Tag: 3*

Party Piece by Steve Hall

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Party Piece by Steve Hall (Science Fantasy #60, August 1963) begins with some prefatory material about the President of the Midnight Club, Vance Seaton, organising the entertainment for the members’ Xmas dinner.
When the club’s science fiction, fantasy and horror writer members finally meet, and after they have finished their meal, Seaton introduces the first act—a magician called Levito and his daughter/assistant Gloria. After a series of tricks Levito finishes the act with his daughter floating in mid-air: the magician then moves his arms with a complicated flourish and she disappears.
Levito soon makes it clear to Seaton that Gloria wasn’t supposed to vanish, so Seaton gets the other act, a hypnotist, to go on while he and Levito discuss the matter. Seaton then conducts an examination:

Under Seaton’s directions, [Levito] gradually lowered the lighter from a point well above the warped space, where it was clearly visible to Seaton on the other side, until it moved into eclipse behind it. For a moment the flame seemed to wink out of existence, then it abruptly re-appeared and extended itself into a flaring, flickering curtain, as if distorted by some grotesque lens.
“Walk behind it yourself,” instructed [Seaton].
As Levito traversed the full length of the uncanny region, which was about waist high, the mid-section of his body seemed to expand and contract in an eye-wrenching fashion; at times it disappeared altogether, leaving his torso and legs to continue, apparently unconnected.
“Light doesn’t go through it,” muttered Seaton clinically, “it goes around it. I think I know what we’ve got here.”
“What is it?”
“It’s something like a Klein Bottle.”  p. 81-82

Further discussions suggest that the enclosed space is a form of three dimensional Möbius strip (I think), and that Gloria may quickly run out of air or overheat.
When the Seaton finally reveals the dilemma to the club members, and asks for suggestions on how to free her, one of them suggests (spoiler) that Levito should move his arms in the opposite manner to unlock the space. However, when the magician tries to do this he cannot remember exactly what he did. Enter the hypnotist, who puts Levito into a trance . . . .
When Gloria finally reappears there is rapturous applause (some of the members think it is part of the act), and she reveals that virtually no time at all had passed inside the space (Seaton observes in passing that you probably can’t distort Space without affecting Time).
This probably sounds like a fairly slight piece, and a contrived one too—but it’s well told, and the hypnotist idea is a neat one.
*** (Good). 3,400 words.

I, Bigfoot by Sarina Dorie

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I, Bigfoot by Sarina Dorie (Analog, September/October 2020) opens with a sasquatch called Bigfoot removing pictures of Jane Goodall (the actress who played Jane in Tarzan) from the tribe’s cave wall. As the females of the group ridicule him we learn that the pictures belonged to another male called Squeaker, who was banished by Old Grey Face for risking the tribe’s discovery by humans.
After brooding for a time Bigfoot goes out foraging, eventually ending up at a set of dumpsters. As he searches through the garbage for food he sees a magazine in the moonlight with what he thinks is a picture of Jane Goodall but, before he can examine it more closely, he hears a woman who is being chased by men. He jumps into in the dumpster to hide, and the woman joins him shortly afterwards. After a period she notices him, and at that point the story flashes back to Squeaker’s visit to a library—the one that got him banished—to hear Jane Goodall speak (this section is rather clumsily located at this dramatic point in the story).
Bigfoot eventually scares the men away and then, when she the teenage girl tells him she is a runaway, he takes her home. In return she tosses him a bag of things—which includes a tin opener to replace the one that was broken by the tribe, and without which they can’t open their store of canned food.
The rest of the story (spoiler) sees Bigfoot return to his tribe of sasquatches, where he is initially lauded for the goodies he has brought back. However, when Old Grey Face realises Bigfoot has been with a human his future looks in doubt—until one of the other males works out how to use the new-fangled can opener (Bigfoot failed), and then confesses that he learned from being near humans. Others join in with their confessions of proximity to humans and the subsequent argument splits the tribe in two.
This story has a rather unlikely premise but, if you can swallow the idea of hide-out sasquatches in the wilds around us, then it’s a pleasant enough read.
*** (Good). 8,750 words.

The Writhing Tentacles of History by Jay Werkheiser

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The Writhing Tentacles of History by Jay Werkheiser (Analog, September/October 2020) opens with two eight-tentacled creatures (we later learn they are evolved squids or octopuses) examining a human hip-bone discovered long after an far-future extinction event for humanity. The dominant one of the pair, Mottled-Brown (they communicate by skin colour changes) is worried about the prospect of his archaeological dig being shut down, and he is due to appear before the Ruling Octet who will decide whether or not this will be the case.
When Mottled Brown appears before the Octet his female nemesis, Blue-Ripples, is also there. During their testimony Blue Ripples states that—despite the human hip-bone Mottled-Brown has just found—his theories are ridiculous, and that the dig is a waste of resources and should be shut down. The Octet decide to have further debate and analysis the next day.
After the adjournment Blue-Ripples approaches Mottled-Brown and tells the archaeologist of her further plans for him:

“One fossil won’t save you,” Blue-ripples said. Her words were tinged with black. “And your conclusion is ridiculous. Two arms indeed.”
Mottled-Brown concentrated on keeping his skin a neutral gray-brown. He wouldn’t let her goad him into a confrontation again. “Well see the words tomorrow.”
He turned to leave, but Blue-Ripples stopped him. “I’ve filed a reproduction claim on you,” she said.
He froze in place, his arms writhing. He felt his skin turn black. “It’ll never be approved. I’m still at the height of my career.”
“And if the octet closes your dig?” Her words shifted blue. “A fossilized historical scientist with little hope of any further contribution? They’ll give you to me before your third heart can finish a beat.”
“Slug slime! My contributions have been—”
“In the past. The only thing you have left to contribute to the next generation is your flesh. Our eggs will grow strong on it.”
He involuntarily pulled himself into an upright fighting posture, an instinct remaining from the presentient past. “The Ruling Octet will see the value of my dig. History is on my side.”
“The writhing tentacles of history have slashed many of your kind,” she said. Her arms began slipping through the port and out of the hall. Her mantle flashed one last thought. “You will be delicious.”
As the last of her mantle slipped through the port, he saw her skin turn bright blue.  pp. 135-136

The rest of the story sees Mottled-Brown talk to his assistant Gray-Ring about the day’s events—and the sexual encounters of his youth. Then, the next day, he appears again in front of the Octet where (spoiler), in an extended debate, he manages to use Blue-Ripples’ own mathematical models against her to suggest that humans may have been tool users and are therefore worthy of further research.
Most of this piece is talking heads (in some respects it’s a bit like an Isaac Asimov story), but the clever debate and conversation between the various players is well done, and I found it an engaging read (having one of the characters threatening to lay their eggs in the other is a novel type of jeopardy!) The only thing that slightly spoiled this for me is the last section, where Mottled-Brown and his assistant Gray-Ring discuss the extinction events that caused the demise of the humans and the reptiles before them. The closing mention of an asteroid impact is obviously meant to mean something, but I couldn’t work out what the point of the comment was. The story is better than my final rating for the most part, and probably would have scored higher but for this.
*** (Good). 5,050 words.

Rover by A. T. Sayre

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Rover by A. T. Sayre (Analog, March-April 2020) opens with an AI rover prospecting on Mars: we learn that it hasn’t had any instructions from Earth for some considerable time and that it has been evolving during that period:

It had changed somewhat since its creation, as it had needed to take parts of other machinery left on Mars to keep going. A new wheel from the Russian probe, an optic lens to replace its own cracked one, a processor from another to subsidize its own when its performance had started to lag. It had taken solar panels from a Chinese machine with more receptive photovoltaic cells and mounted them alongside its original array to improve energy collection. It added another set of arms from an Indian rover, much better at gripping than its original four, connected by an extension of its chassis that it took from an American probe at the edge of the Northern ice cap.
And as always from the probes, landers, other rovers, it took the processors and data storage units, to keep pace with the increasing sophistication of its system. It grew smarter, more resourceful, capable of more and more complex problem solving and decision making. The rover had learned so much, had grown so much, it was barely recognizable as the simple machine that had touched down on the red planet so long ago.  pp. 171-172

While later traversing a ridge the rover falls over and damages a strut. After the vehicle reboots, it then decides to proceed to a location 90km away, where it hopes to find a replacement part on an abandoned vehicle. During this slow and arduous journey, the rover picks up a signal from what it thinks may be a human-manned ship and diverts course, but when the rover finally arrives at the site it finds a damaged ship and the body of one of the crew. The rover eventually manages to hoist itself up and into the vessel.
The last section of the story (spoiler) has the rover repair itself in the ship’s well-equipped workshop; it then contacts Earth, only to find that all Mars missions have been permanently suspended. Now that it is free to do as it wishes the rover converts itself into a drone, and the final scene sees it launch itself out of the ship to endlessly fly over the surface of Mars.
This is a well enough done piece, but I got the vague feeling that (for me, anyway) there was something missing. Maybe I just prefer stories where there is more focus on the personality of the AI.
*** (Good). 6,100 words.

Fermi and Frost by Frederik Pohl

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Fermi and Frost by Frederik Pohl (Asimov’s SF, January 1985)1 opens in the TWA terminal at JFK airport after a maritime military exchange leads to an imminent nuclear war. Initially the story focuses on a young boy called Timothy, who has lost his parents in the crowds trying to flee New York, but we are soon introduced to another character, Harry Malibert, a SETI astronomer sitting in the temporary island of calm that is the Ambassador Club. The two are flung together in the increasing chaos at the airport and, when Malibert gets the offer of a flight to Iceland just as the nuclear attack warning sounds, he takes Timothy with him.
The central part of the story sees the two arrive and settle in Iceland (just as Reykjavik is accidentally nuked by a bomb meant for the US airbase at Keflavik), and details, in graphic and precise detail, the nuclear winter that encompasses the globe—killing off nearly all of the remaining survivors:

The worst was the darkness, but at first that did not seem urgent. What was urgent was rain. A trillion trillion dust particles nucleated water vapor. Drops formed. Rain fell torrents of rain; sheets and cascades of rain. The rivers swelled. The Mississippi overflowed, and the Ganges, and the Yellow. The High Dam at Aswan spilled water over its lip, then crumbled.
The rains came where rains came never. The Sahara knew flash floods. The Flaming Mountains at the edge of the Gobi flamed no more; a ten-year supply of rain came down in a week and rinsed the dusty slopes bare.
And the darkness stayed.
The human race lives always eighty days from starvation. That is the sum of stored food, globe wide. It met the nuclear winter with no more and no less.
The missiles went off on the 11th of June. If the world’s larders had been equally distributed, on the 30th of August the last mouthful would have been eaten. The starvation deaths would have begun and ended in the next six weeks; exit the human race.  p. 87

During this period Malibert parents Timothy and works as a geothermal engineer (Iceland’s constant supply of hot water provides its survivors with heat and electricity, which means artificial light for crops), and Malibert later has time to run an informal SETI club—this is where the “Fermi” of the title enters the story, from Fermi’s Paradox: if there are aliens out there, why haven’t we met them?

“One, there is no other life. Two, there is, but they want to leave us alone. They don’t want to contact us, perhaps because we frighten them with our violence, or for some reason we can’t even guess at. And the third reason—” Elda made a quick gesture, but Malibert shook his head—“is that perhaps as soon as any people get smart enough to do all those things that get them into space—when they have all the technology we do—they also have such terrible bombs and weapons that they can’t control them any more. So a war breaks out. And they kill themselves off before they are fully grown up.  p. 92

Shortly after this the story—which had been interesting, detailed, and well developed—comes to an odd ending where Pohl goes all meta, stating in an authorial voice that in one ending sunlight returns too late to save the Icelandic survivors, but that in another ending they survive and, generations later, aliens finally arrive. (“But that is in fact what did happen! At least, one would like to think so.”)
An irritating finish to an otherwise good story.
*** (Good). 6,200 words.

1. Pohl won the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Story for this, an achievement which hugely overrates the piece. Perhaps 1985 wasn’t a particularly strong year in this category—the other Hugo finalists, which I haven’t read but haven’t heard of either, were: Flying Saucer Rock & Roll by Howard Waldrop; Snow by John Crowley; Dinner in Audoghast by Bruce Sterling; Hong’s Bluff by William F. Wu.)

Rena in the Desert by Lia Swope Mitchell

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Rena in the Desert by Lia Swope Mitchell (Asimov’s SF, March/April 2020) opens with Rena driving across the Nevada desert in a barely functioning electric car when she comes upon a deserted automotel:

[Here] sat the Rock Springs AutoMotel like a postcard from the past, its electric sign flashing SWIM and AC and VACANCY: a single-story, L-shaped building, spread low beside a parking lot with one lonesome, dust-coated truck. Behind a chain-link fence the pool sparkled in the sunlight, a cleaning skimmer dancing across its surface. It had to be real, that water—maybe those Rock Springs still existed, underground somewhere now. Next to the pool, dangling small plump feet, sat a little girl, staring back.
How was that even possible? Settlement was illegal from the Rockies to the Sierras. Back in Chicago the tabloids babbled about outlaw gangs preying through the mountains, doomsday cults, radioactive corpses piled by the roadside. Military escorts guarded cargo trucks driving between Vegas and LA. But on 50 Rena had seen nothing and nobody—only the remnants of gas stations, dried-out husks of ruined towns, and dispirited clumps of dead brush. From horizon to horizon, nothing was moving but her and a few wary birds.
On the Coast, with its forests and desalinization plants and fish-filled oceans, tourists still drove up and down, burning money on hotels and restaurants. Or so people said back home, wondering in hushed tones, dreaming in the winter cold. So Rena wanted to believe.  p. 58

Rena tries to communicate with the eight-year-old girl but her Spanish lets her down, so she goes into the reception and gets a room from the automated system. Then she has a shower, and is delighted that the motel seems to have plentiful water. But, when she tries to order food, she finds that there isn’t anything available.
The rest of this post-apocalypse story includes some backstory about Rena’s trans lover Mike (who has ended up somewhere else for a reason I can’t remember), and her discovery of a smuggler who has been locked in a room by the motel’s security software. Rena also eventually realises that the automotel AI has been looking after the young girl.
The story ends (spoiler) with Rena freeing the man, who has promised to drive her to Tahoe. After some discussion, including about how much food the motel has left, Rena manages to convince the AI to let the girl go with them to the coast.
This is an engaging and well told story but matters rather work out of their own accord—which makes for a rather pedestrian ending.
*** (Good.) 6,000 words.

Handicap by Larry Niven

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Handicap by Larry Niven (Galaxy, December 1967) is set in his ‘Known Space’ universe, and opens with Garvey the narrator and his guide Jilson flying over the red desert of the planet Grit in their skycycles, en route to see a Grog, one of the species of aliens that live there:

We circled the hairy cone, and I started to laugh.
The Grog showed just five features.
Where it touched flat rock, the base of the cone was some four feet across. Long, straight hair brushed the rock like a floor-length skirt. A few inches up, two small, widely separated paws poked through the curtain of hair. They were the size and shape of a Great Dane’s forepaws, but naked and pink. A yard higher two more paws poked through, but on these the toes were extended to curving, useless fingers. Finally, above the forepaws was a yard-long lipless gash of a mouth, half-hidden by hair, curved very slightly upward at the comers. No eyes. The cone looked like some stone-age carved idol, or like a cruel cartoon of a feudal monk.  p. 268 (World’s Best Science Fiction 1968, edited by Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr)

We also learn that, despite the size of their brains, they never move, don’t use tools, and have never communicated with humanity. Garvey, who searches the universe for intelligent species, feels he has wasted his time.
The next section sees the two men together in a bar, where Garvey reveals he is the heir to Garvey Limited, a company that builds “Dolphins Hands”, prosthetics that allow animals such as dolphins and the alien Bandersnatch to manipulate objects, which lets them fully use their intelligence.
Later on the pair visit a Dr Fuller, a research scientist working on the question of whether or not the Grogs are intelligent. During the visit Garvey learns more about their odd life cycle: brains large enough to support intelligence; mobile while young, sessile—non-mobile—when mature; no observations of the adults eating in captivity, etc.
As the story progresses, we see Garvey slowly unravel the mystery of the Grogs, beginning with his next visit to the desert when (spoiler) he realises the creatures have devolved from a more advanced race. Then, when Garvey sees them psychically compel their prey to run into their mouths, he realises that they are descendants of the Slavers, a long dead and feared race.
The remainder of the story sees the creatures mentally communicate with Garvey and his subsequent response, which involves (a) giving them a keyboard to communicate with him rather than invading his mind, and then (b) letting them know that if they ever attempt to mentally control humanity, a running STL ramship will land on the planet and destroy it. By the end of the story, the Grogs are usefully employed in several roles.
This story has a good start, but it pivots too much on the narrator’s realisation of what has happened to the Grogs, as well as him being the first human they decide to communicate with.
Entertaining enough but minor.
*** (Good.) 8,650 words.

Tunnels by Eleanor Arnason

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Tunnels by Eleanor Arnason (Asimov’s SF, May-June 2020) is the sixth of the author’s ‘Lydia Duluth’ stories to appear. This one finds her in Innovation City, an island on the planet Grit, and she is there, as usual, on a work assignment for her employer, the holoplay production company Stellar Harvest. Most of the first part of the story is a mixture of background material (including a previous run-in she had with the owners of the island, a genemod company called BioInnovation), a description of the local silicon and carbon based lifeforms, and travelogue.
The story finally gets going when she meets an actor’s agent for tea to discuss a production in progress on Grit. Before this, however, Duluth feels like she is coming down with a cold and, after the meal, she feels worse. Not only does it feel like she has caught the flu, she also has a compunction to go down into the railway system tunnels under the city. Her inbuilt AI, which hasn’t said a lot until this point, tells her to phone for help, but she can’t remember how. Then she sees a “Gotcha” on the inside of her eyelids, and realises she has been infected with a hacked flu virus.
The second part of the story sees Duluth wake to find herself in a dark tunnel, with her AI silent. She starts walking and eventually finds a lit water fountain where, a little bit later, an alien Goxhat turns up:

[She] saw something by the drinking fountain, her size, but lower to the floor. The way it moved was distinctive. She came closer. The creature had an oval body that rested on four legs, and four arms, two on each side of the oval body. One arm in each pair ended in a formidable-looking pincher. The other ended in a cluster of tentacles. The creature was holding a cup in one of its tentacle-hands and dipping it into the fountain. There was no head. Instead, its brain was housed in a bulge atop its body. There ought to be four eyes in the bulge, though Lydia couldn’t see them. The Goxhat was facing away from her.
“Hello,” she said in humanish.
The alien spun. The four blue eyes glared. “Dangerous!” it cried in humanish. “Beware!” It waved the cup, spilling water. “Fierce! Fierce!”
“I’m not a threat,” Lydia said, trying to sound reasonable and unafraid. As far as she knew, the Goxhat were never dangerous to members of other species, but this one looked agitated and poorly groomed. The black hair that covered its body was spiky in some places and matted in others. What the heck was this guy doing here in this condition, and where was the rest of it?
“Where are your other bodies?” Lydia asked.
The Goxhat screamed and ran into the darkness.
Well, that had certainly been the wrong question to ask.  p. 21

Eventually, Duluth manages to talk to the creature and discovers that it knows other humans in the tunnels, and she manages to convince it to take her to them. She later meets three others that have been trapped underground for years because they too caught the hacked flu virus, and one of the side effects is that trying to climb up any of the stairways incapacitates them. Duluth also learns that the tunnels aren’t actually in use, but are a result of a BioInnovation genmod product that has run wild and spread under the planet.
Further adventures follow, beginning with the four of them (and the Goxhat) going to a vagrants camp (this other group of humans aren’t infected, but refuse to help those who are because they variously use them for stories, provided by Genghis the professor, and sex, from Tope the courtesan, etc.). This encounter is rather irrelevant to the story because when Lydia later talks to the Goxhat and asks it its name, it hoots three times, and adds that no-one has ever asked, before offering to lead her to the surface. However, the meeting provides an amusing after dinner episode where (a) Duluth is quizzed by the tunnel dwellers about a holo star she knows and (b) Genghis’s story about Thor losing his hammer is subject to a relentless analysis of the character’s attitudes and behaviour (“You can’t be killing people, even if they’re giants. It’s illegal.” “And wrong,” etc.).
The last section (spoiler)—where Duluth and Three Hoots reach the surface, steal a boat and escape to the mainland, and then BioIn and Stellar Harvest (Duluth’s employers) security get involved—is routine stuff and not as engaging as the previous part (even with Three Hoots’ revelation about how its other bodies died after they discovered financial irregularities in BioIn’s accounts). The story also feels longer than it needs to be (it is just short of novella length).
Overall an entertaining and amusing, if minor, piece.
*** (Good). 17,400 words.

Jigoku No Mokushiroku by John G. McDaid

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Jigoku No Mokushiroku by John G. McDaid1 gets off to an intriguing start with an AI elevator called Hitoshi talking to Crazy Bob, a visitor to a huge futuristic library built and run by the Koreshians. Although Hitoshi thinks that Bob might be mad, the AI chats to him when he can (partially as part of the building’s security protocols), and reveals that it is named after Hitoshi Igarashi (the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, who was assassinated by Moslem extremists in 1991). Hitoshi even quotes parts of Bob’s books back to him when he stops in-between floors to allow Bob to have an illicit cigarette:

“If I may quote your last book, ‘The vacuum of disbelief sucked the rationality out of culture.’”
“Yeah. We started ringing like a bad circuit. Any control was better than none. Until finally, here I am, in a nation of nonsmoking, nondrinking, vegetarian strangers, stripped of all weaponry in the name of safety, with no culture in common, each plugged into their own unique digital information environment, under a government financed by 40 percent tax and the forfeiture of every convicted criminal’s assets.” He took a long drag and exhaled slowly through his nose. “And I can write all this stuff down, blast it out on the net, and there’s not even anybody left who cares enough to read it.”  p. 109

This feels as if it is, or will be, remarkably prescient.
As the story progresses Bob asks Hitoshi about a woman called Aki who, on one elevator trip, gets on along with a couple of “Koreshi suits” (we learn along the way that the library, a huge underground structure, has been constructed by followers of The David (David Koresh of the Waco siege2) and that each of the disciples is required to emulate The David, usually in some act of self-immolation).
Later on in the story Bob becomes involved in Aki’s plan to nuke the library but, as they are in the process of smuggling the bomb down to the basement, Hitoshi convinces them to let him do it so it can be freed from its current constraints as an elevator AI. After they leave the elevator Hitoshi takes the bomb down to the sub-levels and disarms it for possible future use.
This is a witty and entertaining piece but I’m not sure the satire, which mostly seems to be aimed at mad millennial types, has much point—it’s a pretty obvious target—and I’m not sure I understand Aki’s motivation in wanting to bomb her own library.
The story has a pretty good start but a weaker ending; I think its Sturgeon Award overrates it.
*** (Good). 5900 words.

1. The full title given on the opening page is Jigoku No Mokushiroku (The Symbolic Revelation of the Apocalypse). Google translates the title as “Book of Revelation”.
2. The Wikipedia page on the 1993 Waco siege.

Bibi by Mike Resnick and Susan Shwartz

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Bibi by Mike Resnick and Susan Shwartz (Asimov’s SF, mid-December 1995) opens with an enigmatic passage that has a woman looking for food in the African bush after having “slept too long”. Thereafter the story introduces Jeremy Harris, an American aid worker in a nearby tented compound who is woken by one of the children who lives there with the message that the camp doctor wants him. As he wakes and gets ready we get some of his backstory: he is HIV+, and moved from the USA to work in the Ugandan camp after he infected his ex-partner. We also learn that he was a wealthy stock trader and not only does manual work for the project (there is an observation about digging graves being better exercise than any personal trainer) but helps fund it.
There is more information about Jeremy, as well as the effect that Idi Amin and Aids has had on Uganda, before he goes to meet the story’s other main character, Elizabeth Umurungi. Elizabeth is the camp doctor, a Europeanised Ugandan who was a fashion model before she changed professions. She tells him that one of the families has left the camp and, after breakfast, they drive to their village to see if they can find them. En route Jeremy gets a glimpse of what looks like a woman in the bush.
When they get to the village Elizabeth speaks to the grandmother, and asks her why she left the camp. The grandmother, after some cultural sparring with the doctor (she calls her “Memsaab”) tells her that “Bibi” is coming to help them. Unconvinced, Jeremy and Elizabeth stay to help the daughter, who is dying of AIDS.
As the pair settle down for the night we get more backstory about Jeremy when Elizabeth reads out loud a letter from Jeremey’s ex that he has been reluctant to open and read himself. And with good reason—it contains angry, bitter recriminations, as well as bad news about other friends:

“Dear (that’s a joke) Jeremy:
“After I stopped shaking and walked out on you and got back to the Keys, Bud wanted to head North after you with his AK. But Steve said what the fuck, Bud tested clean—no point throwing away his life along with yours and mine. And Steve’s. He’s real sick. ARC pneumonia. He calls it ARC-light bombing when he’s got enough breath to talk. I’ve moved in with the two of them to try to help out. Money goes farther that way, and I like to think I’m useful. It’s hard to watch him come apart and know this is how I’m going to end up.
“Then I think it’s how you’re going to end up too, and it’s not so bad. For once, you’re not going to be able to weasel your way out of something. Only you call it negotiating, don’t you? It’s part of that important stuff, like attention to detail and execution, that makes you such a big success on the Street. Wall, that is, not 42nd, where they sell themselves another way. Not much difference, is there, when you come right down to it? Talk about ‘execution’—you’ve sure executed the two of us like a pro.”  p. 34

That night, a number of odd things happen: Jeremy wakes up and sees what he thinks is a child by the grave of the family’s grandfather before he shoots at a leopard; later they discover that the the radio and spark plugs have been stolen from the Landrover. When Jeremy and Elizabeth question the family they learn that Bibi took them. Then the daughter starts recovering, seemingly cured.
Later on Jeremy sees Bibi in the bush, and realises she looks like Lucy, the 3.2 million year old Australopithecus afarensis found by archaeologists. Then, when he subsequently tries to lure her into the camp (spoiler), he catches her but is bitten and she escapes. He develops a fever, and tells Elizabeth that she came to village to save her son—they are all her children—and that she can talk but no-one can understand her language. When Jeremy finally recovers he tells Elizabeth that he knows he is no longer HIV+.
Much later, after they have returned to the camp (they swap Elizabeth’s jewellery for the spark plugs), they argue about whether they should try and find Bibi and exploit her gift:

“We’ve got to go back and find her,” answered Elizabeth. “I’d kill for the chance to have AIDS researchers examine her. I still don’t know that I buy your story about her curing you with a bite, but whatever happened, she obviously gave you some biochemical agent that kills the HIV virus.”
She looked at Jeremy wryly. “It’ll never replace the Salk vaccine, but there’s simply no other explanation. I’ve got to find her and bring her to the camp.”
“She’s not a lab animal,” replied Jeremy seriously. “She’s got to remain free to do her job.”
“Her job?”
“She has other children to cure.”
“You’re not a child.”
“We’re all her children.”
“That again,” said Elizabeth with a sigh.
“You don’t have to believe it,” said Jeremy, protecting his bacon as the kite swooped down toward his plate. “It’s enough that I do.”
“You’re not being logical, Jeremy.”
“I was logical my whole life, and what did it get me, except some money I don’t need and an incurable disease?” replied Jeremy. “Why don’t you really look at Uganda sometime? This is a magical place, for all its problems. Spit a mango pit out the window of your Land Rover, and when you drive by six months later a mango tree has grown up. Amin and his successors virtually wiped out your wildlife, yet all the animals are returning. Terminally ill people suddenly get cured. So how can I not believe in magic?”  p. 59

The final section sees the pair spend three months trying to find Bibi but eventually they give up. Then Jeremy wanders out into the bush on his own, and eventually comes upon her.
This, as you can probably gather from the above, is a bit of a mixed bag. It gets off to a good start with its characterisation and the African locale, and throughout the story does an impressive job of recalling the AIDS epidemic of the eighties and nineties (perhaps worse than the one we are dealing with now)1—however, the idea of a three million year old woman who is able to cure various diseases, and Jeremy’s anti-science/magical thinking take at the end of the piece, both take some of the shine off. That said, it’s a worthwhile read for those that are interested in character driven stories set in the HIV era, and/or in Africa, and I enjoyed it.
*** (Good). 18,200 words.

1. Scientists had less of an investigative armoury with HIV; the virus appeared to be lethal; and it seemed at first to affect only certain groups (i.e. gay men, which blunted the initial level of concern).