Catacombs by John Farris

the contemporary East African culture. Most of the decimated tribe, who in their prime had been aristocratic nomads with cattle, fierce spearmen and hunters of lions, had failed to make even the slightest adjustments to changes in their environment. Ukumtara seemed to have prospered. He enjoyed French wines and disco music on his powerful transoceanic Grundig radio. He was tall, with a rock-like shaved head, but lighter in color than most Masai; a Hamitic, caucasoid strain was apparent in his bloodlines. His habitual expression was one of gaping good humor, but that could be deceptive.
    He wore two rows of medals on his blue uniform blouse and a pearl-handled automatic in a sweat-blackened shoulder holster. He had avoided the fever by staying indoors, burning incense, not bathing, and having a daily dose of Sloan's liniment, which he took internally with a bowl of pombe .
    The atmosphere in his closed-up bungalow, despite the cool temperatures outside, almost knocked Erika over. But the colonel scowled when he saw she was wearing a surgical mask and insisted that she remove it. No one in the house could become infected; to think so was to invite a malignant fate...
    She was late, and they had not waited supper. House-boys served Erika goat curry, eland steak, and peas cooked in groundnut oil, along with a glass of a good Bordeaux that had just arrived from Mbeya. Father Varnhalt was also on hand. He was nearly seventy and suffering from bush fever; he had been a long time at the mission. His hands trembled so badly he was forced to eat with his mouth only inches from his plate.
    At some point he had surrendered his faith to the unremitting hostility of the natural world–drought, storm, plague, the evil spirits of the forests. He depended now on ritual, the sterile intonations and responses of a dead language, to get him through the day. He reinforced a precarious hold on reality by talking matter-of-factly about the horrors that had driven fellow priests and white sisters mad in their isolated circumstances.
    "One day at Mass Father Sylvanus saw his entire congregation turn to animals before his eyes–creatures with long snouts, tufted ears, and the fiery eyes of dragons. They gnashed their teeth at him, and farted obscenely when he tried to speak. This is true. Mother Celeste was bathing in a pool when she looked up and saw the devil sitting on the limb of a fig tree playing with his penis. He ejaculated demon seed into her water; his seed turned into thousands of little biting creatures which tried to tear the chaste white flesh from her bones. Father Xavier Antonio was walking along a path in the Loita when he encountered a giant. One side was hair, the other stone. The giant, whose name was Enenauner, beat on a tree with his club until Father Xavier went deaf from the noise. I know this to be a fact."
    Colonel Ukumtara ate heavily, washing down his meal with copious wine. He had gained at least twenty pounds during his idle weeks at the mission, most of it in his belly.
    "Your religion is foolish," he said, pointing his bread knife at Father Varnhalt. "The Masai know this. The Bible is too long. There is too much to read. Why should we pray to a man? Men die, and are no longer real. We know this by looking around and seeing that they are not there. The moon and the sun endure. They are real. We see them, every day, in the sky. Evil spirits are real; with our own eyes we see the evil they do. Then pray to the evil spirits who would harm you, so you will not be harmed. Pray for the sun to come up in the morning and cast away the dark where evil hides. This is sensible; this is good. Your religion will have us all crazy like you."
    "The sun will always rise; it is God's law."
    "What if it doesn't? What if there's no light tomorrow, and tomorrow after? Don't you think the evil spirits will be all over us then? Who will you pray to when that happens?"
    Father Varnhalt tried to smile at this nonsense, but his emotional and