9 Tales From Elsewhere 9

by 9 Tales From Elsewhere

  He didn’t see himself as Tanzanian anymore, much less East African. He was a Spacer, dedicated and confirmed, with nearly five months’ service in High Orbit already, pursuing his shining destiny!

  What did he care about his father and cousin’s quaint earthbound concerns? His choice was the future—a clean and total break with a grim past.

  So what was he even doing here? Was it weakness on his part?

  He distantly heard his name and blinked, looked up vaguely. “Yes, Father?”

  “You looked to be a good thousand kilometers from here, just then.”

  “Farther than that, I confess.”

  The older man’s wrinkled features tightened, as if he read Kenneth’s mind.

  “Papa Stephen offered a guided tour of the worksite,” Walter explained. “I’m certainly going, and Mama Jasmine, too. You, Ken? Come on—let us all see what has gotten this poor little island hopping so! What’s rebuilt the old town, including this lovely home and a thousand more like it.”

  “Yes,” Jasmine put in. “Come. Let your father show you some of the future of Tanzania.”

  “The future,” Kenneth murmured softly. Then he gave his head a slow, sad shake. No—he already knew it. Tanzania had no real future—nothing on this beaten and abused planet did.

  Men and women like Walter and his parents might try and pretend—they might even achieve a few temporary, marginal successes. Like with Walter and that ridiculous new oil field on the bottom of Lake Tanganyika; or like the undoubtedly ingenious underwater factory Kenneth’s father was the so-proud foreman of.

  But in the end, it would all come to nothing.

  This world was dying. It was time to look elsewhere; time for the cold purity of space. Kenneth was certain of that.

  “No, Mother. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I shall be busy that day.”

  His father had not as yet mentioned either day or time. Now, in front of his defiant son, he was not about to. Stephen turned on his heel, left the room in silence.

  The passage of a night and morning had changed nothing, Kenneth saw.

  “Very well,” he growled, “say it.”

  Neither his mother nor his cousin would, aloud. But their eyes spoke most eloquently.

  “I’m a miserable excuse for a son, am I?” Kenneth picked up the carry-sack he’d packed with a light lunch. “And he, on the other hand, is an ideal father?”

  “He was and is a proud man,” Walter said quietly.

  “Proud of his boys,” Jasmine added.

  “His boys!” Kenneth’s nostrils flared. He felt the urge to spit, but the smooth clean surface at his feet held him back. He settled for wetting his lips and shaking his head.

  His cousin stepped forward. “You know, Ken, your reaction to that phrase has always grated on me somewhat. He’s your father, true. Not mine. But he’s also the closest to one that I have any memory of. And I’m not complaining.”

  Why should you? Kenneth thought. You were always his favorite!

  He turned his back to them.

  “I’m going to hike into the hills. Perhaps give the orchards a look, after I visit the monument. Not sure when I shall return.”

  No reply came, so Kenneth closed the door behind him and was off.

  Kenneth moved past the old-style gravesites, most of them unmarked and anonymous. Past generations of Pemba Islanders had mostly been too poor for carved stone and the wooden markers deteriorated quickly in the tropical climate. The Great Warming, now more or less controlled but not yet receding, had only hastened the process.

  None of the recent dead were there, of course.

  These days, humanity did not waste land—not even such rocky hillside land as this—by planting fresh corpses in wastefully abundant rows. There was a law against it, even in the richest countries—and Tanzania was far from that.

  There were a lot of laws now limiting behavior people had once thought nothing of. There was, for example, a good reason why Kenneth and his contemporaries were with few exceptions only children.

  Perhaps that was why Kenneth’s father had latched onto his dead brother’s son so passionately.

  Kenneth sighed, looked around.

  With mandatory cremation and even regulations on the disposition of the ashes, people had developed other means of remembering their dead. One common local adaptation now surrounded him: the clan memorial stones.

  They were much like traditional headstones, really—except that only a full extended family could pool their resources for it and of course no bodies were beneath them. But each of that group’s new dead would have his/her name added as they passed—twenty or twenty-five or even more names finally sharing a single place of tribute and veneration.

  Together as a family, even after death.

  Ujamaa for the dear departed. It struck Kenneth as a quintessentially Tanzanian response.

  He made his way past the comparatively simple clan stones. At the crest of the hill, the largest monument of all stood. It was erected by the town government to honor all the victims of the Hot Rain disaster, regardless of family—because, after all, they were all part of a greater, still more extended family—that of the town, the island, the country and of humanity itself.

  Kenneth paused. He found the newest name, freshly and deeply gouged into the imported granite. He knelt, traced her name with his fingertip and murmured.

  “You adored her, I remember.”

  He started, blinked. He stood abruptly and turned just his head. “Maren? I . . . did not notice your approach.” He glanced around suspiciously, doubting the plump young woman had come on foot, as he had done.

  “Yes,” she answered the unspoken question. “I risked that sorry dirt road—the one that runs alongside the old orchards? I left my car there.” She gestured at a copse of young trees—not that there were any other kind on Pemba Island, not after the Hot Rains of two decades past.

  But—her car?

  Kenneth shook his head, frankly amazed that she owned one. It turned out to be an eighteen-year-old Brazzaville Touring Special—one of the first and probably the most unattractive of African-designed/African-built autos—also the last fossil-fueler mass-produced anywhere.

  Still, Maren Bomani—with her own car!

  “You adored her,” she repeated as they faced the monument.

  Kenneth pursed his lips then nodded. “As one child to another, yes. But Kristan wasn’t the only one. There was always you, for example.”

  “Me?”

  “Don’t pretend surprise. I paid you plenty of attention.”

  “Attention? You pushed my face in every mud puddle you could find.”

  He shrugged. “If that’s not a sure sign of childish devotion, what is?” He took a cautious half-step forward, uncertain of more than his footing.

  “Big hug?” Maren offered, her arms open.

  Two more cautious strides apiece and Maren Bomani got her big hug.

  Later, they walked comfortably around the area together. They surveyed the graveyard and the surrounding area—talked pleasantly enough, though about little of substance. Finally, Maren edged her way to the scrub-lined fringe of the road—more a path than otherwise, actually. Kenneth followed without protest.

  They stood beside the ancient brown machine that was her pride and joy. She leaned against a quarter-panel, folded her arms together and smiled.

  Kenneth decided not to smile back. “What made you come up here today?”

  “It is peaceful, quiet. Can you imagine that, Kenneth? Such a one as me—tiring of excitement, of bustling about! But so many things have changed since the factory hit its stride. Well, you’ve seen the rest of it—the harbor, the town—tripled in size in the six years since you left for University. Wete is no longer a sleepy, decaying backwater—not by any means! By the way, how did you like Dar es Salaam?”

  “The old capital was interesting, I suppose. Now, Maren—”

  “And graduate school? What is Johannesburg like? And what of the whites
there—the Afrikaaners, I mean? Are they resentful—nostalgic for the old days?”

  “Shush.” Kenneth put up a long palm and grinned stupidly. “I’d forgotten how you could go on when the notion took hold.”

  Maren rolled her eyes then made a moderately obscene gesture.

  He laughed. “If you insist—”

  “I do.”

  “Very well.” He took a deep breath. “One, Jo-burg is mostly big. Dirty, hyperactive and big. Like Mombasa, only a touch bigger. As for the old days, hardly anyone is old enough to remember them—black or white. The White Tribe is still very much in evidence. They’re simply too busy getting by for such ancient nonsense. Now, I have a question for you.”

  Maren waited.

  “He sent you—yes?”

  “I’m nobody’s servant, Kenny.”

  “But he did mention—”

  “I simply had a free day from the office work. Decided to come up and savor the view.”

  “And no one mentioned my father’s little tour of the facilities? Or that I’d be up here?”

  Maren’s uncharacteristic silence was an answer, in itself.

  “Is it really so horrid of me—to make my own choices, to live my own life?”

  “Must you reject him, as well as his choices in order to make your own? Think about it, Kenny.” She made a face and thumped an impatient elbow against the car’s side. “Must you look down on us, on all we try to do?”

  Kenneth blinked, unsure how to respond. “I—no, I don’t mean—”

  “Bloody Hell, you say! What else do you call it, Kenny?”

  He drew himself up. “I call it facing facts, Maren. This rock is finished; can’t any of you see it? Finished—done! You talk about a backwater—”

  “Are you blind as well as arrogant? Pemba hasn’t been so vibrantly alive since—well, since long before we were born!”

  “Not this island, Maren. This world—Earth! At best you may stabilize things—as the climate seems finally to be. Maybe roll a few things back, achieve a few temporary gains. But in the end—it’s a vast, rotting nut—dying from the inside out!”

  “And you propose to do what, Kenny? Cut and run? Is this how you discharge your responsibilities to family?”

  His eyes flared, but his voice slowed to a deadly calm. “I have heard quite enough about the glories of ujamaa from others, Maren. I do what I must, for everyone’s sake. Without the space industries—”

  “The future would indeed be hopeless,” she agreed, which shocked him. “You think I don’t know that? You think he doesn’t? If so, you’re simply wrong.” Maren put her hand on his shoulder, leaned in slightly and smiled. “The expansion of Julius Nyerere Airport to handle spacecraft won’t open for another year, so you landed at the one outside of Jo-burg, right? Then flew up to Mombasa and caught the ferry over here? See anything new below?”

  “Multiple antenna farms, personal solar arrays, a couple microwave reception stations,” he conceded. “Mostly in the cities, but even a few in villages of the Serengeti and the Masai Steppe. Yes, I noticed.”

  “Well?” Maren challenged him. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Don’t you think we know the old ways can’t go on? Like, Walter and his ‘young oil’—don’t you realize that he understands that’s only a stopgap? Most of that goes to making plastics, anyway. Fossil fuels are already just about a thing of the past—once the likes of you get the really big orbital solar units finished and more hydrogen processors are up and running down here. . . Well, consider this unlovely dinosaur of mine—?” She thumped the car with a flattened palm. “Within the year it is to be retrofitted to a hydrogen/electric hybrid.”

  “I just wish my father could see—”

  “You only assume he cannot. And that assumption is based on old, outdated memories. You don’t see him browbeating Walter for deciding to go away, do you?”

  “Because he hasn’t,” Kenneth replied. “Ujiji and the lake may be on the opposite side of Tanzania. But it’s still nearby, compared to where I am.”

  “No, thick-brain! It’s because he hasn’t gone away emotionally. He hasn’t rejected Familyhood and love and being a part of something shared.”

  “I am a part of something, Maren. Something important.”

  “But can you trust your family enough to let them also be a part of it? Consider that, Kenny Tanu.”

  He did.

  Kenneth considered the walk they’d just taken. He considered how they’d strolled among the clove-bearing trees his own father had helped replant, the year after the Rains. It had definitely been too soon—the results were sad and stunted, though he’d seen that they were finally producing, after a fashion.

  He pursed his lips and accepted Maren’s offer of a ride back into Wete.

  The town was the same one he remembered leaving, yet profoundly different as well. There were some paved streets now, more decent housing was in evidence and there were people, everywhere—people with hope.

  Was it false hope—or something more?

  He felt unsure, but somehow that was better than his previous bleak certainty.

  The car stopped at the Tanu home. Maren waited as her passenger stepped out, advanced to one side of the clean, off-white building and touched the slightly rough-textured drain pipe that directed rainwater to a covered catch basin. He caressed it delicately, as if it was a strange new thing—and maybe it was.

  Kenneth returned to the car.

  “The Wete Pipe Works?” Maren asked.

  He smiled. “Why not?”

  They left the others to walk together, father and son, along one of the floating pathways that divided sections of the operation. Row after row of pipes of varying sizes and thicknesses were arranged along the shallow lagoon’s floor—not connected to anything, yet clearly visible beneath the crystal clear water.

  The son remarked about the water’s apparent purity and the father nodded.

  “Give this ocean, this world half a chance—and maybe a bit of help—and it’ll come back from nearly anything!”

  “More than a bit,” the son said, but not unkindly.

  “I know,” the father replied in like manner.

  The young man’s expression grew more thoughtful. “You must be extremely careful about their physical environment, to keep all those tiny invertebrates healthy?”

  “Yes, we closely monitor everything—water temperature, mineral content, oxygenation. It all has to be balanced within a fairly narrow range. Ah, see those? That bare mesh, shaped like a pipe?”

  The son nodded. “New ones, just starting?”

  “Correct. All we do is shape it for whatever is wanted—we concentrate on piping of all sizes here, but you can make quite a variety of things. For instance, there’s one over on Zanzibar about to begin making a kind of thin ornamental siding for houses. What we do is shape the mesh—which is 100% recycled wire, by the way. Then we submerge it and run a .1-amp charge in for every square yard. The electrical field breaks down carbon ions in the mesh, forming calcium carbonate. That attracts the tiny larvae—shelled barnacles, clams, tube worms and especially, corals. They use the carbonate to build their shells. Once attached, they stay there—live out their lives on the mesh. Generation after generation of them—living, reproducing, dying.”

  “And leaving their shells behind,” the son murmured. “You truly are growing—in effect aqua farming building supplies from organic matter.”

  “Indeed. It’s good-quality and low-cost.”

  “But what’s the timeframe? Dealing with creatures that small . . . .”

  “That was another problem we had to overcome,” the father admitted. “It used to take three months to get just half-an-inch uniform thickness. Now we achieve as much in a third of the time.”

  “How do you manage that?”

  “You know about ocean warming killing so much coral?”

  The young man nodded.

  “Scientists needed to replenish the reefs before the Great Warming even b
egan to be stabilized. They bio-engineered corals—ones designed to tolerate the elevated temperatures and that went through their life cycle much faster.”

  “Hmm,” the son said.

  “Once the required thickness is achieved, one simply shuts down the electrical pulse. New mesh, like those, are placed near the first and we send a charge through it. The living larvae migrate over of their own accord, beginning the process over again. Then we remove the finished product and ship it out, ready for use.”

  “And nothing’s hurt? I can’t think of any sort of eco-damage in this process!”

  “Hurt?” The father screwed up his face, pretending astonishment. “Why we provide safe homes for all those tiny animals—countless generations of them! There is the matter of the electricity, though.”

  “Ah, yes. Where do you . . . .?”

  “We mainly use geo-thermal and tidal power units. With the cloud cover here, on-site solar would not provide enough for industrial scale purposes. But to expand production to meet demand we’ve been forced to supplement—temporarily—with gas turbines.”

  “Messy.”

  “Well, yes.” The father turned, seemed to stare off into nothing. “We had to obtain a special carbon-use license from the government. Now we are hoping you orbital fellows get those new, far bigger solar units online soon. Then we could tap in on all the clean, pure power we could ever need!”

  The son stopped in his tracks and turned.

  “Father,” he said.

  “Son,” the other replied.

  Their embrace was hard and abrupt. Neither cared how many factory workers passed them or stopped to stare. But inevitably, that moment had to end.

  The father looked his son in the eye. “Walter says he is considering taking a position here. They are as careful as possible, but even the slightest prospect of damaging spills trouble him.”

  The son stiffened slightly. “I have a five-year contract.”

  “I know. Very important work—and exciting, surely. I do not mean to push, even if it seems so.”

  The son nodded. “After we get the big arrays proven and running—who can say what choices might be made. Options to be explored, huh?” He grinned cautiously.