Alternate Generals III

The Burning Spear at Twilight
Mike Resnick

Jomo Kenyatta paces his cell.

It is seven feet by nine feet. There is a barred window, something less than two feet on a side. Along one wall is a metal cot with a thin ripped mattress. In a corner is a rusted pail, filled with his urine and excrement. He has worn the same clothes for seventeen days; laundry day won't come for another two weeks.

It is 97 degrees out, a cool day for Kenya's Northern Frontier District. The flies are out in force; usually even the insects lie up in the shade during the heat of the day.

Kenyatta has been in the cell in Maralal for just over a year. He has six years yet to serve. He wonders how much of his sentence he will manage to survive before he dies. His British guards, those who speak to him, are betting he doesn't live for half his sentence, but he will fool them. He is a tough old bird; he will serve well over half his time, perhaps even five years, before he succumbs.

He thinks back to the trial. Someday, when Kenya is finally free of the British, they will print the transcript, and the world will see that he was railroaded on a trumped-up charge. King of the Mau Mau indeed! To this day, he does not even know what "Mau Mau" means, or what language it represents.

Suddenly his door opens, and he realizes through the haze of heat that almost melts the mind that it is Sunday already, and that it is time for the one weekly visitor he is allowed. This time it is James Thuku, a friend of his from the old days.

Thuku waits until the door locks behind him, then places his hands together and bows as a British guard watches his every move.

"Greetings, O Burning Spear," he says. "I trust all is well with you?"

"You may call me Jomo, or even Johnston," replies Kenyatta, for before he was Jomo Kenyatta he was Johnston Kamau. "And I am as well as can be expected."

"Let me shake your hand in the tradition of the white man, that I may feel your strength," says Thuku.

Kenyatta frowns. The Kikuyu do not shake hands. But there is something in Thuku's expression that tells him that today they do, and he extends his hand. Thuku grabs it, squeezes it, and when they part, Kenyatta is holding a folded note in his huge hand.

"How do my people fare?" he asks, pocketing the note until he is no longer under close observation through the little window in the door.

Thuku's face says, How do you think they fare? but his voice answers, "They miss you, Burning Spear, and every day they ask the British to release you."

"Please thank them for their efforts on my behalf," says Kenyatta. Then, "Are they well fed and fairly treated?"

"Well, they are not in prison," answers Thuku. "At least, not all of them."

Stupid, thinks Kenyatta. Here I give you an opportunity to say what the British wish to hear, and instead you tell me this. I doubt that they will allow you back here again.

"More farms have been attacked?" asks Kenyatta.

Thuku nods. He doesn't care if the British hear. After all, it is in all the papers. "Yes, and they have mutilated hundreds of cattle and goats belonging to the British."

"They are foolish," said Kenyatta in a clear voice, loud enough to be heard beyond the cell. "The British are not evil, merely misinformed. They are not our enemies, and mark my words, someday they will even be our allies."

Thuku looks at him as if he has gone mad.

"They are a handsome race," continues Kenyatta. "They have strong faces and straight backs." He switches from English to Kikuyu, which is much more complex and difficult to learn than Swahili, and-he hopes-beyond the abilities of the guards to understand. "And they have large ears," he concludes.

A look of dawning comprehension crosses James Thuku's face, and the next ten minutes consist of nothing but a discussion of the weather, the harvest, the marriages and births and deaths of the people Kenyatta knows.

Finally Thuku goes to the door. "Let me out," he says. "I am done here."

The door opens, and Thuku turns to Kenyatta. "I will be back next week, Burning Spear."

"I wouldn't bet on that," remarks one of the guards.

Neither would I, agrees Kenyatta silently.

He waits until the evening meal is done, and the new guards have replaced the old. Then, while there is still enough light to read, he unfolds the message and reads it:

It has begun! Tonight we spill the blood of the British!

The news is slow to trickle in. For six months after Thuku leaves, Kenyatta is allowed no visitors at all. Finally he learns what has happened, not from the Kikuyu, but from the British commander.

Kenyatta has requested an audience with him daily since he learned that he has been denied any visitors, and finally it is granted.

The black man with the gray beard is brought, in chains, to the commander's office. The commander sits at his desk, fanning himself in a futile attempt to gain some slight degree of comfort in the hot, still air.

"You wished to see me?" he demands.

"I wish to know why I have not been allowed to have any visitors," says Kenyatta.

"We're not about to let them report on their missions to you, or receive new orders," says the commander.

"I don't know what you are talking about," says Kenyatta.

"I'm talking about your goddamned Mau Mau, and the massacre they committed at Lari!" yells the commander, pounding the desk with a fist. "We're not going to let you black heathens get away with this, and when we catch Deedan Kimathi-and we will-I will take great pleasure in incarcerating him in the cell next to yours. I won't even care about your exchanging information with him, since you're both going to be here until you rot!"

And with that, Kenyatta is escorted back to his cell.

"What happened at Lari?" he asks his guard.

"You ought to know. You were in charge of it."

"I am a prisoner who is not even in charge of his own life. How can I possibly know what happened?"

"What happened is that your savages went out and butchered ninety-three loyal Kikuyu in the town on Lari," says the guard. "Chopped them to bits."

"Loyal Kikuyu," repeats Kenyatta.

"That's right."

"Loyal to who?"

The guard curses and shoves the black man into his cell.

Kenyatta knows what will come next. It will not happen to him. He's probably safer in his cell than any of the Mau Mau are in their hideouts. But the British cannot tolerate this. They will strike back, and in force. He has to get word to his people, to warn them-but how is he to do so when he is allowed no visitors?

He begins smoking, begging an occasional cigarette from the guards. One day, months later, a guard gives him two, and he thanks him profusely, lights one, and explains that he's keeping the second one for the evening. Then, when the guards have changed, he unwraps the cigarette and scrawls You must get me out of here! in Swahili on the paper. He doesn't dare write it in English for fear the guards may find it, and by the same token he can't write it in Kikuyu for he is sure that the prison doesn't employ any members of the Kikuyu tribe now that they are at war with each other.

Day in and day out he stands by his window, watching and waiting with the patience of a leopard. Finally, almost two weeks after he has written his message and carefully folded it up, a black groundskeeper is trimming the bushes near his window. The man is a Samburu, and the Samburu and Kikuyu have never been allies, but he has no choice other than to hope the man realizes that the British are the blood enemy of both races. He coughs to catch the man's attention, then tosses the folded note out through the bars.

The Samburu picks it up, unfolds it, stares at it.

Can you even read? wonders Kenyatta. And if you can, will you take it to my people, or to the guards?

The Samburu stares expressionlessly at him for a long moment, then walks away.

Kenyatta waits, and waits, and waits some more. He has not seen the Samburu again, and he has been given nothing else to write on. Burning day follows freezing night, and he tries futilely to exercise in his nine-by-seven-foot universe. He begs for tidbits of information, but the guards have been instructed not to speak to him. He thinks it has been two years since James Thuku passed him the note, but he could be wrong: it could be eighteen months, it could even be three years. It is hard enough to keep his sanity without worrying about the passage of time.

And then one night he hears it: the sound of bare feet on the uneven ground outside his window. There are more sounds, sounds he cannot identify, then a crash! and a thud!, and suddenly four Kikuyu men, their faces painted for war, are in his cell, helping him to his feet. One of them strips off his prison clothes and wraps him in a red kikoi. Another brings his trademark flyswatter, a third his leopardskin cap. They gently help him walk out the door.

"Where is your car?" asks Kenyatta, looking around. "I am too weak to walk all the way to Kikuyuland."

"A car would be searched, Burning Spear," says one of them. "We have brought an ox wagon. You will hide in the back, under a pile of blankets and skins."

"Skins?" says Kenyatta, frowning. "The British will stop you, and once they see the skins, they will search the wagon."

Another warrior smiles. "The British are too busy fighting for their lives, Burning Spear. The Nandi or the Wakamba will stop us, and if we let them take the skins, they will look no further."

And it is as the warrior has predicted.

Kenyatta asks them not to announce that he is free. He will go to his village, regain some of his strength, some of the weight he has lost, and try to learn what has been happening.

"I do not know if we can spare you that long, Burning Spear," says one of the warriors. "The war does not go well."

"Of course it doesn't," says Kenyatta.

"They bomb the holy mountain daily, and some fifteen thousand of us are captives in the camps along Langata Road."

"Are you surprised?" asks Kenyatta.

"Did not you yourself tell us that we could not lose, that freedom was within our grasp?"

"It was. I only hope that Mau Mau has not pissed it away for all time to come."

They stare at the old man, dumbfounded, and then at each other, and their expressions seem to say, Can this be the Burning Spear we have worshipped all these years? What have the British done to him?

Deedan Kimathi stands with his back to the cave wall, high in the Aberdere Mountains, and faces the assembled warriors. They are truly a ragtag army, not half a dozen pairs of shoes between them, most armed only with spears and clubs.

If I only had a real army, he thinks. If only we had the weapons the British have.

Still, he is prepared to fight to the bitter end with what he has, and he has pinpointed the one way in which they might still defeat the British who are crawling all over the Aberdares and the holy mountain of Kirinyaga itself.

"We have suffered minor defeats," he says, shrugging off an increasing number of military disasters in a sentence fragment, "but now the time has come to assert ourselves."

"How?" asks General China. (Kimathi tries not to wince at the ridiculous names his generals have chosen for themselves.) "Every day the British planes drop bombs on us. Even the elephants and the buffalo have deserted the holy mountain. If we have proved anything, it is that we cannot fight them with sticks and stones."

"We will fight them with a weapon they are unprepared to deal with," says Kimathi with all the confidence he can project. "We will fight them with a weapon they do not have in their arsenal." He sees stirrings of interest in his audience. "We will fight them with barbarism and savagery."

"We already have," says General China. "And what good has it done?"

"This time will be different," promises Kimathi. "We will attack their women and their children, we will make Nairobi itself a place of unspeakable horror, we will kill and torture and mutilate, and against such an onslaught even the British will have to concede defeat and go home."

"Nairobi?" asks a dubious voice.

"Wherever they think they are safe, wherever they hide their most precious possessions-their women and their children and their elderly. We have been making a mistake. They brought them all in from the farms to the city, and yet we continued to attack the farms. This is our land, and we do not have to fight by British rules. They bring an army to the White Highlands, and we have met them in battle with spears against rifles. We have learned our lesson. We must go where their army isn't, must do our killing when there is no chance of retribution. When they finally realize that we are slaughtering them in Nairobi and move their army there, we will attack them in Mombasa, and when they come to Mombasa, they will find we are butchering their children in Lamu and Naivasha."

"That is the path to disaster," says a strong voice, and all eyes turn to the mouth of the cave, where Jomo Kenyatta is standing, surrounded by a small force of painted Kikuyu.

"Burning Spear!" exclaims Kimathi, surprised. "I did not know you were free!"

"It is not something the British wish to publicize," says Kenyatta as he walks forward. "But it was essential that I escape and join you, because this battle cannot be won by the methods you described."

"Then we will make them pay in blood for every Kikuyu they kill!" says Kimathi passionately.

"There are far more British than Kikuyu," says Kenyatta. "Is that really what you want-to trade a Kikuyu life for a British life until one side or the other runs out of lives, for I can tell you which side will run out of lives first."

"What have they done to you?" demands Kimathi. "You were the first to advocate independence!"

"And I still do."

"Then we must drive the British from our land!"

"I agree."

Kimathi frowns. "What are you saying?"

"The day of our hoped-for independence began in sunshine and fair weather-but we have already reached the twilight, and this Mau Mau war, these atrocities, have done nothing but guarantee that the British will not leave. Soon it will be dark, and the rays of hope will vanish as surely as the rays of sunshine."

"How would you get them to leave?" asks General China. "Ask them politely?"

Kenyatta shakes his head. "They will not go because I ask them. They will not go because you ask them. But when the right people ask them, they will go." He holds a book up above his head. "Does anyone know what this is?"

"A book," replies a warrior.

"Ah, but what book?"

"A British bible?" guesses the warrior.

"It is a novel called Something of Value, written by an American named Robert Ruark. Even as we stand here, it is the best-selling book in the English-speaking world."

"What is that to us?" demands Kimathi, aggressively hiding the fact that he cannot read.

"It is about the Mau Mau. It depicts us as savages, not fit to rule ourselves. In this book we do nothing but maim and torture and mutilate."

"Good!" says Kimathi. "That should frighten them."

Kenyatta sighs deeply and shakes his head. "I have lived in England. They will never abandon their colonists to face such savagery as this book has convinced them that we will commit. You keep expecting the Americans, who fought the British to gain independence, to help us-but I tell you that no American will help the Kikuyu that are depicted in this book."

"Then what would you have us do?" says Kimathi. "I swore a blood oath: I will never call a white man Bwana again. I will never rest while the penalty for killing a white man is death and the penalty for killing a Kikuyu is a twenty-five-pound fine. I will never pay a hut tax to the British, who force us to work on their farms-their farms on our homeland!" He pulls himself up to his full height and thrusts his jaw forward. "Never!" he roars.

"Never!" yell a number of the assembled Kikuyu.

"I agree," says Kenyatta. "I have been fined and beaten and jailed for my beliefs. They have not changed. But because I know how the world works, and you have lived all your lives in Kikuyuland, which in turn is only a very small portion of Kenya, you lack the experience to deal with the British."

"All your experience got you was a jail sentence!" says General Burma.

"Use your brain," says Kenyatta, suddenly annoyed that no one can intuit what he is trying to say, that he must carefully explain it step by step as if to a roomful of children. "Why do you think that I was the only one they jailed before Mau Mau? All your other leaders were fined, but only I have been kept away from you." He pauses. "It is because only I know how to drive the British from our land."

"We will not bow and beg," says Kimathi stubbornly.

"No one is asking you to."

"Then what?"

"You must trust me," says Kenyatta. "I know how our enemy thinks, how he reacts. I can still lead you to independence, but time is running out and you must do exactly what I say."

"I am the leader of Mau Mau!" says Kimathi. "We will do it my way!"

"I put it to you," says Kenyatta to the Kikuyu. "You have done it Deedan Kimathi's way for three long years and where has it gotten you? Twenty thousand Kikuyu, those loyal to us and those loyal to the British, are dead, and less than one hundred British have died. Once we owned the White Highlands, and our tribal lands extended to Nairobi in the south and the Rift Valley to the west. Now we hide in caves atop the Aberdares and the holy mountain, and that is all we have left. Will you continue to follow Deedan Kimathi, or will you follow me?"

As one, the Kikuyu jump to their feet and pledge their loyalty to the Burning Spear.

Kimathi turns to Kenyatta. "You have won," he says bitterly. "The army is yours."

Kenyatta shakes his head. "We are in the midst of a war, and the army needs a leader. It is yours."

Kimathi frowns. "Then I don't understand…"

"The army," says Kenyatta with a smile, "will respond to the commands of one general-you. And you will respond to the commands of one general-me."

"I hope you know what you are doing."

"I know exactly what I am doing," says Kenyatta. He raises his voice for all to hear. "I am not just the Spear, I am the Burning Spear-and what does a burning spear do?"

"It stabs!" cry a number of warriors.

"And what else?"

There is a puzzled silence.

Kenyatta smiles a confident smile. "It illuminates."

Kenyatta has set up his headquarters in the densest part of the forest on Kirinyaga, at an altitude of about nine thousand feet. He knows he would be safer in Mombasa, or even on the Loita Plains in Maasailand, but he thinks it is important that his warriors be able to see that he is here with them, and he understands the importance of symbolism, which is why he is on the holy mountain rather than in the nearby Aberdares, which cover far more territory.

He is sitting on a wooden stool-he finds he no longer has the energy he had before his incarceration, and can no longer stand for hours on end-and one of his generals, this one a General Tibet (Kenyatta is sure the man has no idea where Tibet is located), is reporting the latest disaster: a squadron of British commandoes has ambushed twenty Mau Mau warriors and killed every last one of them. It occurred near the Gura Falls, about thirteen thousand feet up in the Aberdares.

Kenyatta sighs deeply. "It begins," he says.

"I do not understand, Burning Spear," says General Tibet.

"The first true step toward independence," says Kenyatta.

"But our men were slaughtered. We did not kill a single white man."

"If you had killed ten of them, it would make no difference," replies Kenyatta. "There are fifty million more where they came from." He paused. "Listen carefully, and do exactly as I say. After darkness falls, take five men that you trust to Gura."

"And bring back the bodies?" asks General Tibet.

Kenyatta shakes his head. "No. Arm them with sharp pangas, and when you arrive, cut the arms and legs from the bodies."

"We cannot do this!" protests General Tibet. "They are Kikuyu, not British!"

"They are dead. They will not mind." Kenyatta stares at him. "If you cannot do this, tell me now, and I will get someone who can."

"I will do it," said General Tibet, frowning. "But I do not know why I am doing it."

"Trust me, and it will all become clear," says Kenyatta.

General Tibet leaves, and Kenyatta turns to an aide. "Bring them to me now."

Four white men and two white women, all blindfolded, are ushered into Kenyatta's presence.

"You may remove your blindfolds now," says Kenyatta in English.

They do so.

"Well, I'll be damned!" mutters one of them. "So the rumors are true!"

Kenyatta surveys them. The reporters and photographers from the New York Times, Newsweek, the Chicago Daily News, two more from the British tabloids, and a documentary filmmaker.

"Welcome to Kikuyuland," says Kenyatta at last. "I apologize for the blindfolds, but I'm sure you understand why they were necessary."

"Okay, we're here," says one of the Americans. "Now what?"

"I promised you exclusive interviews when my emissary made secret contact with you, and you shall have them," answers Kenyatta. "I will give each of you half an hour. Then we will have dinner, and you will spend the night. Tomorrow morning you will be taken to observe the battlefield, such as it is." He pauses. "You are free to wander around my camp here, but please do not take any photographs that might help the British to identify our location. Also, do not overexert yourselves until you have adjusted to the altitude. I do not want the British reporting that we kill journalists."

One by one, Kenyatta gives his interviews. He is the voice of reason, only too happy to cease the hostilities if the British would stop slaughtering his people and give them back their country.

While the journalists are fed their dinner, Kenyatta retires to his cave to catch up on the day's news. His spies have little to report: the British seem to have melted into the forests and vanished. They are getting to know the Aberdares and the holy mountain as well as the Kikuyu themselves do.

"We have killed no British today?" asks Kenyatta.

"We have not killed any this week, Burning Spear," says an aide.

"Just as well. When it has been dark for three hours, and the journalists are all asleep, take two men out with you. Find a clearing within a mile of here, and dig three shallow graves. Then fill them in, and put a cross at the head of each."

"But we have no one to bury in them," says the aide, puzzled.

Kenyatta smiles. "I won't tell them if you don't."

"I do not understand any of this," says Deedan Kimathi, and for the first time Kenyatta sees that his second-in-command is sitting at the back of the cave.

"You will."

"Why do you allow these journalists to see our camp?" persists Kimathi. "Even if they take no photographs, they will remember enough landmarks to lead the British to this very cave."

"But they won't," says Kenyatta.

"How do you know?" demands Kimathi.

"Because I have lived among the white man and you haven't. I know it is difficult for you to believe, but there is an entire segment of white men who are predisposed to believe only the worst of their own race and only the best of ours, and these journalists represent the publications that they read, that mold their opinions. When they see the mutilated bodies of our men in the morning, they will not ask who mutilated them; they will assume it was the British, because they have been taught to assume that their own race is morally flawed. And when they see the graves with the crosses, they will not dig them up to see if British soldiers are really buried there. They will see that we treat their dead with respect, that we mark their graves with the cross of the Christians, and they will never doubt the evidence of their eyes."

"But this is foolish!" says Kimathi. "I would not believe it!"

"You are not a white journalist who is searching for a story that fits his prejudices," said Kenyatta.

Within a week, the photos of the limbless Kikuyu corpses have appeared in every major newspaper and magazine in the Western world. Three Pulitzer Prizes are eventually awarded for photos and articles cataloging the descent of well-trained British soldiers into total savagery.

Kenyatta has chewed the qat leaves for two hours. He feels his consciousness slipping away. It is almost as if he has broken free of his old, weakened body, and is looking down on it from a great height.

"You are sure, Burning Spear?" asks the mundumugu, the witch doctor.

"I am sure."

"If I hear you cry out, I will stop."

"If you stop, I will order you put to death," says Kenyatta placidly. The mundumugu cannot tell if it is the Burning Spear speaking, or the qat leaves.

Five minutes later Kenyatta is so far gone into his trancelike state that he can no longer respond to questions. The mundumugu rolls him onto his belly and picks up the leather whip.

"May Ngai forgive me," he mutters as he brings the whip down on the old man's back. Tears roll down his face as he whips the man he worships again and again.

"I was treated fairly by my captors," Kenyatta is saying to four British journalists.

"That's not the way I heard it," replies one of the journalists.

"I have never said otherwise," protests Kenyatta.

"But a couple of your men say we tortured you."

"You are British," says Kenyatta. "Would you torture a middle-aged man who did not have the power to do you any harm?"

"No… but I'm not in the military."

"I have no complaints about my treatment."

"They never beat you?" persists another journalist, whose face practically begs him to contradict her.

"If they did, I'm sure they had their reasons."

"Then they did beat you!"

"You are putting words in my mouth," says Kenyatta. "If I were beaten, then surely I would bear the scars." He spreads his arms out. "Can you see any?"

"Would you take your shirt off?"

"Are you calling me a liar?" asks Kenyatta with no show of anger.

"No, sir," answered the journalist quickly. "But I would like to report to my readers that I have seen you shirtless and that you bear no scars."

"And then what?" asks Kenyatta with an amused smile. "Will you ask me to remove my pants as well?"

"No," says the journalist, returning his smile. "I'm sure just the shirt will be enough."

"As you wish," says Kenyatta, getting to his feet and starting to fumble with his shirt. "But I want you all to remember that I told you I have no complaints about my treatment at the hands of the British. I bear them no malice. The day will come when England will be Kenya's greatest friend and ally."

As he speaks, he removes his shirt.

"You see?" he says, facing them.

"Would you turn around please?"

Kenyatta turns his back to them. He is glad they cannot see his grin of triumph as their gasps of shock and horror come to his ears.

In the coming months he invites National Geographic to see the death throes of elephants, rhinos, and buffalo that have been crippled and torn apart by the British bombs. A ten-week-old lion cub with one foreleg blown away makes the cover of Life.

Every Kikuyu child who receives a wound from anything-a thorn bush, a jackal, a stray British bullet-is gathered into a single medical facility (it is too primitive to dignify it by calling it a hospital), and an endless parade of Western aid workers and journalists is ushered through it.

Each Kikuyu who dies from a British bullet is mutilated and photographed. Any British soldiers killed by the Kikuyu-and a number who never existed-are buried and their graves marked with crosses.

The King's African Rifles and the British Army deny all the press's charges, but the journalists know better: they have seen the carnage with their own eyes. They know the British are extracting a terrible, barbaric revenge against the Mau Mau up in the forested mountains, they know that the Kikuyu are treating the dead of the enemy with honor, they know that the old Burning Spear has been tortured in a British prison, and they know that hundreds of innocent Kikuyu children have become victims of a British army gone mad.

Within six months the American government is pressuring the British to grant Kenya its independence. The French, the Germans, and the Italians follow suit within weeks. Even the SPCA has publicly condemned the United Kingdom.

"I cannot believe it!" exclaims Kimathi as word comes to them that the British have declared a cease-fire and are withdrawing from the holy mountain. "We have killed only four of them in ten months, and they have killed thousands of us, and yet we are winning the war!"

"Different times call for different methods," replies Kenyatta, who is unsurprised by this turn of events. "There is a sentence in their Bible that says the meek shall inherit the earth. They should have read it more carefully."

Two months later the meek have inherited Kenya. It is a foregone conclusion that Kenyatta will become the first president; an election seems a waste of time and money, but of course they will hold it.

At the ceremony that makes independence official, Malcolm MacDonald, the last British governor of Kenya, introduces Kenyatta to Prince Philip, who formally invites him into the Commonwealth.

"It is a new era, and hence a time for new names," declares the prince. "Just as Kenya Colony has become simply Kenya, I think it is time to cast aside the sobriquet of Burning Spear-" he waits until a murmur of disapproval from the crowd dies down, then continues "-and replace it with M'zee, the Wise Old Man. Certainly," he adds with a rueful smile, "he is wiser than we were."

Kenyatta silently agrees that the name suits him better these days. He decides to keep it.