@ 20,500 words
BIBI 
by Mike Resnick and Susan Shwartz
_Her children's cries woke her from her safe nest. She
stretched, easing the aches in her bones. In the quiet dawn, she
ventured to the lake for water. She saw less of her enemies'
spoor than ever before. Almost nothing was freshly dead, though a
few circling birds warned her: soon._ Not my children! _she wailed 
silently. They were fevered and ill and even dying. But where 
were they? No one crouched beside the lake. No one edged through 
the bush, seeking her. She had to find them soon, before she was 
a mother without children._
_The land was dry and brown, as it had always been, but
there were differences. The footpaths were missing, the birds no
longer fled in fear of her, the few antelope she saw were smaller
and quicker than any she could remember. She felt uneasy, walking
in the open, with no trees to climb should she come across those
fearsome doglike creatures that could swallow her in three bites.
She gripped her club, which was really nothing more than an old
femur bone. She had watched a great cat bring down an antelope and
waited patiently for it to fill its belly, then fought the birds
for the spoils and came away with a weapon as well as a meal._
_She looked up again. The birds seemed smaller, and they were 
the wrong colors. They were still ominous and foreboding as they 
rode the thermals high above the savannah and sought the flesh of 
the newly dead._
_As the sun rose higher, she withdrew into the comforting
shadows of the trees. Her stomach cried out, and she turned over a
dry log, looking for termites. But the log crumbled into dust and
she realized, even as she sifted through its remains, finding a
few laggard insects, that the main army had moved on to choicer
morsels._
_How easy it used to be to find food. In the kinder days of
her youth, she could have traveled fast, grubbing food from the
earth or from hanging branches. Now, it took her hours to fill
her belly so it did not cry like a baby, and she barely heard the
cries or coughs of beasts. Her feet bled, tender after her long
rest, but she trudged on. She had slept too long._
* * *
The camp lay 40 kilometers due west of Moroto, in the 
blistering heat of the Karamojo country. Even the flies had become 
lethargic. Dust devils swirled across the empty landscape, red and 
angry, reaching hundreds of feet into the startling blue sky.
Two boreholes supplied water for all the tents. One teased 
them with cool, clear water for two or three minutes at a time, 
then went dead for half an hour or more, while the other offered a 
slow, sluggish trickle of warm brown liquid. 
"Wake up, wake up!" 
A weight landed on Jeremy Harris's cot, and a child shrilled 
in his ears. Translating the child's excited Swahili 
automatically, Jeremy fixed his tormentor, not four feet high, 
with a bleary eye, then glanced outside. What the hell was the 
kid doing waking him up in practically the middle of the night? 
"Dr. Umurungi told me to fetch you. You remember old Kabute? 
He died around midnight." 
Jeremy remembered the man: not forty yet impossibly aged, 
almost mummified, in the final emaciation of the AIDS that 
threatened to finish the job in Uganda that Idi Amin began and 
Milton Obote had carried forward. They died. Sooner or later, 
everyone died. 
The child's eyes reflected awareness and resignation: he'd 
already lost both parents to the disease and was HIV-positive 
himself. It would be a miracle if he reached puberty. Forget 
AZT: the relief workers were happy if they could provide three 
meals a day. 
"I'm sorry," said Jeremy. "Do they want me to talk to the 
family?" 
He could think of several people better qualified by language 
or race to talk to the man's family--an elderly mother, two 
withered wives. One bore the marks of Kaposi's sarcoma, purple
against black, and coughed almost constantly. There were several 
children; Jeremy would have bet good money that all of them were 
HIV-positive. 
Jeremy was a volunteer, not a physician: if they needed him 
to drive, he drove. If they wanted him to perform medical tests, 
they taught him and looked the other way. If they wanted an 
English class, he taught it. When it came to bribing officials, 
he was without peer. Best of all, when (never _if_) they needed 
emergency funding, his old Wall Street training could usually 
wring it from some unsuspecting philanthropical prey -- or allow 
the prey to donate it anonymously and still keep his tax break. 
What they mostly needed these days, however, was a 
gravedigger. In New York, Jeremy had worked out with a trainer 
who came to his private gym, when he didn't go to his university 
club, his company's fitness center, or any of the places that took 
up a large part of his very private life. But digging graves out 
here in the bush put more muscle on him than his trainer would 
have dreamed possible. 
"Dr. Umurungi said they left the compound, taking Kabute's 
body with them." 
The boy opened the tent flap wider. Jeremy winced at the 
sunrise and swore with the inventive profanity of the equity 
traders he used to match drink for drink at Harry's. Not only 
would the women and children not get proper care -- _so what if 
they die a month before their time, the darkness in him muttered, 
we're all on Death Row here_ -- but carrying a corpse, they'd be 
lucky if they didn't run afoul of hyenas on the plain or crocs 
crossing the rivers on their way back to their village -- and that 
was on the unlikely assumption that it hadn't been looted by 
Somali or Sudanese bandits. 
He lowered his feet decisively, and the child practically 
hugged himself with relief. Reaching for his boots and trousers, 
Jeremy shook them before he put them on. He folded his bedding, 
just so. A place for everything or you'd go crazy, living in a 
cluttered tent in an AIDS relief camp. Everything in its place. 
He unlocked the box where he kept his megavitamins and the 
other drugs, downing a handful of pills without water, before 
replacing the phials next to his portfolio statements, medical 
records, and a few letters. The most recent was from his parents 
in Vermont. He knew it by heart.
It wasn't very long. Surprisingly, it wasn't his mother who 
had written it, but his father, who had always been better with 
tools than words. The fact that Jeremy could continually force 
unnatural life into the camp's ancient truck was a gift from his 
father that he'd only now come to value. As a boy, he had lived 
in terror that those skills would chain him to grimy hands and 
grease-stained clothes, to life in a gas station, a town, a way of 
life he had fought to escape. 
_"Son,_
_"You didn't want your mother and me to come to the airport 
and see you off, so I didn't get a chance to see you. I don't 
suppose I'd have been able to say what I've been thinking about 
there anyhow. Things move too fast for me in New York, and you 
probably were all taken up with getting things arranged and saying 
good-bye to your friends."_ (What friends? Jeremy thought to 
himself. The one person -- the one other person he might have 
wanted to see would never be there again.) 
_"And with your mother there trying not to cry, I couldn't
have said what I wanted to say. We've never had all that much to
say to each other that wasn't cars, or 'How's your schoolwork
going?' or 'That's really interesting,' and now I'm sorry. I
always though maybe I was the wrong father for you...but that's
water under the bridge. I want you to know that you don't have to
do this. You're my son, and I'm proud of you. If you're sick,
come home and your mother and I will take care of you. You always
have a place here._
_"Love,_ (his father had scratched it out, then written the 
word again. Probably he feared that if he had to recopy the 
letter, he'd never send it.)
_"Your Dad"_
Very gently Jeremy replaced the letter in its sheltering 
plastic bag. Then he pulled out the small, tattered box with the 
monogrammed cufflinks and the unopened letter. Jeremy remembered 
the man to whom he'd given the cufflinks. As always, he was 
surprised that the box had reached him with the letter and the 
rejected gift inside. 
It would have been a mercy if some official had heard the 
cufflinks rattling around and stolen the box before it reached 
him. It was a mercy that Raymond hadn't thrown the cufflinks at 
him along with his anger when he learned just how disastrously 
careless Jeremy had been. "Gifts, always giving me things like I 
didn't know how to choose for myself. Well, this last gift you 
gave me was really a killer, wasn't it?" Ray had walked out, 
slamming the door on Jeremy and any chance they'd had for a life 
together, and all those gifts -- except for the deadly one he 
carried inside him. 
Jeremy left the box under the pillow on his cot and stuck the 
letter into his pocket. Maybe today he'd find the time -- or the 
guts -- to open it. Or throw it away. 
Or maybe he'd lose it. 
He turned back to face the little boy. I do have to be here, 
he told the ghost of his father. Everything in its proper place.
Just as he was.
Automatically, he scanned himself. No lesions. No fever. 
No faint weariness, no cough, no trace of night sweats. Nothing 
to worry about. 
Yet. 
Like so many of the people in his world, Jeremy Harris was 
HIV-positive. The verdict had surprised the hell out of him, 
though he supposed it shouldn't have. His life had been so 
precisely arranged: the 80-hour weeks where weekends blended into 
weekdays and when he sometimes lived on the phone so he could make 
his pile and pay for the place on Fire Island; the weeks and 
weekends down in the Keys, where the beer was cold, the seafood 
spicy, and the company -- he'd better not think of _that_...or of 
how many of his old friends were still alive. You had to walk a 
very fine line between indifference, which could kill you, and 
caring too much, which would tear you apart. 
The last time he'd visited his old haunts, the Keys had been 
like a ghost town. No one knew where Raymond was (or maybe he'd 
told them to keep their mouths shut.) That whole group of writers 
and artists and smart guys with money had turned into people like 
his father, no good at words about the _real_ things. The 
survivors were either drinking themselves into oblivion or, like 
Jeremy, working to the point of exhaustion while becoming health 
and diet fanatics. 
And for what? To watch their other friends die while waiting 
for a cure that 98% of them could never afford even if it was 
discovered? He subscribed to medical journals and followed the 
latest research on S.I.V. -- simian immunodeficiency virus -- and 
the vaccine Harvard Med School had developed, one that protected 
monkeys for three years. He'd even allowed himself to hope when 
Johns Hopkins turned up a 43-year-old woman who'd had three 
healthy children after being diagnosed HIV-positive -- and when, 
try as they might, they couldn't get infectious HIV from her 
blood. 
_Maybe I'm a mutant just like her!_ he thought desperately. 
Which, of course, made him feel even more like an outcast from the 
human race. 
He went to Montreal to visit Biochem Pharma, where a new 
drug, 3TC, in combination with ATZ, showed promising results. He 
monitored the Glaxo-Wellcome PLC merger with the attention the 
dying gave to the Last Rites because that had to affect the supply 
of the AZT he expected to need one day. What good did it do him? 
All the biotechs had tanked. AZT was more a poison than a cure, 
and with healthcare costs the way they were... 
Of course, as long as he raked in the commissions, he had key 
man insurance from his company. He hardly thought they'd keep it 
up (_ha!_ Now there was a good pun!) when he got _really_ sick. 
And if he changed companies and came down with ARC or full-blown 
AIDS, there he was with a pre-existing condition. When his money 
finally ran out -- his portfolio was only solid, not huge -- he'd 
be out on the street, and that wasn't Wall Street -- and on 
whatever might be left of Medicaid by that time. 
So Jeremy kept fit. Every day he scanned himself for 
deterioration. As his friends and lovers sickened and died around 
him, Jeremy realized that he was what researchers called a non-
progressor; he might have 10, 15, 20 years yet. One man, infected 
17 years ago, still had a normal CD-4 white blood cell count. 
Maybe Jeremy would get lucky too. 
Day after day, he worked, and worked out, and waited either 
for the disease or a cure. You can't call that living at all, his 
psychiatrist said. 
At an Audrey Hepburn revival at the Thalia, for God's sake, a 
handout told him how she'd starved as a child, working for the 
Resistance. Until cancer left her too weak to continue, she'd 
tried to feed kids in Ethiopia. 
The very next day, _The Wall Street Journal_ had carried a 
story on the AIDS epidemic in Zambia and Uganda. If that wasn't 
some sort of omen, he didn't know a thing about market timing. So 
he'd liquidated his stock positions and parked the money in secure 
Triple-A bond funds, said good-bye to his trainer, sold his co-op 
for a good price despite rotten interest rates, and unloaded his 
beach house. His friends thought he'd gone crazy, his 
psychiatrist thought he'd gone sane and helped him negotiate the
wilderness of regulations, and his family simply cried and wanted 
him to come back home where everyone would whisper about "Jeff 
Harris's boy, what a shame, so young to go." Money and some damn 
good networking had enabled him to hook up with a small relief 
organization; and so here he was. 
He finished his daily checklist. Nothing left out for kids 
or monkeys to steal. Everything in its proper place, except for 
the finishing touch. He'd given up the Hermes ties, the custom-
tailored suits, the meticulous Manhattan grooming for the 
cheapest, toughest, coolest clothes he could find, but one grace 
note remained. From his footlocker, he pulled out a spool of red 
ribbon, cut off a couple inches, and pinned it to his shirt. The 
boy's eyes widened and he held out an eager hand. So Jeremy 
grinned and cut him an AIDS ribbon too, and out they went. 
He began walking through the camp, which seemed like two 
separate worlds to him -- or, actually, three. There was the world 
inhabited by the camp's employees: immaculate tents in a cluster, 
a spotless mess area, the infirmary -- it was too small and too 
easily victimized by the elements to call it a hospital; even 
_infirmary_ seemed to give it an unearned dignity. 
Then there was the world of the Africans: they had come by 
the dozens, and finally the hundreds, once word got out that 
another crazy European was passing out free food and medicine, and 
a small city of mud and thatched huts now completely encircled the 
world of the camp attendants. 
Finally there was that tiny world inhabited only by himself 
and Elizabeth, a pair of people who didn't fit in either of the 
other worlds. Jeremy, whose medical training was limited to a 
lifesaving badge he earned in swimming class when he was twelve, 
and Elizabeth, who had been born in Uganda and raised in Europe 
and didn't quite belong to either society. 
As he passed a huge pile of folded, unused tents, he saw a 
troop of vervet monkeys edging closer to an extended family of 
Africans that were warming their banana mash breakfasts over a 
fire. Hunger had made the monkeys brave, bravery had made them 
foolish, and Jeremy knew that at least one family was going to be 
having meat for lunch. 
At last he reached the mess tent and came to a stop before 
Elizabeth, who was writing meticulous notes in a journal while her 
tea sat, untouched and cooling, right next to the Coleman lamp on 
the breakfast table. 
"Is that you, Jeremy?" she asked without looking up.
Dr. Elizabeth Umurungi's enunciation always sounded like an 
upper-class Englishwoman -- one who spoke perfect French -- rather 
than a convent-educated Achole who had fled to Britain with her 
parents when Idi Amin started decimating the countryside. 
"No, it's Father Damian," he told her, wrapping his sweater 
about his narrow shoulders. It was strange: every evening he went 
to sleep sweating and wondering if he'd ever be cool again, and 
every morning he woke up shivering and wondering if he'd ever be 
warm again. That was Africa for you.
"All things considered, you'd hardly qualify as a saint," she 
retorted. "Pity. We could use a miracle or two." 
She'd been finishing up her residency about the time he'd 
done his MBA: they had friends, or at least contacts, in common, 
and in what felt like another life, they'd skiied the same hills 
in Switzerland. One of the few people he had confided in, she 
monitored his T-cell status along with those of the Ugandans whose 
long defeats she fought. 
She poured him a battered mug of tea that he eyed 
suspiciously. "So it's not that designer herbal muck you used to 
buy. It won't kill you. Dehydration and hunger will. Sit." 
He would have liked to eat by the fire, preferring the chilly 
air and the smoke to the cramped, dark interior and endless 
medical conversation of the mess hall -- but as much as he was 
bored by such talk, he was even more bored with his own company, 
so he decided to eat at Elizabeth's table. His meal consisted not 
of the meticulously chosen, weighed, and cooked health foods that 
he had considered a matter of the merest survival, but rather of 
posho and banana mash which, even here, wasn't much. 
"Think I ought to make a supply run?" he asked. 
She shrugged. 
"I got a dividend check," he volunteered. "Be nice to buy 
chickens. We could use the carcasses for soup." ("Money!" Raymond 
had spat. "It's all you ever think about! Well, let's see you try 
to take it with you!") 
She finally looked up at him. "Homesick for Manhattan? 
Chicken soup isn't _that_ magic. As long as we can feed everyone 
in camp, fine. But I do need you to drive me somewhere." 
He bowed elaborately. With him, she wouldn't have to worry 
about assault -- or about getting back to the compound safely. 
"You want to track down the villagers that left this morning? 
Jabito told me about them when he woke me up." 
"Jabito gossips too much. Old head; young shoulders." 
"What do you expect?" 
"I expect people not to slip away from doctors who are trying 
to help them," said Elizabeth with the hauteur acquired in a 
childhood spent commuting between Paris, London and Kampala. 
Elizabeth might have learned patience and compassion in her self-
appointed mission to help rebuild the country that had exiled her 
family, but the airs of the _grande dame_ still clung to her. 
Though Jeremy had to admit that on her, even a tattered lab coat 
and old crew T-shirt looked chic. She'd been a model in Paris. 
Not the type he'd pretended to drool over as a nervous teenager 
reading _Sports Illustrated's_ swimsuit issue every year, but the 
sort of model who turned up in _Vogue_ and had designers fighting 
each other over who would have the privilege this season of 
draping thousands of dollars of silk over her arrogant, elegant 
bones. Once and future stars were always chucking careers and 
going back to school, so the story on her in _People_ -- 
"Supermodel Abandons Runways for Med School" -- produced a raised 
eyebrow or two before everyone in Jeremy's study group went back 
to being cool. And working their asses off. 
While that might impress the locals, it also intimidated 
them, and they kept her at a distance that saddened her. For all 
the darkness of her skin, she was as much a foreigner here as 
Jeremy. Maybe even more of one. "I've got their medical records, 
such as they are," she added. 
"You got a Land Rover?" 
She smiled at him. "Better than that. I've got a flatbed 
truck with an almost-new spare tire."
"Where'd you get it?" he asked excitedly. "I thought you told 
me you were just about out of money." 
"I am. We got it from a donor." She paused, then amended her 
statement. "I got it from a donor. You're not the only financial 
wizard around here."
"If you're a financial wizard, how did you manage to run 
through all those millions you made modeling?" he asked with a 
smile that was almost smug. 
She sighed. "I bribed a lot of the wrong people when I 
decided to set up the camp. Then I had to go back and bribe the 
right ones. Our equipment cost a fortune to import. We're on our 
fifth Land Rover; do you know how much they cost, and how quickly 
they die out here?" She paused, then added ruefully: "And then 
there were my little blunders, like one hundred tents nobody wants 
to sleep in. They were more than eight hundred dollars apiece, and 
I can't get a single patient to spend a night in one." 
He wanted to teasingly say, "Well, they're _your_ people," -- 
but he bit the words off just in time. They were no longer her 
people, and in fact distrusted this Westernized woman, this "black 
European", even more than they distrusted Jeremy, who in their 
eyes was just another well-intentioned, bumbling American, a 
typical Two-Year Wonder who was working out his guilt at his 
parents' expense. 
"Of course they won't sleep in them," said Jeremy. "Tents 
have corners, and demons live in corners. Much better to live in 
nice round huts."
"Did they tell you that?"
He nodded. 
"Why didn't they tell me?" 
"You're a Ugandan," he said. "They probably assumed you 
knew." 
"I left when I was a child," she said irritably. "I can't 
remember every little superstition they..._we_...have." She 
paused. "I wish I knew why they confide in you and not in me." 
"Us subordinates know not to trust the big chief," he said 
with a smile. 
For a moment he thought she would explode with anger, but 
finally she laughed. "Anyway," she added, "I've actually got two 
jerrycans of petrol and a radio. We'll travel in style." 
_And with enough room to bring back the villagers, whether
they want to come or not. Assuming we don't find them dead by the
side of the road -- or such parts of them as the hyenas leave._
"What if they don't want to come?" 
"What happens to the children?" countered Elizabeth. "The 
old lady can't do it all. It's sad: Two daughters-in-law, both 
with children. Under normal circumstances, she'd have all the 
makings of an easy, honored old age. The daughters-in-law would 
do all the work for her." She sighed deeply. "But now she'll be 
tending them and bringing up the children until they get sick 
too." 
"Does she test positive?" 
"She's negative. But that's not surprising. She lives a 
traditional lifestyle, and in her culture, women don't have sex 
once they reach menopause. Besides, her husband died years ago. 
The son must have picked it up from his circumcision group, or 
maybe from some whore in Kampala or Entebbe." She gestured to a 
beat-up flatbed truck at the far side of the compound. "Get your 
gear and let's get this show on the road. I'll wait for you at the 
truck." 
He joined her a few minutes later, climbed into the driver's 
seat, put the vehicle in gear, and they were on their way.
The road wound in and out of the bush, passing through dozens 
of villages, many of them totally deserted, though it was 
impossible at first glance to determine whether they were empty 
due to war or AIDS. 
"God, I hate these potholes!" muttered Jeremy, as the ride 
began doing painful things to his spine and kidneys. 
"The locals play games, trying to figure out whose they are," 
said Elizabeth with a bitter smile. 
"Whose _what_ are?" repeated Jeremy uncomprehendingly.
"The potholes," she explained. "They try to guess whether 
they were made by Amin's troops, or Nyerere's, or Obote's, or 
Okello's, or Musaveti's." 
"What a delightful way to spend your childhood," said Jeremy 
wryly. "Trying to guess which homicidal monster destroyed the 
road through your village."
"Musaveti's a good man," said Elizabeth adamantly. "And 
Nyerere is a saint." 
"Three out of five still isn't good odds," replied Jeremy. 
"Especially when you have to live through it all." 
Elizabeth quickly grabbed her hat as another bump sent it 
flying toward her window. "We should reach the end of the tarmac 
pretty soon," she said. 
"It gets better then?"
"It's much better right after the long rains. You can't 
repair tarmac out here, but if it's just holes in a dirt road, the 
rains will have leveled it out." 
"_Nothing_ can level this road out," said Jeremy devoutly. He 
looked out the side window just as the tarmac ended. The 
thornbush, which had been rapidly encroaching on both the savannah 
and the roadside _shambas_, had triumphed totally. The grass, 
which was green and endless a few miles back, now existed only in 
isolated pockets, and was dotted by the bones of dead wildebeest 
and kob. The red dust from the road obscured his vision, but he 
could see troops of vervet monkeys, plus an occasional red 
colobus, scampering through the trees and observing the strange-
sounding foul-smelling vehicle from the safety of the branches. 
As the truck slowed down to cross a _lugga_ -- a dry riverbed 
-- Jeremy saw a figure disappearing into the thornscrub some fifty 
yards off to his right. 
"What is it?" asked Elizabeth as Jeremy brought the truck to 
a halt. 
"There's something back there." 
"What?" 
He shook his head. "I don't know." He paused and frowned. "I 
think it was a woman or a child; it was too small to be a man."
She shrugged. "Nothing unusual about that. Uganda's got a lot 
of people and a lot of bush. You tend to find the one in the 
other." 
"Stop patronizing me," he said irritably. 
"Then stop belaboring the obvious," she replied. "You saw a 
woman in the bush."
"There was something funny, though."
"Funny ha-ha, or funny strange?" she asked.
"Funny strange."
"What?"
He paused uncomfortably. "I only caught a quick glimpse of 
her -- or him -- but..." 
"But what?" she persisted. 
"She walked like her feet hurt, and _nobody_ in Africa walks 
like that."
"Maybe she cut her foot."
"The average African spends his whole life walking barefoot 
on rocks and in thornbush country. I don't think you could cut his 
foot open with a knife."
"Nonsense," she said. "I cut my own foot just two days ago."
"You're not the average African," he retorted. "You spent 
most your life in Europe and America."
She ignored his comment, picked up the binoculars, and held 
them to her eyes. "There's nothing out there. Probably it was a 
heat mirage. Or maybe the glare on the windshield made you think 
you saw a woman instead of a tree." 
He shrugged. "Maybe." 
Or maybe his eyes could be starting to go -- except that it 
was way too early in the disease cycle for him to hallucinate. And 
besides, he didn't have the disease yet.
Jeremy continued looking out the window as he started driving 
again. He spotted a pair of silver-backed jackals, and a few 
minutes later he had to swerve to avoid a family of hyenas that 
were fighting over the remains of a small duiker, but there was no 
sign of the small figure he had seen. Or _thought_ he had seen. 
He noticed that sweat was starting to pour down his body, and 
he transferred the letter to another pocket to keep it dry.
"What is that?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing," he replied. "Just a letter from an old 
friend." 
"You haven't opened it yet."
"I'll get around to it."
"Would you like me to read it to you while you're driving?" 
she offered. 
"Not necessary," he said.
"It's no trouble."
"No."
They came to another village. There were sixteen hatched huts 
falling to ruin. Nearby was a large thorn _boma_ for the cattle; 
next to it were four deserted _shambas_, the mango and banana 
trees fighting a losing battle for survival against the 
encroaching bush. The village had a well so that the people would 
not have to drink contaminated water. (Fat chance, thought Jeremy. 
The water in the nearby bilharzia-infested stream was crystal 
clear. The people would take one look at the safe brown water 
coming up from the borehole and opt for the stream every time.) 
There was only one problem: no people. Like so many other 
villages, it was completely deserted. 
"I get so sick of seeing this," remarked Elizabeth, gesturing 
toward the empty huts. 
"Where to now?" asked Jeremy, staring ahead to where the road 
forked and went off in two directions.
"I'm not quite sure, but I seem to think we go to the 
northwest." 
* * *
_She saw a strange beast, growling constantly and belching a
foul-smelling smoke. It was like nothing she had ever experienced,
strange and terrifying even for this strange and terrifying land.
She quickly hid behind a thornbush and waited for it to gallop
off._
_The beast had a most unusual means of enticing its victims.
Instead of stealthily creeping up and then pouncing, like the
great cats and canines, it showed her an image of a human very
similar to herself. Doubtless she was expected to approach it out 
of curiosity, and it would open its slavering jaws and swallow her
whole._
_She would have to be prepared for this beast in the future,
for she had much to do, and would doubtless encounter it again._
* * *
They managed to get lost, of course. After three days of 
punctured tires (five), false paths (eleven), bug bites (three 
million), and fraying tempers (beyond computation), the truck 
crashed out of the underbrush a scant twenty-six miles from where 
it had entered, and turned onto the narrow, almost overgrown track 
that was the best road Jeremy could find with sweat, map, 
frequently profane radio exchanges, and the occasional shout to 
any people they passed on the road. 
"Look up ahead," said Elizabeth, pointing. 
As they approached a village, a thread of smoke curled 
upward, and a flock of birds flew overhead. Jeremy was used to 
children spotting his Land Rover and running ahead or alongside 
with wild shouts -- but for some reason the inhabitants of _this_ 
village, even the children, silently watched the truck and then 
went about their business.
"What do you make of that?" asked Jeremy, frowning, as the 
truck crunches over the rough road.
"I don't know," said Elizabeth. "They know we're bringing 
food and medicine. They should be swarming out to greet us."
"Have you ever seen a reaction like this?"
"No," she said, frowning. "Not even when I was a little 
girl." 
"They don't act afraid," he noted. "Just...I don't 
know..._wary_." 
Next to one of the huts was a mound of heaped dirt. Even 
though it had been encircled by a crude fence that must have 
caused someone a lot of trouble to construct and erect, the ground 
was trampled, the clods scattered in places, as if something had 
tried to dig it up. Jeremy felt a muscle along his jaw jerk. 
They wouldn't have had a whole lot of strength to spare to dig the 
man's grave deep enough -- and there was always the problem of how 
to get out of the pit once it had been dug. 
Two children squatted by the roadside, waving at him. When 
he waved back, they rose slowly. He thought he recognized them. 
They'd been fed in the camp for almost a week, but the long walk 
home had sweated the newly-gained weight off of them. Already 
their ribs were showing above their bellies, which, thank God, had 
at least not started to swell out in severe malnutrition's 
dreadful parody of fat. Squatting outside the nearest hut, the 
healthier -- or rather, the least sick -- of the dead man's young 
wives tended a few scrawny chickens. Beyond the huts, an 
emaciated ox raised its head at the newcomers, then went back to 
the all-important business of grazing the near-grassless land. 
The oldest child pushed at the ox, driving it toward two cows in 
equally poor condition. 
Still, concluded Jeremy, these villagers were better off than 
a lot he had seen. They had posho from the relief center. They 
would have milk. They might even have eggs and meat. It was a 
wonder they had anything left at all. For years, this entire 
country had been little more than the scene of a crime that called 
itself a government -- and now, hardly a step up, it had become a 
plague site. 
_God help them all._
Tall and thin, her head high, the mother of the dead man 
appeared in a doorway. She had an infant in her arms, two others 
clinging to her legs. She walked over to the squatting woman and 
handed her the child. The younger woman opened her dress, and the 
child began to nurse -- or to try to. 
"That'll infect the baby!" Jeremy muttered. 
"You want them to talk to us? Then be quiet!" Elizabeth 
got out of the truck, raised a hand in greeting and spoke in a 
formal Swahili, totally different from the "kitchen Swahili" 
Jeremy had learned. 
Jeremy killed the motor, opened the door, stepped down, and 
joined Elizabeth just as the woman raised a hand. Greetings 
should have gone on ceremoniously, with an invitation to a meal to 
follow, but there was little food and less time to spare, as her 
apologetic gestures seemed to indicate. Abruptly, she clapped her 
hands. The children scattered, disappearing into various huts to 
emerge wearing the ragged Michael Jordan T-shirts they had 
received -- each decorated with a loop of red ribbon. Jeremy 
grinned. He remembered giving out those ribbons and slipping a 
dime to one of the kids, who had lost a front tooth the day 
before. _The Tooth Fairy comes to Uganda. Right. I'd grant you 
three wishes, kid, if I could._
"We know you mean well, _Memsaab_," the old woman was saying, 
"but we have no faith in your magic. We prefer our own. That is 
why we came home."
"But who will help you?" asked Elizabeth, trying to ignore 
the word 'Memsaab', which was only offered to whites and 
outsiders, never from one black Ugandan to another. "Your 
grandchildren are too young. Your son is dead, and his wives are 
sick. She paused. "It is not right that you live alone, without 
family to share your burdens." 
"I wish you would let us bring you back!" Jeremy blurted in 
English. 
"Damn it, Jeremy!" hissed Elizabeth. "I know you mean well, 
but that's an insult."
The old woman turned to Jeremy. "My father is dead," she 
said. "My husband is dead. My sons are dead. My grandsons are too 
young to give me orders. Uganda has been independent for 30 long 
rains. I will not take orders from you or any other European. I 
need no longer call you Bwana." 
When Jeremy had finally stammered an apology, Elizabeth took 
pity on him. 
"Why don't you unload the truck?" she suggested. That won 
her a look of awe from the old woman. For all her dedication, her 
Swahili, her attempt to make herself seem like a good daughter of 
the tribe, Elizabeth was still a European to them. She was all the 
more alien for being a black European and a woman who could give 
orders to men, especially white men, in this society where brides 
were still bought and sold. 
"If you will have us--" 
Instant protest, invitation, and apology followed in order: 
how could she doubt her welcome? 
"--we shall stay for a few days and observe the children. We 
can make ourselves useful to you."
The woman smiled. Surprisingly, given her age and health, 
she still possessed most of her teeth, and they glinted in the 
sunlight. 
"But I have help, _Memsaab_." Elizabeth flinched. That word 
again. So much for Sisterhood and fitting in. "My _bibi_ has come 
to help me." 
"Her baby?" asked Jeremy, trying to translate.
"_Bibi_ is 'mother'," answered Elizabeth. "You've seen those 
signs in the burnt-out stores and _dukas_ along the road to 
Kampala, the ones that say _Babito_? That's a contraction, or 
actually an acronym, for Baba, Bibi, and Toto -- father, mother, 
and baby. In other words, stores for the whole family." She 
paused. "Now please go unload the truck before you offend her 
again." 
Jeremy unloaded sack after sack of _posho_, the cornmeal that 
the Africans made into a porridge (and which Jeremy thought had 
the consistency and taste of library paste), and finally a 
precious box of powdered milk that they could use for the babies 
when (never _if_, only _when_) their mothers' milk ran dry. If he 
had anything to say about it, they'd be drinking it now: if a 
mother was HIV positive, a baby could pick it up from breast milk 
if it hadn't already contracted it in the womb. 
Elizabeth Umurungi disappeared into the dark interior of the 
hut with her medical bag, leaving Jeremy standing outside. The 
children approached to watch him as he finished unloading the 
truck. Aware of their presence, he pocketed the keys, reached into 
the glove compartment, and slipped the revolver into his pocket. 
No sense putting temptation in their way. 
When he walked to the door of the hut, Elizabeth and the old 
woman were kneeling beside a pallet that held the second wife. 
Jeremy remembered her from the relief center. He was surprised 
she had made it back alive. 
"Get me some water," Elizabeth ordered, not even bothering to 
turn around. "Rubbing alcohol too. We have to bring this fever 
down." 
One of the children immediately ran off to obey this not-
quite-stranger with her shiny instruments and her way of 
commanding a man taller and stronger than their father had been. 
When the child sloshed back with a tin pan filled with dubiously 
clean water, Jeremy carried it and the rubbing alcohol inside. 
Elzabeth sponged the woman on the pallet, while the other 
woman hovered and tried to sooth the patient. The sick woman's 
face glowed, the life flickering in it like embers in an ebony 
lantern, building, flaring up... At any moment, he thought it 
would surely burn out into darkness. 
"Help hold her still!" Elizabeth ordered when the patient 
began thrashing, and Jeremy, who had always worn sweatbands and 
gloves when working out in his West Side gym, leapt to obey. 
When they finished, the old woman held her daughter-in-law 
against her shoulder while Elizabeth brought out a syringe and
administered it.
Of the old woman's "_bibi_", there was no sign at all. 
Probably she was too shy or too frightened to even look at the 
strangers; Jeremy didn't envy Elizabeth the task of coaxing her 
out where she could be examined. 
* * *
Jeremy paused, sleeping bag in hand, and looked around the 
hut that had been allotted them. He was used to sweat blotching 
his shirts the instant he put them on. He was used to insects, 
used to animals, used to taking care of people in ways that would 
have made the men on the trading desk pass out. But the dark, 
claustrophobic hut with its long-unswept floor, its hovering, 
whining flies -- his imagination conjured up sleeping sickness, 
yellow fever, and typhoid for starters, and then began dwelling 
on more exotic diseases. 
Elizabeth simply shrugged and spread her sleeping bag out on 
the floor. Maybe it was only dried mud, but it certainly smelled 
like cow dung. 
Dinner had come and gone -- a scrawny chicken. They had 
protested that they had their own supplies, they could perfectly 
well feed themselves and everyone else; but the chicken had been 
killed and stewed, and they had had to eat it with every evidence 
of appreciation for the sacrifice it represented. Despite 
reprimands from mother and grandmother to let their guests eat in 
peace, Jeremy managed to feed at least half his dinner to the 
kids. He felt like a guilty child himself, feeding the family dog 
beneath the table, and then felt even guiltier for equating these 
starving children to household pets. It was a feast to them, and 
when their faces shone with the meager fat from the chicken skin, 
they started to yawn and soon wandered off. 
Elizabeth and Jeremy left the hut and sat outside it, poking 
at a fire Jeremy had insisted on building. He promised himself 
that tomorrow he'd show the children how to toast things on it, 
wondering what he could substitute for marshmallows. He pulled out 
Ray's letter, studied it thoughtfully, and then placed it back in 
his pocket, unopened.
Beyond the circle of the village and its tiny fields, darker 
than the night sky, lay uncleared land. The forest was coming 
back after the devastation of the past decades, and slowly, the 
wild creatures were returning. A hyena giggled maniacally, a lion 
coughed, and far off in the distance hippos grunted and bellowed. 
Elizabeth picked up a green branch and maneuvered a few 
smoldering logs. They suddenly burst into flame, and a shower of 
sparks rose into the dark African sky.
"Where did you learn to tend a fire?" asked Jeremy, whose 
camp duty it was to build fires.
For an instant, her eyes lit with humor. "In Girl Guides," 
she answered with a smile. "Certainly not in the bush." Jeremy 
forced himself not to grimace. He still held his rolled-up 
sleeping bag. "Are you going to hang onto that security blanket 
all night?" she asked. 
"Why don't I sleep out in the truck?" he suggested. "More 
proper for the hired hand, wouldn't you say?" 
"Whatever makes you happy," said Elizabeth. "Those kids look 
like they'd love to spend the night talking with you." It was 
obvious that she would much rather have been able to say "us" than 
"you". Suddenly she swatted a tsetse fly with surgical efficiency. 
It lay still for a minute, then got to its feet and groggily 
walked off. 
"Nobody ever told me they were armor-plated until I got 
here," said Jeremy, staring ruefully at the fly.
"If they get any worse, I may join you. We can take turns 
standing guard." She sighed deeply. "I wish we had some light," 
she continued. "Better than the firelight, I mean. I'd like to 
run some tests on that woman. She ought to be dead from that 
fever -- she had a body temp of at least 105." 
"She was burning up," Jeremy agreed. "I thought I'd be 
digging a grave." He had been so careful to restrain the sick 
woman's flailing hands. Face it: he had been afraid, just as 
he'd been every day since he came here. With every patient he 
touched, he faced the question: are you the one who'll kick my T-
cells out of balance? Will _your_ AIDS be the death of me, too? 
It was no different for him than for the other relief 
workers. He knew that. He was no one special. But he was 
ashamed to ask if the others were afraid, too. 
"Did you see?" asked Elizabeth. At least, she could escape 
into the discipline of her profession. She could do something. 
"Her lesions actually seem to be shrinking." 
There was a drug on the market that reduced lesions --
chicken pox or Kaposi's sarcoma, it made no difference -- but it 
was so expensive they'd need the treasure of King Solomon's mines 
to pay for it. 
"Any chance of remission?" Jeremy kept his face out of the 
firelight so she wouldn't see the wild hope that heated it. At 
least, he hoped it was hope and not the first episode of night 
sweats. 
Elizabeth put a hand out and gently touched his arm. "God 
only knows," she said softly. "There's always a chance, Jeremy. 
Always. And you're a non-progressor. Every day, every month that 
you hold out increases the chances of a cure, and gives us more 
time to study you. When we get back to the compound, I'll test 
your blood again." She paused. "I wish we could bring her back. 
And I wish the old lady's _bibi_ would show up. You know, they 
tell me she cured one of the other villagers. They say he was 
dying of AIDS. That can't be true, of course, but I'd still love 
to learn her methods." 
"Don't tell me you believe in witch doctors?" asked Jeremy 
with a smile. 
"I don't believe in all the superstition that goes along with 
it, but some of these folk healers have stumbled on medicines that 
are new to science. There are plants that no one has classified 
yet, and it's a fair bet that some of them will be effective 
against certain diseases. There's a Nobel Prize waiting for the 
scientist who brings back the right plants." She stared at the 
fire. "Yes, I wish I could convince the old woman to introduce me 
to this _bibi_ of hers. Who knows what we might learn from her?" 
"Maybe after a few days, when they see we don't mean any 
harm..." began Jeremy.
"They already know that, Jeremy," said Elizabeth. "Half of 
them have been to the camp at one time or another." She poked at 
the fire with the stick, silent for awhile. A sudden chorus of 
warning screams and barks from a troop of baboons told them that a 
leopard was in the neighborhood. The noise continued for a couple 
of minutes, growing gradually softer as the troop retreated higher 
up their trees and the leopard decided to seek other prey. 
Jeremy fumbled again for the letter in his pocket, brought it 
out, stared at the once-familiar handwriting for perhaps the tenth 
time that day, and began to tuck it back into the pocket. 
"You're driving me crazy with that letter!" snapped 
Elizabeth. "Either read the bloody thing or throw it into the 
fire!" 
"I don't _feel_ like reading it," said Jeremy. 
"Then I'll read it!" she said, snatching it from him. She 
bent over and began reading aloud by firelight: 
_"Dear (that's a joke) Jeremy:_
_"After I stopped shaking and walked out on you and got back
to the Keys, Bud wanted to head North after you with his AK. But
Steve said what the fuck, Bud tested clean -- no point throwing
away his life along with yours and mine. And Steve's. He's real
sick. ARC pneumonia. He calls it ARC-light bombing when he's got
enough breath to talk. I've moved in with the two of them to try
to help out. Money goes farther that way, and I like to think I'm
useful. It's hard to watch him come apart and know this is how
I'm going to end up._
_"Then I think it's how you're going to end up too, and it's 
not so bad. For once, you're not going to be able to weasel your 
way out of something. Only you call it negotiating, don't you? 
It's part of that important stuff, like attention to detail and 
execution, that makes you such a big success on the Street. Wall, 
that is, not 42nd, where they sell themselves another way. Not 
much difference, is there, when you come right down to it? Talk 
about 'execution' -- you've sure executed the two of us like a 
pro._
_"'We can fight this,' you said. Maybe_ you _can turn what's 
left of your life into a holy crusade against this thing you gave
me. Me, I just want to live what years I've got left. In a way,
I envy Steve. He's out of it_ now, _and he's got Bud with him. I
don't know what Bud'll do after he goes. Write, maybe. I'm using
his computer. Don't mind the spelling mistakes. Bud's trying to
get some rest, and if he knew I was writing to you, he'd probably
pitch a fit._
_"'Why in hell are you bothering? he'd ask. For one thing, I 
want you to_ know _what you've done._
_"And I wanted to return these cufflinks to you. Bud was all 
for pawning them, sending you the ticket, and throwing one hell of 
a party, but that was always your job, wasn't it? With your 
Platinum Card, easy come, easy go, right? I don't want to drink 
your booze, and I don't want my friends to, either. And I don't 
want to keep these things around. I saw the catalog you ordered 
them from. 18 karat gold. I know what you paid. You must have 
been out of your mind._
_"You want to look right, you said. You belong here. You 
belong with me. Dammit, if I belonged with you, why didn't you
ever bring me home? I saw that picture of your folks you hide in
your desk. They look nice. Your father -- he's a big guy, maybe
big enough to take in another son. Maybe he even valued the one he
had -- you, never mind the clone you stitched up out of bits of
grad school, F. Scott FitzGerald, and_ The New Yorker, _or 
whatever the hell. Instead, Tiffany cufflinks. And the bloody 
Hamptons and why don't I move up to the City from the Keys, full-
time, and take the goddamned Series 7 and you'd help me find a 
job. Then I could dress up and go to banquets for Greg Louganis or 
something with you and get my name on program committees. And if 
you died first, then I'd be the right kind of person to be written 
up as 'companion of' in_ The New York Times _obituary section with 
all the other guys who are dying too damn young._
_"No, thanks._
_"You said I was the best thing that ever happened to you. 
But that wasn't good enough. You had to play around and go test 
positive for HIV and give that to me, too._
_"Careless, that's what you are. Stupidly, killingly
careless. Like the rules don't apply to you. I saw how your
friends act when you're not looking or maybe you don't care. They
stiff waiters. They cut lines. They shout at people on the
phones, people who can't shout back because they need their jobs.
You probably even barged into the doctor's for your blood test
ahead of six other people who had to wait even longer because_ you 
_were there and_ you _were important._
_"Well, it's going to get you too, Jeremy Harris, just like
it's getting the guy with TB on the street corner, wishing to hell
he was dying down here where it's warm._
_"Besides, I want to return the cufflinks because I don't 
want to get to the point where I have to pawn them and use the 
money. I wasn't smart, like you, at making money. Never had all 
that much. With luck, when I go, I'll go quick. If not, I plan 
to be somewhere warm, somewhere maybe people will take care of me. 
That's why I left New York. When Steve's gone, I'll probably head 
even farther south._
_"If I had folks I was alive to, I'd go home to them, maybe, 
not hide their picture._
_"It doesn't matter a whole hell of a lot. State of mind is
important, though; that's what Steve's doctors said when they sent
him home. We're not hoping for a miracle cure. He hasn't got a
whole lot of time left, and no one knows that better than he does.
But he's happier with his partner around and his garden and his
boat in sight -- we hauled it out in front of his window. He can
hear the ocean, and sometimes, when he's able to eat, one of us
goes and catches him a fish._
_"So here's the cufflinks. Keep 'em, throw 'em away, or pay 
Tiffany's to change the monogram for the next sucker. No use 
wasting good stuff._ 
_"Steve just woke up. Got to go in a minute. Bud yelled in
from his room, 'If you're writing to Jeremy, tell the sonofabitch
to get a life.'_
_"You had one. You threw it away. It couldn't happen to 
you: you were important. You were privileged. Well, it did, and 
now you've thrown away_ my _life too. Get a life, for as long as 
you can. That's what I plan to do. So I'm going to live as much 
as I can. First, I'm taking care of Steve. Did you ever help 
anyone up close? I'm not talking about writing checks and handing 
out cufflinks. It's kind of a mess, only helping someone who's 
that sick makes you feel...it's like you respect yourself. You 
know, I didn't for awhile there. You were paying the bills. I 
had to go along, I thought. But I hated it._
_"Don't try to get in touch. This isn't something you can
negotiate until you talk me around. I know you're better at it
than I am. Thing is, as long as I don't see you, I can remember
the good things. But if I see you, I know I'll get mad all over
again. And scared, just like when I first heard, and I prayed for
a heart attack right then and there so I wouldn't have to go
through what I know lies up ahead._
_"Don't look for me. Don't even think about me. You know 
the old line, 'I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you'? 
Right now, I think that if I saw you, I'd kill you or die trying. 
And there'd go the few years I've got left. I'm not willing to
throw them away too._
_"Get a life, Jeremy. If you know how._
_"Raymond"_
Elizabeth stopped, her eyes glittering in the firelight. She 
was silent for a long time. Then she looked up. "I don't know what 
to say..."
"Maybe now you understand why I didn't want to know what was 
in it," he said bitterly. 
"It's a terrible burden to carry," she acknowledged. "But 
you're not the only one this has happened to."
"That's a damned arrogant thing to say. At least you were 
able to come back here..." 
She moved abruptly, then stopped. It was as if she wanted to 
take his letter -- and his idiotic defensive statement -- and toss 
the whole lot into the fire. "I didn't mean to come back alone. 
I wasn't alone in Paris. Ever. I could have had anyone. 
Bankers, oil men, Frenchmen whose blood was so blue it was a 
wonder they could still breathe." She sighed. "What I chose was 
Paul. That was his Western name, the one he used in medical 
school. He was an Ibo." 
Jeremy shut his eyes as he considered this revelation. Achole 
and Ibo. Elizabeth would have had about as much in common with 
Paul as if she'd been a nice Jewish girl who fell in love with 
Moammar Quadafi. 
"Sorry," he muttered. At this rate, he'd have to make a tape 
or something: "Jeremy Harris -- His Greatest Apologies!" and play 
it as needed.
A hippo grunted, much closer than before, and Jeremy peered 
into the dark, trying to spot it with no success. They weren't 
carnivores, but they killed a lot of people who got in their way 
at nights.
Elizabeth spat on the ground, all the chic, all the European 
gone from her for a moment. "We had such plans. He was going to 
establish the best medical clinic in Africa, and I would be a 
high-profile spokeswoman or fund-raiser, probably both. We were 
going to be a bridge between the nations, Paul and I -- and since 
he was the man, and that counts for more than you can imagine on 
this continent, we set up shop in his country." She sighed, and 
her shoulders looked bony, not elegant, not any more. "I tried. I 
did my best. I stuck it out long enough to be called a useless 
Achole bitch." 
"By him?"
"By everyone. Including him."
Jeremy wanted to reach for the letter, but managed to control 
himself. "Then what?" 
"I applied to medical school myself. My O-levels were good. 
I'd taken a First in university. Given Harvard's admission 
policies, I knew I could get in as a special student, then move on 
to med school. When I was done, I took my money and built the 
relief camp, and cajoled a few doctors into coming back to Uganda, 
and sold space to a few people like you, who were willing to pay 
to work here for whatever their personal reasons." She paused. "It 
was important to me when the camp became a reality. I collected 
all my clippings and sent them to Paul." 
"Where is he now?" 
"Nigeria. Or maybe hell, for all I know. There's not much 
difference between the two. I read last month that there's yet 
another revolution there; maybe they'll shoot him this time." 
Again she poked at the fire.
Jeremy watched her face in the flickering firelight. All I 
ever saw before tonight was the model's looks and the cool, 
competent exterior, he mused. I guess we're all of us trapped 
inside our bodies. Even someone as beautiful and accomplished as 
Elizabeth, 
"Nigeria will do just fine without him," she concluded after 
a long silence. "It doesn't need a savior." She stared into the 
fire again. "I just wish I knew why Uganda is cursed." 
"Uganda's not unique," replied Jeremy. "All the African 
countries have AIDS." 
"We're unique," she said adamently. "First Amin, then the 
other butchers, and now _this_. You know, Kenya has a high HIV 
incidence, almost as high as ours -- but their people aren't dying 
like ours. I've even heard former colonials in Nairobi, sitting at 
their lily-white bars and restaurants, _complaining_ about it. 
They thought AIDS would return Kenya to them, but hardly anyone's 
dying and they feel cheated! And here, right next door, in the 
most beautiful, fertile land on the continent, we're lost entire 
villages." A look of fury spread across her face. _"It's just not 
fair!"_
"Maybe we should learn from other countries instead of 
resenting them," said Jeremy, while deep within him a tiny voice 
protested in outrage. 
"Their time will come," she replied. "What we need is more 
information. Sooner or later, we're going to find out what it is 
about non-progressors that makes them fight the disease better. 
Sooner or later, we're going to find someone with natural 
immunity..." 
"God help the poor sucker," said Jeremy. "You'll make a lab 
rat out of him for sure." 
A rich lab rat. A celebrity lab rat. There'd be fortunes to 
be made from an AIDS vaccine -- if you'd lost enough of your soul 
to charge what the market would bear. The market, of course, 
being guys like him, not women like the ones lying two huts over, 
fighting off fever and the long defeat of their lives. 
"Or _her_," she replied. "Who knows? Maybe this old woman's 
mother is the one. She's certainly lived long enough." 
"So where is she?"
"Who knows?" Elizabeth frowned. "I've been away a long time. 
My clothing's wrong, my accent's wrong, even my magic's wrong. 
They don't trust me." 
They sat in silence by the flickering firelight for a few 
more moments. Finally Elizabeth yawned, stretching like one of the 
children. Jeremy smiled at her. _I'm sorry that you hurt, but I
like you even better now that I know you're human._ Maybe he and 
Elizabeth could adopt each other or something. He could be Uncle 
Jeremy to any children she would eventually have. If he lived 
long enough to see her meet a man with more sense than Paul. _Not 
wisely, but too well,_ Jeremy thought. That went for both of them. 
"I really _am_ going to bunk in the truck," he said, picking 
up his sleeping bag. "The hut's too stuffy for me, even if does 
get cold out here, and this way I can keep an eye on things." 
"While you're sound asleep?" asked Elizabeth. He'd rather 
hoped she'd be too sleepy to be sarcastic. 
"Good night," he told her and trudged wearily toward the 
battered truck. He spread out his bedding on the back of the 
truck. If anything tried to get him, he'd at least hear it 
coming, and he still had the pistol, just in case. 
* * *
Jeremy jolted instantly awake, his heart pounding, his body 
drenched. But this wasn't fever. 
_Something was watching him._ 
He forced himself back into stillness, keeping his eyes shut. 
His hand, hidden beneath his head, gently released the safety on 
the pistol. Leopard or bandit or whatever, whatever tried to 
attack him was going to be very, very surprised, and then very, 
very dead. 
_Steady there. Play possum._ He slowly opened his eyes. When 
they adjusted to the darkness, he glanced stealthily about. A 
tiny blot of shadow detached itself from the doorway of the sick 
woman's hut and paused, staring at the truck. 
_Dammit, those kids had no business wandering around here at
night!_ He'd seen the fence around the old man's grave. Maybe 
the local scavengers would like live meat for a change. The 
children seemed eager to provide it. 
_You know perfectly well why their mothers can't watch the
kids,_ he told himself. _They're sick or they're dying. Probably
both._ Never mind what Elizabeth had said about miracles. The fact 
that her parents had survived the madness of Idi Amin had made her 
a cock-eyed optimist. 
He'd give the kid five minutes, Jeremy decided. Five. If it 
didn't do its business in the bush or wherever, then go back into 
the hut, he personally would escort it back to its mother. 
_Wait. Don't move._
The shadow detached itself from the shelter of the hut and 
moved out into the clearing, toward the fenced-in grave. It 
squatted there, and Jeremy could see the tremors that shook it. 
No, shook _her_. Had one of the little ones been a girl? He 
couldn't remember. There'd been so many children, each to be 
greeted with a grin and a loop of scarlet ribbon as long as 
supplies held out, that sometimes he didn't look at them as the 
individuals they were -- or that they would grow into if they 
lucked out and lived. 
This was a girl, barely four feet tall. Much too small to be 
out alone. He gathered himself to leap down from the truck and 
take the child in charge. 
_Not yet._
The child's shoulders shook. _Why, she's crying for her
father!_ Jeremy's own eyes filled. He blinked frantically, and 
when his sight cleared, he found that the child had turned around. 
_And it was no child._
It had the face of a withered old woman -- with eyes that 
seemed filled with love and compassion. 
_This is crazy! Africa's finally got to me. I must be
hallucinating. How can you look at a pair of eyes, especially in
that ancient face, and read compassion or anything else into 
them?_ 
A cough came from the darkness of the forest, a cough and a 
rush of paws, followed by a squall of pure rage as the child with 
the ancient face beat at the predator with a club. Finally Jeremy
could make out her attacker: a small, scrawny leopard, made bold 
by its hunger. 
No time for waiting now. Jeremy grabbed for the pistol, 
aimed as best he could, and fired. 
The explosion woke up the village. Jeremy built a huge fire 
and reconnoitered, pursued by Elizabeth's ironic comments about 
mighty hunters. A trail of blood and pawprints led back to the 
bush and vanished there. Upon returning, he insisted on seeing all 
the children and counting them, and trying fruitlessly to 
determine which of them had been the one that had beaten off the 
leopard. 
Gradually, the infants stopped screaming. The sick woman in 
the hut stopped moaning for "Bibi". She even consented to drink 
some broth and put on a T-shirt that had been donated by 
Elizabeth. 
Finally the village quieted down and went back to sleep. 
After a long, long while, so did Jeremy. If anyone ventured 
outside, he didn't hear it -- or anything else. 
In the morning, he found that the truck's radio and spark 
plugs were missing. 
"Why would anyone take them?" he asked Elizabeth. "It's not 
as if this was telephone wire or something they could use for 
ornaments. The radio's no good to anyone without a power source, 
and the plugs are totally useless -- unless someone thought they'd 
look cute stuck through his ears." He paused. "If they don't turn 
up, we're in deep shit: no transportation and no way of calling 
for help." 
"All we can do is ask," replied Elizabeth wearily. 
She walked over to the old woman's hut and entered it. 
"Good morning," she said with a smile as the old woman looked 
up from the daughter-in-law she had been tending.
_"Jambo, Memsaab,"_ responded the woman. 
"That is a very formal greeting. I would much rather you 
called me Elizabeth." 
"But _you_ are always formal, and don't call me by _my_ 
name," the old woman pointed out. 
"I apologize, Maroka," said Elizabeth. "I did not mean to 
offend." 
"I am sure you did not." Maroka reached out and touched 
Elizabeth's arm gently. "You are a good person, Elizabeth." 
Elizabeth finally looked down at the younger woman -- and 
almost did a double-take. Her eyes were alert and animated, and 
she was no longer covered with sweat. Elizabeth reached out a 
hand, feeling for signs of the fever, and finding none. 
"Has she eaten?"
"Yes, Elizabeth," answered Maroka. "She has had _posho_ and 
milk. She asked for _pombe_, but I decided she should not have any 
until tomorrow." 
Elizabeth examined the young woman for another few minutes, 
then straightened up. "It's amazing," she said at last. "My 
medicine has never been able to do this before." 
"Your medicine did not save her," said Maroka. "It was Bibi's 
magic." 
"Bibi came here last night?" asked Elizabeth.
"Yes."
"Where is she now?" 
"Hiding," answered Maroka. "She is shy of strangers. She will 
be back after you have left."
Elizabeth glanced out the door, wondering where Bibi might 
be. Then her eyes fell on the truck, and she remembered the 
purpose of her visit. 
"There is a problem, Maroka," she said. "This morning we have 
found that certain things are missing from the truck. We must have 
them back, or the truck will not run." 
"A monkey took them, Elizabeth," suggested Maroka. "Or 
perhaps a baboon." 
"Why do you say that?" 
"Because you have many other villages to visit, and nobody in 
_this_ village would want to keep you from your work. We know it 
is important." 
Elizabeth frowned. In a culture where no one ever spoke 
harshly or said anything unpleasant, Maroka's answer was the 
closest she would come to: "Because we don't want you here, and 
would never do anything to keep you from leaving." 
"We still have food and medicine to give you," said 
Elizabeth.
"We have food, so it is best that your food go to a less 
fortunate village," replied Maroka. "And we have no need of your 
medicine. Bibi's magic is much stronger." 
"I _really_ want to meet her," said Elizabeth, "and learn 
about her magic." 
"I think she is afraid of you." 
"Please help me," said Elizabeth earnestly. "She is an old 
woman who will probably never travel ten miles from here. Whatever 
magic she performs is needed all across Uganda." 
Maroka paused and considered what she had heard. "That is 
true," she said at last. "I will tell her what you said, 
Elizabeth." 
"Thank you."
"But I do not think she will come." 
"Please ask her anyway," said Elizabeth. She inspected the 
younger woman one more time and then left the hut. She rejoined 
Jeremy, who was still rummaging under the hood of the truck, 
searching for further damage. 
"Well?" he asked. "Does she know where our spark plugs and 
radio are?"
"I can't be sure, but I don't think so," said Elizabeth. 
"It took you fifteen minutes to come to that conclusion?" he 
asked sardonically.
"It took fifteen seconds," she said. "The rest of the time we 
talked about medicine. Or magic."
"I don't follow you."
"That young woman -- the one I thought would be dead by today 
-- is one hundred percent better."
"What did you give her?" asked Jeremy.
"Nothing I haven't given hundreds of other patients," said 
Elizabeth, frowning. "I'm thrilled that she's recovering -- but 
everything I know about medicine says she shouldn't be."
"And they think it's magic?" asked Jeremy. "Even though they 
saw you administer the medications?"
"Evidently Bibi came by last night and laid a spell on her," 
said Elizabeth. 
"A spell?"
Elizabeth shrugged. "A leaf. A plant. Some kind of flower. I 
don't know what. But Maroka's convinced that she's the one who 
saved the young woman." Elizabeth frowned. "Hell, for all I know, 
Maroka's right. That's why I want to find her, even more than I 
want to find our spark plugs. If this woman has stumbled on some 
kind of miracle cure, I want to know about it."
"Maybe they're right," said Jeremy. "Maybe it _is_ magic." 
"Nonsense!" she snapped. "There's no such thing!" 
"Oh, I don't know," said Jeremy. "To create penicillin out of 
bread mold seems like magic to me. Or to take a piece of silicon 
and make it think faster and more accurately than a man, that's 
magic too. You're too concerned with process, Elizabeth, when it's 
the result that counts. If the old lady's mother can cure people 
by magic or any other means, I'd bring her a batch of sick people 
instead of trying to steal her secrets." 
"I don't like what you're accusing me of, Jeremy," said 
Elizabeth sharply. "All I want to know is what she's doing to make 
them well -- if indeed she's doing anything at all -- and then I 
want to find out how to synthesize it, bottle it and distribute 
it." 
"Maybe it can't be done."
"You give me the facts, and I'll do it."
"To quote Don Quixote, facts are the enemies of truth." 
"That's romantic drivel," said Elizabeth. "Facts are all 
there is."
"Not around here," he replied.
"Oh?"
He smiled. "Ask the villagers: There's magic, too." 
"Are you _trying_ to be argumentative?" she demanded.
"Some unseen old lady may be going around curing people of 
AIDS," answered Jeremy. "All _you're_ concerned with is how she 
does it, and all _I'm_ concerned with is getting her to do it 
again. Now, if _that's_ argumentative..." 
"No," replied Elizabeth thoughtfully. "No, I suppose it 
isn't, really. You've got a vested interest in being cured; I've 
got one in finding out _how_ to cure people. Our approaches are 
bound to differ." 
"I grew up on Peter Pan and Mother Goose and Mowgli and Oz, 
and you grew up with facts and figures and slaughtered villages," 
replied Jeremy. "Of course our approaches are different." 
"You simply will not understand!" she said irritably.
"No," he admitted. "But show me a cure and I might 
_believe._" 
She angrily turned away from him and strode off into the 
village, where a clap of her hands summoned all the children from 
their huts. Those few who were wearing clothes twisted them as 
they stood in a ragged, uneasy line, expecting the worst from the 
two strangers, one white and one black. 
"All right, believer," said Elizabeth to Jeremy. "_You_ can 
tell them what we lost." It would be a stretch in kitchen Swahili, 
but walking back to the relief camp was a far less attractive 
alternative. 
A few adults gathered around to chuckle in amusement at 
Jeremy's awkward descriptions of the things that were missing. The 
children's eyes simply widened and they looked from one to 
another. 
Then Elizabeth walked up and down the row of children, 
studying each in turn. Finally she stopped before the tallest of 
the boys, who had long since outgrown his Michael Jordan t-shirt 
and was wearing a filthy, tattered Muhammed Ali t-shirt from 
another era.
"You know, don't you?" she said. "I can see it on your face. 
You know who took those things." 
The boy's bare feet scuffed in the dust. He muttered 
something. 
"I can't hear you," said Elizabeth.
"Bibi took them." 
"His mother?" interjected Jeremy, puzzled.
"Perhaps," answered Elizabeth. "In formal Swahili, _bibi_ can 
also mean grandmother." 
"You mean Maroka?" asked Jeremy, surprised.
There were indignant protests from the healthier of the two 
wives, who had come out to watch. From Maroka there was only a 
haughty lift of the head. 
Elizabeth turned back to the child. "I want you to tell me 
where our things are. We can't go home without them." 
More sidelong, wary glances, child to child. 
Elizabeth left the boy and stopped in front of a girl who was 
no more than six or seven years old. She didn't say a word, just 
stared at her. The girl kicked the red dirt nervously with her 
bare feet and refused to meet Elizabeth's gaze. 
"Do _you_ know?" Elizabeth finally asked her. 
"_She_ said not to tell." 
"Who said not to tell...and why?" 
The little girl looked up, and then spoke in a rush. "Bibi. 
She says your hearts are good, because you wish to help. But she 
also says if we stayed in your village, we would have all gotten 
sicker. If we had left earlier, my father would still be alive." 
"But that's not true!" protested Elizabeth. 
"Bibi says it is," said the girl, staring unblinking into 
Elizabeth's eyes.
Elizabeth kept trying, but after a few minutes it became 
obvious that the children would not disobey Bibi and reveal where 
the missing parts were hidden. 
Elizabeth exchanged a quick, frustrated glance with Jeremy. 
"Beautiful Uganda, land of my people, where no good deed goes 
unpunished," she murmured. 
Jeremy was almost as depressed as he had been when the 
results of his initial bloodwork had come back. Radios, if 
mistreated, could be cranky, and there was a limit to the truck's 
ability to sit outside without maintenance. Let it be exceeded, 
and even if they found their equipment, they'd still be 
stranded in this tiny village.
"Well," said Elizabeth, "I may as well make my morning 
rounds." She grimaced in Jeremy's direction. "Are you ready for an 
_un_scientific opinion?" 
"It's my favorite kind."
"Personally, I think this whole goddamned village needs to 
have its collective head examined." 
The day passed uneventfully, and as the huge sun went down, 
Jeremy summoned the energy from somewhere to gather wood for a 
fire. The children were busy gathering firewood and water, and 
putting the chickens in their coops, which would be hung from 
nearby trees. Jeremy watched Elizabeth's friendly overtures met 
with polite coolness, as the villagers decided that black skin and 
a knowledge of Buganda did not make her one of them. 
He considered the missing equipment for the hundredth time. 
They couldn't count on anyone arriving here except by accident. 
They _had_ to persuade the thief to give back the radio and the 
spark plugs. 
Elizabeth emerged from a hut and walked over to join Jeremy. 
"I must have misdiagnosed that woman," she said, puzzled. "She 
showed all the classic signs, and I thought her fever would finish 
her off in a matter of hours. But she's no more an AIDS victim 
than _I_ am. Hell, even that case of thrush she had is clearing 
up." She shook her head. "Maroka wants to make her sit up 
tomorrow. I suppose she's right; the sooner she's back on her 
feet, the better." 
"Who will watch her until she can go back out in the fields?" 
Elizabeth shrugged. "We still haven't seen Bibi; given her 
age, that'd be a good job for her." She paused. "You know, that's 
another reason I'd like to get out of here; the poor thing's so 
scared of us she's hiding out in the bush. I didn't come here to 
turn some poor woman out of her house and put her at the mercy of 
the hyenas." 
She seemed about to say something more, then changed her mind 
and headed off to her sleeping hut.
Darkness descended, and Jeremy soon fell asleep on the back 
of the truck. When he woke in the morning, the crimson ribbon was 
missing from his shirt. 
_Interesting_. He climbed down, swallowed his pills, cut 
himself a fresh ribbon, and put the much-diminished spool into a 
hip pocket, just in case. 
And suddenly he _knew_ that he was being watched. He found 
himself glancing over his shoulder, watching the long sharp 
shadows in case some tiny fragment broke off from one of them and 
headed for the truck or the fields or the deep bush. 
When he paused to wipe his face after splashing it with some 
water, the sense of being watched grew even stronger. Once or 
twice, he caught a flicker of motion on the far side of a 
clearing, at the edge of his vision. 
Maroka's _bibi_? He hadn't gotten a good look at her, but he 
couldn't imagine who else it could be. He set off across the 
clearing, and soon spotted some footprints in the dust. They were 
small enough to be the prints of a child, but they were deep, as 
if the person they belonged to was carrying something heavy. 
They led him deeper and deeper into the bush. Soon the 
vegetation had closed around him. He could hear the chirping of 
birds and the buzzing of insects, but the only motion he could see 
was the slight swaying of leaves in the hot breeze. He could 
almost imagine that he was some stone-age man, pushing his way 
through the bush in pursuit of his dinner; surely the terrain 
hadn't looked much different even a million years ago. 
A hyena giggled in the distance; in Jeremy's mind it became a 
300-pound hyenadon. A vulture circled lazily overhead; he 
pretended it was a pteradactyl. 
He was still imagining a distant past and a more physically 
imposing version of himself when suddenly he came upon a clearing. 
A huge dead tree had fallen down -- he imagined that a mastodon 
had pushed it over -- and a nearby termite mound towered some 
twenty feet above the ground. 
Then, suddenly, he became aware of a cluster of children, and 
saw the baby -- (and how had they let the kids take it out of the 
hut?) -- in the arms of what looked like another child. 
That is, it looked like another child until he got a glimpse 
of its wizened face. It was a female, no question about it, for 
she was nursing the infant. Her skin seemed incredibly ancient, 
not so much lined as engraved with seams. The sparse hair 
surrounding it, growing far down on her low brow, was white. But 
the smile on her lips as she looked down at the baby was very 
beautiful and oddly familiar. 
_I've seen you before, I know I have. But where?_
Jeremy took a step toward her. A dry twig snapped beneath his 
foot and a dozen birds burst from cover while overhead a family of 
colobus monkeys began shrieking. The woman with the ancient face 
jumped, startled. Then she laid the baby down on a piece of red 
cloth and fled into the bush. The infant, deprived of his milk, 
promptly began howling. 
_"Come on, Bibi!" he wanted to yell after her. "Can a sick, 
skinny American be that frightening?"_
By the time Jeremy had helped soothe the infant, placing it 
in the eldest girl's arms and coaxing all of them to believe he 
wasn't some sort of monster just because the old woman had fled, 
he had gotten his thoughts -- and his memory -- in order. 
One summer, just for a change, he had rented a place on 
Nantucket, not the Hamptons: a shabby, ramshackle, desirable 
home that had cost him a bundle. It had been a good summer, and 
he hadn't begrudged a cent of it, despite about a week of rainy 
days. Along with the seafood, the sailing, and the whale 
watching, he'd had the whole old house to prowl through. And, in 
its attic, he'd found treasure indeed -- thirty years worth of 
_National Geographics_. 
He'd loved that magazine ever since he was a child. In fact, 
he'd dreamed of being an explorer, maybe even a paleontologist or 
geochronologist until his Uncle Sid -- the executive vice 
president -- sat him down and explained the facts of life to him: 
student loans; grants; bottom lines. The best way -- probably the 
_only_ way -- to participate in these expeditions was to fund 
them. 
So he'd packed the dream away, but he'd kept up his 
subscription to _National Geographic_, joined the Nature 
Conservancy, and always made donations to the American Museum of 
Natural History. They were good causes and tax-deductible, but 
the _real_ reason was that he loved them. 
Now, those yellowed covers and fragile pages riffled in his 
imagination, and he remembered Dr. Donald Johanson's discovery of 
_Australopithecus afarensis_, some 3.2 million years old. She was 
mankind's ancestor, a tiny female Johanson had called Lucy after 
the Beatles' record his staff had played incessantly during the 
dig. 
And now he had seen her. Not as a mummified corpse or a pile 
of white bones, either. 
He'd seen her as a living, breathing being. Nursing her 
great-to-the-Nth-power-grandchild. He even knew her name. 
_Bibi._
* * *
While everyone else was celebrating the miraculously-
recovered young woman's emergence from the hut in which she was 
expected to die, Jeremy wandered over to the truck and picked up 
his "bait": a bowl of _posho_ and some dried fruits.
There was no sense telling Elizabeth what he had seen or what 
he planned to do about it. She would give him so many rational 
explanations that he would have ended up believing her and not 
trying to entice the ancient woman back. So while Elizabeth lay 
deeply asleep within the hut, Jeremy laid out his traps on the 
back of the truck, then stretched out right beside them. He 
forced himself to close his eyes: moonlight would reflect off 
them, and it stood to reason that the superior senses of 
_australopithecus_..._pitheca?_... would spot it. 
He waited. 
And then it was morning, and the fruit was gone.
* * * 
"It was _her_," said Jeremy to Elizabeth. "I know it was!"
"Then what are you going to do -- sleep out in the truck 
again?" 
He shook his head. "That's _my_ turf, and it makes her too 
cautious." 
"Surely you're not going out into the bush at night!"
"You want your spark plugs back, don't you?" he retorted. 
"Not at the cost of your life."
"I'll be fine."
"Sure you will," she said caustically. "If you don't get 
totally lost, you'll probably run into that leopard you shot."
"He's out of the area," replied Jeremy.
"How do you know?"
"The baboons are quiet at night."
She stared at him. "This is really stupid, Jeremy."
"Probably," he agreed. "But unless you have a better idea..." 
* * *
_She walked through the bush, eyes and ears alert to any
danger. The animals were different from those she was used to --
smaller, but just as dangerous. She came to a small stream,
checked carefully for predators, then squatted down, cupped a
hand, and brought some of the life-giving liquid to her lips. A
marabou stork landed a few feet away and she jumped._
_Her first urge, now that she had satisfied her thirst, was 
to return to the cave she had found, where she would be safe for 
the night. But then the wind brought the scent of fruit to her 
nostrils, and she decided to investigate..._
* * *
The moon had long set, and he was on the verge of drowsing 
off, his back against the thick bole of an acacia tree, when he 
finally saw that small, familiar figure steal out from a nearby 
bush across the clearing. It paused to stare at him, and Jeremy 
forced himself to remain motionless. Tiny shadows swung from her 
neck. As she came closer, Jeremy saw what it was: she -- or one 
of the children she tended -- had strung the spark plugs on a 
grass string, and she was wearing them as a necklace. 
_Come on, Sweetheart,_ he thought as his heart pounded. He 
had spread his treasures out on the ground: the red cloth in which 
the infant had been wrapped, some dried apricots, a bowl of 
_posho_, a long loop of scarlet ribbon. _Come on!_ But the tiny 
creature paused, suddenly frightened. _Please_, he thought again, 
this time imploringly. _Please, Bibi!_
The figure turned toward him, lifting her head and 
straightening up, which set the spark-plug necklace to swaying 
once again. Then, attracted by the prizes he'd set out, she drew 
closer. 
She recognized the cloth and snatched it to her breast, 
cradling it like an infant. She caught up a dried apricot and 
chewed it quickly, her eyes shining with pleasure. Then she 
reached for the strand of crimson ribbon. 
Jeremy laid his hand down on the other end of the ribbon.
Bibi jumped back. 
Jeremy leaned forward carefully. She had seen him with the 
women and children; she had to know that he wasn't a threat. 
Still, she watched him carefully, never taking her eyes from his, 
never loosing her grip upon the ribbon. 
_That's right. Think of the necklace you can make. Think of 
how it'll delight the kids._
"Come on," he whispered to her as he got slowly, carefully to 
his feet. Would she understand any speech at all? "Of course you 
want it. It's pretty. I'll trade you. This for..." he waved at 
the spark plug necklace in a gesture of _let's barter_ that might 
have been old when she was young. 
The ancient woman backed away. _Smart, aren't you? Why 
bargain if you can get it for free?_ He tugged lightly on the 
length of ribbon, trying to draw it toward him, and her with it. 
She let herself be drawn and looked up into his face. 
He was struck by her eyes. Even under the low, furrowed 
brow, they glowed with intelligence. This was not a "primate"; 
this was a _person_. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. 
_You've seen me. I'm your friend. I shot the leopard._
"I really need those spark plugs," he said softly. He leaned 
over, cautiously, maintaining the tension on the red ribbon. He 
was six feet tall to her four. A little further, a little longer
-- and his fingers closed on her arm. 
He was strong, especially compared to her -- but she was 
wily. Even as she squalled with anger, she let him draw her 
closer. And then, with a smile of glee at her own cunning, she 
buried her sturdy, three-million-year-old teeth deep in his arm. 
Jeremy let out a yelp of surprise and pain. Human bites were 
as nasty as those of the big cats, he'd heard, and even dirtier; 
but this bite burned like molten iron.
_Goddammit! I thought you'd come to save your children, not 
kill them! Are we_ that _disappointing to you?_ And then came a 
frightening thought: 
_God help me, I've contaminated her!_
He realized that he was bleeding like the proverbial stuck 
pig, his arm was swelling, and the moonlight shone off some nasty 
red streaks had started to travel from the wound up toward his 
lymph nodes. He could hear his teeth chattering as he burned and 
shivered and tried to use his belt as a tourniquet.
_Why, Bibi? You_ can't _have come across the endless eons 
just to bite a man who's already dying. It doesn't make any 
sense!_ 
Then he blacked out. 
* * * 
The sky glittered as if it were filled with diamonds. More 
diamonds, or maybe sapphires, reflected off the brilliant surface 
of the lake. Or maybe it was an ocean. A white wake bisected it, 
and ripples shimmered, then evened out as the water calmed. 
Jeremy thrashed. He wanted to tell everyone that it was a good 
sign that the water was troubled, it meant that spirits were 
abroad, or afloat, or something. Anyhow, it meant that miracles 
could indeed happen, even to him. His arm burned; he ached all 
over; and his mouth tasted as if bats had roosted in it. 
He thrashed and felt weights land on him, forcing him back 
down. He opened his eyes and saw Bibi, the infinitely loving 
mother of the race, up in that glittering sky, surrounded by a 
rainbow haze that turned into crystals even as he watched, then 
dropped down in showers of gems. _Lucy in the sky, with diamonds.
And I thought it was just a song!_
He'd been young once, without this treason in his blood and 
body; and he'd waterskiied in the Keys with guys as carefree as 
he himself. He'd linked arms and chanted, "The whole world's 
watching!" So it was, and Bibi was watching too, her ugly, 
beautiful, infinitely loving face grave with concern. 
"If you get sick, come home," his parents had written, "and 
we'll take care of you." 
_That's just what I've done,_ he wanted to say; _I've come 
home, and the mother of us all is taking care of me._ 
Then he fell into a restless sleep in which he was walking, 
walking, always walking. He was walking not merely across the 
millennia but across goddamned millions of years toward someone 
who had cried out in pain. Toward a _lot_ of someones. And he 
thought his heart would break from the effort and the sorrow. 
* * *
Jeremy awoke, shivering, as three women sponged him down. A 
child's voice piped up like rock music when the lead singer goes 
falsetto. He heard a cuff, and a cry, and the child was out of 
there. 
In the muted grey light of a dawn he had never expected to 
see, he found Elizabeth Umurungi's troubled eyes, much reddened, 
watching him. "If he doesn't come out of this now..." he expected 
her to say. Instead, he could lip-read the words of the Rosary. 
He cried at her sorrow. He imagined that someone took his 
hand in a warm grip, unlike any he had ever known. It drew him 
back across the years, across the gulf of sickness, fear, and 
death, out of the place where the sky dropped diamonds and back 
into the familiar smells and sounds of the tiny village. 
* * *
Flies buzzed overhead, butting up against the hut's thatched
ceiling. Jeremy wrinkled his nose at the reek of antiseptic, so 
totally at odds with the homelier smells of animal dung, human 
sweat, and cooking fires. Not far away, water trickled into a 
metal basin... God, he was so thirsty! He tried to ask for water. 
Something between a croak and a whimper emerged from lips that 
cracked open with the effort. 
Another voice echoed his. Someone went to the door and 
called. Shouts that might have been cheers sounded from outside. 
"He's coming around? Good! Stay with him." 
His eyes were so thoroughly gummed shut that it seemed to 
take an hour to open them. He flexed his fingers. Still all 
there. What about his other arm, the one Bibi had bitten? 
Experimentally, he moved it, and flinched. 
"I wouldn't try that," said Elizabeth. "You've been pretty 
sick. Bit of a reaction to the rabies vaccine. Or maybe the 
tetanus." 
The _what?_
"Maybe you can help me out," continued Elizabeth. "I don't 
know what got you. I just know I found you, swelling up like a 
balloon, blood oozing from your arm, and nothing in sight." 
"It was Bibi."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Elizabeth. 
"It was Bibi, and she didn't do it to hurt me," whispered 
Jeremy weakly. 
"Rubbish."
"You'll see," said Jeremy. "Ask her yourself." 
"Why in the world would she come back here -- _especially_ if 
she bit you?" 
"Because she's worried about her son." 
"You're not her son," replied Elizabeth patiently, as if 
speaking to a child.
"We are _all_ her children," rasped Jeremy. "Somehow, she 
felt our pain, knew we were in trouble, and through means we'll 
never understand, she did what any mother would do: she came to 
help us." 
"Jeremy, you've been delerious. You're still not thinking 
rationally," said Elizabeth. "She's an old woman, that's all. 
Possibly a bit retarded. And she's probably mute; the children 
told me she used some form of sign language when she spoke to 
them." 
"She can speak," said Jeremy with absolute conviction. "It's 
just that no one can understand her language."
"Oh?" said Elizabeth sardonically. "Just what language does 
she speak?" 
"I don't know," murmured Jeremy. "It hasn't been heard in 
three million years." 
"You're sicker than I thought," she said as he passed out 
again. 
* * *
When he awoke, he felt good.
More than good. He felt better than he'd felt in years. For 
the first time since he'd contracted the virus, he felt ready to 
get up and seize the day.
And then, suddenly, the revelation hit him. He tried to sit 
up, but found he didn't have the strength. A child looked in, saw 
him struggling, and called Elizabeth.
"What on earth is the matter with you, Jeremy?" she asked as 
she entered the hut.
"Nothing!" he said. "Absolutely nothing!" 
She stared at him, puzzled.
"Don't you understand?" he said excitedly. _"There's nothing 
wrong with me!"_
"What are you talking about?"
"As soon as we get back to camp, I want you to run another 
blood test on me."
She looked at him as if she expected him to foam at the mouth 
momentarily. "You don't seriously believe that you're no longer 
HIV positive, do you?" 
"Just test me," his voice reflecting his absolute conviction. 
"There's never been a single recorded case of a spontaneous 
cure, Jeremy." 
"It's _not_ spontaneous!" Jeremy said excitedly. "And no one 
records cures out here in the bush. _She_ cured me, just like 
she's cured so many others. That's what she's here for." 
"And just how do you think this old, illiterate woman, who is 
totally ignorant of all medicine and technology, cured your 
incurable disease?"
"She bit me."
"You mean all I had to do all these months was bite you and 
you'd have become HIV negative?" said Elizabeth sarcastially.
"No. _She_ had to do it."
"She undoubtedly bit you because you scared her." 
A feeling of overwhelming fatigue swept over him, and he lay 
back on his pillow. "I feel very sorry for you," he said. 
"_You_ feel sorry for _me_?" she repeated. "Why?"
"Because you know too many facts and too little truth," he 
said as he struggled to remain awake. "You'll test my blood, and 
because you don't believe in Bibi, you'll take two or three more 
samples before you acknowledge what your tests tell you." 
He could almost feel a rough, calloused hand run tenderly
through his hair as he dropped off to sleep once more.
* * *
Jeremy was outside, chopping firewood, working up a sweat and 
feeling great about it, when Elizabeth called him over to her hut. 
"What is it?" he asked when he arrived.
She held up the spark plugs, strung together on a thread of 
scarlet ribbon. 
"What happened?" 
"I left some costume jewelry outside the hut," said 
Elizabeth. "She came during the night and accepted the trade." She 
grimaced. "They cost me a cultured pearl necklace and a silver-
plated bracelet." 
"I think both sides made a good trade," said Jeremy. 
He looked across the village, past all the huts, toward the 
bush. 
_Thank you, Bibi. I will probably never see you again, but I
owe you my life, and I will dedicate it to helping your other
children._
* * *
They had been back in camp for a day. Jeremy had put in a 
long morning tending patients and passing out food, and was 
sitting on a camp chair just outside his tent, reading a 10-month-
old copy of _The New Yorker_, when Elizabeth appeared. 
"I tested your blood," she announced. 
"And?"
"I couldn't culture HIV from your blood if I had all the 
resources of the Mayo Clinic here." She paused and stared at him. 
"You got your miracle, Jeremy. You're clean. HIV negative." 
Suddenly tears welled up and spilled down his cheeks. For 
just an instant he thought he could feel Bibi's hand tighten 
around his, a mother reassuring a child who has been desperately 
ill. 
"I _told_ you," he said at last. 
"I didn't believe you then, and I don't believe you now," 
answered Elizabeth. "But whoever and whatever she is, she's worth 
her weight in gold to us." She paused thoughtfully. "She's why 
they said that Kabute wouldn't have died if they could have gotten 
him back home -- because _she_ was there waiting for him. And she's 
probably why we saw that fatally ill woman's lesions shrink and 
the thrush go away." 
Jeremy grinned. "'Probably', hell! Of course it was her. And 
now I'm going to live. I'm going to live forever and ever!"
* * *
The next morning was cool and clear, and they decided to eat 
breatfast outside. The crackling of the eggs and bacon frying 
attracted a small troop of vervet monkeys, and a black African 
kite swooped down from a limb above the fire and swiped a piece of 
bread right out of Jeremy's hand.
"They're such rogues," said Elizabeth as the kite flew away 
with its prize.
"Well, it's nice to know that _something_ on this continent 
isn't endangered," remarked Jeremy.
She watched the kite for another moment, then turned to 
Jeremy. "I've been giving Bibi a lot of thought." 
"And?" asked Jeremy. 
"We've got to go back and find her," answered Elizabeth. "I'd 
kill for the chance to have AIDS researchers examine her. I still 
don't know that I buy your story about her curing you with a bite, 
but whatever happened, she obviously gave you some biochemical 
agent that kills the HIV virus." She looked at Jeremy wryly. 
"It'll never replace the Salk vaccine, but there's simply no other 
explanation. I've _got_ to find her and bring her to the camp." 
"She's not a lab animal," replied Jeremy seriously. "She's 
got to remain free to do her job."
"Her job?"
"She has other children to cure." 
"You're not a child."
"We're all her children." 
"_That_ again," said Elizabeth with a sigh. 
"_You_ don't have to believe it," said Jeremy, protecting his 
bacon as the kite swooped down toward his plate. "It's enough that 
_I_ do." 
"You're not being logical, Jeremy."
"I was logical my whole life, and what did it get me, except 
some money I don't need and an incurable disease?" replied Jeremy. 
"Why don't you _really_ look at Uganda sometime? This is a magical 
place, for all its problems. Spit a mango pit out the window of 
your Land Rover, and when you drive by six months later a mango 
tree has grown up. Amin and his successors virtually wiped out 
your wildlife, yet all the animals are returning. Terminally ill 
people suddenly get cured. So how can I not believe in magic?" 
"There's nothing magical about Bibi."
"I think there is," said Jeremy. "Leave her alone."
"I _can't_," protested Elizabeth. "Not until I've studied 
her, and found out how she does it. We may never find anything 
like her again." 
"Think of _her_," he said. "What kind of life do you think 
she'd have, shuttling from clinic to clinic, facing all those 
vampires in white coats that not even a mother could love?" He 
paused. "Let her stay in the bush. These people won't tell. 
Besides, you have me: a certified HIV-negative volunteer at your 
disposal." He stared unblinking into her deep brown eyes. "Let her 
go, Elizabeth." 
"You know I can't. We could save _millions_ of people." She 
zeroed in for the kill. "Or isn't that important to you, now that 
_you've_ been cured?" 
"You know that's not true!" he snapped heatedly. 
He was going to say more, tell her how unfair that statement 
was, how no true friend would ever even suggest it. But a little 
voice in his head intervened: _Could she be right? Am I just
pretending to believe in Bibi's powers? Do I really feel now that
I'm cured that no one else matters?_
He searched his soul, which he had not done for a long time, 
because he hadn't especially liked what he had found there. This 
time he couldn't find what he was afraid might be lurking in its 
darker recesses. 
_Well, I know it's a lie,_ he thought with satisfaction; _no 
sense trying to convince you, too._
"All I know is that we're going to dig ten more graves 
tomorrow morning," responded Elizabeth, "and ten the day after 
that, and ten the day after _that_, and we're going to keep 
digging them until we've either beaten this disease or every last 
victim has died. Now, here's a woman who may, just _may_, have a 
cure for it. Do you really think I can let her go?" 
He stared at her for a very long moment. "No," he said 
softly. "I know you can't." 
"Then come with me while I search for her," continued 
Elizabeth. "She helped you. Maybe she won't be so frightened if 
she sees that you're with me." 
He stared at his plate for a long moment, considering his 
answer. The kite hovered overhead, and finally settled for a scrap 
of bacon that had fallen in the dirt by the fire. 
"All right, I'll come," he said at last. "But we won't find 
her." 
"What makes you think so?"
"Because you're antithetical to her. She's magic brought 
forth from the spirit of this land, and you're science and logic 
and doubt educated thousands of miles away." 
"Science will save a lot more people than _she_ can once I 
find out just what it is that she does," said Elizabeth.
He shook his head sadly. "You still don't see, do you?"
"See what?"
"Science _needs_ her," said Jeremy. "_She_ doesn't need 
science. Never has, never will." He sighed deeply. "You and she 
are oil and water, and your worlds touch only briefly in passing. 
That's why you'll never find her." 
"We'll see," said Elizabeth grimly.
* * *
They spent the next three months following up every rumor, 
every imagined sighting of an old woman who performed feats of 
medical magic.
They scoured the Virunga Volcanos and came away empty-handed. 
They thought they found her tracks in the foothills of the 
Mountains of the Moon, but they never saw her. They stopped back 
at camp only long enough to take on fresh supplies, then went to 
the arid semi-desert in the north of the Karamojong country, and 
west to the aptly-named Impenetrable Forest. They spent a week at 
Murchison's Falls, only to discover that the old lady they were 
tracking was a Buganda witch woman who was missing an eye and part 
of an ear.
Everywhere they went they questioned the local people. Far 
from showing the symptoms of the "Thinning Disease", almost all of 
them glowed with health and fervently denied ever having seen 
anyone who remotely resembled Bibi. Jeremy got the distinct 
impression that they were secretly laughing at the two relief 
workers. 
Finally Elizabeth admitted defeat and returned to camp. 
Jeremy tended the sick and the dying for another week, and then 
asked to see her privately. 
"Well?" she said, when the two of them were alone in her 
tent. 
"I've made up my mind," he announced. "I'm leaving." 
"You mean you're going home?" 
He shook his head. "No, I'm staying in Uganda." 
"Then I don't understand..." 
"All we're doing here is prolonging doomed lives," said 
Jeremy. "I came here to _save_ some." 
Suddenly Elizabeth's eyes widened with comprehension. "You're 
going out after Bibi!"
"That's right."
"But we've just spent three months looking for her. What 
makes you think _you_ can find her?" 
He didn't want to answer that, for fear of hurting her, but 
finally he did. "I'll be alone." 
"You think that makes a difference?" she said caustically.
"Yes, I do." _Okay, so you can't be hurt if you don't 
believe._
"You're a fool!" she snapped. "Where will you go? In what 
direction will you look? How will you feed yourself?"
"I'll get by," he said. "And I won't have to find her. 
_She'll_ find _me_." 
"You'll starve to death, or run into a leopard or a hyena, or 
drink the wrong water or eat the wrong food," said Elizabeth. 
"You can't survive alone in the bush." 
"I didn't realize you thought so little of me," he said 
wryly. 
"It's because I think so much of you that I don't want you 
dead." 
"It's my decision -- and if AIDS can't kill me, neither will 
anything else this land has to offer." He withdrew a handwritten 
document and placed it on her table. "This turns over all my 
investments to the camp." Suddenly he grinned. "The Notary 
Public's hut wasn't open for business today, but I think it'll 
stand up in court." 
Elizabeth walked to the door of the tent and looked out at 
the busy camp, then turned back to Jeremy. "You're giving 
everything up for a dream. Won't you reconsider?" 
He shook his head. "If I reconsidered, I might agree that it 
was nothing but a dream and stay here. And then I'd miss the 
chance to help her perform her magic."
"We don't need magic," she replied impatiently. "If this 
crisis is solved, it will be solved by science." 
"To me it's _all_ magic, and who's to say that yours is any 
more potent than theirs? Science couldn't cure me, but Bibi 
could." 
"Damn it, Jeremy, you're chasing a will-o-the-wisp. She's 
just an old woman, not some mythical creature with awesome powers 
of healing." 
"She cured me with a bite," he said. "How can I not believe 
in that?"
"We don't know that that's what cured you," insisted 
Elizabeth. "She could have administered any number of medications 
while you were delerious." 
"She could have," he agreed. "But she didn't." 
Elizabeth paused and look at him sadly. "Isn't there anything 
I can say?" 
"Yes," he replied. "Say 'Good luck'."
She was still staring at him silently as he left her tent.
* * *
_Bibi walked through the bush, senses alert to the hidden
presence of predators. There were so many children, far more than 
she dreamed possible. She could feel their cries, their hunger,
their pain, and she knew that she had much work to do before she
could rest again._
_Suddenly she heard a twig break, and she crouched, ready to 
race to safety. A man was approaching noisily, making no attempt
to hide his presence, frightening birds and monkeys with every
step._
_Her first inclination was to run, but some secret instinct
made her stay -- and then she saw a familiar face, a face that
reflected the unselfish love that was written across her own._
_"Hi, Mom," said the man, holding a dried apricot out to her. 
"I've brought you a present."_
-end-