Futures Near and Far (5 page)

This is a way of saying that Bob doesn’t have time to
write his own science fiction stories, which causes him some frustration.
Hardly a day goes by when he doesn’t come across something that makes him
think, “What a story that would make.” Perhaps someday he’ll indulge the muse;
meanwhile, he’s not the sort of man to let his harried schedule thwart him. He
tries to get other people to write the stories.

Sometimes he is very convincing.

His persuasiveness snagged Vernor Vinge, which is why
you’ll find considerable mention in
A Deepness
in the Sky
and “Fast Times at Fairmont High” of “localizers” — technology
that Bob and Cherie invented. Later in this collection you’ll find “The Cookie
Jar,” my own exploration of a future shaped by the existence and use of those
devices. But the first of Bob’s arm-twisting happened in 1986, and led to this
story.

Bob presented me with a list of real-science ideas he
thought might work as stories. Mostly, he was wrong. The thing is, real
scientific developments are a bitch to use in place of raw material that rises
from sheer imagination. Imagination can be tamed and manipulated. Real science
fascinates me as non-fiction, and it’s fun to consider how it will affect our
lives, but a given slice of technology or research all by itself does not
supply characters, plot, conflict, and other elements necessary for a work of
fiction. Bob himself had tried to think of scenarios to cope with this
challenge, but none of them generated a spark in my brainstorming apparatus
until he thrust forward one he called “Bookworm.”

The real science goes like this: We have a common
bacterium in our gut called
E. coli.
It’s most often mentioned when it escapes the digestive system and wreaks havoc
in parts of the body it doesn’t belong in, but when it behaves itself it is
benign. It happens that this little critter almost allows us to digest
cellulose, as termites do. If there were ever a time when food was in short
supply, people might find it advantageous to be able to convert cellulose into
edible sugars. (Some might argue that it’s already damn useful as the major
component of fiber in our diet.)

In the milieu of “Bookworm,” the future is also a place
in which books made of paper have long since fallen out of fashion (an almost
unthinkable possibility back in 1986, prior to the development of the World
Wide Web, smartphones, and ebooks). Precious archival volumes are kept in a
place where oxygen, dust, and light will not decompose them: in a space
station. One day a chunk of errant space debris appears at high velocity and
wipes out the galley of the space station. The poor librarian is left foodless.
Due to a tense political situation, a rescue party may not arrive for weeks.

All is not lost. After all, the books are full of
cellulose. The librarian need not go hungry after all. He has shelf after shelf
of sustenance. Never mind that each volume is one-of-a-kind, the last
repository of classic literature in its original publication medium.

Imagine the choices. Shall he sacrifice Keats, or
Shelley? Should he bother with Harold Robbins? No, probably not very
fulfilling. Ah, but Thoreau, now there’s a rich meal. Dostoyevsky might present
a little trouble going down, but surely the
Betty
Crocker Tenth Edition
would provide a remedy.

A new form of literary criticism is born. And it used to
be no more than metaphor to say that bad writing produces indigestion.

I never wrote “Bookworm.” I’m sure I would have enjoyed
it, and I rather liked the idea of sticking close enough to it that I could
justifiably list Bob as collaborator, because he has done me many a favor over
the years and helping him get his byline on a piece of science fiction would
please him. But my speculation had gone off on a tangent: Just why the hell
would humans go to such extremes as to alter the digestive arrangement of the
entire species? Why would the librarian have had that capacity? The answer that
came to mind led me completely away from space stations, literary satire, and
into a serious piece, which was what I was in the mood for anyway. I had a
solid hard-sf premise to work with; I didn’t want to get too silly with it.

“Termites” was my first sale to
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine,
appearing in the
May, 1987 issue. We’re already past the date of the main action, which takes
place in 2011. That’s one of the frustrating aspects of writing near-future
science fiction — all too soon it becomes alternate-reality fiction. Which is
one reason I made the characters, and not the premise, the core of the tale.
They keep “Termites” fresh — but if you are jarred by some of the assumptions
herein, remember what a different Africa we were all looking at in 1986. A time
before, for example, the AIDS epidemic had taken hold and not only burst the
bubble of population explosion in the sub-Saharan region, but in some places
sent birthrates plummeting below replacement level.

One more thing, and it’s spooky. About the time the story
saw print, I read an account of a biologist who actually created the very type
of
E. coli
I mention in the narrative.
He invented it in 1981, let it sit in his lab for a year, and when he realized
what could happen if his sample were ever inadvertently released, he destroyed
it.

Had he not been so prudent, by this time McDonald’s might
have already treated us to its new McChaff sandwich.

When I first arrived in
the Cherangani Hills of northwestern Kenya as a young woman, the mountains had
been green and tawny, cloaked in lush bush, dotted with the cultivated
plots of the Pokot tribe that I had come to study. Now I could hardly recognize
the place where I had lived my life between the ages of twenty-two and
twenty-eight. The drought had turned the Great Rift Valley into blistered,
lunarlike terrain; the hills reminded me of Ethiopia back in the eighties — steep
mounds unintended for human habitation, withered, eroded, and above all, dry.
Greg stopped the Land Rover and let me examine the scenery more carefully. But
it was no use.

“I’m lost,” I said.

He brushed a cloud of
flies away from his face, callused fingers rasping against a four-day
growth of tough, white beard. “I believe it’s around the next promontory,” he
said, his clipped British inflections making the statement unequivocal, though
in truth he knew the region far less than I.

His confidence made me try one more time. “Yes. Yes, I think
you’re right,” I said.

When we rounded the flank of the hills, we saw the remnants
of a village. All that remained of the huts were the firepits, the packed-earth
floors, and ruptured holes where the branches that formed the walls had been
anchored. And, of course, the sitting stones — it was improper for a man of the
Pokot to sit on naked ground. In their stead were three hovels constructed of
piled dung and animal hides, not true dwellings at all, merely places to get
out of the sun. I saw a dozen or more people, all lying or sitting listlessly
in the shade.

We felt the impact of their eyes, but aside from the stares,
most of them did not react to our arrival. A single boy stood and began to
approach the Land Rover. He was suffering from the early stages of marasmus, his
limbs painfully thin, stomach bloated, skin hanging slack from his bones so
that his face resembled that of an old man and not, so I estimated, a boy well
short of puberty. His only garment was a pair of threadbare, stained khaki
shorts.

Greg pulled out the .45
as we stopped rolling, keeping it in obvious view. But the boy emitted
not even a flicker of belligerence; he was
past those emotions. He gazed at us blankly, like a retardate. Only the
fact that he had risen of his own accord gave me hope of obtaining a response
from him.

“Do you know KoCherop?” I asked. I used the Pokot dialect,
though the words came haltingly, with a bittersweet tang. The boy, if he had
been schooled, could speak English or Swahili, but use of his home tongue might
ingratiate me. “Do you know where she is?”

He turned his prematurely old eyes toward me, and I saw, to
my surprise, a mind still capable of activity and calculation. “You are
Chemachugwo,” he said, using my Pokot name, his voice raspy but energetic.

“Yes.” I did not know
him, but I was not surprised that he had guessed my identity. There were
no other middle-aged white women alive who could speak his language.

“I will tell you where to find KoCherop if you give me a
piece of paper,” he stated.

I hesitated a moment, then reached into a compartment under
the seat and withdrew the bribe. I gave him a whole sheet. The boy ran his
hands over it, apparently pleased with the rough, pulpy texture and
sawdust-yellow color. He rolled it into a funnel, and with his empty hand pointed
to a terrace plot far up the nearest mountain. “She is there.”

I could make out a tendril of smoke. I signalled Greg to
drive on.

I could see the boy and his piece of paper in the side
mirror for a full thirty seconds. Just before the dust and the turns in the
track obscured him I saw him bite off the end of the funnel and begin to chew
it. I wanted to weep, but the past few days had left me incapable of tears. It
was the village, I told myself. It had been so much like the one in which I had
built my hut, almost forty years back.

The road narrowed and grew more steep, until the Land Rover
would go no further. We faced a dilemma, for we couldn’t leave the vehicle
unattended.

“I’ll stay,” Greg said, handing me the .45. He pulled out
one of the rifles for himself.

I hadn’t reckoned on this development. I needed his plucky
humor and stiff upper lip. But I had gone alone into the wilderness of East
Africa before. I buckled on my holster and started up the path.

Climbing these hills had been easier in younger days. I
stopped often, until I could no longer bear to gaze out over the valley, where
I had once watched the herdsmen and their cattle. The air became cooler, though
not enough to compensate for my exertion. I estimated it would take me two
hours to reach the terrace. I thought of KoCherop.

“
Now we are like
sisters,” she said, touching my belly. I jumped. The tattoo was still tender
from the artist’s needle. She jerked back her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I was just surprised.”

“It will only hurt for a little while,” she said
encouragingly. “Then you will be happy because you have become more beautiful.”
She pointed at the spectacular, star-shaped design carved around her navel. The
blood still congealed around it. “All the other girls will be jealous of me,”
she said firmly. “Now that I am a woman, I will add more all along here.” She
brushed her fingers up and down her midriff.

I concealed my shiver. KoCherop — she still used her
childhood name, Chesinen, at that point — had a sleek body and perfect, rich
brown complexion. It needed no accentuation. Along with clitoridectomy,
scarification was one of the practices that tempted me to drop my
anthropologist’s reserve.

“Many of the girls nowadays are leaving their bellies
smooth,” I said.

“Those girls must be looking for Kikuyu husbands,” she said
with disdain. She smeared her face with red ocher and ghee, and offered to do
the same for me. I accepted.

She lavished it over my nose and cheeks. “Trust me. One day
a handsome man with much land will look at your belly and admire what you have
had done.”

I chuckled, staring down at the tattoo. I had to admit it
was pretty. It was a tiny butterfly, etched in six colors of ink, excellent
artistry considering that it had been performed by a traveling craftsman. In my
own way, I
would
enjoy owning it;
otherwise I would never have done something so permanent to my body. But it
most certainly had not been done to attract a husband. I had done it for my
Pokot sister, because her father had become like my own, and because she,
though ten years my junior, had made me feel instantly welcome in a sea of
strange black faces.

“Oh, no one will marry me,” I said. “I always burn the
porridge.”

I passed terrace after terrace of abandoned land. The
farms extended far up the slope ahead of me, each family tilling parcels at not
one but several elevations, the better to guard against crop failure. Some
could be found as high as seven or eight thousand feet, among the peaks where,
in former times, the mist would gather, moistening the land, dispelling the
aridity of the Great Rift Valley. Now all I
could see growing were gnarled hardwoods whose resins made them
impossible to eat, or thorn thickets and brambles not worth the pain to molest.
Dust crawled up my shoes and into the cuffs of my trousers.

Breathless, aching in my calves, I reached the terrace that
the boy had indicated. Nothing was left of the fields but irrigation channels
waiting for water that had not come. KoCherop was seated on a flat stone beside
a firepit. An empty porridge kettle sat over dying coals. Beside her was a
gourd of water and a small sack of maize or millet.

She stared at me with wide eyes, perhaps thinking that she
had died and met a ghost. I spoke her name.

She bowed her head. “I am called only Ko, now.”

“Ko” means grandmother. Her full name meant Grandmother of
Daughter of Rain, which she had adopted upon the birth of her first
granddaughter. It was a declaration that Cherop was dead.

KoCherop, in her typically Pokot way, did not display overt
grief. It was enough to have made the statement. In a culture in which the
lives of the women of the tribe revolve so deeply around those of their
children that they rename themselves each time a new generation is established,
no loss could have been sharper.