"Mike Resnick - Kirinyaga" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

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Kirinyaga
by Mike Resnick
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Copyright (c)1988 by Mike Resnick
Hugo Winner, Year's Best SF

Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction


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IN THE BEGINNING, Ngai lived alone atop the mountain called Kirinyaga.
In the fullness of time he created three sons, who became the fathers of the
Maasai, the Kamba, and the Kikuyu races, and to each son he offered a spear, a
bow, and a digging-stick. The Maasai chose the spear, and was told to tend
herds on the vast savannah. The Kamba chose the bow, and was sent to the
dense forests to hunt for game. But Gikuyu, the first Kikuyu, knew that Ngai
loved the earth and the seasons, and chose the digging-stick. To reward him
for this Ngai not only taught him the secrets of the seed and the harvest, but
gave him Kirinyaga, with its holy fig tree and rich lands.
The sons and daughters of Gikuyu remained on Kirinyaga until the white
man came and took their lands away, and even when the white man had been
banished they did not return, but chose to remain in the cities, wearing
Western clothes and using Western machines and living Western lives. Even I,
who am a mundumugu -- a witch doctor -- was born in the city. I have never
seen the lion or the elephant or the rhinoceros, for all of them were extinct
before my birth; nor have I seen Kirinyaga as Ngai meant it to be seen, for a
bustling, overcrowded city of three million inhabitants covers its slopes,
every year approaching closer and closer to Ngai's throne at the summit. Even
the Kikuyu have forgotten its true name, and now know it only as Mount Kenya.
To be thrown out of Paradise, as were the Christian Adam and Eve, is a
terrible fate, but to live beside a debased Paradise is infinitely worse. I
think about them frequently, the descendants of Gikuyu who have forgotten
their origin and their traditions and are now merely Kenyans, and I wonder why
more of them did not join with us when we created the Eutopian world of
Kirinyaga.
True, it is a harsh life, for Ngai never meant life to be easy; but it
is also a satisfying life. We live in harmony with our environment, we offer
sacrifices when Ngai's tears of compassion fall upon our fields and give