by Mike Resnick
“She said not to tell.”
“Who said not to tell…and why?”
The little girl looked up, and then spoke in a rush. “Bibi. She says your hearts are good, because you wish to help. But she also says if we stayed in your village, we would have all gotten sicker. If we had left earlier, my father would still be alive.”
“But that’s not true!” protested Elizabeth.
“Bibi says it is,” said the girl, staring unblinking into Elizabeth’s eyes.
Elizabeth kept trying, but after a few minutes it became obvious that the children would not disobey Bibi and reveal where the missing parts were hidden.
Elizabeth exchanged a quick, frustrated glance with Jeremy. “Beautiful Uganda, land of my people, where no good deed goes unpunished,” she murmured.
Jeremy was almost as depressed as he had been when the results of his initial bloodwork had come back. Radios, if mistreated, could be cranky, and there was a limit to the truck’s ability to sit outside without maintenance. Let it be exceeded, and even if they found their equipment, they’d still be stranded in this tiny village.
“Well,” said Elizabeth, “I may as well make my morning rounds.” She grimaced in Jeremy’s direction. “Are you ready for an unscientific opinion?”
“It’s my favorite kind.”
“Personally, I think this whole goddamned village needs to have its collective head examined.”
The day passed uneventfully, and as the huge sun went down, Jeremy summoned the energy from somewhere to gather wood for a fire. The children were busy gathering firewood and water, and putting the chickens in their coops, which would be hung from nearby trees. Jeremy watched Elizabeth’s friendly overtures met with polite coolness, as the villagers decided that black skin and a knowledge of Buganda did not make her one of them.
He considered the missing equipment for the hundredth time. They couldn’t count on anyone arriving here except by accident. They had to persuade the thief to give back the radio and the spark plugs.
Elizabeth emerged from a hut and walked over to join Jeremy. “I must have misdiagnosed that woman,” she said, puzzled. “She showed all the classic signs, and I thought her fever would finish her off in a matter of hours. But she’s no more an AIDS victim than I am. Hell, even that case of thrush she had is clearing up.” She shook her head. “Maroka wants to make her sit up tomorrow. I suppose she’s right; the sooner she’s back on her feet, the better.”
“Who will watch her until she can go back out in the fields?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “We still haven’t seen Bibi; given her age, that’d be a good job for her.” She paused. “You know, that’s another reason I’d like to get out of here; the poor thing’s so scared of us she’s hiding out in the bush. I didn’t come here to turn some poor woman out of her house and put her at the mercy of the hyenas.”
She seemed about to say something more, then changed her mind and headed off to her sleeping hut.
Darkness descended, and Jeremy soon fell asleep on the back of the truck. When he woke in the morning, the crimson ribbon was missing from his shirt.
Interesting. He climbed down, swallowed his pills, cut himself a fresh ribbon, and put the much-diminished spool into a hip pocket, just in case.
And suddenly he knew that he was being watched. He found himself glancing over his shoulder, watching the long sharp shadows in case some tiny fragment broke off from one of them and headed for the truck or the fields or the deep bush.
When he paused to wipe his face after splashing it with some water, the sense of being watched grew even stronger. Once or twice, he caught a flicker of motion on the far side of a clearing, at the edge of his vision.
Maroka’s bibi? He hadn’t gotten a good look at her, but he couldn’t imagine who else it could be. He set off across the clearing, and soon spotted some footprints in the dust. They were small enough to be the prints of a child, but they were deep, as if the person they belonged to was carrying something heavy.
They led him deeper and deeper into the bush. Soon the vegetation had closed around him. He could hear the chirping of birds and the buzzing of insects, but the only motion he could see was the slight swaying of leaves in the hot breeze. He could almost imagine that he was some stone-age man, pushing his way through the bush in pursuit of his dinner; surely the terrain hadn’t looked much different even a million years ago.
A hyena giggled in the distance; in Jeremy’s mind it became a 300-pound hyenadon. A vulture circled lazily overhead; he pretended it was a pterodactyl.
He was still imagining a distant past and a more physically imposing version of himself when suddenly he came upon a clearing. A huge dead tree had fallen down—he imagined that a mastodon had pushed it over—and a nearby termite mound towered some twenty feet above the ground.
Then, suddenly, he became aware of a cluster of children, and saw the baby—(and how had they let the kids take it out of the hut?)—in the arms of what looked like another child.
That is, it looked like another child until he got a glimpse of its wizened face. It was a female, no question about it, for she was nursing the infant. Her skin seemed incredibly ancient, not so much lined as engraved with seams. The sparse hair surrounding it, growing far down on her low brow, was white. But the smile on her lips as she looked down at the baby was very beautiful and oddly familiar.
I’ve seen you before, I know I have. But where?
Jeremy took a step toward her. A dry twig snapped beneath his foot and a dozen birds burst from cover while overhead a family of colobus monkeys began shrieking. The woman with the ancient face jumped, startled. Then she laid the baby down on a piece of red cloth and fled into the bush. The infant, deprived of his milk, promptly began howling.
“Come on, Bibi!” he wanted to yell after her. “Can a sick, skinny American be that frightening?”
By the time Jeremy had helped soothe the infant, placing it in the eldest girl’s arms and coaxing all of them to believe he wasn’t some sort of monster just because the old woman had fled, he had gotten his thoughts—and his memory—in order.
One summer, just for a change, he had rented a place on Nantucket, not the Hamptons: a shabby, ramshackle, desirable home that had cost him a bundle. It had been a good summer, and he hadn’t begrudged a cent of it, despite a week of rainy days. Along with the seafood, the sailing, and the whale watching, he’d had the whole old house to prowl through. And, in its attic, he’d found treasure indeed—thirty years worth of National Geographics.
He’d loved that magazine ever since he was a child. In fact, he’d dreamed of being an explorer, maybe even a paleontologist or geochronologist until his Uncle Sid—the executive vice president—sat him down and explained the facts of life to him: student loans; grants; bottom lines. The best way—probably the only way—to participate in these expeditions was to fund them.
So he’d packed the dream away, but he’d kept up his subscription to National Geographic, joined the Nature Conservancy, and always made donations to the American Museum of Natural History. They were good causes and tax-deductible, but the real reason was that he loved them.
Now, those yellowed covers and fragile pages riffled in his imagination, and he remembered Dr. Donald Johanson’s discovery of Australopithecus afarensis, some 3.2 million years old. She was mankind’s ancestor, a tiny female Johanson had called Lucy after the Beatles’ record his staff had played incessantly during the dig.
And now he had seen her. Not as a mummified corpse or a pile of white bones, either.
He’d seen her as a living, breathing being. Nursing her great-to-the-Nth-power-grandchild. He even knew her name.
Bibi.
* * *
While everyone else was celebrating the miraculously-recovered young woman’s emergence from the hut in which she was expected to die, Jeremy wandered over to the truck and picked up his “bait”: a bowl of posho and some dried fruits.
There was no sense telling Elizabeth what
he had seen or what he planned to do about it. She would give him so many rational explanations that he would have ended up believing her and not trying to entice the ancient woman back. So while Elizabeth lay deeply asleep within the hut, Jeremy laid out his traps on the back of the truck, then stretched out right beside them. He forced himself to close his eyes: moonlight would reflect off them, and it stood to reason that the superior senses of australopithecus…pitheca?…would spot it.
He waited.
And then it was morning, and the fruit was gone.
* * *
“It was her,” said Jeremy to Elizabeth. “I know it was!”
“Then what are you going to do—sleep out in the truck again?”
He shook his head. “That’s my turf, and it makes her too cautious.”
“Surely you’re not going out into the bush at night!”
“You want your spark plugs back, don’t you?” he retorted.
“Not at the cost of your life.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Sure you will,” she said caustically. “If you don’t get totally lost, you’ll probably run into that leopard you shot.”
“He’s out of the area,” replied Jeremy.
“How do you know?”
“The baboons are quiet at night.”
She stared at him. “This is really stupid, Jeremy.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “But unless you have a better idea…”
* * *
She walked through the bush, eyes and ears alert to any danger. The animals were different from those she was used to—smaller, but just as dangerous. She came to a small stream, checked carefully for predators, then squatted down, cupped a hand, and brought some of the life-giving liquid to her lips. A marabou stork landed a few feet away and she jumped.
Her first urge, now that she had satisfied her thirst, was to return to the cave she had found, where she would be safe for the night. But then the wind brought the scent of fruit to her nostrils, and she decided to investigate…
* * *
The moon had long set, and he was on the verge of drowsing off, his back against the thick bole of an acacia tree, when he finally saw that small, familiar figure steal out from a nearby bush across the clearing. It paused to stare at him, and Jeremy forced himself to remain motionless. Tiny shadows swung from her neck. As she came closer, Jeremy saw what it was: she—or one of the children she tended—had strung the spark plugs on a grass string, and she was wearing them as a necklace.
Come on, Sweetheart, he thought as his heart pounded. He had spread his treasures out on the ground: the red cloth in which the infant had been wrapped, some dried apricots, a bowl of posho, a long loop of scarlet ribbon. Come on! But the tiny creature paused, suddenly frightened. Please, he thought again, this time imploringly. Please, Bibi!
The figure turned toward him, lifting her head and straightening up, which set the spark-plug necklace to swaying once again. Then, attracted by the prizes he’d set out, she drew closer.
She recognized the cloth and snatched it to her breast, cradling it like an infant. She caught up a dried apricot and chewed it quickly, her eyes shining with pleasure. Then she reached for the strand of crimson ribbon.
Jeremy laid his hand down on the other end of the ribbon.
Bibi jumped back.
Jeremy leaned forward carefully. She had seen him with the women and children; she had to know that he wasn’t a threat. Still, she watched him carefully, never taking her eyes from him, never loosing her grip upon the ribbon.
That’s right. Think of the necklace you can make. Think of how it’ll delight the kids.
“Come on,” he whispered to her as he got slowly, carefully to his feet. Would she understand any speech at all? “Of course you want it. It’s pretty. I’ll trade you. This for…” he waved at the spark plug necklace in a gesture of let’s barter that might have been old when she was young.
The ancient woman backed away. Smart, aren’t you? Why bargain if you can get it for free? He tugged lightly on the length of ribbon, trying to draw it toward him, and her with it. She let herself be drawn and looked up into his face.
He was struck by her eyes. Even under the low, furrowed brow, they glowed with intelligence. This was not a “primate,” this was a person. He smiled at her, and she smiled back.
You’ve seen me. I’m your friend. I shot the leopard.
“I really need those spark plugs,” he said softly. He leaned over, cautiously, maintaining the tension on the red ribbon. He was six feet tall to her four. A little further, a little longer—and his fingers closed on her arm.
He was strong, especially compared to her—but she was wily. Even as she squalled with anger, she let him draw her closer. And then, with a smile of glee at her own cunning, she buried her sturdy, three-million-year-old teeth deep in his arm.
Jeremy let out a yelp of surprise and pain. Human bites were as nasty as those of the big cats, he’d heard, and even dirtier; but this bite burned like molten iron.
Goddammit! I thought you’d come to save your children, not kill them! Are we that disappointing to you? And then came a frightening thought:
God help me, I’ve contaminated her!
He realized that he was bleeding like the proverbial stuck pig, his arm was swelling, and the moonlight shone off some nasty red streaks had started to travel from the wound up toward his lymph nodes. He could hear his teeth chattering as he burned and shivered and tried to use his belt as a tourniquet.
Why, Bibi? You can’t have come across the endless eons just to bite a man who’s already dying. It doesn’t make any sense!
Then he blacked out.
* * *
The sky glittered as if it were filled with diamonds. More diamonds, or maybe sapphires, reflected off the brilliant surface of the lake. Or maybe it was an ocean. A white wake bisected it, and ripples shimmered, then evened out as the water calmed. Jeremy thrashed. He wanted to tell everyone that it was a good sign that the water was troubled, it meant that spirits were abroad, or afloat, or something. Anyhow, it meant that miracles could indeed happen, even to him. His arm burned; he ached all over; and his mouth tasted as if bats had roosted in it.
He thrashed and felt weights land on him, forcing him back down. He opened his eyes and saw Bibi, the infinitely loving mother of the race, up in that glittering sky, surrounded by a rainbow haze that turned into crystals even as he watched, then dropped down in showers of gems. Lucy in the sky, with diamonds. And I thought it was just a song!
He’d been young once, without this treason in his blood and body; and he’d water-skied in the Keys with guys as carefree as he himself. He’d linked arms and chanted, “The whole world’s watching!” So it was, and Bibi was watching too, her ugly, beautiful, infinitely loving face grave with concern.
“If you get sick, come home,” his parents had written, “and we’ll take care of you.”
That’s just what I’ve done, he wanted to say; I’ve come home, and the mother of us all is taking care of me.
Then he fell into a restless sleep in which he was walking, walking, always walking. He was walking not merely across the millennia but across goddamned millions of years toward someone who had cried out in pain. Toward a lot of someones. And he thought his heart would break from the effort and the sorrow.
* * *
Jeremy awoke, shivering, as three women sponged him down. A child’s voice piped up like rock music when the lead singer goes falsetto. He heard a cuff, and a cry, and the child was out of there.
In the muted grey light of a dawn he had never expected to see, he found Elizabeth Umurungi’s troubled eyes, much reddened, watching him. “If he doesn’t come out of this now…” he expected her to say. Instead, he could lip-read the words of the Rosary.
He cried at her sorrow. He imagined that someone took his hand in a warm grip, unlike any he had ever known. It drew him back across the years, across the gulf of sickness, fear, and death, out of the place where
the sky dropped diamonds and back into the familiar smells and sounds of the tiny village.
* * *
Flies buzzed overhead, butting up against the hut’s thatched ceiling. Jeremy wrinkled his nose at the reek of antiseptic, so totally at odds with the homelier smells of animal dung, human sweat, and cooking fires. Not far away, water trickled into a metal basin…God, he was so thirsty! He tried to ask for water. Something between a croak and a whimper emerged from lips that cracked open with the effort.
Another voice echoed his. Someone went to the door and called. Shouts that might have been cheers sounded from outside.
“He’s coming around? Good! Stay with him.”
His eyes were so thoroughly gummed shut that it seemed to take an hour to open them. He flexed his fingers. Still all there. What about his other arm, the one Bibi had bitten?
Experimentally, he moved it, and flinched.
“I wouldn’t try that,” said Elizabeth. “You’ve been pretty sick. Bit of a reaction to the rabies vaccine. Or maybe the tetanus.”
The what?
“Maybe you can help me out,” continued Elizabeth. “I don’t know what got you. I just know I found you, swelling up like a balloon, blood oozing from your arm, and nothing in sight.”
“It was Bibi.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Elizabeth.
“It was Bibi, and she didn’t do it to hurt me,” whispered Jeremy weakly.
“Rubbish.”
“You’ll see,” said Jeremy. “Ask her yourself.”
“Why in the world would she come back here—especially if she bit you?”
“Because she’s worried about her son.”
“You’re not her son,” replied Elizabeth patiently, as if speaking to a child.
“We are all her children,” rasped Jeremy. “Somehow, she felt our pain, knew we were in trouble, and through means we’ll never understand, she did what any mother would do: she came to help us.”
“Jeremy, you’ve been delirious. You’re still not thinking rationally,” said Elizabeth. “She’s an old woman, that’s all. Possibly a bit retarded. And she’s probably mute; the children told me she used some form of sign language when she spoke to them.”