Brave and the Bold #205

Twenty Years, #5: Between the Darkness and the Light, Part 2

"It was the dawn of the Second Age of Heroes, a few years after the Allies-Axis War. The Brave & the Bold was a dream given form. Their goal: to prevent more evil by creating places where humans would not be afraid of metahumans. It's a way of life, stopping evil and creating homes away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers: humans and metahumans, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, this new, metahuman-ridden Earth, but it's our last, best hope for peace. This is the story of the those times and those peoples. The years are 1948-1966. The name of the book, and the people in them, is The Brave And The Bold."

Rated PG for language.

As dusk fell on the troubled city of Nairobi six very disparate figures walked and loped and ran through its streets, headed north. Two, the chimp and the dog, were nonplused and on edge, distrusting their companions and their circumstances and overwhelmed by the many sights and smells and sounds of the strange and unhappy city they found themselves in. Two of the others, the big game hunter and the gorilla, were calm, for the moment, but were dreading what was to come, doubting their ability to stop their enemy in time to avert the holocaust he planned. And the remaining two, the tall Masaai and the other white man, were stoic and seemed unmoved by what lay before them. The Kikuyu and Kalenjin and the Kamba and the Luhya and the Luo of Nairobi, seeing them run, got out of their way, some quickly–for any group that included a mzungu, an gorilla, and a chimp as well as the Beast should be avoided–and some slowly and grudgingly–resentment of outsiders, especially white outsiders, was so thick in Nairobi as to be tasted. The six ignored the sullen, resentful glares and not-so-furtive whispers of those Kenyans who wished them ill and ran, not speaking to each other but concentrating on leaving the city before the British noticed them.

The six left the last of Nairobi’s shanty towns and the sun’s last rays disappeared and the stars became fully visible. When they stopped for a break beside the wide dirt “highway” that led to the northeast, Bobo fell to one knee and one hand and muttered to Rex, between gasps,

“I’m...outta...shape... for this...Rex. Screw...this. Let’s...get...a cab.” Rex, tongue metronomically bobbing and his brain a-whirl with sensory overload, managed only a quick nod.

After a minute, when Rex managed to catch his breath, he said, “Bill, you gonna tell us where we’re going, or are we just going to run all the way to Thika?”

Bill, the hunter and explorer known the world over as “Congo Bill,” said nothing for a moment, instead holding his stomach and concentrating on not throwing up. He did not look up, but could still feel the cool stare of the Masaai on him. He waited until he was sure he could control himself and then looked into the bulbous red helmet of the Masaai. He said, “Not all of us run fifty miles a day, Beast. I’m used to stalking my prey, not running after them.” The Beast nodded curtly and turned to look at the distant lights of Thika, fifty miles away but still visible through the African night sky, which struck Rex, a long-time native of New York City, as being unnaturally clear. Bill spared a moment to look with envy at the Masaai, whose chest was not heaving from the run and whose body was not covered with sweat. Then he turned to Rex and said, “No. I have a jeep not far from here. We’re going to drive through Embu, and then hike from there to Mt. Kenya.”

Bobo muttered, “Thank God.” The other white man, who’d been introduced as “Ronald Jones” but who had said nothing the entire time Bobo and Rex had been with the quartet and who showed no visible strain from the prolonged sprint through Nairobi, turned to Kong, the blond gorilla, and said, in a surprisingly high and soft voice, “Anything?”

Kong, who was rubbing his knuckles and the pads of his feet–loping through the rough streets and alleys of Nairobi was much harder on his body than the soft streets of his native city–said “No, Mr. Jones. We are alone and unobserved. At least, by humans.” Rex, who had just picked up the scent of a spotted hyena, attracted to the six by the smell of the blood coming from the cuts and scratches on Rex’s and Bobo’s and Kong’s bodies, stood up and growled, the hair on his back flattening back. The hyena, seeing that the wounded animals were not that wounded and were surrounded by unharmed friends, quickly and wisely withdrew.

Rex, willing himself to calm down, said, “When are you going to tell us about where we’re going and what you have planned?”

Bill ignored a look from Kong and said, “When we’re driving, and not before. The forest has many ears, the road none.”
 
Bobo softly growled, “What forest? We’re in the middling of a stinking plain.”
 
Without a word the Beast resumed running, following the road. The other five sighed, wearily stood up, and followed, not even attempting to match the Masaai’s pace. After five minutes they reached the curve in the road where Bill had concealed his jeep. The Beast stood impassively, arms crossed, waiting for them. With varying degrees of relief they threw dropped to the ground and waited while Bill and the Beast threw back the netting and plants covering the jeep. Once it was started, they climbed in to the back, Bill driving, Bobo and Rex in the front seat, Jones and the Beast in the back, and Kong occupying the jeep’s bed. As soon as the jeep lurched forward Rex stuck his head out of the jeep’s side and grinned maniacally, drinking in the wind and the country’s scents. He knew he shouldn’t do it; Bobo had told him many times that it was too easy to get things in his eyes and mouth this way. Rex didn’t care. To his way of thinking, there were some things that he as a dog was genetically entitled to, and sticking his head out of a car’s window while it drove was one of them.
 
After five minutes they were sufficiently far from Nairobi to be surrounded by complete darkness, the lights of the city now far behind them and only faintly visible. Rex, tongue wagging and enjoying himself immensely–Kenya, from the nose’s perspective, was fascinating–looked at the others in the jeep. The Masaai had not changed expression, and although he smelled calmer than he had in Nairobi he still radiated danger. The blond gorilla had his arms folded across his chest and his eyes closed; he looked asleep. (Rex didn’t trust him, though. Kong had said, back in Nairobi, that he never read minds unless he had to, but Rex didn’t quite believe him. Rex had dealt with telepaths before, and didn’t trust them. At all.) Jones looked slightly bored; like the Beast, his expression had not varied, and he was almost as taciturn as the Masaai. Bill was concentrating on the road, and Bobo was busy regaining his breath. (Too much city food and not enough exercise, Rex thought. We have to start exercising more when we get back to the States.)
 
Rex finally broke the silence. “So, where are we going, anyhow?”
 
Bill said, “Kong...?”
 
Without moving or opening his eyes Kong began broadcasting mentally. “We’re going to Mt. Kenya, Rex. We’re–“
 
Bill’s mental voice, which was as hoarse and grim as his physical voice, said, “I think we’d better start at the beginning, Kong. Introductions, at least. We’ve got a long drive in front of us, and I don’t think sleep’s going to be–“
 
The jeep went across a large ditch, and the bump was so jarring that it disrupted the mental link between the six and sent them all several inches into the air. Kong growled an obscenity that Rex was surprised a jungle gorilla would know, and then re-established the mental net between them.
 
“As I was saying before our chauffeur here decided to wake us up, we–“
 
”Kong, I’ve got a banana for you to peel. Right here.”
 
“Please, Bill, there are some foods so disgusting even apes won’t eat them.”

Bill chuckled and bowed his head in Kong’s direction. Kong momentarily projected amusement via the mental web, and then resumed. “We’re headed to Embu, Rex. It’s a town of about 2500, around a hundred miles northeast of here. Before you ask, we’re going there because it’s the final stop for anyone looking for the Mau-Mau.”
 
Rex rested his head on his paws and let Kong tell him about the Mau-Mau. Kong’s telepathic voice was friendly and filled with good humor, and Rex found himself warming to the ape, despite what his senses and Kong were telling him. The story that Kong related was partially familiar to Rex, who did his best to follow current events and world politics, but some of the details were new, and not pleasing to Rex.
 
Kong told Rex and Bobo (and the others, who were listening in but already knew most of what Kong said) about the Mau-Mau rebellion, which truly began many years before, when the British had come to Kenya and, misunderstanding the Kikuyu’s ideas of land ownership, taken the land away from the Kikuyu. The Kikuyu were the largest single group in Kenya and owned the most land, but the translators who the British hired were not skillful, not being from Kenya, and when the British had asked the Kikuyu tribal leaders “Who owns the land?” they were told, through the translators, that the “tribes” owned the land. The British took this to mean that the lands were therefore overseen by the Kikuyu leaders. The British, for their part, had just taken control of Kenya away from the tribal leaders of the Kikuyu (and the Kalenjin and the Kamba and the Luhya and the Luo and the other peoples of Kenya, but Kong said, in a dry aside, that they were secondary to this story, as they didn’t count, at least according to the British and the Kikuyu), and so assumed that, since they were now in charge of Kenya, they should also be in charge of Kenya’s land.
 
The Kikuyu took this poorly. (Rex began to see that Kong had a taste for understatement and irony) Traditionally the Kikuyu families had overseen the land, not the tribal government, but the translators used by the British had failed to relay this, with the result of the British thinking that they were entitled to the land and the Kikuyu seeing the British as a band of heavily-armed thieves. (Of such small seeds, Kong added, have large trees grown.)
 
Resentment grew, and quickly bloomed into outright hatred, for the Kikuyu’s culture was based on herding, and without the land to herd on the Kikuyu had no choice but to go to work for the few, rich Kikuyu who had managed to save their lands from the British, or for the British themselves. The British, naturally, paid the Kikuyu less for their work than they paid whites for comparable work. In the space of years the Kikuyu were reduced to poverty and desperation, and were left to starve, work for criminally low wages...or fight.
 
The Kikuyu tried to gain independence through the political system which the British colonists and colonial government had imposed on them. The Kikuyu leader Jomo Kenyatta had brought together many different peoples and had formed the Kenya African Union. The Union worked for independence for Kenya, and took peaceful actions against the British colonial government, including strikes. The British responded by suppressing the Union’s strikes with violence, firing on protestors and conducting nighttime attacks on the Union’s leadership. The attitudes of the British colonists hardened towards the Kenyans’ fight for independence, and the British colonial government became intransigent towards all of the Union’s actions. The Kikuyu were left with no choice but violence.
 
The Kikuyu, like many African peoples, had a long tradition of secret societies, and it was not so many years since they’d had active war societies, and so they formed new ones, bound by sacred oaths (to the Kikuyu such oaths are inviolable) and dedicated to ending white domination of Kenya. Little was known about those societies, whether they desired violence and war or if they were willing to work peacefully within the political structure that the British had forced on them. Kenyatta wanted political, social and economic equality, but via peaceful means, not one that would alienate the whites or create unhappiness. So did many Kikuyu. But the colonial government declared these societies illegal on the grounds that they were anti-government and had Kenyatta and several other leaders of the anti-government movement arrested during midnight raids.
 
From that moment forward the revolt changed. The remaining leaders of the secret societies met and formed a new secret society, taking the most fit and earnest members of the other societies. These men and women were made to swear the most terrible vows of all, oaths so horrible that Kong refused to reveal them. (Rex, whose telepathy was nearly as strong as Kong’s, got a telepathic flash from Kong, an impression that leaked through Kong’s mental shields, and was nauseated by what he mentally heard) These men and women became the Mau-Mau.
 
Kong decided to skip the specifics of the war between the Mau-Mau and the British, for (he said) he knew that his listeners knew the details. He skipped ahead to the recent past, and the details that the outsiders might not have been aware of.
 
The British and the Mau-Mau were exchanging atrocities, and no real headway was being made by either side, when three new elements entered the scene. The first was the use of the British supermen against the Mau-Mau. For several months the British had been willing (or so it seemed) to let their troops, the Colonial Police, and the native Kikuyu Guard fight against the Mau-Mau. The British supermen corps, whose official title was not known but which commonly went by the name “the Victoria Guard,” were busy elsewhere, fighting in Ireland and Somalia and Malaysia and Guyana. But the Lari massacre, where 90 Kikuyu loyal to the British and insufficiently loyal to the Mau-Mau were burned alive, changed matters, and members of the Victoria Guard, including the (in)famous Shining Knight, were brought in.
 
Their presence attracted (Kong added, in an aside, `Triggered ‘might be a better word) African supermen, some of who had no particular reason to love the Kikuyu or wish for Kenyan independence but whose hatred for the British far outweighed their desire to see the Kikuyu destroyed. (Kong, in another aside, said, The Kikuyu, a proud and war-like people, had made many enemies over the centuries, and their subjugation at the hands of the British was not entirely unwelcome to many peoples in East Africa) Although there were several African supermen who quickly distinguished themselves in the fighting against the British, two in particular were significant, both to the Mau-Mau and to the British.
 
The first was a sorcerer, who until the arrival of the Victoria Guard, had been content to lurk behind the scenes, directing the Mau-Mau’s actions and never revealing himself or his power. The sorcerer was never seen by anyone outside of the inner circle of the Mau-Mau, and every British attempt to find and kill him had been a humiliating failure, but everyone in Nairobi and seemingly in Kenya itself knew that the sorcerer was helping the Mau-Mau. The sorcerer was a legend in East Africa, reported to have been there for 10,000 years, to have founded his own empire and to live on the coast of Kenya inside a mountain carved in his own likeness. None knew his name, and he was considered half-mythical, referred to only as “The Sorcerer,” but it was still widely known that he was active now, and helping the Mau-Mau, along with his apprentice, the Dzonzoko.

The second, and more frightening, was He Who Never Dies. Like the Sorcerer much was rumored about He Who Never Dies, but little was known for sure. He had ruled over a small empire in East Africa from beyond living memory, and had survived numerous murder attempts, but his true name, or what he looked like, was not known. Those who followed him and served under him prospered, as long as they showed their loyalty and respect (or fear); those who betrayed him died in ways...(frighteningly, Kong did not complete the sentence, simply letting it trail off) What He Who Never Dies did for the Mau-Mau was not known for sure; the Kikuyu suddenly became better armed and fed, and their actions more smartly planned and executed, but beyond that his actions were unknown.

The presence of both of these figures led to more intense and vicious fighting between the Mau-Mau and the British, with mercy neither asked nor given and with massacres of the innocent by the Mau-Mau and the midnight imprisonments and tortures by the British more common. That in turn led to the third new element in the Mau-Mau revolt, the expulsion of the Kikuyu from Nairobi.

Kong explained that the Kikuyu within Nairobi had been providing the Mau-Mau with assistance for months. The Mau-Mau, unable to defeat the British in a pitched, European-style set-piece battle, had retreated to the north, to the forests of the Aberdares and Mount Kenya and to the villages around Lake Victoria. The British had been unable to find the Mau-Mau in those locations, much less dislodge or defeat them. And the urban Kikuyu continued to send money and food to the Mau-Mau. So the British deported 100,000 Kikuyu from Nairobi, imprisoning most of them in “detention camps.” This, the British thought, would choke off the support for the Mau-Mau, and do by starvation and disease what had not been done by force of arms.

The reaction by the Mau-Mau themselves was to step up the fighting and the massacres, to try to intimidate the British by committing acts so horrible and evil that the white outsiders would finally lose heart and leave Kenya to the Kenyans. While Kong and the others did not approve of such acts, that was not what had brought them to Nairobi, and was not why they were driving towards Embu. What had brought them all together was what Kong and the Beast and Ronald Jones had each individually learned about the plans of the Sorcerer and He Who Never Dies.

At this point Bobo, who had been listening surprisingly quietly–surprising to Rex, anyhow–spoke up. “How? How’d you hear about their plans?”

Kong turned soft, sad, wise eyes on Bobo and mentally said, “My...people...have been watching the rebellion for some time, Bobo. It was my duty to monitor the war, to ensure that the conflict would not affect Go–would not affect my city. I was scanning the minds of the Mau-Mau and overheard the thoughts of one of those Kikuyu who will be involved in the ritual tomorrow night. I was with Bill, and told him what I’d heard.

“The Beast is in tune with the land and the animals on it. I believe they told him. You may ask him, if you wish. I doubt he’ll answer, however. And Mr. Jones, for reasons of his own, was monitoring the situation. Like me, he read the mind of one of the Mau-Mau.”

Bobo said, “Izzat how you found out about us?”

Jones mentally spoke for the first time, his telepathic voice as high and soft as his physical one. “Actually, Bob, that little incident of yours at the Cairo airport got people talking. I got wind of it from someone in the Victoria Guard.”

Rex caught a brief flash of mental surprise from Bobo, who was obviously caught off-guard by the use of a name that (judging from his reaction) he wanted to forget about. Bobo turned to stare at Jones, who looked at him with a bland expression.

Rex, feeling he should say something to break the moment (Bobo looked distinctly unhappy), said, “What was it you heard, Kong? What exactly are the plans of the Mau-Mau and this...Sorcerer...of yours? For that matter, why not just read his mind?”

“He’s too well-guarded for that, as is He Who Never Dies. Their mental blocks are...impressive. As for their plans....”

Rex, sensing a curious reluctance on Kong’s part, a reluctance shared by Jones and Bill (the Masaai might have been a block of stone for all the mental impulses Rex was receiving from him), said, “You’ll have to tell us sooner or later, Kong. We didn’t come all this way just to follow orders.”

Kong mentally sighed and said, “You’re right, of course. In my job keeping secrets becomes a habit, one that’s hard to break, even when you know you should. My apologies.

“He Who Never Dies and the Sorcerer plan to bring back the Kikuyu dead. All of the Kikuyu dead, from the beginning of time.”

Author’s Notes:

See the Notes for the final issue of this story.

Next Issue: Between the Darkness and the Light, Part 3