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Termites [MultiFormat]
eBook by Dave Smeds
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$0.79 |
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$0.67 |
eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: The genetic changes seemed like the answer to everything--but in the end they only made the famine worse.
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, 1987
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2006
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [275 KB], eReader (PDB) [45 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [21 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [20 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [91 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [93 KB], hiebook (KML) [120 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [109 KB], iSilo (PDB) [18 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [23 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [86 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [32 KB]
Words: 6278
Reading time: 17-25 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
August, 2011
When I first arrived in the Cherangani Hills of northwestern Kenya as a young woman, the mountains had been green and tawny, cloaked in lush bush, dotted with the cultivated plots of the Pokot tribe that I had come to study. Now I could hardly recognize the place where I had lived my life between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-eight. The drought had turned the Great Rift Valley into blistered, lunarlike terrain; the hills reminded me of Ethiopia back in the eighties--steep mounds unintended for human habitation, withered, eroded, and above all, dry. Greg stopped the Land Rover and let me examine the scenery more carefully. But it was no use.
"I'm lost," I said.
He brushed a cloud of flies away from his face, callused fingers rasping against a four-day growth of tough, white beard. "I believe it's around the next promontory," he said, his clipped British inflections making the statement unequivocal, though in truth he knew the region far less than I.
His confidence made me try one more time. "Yes. Yes, I think you're right," I said.
When we rounded the flank of the hills, we saw the remnants of a village. All that remained of the huts were the firepits, the packed-earth floors, and ruptured holes where the branches that formed the walls had been anchored. And, of course, the sitting stones--it was improper for a man of the Pokot to sit on naked ground. In their stead were three hovels constructed of piled dung and animal hides, not true dwellings at all, merely places to get out of the sun. I saw a dozen or more people, all lying or sitting listlessly in the shade.
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