Mike Resnick - A Little Knowledge

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A Little Knowledge

by Mike Resnick

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Hugo Award Nominee

Fictionwise Contemporary

Science Fiction

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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the

purchaser. If you did not purchase this ebook directly from Fictionwise.com

then you are in violation of copyright law and are subject to severe fines.

Please visit www.fictionwise.com to purchase a legal copy. Fictionwise.com

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violators of Fictionwise ebooks.

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THERE WAS a time when animals could speak.

Lions and zebras, elephants and leopards, birds and men all shared the

earth. They labored side by side, they met and spoke of many things, they

exchanged visits and gifts.

Then one day Ngai, who rules the universe from His throne atop

Kirinyaga, which men now call Mount Kenya, summoned all of His creations to

meet with Him.

"I have done everything I can to make life good for all My creatures,"

said Ngai. The assembled animals and men began to sing His praises, but Ngai

held up His hand, and they immediately stopped.

"I have made life too good for you," He continued. "None among you has

died for the past year."

"What is wrong with that?" asked the zebra.

"Just as you are constrained by your natures," said Ngai, "just as the

elephant cannot fly and the impala cannot climb trees, so I cannot be

dishonest. Since no one has died, I cannot feel compassion for you, and

without compassion, I cannot water the savannah and the forest with my tears.

And without water, the grasses and the trees will shrivel and die."

There was much moaning and wailing from the creatures, but again Ngai

silenced them.

"I will tell you a story," He said, "and you must learn from it.

"Once there were two colonies of ants. One colony was very wise, and

one colony was very foolish, and they lived next to each other. One day they

received word that an aardvark, a creature that eats ants, was coming to their

land. The foolish colony went about their business, hoping that the aardvark

would ignore them and attack their neighbors. But the wise colony built a

mound that could withstand even the efforts of an aardvark, and they gathered

sugar and honey, and stockpiled it in the mound.

"When the aardvark reached the kingdom of the ants, he immediately

attacked the wise ants, but the mound withstood his greatest efforts, and the

ants within survived by eating their sugar and honey. Finally, after many

fruitless days, the aardvark wandered over to the kingdom of the foolish ants,

and dined well that evening."

Ngai fell silent, and none of His creatures dared ask Him to speak

further. Instead, they returned to their homes and discussed His story, and

made their preparations for the coming drought.

A year passed, and finally the men decided to sacrifice an innocent

goat, and that very day Ngai's tears fell upon the parched and barren land.

The next morning Ngai again summoned His creatures to the holy mountain.

"How have you fared during the past year?" He asked each of them.

"Very badly," moaned the elephant, who was very thin and weak. "We did

as you instructed us, and built a mound, and gathered sugar and honey -- but

we grew hot and uncomfortable within the mound, and there is not enough sugar

and honey in all the world to feed a family of elephants."

"We have fared even worse," wailed the lion, who was even thinner, "for

lions cannot eat sugar and honey at all, but must have meat."

And so it went, as each animal poured out its misery. Finally Ngai

turned to the man and ask him the same question.

"We have fared very well," replied the man. "We built a container for

water, and filled it before the drought came, and we stockpiled enough grain

to last us to this day."

"I am very proud of you," said Ngai. "Of all my creatures, only you

understood my story."

"It is not fair!" protested the other animals. "We built mounds and

saved sugar and honey, as you told us to!"

"What I told you was a parable," said Ngai, "and you have mistaken the

facts of it for the truth that lay beneath. I gave you the power to think,

but since you have not used it, I hereby take it away. And as a further

punishment, you will no longer have the ability to speak, for creatures that

do not think have nothing to say."

And from that day forth, only man, among all Ngai's creations, has had

the power to think and speak, for only man can pierce through the facts to

find the truth.

* * * *

You think you know a person when you have worked with him and trained him and

guided his thinking since he was a small boy. You think you can foresee his

reactions to various situations. You think you know how his mind works.

And if the person in question has been chosen by you, selected from the

mass of his companions and groomed for something special, as young Ndemi was

selected and groomed by me to be my successor as the mundumugu -- the witch

doctor -- to our terraformed world of Kirinyaga, the one thing you think above

all else is that you possess his loyalty and his gratitude.

But even a mundumugu can be wrong.

I do not know exactly when or how it began. I had chosen Ndemi to be

my assistant when he was still a kehee -- an uncircumcized child -- and I had

worked diligently with him to prepare him for the position he would one day

inherit from me. I chose him not for his boldness, though he feared nothing,

nor for his enthusiasm, which was boundless, but rather for his intellect, for

with the exception of one small girl, long since dead, he was by far the

brightest of the children on Kirinyaga. And since we had emigrated to this

world to create a Kikuyu paradise, far from the corrupt imitation of Europe

that Kenya had become, it was imperative that the mundumugu be the wisest of

men, for the mundumugu not only reads omens and casts spells, but is also the

repository for the collected wisdom and culture of his tribe.

Day by day I added to Ndemi's limited storehouse of knowledge. I

taught him how to make medicine from the bark and pods of the acacia tree, I

showed him how to create the ointments that would ease the discomfort of the

aged when the weather turned cold and wet, I made him memorize the hundred

spells that were used to bless the scarecrows in the field. I told him a

thousand parables, for the Kikuyu have a parable for every need and every

occasion, and the wise mundumugu is the one who finds the right parable for

each situation.

And finally, after he had served me faithfully for six long years,

coming up my hill every morning, feeding my chickens and goats, lighting the

fire in my boma, and filling my empty water gourds before his daily lessons

began. I took him into my hut and showed him how my computer worked.

There are only four computers on all of Kirinyaga. The others belong

to Koinnage, the paramount chief of our village, and to two chiefs of distant

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