Mike Resnick - The Manamouki

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The Manamouki

by Mike Resnick

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Hugo Award Winner

Fictionwise Contemporary

Science Fiction

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MANY EONS AGO, the children of Gikuyu, who was himself the first

Kikuyu, lived on the slopes of the holy mountain Kirinyaga, which men now call

Mount Kenya.

There were many serpents on the mountain, but the sons and grandsons of

Gikuyu found them repulsive, and they soon killed all but one.

Then one day the last serpent entered their village and killed and ate

a young child. The children of Gikuyu sought out their mundumugu -- their

witch doctor -- and asked him to destroy the menace.

The mundumugu rolled the bones and sacrificed a goat, and finally he

created a poison that would kill the serpent. He slit open the belly of

another goat, and placed the poison inside it, and left it beneath a tree, and

the very next day the serpent swallowed the goat and died.

"Now," said the mundumugu, "you must cut the serpent into one hundred

pieces and scatter them on the holy mountain, so that no demon can breathe

life back into its body."

The children of Gikuyu did as they were instructed, and scattered the

hundred pieces of the serpent across the slopes of Kirinyaga. But during the

night, each piece came to life and became a new serpent, and soon the Kikuyu

were afraid to leave their bomas.

The mundumugu ascended the mountain, and when he neared the highest

peak, he addressed Ngai.

"We are beseiged by serpents," he said. "If you do not slay them, then

the Kikuyu shall surely die as a people."

"I made the serpent, just as I made the Kikuyu and all other things,"

answered Ngai, who sat on His golden throne atop Kirinyaga. "And anything

that I made, be it a man or a serpent or a tree or even an idea, is not

repellant in My eyes. I will save you this one time, because you are young

and ignorant, but you must never forget that you cannot destroy that which you

find repulsive -- for if you try to destroy it, it will always return one

hundred times greater than before."

This is one of the reasons why the Kikuyu chose to till the soil rather

than hunt the beasts of the jungle like the Wakamba, or make war on their

neighbors like the Maasai, for they had no wish to see that which they

destroyed return to plague them. It is a lesson taught by every mundumugu to

his people, even after we left Kenya and emigrated to the terraformed world of

Kirinyaga.

In the entire history of our tribe, only one mundumugu ever forgot the

lesson that Ngai taught atop the holy mountain on that distant day.

And that mundumugu was myself.

* * * *

When I awoke, I found hyena dung within the thorn enclosure of my boma. That

alone should have warned me that the day carried a curse, for there is no

worse omen. Also the breeze, hot and dry and filled with dust, came from the

west, and all good winds come from the east.

It was the day that our first immigrants were due to arrive. We had

argued long and hard against allowing any newcomers to settle on Kirinyaga,

for we were dedicated to the old ways of our people, and we wanted no outside

influences corrupting the society that we had created. But our charter

clearly stated that any Kikuyu who pledged to obey our laws and made the

necessary payments to the Eutopian Council could emigrate from Kenya, and

after postponing the inevitable for as long as we could, we finally agreed to

accept Thomas Nkobe and his wife.

Of all the candidates for immigration, Nkobe had seemed the best. He

had been born in Kenya, had grown up in the shadow of the holy mountain, and

after going abroad for his schooling, had returned and run the large farm his

family had purchased from one of the last European residents. Most important

of all, he was a direct descendant of Jomo Kenyatta, the great Burning Spear

of Kenya who had led us to independence.

I trudged out across the hot, arid savannah to the tiny landing field

at Haven to greet our new arrivals, accompanied only by Ndemi, my youthful

assistant. Twice buffalo blocked our path, and once Ndemi had to hurl some

stones to frighten a hyena away, but eventually we reached our destination,

only to discover that the Maintenance ship which was carrying Nkobe and his

wife had not yet arrived. I squatted down in the shade of an acacia tree, and

a moment later Ndemi crouched down beside me.

"They are late," he said, peering into the cloudless sky. "Perhaps

they will not come at all."

"They will come," I said. "The signs all point to it."

"But they are bad signs, and Nkobe may be a good man."

"There are many good men," I replied. "Not all of them belong on

Kirinyaga."

"You are worried, Koriba?" asked Ndemi as a pair of crested cranes

walked through the dry, brittle grass, and a vulture rode the thermals

overhead.

"I am concerned," I said.

"Why?"

"Because I do not know why he wants to live here."

"Why shouldn't he?" asked Ndemi, picking up a dry twig and methodically

breaking it into tiny pieces. "Is it not Utopia?"

"There are many different notions of Utopia," I replied. "Kirinyaga is

the Kikuyu's."

"And Nkobe is a Kikuyu, so this is where he belongs," said Ndemi

decisively.

"I wonder."

"Why?"

"Because he is almost 40 years old. Why did he wait so long to come

here?"

"Perhaps he could not afford to come sooner."

I shook my head. "He comes from a very wealthy family."

"They have many cattle?" asked Ndemi.

"Many," I said.

"And goats?"

I nodded.

"Will he bring them with him?"

"No. He will come empty-handed, as we all did." I paused, frowning.

"Why would a man who owned a large farm and had many tractors and men to do

his work turn his back on all that he possessed? That is what troubles me."

"You make it sound like the way he lived on Earth was better," said

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