No Enemy But Time

by Michael Bishop

  Authorized Personnel Only—

  By Order of ZAPPA

  “ZAPPA?” Joshua said.

  “It’s an acronym for Zarakali Administration for Peace and Prosperity through Astronautics.”

  “Astronautics?”

  “Surely that doesn’t boggle your bourgeois brain, Joshua. After all, you’re a Zarakali chrononaut.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Astro-, chrono-, what matters the prefix? President Tharaka is visiting all his nauts today. That’s why you’ve been summoned.”

  “Yes, sir. But I’m a special case, aren’t I? It’s a little hard to believe that Zarakal has a space program, too.”

  “What Mzee Tharaka wants, Mzee Tharaka gets.”

  A wooden reviewing stand with a high oblong hutch resembling a press box appeared in the hazy middle distance, bleacher-green against the dirty beige of the desert. A pair of revolving sprinklers watered the narrow travesty of lawn in front of these bleachers, and six spiky palm trees in tubs lined the walkway that bisected the reviewing stand. Not an especially auspicious site for a football or soccer stadium. As it turned out, however, the reviewing stand overlooked not a well-kept playing field but a barren depression, or cut, in the landscape.

  The enameled WaBenzi limousines slotted by ministerial rank into crudely marked spaces on the lip of the gorge, but an armed African soldier in pinks deflected the Land Rover into an unpaved parking area and told Blair that he and Joshua would not be able to dismount until the President had climbed to his place in the hutch at the top of the bleachers. The battered Land Rover did not qualify as an official vehicle, nor Blair himself as a bona fide WaBenzi.

  “Suits me,” the Great Man said. “I’m delighted he doesn’t know we’re late.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Finally, clicking his heels and opening Blair’s door, the soldier announced that the President would receive them, and Blair and Joshua marched across the parking area to the bleachers. All you could see between the two halves of the reviewing stand was a vast, pitted plain. And in front of the plain a huge, alkaline crater. There was a terrible charnel beauty to this landscape.

  At the beginning of the decade several million people—refugees from the civil conflicts in Ethiopia, nomadic pastoralists fleeing drought and tribal warfare—had straggled into this region to die of starvation and disease. A portion of what was now Russell-Tharaka AFB had once been a receiving area for the refugees, the focus of an international relief effort run jointly by the Zarakali government and the United Nations Development Program. Skirmishes with Somali irregulars along a disputed border and battles with Ethiopian Army units in the Djilbabo Plain had eventually cut off the southward flow of the dispossessed, a rather mixed blessing, if a blessing at all. Meantime, graft in Marakoi had undone the relief effort by diverting food and medical supplies to Zarakali soldiers in the frontier regions. The WaBenzi had played a telling role in this fiasco, but, magnificently irate, Mutesa David Christian Ghazali Tharaka had purged the most blatant offenders. Now he had a new batch of WaBenzi, and the dead . . . well, the dead were dead. The vultures and hyenas had obliterated nearly every trace of them. For having briefly suffered the dazed tread and shuffle of a hapless multitude, the land looked little if any different.

  A sign on the metal rail designed to prevent a visitor from slipping and falling into the depression below the bleachers caught Joshua’s attention:

  Weightlessness Simulation Incline

  ZAPPA

  “Up,” Blair said. “The sign’s meaning will become clear only when you witness the use to which we put the incline.”

  They climbed a set of switchbacking metal stairs to the hutch nearly sixty feet above the ground. The climb seemed altogether familiar to Joshua, a dream numbly repeating itself. Blair wheezed in the heat, wiped his sweaty brow, and nodded curtly at three black officials—WaBenzi all—seated under an immense vinyl umbrella in the center of the reviewing stand. Plainly the President had not granted them permission to sit with him above.

  In the carpeted, air-conditioned hutch, Mzee Tharaka received Blair and Joshua as if he had planned this entire outing around their presence and participation. Standing before a rectangle of delicately tinted plate glass, Joshua found his right hand imprisoned between the strong, plump hands of the President, like a mug from which the old man was about to quaff a potent and exotic brew.

  “Welcome, Mr. Kampa. Welcome.”

  The voice was hoarse, the English impeccable, but what disconcerted Joshua about the old freedom fighter was his attire. A man of medium height, with no single compelling feature other than his eyes, which were penetrating and mournfully red-rimmed, Mzee Tharaka today shunned the Western-style business suits of his retainers in favor of a Sambusai toga, a gorget of monkey’s teeth, a red silk cloak featuring a pattern of alternating fleur-de-lis and (of all things) golden appliqué pineapples, and a set of silver anklets, from which depended tiny effigies of the country’s vanishing wildlife, an ornamental touch that reminded Joshua of the grade-school name bracelet to which his sister, Anna Monegal, had once added charms depicting a puppy, a broken heart, a pair of saddle oxfords, a football, and so on.

  The President’s feet were bare. His head was not. Atop his grizzled sponge of hair he wore a felt crown to which had been affixed an enameled hominid skull discovered by Blair at Lake Kiboko in the early 1970s. Joshua was able to get a good look at the skull, which usually gawped upward at sky or ceiling, only when the President bowed ritually to the paleontologist and warmly clasped his hands. This skull, Joshua knew, was genuine, not a plaster cast or a clever facsimile. Blair had yielded it to the President, under stern and probably injudicious protest, only after his staff at the National Museum had obtained a plaster duplicate from an American physical anthropologist and had catalogued for posterity every known fact about the valuable fossil.

  This episode in recent Zarakali history had provoked worldwide interest and comment. The Times of London had run an article predicting Blair’s expulsion from the native government and his possible arraignment for criticism detrimental to the country’s best interests, but the affair had blown over in a fortnight, the President privately placating Blair by promising to restore the hominid crown to the National Museum at his death, and Blair appeasing Mzee Tharaka by agreeing to refuse public comment on the issue and to reaffirm his loyalty pledge to the old man at an open session of the National Assembly. The paleontologist had kept his promises. What Mzee Tharaka would do no one could say. He might choose to be buried wearing the crown. In the meantime, however, he was by universal acknowledgment the only head of state who periodically proclaimed his sovereignty by donning the skull of a human ancestor nearly three million years old.

  “Sit,” said the President, indicating the padded swivel chairs in front of the window. “Sit, sit. Mr. Kampa is our guest. He must see that Zarakal is pursuing its future as actively as any other great nation.”

  “His especial interest is the past,” Blair said.

  “But not for its own sake, surely. Very few people are interested in the past for its own sake. Where we have been, gentlemen, shapes what we are. Further, it implies where we may be going.” The President patted Joshua on the hand. “Zarakal is humanity’s birthplace, young man, and it will not be a negligible factor in determining our species’ ultimate destiny.” He gestured at the merciless blue sky, at the rugged yawn of the gorge. “Here you behold the primitive but fateful beginnings of Project Umuntu, the diaspora of our evolving intelligence to the stars.”

  Joshua looked out the window at the Weightlessness Simulation Incline. Three of Zarakal’s astronauts-in-training stood on the opposite ridge, paying homage to their Commander in Chief with the stiff, palm-outward salute that was a relic of the days of British colonialism. They were dwindled by distance, these trainees, but their white uniforms and tight-fitting headgear reminded Joshua of hospital workers in rubber bathing caps. Each man was standing by a large, upright bar
rel, and each barrel was balanced on the edge of the incline by wires connected to cables strung across the gorge like an unfinished suspension bridge. Red, yellow, and blue, the barrels appeared to be made of a hard, dent-resistant plastic. They were perforated with air holes, and at the moment their hatch covers were up, quite like toilet seats.

  Looking down the counter to an official hunched over a microphone, Mzee Tharaka said, “It’s time to begin.”

  “Prepare for drop-off,” said the man at the microphone. “One minute and counting.”

  The official’s amplified voice echoed over the bleak desert landscape like the voice of God. The astronauts climbed into their capsules and closed the hatch covers.

  Mzee Tharaka said, “It’s ridiculous that of all the nations of the earth only the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and perhaps the People’s Republic of China, should be trying to conquer the frontiers of space.”

  “Isn’t it equally ridiculous for a nation with insufficient resources and personnel to be making the attempt?” Joshua asked. “Zarakal has more pressing business to attend to, hasn’t it?”

  The President’s flinty eyes flashed, but with delight rather than disapproval. “One need not be a giant to have great dreams, Mr. Kampa. As you well know.”

  “Yes, Mzee.” The shrewd old bastard.

  “For just that reason, and for the reason that although Zarakal may be no giant, Africa is a colossus stirring with a newfound sense of its strength, I am the champion of African astronautics, Mr. Kampa. It was I, incidentally, who initially convinced President Kaunda of Zambia that we must put an African on the moon without the assistance of the so-called superpowers. Zambia’s fledgling space program collapsed under the weight of a staggering economy, but our program is taking wing.”

  “We’ve recently replaced our obsolescent beer kegs,” said Blair, wryly, “with expertly engineered ‘descent cylinders.’ ”

  “True, very true.” The President laughed, not at all offended. “But now we have direct American aid—not for space technologies, mind you, but for military and economic programs that will permit us to develop such. The prospect of bartering coffee, sisal, and refined petroleum products for computer technology and educational opportunities is a major step forward.”

  “Thirty seconds and counting.”

  “That’s aid from a superpower, isn’t it?” Joshua remarked. “I think you’re splitting hairs on this point.”

  “Well, certainly, we intend to take advantage of what others have learned through trial and error. It would be stupid to insist that we ignore existing technologies, put blinders on ourselves, and create an unadulterated Zarakali space program in the desert of our national purity. And we are not stupid, Mr. Kampa.”

  To change the subject, Joshua said, “Are those barrels padded?”

  “Most assuredly. Finest quality American foam rubber.”

  The wires connecting the barrels to the suspension-bridge cables began slackening. The barrels themselves began rocking from side to side as their pilots prepared for launch. Through the larger holes in the capsules Joshua could see the men’s immaculate white uniforms, like bits of tissue paper in punctured cookie tins.

  “Ten, nine, eight, seven—”

  “Pay attention, Mr. Kampa. The first trial run is often the most exhilarating, for the observer as well as the trainee.”

  “—three, two, one: DROP-OFF!”

  The wires on the capsules yanked free, and the Zarakali astronauts came barreling down the Weightlessness Simulation Incline at a dizzying clip. The barrels bounced like balloons from some surfaces, skidded like rolling pins along others, occasionally caromed off one another like billiard balls. In a matter of seconds, it was over. The hatches on two of the barrels popped open, and their pilots wriggled out into the bottom of the gorge. The man in the remaining barrel, however, required assistance, and he was carefully extracted and led into the shade by his comrades.

  “Brave men,” said Mzee Tharaka. “Very brave men.”

  “Much braver than I, Mr. President.” Joshua believed it, too. All he had to do on Woody Kaprow’s Backstep Scaffold was close his eyes and dream. The time-displacement equipment and his own dreaming consciousness did the rest. It was as easy as falling downstairs.

  “Not necessarily, Mr. Kampa, but perhaps you would be interested to know that many of our astronauts-in-training must overcome a powerful psychological reluctance to take part in these experiments. Tribal ways and allegiances sometimes militate against their willingness to test pilot our WSI vehicles.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “These trainees are members of the Kikembu tribe. In their society, Mr. Kampa, one of the punishments reserved for sorcerers—evil persons who inflict illness or misfortune on their neighbors—quite resembles an exercise on the Weightlessness Simulation Incline.”

  Joshua waited, knowing that the President intended to detail the similarity whether he replied or not.

  “When the sorcerer is apprehended, you see, usually by a contingent of men who have lain in wait for him, they find an immense beehive, put the sorcerer inside it alive, seal the hive, and send it tumbling down a slope. At the bottom, Mr. Kampa, the sorcerer is invariably discovered to have given up the ghost. One of our first trainees, interestingly enough, died of fright during his maiden descent of the WSI. He must have assumed that his selection to our program constituted a formal accusation of sorcery. On the other hand, he may actually have been guilty of poisoning someone or practicing witchcraft. As a result, his guilt combined with the trauma of weightlessness simulation to punish him for his crimes. Not only are our trainees brave, they are virtuous.”

  “I reckon so,” Joshua said.

  “What about you, Mr. Kampa? You modestly downplay your own bravery, which must be considerable—but are you virtuous?”

  “Virtuous?”

  Everyone in the hutch, including Alistair Patrick Blair, was looking at him. Was he virtuous?

  “Pardon me, Mzee. I’m not sure how to answer. I voted Democratic in the last two presidential elections.”

  Mutesa David Christian Ghazali Tharaka patted Joshua’s hand; whether in tribute or consolation was not clear. They watched four more barrel races before the President wearied of the show and returned with his retinue to Marakoi.

  “You made a good impression,” Blair had told Joshua on the way back to his barracks.

  “How?”

  “Perhaps by preserving your sang-froid when you caught sight of his ceremonial attire. Besides, he’s always been partial to Americans.”

  * * *

  Yes, sang-froid. That was what he would require now, for Kaprow’s omnibus was prowling the lake margin (the lunar battlement of the Rift’s western wall like a mirage on their left), and tomorrow morning he would be playing chrononaut for keeps. Joshua’s stomach knotted, and the jumbled slide show of his past clicked away inside his mind with every jolt of The Machine’s balloonlike tires. This was his mission. He had finally got it, or it had got him, and his entire life had been pointing toward this place and this time. A time that encompassed an infinity of moments. An infinity of possibilities.

  “You all right?” Kaprow asked, wrestling with the steering wheel. “You’ve been mighty quiet.”

  “He’s anticipating the morrow,” Blair put in.

  “More than that,” Joshua confessed. “Lots more than that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A Gift from the Ashes

  THE STORM BROKE OVER SHANGRI-LA and soon enveloped the entire mountain in its shroud. I squatted beside my wife and daughter in Guinevere’s hovel, in the sting of the astringent rain, and tried to sort out my fragmented emotions. News of the birth had spread through our encampment, even to those who had been sleeping, and while I watched my Helen struggle futilely against the stealthy machinations of death, every Minid in our band passed by her resting place—her makeshift bier—to see the baby. I could not pinpoint the m
oment of her dying, for she went without a wince or a murmur, the victim of lacerations and internal hemorrhaging, having exerted the last reserves of her strength to force our daughter into the impersonal slaughterhouse of the world; and the rain, the cleansing and astringent rain, had distanced me from the full intensity of her suffering.

  “She’s dead!” I shouted at Alfie, Guinevere, and the others. “Goddamn it, I think she’s dead!”

  I did not look to see what their reaction was. I turned my attention to the issue of Helen’s womb. Despite our daughter’s pale skin and greedy suckling at her mother’s breast, I began to feel a powerful affection for her, a desire to comfort and protect. I took her into my arms and sheltered her from the pounding rain.

  The storm passed over us, moving seaward. Dawn broke bright and cool. Several of the Minids greeted it with song.

  But I could not understand the persistence of thunder on so fine a morning. The habilines were quicker than I to deduce the answer, to identify the source of this noise, and their gathering panic finally opened my eyes to what was happening.

  The thunder was not overhead but underfoot.

  Like a boiler full of clabbered tapioca, Mount Tharaka was churning inside, its sticky contents threatening to burst, brim, and overflow. The thunderstorm, along with the confusion attending the birth of the Grub, had disguised from us the mountain’s premonitory rumblings—but now, all too plainly, we could hear and feel them. The higher the sun mounted the more pronounced and emphatic these warnings.

  We began to make preparations to leave Shangri-la, and our preparations included the manufacture of a travois on which to place my wife’s body. I was hurriedly trying to tie together the frame for this sledge when Mount Tharaka’s highest peak flew apart like a gigantic tooth dealt a shattering hammer blow.

  I pitched to the ground. Foliage blocked my view of the summit, but above this line of foliage a billow of smoke and ash climbed into the sky, twisted in the air, and drifted downwind like the fallout from Death’s powder puff.