Six Blind Men & an Alien (4 page)

    
Charles Njobo was the second blind man.

    

    

    His name was Zhond Matoka, and this was his continent. Which is say, it was the continent he was responsible for. Other land masses had other members of his race scouting them out, probing for weaknesses, mapping the population centers, estimating the defense capabilities. But Africa, as the inhabitants called it, was his.

    He was at first confused at the physical variety of the sentient beings, because on his own world, and almost all the worlds he had scouted for the military, when there were minor variations-skin color, number of limbs, skin texture, whatever-one race had proven dominant and eliminated the competing races. It was, to Matoka, the natural order of things. Yet here, while the dominant variety or species was black, there were reds and browns, a handful of golds, and one type that ranged from pink to tan, all living on the same land. It went against his experience, and he decided he would have to learn more about this race that alternately called itself man or human before he was ready to report back to the mother ship.

    He had spent a week in Egypt, going forth only at night, swathed in Arab robes and a turban. He was awed as any tourist by the pyramids and the ruins of Karnak and Luxor. Yet try as he might, he could find no sign of the race that required those massive doorways, or sat on those gigantic thrones. He went as far as Abu Simbel, with its 60-foot-high representations of Rameses II and it’s almost equally large statues of Nefertari, and finally concluded that this race of giants had either died off, or had left the Earth to settle (or conquer) another planet. Given their size, it was inconceivable to him that they had been defeated by the comparatively tiny species that now inhabited the continent.

    He’d followed the Nile all the way down to Uganda, then left it and began observing the cities, analyzing their weaponry. Kampala presented no threat to the invading force, and he contacted the mother ship, asking where they wanted him to go next. They didn’t have the names of the cities or countries, but they could pinpoint the artificial structures and measure the neutrino activity, and based on this they could direct him to those cities that seemed the most able to defend themselves against a concerted attack.

    From Kampala they directed him east, over Mount Elgon and past the vast Rift Valley, to Nairobi. As he had done with the other cities he’d explored, he remained in hiding during the daylight and emerged only after midnight, when most of the city was asleep and those who weren’t could plausibly be divided into miscreants and police officers.

    He found a drunk sleeping in an alley and relieved him of his tribal robe, wrapping it around himself. He had seen other men wearing hats and turbans, and wished this one had one, but he settled for what he could get. The tallest building, towering above all others, was the recently-constructed Kenyatta Conference Center, begun in 1966 and not completed until 1973. He examined it as thoroughly as he could without entering it, but was unable to find any trace of its sensing devices, its radar trackers, or its cannons-yet he
knew
they must be there. War was the natural state for sentient beings, and surely this building would be the greatest prize a conquering army could claim.

    He was so intent on finding the Center’s hidden defenses and weaponry that he didn’t see the two uniformed men coming out of the Long Bar of the New Stanley Hotel a block away from where he lurked in the shadows.

    "What the hell is
that
?" said one of the men.

    Matoka turned, saw the men, and froze momentarily.

    "Jesus!" said the other. "That better be what men look like when you’ve had too much to drink."

    "That’s no man!"

    "I was afraid you were going to say that."

    "Draw your gun and let’s find out what it is," said the first man, withdrawing his own handgun from its holster.

    When the men didn’t shoot, Matoka realized that they were only displaying their guns to frighten or impress him, or at best for self-protection. He knew he could kill them both before they could get off a shot, but he also knew that if he did so, the inhabitants would realize they were up against a race with superior weaponry. He doubted that they had anything that could counteract his weapon, but he had no intention of using it against two inebriated men and being proven wrong.

    He ducked behind a nearby building, and the two men broke into a run. He could hear them coming, looked around for a doorway, couldn’t see any that were clearly unlocked-and he couldn’t take the chance that the door he went to wouldn’t open-so at the last instant he dove into a huge metal dumpster. It must have belonged to a restaurant, because it was filled with loosely-tied plastic bags of partially-eaten human food. The odor was sick-making, but he held perfectly still as he heard the two men race up, come to a stop, and begin speaking.

    "Where the hell did he go?" asked one.

    "Maybe he never was," suggested the other hopefully.

    "I saw him. You saw him. We couldn’t both have the same delusion."

    "Maybe we didn’t. What color was yours?"

    "Dark gray, maybe."

    "Mine was brown."

    "Dark gray and brown can look at lot alike from a distance at two in the morning."

    "How many legs?"

    "Two arms, two legs, just like us."

    "What was he wearing?"

    "I don’t know. By the time I got a clear look at him, he was running hell for leather for this alley." A pause. "So what do we do now? If we report it, we’re going to spend a lot of time with the shrink, and if he doesn’t believe us, and there’s no reason why he should, we could be looking at brig time."

    "I know," said his companion. "I suppose we could just forget it. It’s not as if he threatened us."

    "Then it’s settled?"

    "Yeah, it’s settled."

    The two men began walking back toward the New Stanley. "What do you suppose it was, really?"

    "I don’t know."

    "A chimpanzee, maybe, or a gorilla?"

    "Wearing clothes?" said his companion with a laugh. "It’d be the first of either that was even seen in Kenya, let alone Nairobi. Besides, what would a chimp or a gorilla be doing in Nairobi?"

    "Yeah, it’s probably better that we decide here and now that we never saw anything."

    Then they were out of earshot. Matoka waited another five minutes to be sure they didn’t come back, then climbed out of the dumpster. Despite the plastic bags, he found himself wiping pieces of lettuce and some orange peels off himself.

    He began walking south until he’d passed out of the commercial sector and found himself in a dilapidated area of poorly-constructed dwellings. He stood in an alley between two rows of shanties in desperate need of repair, and pressed one of his thumbs against the chip that had been embedded in his neck.

    "Yes?" said a voice inside his head.

    "I regret to report that I was seen tonight."

    "That is not good, Zhond Matoka," said the voiceless voice from the mother ship.

    "I require instructions," said Matoka. "I am in a city of perhaps six million. The two men who saw me have decided not to report the incident. Shall I remain here?"

    "No."

    "Where shall I go next?"

    "There is a large city a little more than 400 miles south of you. And since you started at the north end of the continent, it makes sense to keep moving south."

    "Understood and acknowledged," said Matoka, ending the pressure on the chip and breaking the connection.

    He began walking south again. A few people saw him, or at least saw his outline, but it was very dark, and the people who lived in these slums were not inclined to call the authorities for any reason. About an hour later he came upon a bicycle that was not locked and chained, and after a moment’s hesitation-he had never ridden one, though he’d watched others-he appropriated it. Areas like this, he knew, did not report theft any more than they reported strangers wandering the streets in the middle of the night. The owner would probably just go out and steal another.

    He knew that he couldn’t ride along the roads or anywhere near them, not in the daylight, and he couldn’t make much progress riding it over bumpy and frequently-fenced fields, so he abandoned it when he reached the southernmost end of town an hour before daylight.

    He looked around, and saw a large building with a number of trucks backed up to it. He approached it carefully and studied it. It seemed to be a factory of some kind, but he couldn’t tell what it manufactured because all he could see from his vantage point was the shipping dock, filled with hundreds of huge wooden and cardboard boxes.

    The backs of the trucks were open. One old man operated a forklift, loading the boxes into the trucks. There was no one else to be seen. Matoka’s problem was how to determine which of the trucks would be going south, and finally he figured it out. Each of the trucks bore license plates. There were sixteen trucks. Thirteen had license plates of one type or color. Two more had a second color, and a single one had a third.

    Logic dictated that the thirteen trucks were all from Nairobi, or at least from Nairobi’s country, which was spelled K-e-n-y-a. Nairobi was in the southern part of the country, so it was likely (but not certain) that the two trucks with similar plates belonged to the adjacent southern country, and the other one to a country to the north or west.

    He looked at the sky. It would be light in another half hour, at least light enough that he couldn’t climb into one of the trucks unseen, so he approached them, waited patiently until the forklift driver was busy loading boxes into a truck thirteen vehicles removed from the one he’d chosen, and he quickly climbed into it. He moved some of the boxes to leave himself room to sit and even lie down if it was an exceptionally long or wearing trip, made sure that no one standing behind the truck could spot him, and settled in for the ride.

    As if on cue, the driver arrived at sunrise, closed the back of the truck, climbed into the driver’s seat, and began speeding down the road. The whole time the truck was in motion Matoka was considering all his alternatives for when the truck stopped, because he was only hidden from view as long as the boxes remained where they were.

    The truck slowed and came to a stop in two hours, but no one opened the back, and it began moving again in twenty minutes. Matoka couldn’t know it, of course, but it had merely stopped for the border crossing into Tanzania.

    An hour later it stopped again, this time in the city of Arusha. Matoka huddled in a corner, his weapon in his hand, wishing now that he’d made the journey on foot, walking by night, hiding and sleeping by day. It was too late to concern himself with that, though, because the back of the truck was being opened.

    "What have you got for us?" asked a voice.

    "Two couches and five chairs," answered the driver. "It’s right here on the manifest."

    "What about the brass lamp?"

    "I don’t know anything about a lamp," said the driver.

    "Well, come on in while I call your boss and find out what happened to it. Then if you’re hungry we can grab some lunch, and we’ll unload the cargo after that."

    "Sounds good to me," said the driver, and Matoka could hear the two of them walking away. He waited a few minutes, then cautiously stuck his head out the back. No one was around, and he quickly climbed out of the truck and hid behind a small shanty. He felt exposed there, and when the coast was clear he raced across the dirt road to an empty field filled with waist-high grasses, lay down on his belly, and waited for dark.

    When night fell he contacted the ship again, to report his progress.

    "Stay hidden for a few days," said the voice that seemed to originate within his head. "The situation may be changing."

    "In what way?" asked Matoka.

    "I don’t know. I just know we’ve been told to suspend all operations and await further orders."

    "When shall I check in with you again?"

    "Three days."

    The communication ended, and Matoka surveyed his surroundings. Towering above everything, filling the horizon, its snowcap shining in the moonlight, was Kilimanjaro. He couldn’t make out any of the features except the snow, but he knew from the brief glance he’d had when he left the truck that its slopes were heavily forested, which implied that he would be able to remain hidden there for as long as need be. He assumed there would be some towns or villages, but it wouldn’t take much to avoid them on a gigantic mountain like this one.

    He began approaching it, hastening his stride so he could reach the forests at the base of it before sunrise, and indeed he reached his destination with almost an hour to spare. He moved away from the road, which he was sure would pass through a number of villages on its ascent, and instead stayed in the dense forest, moving up the slope at a far more leisurely pace.

    After he’d ascended some three thousand feet he heard a low growl, and turned to find himself facing a lion. Most of its mane was missing, torn out by constantly brushing against thornbushes, and it bore several scars on its body. There was a hint of a limp, and although Matoka knew nothing of lions, he knew that this one was too infirm to hunt whatever was its normal prey, and had chosen to hunt anything it could find-including men-in the forest.

    Matoka slowly drew his weapon. He didn’t want to use it if he didn’t have to. Not only was he trying to save his ammunition, but he didn’t want anyone examining the lion’s corpse and finding out that it had been killed by an unknown weapon. He backed away slowly, the lion approached slowly, and then the huge cat roared and charged. Matoka pressed the firing mechanism, and the lion was dead in mid-leap.