind of a peace down there for generations.’

‘And carvings. Don’t forget our loot.’

‘Yes, and carvings. Dammit, Alex, they don’t hurt anybody. If you get really morbid on me, I’m yelling for the medics. We did the best we could.’

‘Yes.’ Alex downed his Scotch and felt a little better. ‘We did the best we could. I’ll give us that.’

Tucker nodded. ‘I’m shoving off to get some sleep. Helen is waiting for you, in case you’ve forgotten.’

‘I haven’t forgotten.’

‘I do have one question.’

‘Shoot.’

‘What in the hell did happen to the historical Shaka?’

Alex Porvenir grinned and poured himself another drink. ‘Shaka had two brothers. They assassinated Shaka in 1828. Then one brother killed the other and took over. We simplified it a little on Procyon V.’

Tucker Olton shook his head and left the room.

*

The Caravans lightship plunged on through the desert of space. Against the stars, against the scale of the universe, the ship was nothing and less than nothing.

It carried a man and beside him a woman.

There was life, and purpose.

And there was a tiny thought, hurtled against the immensity of nothingness:

We try. We learn through our mistakes. We do the best we can.

Maybe we’ll be remembered.