"Resnick, Mike - Kirinyaga 5 - The Manamouki" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

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The Manamouki
by Mike Resnick
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Copyright (c)1990 by Mike Resnick
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."