"My mother did not give up all contact with my father's people. When some of the farther-ranging Bushmen came to the village to trade, my mother sent back messages. One day, when I was perhaps ten years old, my uncle came out of the desert. With my mother's blessing, he took me to meet my relations.
"I will not tell you the story of the years I spent with them. I learned much, both of my father and the world in which he had lived. I grew to love them, and also to fear for them. Even at that young age I could see that their way of life was dwindling away. They knew it themselves. I often think that although they never told me so—that is not my people's way—they hoped that through me they would save something of the wisdom of Grandfather Mantis, of the old ways. Like a man lost on an island who writes a letter and puts it in a bottle, I think they meant to send me back to the city-world with something of our people saved inside me."
!Xabbu hung his head. "And the first of my great shames is that for many years after I returned to my mother's village, I thought no more of it. No, that is not true, for I thought of my time with my father's people often, and always will. But I thought little of the fact that they would be gone someday, that almost nothing would be left of the old world. I was young and saw life as something limitless. I was eager to learn everything and afraid of nothing—the prospect of the city-world and all its wonders seemed far more intriguing than life in the bush. I worked hard in the small school, and a man who was important in the village took interest in me. He told a group called The Circle about me. They are people from all over the world who are interested in what city-folk call 'aboriginal cultures.' With their help I was able to gain a position at a school in the same city where my father died, a good school. My mother feared for me, but in her wisdom she let me go. At least, I think it was wisdom.
"So I studied, and learned of other kinds of life besides that led by my people. I became familiar with things that are as ordinary to you as water and air, but to me were at first strange and almost magical—electric light, wallscreens, plumbing. I learned about the science of the folk who had invented these things, and learned some of the history of the black and white peoples as well, but in all the books, all the netflicks, there was almost nothing about my own people.
"Always I returned to my mother's family when school was ended for the season to help with the sheep and set out the nets for fish. Fewer and fewer of those living in the old way came to the village to trade. As the years passed, I began to wonder what had happened to my father's people. Did they still live in the desert? Did my uncle and his brothers still dance the eland dance when they had killed one of the great beasts? Did my aunt and her sisters still sing songs about how the earth is lonely for the rain? I decided that I would go and see them again.
"And here is my second shame. Even though it had been a good year, even though the rains had been plentiful and the desert was friendly and full of life, I almost died while searching for them. I had forgotten much of what they had taught me—I was like a man who grows old and loses his vision, loses his hearing. The desert and the dry hills kept secrets from me.
"I survived, but only barely, after much thirst and hunger. It was a long time until I could feel the rhythm of life the way my father's family had taught me, before I could feel again the ticking in my breast that told me game was near, smell the places where water lay close beneath the sand. I slowly found the old ways, but I did not find my father's family or any other free Bushmen. At last I went to the sacred places, the hills where the people painted on the rocks, but there was no sign of recent habitation. Then I truly feared for my relations. Every year they had gone there to show their respect for the spirits of the First People, but they had not come for a long time. My father's people were gone. Perhaps they are all dead.
"I left the desert, but something in me had changed forever. I made a promise to myself that the life of my people would not simply disappear, that the stories of Mongoose and Porcupine and the Morning Star would not be forgotten, the old ways would not be swept away by the sand as the wind blows away a man's footprints after he has died. Whatever must be done to save something of them, I would do it. To accomplish this I would learn the science of the city-people, which I then believed could do anything.
"Again the people in The Circle were generous, and with their help I came to Durban to study how the city-people make worlds for themselves. For that is what I wish to do, Renie, what I must do—I must make the world of my people again, the world of the Early Race. It will never exist again in our time, on our earth, but it should not be lost forever!"
!Xabbu fell silent, rocking back and forth. His eyes were dry, but his pain was very clear.
"But I think that's a wonderful thing," Renie said at last. If her friend was not crying, she was. "I think that's the best argument for VR I've ever heard. Why are you so unhappy now, when you have learned so much, when you're so much nearer to your goal?"
"Because when I was in that terrible place with you, while you were struggling to save my life, I went away in my thoughts to another world. That is shameful, that I left you behind, but I could not help it, so that is not what makes me sad." He stared at her, and now she saw the fear again. "I went to the place of the First People. I do not know how, or why, but while you were experiencing all the things that you told to me in the emergency room, I was in another place. I saw sweet Grandfather Mantis, riding between the horns of his hartebeest. His wife Kauru was there, and his two sons Kwammanga and Mongoose. But the one who spoke to me was Porcupine, his beloved daughter. She told me that even the place beyond the world, the place of the First People, was in danger. Before the Honey-Guide appeared to lead me back, she told me that soon the place where we were would become a great emptiness, that just as this city-world in which you and I sit had gradually overwhelmed my people in their desert, so the First People were being overwhelmed.
"If that is so, then it will not matter if I build my people's world again, Renie. If the First People are driven from their place beyond this earth, then anything I make will only be an empty shell, a beetle's hollow casing left behind when the beetle has died. I do not want to use your science simply to make a museum, Renie, a place for city-folk to see what was once alive. Do you understand? I want to make a home where something of my people will live forever. If the home of the First People disappears, then the dream that is dreaming us will dream us no more. The whole life of my people, since the very dawn of things, will be nothing but footprints vanishing under the wind.
"And that is why I can no longer hear the sun ringing."
They sat together in silence for a while. Renie poured herself another glass of water and offered some to !Xabbu, but he shook his head. She could not understand what he was saying, and a part of her was uncomfortable, as she was when her Christian colleagues spoke of heaven, or the Moslems spoke of the Prophet's miracles. But there was no ignoring the Bushman's deep unhappiness.
"I do not understand exactly what you mean, but I'm trying." She reached out and lifted his unresisting hand, squeezing his dry fingers in hers. "As you have helped me try to help Stephen, I'll do my best to help you—just tell me what I can do. You're my friend, !Xabbu."
He smiled for the first time since he had arrived. "And you are my good friend, Renie. I do not know what I must do. I have been thinking and thinking." He gently retrieved his hand and rubbed his eyes, his weariness very evident. "But we also have your questions to answer—so many questions the two of us have! What are we to do about the yellow diamond, that dangerous thing?"
Renie yawned, hugely and—to her—embarrassingly. "I think I may know someone who can help us, but I'm too tired to deal with it now. After I get some sleep, I'll call her."
"Then sleep. I will stay until your father returns."
She told him it was not necessary, but it was like arguing with a cat.
"I will give you privacy." !Xabbu stood up smoothly, a single motion. "I will sit in your other room and think." Smiling again, he
backed out the door and pulled it closed behind him.
Renie lay for a long time thinking of the strange places they had both visited, places only linked because they had both been conceived in the human mind. Or so she believed. But it was hard to hold firmly to that belief when watching the deep longing and expression of loss on !Xabbu's serious, intelligent face.
She woke up, startled by the tall, dark figure bending over her. Her father took a hurried step back, as though he had been caught doing something bad.
"It's only me, girl. Just checking you all right."
"I'm fine. I took my medicine. Is !Xabbu here?"
He shook his head. She could smell the beer on his breath, but he seemed relatively steady on his feet "He gone home. What you making 'em line up now?"
She stared at him in puzzlement.
"Another man sitting in a car out in front when I got home, Big man, beard. He drove off when I walked up."
Renie felt a swift pang of fear. " A white man?"
Her father laughed. " 'Round here? Naw, he was black as me. Somebody for one of the other places, probably. Or a robber. You keep that chain on the door when I'm not around."
She smiled. "Yes, Papa." It was rare to see him so concerned.
"I'll see if there's something to eat" He hesitated in the doorway, then turned. "That friend of yours, he's one of the Small People."
"Yes. He's a Bushman. From the Okavango Delta."
There was a strange look in her father's eye, a small fire of memory. "They the oldest folk, you know. They were here even before the black man came—before the Xhosa, the Zulu, any of them."
She nodded, intrigued by the faraway sound of his voice.
"I never thought I'd see one of his kind again. The Small People. Never thought I'd see any more."
He went out the distracted expression still on his face. He shut the door quietly.
CHAPTER 14
His Master's Voice
NETFEED/NEWS: Merowe To Face War Crimes Trial
(visual: Merowe surrendering to UN General Ram Shagra)
VO: Hassan Merowe, the outsted president of the Nubian Republic, will face a UN tribunal for war crimes.
(visual: UN soldiers excavating mass graves outside Khartoum)
As many as a million people are thought to have died during the ten years of Merowe's rule, one of the bloodiest in the history of Northeastern Africa.
(visual: Merowe's attorney, Mohammad al-Rashad)
RASHAD: "President Merowe is not afraid to stand before other world leaders. My client singlehandedly built our nation from the smoldering ruins of Sudan. These people all know that a leader must sometimes take a firm stand during times of chaos, and if they claim they would have done differently, then they are hypocrites. . . ."
A neon-red line crawled at the edge of his vision, as though one of his own ocular capillaries had suddenly become visible. The line wriggled and turned on itself, branching and then rebranching as the expert system which it symbolized did its work. Dread smiled. Beinha y Beinha were not trusting his promises on security—they wanted to know his virtual office as well as they knew their own. Not that he would have expected anything different. In fact, despite some successful past partnerships, he would have had serious doubts about hiring them again if they had taken him at his word.
Confident, cocky, lazy, dead. It was the Old Man's mantra, and a good one, even if Dread sometimes drew the lines in different places than the Old Man would. Still, he was alive, and in his kind of business that was the only measurement of success—there were no failures who were merely poor. Of course, the Old Man had something to show for his greater caution—he had been alive longer than his hired gun. A lot longer.
Dread augmented the field of abstract color outside the office's single window, then returned his own attention to the virtual white wall as the Beinhas' gear finished checking the security of his node. When it had satisfied itself, it disconnected, the red line vanishing from Dread's own monitor program and the Beinha twins immediately snapped in,
They appeared as two identical but almost featureless objects, seated side by side on the far side of the table like a pair of headstones. The Beinha sisters disdained high-quality sims for personal meetings, and no doubt regarded Dread's own expensive replication as a meaningless and flashy example of excess. He enjoyed the prospect of their irritation: noting the tics of other professionals, and even of his victims, was the closest he ever came to the fondness for the habits of friends that enlivened the existence of more mundane people.
"Welcome, ladies." He gestured to the simulated black marble table and the Yixing stoneware tea service, so important for doing even virtual business with Pacific Rim clients that Dread had made it a permanent part of his office environment. "Can I offer you anything?"
He could almost feel the annoyance that emanated from the twin shapes. "We do not waste our net time on amateur theatricals," one of them said. His satisfaction increased—they were annoyed enough not to hide it. First move to him.
"We are here to deal," said the other faceless shape.
He could never remember their names. Xixa and Nuxa, something like that, elfin Indio names quite out of character with their real selves, first given to them when they were the child stars of a Sao Paulo brothel. Not that it mattered whether he remembered or not: the two operated so much as a single entity that either would answer questions addressed to the other. The Beinha sisters considered names almost as much of a sentimental indulgence as realistic sims.
"Then we'll deal," he said cheerfully. "You reviewed the prospectus, of course?"
More irritation, revealed in the slight pause before reply. "We have. It can be done."
"It will not be easy." He thought the second had spoken, but they used the same digitized voice, so it was difficult to tell. The sisters had an effective act—they seemed to be one mind inhabiting two bodies.
What if it really is only one person? he suddenly wondered. I've certainty never seen more than one of them at a time in RL. What if the whole "deadly twin" thing is just a marketing gimmick? Dread put aside the interesting thought for later. "We are prepared to pay 350,000 Swiss credits. Plus approved expenses."
"That is unacceptable."
Dread raised an eyebrow, knowing his sim would mimic the effect exactly. "Then it seems we'll have to find another contracting agency."
The Beinhas regarded him for a moment, blank as two stones. "The job you wish done is only technically within the civil sector. Because of the importance of the . . . object you plan to remove, there would be many repercussions from the national government. Loss of the object would, in fact, have worldwide impact. This means that any contractors would have to prepare a greater degree of protection than is usual."
He wondered how much of their unaccented English was voice-filters. It was not hard to imagine a pair of twenty-two-year-old women—if his information on them could be trusted—purposefully shedding their accents along with everything else they had jettisoned on their way to becoming what they were.
He decided to poke them a bit "What you're saying is, this is not really a civilian job but a political assassination."
There was a long moment's silence. Mockingly, Dread brought up the background music to fill it. When the first sister spoke, her voice was as flat and inflectionless as before. "That is correct. And you know it"
"So you think it's worth more than Cr.S. 350,000."
"We will not waste your time. We do not want more money. In fact, if you sweeten the job for us with something else, we will ask only Cr.S. 100,000, most of which we will need for post-action protection and a cooling-off period."
Again the eyebrow lifted. "And what is this 'something else'?"
The second of the two shapeless figures laid spatulate hands on the tabletop. "We have heard that your principal has access to certain biological products—a large source of them in our own hemisphere."
Dread sat forward. He felt something tightening at his
temples. "My principal? I'm the only person you deal with on this contract. You're on very dangerous ground."
"Nevertheless, it is known you do a great deal of work for a certain group. Whether they are the ultimate source of this contract or not, they have something we want"
"We wish to start a side-business," said the other sister. "Something less strenuous for our old age than our current occupation. We think that wholesaling these biological products would be ideal, and we seek a way into the business. Your principal can grant us that. We seek a franchise, not a rivalry."
Dread considered. The Old Man and his friends, despite the immense influence they wielded, were certainly the objects of many rumors. The Beinhas traveled in the sort of circles that would know much of the truth behind even the most horrifying and improvable speculations, so their request didn't necessarily imply a breach of security. Even so, he did not particularly relish the thought of going to the Old Man with such an impertinent offer, and it also meant he would lose some of his control over his own subcontractors—not the sort of thing that suited his future plans at all.
"I think perhaps I should give this job to Klekker and Associates." He said it as lazily as possible—he was angry with himself at being caught off-balance. Second move to the Beinha sisters.
The first shape laughed, a snick of sound like a breadknife being drawn across someone's windpipe. "And waste months and credits while he does the backgrounding?"
"Not to mention trusting the job itself to his team of bravos," added the second, "who will come in like wild bulls and leave hoofprints and horn-scars on everything. This is our territory. We have contacts all over that city, and in some very useful sectors of it, too."
"Ah, but Klekker won't try to extort me."
The first placed her hands on the table beside her sister's, so that they seemed to be performing a seance. "You have worked with us before. You know we will deliver what you need. And unless you have changed mightily, senhor, you plan to play the role of foreman yourself. Whose preparations would you rather trust your own safety to—Klekker, working in a strange place, or us, performing in our back garden?"