Part 22 (2/2)

”Yes, I suppose, it is like the old slave underground railroads,” I answered one.

”I still don't understand why they try to stop people going in.”

”Because we scare them. We can build a society in there that needs nothing from them. We challenge everything they believe. This is the first century we have gone into where we have no ideas, no philosophies, no beliefs. Buy stuff, look at stuff. That's it. We are supposed to build a thousand years on that?

Well, now we do. I tell you, I've been reading, learning stuff, ideas, politics. Philosophy. It's all in there.

There are information storage banks the size of skyc.r.a.pers, Sean. And not just our history. Other people, other races. You can go into them, you can become them. Live their lives, see things through their senses. We are not the first. We are part of a long, long chain, and we are not the end of it. The world will belong to us; we will control physical reality as easily as computers control information.”

”h.e.l.l, never mind the UN ... you scare me, Ten!”

I always loved it when he called me Ten. II Primo, Top of the Heap, King of the Hill, A-Number-One.

Then he said, ”and your family?”

”Little Egg is in a place called Kilandui. It's full of weavers, she's a weaver. She makes beautiful brocades. I see her quite often.”

”And your mother and father?”

”I'll find them.”

But to most of his questions, there was only one answer: ”Come, and I will show you.” I left it to last. It rocked him as if he had been struck.

”You are serious.”

”Why not? You took me to your home once. Let me take you to mine. But first, it's a year... And so so much...”

He picked me up.

”I like you in this combat stuff,” he said.

We laughed a lot and remembered old things we had forgotten. We slowly shook off the rust and the dust, and it was good, and I remember the room maid opening the door and letting out a little shriek and going off giggling.

Scan once told me that one of his nation's greatest ages was built on those words, why not? For a thousand years Christianity had ruled England with the question: ”Why?” Build a cathedral, invent a science, write a play, discover a new land, start a business: ”Why?” Then came the Elizabethans with the answer: ”Why not?”

I knew the old Elizabethan was thinking, why not? There are only numbers to go back to, and benefit traps, and an old, gray city, and an old, gray dying world, a safe world with few promises. Here there's a world to be made. Here there's a future of a million years to be shaped. Here there are a thousand different ways of living together to be designed, and if they don't work, roll them up like clay and start again.

I did not hurry Sean for his answer. He knew as well as I that it was not a clean decision. It was lose a world, or lose each other. These are not choices you make in a day. So, I enjoyed the hotel. One day I was having a long bath. The hotel had a great bathroom and there was a lot of free stuff you could play with, so I abused it. I heard Scan pick up the phone. I could not make out what he was saying, but he

was talking for some time. When I came out he was sitting on the edge of the bed with the telephone beside him. He sat very straight and formal.

”I called Jean-Paul,” he said. ”I gave him my resignation.”

Two days later, we set out for the Chaga. We went by matatu. It was a school holiday, the Peugeot Services were busy with children on their way back to their families. They made a lot of noise and energy. They looked out the corners of their eyes at us and bent together to whisper. Scan noticed this.

”They're talking about you,” Scan said.

”They know what I am, what I do.”

One of the schoolgirls, in a black and white uniform, understood our English. She fixed Scan a look.

”She is a warrior,” she told him. ”She is giving us our nation back.”

We left most of the children in Kapsabet to change on to other matatus; ours drove on into the heart of the Nandi Hills. It was a high, green rolling country, in some ways like Scan's England. I asked the driver to stop just past a metal cross that marked some old road death.

”What now?” Sean said. He sat on the small pack I had told him was all he could take.

”Now, we wait. They won't be long.”

Twenty cars went up the muddy red road, two trucks, a country bus and medical convoy went down.

Then they came out of the darkness between the trees on the other side of the road like dreams out of sleep: Meji, Naomi and Hamid. They beckoned: behind them came men, women, children . .. entire families, from babes in arms to old men; twenty citizens, appearing one by one out of the dark, looking nervously up and down the straight red road, then crossing to the other side.

I lived with Meji, he looked Scan up and down.

”This is the one?”

”This is Scan.”

”I had expected something, um ...”

”Whiter?”

He laughed. He shook hands with Scan and introduced himself. Then Meji took a tube out of his pocket and covered Scan in spray. Scan jumped back, choking.

”Stay there, unless you want your clothes to fall off you when you get inside,” I said.

Naomi translated this for the others. They found it very funny. When he had immunized Scan's clothes, Meji sprayed his bag.

”Now, we walk,” I told Scan.

We spent the night in the Chief's house in the village of Senghalo. He was the last station on our railroad. I know from my Dust Girl days you need as good people on the outside as the inside. Folk came from all around to see the black Englishman. Although he found being looked at intimidating, Scan managed to tell his story. I translated. At the end the crowd outside the Chief's house burst into spontaneous applause and finger-clicks.

”Aye, Tendeleo, how can I compete?” Meji half-joked with me.

I slept fitfully that night, troubled by the sound of aircraft moving under the edge of the storm.

”Is it me?” Sean said.

”No, not you. Go back to sleep.”

Sunlight through the bamboo wall woke us. While Sean washed outside in the bright, cold morning, watched by children curious to see if the black went all the way down, Chief and I tuned his shortwave to the UN frequencies. There was a lot of chatter in Klingon. You Americans think we don't understand

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