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

Wambu glared at me, but did not dare to disobey me, and finally, turning on her heel, she stalked back down the path to the village, followed by Sabo and the still-wailing Morina.
Bori stood where she was for an extra moment, then turned to me.
"It is as I told you before, Koriba," she said, almost apologetically. "She really is a witch."
Then she, too, began walking back to the village.
"What will you do, Koriba?" asked Ndemi.
"The law is clear," I said wearily. "No uncircumcised woman may live with a Kikuyu man as his wife."
"Then you will make her leave Kirinyaga?"
"I will offer her a choice," I said, "and I will hope that she chooses to leave."
"It is too bad," said Ndemi. "She has tried very hard to be a good manamouki."
"I know," I said.
"Then why is Ngai visiting her with such unhappiness?"
"Because sometimes trying is not enough."
* * * *
We stood at Haven -- Mwange, Nkobe, and I -- awaiting the Maintenance ship's arrival.
"I am truly sorry that things did not work out," I said sincerely.
Nkobe glared at me, but said nothing.
"It didn't have to end this way," said Mwange bitterly.
"We had no choice," I said. "If we are to create our Utopia here on Kirinyaga, we must be bound by its rules."
"The fact that a rule exists does not make it right, Koriba," she said. "I gave up almost everything to live here, but I will not let them mutilate me in the name of some foolish custom."
"Without our traditions, we are not Kikuyu, but only Kenyans who live on another world," I pointed out.
"There is a difference between tradition and stagnation, Koriba," she said. "If you stifle every variation in taste and behavior in the name of the former, you achieve only the latter." She paused. "I would have been a good member of the community."
"But a poor manamouki," I said. "The leopard may be a stealthy hunter and fearsome killer, but he does not belong among a pride of lions."
"Lions and leopards have been extinct for a long time, Koriba," she said. "We are talking about human beings, not animals, and no matter how many rules you make and no matter how many traditions you invoke, you cannot make all human beings think and feel and act alike."
"It's coming," announced Nkobe as the Maintenance ship broke through the thin cloud cover.
"Kwaheri, Nkobe," I said, extending my hand.
He looked contemptuously at my hand for a moment, then turned his back and continued watching the Maintenance ship.
I turned to Mwange.
"I tried, Koriba," she said. "I really did."
"No one ever tried harder," I said. "Kwaheri, Mwange."
She stared at me, her face suddenly an emotionless mask.
"Good-bye, Koriba," she said in English. "And my name is Wanda."
* * * *
The next morning Shima came to me to complain that Shumi had rejected the suitor that had been arranged for her.
Two days later Wambu complained to me that Kibo, Koinnage's youngest wife, had decorated her hut with colorful ribbons, and was beginning to let her hair grow.
And the morning after that, Kimi, who had only one son, announced that she wanted no more children.
"I thought it had ended," I said with a sigh as I watched Sangora, Kimi's distressed husband, walk back down the path to the village.
"That is because you have made a mistake, Koriba."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because you believed the wrong story," answered Ndemi with the confidence of youth.
"Oh?"
He nodded. "You believed the story about the Ugly Buffalo."
"And which story should I have believed?"
"The story of the mundumugu and the serpent."
"Why do you think one story is more worthy of belief than the other?" I asked him.
"Does not the story of the mundumugu and the serpent tell us that we cannot be rid of that which Ngai created simply because we find it repugnant or unsettling?"
"That is true," I said.
Ndemi smiled and held up three fingers. "Shumi, Kibo, Kimi," he said, counting them off. "Three serpents have returned already. There are 97 yet to come."
And suddenly I had the awful premonition that he was right.

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