articles on to the table.
'My clipping service,' he explained. 'Courtesy of Wallace Threadgill. One of the space travellers. That crew who think if it gets a bit crowded we can book ourselves to Venus and hold our breath. They are quite remarkable. I've never figured out what drugs they're on, but I would love a bottle.'
'Why would he send you clippings?'
'It's hate mail.'
She peered at the pile. 'I thought you weren't interested in AIDS.' For these were the headlines on top: 'Confronting the Cruel Reality of Africa's AIDS: A Continent's Agony'; 'AIDS
Tears Lives of a Ugandan Family'; 'My Daughter Won't Live to Two, Mother Weeps'.
'I'm entirely interested. I just find the alarmist impact projections optimistic. One more virus: we've seen them come and go.'
'You find high infection rates optimistic ?'
'Threadgill is browned off with me. HIV—he thinks I invented it.'
'That's preposterous!'
'Not really. And I was honoured. The virus is ingenious. But from my provisional projections, AIDS will not stem population growth even in Africa. HIV has proved a great personal disappointment. Why, I rather resent it for getting my hopes up.'
Eleanor stood and picked up her briefcase. ' Disappointment ? I refuse to sit here and—'
He poured her a stout double. 'Young lady, we are still working on your sense of humour.'
She paused, stayed standing, but finally put the briefcase down. 'I think we need to work on yours. It's ghoulish.'
He smiled. 'I was the boy in seventh grade in the back of the class telling dead-baby jokes.'
'You're still telling them.'
'Mmm.'
'That was quite a leg-pull. Touché.'
She ranged the room, taking a good belt of the brandy. It was an ordinary room, wasn't it? But the light glowed with the off-yellow that precedes a cyclone, and she was unnerved by a persistent scrish scrash at the edge of her ear that she couldn't identify. When she looked at the photograph of the diver, the eyes no longer focused on Calvin but followed Eleanor's uneasy pace before the elephant bone instead. Their expression was of the utmost entertainment.
4
Spiritual Pygmies at the Ski Chalet
Wallace didn't attend social functions often any more, but an occasional descent into the world of the pale kaffir was charitable. As he glided over their heads in his airy comprehension of the Fulgent Whole, it was easy to forget that most of his people were still piddling in the dirt with their eyes closed. While Wallace had the loftiest of interior aspirations, he did not believe that individual enlightenment should be placed above your duties to the blind. Revelation came with its responsibilities, if sometimes tedious.
He set up camp on a stool by the fire, scanning the gnoshing, tittering, tinselly crowd as they tried to numb their agony with spirit of the wrong sort. Aside from the Luo domestic staff scurrying with platters, the entire gathering was white. The usual form, in Nairobi. The pallid, both on the continent and on the planet, were being phased out, so they huddled together through the siege in lamentable little wakes like these that they liked to call 'parties'.
He glanced around the house, an A-frame with high varnished rafters, like a ski chalet: Aspen overlooking the Ngong Hills. Dotted around the CD player perched a predictable display of travel trophies—bone pipes and toothy masks—whose ceremonial purposes their looters wouldn't comprehend, or care to.
The herd was mixed tonight. A larger than average colony of aid parasites, each of whom was convinced he and he alone really understood the Samburu. The clamour of authority was deafening: 'The problem with schools for the pastoralist is they discourage a nomadic life…'
'And you have to wonder', a proprietary voice chimed, 'if teaching herders to read about Boston is in their interests. When you expose them to wider options, you educate them, in effect, to be
'My clipping service,' he explained. 'Courtesy of Wallace Threadgill. One of the space travellers. That crew who think if it gets a bit crowded we can book ourselves to Venus and hold our breath. They are quite remarkable. I've never figured out what drugs they're on, but I would love a bottle.'
'Why would he send you clippings?'
'It's hate mail.'
She peered at the pile. 'I thought you weren't interested in AIDS.' For these were the headlines on top: 'Confronting the Cruel Reality of Africa's AIDS: A Continent's Agony'; 'AIDS
Tears Lives of a Ugandan Family'; 'My Daughter Won't Live to Two, Mother Weeps'.
'I'm entirely interested. I just find the alarmist impact projections optimistic. One more virus: we've seen them come and go.'
'You find high infection rates optimistic ?'
'Threadgill is browned off with me. HIV—he thinks I invented it.'
'That's preposterous!'
'Not really. And I was honoured. The virus is ingenious. But from my provisional projections, AIDS will not stem population growth even in Africa. HIV has proved a great personal disappointment. Why, I rather resent it for getting my hopes up.'
Eleanor stood and picked up her briefcase. ' Disappointment ? I refuse to sit here and—'
He poured her a stout double. 'Young lady, we are still working on your sense of humour.'
She paused, stayed standing, but finally put the briefcase down. 'I think we need to work on yours. It's ghoulish.'
He smiled. 'I was the boy in seventh grade in the back of the class telling dead-baby jokes.'
'You're still telling them.'
'Mmm.'
'That was quite a leg-pull. Touché.'
She ranged the room, taking a good belt of the brandy. It was an ordinary room, wasn't it? But the light glowed with the off-yellow that precedes a cyclone, and she was unnerved by a persistent scrish scrash at the edge of her ear that she couldn't identify. When she looked at the photograph of the diver, the eyes no longer focused on Calvin but followed Eleanor's uneasy pace before the elephant bone instead. Their expression was of the utmost entertainment.
4
Spiritual Pygmies at the Ski Chalet
Wallace didn't attend social functions often any more, but an occasional descent into the world of the pale kaffir was charitable. As he glided over their heads in his airy comprehension of the Fulgent Whole, it was easy to forget that most of his people were still piddling in the dirt with their eyes closed. While Wallace had the loftiest of interior aspirations, he did not believe that individual enlightenment should be placed above your duties to the blind. Revelation came with its responsibilities, if sometimes tedious.
He set up camp on a stool by the fire, scanning the gnoshing, tittering, tinselly crowd as they tried to numb their agony with spirit of the wrong sort. Aside from the Luo domestic staff scurrying with platters, the entire gathering was white. The usual form, in Nairobi. The pallid, both on the continent and on the planet, were being phased out, so they huddled together through the siege in lamentable little wakes like these that they liked to call 'parties'.
He glanced around the house, an A-frame with high varnished rafters, like a ski chalet: Aspen overlooking the Ngong Hills. Dotted around the CD player perched a predictable display of travel trophies—bone pipes and toothy masks—whose ceremonial purposes their looters wouldn't comprehend, or care to.
The herd was mixed tonight. A larger than average colony of aid parasites, each of whom was convinced he and he alone really understood the Samburu. The clamour of authority was deafening: 'The problem with schools for the pastoralist is they discourage a nomadic life…'
'And you have to wonder', a proprietary voice chimed, 'if teaching herders to read about Boston is in their interests. When you expose them to wider options, you educate them, in effect, to be
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