“Wake up! It’s time!”
The whisper was urgent. Muthomi blinked in the darkness, shrugging away the arms that shook him by the shoulders.
“Hurry! Change your clothes. We have to go now.”
Muthomi made out Kioko’s frantic face.
“What’s going on?” he asked aloud.
“Shh!” commanded Kioko. “Where are the clothes you came with from home?”
“In here,” whispered Muthomi, wide-eyed, indicating his locker.
“Put them on,” said Kioko, “and wear this around your mark,” handing over a kind of bracelet made from cloth, Muthomi thought at first, but it was wire as fine as lace.
Kioko fidgeted while Muthomi got dressed and wore the bracelet, then grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the exit.
Muthomi pulled back.
“My bag,” he gasped. He hurried back for it: he could not be separated from his book. He reached for his Silvertouch—
“No! Leave it,” said Kioko.
“Why?”
“Later. Let’s go. Help is here.”
Muthomi choked: how could he have known? Was Kioko part of the Union?
They ran behind the classes, keeping well away from the light, behind the Virtual Library, around the Recreation Complex, and stopped in front of a shed. Even in the dark, it looked out of place, with its rough brick walls and low corrugated roofing. It was an old scab amid the smooth concrete and polished glass and steel of Clarence University.
“Why were we hiding?” panted Muthomi. “I saw no guards.”
Kioko shushed Muthomi and pointed around the lampposts and buildings closest to them. Muthomi squinted: what was he supposed to see? His eyes strained, but there it was, the faint red pulsing glow, high up in the corners of the buildings, and near the top of the streetlamps.
“What are those?”
“Eyes,” said Kioko, as he put his shoulder to the shed’s wooden door and heaved.
Muthomi followed him inside; Kioko shoved the door shut and dragged something heavy across it. He produced a flashlight from his pocket and waved it around the room. It was empty, except for a handful of rusted tools in one corner and the heavy wooden crate that blocked the door from the inside.
“We don’t have much time,” said Kioko as he sat cross-legged on the shed’s pitted floor. Muthomi hugged his bag across his chest. Kioko smiled and extended his hand.
“What?” asked Muthomi, holding his bag tighter.
“I know you have it,” said Kioko.
“You are one of them!”
Kioko nodded. “I will help you understand.”
Help has come, whispered Kanana.
Muthomi pulled the book out of his bag. At the sight of it, Kioko’s eyes grew wide. He took the book from Muthomi’s hands and touched the letters on its cover. His eyes glazed with tears, his hands trembled, like a believer before his God.
“I am surprised that you have kept it on campus for this long,” said Kioko. He looked at Muthomi expectantly.
Kioko cocked his head and frowned. Muthomi had an honest face—you needed one to trade well in the barter—one that spoke a thousand words in a look. What Kioko saw broke his heart.
“You really know nothing,” he said.
The poor boy shifted nervously. Heaven save us, thought Kioko.
“Why didn’t you say you were my helper?” asked Muthomi.
“You were not meant to know.”
“What did you do to my device that day?”
“It doesn’t matter. Start from the beginning. I must understand you before I can serve you.”
“But you do know me. I have told you everything.”
“I mean, how did you get into CU? Who gave you this print?”
“My grandmother did both,” said Muthomi. “She said it was my destiny to join the university, that it would honour my father and my grandfather too, beyond his grave. She gave the book to me on the day I left the village to come here.”
Kioko nodded; Muthomi continued.
“I didn’t understand anything at first,” he said, “because my mother never liked me going to Mama Oti’s lessons, and she never talked about my father after he left. But then, everybody else was so happy that I was chosen. I thought it would be a break from shoemaking.” Muthomi laughed. It now seemed like an absurd idea; since arriving at CU, he had missed his trade intensely.
“The people here…” The jeers and taunts of the Clarentians, the shame of the uniform, the headache of reading the Manifesto, Kanana… the frustration was almost unbearable. He shook his head. “They are not like the people in the plains.”
Kioko understood.
“When Madam Bundi asked to see me—”
“You were summoned by Madam Bundi?” demanded Kioko. “When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Did you have this with you?” Kioko indicated the book.
“Yes, it was in my bag. I try to read it every day, but so far—”
“She must know about it then. Listen, Muthomi, you might be in danger.” Kioko’s voice was grave, urgent, frightening. “The Bundis hate us. They killed your grandfather, and maybe they have your father, too. If they know you have an Original, they will come after you. We must hide the book. I will alert the Leader. We must keep you safe.”
“What do you mean? What do you know about my family?”
“Quiet!”
Muthomi was furious. “Tell me what you know!”
Kioko threw his hand over Muthomi’s mouth. Struggling was futile; the boy was stronger than he seemed.
“Peace,” he whispered. “There are ears everywhere, too.”
Muthomi yielded, recalling the red eyes in the trees.
Kioko stood and ran his hand over the walls of the shed, waving his flashlight back and forth, looking for nooks and crevices big enough to hide the book. The enemy must not find it—
“I want to know what is in it first,” said Muthomi.
Kioko stopped. This was his mission, after all.
He sat back down and placed the flashlight on the floor between them. He searched Muthomi’s face—still nothing but blank honesty. He held the book in his left hand, and placed his right on top of it, like the village pastor and his Scriptures.
He looks many years older, thought Muthomi.
“You are a Njema,” Kioko began. “The Union has been losing faith, ever since your grandfather passed on. We think your father, Mugambi, is alive, hiding out there somewhere, sending us his wisdom in secret. To have his descendant among us is more than enough to renew our convictions. You are our hope.”
“I am a shoemaker.”
“Moses Njema was a teacher.”
Muthomi was surprised. He only knew that his grandfather had worked for the Authorities; Mama Oti’s stories always began there.
Kioko turned the pages reverently to the preamble. He took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the task ahead of him. He was trusted to help Muthomi to understand the Union, but the boy was clueless. He would need to translate the entire Manifesto into Native, right here, in this old shed.
“Moses Njema taught mathematics—his trade was in numbers. He worked in the Authorities as a researcher—a kind of investigator—in the Education Ministry. He met Clarence Bundi there, the man who would later open his group of schools and ruin our nation. Some say they were great friends, others say they were enemies from the start. What we know is that Clarence Bundi was a lawyer—a man who understood all the rules of the nation—and he needed Moses’ help with a new plan for the learning of our people.
“In Moses’ time, anyone could go to school if they wanted to, and the Authorities would pay for the students to learn anything they liked, and there were many trades waiting in the Capital once they completed their learning. But Moses was from Ndoro Village; he was only lucky to have achieved such high learning to become a teacher, and luckier still to rise from teaching in schools to teaching the Authorities. Clarence’s plan was to give everybody a chance to learn, whether they came from the great mountain or from the plains, more than just luck for people like Moses. The two agreed to work on the plan together.
“Clarence knew how to change the rules of the nation for the plan to work. Moses worked...