Ivory by Mike Resnick

Author:Mike Resnick [Resnick, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, General, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9781591025467
Google: uBqRFyS_fY0C
Amazon: 159102546X
Publisher: Pyr
Published: 2007-04-14T12:00:00+00:00

6. THE CURATOR (16 G.E.)

My years weighed heavily upon my massive body as I climbed the escarpment of the Rift Valley, still drawn to the South. Once, as I slept, ants crept up the inside of my trunk; the pain almost maddened me before I could reach water and drown them. I had seen others of my kind die from such physical invasions, or from starvation when they ground away their final set of teeth, or from predation when they lay down, too weak and tired to defend themselves—but I knew that such fates were not meant for me.

Time pressed heavily upon me, burning at my insides as the sun burnt upon my back, urging me onward. A lioness, feeding upon a waterbuck, growled at me, prepared to hold her ground; I raised my trunk and bellowed at her, and she retreated, not even daring to snarl as I passed by. A crocodile attacked my leg as I crossed a shallow stream; I picked up him and broke him in half. A herd of impalas blocked my path; I rushed down upon them, asserting my right to be there, and they fled in terror.

I became foul of temper and sore of spirit as I urged my ancient body along its journey. I did not suffer silently, but broke the stillness of the African air with shrill, high-pitched blasts of anger, as I warned both men and beasts not to stand in my path as I hurried onward to confront my destiny.

* * * *

The Museum of African Antiquities was a magnificent if misnamed structure. For one thing, it covered a period of only 300 years, from 1780 to 2080 A.D.; for another, it dealt not with all of Africa, nor even East Africa, but solely with the relics of Kenya's past, as befitted an institution that had been moved in its entirety from Nairobi to its new marble-and-glass edifice on the colony planet of New Kenya.

New Kenya itself was an abundant world, teeming with life, criss-crossed by hundreds of clear rivers, blessed with fertile soil, which had been ceded to the overpopulated nation of Kenya by the Republic just after the dawn of the Galactic Era in the 30th century A.D. There had been considerable sentiment for calling the capital New Nairobi, but eventually it bore the name of Kenyatta City in honor of theMzee , the Wise Old Man, who had delivered Kenya from the British and guided it through its first tentative years of independence. Kenyatta City now numbered half a million citizens, with another million residing in the principalities of New Mombasa, Little Naivasha, Nyerere City, and Kericho Town, and the remaining 200,000 living and working on the farms that were making a vigorous attempt to encircle the colony world at the equator.

Like all successful colony planets, New Kenya had survived some minimal terraforming, some major population influxes, and some serious political adjustments as it became a functioning member of Mankind's infant-but-burgeoning Republic. New bacterial infestations were

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