Galileo's Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition

by Gardner Dozois

  ###

  I thought that when she left, things would go back to the way they had been, that the people would once again fear Ngai and show respect to their mundumugu—but this was not to be. Oh, they went about their daily chores, they planted their crops and tended to their cattle . . . but they did not come to me with their problems as they always had done in the past.

  At first I thought we had entered one of those rare periods in which no one in the village was ill or injured, but then one day I saw Shanaka walking out across the savannah. Since he rarely left his shamba, and never left the village, I was curious about his destination and I decided to follow him. He walked due west for more than half an hour, until he reached the landing area at Haven.

  “What is wrong?” I asked when I finally caught up with him.

  He opened his mouth to reveal a serious abscess above one of his teeth. “I am in great pain,” he said, “I have been unable to eat for three days.”

  “Why did you not come to me?” I asked.

  “The god of the Europeans has defeated Ngai,” answered Shanaka. “He will not help me.”

  “He will,” I assured him.

  Shanaka shook his head, then winced from the motion. “You are an old man, and Ngai is an old god, and both of you have lost your powers,” he said unhappily. “I wish it were otherwise, but it is not.”

  “So you are deserting your wives and children because you have lost your faith in Ngai?” I demanded.

  “No,” he replied. “I will ask the Maintenance ship to take me to a European mundumugu, and when I am cured I will return home.”

  “I will cure you,” I said.

  He looked at me for a long moment. “There was a time when you could cure me,” he said at last. “But that time has passed. I will go to the Europeans’ mundumugu.”

  “If you do,” I said sternly, “you may never call on me for help again.”

  He shrugged. “I never intended to,” he said with neither bitterness nor rancor.

  ###

  Shanaka returned the next day, his mouth healed.

  I stopped by his boma to see how he was feeling, for I remained the mundumugu whether he wanted my services or not, and as I walked through the fields of his shamba I saw that he had two new scarecrows, gifts of the Europeans. The scarecrows had mechanical arms that flapped constantly, and they rotated so that they did not always face in one direction.

  “Jambo, Koriba,” he greeted me. Then, seeing that I was looking at his scarecrows, he added, “Are they not wonderful?”

  “I will withhold judgment until I see how long they function,” I said. “The more moving parts an object has, the more likely it is to break.”

  He looked at me, and I thought I detected a hint of pity in his expression. “They were created by the God of Maintenance,” he said. “They will last forever.”

  “Or until their power packs are empty,” I said, but he did not know what I meant, and so my sarcasm was lost on him. “How is your mouth?”

  “It feels much better,” he replied. “They pricked me with a magic thorn to end the pain, then cut away the evil spirits that had invaded my mouth.” He paused. “They have very powerful gods, Koriba.”

  “You are back on Kirinyaga now,” I said sternly. “Be careful how you blaspheme.”

  “I do not blaspheme,” he said. “I speak the truth.”

  “And now you will want me to bless the Europeans’ scarecrows, I suppose,” I said with finely wrought irony.

  He shrugged. “If it makes you happy,” he said.

  “If it makes me happy?” I repeated angrily.

  “That’s right,” he said nonchalantly. “The scarecrows, being European, certainly do not need your blessings, but if you will feel better . . .”

  I had often wondered what might happen if for some reason the mundumugu was no longer feared by the members of the village. I had never once considered what it might be like if he were merely tolerated.

  ###

  Still more villagers went to Maintenance’s infirmary, and each came back with some gift from the Europeans: time-saving gadgets for the most part. Western gadgets. Culture-killing gadgets.

  Again and again I went into the village and explained why such things must be rejected. Day after day I spoke to the Council of Elders, reminding them of why we had come to Kirinyaga—but most of the original settlers were dead, and the next generation, those who had become our Elders, had no memories of Kenya. Indeed, those of them who spoke to the Maintenance staff came home thinking that Kenya, rather than Kirinyaga, was some kind of Utopia, in which everyone was well-fed and well-cared-for and no farm ever suffered from drought.

  They were polite, they listened respectfully to me, and then they went right ahead with whatever they had been doing or discussing when I arrived. I reminded them of the many times I and I alone had saved them from themselves, but they seemed not to care; indeed, one or two of the Elders acted as if, far from keeping Kirinyaga pure, I had in some mysterious way been hindering its growth.

  “Kirinyaga is not supposed to grow!” I argued. “When you achieve a Utopia, you do not cast it aside and say, ‘What changes can we make tomorrow?’ ”

  “If you do not grow, you stagnate,” answered Karenja.

  “We can grow by expanding,” I said. “We have an entire world to populate.”

  “That is not growing, but breeding,” he replied. “You have done your job admirably, Koriba, for in the beginning we needed order and purpose above all else . . . but the time for your job is past. Now we have established ourselves here, and it is for us to choose how we will live.”

  “We have already chosen how to live!” I said angrily. “That is why we came here to begin with.”

  “I was just a kehee,” said Karenja. “Nobody asked me. And I did not ask my son, who was born here.”

  “Kirinyaga was created for the purpose of becoming a Kikuyu Utopia,” I said. “This purpose is even the basis of our charter. It cannot be changed.”

  “No one is suggesting that we don’t want to live in a Utopia, Koriba,” interjected Shanaka. “But the time has passed when you and you alone shall be the sole judge of what constitutes a Utopia.”

  “It is clearly defined.”

  “By you,” said Shanaka. “Some of us have our own definitions of Utopia.”

  “You were one of the original founders of Kirinyaga,” I said accusingly. “Why have you never spoken out before?”

  “Many times I wanted to,” admitted Shanaka. “But always I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Of Ngai. Or you.”

  “They are much the same thing,” said Karenja.

  “But now that Ngai has lost His battle to the god of Maintenance, I am no longer afraid to speak,” continued Shanaka. “Why should I suffer with the pain in my teeth? How was it unholy or blasphemous for the European witches to cure me? Why should my wife, who is as old as I am and whose back is bent from years of carrying wood and water, continue to carry them where there are machines to carry things for her?”

  “Why should you live on Kirinyaga at all, if that is the way you feel?” I asked bitterly.

  “Because I have worked as hard to make Kirinyaga a home for the Kikuyu as you have!” he shot back. “And I see no reason to leave just because my definition of Utopia doesn’t agree with yours. Why don’t you leave, Koriba?”

  “Because I was charged with establishing our Utopia, and I have not yet completed my assignment,” I said. “In fact, it is false Kikuyu like you who have made my work that much harder.”

  Shanaka got to his feet and looked around at the Elders.

  “Am I a false Kikuyu because I want my grandson to read?” he demanded. “Or because I want to ease my wife’s burden? Or because I do not wish to suffer physical pain that can easily be avoided?”

  “No!” cried the Elders as one.

  “Be very careful,” I warned them. “For if he is not a false Kikuyu, then you are cal
ling me one.”

  “No, Koriba,” said Koinnage, rising to his feet. “You are not a false Kikuyu.” He paused. “But you are a mistaken one. Your day—and mine—has passed. Perhaps, for a fleeting second, we did achieve Utopia—but that second is gone, and the new moments and hours require new Utopias.” Then Koinnage, who had looked at me with fear so many times in the past, suddenly looked at me with great compassion. “It was our dream, Koriba, but it is not theirs—and if we still have some feeble handhold on today, tomorrow surely belongs to them.”

  “I will hear none of this!” I said. “You cannot redefine a Utopia as a matter of convenience. We moved here in order to be true to our faith and traditions, to avoid becoming what so many Kikuyu had become in Kenya. I will not let us become black Europeans!”

  “We are becoming something,” said Shanaka. “Perhaps just once there was an instant when you felt we were perfect Kikuyu—but that instant has long since passed. To remain so, not one of us could have had a new thought, could have seen the world in a different way. We would have become the scarecrows you bless every morning.”

  I was silent for a very long time. Then, at last, I spoke. “This world breaks my heart,” I said. “I tried so hard to mold it into what we had all wanted, and look at what it has become. What you have become.”

  “You can direct change, Koriba,” said Shanaka, “but you cannot prevent it, and that is why Kirinyaga will always break your heart.”

  “I must go to my boma and think,” I said.

  “Kwaheri, Koriba,” said Koinnage. Good-bye, Koriba. It had a sense of finality to it.

  ###

  I spent many days alone on my hill, looking across the winding river to the green savannah, and thinking. I had been betrayed by the people I had tried to lead, by the very world I had helped to create. I felt that I had surely displeased Ngai in some way, and that He would strike me dead. I was quite prepared to die, even willing . . . but I did not die, for the gods draw their strength from their worshippers, and Ngai was now so weak that He could not even kill a feeble old man like myself.

  Eventually I decided to go down among my people one last time, to see if any of them had rejected the enticements of the Europeans and come back to the ways of the Kikuyu.

  The path was lined with mechanical scarecrows. The only meaningful way to bless them would be to renew their charges. I saw several women washing clothes by the river, but instead of pounding the fabrics with rocks, they were rubbing them on some artificial board that had obviously been made for the purpose.

  Suddenly I heard a ringing noise behind me, and, startled, I jumped, lost my footing, and fell heavily against a thorn bush. When I was able to get my bearings, I saw that I had almost been run over by a bicycle.

  “I am sorry, Koriba,” said the rider, who turned out to be young Kimanti. “I thought you heard me coming.”

  He helped me gingerly to my feet.

  “My ears have heard many things,” I said. “The scream of the fish eagle, the bleat of the goat, the laugh of the hyena, the cry of the newborn baby. But they were never meant to hear artificial wheels going down a dirt hill.”

  “It is much faster and easier than walking,” he replied. “Are you going anywhere in particular? I will be happy to give you a ride.”

  It was probably the bicycle that made up my mind. “Yes,” I replied, “I am going somewhere, and no, I will not be taken on a bicycle.”

  “Then I will walk with you,” he said. “Where are you going?”

  “To Haven,” I said.

  “Ah,” he said with a smile. “You, too, have business with Maintenance. Where do you hurt?”

  I touched the left side of my chest. “I hurt here—and the only business I have with Maintenance is to get as far from the cause of that pain as I can.”

  “You are leaving Kirinyaga?”

  “I am leaving what Kirinyaga has become,” I answered.

  “Where will you go?” he asked. “What will you do?”

  “I will go elsewhere, and I will do other things,” I said vaguely, for where does an unemployed mundumugu go?

  “We will miss you, Koriba,” said Kimanti.

  “I doubt it.”

  “We will,” he repeated with sincerity. “When we recite the history of Kirinyaga to our children, you will not be forgotten.” He paused. “It is true that you were wrong, but you were necessary.”

  “Is that how I am to be remembered?” I asked. “As a necessary evil?”

  “I did not call you evil, just wrong.”

  We walked the next few miles in silence, and at last we came to Haven.

  “I will wait with you if you wish,” said Kimanti.

  “I would rather wait alone,” I said.

  He shrugged. “As you wish. Kwaheri, Koriba.”

  “Kwaheri,” I replied.

  After he left I looked around, studying the savannah and the river, the wildebeest and the zebras, the fish eagles and the marabou storks, trying to set them in my memory for all time to come.

  “I am sorry, Ngai,” I said at last. “I have done my best, but I have failed you.” The ship that would take me away from Kirinyaga forever suddenly came into view.

  “You must view them with compassion, Ngai,” I said as the ship approached the landing strip. “They are not the first of your people to be bewitched by the Europeans.”

  And it seemed, as the ship touched down, that a voice spoke into my ear and said, You have been my most faithful servant, Koriba, and so I shall be guided by your counsel. Do you really wish me to view them with compassion?

  I looked toward the village one last time, the village that had once feared and worshipped Ngai, and which had sold itself, like some prostitute, to the god of the Europeans.

  “No,” I said firmly.

  “Are you speaking to me?” asked the pilot, and I realized that the hatch was open and waiting for me.

  “No,” I replied.

  He looked around. “I don’t see anyone else.”

  “He is very old and very tired,” I said. “But He is here.”

  I climbed into the ship and did not look back.

  Oracle

  Greg Egan

  Looking back at the century that’s just ended, it’s obvious that Australian writer Greg Egan was one of the Big New Names to emerge in science fiction in the nineties, and he is probably one of the most significant talents to enter the field in the last several decades. Already one of the most widely known of all Australian genre writers, Egan may well be the best new “hard-science” writer to enter the field since Greg Bear, and he is still growing in range, power, and sophistication. In the last few years, he has become a frequent contributor to Interzone and Asimov’s Science Fiction and has made sales as well as to Pulphouse, Analog, Aurealis, Eidolon, and elsewhere; many of his stories have also appeared in various Best of the Year series, and he was on the Hugo Final Ballot in 1995 for his story “Cocoon,” which won the Ditmar Award and the Asimov’s Readers Award. He won the Hugo Award in 1999 for his novella “Oceanic.” His first novel, Quarantine, appeared in 1992; his second novel, Permutation City, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1994. His other books include the novels Distress, Diaspora, and Teranesia and three collections of his short fiction, Axiomatic, Luminous, and Our Lady of Chernobyl. His most recent book is a novel, Schild’s Ladder. He has a website at http://www.netspace.netau/^gregegan/.

  In the strange and eloquent story that follows, he takes us to a slightly altered version of our own familiar Earth in the days just after World War II, for a memorable battle of ideas between two of the smartest humans alive—a deceptively quiet battle of science versus superstition and rationality versus mysticism, fought with words broadcast over the radio, that could nevertheless change our view of the universe forever and perhaps even change the universe itself.

  ###

  1

  On his eighteenth day in the tiger cage, Robert Stoney began to lose hope of emerging unscathed.

/>   He’d woken a dozen times throughout the night with an overwhelming need to stretch his back and limbs, and none of the useful compromise positions he’d discovered in his first few days—the least-worst solutions to the geometrical problem of his confinement—had been able to dull his sense of panic. He’d been in far more pain in the second week, suffering cramps that felt as if the muscles of his legs were dying on the bone, but these new spasms had come from somewhere deeper, powered by a sense of urgency that revolved entirely around his own awareness of his situation.

  That was what frightened him. Sometimes he could find ways to minimize his discomfort, sometimes he couldn’t, but he’d been clinging to the thought that, in the end, all these fuckers could ever do was hurt him. That wasn’t true, though. They could make him ache for freedom in the middle of the night, the way he might have ached with grief, or love. He’d always cherished the understanding that his self was a whole, his mind and body indivisible. But he’d failed to appreciate the corollary: through his body, they could touch every part of him. Change every part of him.

  Morning brought a fresh torment: hay fever. The house was somewhere deep in the countryside, with nothing to be heard in the middle of the day but bird song. June had always been his worst month for hay fever, but in Manchester it had been tolerable. As he ate breakfast, mucus dripped from his face into the bowl of lukewarm oats they’d given him. He stanched the flow with the back of his hand, but suffered a moment of shuddering revulsion when he couldn’t find a way to reposition himself to wipe his hand clean on his trousers. Soon he’d need to empty his bowels. They supplied him with a chamber pot whenever he asked, but they always waited two or three hours before removing it. The smell was bad enough, but the fact that it took up space in the cage was worse.