“Every emotion and sensation, good or bad, that you feel is energy,” I say, assuredly. “A Healer’s duty is to turn the energy that burdens you into something . . . more pleasant.”
I extend my palm. Khaya peers at the device in my hand as if it is a treasure beyond her reach like window shopping at an upscale boutique.
“This is a shock absorber,” I say with a smile. “I will implant it into your temple. The device will absorb your pain, converting it into a new energy called an aura.”
Her fear and doubts prickle against my skin. “First you must choose an aura.”
The menu of auras is listed outside the Healing Hut’s door. It is the first thing one sees before they enter.
“I . . . I . . . don’t know,” Khaya says. “Can you explain what each aura will do to me?”
“If you choose Euphoria, each time you feel sad, angry, or hurt, the shock absorber will turn it into a state of intense excitement and happiness,” I say. “Laughter will make you laugh off every trauma. Patience means you will always keep your cool. With Resilience, you will still feel the pain, but it will make you stronger. If you choose Apathy, you will be indifferent to anything that happens to you.”
Khaya bites her lip. She can hear her father’s voice warning her about the evils of the Friendship Bench. Don’t you see that it makes you forget your pain? It makes you live a lie.
Another memory escapes from her mind and fills the space between us—Khaya watching the grief eat away at her father, grief that could have easily been taken away by this simple procedure.
“What do you recommend?” she asks.
“I cannot make that decision for you.” Her shoulders droop lower at my words. “Most people choose Euphoria,” I offer.
Khaya turns over the options in her head. Apathy is very tempting, even resilience but she sees no joy in them.
“Euphoria,” she says, finally.
I lean toward Khaya, tucking her braids behind her ears. I gently insert the device into her skin through the temples. All she feels is a slight pinch. When I’m done, the top half of the device sits behind her ear. “All set,” I say, leaning away.
The mass on her shoulders blanches until it fades away, melting into a warm sensation. Only one memory remains. Her father teaching her to ride a bike. Khaya falls and scrapes her knee. Her father is by her side immediately.
“You know why your mother named you Khaya?” her father says in a soothing voice. “It means ‘home.’ No matter how far you go, no matter how far you fall, you will always have a home.”
Khaya smiles for the first time since stepping into my Healing Hut. She has the most dazzling smile of all the people that have sought my services.
“I wish you all the happiness,” I say, watching her leave.
The meadow wanes with her receding footsteps and completely vanishes when she is gone. I deposit the cold memories into a jar. My hands tremble more with each new patron, but I can’t stop. One more patron and the masters will be pleased. And I’ll be free.
23
“Fort Kwame” © Derek Lubangakene
Originally Published in Africanfuturism: An Anthology edited by Wole Talabi (Brittle Paper: October 19, 2020)
Two hours passed before Jabari Asalur acknowledged his dread. His chest felt hollow and a damp stillness was lodged in his gut. If he had any breakfast left in him, he would’ve fallen to his knees, stuck a cold finger down his throat and let the exploding bile jar his senses. Anything was better than the endless waiting.
Two hours, something was definitely wrong. Naleni hadn’t made it. Their rebellion had failed. She was probably dead. He regretted letting her go back instead of himself. Asalur, you stupid, clumsy coward, he chastised himself. If he hadn’t been such an Asalur and messed up the charges, she wouldn’t have had to risk herself cleaning up after him. Naleni and he would’ve already joined the others and been miles away from danger. Instead he lingered here on this blue-tinged cryocrater, their rendezvous point. There was no point in waiting for her, he knew this, but he couldn’t leave. He owed her that much.
To distract himself, he laid down the four control units flat against the ice. One had gone off okay but the other three still glowed red. He suspected their fuses had come loose. He didn’t account for that earlier. Naleni should’ve fixed the fuses by now. But no, the control units still glowed red, not green. Even if they finally turned green, he wouldn’t detonate them until she was with him. She was his only green light.
“Come on, Naleni. Come on,” he whispered.
He glanced once more at the bio-monitor on his wrist. It blinked a steady amber light. The declining power blurred his vision, turning his mask’s optic visualiser cloudy like into a Harmattan haze. He had maybe forty, fifty minutes of breathable air left. It was already too late, but he couldn’t leave. Not without Naleni. He didn’t want to believe all he had done — all they had done — was in vain. No way.
He crouched beside his Kunguru and waited.
* * *
An hour later, he checked the control units, two of the three had turned green. All three would be great, but two was enough. If only there was a way to communicate to her. He would’ve told her to get out of there. Perhaps she already had. He had no way of knowing but he wouldn’t detonate the charges until she had returned to him. He ignored the sense of urgency. Even when his bio-monitor light turned red and the temperature dropped a dozen degrees,
Jabari double-checked his thermskin’s isothermal functions. They were at eighty percent. The wireless receptors between the Kunguru’s backup isothermal reservoir and his thermskin suit still worked. Hypothermia proved a distant threat. Around him, the cryocrater remained silent, save for the frozen ice-shelf cracking underneath the porous bedrock. That and the rumble of distant thunder medleying with the howling winds. As the landscape steadily sluiced into dusk, Jabari’s panic rose. In spite of his thermskin’s capabilities, no amount of training would save him once dusk fell. No amount.
He glanced afresh at his surroundings hoping to see Naleni stumbling down the glacial outcroppings. Hard luck. Only the winds replied his anguish. Theirs was a dialect of misgiving. A language he now knew too well.
The Kunguru’s comms, connected to his mask, implored him to climb aboard and recharge his thermskin.
Jabari ignored the warning. He knew the moment he hopped inside, the Kunguru’s A.I. interface would supervene his manual override and fly him someplace dry and safe. Not that such a place existed. Not for miles in any direction. Fort Kwame was one of a few embers in a growing darkness. The last frontier against the creeping chill.
“Come on Naleni,” this time his whisper was a prayer.
He knelt, figuring this would conserve power. Perhaps a few fractions of a percent. Perhaps a little more. His movements were the least pilferers of his standby power. He figured the beating of his quailing heart probably consumed enough to excavate a sinkhole by himself. Probably more. He shut his eyes to even his breathing. A vain endeavour.
I could just go back for her, couldn’t I? Nah, Jabari dismissed the idea. It was impossible. From the cryocrater, eighty klicks away, he recognised the slick, oil-spill hue of the intrinsic shield glass-doming Fort Kwame’s orbit.
Everything had gone according to plan. Well, except, for his clumsy mess that had sent Naleni scurrying back.
Despite the intrinsic shield going off, Jabari believed Naleni made it out somehow. She had to.
The gravity of what he had done, helping the water dwelling Jo’Nam destroy Fort Kwame, didn’t undo him. Not yet anyway.
By sunfall every Civic Centre in every Orbital City from Old Cape Town to New Cairo would hear of Fort Kwame’s fate. They’d hear of the meltdown of the nuclear reactors, the cracking gas hydrates, and the sinking tonnes of metal and bedrock. They’d hear it all. Jabari and Naleni would join the rest of Jo’Nam exodus and resettle in the colonies west of Fort Kwame. They’d be closer to their real home. The ancestors weren’t pleased and none of this thawin
g would cease unless the Jo’Nam returned home — well, what was left of home.
He checked his bio-monitor, then lowered his breathing, and waited. . .
The last perfect day Jabari remembered was the day he crashed his Kunguru in the thermokarst lake below the pylons which held Fort Kwame aloft. It was also the last time he saw the clockwork methane-flares storm across the intrinsic shield. The methane-flares burned blue and fiery, turning the intrinsic shield into an opalescent canopy wherever they hit. He loved the way the shield absorbed the flares, then radiated their fire outwards. It always made him feel tiny perforations press against his thermskin’s polyethylene fibre. They used to call these goosebumps. Back when the language allowed for the acknowledgement of involuntary body functions. Now every inhabitant, from sentry cadets to frontier explorers and the glaciologists and anthropologists, everyone was taught to master their bodily functions. It was the only way they could survive.
Back then, Fort Kwame lay in the trajectory-spray of one of those volcanic hydromethane archipelagos. Now, who knows? Geological faulting constantly shifted their bearing. For now, as of this morning that is, Fort Kwame was anchored to the subglacial mountain ranges entombed beneath Antarctica’s solid ice-sheet. Many other Orbital Cities were likewise anchored to whatever floating land mass not yet completely inundated. What remained of humanity was incredibly lucky to have survived rapid polar amplifications and permafrost thawing which raised water levels to diluvian heights. Subsequent nuclear fallouts in the twenty-second and twenty-fourth centuries disrupted subduction patterns and the evolution of tectonic plates. Chunks of continental bedrock now floated freely on hot asthenosphere, crashing into each other like a bad game of bumper cars.
It’s why no one else marvelled at the methane-flares. Jabari wasn’t everyone else though. He was an Asalur. His ancestors descended from cattle-rustlers; back when East-Africa still had a Rift Valley; he knew a thing or two about living dangerously. Not that that had anything to do with methane flares. He loved reminding himself and others that he was an Asalur. The Asalur were the first Frontier Explorers. They traversed the unstable globe searching out new land masses to anchor Fort Kwame. Jabari’s baba had led the last exploration trip. It was yet to yield reports. He was lost, presumed dead. Jabari wasn’t surprised. The vision of Frontier Explorers like his baba once ensured they had a tomorrow, even at the cost of their own lives. The ice sheet wouldn’t hold them forever. Jabari was poised to step into his baba’s shoes but by his own actions today, he had spurned his Asalur legacy and damned them all. They would say it was cruel fate. The baba builds, the son squanders.
* * *
Jabari, like a thousand other cadets, had patrolled one of five Fort Kwame sectors, and often assisted the glaciologists in their expeditions beyond the darkening ice-sheet. Sometimes, they’d escort ethnolinguists attempting to recreate ‘ethnic blueprints’ based on the passed-down oral ciphers of the Jo’Nam. Ciphers about dwarf pyramids in ancient Nubia, two-faced, two-sexed gods, myriad orishas, and water dragons named Nyami Nyami, Ninki Nanka, the Mazomba, and Grootslang. It was mildly amusing, but delusional in the face of near-certain extinction.
Jabari’s regiment patrolled Sector Five. Sector five was nothing but a lingering abyss. It was the dark netherworld beneath the Orbital City’s flatform. A site often attacked by Jo’Nam terrorists. Though Jabari was being fast-tracked to become a Frontier Explorer like his baba, he had to prove himself in Sector Five.
On the day he crashed his Kunguru, he had lost a wager to his roommate Bakida Okol and had to pull a double shift. Though exhausted, Jabari’s pride wouldn’t allow him put the Kunguru on autopilot. The crash surprised no one, least of all himself. He would later learn that Bakida led the search party. Like his baba, Jabari too was presumed dead. His return, having spent six months in the company of the Jo’Nam, surprised everyone. They seemed to have all moved on. Bakida even gave away Jabari’s family heirlooms.
The bastard was six inches taller than Jabari. His combat and analysis scores were the highest in their sentry graduating class. Bakida never ever regarded Jabari with the respect his family name deserved. For this, they often duelled. Much to Jabari’s disfavour. Now Jabari had the ultimate ‘leg-up’ on the bastard.
Fort Kwame was made of colonies stacked on lead pylons twenty thousand feet above permafrost. A hodgepodge of largely desert or river-basin cultures — Nilotic, Bantoid, Amhara, Mande, Nuer, even some Nubian — now banked on immense concave flatforms. Polymerised solar panels and pressurised water nuclear reactors powered Fort Kwame’s ever-expanding colonies. The colonies widened in inverse proportion to their population. This, another thorn piercing at the heart of the Jo’Nam, fuelling their dissent. Jabari now agreed with the aspersion that these colonies intended to grow so large their flatforms would lock together in circular mosaics and form a new lithosphere. Ultimately forge a roof over Jo’Nam world.
The Jo’Nam, just because they lived almost entirely in the taliks and meltwater, weren’t mermaids, or men with gills. Evolution, after all, takes millions of years. Their hands and feet were webbed though. Some clans at least.
When the ice sheets first started melting and submerging continents, the coastal towns migrated inland. The then Allied African Union — well, what remained of it — decided that the Orbital Cities were the only way to survive. Much like Noah’s Ark. Only, they wouldn’t take two of each. The migrants who proved useful, those coastal tribes whose parents and ancestors had taught them to make dhows and ships, spear fish underwater on a single breath and work heavy, wet machinery were retained. They became the Jo’Nam. The Cities were small to start with. Those fortunate enough to afford placement up in the City survived. The rest fended for themselves or joined the Jo’Nam working the City’s pylon-anchor mechanisms like symbiotic organisms, in the hope of seeing their children ascend to the Orbital City. Radiation, drownings, accidents were common and the advisors in the Orbital cities estimated that the Jo’Nam would slowly become sterile and die out. But they thrived instead. And Jabari wouldn’t have known better if he hadn’t crashed his Kunguru a year ago.
He never regretted it though, even now, even lying on the ice, anchored by the weight of his betrayal. For if he hadn’t crashed, he wouldn’t have met Naleni.
Naleni, his lithe, dark-skinned goddess. Hair braided and eclipse-black. Eyes bright like a methane flare, her lips full and thick. She looked ageless, despite the ritual scarring on her cheeks. Her skinsuit was an emerald colour that changed shade with each flicker of the waves when they went exploring sinkholes. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
It’s always an accumulation of little things that undoes a man. Not Naleni. She undid Jabari all at once.
The day his Kunguru crashed, Naleni said there were unexpected oscillations. Like the Haboob winds of ancient Sahara, except these oscillations travelled vertically and burnt a cold, fierce fire. Naleni claimed these oscillations were water-djinns mating; an adapted myth from the people of the Libyan Desert who considered siroccos to be desert-djinns mating.
Naleni described how Jabari’s Kunguru rattled with each swelling jetstream and eventually struck the pylon before crashing into the lake and killing four Jo’Nam.
She never ever took credit for pulling Jabari out of the sinking wreckage, but for stopping her kin from gutting him. They spent many days together trying to repair the comms unit of his Kunguru. She was competent with her hands. Her baba worked on the pylons and always went with her whenever they could manage it.
The six months he spent as her captive passed like a blur. He never would’ve believed he lived through it, if not for the memories on his skin. They say the best affairs leave scars. He bore the marks of her tiny teeth on his neck. That’s from the day he told her the elders who dwelt in the hollow Conch of Enlightenment, had chosen him to betray his own people. She wouldn’t let him do it unless she came along. The Jo’Nam couldn’t defeat Fort Kwame from without so they chose to strike f
rom within. Jabari didn’t mind the taint of treachery. Not for her. Now here they were, he, dejected, failed and she, missing, probably dead.
* * *
A kick, blunt as entropy’s glacial teeth, woke Jabari.
Wincing, he roused to see a wavery figure solidify in front of him. His vision struggled to adjust to the glare of a hovering Kunguru right above his resting ground. He trained his vision at the figure and recognised him by his musky scent. It was Bakida.
“Bastard,” Jabari cursed.
Bakida drew near and towered over Jabari “I always knew you were spineless,” he said, “But not this spineless.” He threw something which cluttered against Jabari’s mask.
Jabari picked it up and held it to the light. It was one of the fuses for the time-delay control unit. The fuses Naleni had volunteered to replace. The bastard had her. Jabari tried to scramble for the control units but Bakida kicked him again. This time hard enough to snap a rib. The pain blurred Jabari’s already strained vision. His power was too low. Otherwise his thermskin should’ve absorbed the impact of Bakida’s boot. Jabari regretted not having worn the tensile armour-suit. This camouflage suit was good against the cold, but not much for impact resistance.
“Get up, traitor,” Bakida loomed over the floored Jabari.
Jabari glanced at his bio-monitor. Its broken face told him, with or without Naleni, he should’ve left this wet rock hours ago. He should’ve re-joined the Jo’Nam exodus and continued East to the nearest colony. He glanced at the control units and saw that Bakida had stomped on them already. They were broken.
Thaw now blunted the ridges around the cryocrater. Its solid footing now soggy. Gas hydrates from afar, burnt readily. Their pale, luminous flame spotlighting the backdrop. The ice no longer cracked but vibrated. The cryocrater was warming rapidly. Jabari’s Kunguru steadily sunk into the ice-shelf. No wonder Bakida kept his hovering.
The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021) Page 30