FOR I HAVE TOUCHED THE SKY

{JANUARY 2131}

Mike Resnick

There was a time when men had wings.

Ngai, who sits alone on His golden throne atop Kirinyaga, gave men the gift of flight, so that they might reach the succulent fruits on the highest branches of the trees. But one man, a son of Gikuyu, who was himself the first man, saw the eagle and the vulture riding high upon the winds, and spreading his wings, he joined them. He circled higher and higher, and soon he soared far above all other flying things.

Then, suddenly, the hand of Ngai reached out and grabbed the son of Gikuyu.

“What have I done that you should grab me thus?” asked the son of Gikuyu.

“I live atop Kirinyaga because it is the top of the world,” answered Ngai, “and no one’s head may be higher than my own.”

And so saying, Ngai plucked the wings from the son of Gikuyu, and then took the wings away from all men, so that no man could ever again rise higher than His head.

And that is why all of Gikuyu’s descendants look at the birds with a sense of loss and envy, and why they no longer eat the succulent fruits from the highest branches of the trees.

We have many birds on the world of Kirinyaga, which was named for the holy mountain where Ngai dwells. We brought them along with our other animals when we received our charter from the Eutopian Council and departed from a Kenya that no longer had any meaning for true members of the Kikuyu tribe. Our new world is home to the maribou and the vulture, the ostrich and the fish eagle, the weaver and the heron, and many other species. Even I, who am the mundumugu, delight in their many colors, and find solace in their music. I have spent many afternoons seated in front of my boma, my back propped up against an ancient acacia tree, watching the profusion of colors and listening to the melodic songs as the birds come to slake their thirst in the river that winds through our village.

It was on one such afternoon that Kamari, a young girl who was not yet of circumcision age, walked up the long, winding path that separates my boma from the village, holding something small and gray in her hands.

“Jambo, Koriba,” she greeted me.

“Jambo, Kamari,” I answered her. “What have you brought to me, child?”

“This,” she said, holding out a young pygmy falcon that struggled weakly to escape her grasp. “I found him in my family’s shamba. He cannot fly.”

“He looks fully fledged,” I noted, getting to my feet. Then I saw that one of his wings was held at an awkward angle. “Ah!” I said. “He has broken his wing.”

“Can you make him well, mundumugu?” asked Kamari.

I examined the wing briefly, while she held the young falcon’s head away from me. Then I stepped back.

“I can make him well, Kamari,” I said. “But I cannot make him fly. The wing will heal, but it will never be strong enough to bear his weight again. I think we will destroy him.”

“No!” she exclaimed, pulling the falcon back. “You will make him live, and I will care for him!”

I stared at the bird for a moment, then shook my head. “He will not wish to live,” I said at last.

“Why not?”

“Because he has ridden high upon the warm winds.”

“I do not understand,” said Kamari, frowning.

“Once a bird has touched the sky,” I explained, “he can never be content to spend his days on the ground.”

“I will make him content,” she said with determination. “You will heal him and I will care for him, and he will live.”

“I will heal him and you will care for him,” I said. “But,” I added, “he will not live.”

“What is your fee, Koriba?” she asked, suddenly businesslike.

“I do not charge children,” I answered. “I will visit your father tomorrow, and he will pay me.”

She shook her head adamantly. “This is my bird. I will pay the fee.”

“Very well,” I said, admiring her spirit, for most children—and all adults—are terrified of their mundumugu, and would never openly contradict or disagree with him. “For one month you will clean my boma every morning and every afternoon. You will lay out my sleeping blankets, and keep my water gourd filled, and you will see that I have kindling for my fire.”

“That is fair,” she said after a moment’s consideration. Then she added: “What if the bird dies before the month is over?”

“Then you will learn that a mundumugu knows more than a little Kikuyu girl,” I said.

She set her jaw. “He will not die.” She paused. “Will you fix his wing now?”

“Yes.”

“I will help.”

I shook my head. “You will build a cage in which to confine him, for if he tries to move his wing too soon, he will break it again and then I will surely have to destroy him.”

She handed the bird to me. “I will be back soon,” she promised, racing off toward her shamba.

I took the falcon into my hut. He was too weak to struggle very much, and he allowed me to tie his beak shut. Then I began the slow task of splinting his broken wing and binding it against his body to keep it motionless. He shrieked in pain as I manipulated the bones together, but otherwise he simply stared unblinking at me, and within ten minutes the job was finished.

Kamari returned an hour later, holding a small wooden cage in her hands.

“Is this large enough, Koriba?” she asked.

I held it up and examined it.

“It is almost too large,” I replied. “He must not be able to move his wing until it has healed.”

“He won’t,” she promised. “I will watch him all day long, every day.”

“You will watch him all day long, every day?” I repeated, amused.

“Yes.”

“Then who will clean my hut and my boma, and who will fill my gourd with water?”

“I will carry his cage with me when I come,” she replied.

“The cage will be much heavier when the bird is in it,” I pointed out.

“When I am a woman, I will carry far heavier loads on my back, for I shall have to till the fields and gather the firewood for my husband’s boma” she said. “This will be good practice.” She paused. “Why do you smile at me, Koriba?”

“I am not used to being lectured to by uncircumcised children,” I replied with a smile.

“I was not lecturing,” she answered with dignity. “I was explaining.”

I held a hand up to shade my eyes from the afternoon sun.

“Are you not afraid of me, little Kamari?” I asked.

“Why should I be?”

“Because I am the mundumugu.”

“That just means you are smarter than the others,” she said with a shrug. She threw a stone at a chicken that was approaching her cage, and it raced away, squawking its annoyance. “Someday I shall be as smart as you are.”

“Oh?”

She nodded confidently. “Already I can count higher than my father, and I can remember many things.”

“What kind of things?” I asked, turning slightly as a hot breeze blew a swirl of dust about us.

“Do you remember the story of the honey bird that you told to the children of the village before the long rains?”

I nodded.

“I can repeat it,” she said.

“You mean you can remember it.”

She shook her head vigorously. “I can repeat every word that you said.”

I sat down and crossed my legs. “Let me hear,” I said, staring off into the distance and idly watching a pair of young men tending their cattle.

She hunched her shoulders, so that she would appear as bent with age as I myself am, and then, in a voice that sounded like a youthful replica of my own, she began to speak, mimicking my gestures.

“There is a little brown honey bird,” she began. “He is very much like a sparrow, and as friendly. He will come to your boma and call to you, and as you approach him he will fly up and lead you to a hive, and then wait while you gather grass and set fire to it and smoke out the bees. But you must always”—she emphasized the word, just as I had done—”leave some honey for him, for if you take it all, the next time he will lead you into the jaws of fisi, the hyena, or perhaps into the desert where there is no water and you will die of thirst.” Her story finished, she stood upright and smiled at me. “You see?” she said proudly.

“I see,” I said, brushing away a large fly that had lit on my cheek.

“Did I do it right?” she asked.

“You did it right.”

She stared at me thoughtfully. “Perhaps when you die, I will become the mundumugu.”

“Do I seem that close to death?” I asked.

“Well,” she answered, “you are very old and bent and wrinkled, and you sleep too much. But I will be just as happy if you do not die right away.”

“I shall try to make you just as happy,” I said ironically. “Now take your falcon home.”

I was about to instruct her concerning his needs, but she spoke first.

“He will not want to eat today. But starting tomorrow, I will give him large insects, and at least one lizard every day. And he must always have water.”

“You are very observant, Kamari.”

She smiled at me again, and then ran off toward her boma.

She was back at dawn the next morning, carrying the cage with her. She placed it in the shade, then filled a small container with water from one of my gourds and set it inside the cage.

“How is your bird this morning?” I asked, sitting close to my fire, for even though the planetary engineers of the Eutopian Council had given Kirinyaga a climate identical to Kenya’s, the sun had not yet warmed the morning air.

Kamari frowned. “He has not eaten yet.”

“He will, when he gets hungry enough,” I said, pulling my blanket more tightly around my shoulders. “He is used to swooping down on his prey from the sky.”

“He drinks his water, though,” she noted.

“That is a good sign.”

“Can you not cast a spell that will heal him all at once?”

“The price would be too high,” I said, for I had foreseen her question. “This way is better.”

“How high?”

“Too high,” I repeated, closing the subject. “Now, do you not have work to do?”

“Yes, Koriba.”

She spent the next few minutes gathering kindling for my fire and filling my gourd from the river. Then she went into my hut to clean it and straighten my sleeping blankets. She emerged a moment later with a book in her hand.

“What is this, Koriba?” she asked.

“Who told you that you could touch your mundumugu’s possessions?” I asked sternly.

“How can I clean them without touching them?” she replied with no show of fear. “What is it?”

“It is a book.”

“What is a book, Koriba?”

“It is not for you to know,” I said. “Put it back.”

“Shall I tell you what I think it is?” she asked.

“Tell me,” I said, curious to hear her answer.

“Do you know how you draw signs on the ground when you cast the bones to bring the rains? I think that a book is a collection of signs.”

“You are a very bright little girl, Kamari.”

“I told you that I was,” she said, annoyed that I had not accepted her statement as a self-evident truth. She looked at the book for a moment, then held it up. “What do the signs mean?”

“Different things,” I said.

“What things?”

“It is not necessary for the Kikuyu to know.”

“But you know.”

“I am the mundumugu?

“Can anyone else on Kirinyaga read the signs?”

“Your own chief, Koinnage, and two other chiefs can read the signs,” I answered, sorry now that she had charmed me into this conversation, for I could foresee its direction.

“But you are all old men,” she said. “You should teach me, so when you all die someone can read the signs.”

“These signs are not important,” I said. “They were created by the Europeans. The Kikuyu had no need for books before the Europeans came to Kenya; we have no need for them on Kirinyaga, which is our own world. When Koinnage and the other chiefs die, everything will be as it was long ago.”

“Are they evil signs, then?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “They are not evil. They just have no meaning for the Kikuyu. They are the white man’s signs.”

She handed the book to me. “Would you read me one of the signs?”

“Why?”

“I am curious to know what kind of signs the white men made.”

I stared at her for a long minute, trying to make up my mind. Finally I nodded my assent.

“Just this once,” I said. “Never again.”

“Just this once,” she agreed.

I thumbed through the book, which was a Swahili translation of Elizabethan poetry, selected one at random, and read it to her: Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountains yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee bed of roses,

And a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A bed of straw and ivy buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me and be my love.

Kamari frowned. “I do not understand.”

“I told you that you would not,” I said. “Now put the book away and finish cleaning my hut. You must still work in your father’s shamba, along with your duties here.”

She nodded and disappeared into my hut, only to burst forth excitedly a few minutes later.

“It is a story!” she exclaimed.

“What is?”

“The sign you read! I do not understand many of the words, but it is a story about a warrior who asks a maiden to marry him!” She paused. “You would tell it better, Koriba. The sign doesn’t even mention fisi, the hyena, and mamba, the crocodile, who dwell by the river and would eat the warrior and his wife. Still, it is a story! I had thought it would be a spell for mundumugus.”

“You are very wise to know that it is a story,” I said.

“Read another to me!” she said enthusiastically.

I shook my head. “Do you not remember our agreement? Just that once, and never again.”

She lowered her head in thought, then looked up brightly. “Then teach me to read the signs.”

“That is against the law of the Kikuyu,” I said. “No woman is permitted to read.”

“Why?”

“It is a woman’s duty to till the fields and pound the grain and make the fires and weave the fabrics and bear her husband’s children,” I answered.

“But I am not a woman,” she pointed out. “I am just a little girl.”

“But you will become a woman,” I said, “and a woman may not read.”

“Teach me now, and I will forget how when I become a woman.”

“Does the eagle forget how to fly, or the hyena to kill?”

“It is not fair.”

“No,” I said. “But it is just.”

“I do not understand.”

“Then I will explain it to you,” I said. “Sit down, Kamari.”

She sat down on the dirt opposite me and leaned forward intently.

“Many years ago,” I began, “the Kikuyu lived in the shadow of Kirinyaga, the mountain upon which Ngai dwells.”

“I know,” she said. “Then the Europeans came and built their cities.”

“You are interrupting,” I said.

“I am sorry, Koriba,” she answered. “But I already know this story.”

“You do not know all of it,” I replied. “Before the Europeans came, we lived in harmony with the land. We tended our cattle and plowed our fields, we produced just enough children to replace those who died of old age and disease, and those who died in our wars against the Maasai and the Wakamba and the Nandi. Our lives were simple but fulfilling.”

“And then the Europeans came!” she said.

“Then the Europeans came,” I agreed, “and they brought new ways with them.”

“Evil ways.”

I shook my head. “They were not evil ways for the Europeans,” I replied. “I know, for I have studied in European schools. But they were not good ways for the Kikuyu and the Maasai and the Wakamba and the Embu and the Kisi and all the other tribes. We saw the clothes they wore and the buildings they erected and the machines they used, and we tried to become like Europeans. But we are not Europeans, and their ways are not our ways, and they do not work for us. Our cities became overcrowded and polluted, and our land grew barren, and our animals died, and our water became poisoned, and finally, when the Eutopian Council allowed us to move to the world of Kirinyaga, we left Kenya behind and came here to live according to the old ways, the ways that are good for the Kikuyu.” I paused. “Long ago the Kikuyu had no written language, and did not know how to read, and since we are trying to create a Kikuyu world here on Kirinyaga, it is only fitting that our people do not learn to read or write.”

“But what is good about not knowing how to read?” she asked. “Just because we didn’t do it before the Europeans came doesn’t make it bad.”

“Reading will make you aware of other ways of thinking and living, and then you will be discontented with your life on Kirinyaga.”

“But you read, and you are not discontented.”

“I am the mundumugu” I said. “I am wise enough to know that what I read are lies.”

“But lies are not always bad,” she persisted. “You tell them all the time.”

“The mundumugu does not lie to his people,” I replied sternly.

“You call them stories, like the story of the lion and the hare, or the tale of how the rainbow came to be, but they are lies.”

“They are parables,” I said.

“What is a parable?”

“A type of story.”

“Is it a true story?”

“In a way.”

“If it is true in a way, then it is also a lie in a way, is it not?” she replied, and then continued before I could answer her. “And if I can listen to a lie, why can I not read one?”

“I have already explained it to you.”

“It is not fair,” she repeated.

“No,” I agreed. “But it is true, and in the long run it is for the good of the Kikuyu.”

“I still don’t understand why it is good,” she complained.

“Because we are all that remain. Once before the Kikuyu tried to become something that they were not, and we became not city-dwelling Kikuyu, or bad Kikuyu, or unhappy Kikuyu, but an entirely new tribe called Kenyans. Those of us who came to Kirinyaga came here to preserve the old ways—and if women start reading, some of them will become discontented, and they will leave, and then one day there will be no Kikuyu left.”

“But I don’t want to leave Kirinyaga!” she protested. “I want to become circumcised, and bear many children for my husband, and till the fields of his shamba, and someday be cared for by my grandchildren.”

“That is the way you are supposed to feel.”

“But I also want to read about other worlds and other times.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“But—”

“I will hear no more of this today,” I said. “The sun grows high in the sky, and you have not yet finished your tasks here, and you must still work in your father’s shamba and come back again this afternoon.”

She arose without another word and went about her duties. When she finished, she picked up the cage and began walking back to her boma.

I watched her walk away, then returned to my hut and activated my computer to discuss a minor orbital adjustment with Maintenance, for it had been hot and dry for almost a month. They gave their consent, and a few moments later I walked down the long winding path into the center of the village. Lowering myself gently to the ground, I spread my pouchful of bones and charms out before me and invoked Ngai to cool Kirinyaga with a mild rain, which Maintenance had agreed to supply later in the afternoon.

Then the children gathered about me, as they always did when I came down from my boma on the hill and entered the village.

“Jambo, Koriba!” they cried.

“Jambo, my brave young warriors,” I replied, still seated on the ground.

“Why have you come to the village this morning, Koriba?” asked Ndemi, the boldest of the young boys.

“I have come here to ask Ngai to water our fields with His tears of compassion,” I said, “for we have had no rain this month, and the crops are thirsty.”

“Now that you have finished speaking to Ngai, will you tell us a story?” asked Ndemi.

I looked up at the sun, estimating the time of day.

“I have time for just one,” I replied. “Then I must walk through the fields and place new charms on the scarecrows, that they may continue to protect your crops.”

“What story will you tell us, Koriba?” asked another of the boys.

I looked around, and saw that Kamari was standing among the girls.

“I think I shall tell you the story of the Leopard and the Shrike,” I said.

“I have not heard that one before,” said Ndemi.

“Am I such an old man that I have no new stories to tell?” I demanded, and he dropped his gaze to the ground. I waited until I had everyone’s attention, and then I began: “Once there was a very bright young shrike, and because he was very bright, he was always asking questions of his father.

” ‘Why do we eat insects?’ he asked one day.

” ‘Because we are shrikes, and that is what shrikes do,’ answered his father.

” ‘But we are also birds,’ said the shrike. ‘And do not birds such as the eagle eat fish?’

” ‘Ngai did not mean for shrikes to eat fish,’ said his father, ‘and even if you were strong enough to catch and kill a fish, eating it would make you sick.’

” ‘Have you ever eaten a fish?’ asked the young shrike.

” ‘No,’ said his father.

” ‘Then how do you know?’ said the young shrike, and that afternoon he flew over the river, and found a tiny fish. He caught it and ate it, and he was sick for a whole week.

” ‘Have you learned your lesson now?’ asked the shrike’s father, when the young shrike was well again.

” ‘I have learned not to eat fish,’ said the shrike. ‘But I have another question.’

” ‘What is your question?’ asked his father.

” ‘Why are shrikes the most cowardly of birds?’ asked the shrike. ‘Whenever the lion or the leopard appears, we flee to the highest branches of the trees and wait for them to go away.’

” ‘Lions and leopards would eat us if they could,’ said the shrike’s father. ‘Therefore, we must flee from them.’

” ‘But they do not eat the ostrich, and the ostrich is a bird,’ said the bright young shrike. ‘If they attack the ostrich, he kills them with his kick.’

” ‘You are not an ostrich,’ said his father, tired of listening to him.

” ‘But I am a bird, and the ostrich is a bird, and I will learn to kick as the ostrich kicks,’ said the young shrike, and he spent the next week practicing kicking any insects and twigs that were in his way.

“Then one day he came across chui, the leopard, and as the leopard approached him, the bright young shrike did not fly to the highest branches of the tree, but bravely stood his ground.

” ‘You have great courage to face me thus,’ said the leopard.

” ‘I am a very bright bird, and I am not afraid of you,’ said the shrike. ‘I have practiced kicking as the ostrich does, and if you come any closer, I will kick you and you will die.’

” ‘I am an old leopard, and cannot hunt any longer,’ said the leopard. ‘I am ready to die. Come kick me, and put me out of my misery.’

“The young shrike walked up to the leopard and kicked him full in the face. The leopard simply laughed, opened his mouth, and swallowed the bright young shrike.

” ‘What a silly bird,’ laughed the leopard, ‘to pretend to be something that he was not! If he had flown away like a shrike, I would have gone hungry today—but by trying to be what he was never meant to be, all he did was fill my stomach. I guess he was not a very bright bird after all.’ “

I stopped and stared straight at Kamari.

“Is that the end?” asked one of the other girls.

“That is the end,” I said.

“Why did the shrike think he could be an ostrich?” asked one of the smaller boys.

“Perhaps Kamari can tell you,” I said.

All the children turned to Kamari, who paused for a moment and then answered.

“There is a difference between wanting to be an ostrich, and wanting to know what an ostrich knows,” she said, looking directly into my eyes. “It was not wrong for the shrike to want to know things. It was wrong for him to think he could become an ostrich.”

There was a momentary silence while the children considered her answer.

“Is that true, Koriba?” asked Ndemi at last.

“No,” I said, “for once the shrike knew what the ostrich knew, it forgot that it was a shrike. You must always remember who you are, and knowing too many things can make you forget.”

“Will you tell us another story?” asked a young girl.

“Not this morning,” I said, getting to my feet. “But when I come to the village tonight to drink pombe and watch the dancing, perhaps I will tell you the story about the bull elephant and the wise little Kikuyu boy. Now,” I added, “do none of you have chores to do?”

The children dispersed, returning to their shambas and their cattle pastures, and I stopped by Siboki’s hut to give him an ointment for his joints, which always bothered him just before it rained. I visited Koinnage and drank pombe with him, and then discussed the affairs of the village with the Council of Elders. Finally I returned to my own boma, for I always take a nap during the heat of the day, and the rain was not due for another few hours.

Kamari was there when I arrived. She had gathered more wood and water, and was filling the grain buckets for my goats as I entered my boma.

“How is your bird this afternoon?” I asked, looking at the pygmy falcon, whose cage had been carefully placed in the shade of my hut “He drinks, but he will not eat,” she said in worried tones. “He spends all his time looking at the sky.”

“There are things that are more important to him than eating,” I said.

“I am finished now,” she said. “May I go home, Koriba?”

I nodded, and she left as I was arranging my sleeping blanket inside my hut.

She came every morning and every afternoon for the next week. Then, on the eighth day, she announced with tears in her eyes that the pygmy falcon had died.

“I told you that this would happen,” I said gently. “Once a bird has ridden upon the winds, he cannot live on the ground.”

“Do all birds die when they can no longer fly?” she asked.

“Most do,” I said. “A few like the security of the cage, but most die of broken hearts, for having touched the sky they cannot bear to lose the gift of flight.”

“Why do we make cages, then, if they do not make the birds feel better?”

“Because they make us feel better,” I answered.

She paused, and then said: “I will keep my word and clean your hut and your boma, and fetch your water and kindling, even though the bird is dead.”

I nodded. “That was our agreement,” I said.

True to her word, she came back twice a day for the next three weeks. Then, at noon on the twenty-ninth day, after she had completed her morning chores and returned to her family’s shamba, her father, Njoro, walked up the path to my boma.

“Jambo, Koriba,” he greeted me, a worried expression on his face.

“Jambo, Njoro,” I said without getting to my feet. “Why have you come to my boma?”

“I am a poor man, Koriba,” he said, squatting down next to me. “I have only one wife, and she has produced no sons and only two daughters. I do not own as large a shamba as most men in the village, and the hyenas killed three of my cows this past year.”

I could not understand his point, so I merely stared at him, waiting for him to continue.

“As poor as I am,” he went on, “I took comfort in the thought that at least I would have the bride-prices from my two daughters in my old age.” He paused. “I have been a good man, Koriba. Surely I deserve that much.”

“I have not said otherwise,” I replied.

“Then why are you training Kamari to be a mundumugu?’” he demanded. “It is well known that the mundumugu never marries.”

“Has Kamari told you that she is to become a mundumugu?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. She does not speak to her mother or myself at all since she has been coming here to clean your boma.”

“Then you are mistaken,” I said. “No woman may be a mundumugu. What made you think that I am training her?”

He dug into the folds of his kikoi and withdrew a piece of cured wildebeest hide. Scrawled on it in charcoal was the following inscription:

I AM KAMARI

I AM TWELVE YEARS OLD

I AM A GIRL

“This is writing,” he said accusingly. “Women cannot write. Only the mundumugu and great chiefs like Koinnage can write.”

“Leave this with me, Njoro,” I said, taking the hide, “and send Kamari to my boma”

“I need her to work on my shamba until this afternoon.”

“Now,” I said.

He sighed and nodded. “I will send her, Koriba.” He paused. “You are certain that she is not to be a mundumugu?”

“You have my word,” I said, spitting on my hands to show my sincerity.

He seemed relieved, and went off to his boma. Kamari came up the path a few minutes later.

“Jambo, Koriba,” she said.

“Jambo, Kamari,” I replied. “I am very displeased with you.”

“Did I not gather enough kindling this morning?” she asked.

“You gathered enough kindling.”

“Were the gourds not filled with water?”

“The gourds were filled.”

“Then what did I do wrong?” she asked, absently pushing one of my goats aside as it approached her.

“You broke your promise to me.”

“That is not true,” she said. “I have come every morning and every afternoon, even though the bird is dead.”

“You promised not to look at another book,” I said.

“I have not looked at another book since the day you told me that I was forbidden to.”

“Then explain this” I said, holding up the hide with her writing on it.

“There is nothing to explain,” she said with a shrug. “I wrote it.”

“And if you have not looked at books, how did you learn to write?” I demanded.

“From your magic box,” she said. “You never told me not to look at it.”

“My magic box?” I said, frowning.

“The box that hums with life and has many colors.”

“You mean my computer?” I asked, surprised.

“Your magic box,” she repeated.

“And it taught you how to read and write?”

“I taught me—but only a little,” she said unhappily. “I am like the shrike in your story—I am not as bright as I thought. Reading and writing are very difficult.”

“I told you that you must not learn to read,” I said, resisting the urge to comment on her remarkable accomplishment, for she had clearly broken the law.

Kamari shook her head.

“You told me I must not look at your books,” she replied stubbornly.

“I told you that women must not read,” I said. “You have disobeyed me. For this you must be punished.” I paused. “You will continue your chores here for three more months, and you must bring me two hares and two rodents, which you must catch yourself. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Now come into my hut with me, that you may understand one thing more.”

She followed me into the hut.

“Computer,” I said. “Activate.”

“Activated,” said the computer’s mechanical voice.

“Computer, scan the hut and tell me who is here with me.”

The lens of the computer’s sensor glowed briefly.

“The girl, Kamari wa Njoro, is here with you,” replied the computer.

“Will you recognize her if you see her again?”

“Yes.”

“This is a Priority Order,” I said. “Never again may you converse with Kamari wa Njoro verbally or in any known language.”

“Understood and logged,” said the computer.

“Deactivate.” I turned to Kamari. “Do you understand what I have done, Kamari?”

“Yes,” she said, “and it is not fair. I did not disobey you.”

“It is the law that women may not read,” I said, “and you have broken it. You will not break it again. Now go back to your shamba.”

She left, head held high, youthful back stiff with defiance, and I went about my duties, instructing the young boys on the decoration of their bodies for their forthcoming circumcision ceremony, casting a counterspell for old Siboki (for he had found hyena dung within his shamba, which is one of the surest signs of a thahu, or curse), instructing Maintenance to make another minor orbital adjustment that would bring cooler weather to the western plains.

By the time I returned to my hut for my afternoon nap, Kamari had come and gone again, and everything was in order.

For the next two months, life in the village went its placid way. The crops were harvested, old Koinnage took another wife and we had a two-day festival with much dancing and pombe drinking to celebrate the event, the short rains arrived on schedule, and three children were born to the village. Even the Eutopian Council, which had complained about our custom of leaving the old and the infirm out for the hyenas, left us completely alone. We found the lair of a family of hyenas and killed three whelps, then slew the mother when she returned. At each full moon I slaughtered a cow—not merely a goat, but a large, fat cow—to thank Ngai for His generosity, for truly He had graced Kirinyaga with abundance.

During this period I rarely saw Kamari. She came in the mornings when I was in the village, casting the bones to bring forth the weather, and she came in the afternoons when I was giving charms to the sick and conversing with the Elders—but I always knew she had been there, for my hut and my boma were immaculate, and I never lacked for water or kindling.

Then, on the afternoon after the second full moon, I returned to my boma after advising Koinnage about how he might best settle an argument over a disputed plot of land, and as I entered my hut I noticed that the computer screen was alive and glowing, covered with strange symbols. When I had taken my degrees in England and America I had learned English and French and Spanish, and of course I knew Kikuyu and Swahili, but these symbols represented no known language, nor, although they used numerals as well as letters and punctuation marks, were they mathematical formulas.

“Computer, I distinctly remember deactivating you this morning,” I said, frowning. “Why does your screen glow with life?”

“Kamari activated me.”

“And she forgot to deactivate you when she left?”

“That is correct.”

“I thought as much,” I said grimly. “Does she activate you every day?”

“Yes.”

“Did I not give you a Priority Order never to communicate with her in any known language?” I said, puzzled.

“You did, Koriba.”

“Can you then explain why you have disobeyed my directive?”

“I have not disobeyed your directive, Koriba,” said the computer. “My programming makes me incapable of disobeying a Priority Order.”

“Then what is this that I see upon your screen?”

“This is the Language of Kamari,” replied the computer. “It is not among the one thousand seven hundred thirty-two languages and dialects in my memory banks, and hence does not fall under the aegis of your directive.”

“Did you create this language?”

“No, Koriba. Kamari created it.”

“Did you assist her in any way?”

“No, Koriba, I did not.”

“Is it a true language?” I asked. “Can you understand it?”

“It is a true language. I can understand it.”

“If she were to ask you a question in the Language of Kamari, could you reply to it?”

“Yes, if the question were simple enough. It is a very limited language.”

“And if that reply required you to translate the answer from a known language to the Language of Kamari, would doing so be contrary to my directive?”

“No, Koriba, it would not.”

“Have you, in fact, answered questions put to you by Kamari?”

“Yes, Koriba, I have,” replied the computer.

“I see,” I said. “Stand by for a new directive.”

“Waiting…”

I lowered my head in thought, contemplating the problem. That Kamari was brilliant and gifted was obvious: she had not only taught herself to read and write, but had actually created a coherent and logical language that the computer could understand and in which it could respond. I had given orders, and without directly disobeying them she had managed to circumvent them. She had no malice within her, and wanted only to learn, which in itself was an admirable goal. All that was on the one hand.

On the other hand was the threat to the social order we had labored so diligently to establish on Kirinyaga. Men and women knew their responsibilities and accepted them happily. Ngai had given the Maasai the spear, and He had given the Wakamba the arrow, and He had given the Europeans the machine and the printing press, but to the Kikuyu He had given the digging stick and the fertile land surrounding the sacred fig tree on the slopes of Kirinyaga.

Once before we had lived in harmony with the land, many long years ago. Then had come the printed word. It turned us first into slaves, and then into Christians, and then into soldiers and factory workers and mechanics and politicians, into everything that the Kikuyu were never meant to be. It had happened before; it could happen again.

We had come to the world of Kirinyaga to create a perfect Kikuyu society, a Kikuyu Utopia. Could one gifted little girl carry within her the seeds of our destruction? I could not be sure, but it was a fact that gifted children grew up. They became Jesus, and Mohammed, and Jomo Kenyatta—but they also became Tippoo Tib, the greatest slaver of all, and Idi Amin, butcher of his own people. Or, more often, they became Friedrich Neitzsche and Karl Marx, brilliant men in their own right, but who influenced less brilliant, less capable men. Did I have the right to stand aside and hope that her influence upon our society would be benign when all history suggested that the opposite was more likely to be true?

My decision was painful, but it was not a difficult one.

“Computer,” I said at last, “I have a new Priority Order that supercedes my previous directive. You are no longer allowed to communicate with Kamari under any circumstances whatsoever. Should she activate you, you are to tell her that Koriba has forbidden you to have any contact with her, and you are then to deactivate immediately. Do you understand?”

“Understood and logged.”

“Good,” I said. “Now deactivate.”

When I returned from the village the next morning, I found my water gourds empty, my blanket unfolded, my boma filled with the dung of my goats.

The mundumugu is all-powerful among the Kikuyu, but he is not without compassion. I decided to forgive this childish display of temper, and so I did not visit Kamari’s father, nor did I tell the other children to avoid her.

She did not come again in the afternoon. I know, because I waited beside my hut to explain my decision to her. Finally, when twilight came, I sent for the boy, Ndemi, to fill my gourds and clean my boma, and although such chores are woman’s work, he did not dare disobey his mundumugu, although his every gesture displayed contempt for the tasks I had set for him.

When two more days had passed with no sign of Kamari, I summoned Njoro, her father.

“Kamari has broken her word to me,” I said when he arrived. “If she does not come to clean my boma this afternoon, I will be forced to place a thahu upon her.”

He looked puzzled. “She says that you have already placed a curse on her, Koriba. I was going to ask you if we should turn her out of our boma!”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Do not turn her out of your boma.”

I have placed no thahu on her yet—but she must come to work this afternoon.”

“I do not know if she is strong enough,” said Njoro. “She has had neither food nor water for three days, and she sits motionless in my wife’s hut.” He paused. “Someone has placed a thahu on her. If it was not you, perhaps you can cast a spell to remove it.”

“She has gone three days without eating or drinking?” I repeated.

He nodded.

“I will see her,” I said, getting to my feet and following him down the winding path to the village. When we reached Njoro’s boma he led me to his wife’s hut, then called Kamari’s worried mother out and stood aside as I entered. Kamari sat at the farthest point from the door, her back propped against a wall, her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms encircling her thin legs.

“Jambo, Kamari,” I said.

She stared at me but said nothing.

“Your mother worries for you, and your father tells me that you no longer eat or drink.”

She made no answer.

“You also have not kept your promise to tend my boma.”

Silence.

“Have you forgotten how to speak?” I said.

“Kikuyu women do not speak,” she said bitterly. “They do not think. All they do is bear babies and cook food and gather firewood and till the fields. They do not have to speak or think to do that.”

“Are you that unhappy?”

She did not answer.

“Listen to my words, Kamari,” I said slowly. “I made my decision for the good of Kirinyaga, and I will not recant it. As a Kikuyu woman, you must live the life that has been ordained for you.” I paused. “However, neither the Kikuyu nor the Eutopian Council are without compassion for the individual. Any member of our society may leave if he wishes. According to the charter we signed when we claimed this world, you need only walk to that area known as Haven, and a Maintenance ship will pick you up and transport you to the location of your choice.”

“All I know is Kirinyaga,” she said. “How am I to choose a new home if I am forbidden to learn about other places?”

“I do not know,” I admitted.

“I don’t want to leave Kirinyaga!” she continued. “This is my home. These are my people. I am a Kikuyu girl, not a Maasai girl or a European girl. I will bear my husband’s children and till his shamba; I will gather his wood and cook his meals and weave his garments; I will leave my parents’ shamba and live with my husband’s family. I will do all this without complaint, Koriba, if you will just let me learn to read and write!”

“I cannot,” I said sadly.

“But -why?

“Who is the wisest man you know, Kamari?” I asked.

“The mundumugu is always the wisest man in the village.”

“Then you must trust to my wisdom.”

“But I feel like the pygmy falcon,” she said, her misery reflected in her voice. “He spent his life dreaming of soaring high upon the winds. I dream of seeing words upon the computer screen.”

“You are not like the falcon at all,” I said. “He was prevented from being what he was meant to be. You are prevented from being what you are not meant to be.”

“You are not an evil man, Koriba,” she said solemnly. “But you are wrong.”

“If that is so, then I shall have to live with it,” I said.

“But you are asking me to live with it,” she said, “and that is your crime.”

“If you call me a criminal again,” I said sternly, for no one may speak thus to the mundumugu, “I shall surely place a thahu on you.”

“What more can you do?” she said bitterly.

“I can turn you into a hyena, an unclean eater of human flesh who prowls only in the darkness. I can fill your belly with thorns, so that your every movement will be agony. I can—”

“You are just a man,” she said wearily, “and you have already done your worst.”

“I will hear no more of this,” I said. “I order you to eat and drink what your mother brings to you, and I expect to see you at my boma this afternoon.”

I walked out of the hut and told Kamari’s mother to bring her banana mash and water, then stopped by old Benima’s sbamba. Buffalo had stampeded through his fields, destroying his crops, and I sacrificed a goat to remove the thahu that had fallen upon his land.

When I was finished I stopped at Koinnage’s boma, where he offered me some freshly brewed pombe and began complaining about Kibo, his newest wife, who kept taking sides with Shumi, his second wife, against Wambu, his senior wife.

“You can always divorce her and return her to her family’s shamba,” I suggested.

“She cost twenty cows and five goats!” he complained. “Will her family return them?”

“No, they will not.”

“Then I will not send her back.”

“As you wish,” I said with a shrug.

“Besides, she is very strong and very lovely,” he continued. “I just wish she would stop fighting with Wambu.”

“What do they fight about?” I asked.

“They fight about who will fetch the water, and who will mend my garments, and who will repair the thatch on my hut.” He paused. “They even argue about whose hut I should visit at night, as if I had no choice in the matter.”

“Do they ever fight about ideas?” I asked.

“Ideas?” he repeated blankly.

“Such as you might find in books.”

He laughed. “They are women, Koriba. What need have they for ideas?” He paused. “In fact, what need have any of us for them?”

“I do not know,” I said. “I was merely curious.”

“You look disturbed,” he noted.

“It must be the pombe” I said. “I am an old man, and perhaps it is too strong.”

“That is because Kibo will not listen when Warnbu tells her how to brew it. I really should send her away”—he looked at Kibo as she carried a load of wood on her strong, young back—”but she is so young and so lovely.” Suddenly his gaze went beyond his newest wife to the village. “Ah!” he said. “I see that old Siboki has finally died.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

He pointed to a thin column of smoke. “They are burning his hut.”

I stared off in the direction he indicated. “That is not Siboki’s hut,” I said. “His boma is more to the west.”

“Who else is old and infirm and due to die?” asked Koinnage.

And suddenly I knew, as surely as I knew that Ngai sits on His throne atop the holy mountain, that Kamari was dead.

I walked to Njoro’s shamba as quickly as I could. When I arrived, Kamari’s mother and sister and grandmother were already wailing the death chant, tears streaming down their faces.

“What happened?” I demanded, walking up to Njoro.

“Why do you ask, when it is you who destroyed her?” he replied bitterly.

“I did not destroy her,” I said.

“Did you not threaten to place a thahu on her just this morning?” he persisted. “You did so, and now she is dead, and I have but one daughter to bring the bride-price, and I have had to burn Kamari’s hut.”

“Stop worrying about bride-prices and huts and tell me what happened, or you shall learn what it means to be cursed by a mundumugu!” I snapped.

“She hung herself in her hut with a length of buffalo hide.”

Five women from the neighboring shamba arrived and took up the death chant.

“She hung herself in her hut?” I repeated.

He nodded. “She could at least have hung herself from a tree, so that her hut would not be unclean and I would not have to burn it.”

“Be quiet!” I said, trying to collect my thoughts.

“She was not a bad daughter,” he continued. “Why did you curse her, Koriba?”

“I did not place a thahu upon her,” I said, wondering if I spoke the truth. “I wished only to save her.”

“Who has stronger medicine than you?” he asked fearfully.

“She broke the law of Ngai,” I answered.

“And now Ngai has taken His vengeance!” moaned Njoro fearfully. “Which member of my family will He strike down next?”

“None of you,” I said. “Only Kamari broke the law.”

“I am a poor man,” said Njoro cautiously, “even poorer now than before. How much must I pay you to ask Ngai to receive Kamari’s spirit with compassion and forgiveness?”

“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.

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