Things Will Never Be the Same Read online

  ashingo: He came, I swear, his skin all strings, his brain a red cawleyflower, his eyes empty holes!

  renebe: What portent this? The old astrologer, quick. To find what means to turn out this being like a goat from our crops.

  (Alarums without. Enter Astrologer.)

  astrologer: Your men just now waked me from a mighty dream. Your majesty was in some high place, looking over the courtyard at all his friends and family. You were dressed in regal armor all of brass and iron. Bonfires of victory burned all around, and not a word of dissent was heard anywhere in the land. All was peace and calm.

  renebe: Is this then a portent of continued long reign?

  astrologer: I do not know, sire. It was my dream.

  His mother was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder.

  Robert jerked, trying to close his copybook. His glasses flew off.

  “What is that?” She reached forward and pulled the workbook from his hands.

  “It is extra work for school,” he said. He picked up his glasses.

  “No, it is not.” She looked over his last page. “It is wasting your paper. Do you think we have money to burn away?”

  “No, Mother. Please . . .” He reached for the copybook.

  “First you are tardy. Then you stay detention after school. You waste your school notebooks. Now you have lied to me. “

  “I’m sorry. I . . .”

  “What is this?”

  “It is a play, a historical play.”

  “What are you going to do with a play?”

  Robert lowered his eyes. “I want to take it to Mr. Fred’s Printers and have it published. I want it acted in the Niger Culture Hall. I want it to be sold all over Niger.”

  His mother walked over to the fireplace, where her irons were cooling on the racks away from the hearth.

  “What are you going to do!!?” he yelled.

  His mother flinched in surprise. She looked down at the notebook, then back at Robert. Her eyes narrowed.

  “I was going to get my spectacles.”

  Robert began to cry.

  She came back to him and put her arms around him. She smelled of the marketplace, of steam and cinnamon. He buried his head against her side.

  “I will make you proud of me, Mother. I am sorry I used the copybook, but I had to write this play.”

  She pulled away from him. “I ought to beat you within the inch of your life, for ruining a copybook. You are going to have to help me for the rest of the week. You are not to work on this until you have finished every bit of your schoolwork. You should know Mr. Fred nor nobody is going to publish anything written by a schoolboy.”

  She handed him the notebook. “Put that away. Then go out on the porch and bring in those piles of mending. I am going to sweat a copybook out of your brow before I am through.”

  Robert clutched the book to him as if it were his soul.

  renebe: O rack, ruin, and pain! Falling stars and the winds do shake the foundation of night itself! Where my soldiers, my strength? What use taxes, tribute if they buy not strong men to die for me?

  (Off): Gone. All Fled.

  renebe: Hold! Who is there? (Draws)

  motofene: (Entering) He whose name will freeze your blood’s roots.

  renebe: The son of that dead king!

  motofene: Aye, dead to you and all the world else, but alive to me and as constant as that star about which the groaning axletree of the earth does spin.

  (Alarums and excursions off.)

  Now hear you the screams of your flesh and blood and friendship, such screams as those I have heard awake and fitfully asleep these fourteen years. Now hear them for all time.

  renebe: Guards! To me!

  motofene: To you? See those stars which shower to earth out your fine window: At each a wife, child, friend does die. You watched my father cut away to bone and blood and gore and called not for the death stroke! For you I have had my Vulcans make you a fine suit. All iron and brass, as befits a king! It you will wear, to look out over the palace yard of your dead, citizens and friends. You will have a good high view, for it is situate on cords of finest woods. (Enter Motofene’s soldiers.) Seize him gently. (Disarm) And now, my former king, outside. Though full of hot stars, the night is cold. Fear not the touch of the brass. Anon you are garmented, my men will warm the suit for you.

  (Exeunt and curtain.)

  Robert passed the moaning white man and made his way down the street, beyond the market. He was going to Mr. Fred’s Printers in downtown Onitsha. He followed broad New Market Street, bring careful to stay out of the way of the noisy streetcars that steamed on their rails toward the center of town.

  He wore his best clothes, though it was Saturday morning. In his hands he carried his play, recopied in ink in yet another notebook. He had learned from the clerk at the market bookstall that the one sure way to find Mr. Fred was at his office on Saturday forenoon, when the Onitsha Weekly Volcano was being put to bed.

  Robert saw two wayway birds sitting on the single telegraph wire leading to the relay station downtown. In the old superstitions one wayway was a bad omen, two were good, three a surprise.

  “Mr. Fred is busy,” said the woman in the Weekly Volcano office. Her desk was surrounded by copies of all the pamphlets printed by Mr. Fred’s bookstore, past headlines from the Volcano, and a big picture of Mr. Fred. looking severe in his morning coat, under the giant clock, on whose face was engraved the motto in Egyptian: TIME IS BUSINESS.

  The calendar on her desk, with the picture of a Niger author for each month, was open to October 1894. A listing of that author’s books published by Mr. Fred was appended at the bottom of each page.

  “I should like to see Mr. Fred about my play,” said Robert.

  “Your play?”

  “Yes. A rousing historical play. It is called Motofuko’s Revenge.”

  “Is your play in proper form?”

  “Following the best rules of dramaturgy,” said Robert.

  “Let me see it a moment.”

  Robert hesitated.

  “Is it a papertypered?” she asked.

  A cold chill ran down Robert’s spine.

  “All manuscripts must be papertypered, two spaces between lines, with wide margins,” she said.

  There was a lump in Robert’s throat. “But it is in my very finest book-hand,” he said.

  “I’m sure it is. Mr. Fred reads everything himself, is a very busy man, and insists on papertypered manuscripts.”

  The last three words came crashing down on Robert like a mud-wattle wall.

  “Perhaps if I spoke to Mr. Fred . . .”

  “It will do you no good if your manuscript isn’t papertypered.”

  “Please. I . . .”

  “Very well. You shall have to wait until after one. Mr. Fred has to put the Volcano in final form and cannot be disturbed.”

  It was ten-thirty.

  “I’ll wait,” said Robert.

  At noon the lady left, and a young man in a vest sat down in her chair.

  Other people came, were waited on by the man or sent into another office to the left. From the other side of the shop door, behind the desk, came the sound of clanking, carts rolling, thumps, and bells. Robert imagined great machines, huge sweating men wrestling with cogs and gears, books stacked to the ceiling.

  It got quieter as the morning turned to afternoon. Robert stood, stretched, and walked around the reception area again, reading the newspapers on the walls with their stories five, ten, fifteen years old, some printed before he was born.

  Usually they were stories of rebellions, wars, floods, and fears. Robert did not see one about the burst dam that had killed his father, a yellowed clipping of which was in the Coptic Bibl
e at home.

  There was a poster on one wall advertising the fishing resort on Lake Sahara South, with pictures of trout and catfish caught by anglers.

  At two o’clock the man behind the desk got up and pulled down the windowshade at the office. “You shall have to wait outside for your father,” he said. “We’re closing for the day.”

  “Wait for my father?”

  “Aren’t you Meletule’s boy?”

  “No. I have come to see Mr. Fred about my play. The lady . . .”

  “She told me nothing. I thought you were the printer’s devil’s boy. You say you want to see Mr. Fred about a play?”

  “Yes. I . . .”

  “Is it papertypered?” asked the man.

  Robert began to cry.

  “Mr. Fred will see you now,” said the young man, coming back in the office and taking his handkerchief back.

  “I’m sorry,” said Robert.

  “Mr. Fred only knows you are here about a play,” he said. He opened the door to the shop. There were no mighty machines there, only a few small ones in a dark, two-story area, several worktables, boxes of type and lead. Everything was dusty and smelled of metal and thick ink.

  A short man in his shirtsleeves leaned against a workbench reading a long, thin strip of paper while a boy Robert’s age waited. Mr. Fred scribbled something on the paper, and the boy took it back into the other room, where several men bent quietly over boxes and tables filled with type.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Fred, looking up.

  “I have come here about my play.”

  “Your play?”

  “I have written a play, about King Motofuko. I wish you to publish it.”

  Mr. Fred laughed. “Well, we shall have to see about that. Is it papertypered?”

  Robert wanted to cry again.

  “No, I am sorry to say, it is not. I didn’t know . . .”

  “We do not take manuscripts for publication unless . . .”

  “It is in my very best book-hand, sir. Had I known, I would have tried to get it papertypered.”

  “Is your name and address on the manuscript?”

  “Only my name. I . . .”

  Mr. Fred took a pencil out from behind his ear. “What is your house number?”

  Robert told him his address, and he wrote it down on the copybook.

  “Well, Mr.—Robert Oinenke. I shall read this, but not before Thursday after next. You are to come back to the shop at ten a.m, on Saturday the nineteenth for the manuscript and our decision on it.”

  “But . . .”

  “What?”

  “I really like the books you publish, Mr. Fred, sir. I especially liked Clio’s Whips by Mr. Oskar Oshwenke.”

  “Always happy to meet a satisfied customer. We published that book five years ago. Tastes have changed. The public seems tired of history books now.”

  “That is why I am hoping you will like my play,” said Robert.

  “I will see you in two weeks,” said Mr. Fred. He tossed the copybook into a pile of manuscripts on the workbench.

  “Because of the legacy of the White Man, we have many problems in Africa today. He destroyed much of what he could not take with him. Many areas are without telegraphy; many smaller towns have only primitive direct current power. More needs to be done with health and sanitation, but we are not as badly off as the most primitive of the White Europeans in their war-ravaged countries or in the few scattered enclaves in the plantations and timber forests of the New Lands.

  “It is up to you, the youth of Africa of today, to take our message of prosperity and goodwill to these people, who have now been as abused by history as we Africans once were by them. I wish you good luck.”

  Oskar Oshwenke,

  Onitsha, Niger, 1889

  Robert put off going to the market stall of Mr. Fred’s bookstore as long as he could. It was publication day.

  He saw that the nice young clerk was there. (He had paid him back out of the ten Niger dollar advance Mr. Fred had had his mother sign for two weeks before. His mother still could not believe it.)

  “Ho, there, Mr. Author!” said the clerk. “I have your three free copies for you. Mr. Fred wishes you every success.”

  The clerk was arranging his book and John-John Motulla’s Game Warden Bob and the Mad lvory Hunter on the counter with the big starburst saying: JUST PUBLISHED

  His book would be on sale throughout the city. He looked at the covers of the copies in his hands:

  The TRAGICALL DEATH OF KING

  MOTOFUKO

  and HOW THEY WERE SORRY

  a drama by Robert Oinenke

  abetted by

  MR. FRED OLUNGENE

  “The Mighty Man of the Press”

  for sale at Mr. Fred’s High-Class Bookstore

  # 300 Market, and the Weekly Volcano

  Office, 12 New Market Road

  ONITSHA, NIGER

  price 10¢ N.

  On his way home he came around the corner where a group of boys was taunting the white man. The man was drunk and had just vomited on the foundation post of a store. They were laughing at him.

  “Kill you all. Kill you all. No shame,” he mumbled, trying to stand.

  The words of Clio’s Whips came to Robert’s ears. He walked between the older boys and handed the white man three Niger cents. The white man looked up at him with sick, grey eyes.

  “Thank you, young sir,” he said, closing his hand tightly.

  Robert hurried home to show his mother and the neighbors his books.

  AFTERWORD

  This was referred to when I talked about doing it for years as the “Alternate Africa story.”

  I finally sat down and wrote it January 8-14, 1985. I revised it (some) on February 5, and sold it to Ellen Datlow at Omni on March 12, It was published there in the August 1986 issue and drew some weird letters.

  One guy said “This is the end of Euroanthropism in SF!” (“About time, too!” said the late Chad Oliver.) Others wondered where the SF was in the story, since it was just a story about a kid writing a play in Africa.

  “You must remember, Howard,” said Ellen, “most people don’t know much history.”

  “Then why am I writing this crap!” I shreiked. “If they don’t know History, why am I writing Alternate History?!”

  “You’ll have to answer that for yourself,” she said.

  Three days after the issue came out I got a letter from Donald A Wollheim at DAW Books, sending me a contract for his Year’s Best SF (you can do that when you’re the editor and the publisher—most of the editors of Year’s Bests are freelancers and send out contracts in January and February, after all the stories of the preceding year are out. Wollheim read it, knew it was one of the year’s best already when he saw it, and sent me a contract. (It’s one of those things you never forget in an otherwise long and dismal career. Something, like the Little Match Girl, to warm the hands of my mind on . . .)

  This story, too, has had legs—it’s been reprinted anytime there’s an SF anthology involving Africa. Its latest incarnation is in John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly’s Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology which I just got a copy of two days ago. (although I didn’t do anything when writing the story I usually don’t do in others—I think there’s something in the tone Jim and John responded to.) I’m proud to be in the book even if sailing under the wrong flag, as it were.

  Onitsha Market Pamphlets were real, in this world. I have through the kind courtesy of Ms. Eileen Gunn a couple of them, and have the one book about them readily available. Emmanuel Obiechina’s An African Popular Literature: A Study of Onitsha Market Pamphlets. Cambridge, the University Press, 1973. (You need to read it.) The real stuff was even more eclectic tha
n the ones I have in the story.

  Thus I repay my debt to the Tokens (as did Disney) and I think people have sent me every article on the guy who wrote “Wee-Mo-Way” ever published. His heirs have finally gotten some justice (and royalties) after 60 years. (It reads right out of Dickens’ Chancery Court in Bleak House, except it’s 20th C. and apartheid.)

  Thanks, people, for sending them to me.

  NIGHT OF THE COOTERS

  Sheriff Lindley was asleep on the toilet in the Pachuco County courthouse when someone started pounding on the door.

  “Bert! Bert!” the voice yelled as the sheriff jerked awake.

  “Gol Dang!” said the lawman. The Waco newspaper slid off his lap onto the floor.

  He pulled his pants up with one hand and the toilet chain on the waterbox overhead with the other. He opened the door. Chief Deputy Sweets stood before him, a complaint slip in his hand.

  “Dang it, Sweets!” said the sheriff. “I told you never to bother me in there. It’s the hottest Thursday in the history of Texas! You woke me up out of a hell of a dream!”

  The deputy waited, wiping sweat from his forehead. There were two big circles, like half-moons, under the arms of his blue chambray shirt.

  “I was fourteen, maybe fifteen years old, and I was a Aztec or a Mixtec or somethin’,” said the sheriff. “Anyways, I was buck-naked, and I was standin’ on one of them ball courts with the little bitty stone rings twenty foot up one wall, and they was presentin’ me to Moctezuma. I was real proud, and the sun was shinin’, but it was real still and cool down there in the Valley of the Mexico. I looks up at the grandstand, and there’s Moctezuma and all his high muckety-mucks with feathers and stuff hangin’ off ’em, and more gold than a circus wagon. And there was these other guys, conquistadors and stuff, with beards and rusty helmets, and I-talian priests with crosses you coulda barred a livery-stable door with. One of Moctezuma’s men was explainin’ how we was fixin’ to play ball for the gods and things.