NETFEED/INTERACTVES: IEN, Hr. 4 (Eu, NAm)—"BACKSTAB"

(visual: Kennedy running across estate garden pursued by tornado)

VO: Stabbak (Carolus Kennedy) and Shi Na (Wendy Yohira) again try to escape the fortress estate of the mysterious Doctor Methuselah (Moishe Reiner). Jeffreys, 6 other supporting characters open. Flak to: IEN.BKSTB.CAST

 

"Someone at the door downstairs." Long Joseph stood nervously in the doorway of her room, unwilling to enter the proximity of illness, even something as unlikely to be contagious as what he had been told was a "breakdown due to stress." "He says his name Gabba or something."

"It's !Xabbu. My friend from the Poly. You can let him in."

He stared for a moment, frowning, then turned and trudged away. He was clearly not happy about answering the door or taking messages for her, but in his own way he was doing his best. Renie sighed. In any case, she couldn't summon up the energy to be angry—suspicious and bad-tempered was just her father's way. To his credit, in the days she'd been home, he hadn't expected her to get up and fix him meals. Of course, his own contribution to the household hadn't grown much either. They were both eating a lot of cold cereal and waved Menu Boxes.

She heard the front door opening. She struggled upright in the bed and drank some water, then tried to fluff herself into some appearance of normality. Even if you'd almost died, it was embarrassing to have bed-hair.

Unlike her father, the Bushman came into the sickroom with no hesitation. He stopped a few feet away from her, which she guessed was more from some strange sort of respect than anything else. Renie reached out her hand to draw him closer. His fingers were warm and reassuring.

"I am very happy to see you, Renie. I have been worrying about you."

"I'm doing pretty well, actually." She squeezed his hand and released him, then looked around for something for !Xabbu to sit on. The only chair was covered with clothes, but he seemed content to stand. "I had to fight like hell to get them to send me home from the emergency room. But if I'd gone into hospital, I would have been stuck in quarantine for weeks."

She would also have been close to Stephen, but she knew that would have been a bittersweet proximity at best.

"You are best at home, I think." He smiled. "I know that amazing things can be done in a modem hospital, but I am still one of my people. I would become even more sick if I had to stay in such a place."

Renie looked up. Her father was back in the doorway, staring at !Xabbu. Long Joseph had a very strange expression on his face; when he saw Renie, it changed to something like embarrassment.

"I'm going over to see Walter." He showed her his hat as proof. He took a few steps away, then turned. "You be all right?"

"I'm not going to die while you're gone, if that's what you mean." She saw the closing-up of his face and regretted her words. "I'll be fine, Papa. Don't you and Walter drink too much."

Her father had been looking at !Xabbu again, but he scowled at Renie. It was not particularly unpleasant, more of a general-purpose scowl. "Don't you worry about what I'm getting up to, girl."

!Xabbu was still standing patiently when the door closed behind Long Joseph, eyes bright in his small solemn face. Renie patted the edge of the bed.

"Please sit down. You're making me nervous. I'm sorry we couldn't talk before, but the drugs I've been taking make me sleep a lot."

"But you are better now?" He scrutinized her race. "You look healthy in your spirit to me. When we first came back from . . . from that place, I was very frightened for you."

"It was an arrhythmia—not really a full-fledged heart attack. In fact, I'm feeling enough better that I'm beginning to get really angry. I saw them, !Xabbu, the bastards who run that place. I saw what they do in that club. I still don't have the slightest idea why, but if we weren't both this close—" she held up her fingers, "—to having the same thing happen as Stephen and who knows how many others, I'll eat my hat." !Xabbu stared at her, confused. Renie laughed. "Sorry. That's an expression that means 'I'm certain I'm right.' Haven't you heard it before?"

The Bushman shook his head. "No. But I am learning more all the time, learning to think, almost, in this language. Sometimes I wonder what I am losing." He finally sat down. He was so light Renie barely felt the mattress give. "What do we do now, Renie? If what you say is true, these are bad people doing very bad things. Do we tell the police or the government?"

"That's one of the reasons I wanted to see you—to show you something." She reached down behind her pillows, feeling for her pad. It took her some moments to pull it from the gap between the mattress and the wall where it had been wedged. She was dismayed by how weak she still felt; even the small effort made her feel short of breath. "Did you bring the goggles? It's so much slower trying to work on a flat screen."

!Xabbu produced the cases stamped with the Polytechnic's logo. Renie took out both sets, neither much larger man a pair of sunglasses, found a Y-connector in the tangle of cables beside her, and jacked both the goggle-cable and a pair of squeezers into her pad.

When she handed one pair of goggles to !Xabbu, he did not immediately take them.

"What's wrong?"

He shook his head slowly. "I was lost, Renie. I failed you when we were in that place."

"We're not going anywhere near there—besides, this is just optical display and sound, anyway, not full wrap-around. We're just going to go visit the Poly's infobanks and a few other subnets. There's nothing to be afraid of."

"It is not so much fear that holds me back, although I would be a liar if I said I was not frightened. But there is more. There are things I need to tell you, Renie—things about what happened to me in that place."

She paused, not wanting to push him. Despite his facility, she reminded herself, he was still very new to this—new to everything she took for granted, in fact. "I have things I need to show you, too. I promise you it will be no worse than working in the lab at the school. Afterward, I very much want to hear what you have to say." She offered the goggles again and this time !Xabbu accepted them.

The empty gray quickly became the ordered polygons of her personal system—a simple array resembling a home office, far less sophisticated than what she had available at the Poly. She had customized it with a few pictures on the wall and a tank of tropical fish, but otherwise it was a coldly functional environment, a system for someone who was always in a hurry. She couldn't see herself changing it any time soon.

"We were in that place for what, three hours? Four?" As she palpated the squeezers, one of the polygons became a window. After a moment, the Polytechnic's logo and advisory warning appeared. Renie keyed in her access code and immediately the library environment sprang into detailed existence. "Bear with me," she said. "I'm used to doing my work here with some kind of freehand capabilities, but today we're stuck with these squeezer things, which are pretty basic."

It was strange to be moving through such a familiar and realistic environment but not being able to react directly to anything; when she wanted to manipulate one of the symbolic objects, instead of reaching out toward it, she had to think about the quite different things needed to key in a direction.

"This is what I wanted you to see," she said when she'd finally opened the information window she wanted, "—the Poly's records for that day." Lines of numbers rolled rapidly upward in front of them. "Here's the Harness Room prefix, all the connections. There we are, signing in. That's my access code, right?"

"I see it" !Xabbu's voice was steady but distant.

"Well, scan this. That's our usage record. No connection except to the in-house school system."

"I don't understand."

"It means that, according to this, we never logged onto the net, never entered the commercial node called 'Mister J's' all. Everything we experienced, the pool, that sea-monster, that huge main room, none of it happened. That's what the Poly's records say, anyway."

"I am confused, Renie. Perhaps I am still not as wise about these things as I believed myself to be. How could there be no record?"

"I don't know!" Renie played the squeezers. Inside the goggle-universe, the Poly's records disappeared and another window opened up. "Look at this—my own personal accounts, even the ones I set up just for this, are zeroed. None of the connection time was charged to me, to the school—anywhere! There's not a single record of what we did. Nothing." She took a breath, reminding herself to stay calm. She still got a little dizzy now and then, but was feeling stronger every day, which made the whole thing even more frustrating. "If we can't find the records, we can't very well make a complaint, can we? You can just imagine what the reaction of the authorities would be: 'That's a very serious charge, Ms. Sulaweyo, especially since you've apparently never used the node in question.' It would be useless."

"I wish I could make some suggestion, Renie. I wish there was some help I could give, but this is beyond my very young knowledge."

"You can help. You can help me try to find out what happened. I don't have much stamina, and I get tired if I have to stare at anything too long. But if you can be my eyes, we can try a few things I haven't had a chance to do yet. I'm not giving up that easily. Those bastards have hurt my brother, and they damn near got you and me, too."

 

Renie was leaning back against the pillows. She'd taken her medicine, and as usual it was making her sleepy. !Xabbu was sitting cross-legged on the floor, his eyes hidden by the goggles, his fingers moving with surprising fluency on the squeezer keys.

"There is nothing like what you describe," he said, breaking a long silence. "No loops, no repetitions. All the loose ends are, as you would say, tied up."

"Shit." She closed her eyes again, trying to think of another way through the problem. Someone had wiped out all record of what she and !Xabbu had done, then fabricated a new one and inserted it seamlessly into place. The time they had spent in the club, all of it, was now as insubstantial and improvable as a dream.

"The thing that frightens me is not just that they've managed to do that, but the fact that they tracked back all my aliases and wiped them, too. There shouldn't be any way in hell they could do that"

!Xabbu was still moving through the data-world. The goggles looked like insect eyes on his narrow face. "But if they have found these false selves you constructed, can they not trace them back to you?"

"Yesterday I would have said 'Not in a million years,' but suddenly I'm not so sure. If they know it was someone at the Poly, they wouldn't have much trouble narrowing it down without even getting into internal records." She bit her lip, wondering. It was not a pleasant thought; she somehow doubted that the people who ran Mister J's would limit themselves to the kind of intimidation that came in a solicitor's letter. "I kept them as far from me as I could when I was setting up the aliases, went in through public nodes, everything I could think of. I never believed they could track me straight back to the Poly."

!Xabbu made a sudden noise, a small click of surprise. Renie sat up.

"What?"

"There is something. . . ." He paused and his fingers moved swiftly. "There is something here. What does it mean when an orange light flashes in your office? It is blinking like a lightning beetle! It just began."

"That's the antivirals kicking in." Renie leaned over, ignoring the moment of light-headedness, and picked the other pair of goggles up from the floor. She pulled the Y-connector tight between her and !Xabbu. "Someone's trying to get into my system, maybe." A shiver of unease moved through her. Had they tracked her already? Who were these people?

She was in the system's basic VR representation again, the three-dimensional office. A small vermilion dot was blinking on and off, a smoldering glow like a coal from a braai. She leaned and groped blindly across !Xabbu's knee, then tapped a couple of keys. Inside the virtual space, the dot of light exploded into a welter of symbols and text which filled much of the office.

"Whatever it is, it's already in the system, but it's still dormant. Probably a virus." She was angry that her system had been penetrated and perhaps hopelessly corrupted, but at the same time it seemed an oddly muted response from the kind of people who owned such a club. She set her Phage gear in search of the intruding code. It didn't have to hunt very long.

"What in hell. . . ?"

!Xabbu sensed her puzzlement "What is wrong, Renie?"

"That's not supposed to be there."

Hanging in virtual space before them, rendered much more realistically than the planar office furniture, was a translucent, yellow-glinting, faceted object.

"It looks like a yellow diamond." An image, as tenuous as a dream, floated up to her—a pure white shape, an empty person made of light—then it was gone again.

"Is it a computer sickness? Is it something those people have sent?"

"I don't know. I think I recall something about it from just before we went offline, but it's all very confused. I don't remember much of what happened after I went back to the cave to get you." The yellow gem hung before her, staring back like an emotionless golden eye.

"I really must talk to you, Renie." !Xabbu sounded unhappy. "I must tell you about what happened to me there."

"Not now." She quickly threw her analyticals at the gem—or at what the gem represented. When the results came back a few moments later, surrounding the foreign object like a system of tiny text planets orbiting a diamond-edged sun, she whistled between her teeth in surprise. "It's code, but it's been compacted until it's tight as a drum. There's an amazing amount of information packed in there. If it is some kind of destructive virus, it's got enough information to rewrite a system much bigger than mine."

"What are you going to do?"

Renie didn't answer him for several long moments as she hastily checked back through her earlier connections. "Wherever it came from, it's attached itself to my system now. But I don't see any trace of it remaining on my part of the Polytechnic's net, which is just as well. God, the pad is bulging—I hardly have any memory left." She cut her connection to the school. "I don't think I can even activate this thing on my little system here, so maybe it's effectively neutralized, although I can't imagine why someone would set up a virus that downloads itself to a system too small for it to operate. For that matter, I can't imagine why anyone would make a virus that big—it's like trying to use an elephant to do surveillance in a phone booth."

She turned off her system and removed the goggles, then slumped back on her bed. Small spots of yellow light like the diamond's smaller cousins jittered before her eyes. !Xabbu took off his own goggles and looked at the pad with suspicion, as though something unpleasant might crawl out of it. He then turned his worried look onto her.

"You look pale. I will pour you some water."

"I have to find a system that's powerful enough to let the thing activate," Renie said, thinking out loud, "but that's not connected to any other system—something big and isolated, sterile. I could probably set that up in one of the labs at the Poly, but I'd have to answer a lot of questions."

!Xabbu carefully handed her a glass. "Should you not destroy it? If it is something that those people made, the people of that terrible place, it must be a dangerous thing."

"But if it came from the club, it's the only proof we've got that we were there! Even more important, it's code, and people who write high-level code have their own style, just like flick directors or artists. If we can figure out who writes the gear for Mister J's duty side—well, it's a place to start, anyway." She drained the glass in two long swallows, amazed at how thirsty she was. "I'm not going to give up just because they frightened me." She let herself slump back against the pillows. "I'm not giving up."

!Xabbu still sat cross-legged on the floor. "So how will you do this if you do not use the school?" He sounded almost mournful, far more so than was appropriate for what he'd said, as though he were making small talk while saying good-bye to someone he did not expect to see again.

"I'm thinking. I have a couple of ideas, but I need to let them cook."

The Bushman was quiet, staring at the floor. At last he looked up. His eyes were troubled, his forehead wrinkled. Renie suddenly realized that a quite uncharacteristic gloom had been hanging over him since he had arrived.

"You said you wanted to talk to me about what happened."

He nodded his head. "I am very confused, Renie, and I need to speak. You are my friend. You have saved my life, I think."

"And you saved mine, and I know that for certain. If you had waited too long before getting help for me. . . ."

"It was not hard to see that your spirit was very weak, that you were very ill." He shrugged as though embarrassed.

"So talk to me. Tell me why your spirit is weak, if that's what is wrong."

He nodded, his expression solemn. "Since we came back from that place, I do not hear the sun ringing. That is what my people say. When you can no longer hear the sound the sun makes, your spirit is in danger. I have felt that way many days now.

"First I must tell you things about me you do not know—some of the story that is my life. I told you that my father is dead, that my mother and my sisters live with my people. You know that I have been to city schools. I am of my people, but I also have the language, the ideas of city-people. Sometimes these things feel like a poison inside of me, something cold that might stop my heart."

He stopped, drawing a deep, ragged breath. Whatever he was about to tell clearly pained him. Renie found that she was clenching her fists tightly, as though watching someone she loved perform a dangerous feat in a high place.

"There are very few of my people left," he began. "The old blood is mostly gone. We have married the taller people, or sometimes our women have been taken against their wishes, but there are fewer and fewer who look like me.

"There are fewer still who live in the old way. Even those who are of the true Bushman kind, of the pure blood, are almost all raising sheep or working in cattle stations along the edges of the Kalahari or in the Okavango Delta. That was my mother's family, a delta family. They had sheep, a few goats, they took fish from the delta and traded in the nearest town for things that they felt they needed—things our ancestors would have laughed at. How they would have laughed! Radios, someone even had an old television that worked on batteries—what are those things but the voices of the white man, and the black man who lives like the white man? Our ancestors would not have understood. The voices of the city drown out the sounds of the life my people once lived, just as they make it hard to hear the ringing of the sun.

"So my mother's family lived a life like many of Africa's poor black people, haunting the outside places of what had been their own lands. The whites do not rule in Africa now, at least they no longer sit in the offices of the Government, but the things they brought here rule Africa in their place. This you know, even living in the city."

Renie nodded. "I know."

"But there are still some of our people who live the old way—the way of the Early Races, the way of Mantis and Porcupine and Kwammanga the Rainbow. My father and his people lived this way. They were hunters, traveling in the desert where neither the white man nor the black man go, following the lightning, the rains, and the antelope herds. They still lived the life that my people have lived since the very first days of Creation, but only because there is nothing the city-folk want from the desert. I learned in school that there are still a few such places left in this world, a few places where no radios play, where no rolling wheels leave their tracks, but these places are shrinking away like water spilled on a flat rock that dries beneath the sun.

"But the only way my father's people could keep their life and hold on to the old ways was to stay far away from everyone, even those of our blood who had left the desert and the sacred hills. Once all Africa was ours, and we roamed it with the other first peoples, with the eland and the lion, the springbok and the baboon—we call baboons 'the people who sit on their heels'—and all the others. But the last remnants of our kind can live only by hiding. To them, the city-world is true poison. They cannot survive its touch.

"Many years ago now, before you or I were born, a terrible drought began. It hurt all the land, but most of all the dry places, the places where only my father's people lived. It lasted three full years. The great springbok herds deserted the land, the kudu and the hartebeest, too, they all died or moved away. And my father's family suffered. Even the sipping wells, the places where only the Bushmen can find water, ran dry. The old people had already given themselves up to the desert that the younger ones might live, but now the young and strong were dying also. The children already born were weak and sickly, and no new children had come, since in a time of great drought our women are no longer fertile.

"My father was a hunter, in the early prime of his life. He traveled far across the desert, walking for days in search of anything that might help keep his family, his brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, alive.

"But each time he went out he had to go farther in search of same, and each time there was less food to keep him alive as he hunted. The ostrich shells in which my people carry water were always nearly empty. The other hunters had no better luck, and the women worked all day long every day, digging for any roots that might have survived the terrible drought, collecting what few insects remained so that the children would have something to eat. At night they all prayed that the rains would finally come back. They had no happiness. They did not sing, and after a while they did not even tell stories. The misery was so great that some of my father's family suspected that the rain had finally left the earth and gone away forever to some other place, that life itself was ending.

"One day, when my father was on a hunting trip and had already been away from his people for seven days, he saw an impossible vision—a great eland, the most wonderful of all creatures, standing at the edge of a desert pan, nibbling at the bark of a thorn tree. An eland, he knew, would provide days of food for his family, and even the water in the grass remaining in its stomach would help to keep the children alive a little longer. But he knew it was also a strange thing to see this single solitary beast. The eland does not travel in vast herds like the other antelope, but where he goes, his family goes, just as with our own people. Also, this eland was not sick, its ribs did not show, despite the terrible drought. He could not help wondering if perhaps this animal was a special gift from Grandfather Mantis, who had made the very first eland from the leather of Kwammanga's sandal.

"As he wondered, the eland saw him and darted away. My father gave chase.

"All of one day he followed the eland, and when at last it stopped to rest, he crept as close as he could, then daubed an arrow with his strongest poison and let it fly. He saw the arrow strike before the eland ran away. When he went to the place it had been, the arrow was not there, so his heart was full. He had struck what he shot at. He began to track it, waiting for the poison to take effect.

"But the eland did not slow or show any sign of weakness. All the next day he tracked it, but never came close enough to shoot another arrow. The eland moved quickly. My father's ostrich shells were empty and there was no more dried meat in his pack, but he had no time to search for water or hunt for food.

"Two more days he tracked the animal across the sands, by hot sun and cold moon. The eland ran ever southeast, toward the place where the desert ended in what had been a great swamp around a river delta. My father had never in his life been half so close to the Okavango—his people, who had once traveled a thousand miles every season, now kept to the most inaccessible inner reaches of the desert for their own safety. But he had become a little mad with hunger and weariness and fear, or perhaps a spirit was in him. He was determined that he would catch the eland. He now felt sure that it was a gift from Mantis, and that if he brought it back to his people, the rains would come.

"At last, on the fourth day after he had shot at the eland, he stumbled across the fringes of the desert, through the hills into the outer edges of the Okavango Swamp. But of course the swamp had also dried in the great drought, and so he found nothing but cracked mud and dead trees. But still he saw the eland running before him, as faint as a dream, and saw its track in the dust, so he went on.

"He walked all night through that unfamiliar place, the bones of crocodiles and fish showing white beneath the moon. My father's people lived in the old way—they knew every rock and mound of sand, every tree and thornbush of the desert in the way that city-people know the habits of their children or the furnishings of their houses. But now he was in a place that he did not know, and chasing a great eland that he believed was a spirit. He was weak and afraid, but he was a hunter and his people were in terrible need. He prayed to the grandmother stars for wisdom. When the Morning Star, who is the greatest hunter of all, at last appeared in the sky, my father prayed to him as well. 'Make my heart as your heart,' he asked the star. He was begging for the courage to survive, for he had grown very weak.

"As the sun rose up into the sky and began to burn the land again, my father saw the shape of the eland beside a stream of running water. The sight of so much water, and the spirit-beast so close at last, made my father's head hurt and so he fell to the ground. He crawled toward the eland, but his arms and legs grew weak and he could not crawl any farther. But as his senses fled from him, he saw that the eland had become a beautiful girl—a girl of our people, but with an unfamiliar face.

"It was my mother, who had gotten up early in the morning to walk to the water. The drought meant that even the great river delta was nearly dry, and she and her family had to travel a long way from their tiny village beside the road to draw water. My mother saw this hunter come from the desert and fall down in a swoon at her feet, and she saw that he was dying. She gave him to drink. He emptied her jug, then nearly drank the little stream dry. When he could walk, she took him back to her family.

"The older ones still spoke his language. While my mother's parents fed him, the grandparents asked him many questions, clucking to themselves in wonder at seeing a man of their own early memories. He ate, but did not say much. Although these people looked much like him, their ways were strange, but he hardly noticed what they did. He had eyes only for my mother. She, who had never seen a man of the old ways, had eyes only for him.

"He could not stay. He had lost the eland, but he would at least take water back to his family and people. He was also uneasy with the strangers, with their box-that-spoke, with their strange clothes and strange language. My mother, who did not like or respect her own father because he beat her, ran away with my father, preferring to go to his people than to remain with her own.

"Although he did not urge her to leave her family, he was very happy when she came with him, for she was beautiful in his eye from their first meeting. He called her Eland's Daughter, and they laughed together, although at first they could not understand each other's speech. When at last, after a journey of many days, they found his people again, the rest of his family was amazed by his story and welcomed her and made much of her. That night thunder rang out over the desert and lightning walked. The rains had come back. The drought was ended."

!Xabbu fell silent. Renie waited as long as she could before speaking.

"And then what happened?"

He looked up, a small, sad smile playing about his lips. "Am I not tiring you with this long story, Renie? It is only my story, the story of how I came to be, and how I came here."

"Tiring me? It's . . . it's wonderful. Like a fairy tale."

The smile flickered. "I stopped because that was the happiest moment for them, I think. When the rains came. My father's family thought he had brought back the Eland's Daughter in truth, that he had brought luck back to them. But if I go on, the story grows more sad."

"If you want to tell me, I want to listen, !Xabbu. Please."

"So." He spread his hands. "For a time after that, things were good. With the rain's return came the animals, and soon things were growing again—trees were making new leaves, flowers were springing up. Even the bees returned and began to make their wonderful honey and hide it away in the rocks. This was truly a sign that life was strong in that place—there is nothing the Bushmen like so much as honey, and that is why we love the little bird called the Honey-Guide. So things were good. Soon after, my mother and father conceived a child. That was me, and they named me !Xabbu, which means 'Dream.' The Bushmen believe that life is a dream which itself is dreaming us, and my parents wanted to mark the good fortune that the dream had sent them. Others in the family also bore children, so my first few years were spent among companions of my own age.

"Then a terrible thing happened. My father and his nephew were out hunting. It had been a successful day—they had killed a fine big hartebeest. They were happy because they knew that there would be a feast when they returned, and that the meat would feed their families well for several days.

"On their way back they came across a jeep. They had heard of such things but had never seen one before, and at first they were reluctant to go near it. But the men in it—three black men and one white, all tall, all dressed in city-clothes—were clearly in danger. They had the look of people who would die soon if they did not get water, so my father and his nephew went to them and helped them.

"These men were desert scientists from one of the universities—I would guess that they were geologists searching for oil or something else of value to city-people. Their jeep had been struck by lightning, so that both engine and radio were useless. Without help they would doubtless have died. My father and his nephew led them to the outskirts of the desert, to a small trading village. This they would not have dared to do, except that my father remembered he had left the desert once before without harm. My father planned to take them to the edge of the town and send them on their way, but as they all walked—very slowly, since that was as fast as the city-folk could go—another jeep came. This one belonged to government rangers, and although they used their radio to summon help for the men my father had rescued, they also arrested my father and his nephew for having killed a hartebeest. The hartebeest, you see, is protected by the government. The Bushman is not"

The uncharacteristic bitterness in his words made Renie flinch. "They arrested them? After they'd just saved those men? That's horrible!"

!Xabbu nodded. "The scientists argued against it, but the rangers were the kind of men who fear that they will get in trouble if they are seen to let some small thing pass, so they arrested my father and his relative and took them away. Just like that. They even took the hartebeest as evidence. By the time my father and his nephew reached the town, it was a rotting carcass unfit to eat and was thrown away.

"The scientists were so ashamed that they borrowed another vehicle and went to tell my father's people what had happened. They did not find them, but they found another group of Bushmen, and soon my mother and the rest of the family heard what had happened.

"My mother, who if she had not lived in the city-world at least knew something of it, determined that she would go and argue with the government, which she thought of as a wise man with a white beard in a big village, and tell them they must let my father go. Although the rest of the family warned her not to do it, she took me and set out for the town.

"But, of course, my father had already been sent on to the city, far away, and by the time my mother could make her way there, he had already been convicted and sentenced for poaching. Both he and my cousin were put in prison, caged with men who had committed terrible crimes, who had shot their own families dead, had tortured and killed children or old people.

"Every day my mother went to beg for my father's freedom, taking me with her, and every day she was driven away from the court, and later the prison, with harsh words and blows. She found us a shack on the edge of the city, two walls of plywood and a piece of tin for a roof, and she scavenged in the rubbish heaps for food and clothing with the other poor people, determined that she would not leave until my father was free.

"I cannot even imagine what it felt like for her. I was so young that I did not really understand. Even now I have only the faintest memories of that time—a vision of the bright lights of a truck shining through the cracks between the boards, the sound of people arguing and singing loudly in other shacks. But it must have been a terrible time for her, alone and so far from her people. She would not give up. She was certain that if she could only find the right man—'the real Government,' as she thought of it—then eventually the mistake would be made right and my father allowed to go free.

"My father, who had even less knowledge of the city-world than she, grew sick. After a few visits he was not allowed to see my mother any more, although she continued to go to the prison every day. My father did not even know she was still in the city, only a few hundred yards from him. He and his nephew lost their happiness, lost their stories. Their spirits became very weak and they stopped eating. Soon, after only a few months in the prison, my father died. His nephew lasted longer. I am told that he was killed in a fight some months later."

"Oh, !Xabbu, how terrible!"

He raised his hand, as if Renie's cry of sympathy was a gift he could not accept. "My mother could not even take my father's body back to the desert. He was buried instead in a cemetery beside the shantytown. My mother hung his ostrich-shell beads on a wooden stick for a marker. I have gone there, but I could not find his grave.

"My mother took me and started the long trip back. She could not bear to go to the desert again, to the place that meant my father to her, so she stayed with her own family instead, and that is where I was raised. Before too many more years she found another man, a good man. He was Bushman, but his people had left the desert long ago. He did not know the old ways and barely spoke the language. He and my mother had two daughters, my sisters. We were all sent to school. My mother demanded that we learn the city-ways, so that we could protect ourselves as my father could not do.

"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.