The detective stroked his chin, smiled, “Ah, the huge fight promoter—Pan-African always did aim big.”
He hauled out his cell and opened his messages, but there were none—still—from Thembeka, his phone seemingly blocked to her.
He tapped in a message and sent, but nothing happened. Cursing, he threw it across the Hall, where it clattered in a sprinkle of glass through a closed window.
“Fine,” he said, “what time did you set? Is he late?”
A small, dark wiry man stood there expectantly, in jeans and a District 9 T-shirt, with the ‘No Humans Allowed’ sign and a shambling alien that looked like a Parktown Prawn from the movie emblazoned across his chest. The ‘Humans’ had been scratched out and replaced with ‘Nigerians’.
Phulani stood up and shook hands, “Cute T-shirt, Mr. Deniran.”
The wiry man smiled and sat smoothly, as if accustomed to cutting to many chases. “Thank you, Fulani, I take it this big man is Black-Power, in subtle disguise?”
“Phulani, the ‘ph’ is pronounced like a pee,” said Phulani, with creased brows. “Nice T-shirt as I said—what were you, a Blomkamp extra?”
Lekan Deniran laughed, openly and genuinely, “Nollywood would have done a much better job, Phulani, but let’s get to the real business at hand, shall we?”
The man turned and focused his intent gaze on the detective; Black-Power could almost see the yen signs rolling across the small man’s eyeballs. “So, what are your terms and conditions, Mister Black-Power?”
“I’ll fight him any which way I can, I’ll fight him in Soccer Stadium, Soweto, I’ll fight him on top of fucking Table Mountain, or even in the Tata Raphael Stadium if I have to!”
“Good,” smiled Lekan, hauling out a tablet. “There’s a contract template on here—what are your conditions?”
“One mill, US dee’s, here...” The detective handed over a small square piece of paper.
Lekan looked at the paper and laughed. “Very generous, to allocate all of this to your dead ex-president’s charity, ex-prisoner 46664.”
“For some strange reason I have an affinity with prisoners,” said the detective, signing with an e-pen.
With a nod and a wink, Lekan slipped the tablet into his leather bag and was gone.
“What about my payment?” asked Phulani.
“The usual,” said the detective tersely.
“Oh... Can you beat him?” asked Phulani boldly, “Can you beat Pan-African, once and for all?”
The detective stood up, whipping his hat and coat off and—in full regalia, once he’d flicked his cape open and donned his mask—he bent down and kissed the very surprised, drunken white youth at the next door table.
Phulani howled his outrage as cameras began to snap across the hall.
Nothing like the scent of death to focus the mind...
Thud! The young man had flung a drunken upper-cut against Black-Power’s chin. Black-Power, stood up, surprised, the punch had tickled, but he’d felt it.
“Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean it’s all about sex,” said the young man, “We’re all just people, you know.”
Humans! Who could understand them?
Phulani slipped a phone into Black-Power’s coat pocket and pulled at his arm, “Let’s roll,” he said, “bigger fish to fry.”
Now fish he could understand!
13
February 18, 1979
Sahara Desert
Black-Power slammed him into the side of a mountain. There was a brief rock fall and a tumescence of dust but before the Pan-African could cough there was that grip on the scruff of his neck and...g-forces. Flung into the sky.
The rush of air, the blue sky...
The cold roused him.
It’s beautiful up here.
Impact. A light brighter than the sun, then darkness. He woke, then two seconds later he hit the desert ground.
Black-Power landed after him with a heavy vibration. He grabbed the Pan-African’s right arm and spun him like a centrifuge, clockwise, then after a half-turn he stopped, then turned counter-clockwise.
The Pan-African’s body was still moving clockwise and the bones popped like cheap fireworks. His scream echoed and the involuntary psychic feedback immobilised Black-Power.
In desperation the Pan-African poured his pain into Black-Power’s thalamus. As he recovered he saw his opponent recoil in pain. His right arm hung useless at his side and blood poured out of both nostrils. He channelled all of his power in the pain, all his resentment of this hero, this shining one. He punched Black-Power in the centre of the chest. He felt the ribs go, the sternum crack.
The Pan-African reached out with his mind, found the small electric charge that gave rhythm to Black-Power’s heart and stopped it.
He held on for as long as he could, and that mighty heart struggled against him.
It got colder. The sun darkened and clouds gathered.
Wind.
Precipitation.
Snow.
The Pan-African collapsed.
2015
Lagos, Nigeria
“I found him,” said Lekan. “He spells his name ‘Phulani’, like Fulani, but with ph. We’re on. Black-Power’s in.”
“He’ll fight?” asked Tope.
“He was always going to fight,” said Bank, not looking up from his tablet.
“To the death,” said Lekan. “Signed the document, which you haven’t, by the way.”
“I’ll get to that,” said Tope. “How much did he want?”
“He said he’ll fight you for free in a telephone booth in Tafawa Balewa Square, if need be.”
“Hmm. Ali, Boma ye.”
Bank said, “Is a death match legal? Even in Nigeria?”
Lekan sucked his teeth. “My cousin is a councillor in Surulere. I’ll get all the permits I need. We’ll say the death match thing is only for publicity. If anything happens and one of you should...accidentally die, well, I’ll bury the Lagos State governor in an ocean of Naira. Trust me, the bout will happen.”
“And the dome?”
“It’ll be a sphere. I’ve already commissioned my nephew to build it. Parts are already en route.”
“How many of you are there?” asked Tope. “Your grandfather was pretty busy.”
Lekan laughed. “‘In a land where nepotism is currency, the man with plentiful relatives is rich’.”
“Don’t be too sure,” said Tope. “Do you know what Operation Deadwoods was?”
“No.”
“1975. Nigeria’s then Head of State Murtala Mohammed started Deadwoods to purge the corrupt officials from the government bureaucracy. He swept away hundreds of the unscrupulous civil servants and planned to return the country to civil rule.”
“Hmm. And where did that get him?” asked Lekan.
February 13, 1976
Lagos, Nigeria
Presidential car, riddled with bullets, Murtala’s cap on the back seat. The perpetuators, who hid sub-machine guns in their agbada, were gone.
Tope shook his head and flew away.
You could have kept him alive, brother. I told you. I told you!
This one time, Black-Power responded:
-Fuck off-
2015
Lagos, Nigeria
“An international airport and his face on a twenty-naira bill,” said Bank.
Lekan snorted. “Murtala died for similar reasons to Lumumba. You played in that war theatre in the seventies, right? Murtala declared support for the MPLA. Any African leader who even smelled of Soviet or socialist leanings was a target for the CIA. Notice how Nigeria got a U.S style constitution soon after Murtala died?”
“I don’t want to think about that time anymore. When is the bout?”
“Six weeks to build the geodesic, five if I can get a hooker to blow my cousin.” Lekan guffawed at his own wit.
“Which one?”
Elizabeth stirred and Tope felt the weight change on the bed. He opened one eye. She padde
d to his desk and opened the laptop. She punched a few keys and gasped.
He allowed himself the pleasure of ogling her fundament, then spoke: “What’s wrong?”
She brought the screen to him. It was a tube video. A man forcefully kissed another man in a bar of some kind. Tope recognised the aggressor’s face. The scene paused and a voiceover began commentary.
“The man in the video is Sipho Cele, a police detective. The smaller man in the picture is Colin Jordaan, and he has accused Detective Cele of rape. What is more astonishing is that Jordaan has alleged that Cele is the super-powered adventurer from the seventies called Black-Power.”
The scene cut to an interview. Jordaan now sported several bruises, a black eye and a torn lower lip. “He walks around with this old, worn black mask in his pocket, fingering it for sexual pleasure. He was...I mean, I go to the gym, but there’s no amount of resistance training that would make me strong enough to...” The man burst into tears.
The reporter said Detective Cele could not be reached for comment and it was unclear if he was under arrest.
“What do you make of it?” asked Elizabeth.
Tope didn’t speak. He knew Black-Power took male lovers from time to time, but rape? If he raped Jordaan the guy would be in hospital or a morgue, not on a TV show with minor bruises.
“This may not be what it looks like,” said Tope.
“What? He’s kissing a man.”
“Yes, he is. That means he’s gay or bisexual, but not necessarily a rapist.”
“Will you fly over?”
Tope laughed. “When I went to prison one of the charges was violation of airspace. The other was flying in an urban area without a flight plan. Also, flying in a rural area without a flight plan. Flying without a permit. You get the etcetera? To do that, they first had to classify my body as an aircraft, then retrospectively charge me. It was a work of profound legal gymnastics. Bottom line is none of the Organisation of African Unity countries want me flying. So, no, I will not be flying to South Africa.”
“Is it him?”
“The relevant question, Elizabeth, is how you knew about the video. I watched you. You woke and went straight to that web page without a search. What are you not telling me?”
Elizabeth stared at him.
“I can get it out of you if I want,” said Tope. “But I want you to tell me.”
She knelt back on her haunches, swallowed and said, “I have an implant.”
“What kind?”
“It... I got it designed and needed thirty hours of surgery to have it inserted.” She took his hand, parted her hair and ran his finger over the skin. He felt the bump. “That’s the power supply. I have to change it every five years. It’s experimental, but I had to have it. It cost fifteen million dollars and change.”
“Again, what kind?”
“It keeps me connected to the Net wirelessly and sends the data to my sensory cortex. I can also feed data back down the same route. I see everything that goes on the net. I know everything. I bypass VPN tunnelling, software or hardware firewalls, and one sixty-eight key bit triple DES encryption before breakfast.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means I can go anywhere on the internet, like God intended.”
“You have a chip that helps you do that?”
“Yes.”
“You’re online all the time.”
“Yes. Searching, cataloguing, looking for news as it happens. On people’s mobile phones, on their fucking e-readers just because. I spent last night talking to eGhosts.”
“What’s an-”
“You know social media? Well, when people die in real life their online persona still exists, like their profiles, their email accounts, their blogs, their Tweets. This is an eGhost. If you amalgamate all the data, all the status updates, all the Tweets, you can pretty much construct a being who will respond and show quasi-independent thought.”
Tope got up.
“Does this freak you out?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Tope. “You could have mentioned it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I would have wanted...I don’t know.”
Elizabeth started getting dressed. “You know, you peer into people’s heads and I trust you.”
“I trust you.”
“I don’t see that from where I’m standing.”
Soon, the door slammed.
She was gone.
14
2008
Alexandra Township, Johannesburg
Killings.
More killings.
Just foreigners, they said, kwerekwere.
This was on a wide open field, stunted bushes bristling across from crumbling shacks and the firmer brick of township houses.
These had been people on their way to work perhaps, or just on their way somewhere, to talk, to have fun—not expecting to die.
Detective Cele bent down, looked at the two twisted, burnt bodies, with gathering rage. The site had been roped off, but a crowd stood watching, silent and sullen. The open field itself was partially scorched and baked a blackish brown, smelling of dirt and charred meat.
He had to be detached and forensic about this. The support squad from his police unit was combing the field for murder weapons; crusted blood from the corpses’ ragged head and torso wounds suggested both pangas and knobkieries. Surprisingly, no guns.
Close quarter murders, personal and intimate. Cele gritted his teeth, he needed to be cool and professional, after all.
He stood up and shouted at the milling crowd: “You fucking bastards, why murder your own brothers and sisters?”
A slow growling noise from the mob, a faint echo of umshini wami, bring me my machine gun.
You’ll just tickle me with that, Cele thought, and make me angry—and you won’t like me when I’m angry. A faint echo in that phrase, perhaps not his own?
A young police-woman came over, neatly uniformed, professional, holding out a partly burned bundle of papers.
“ID documents, sir,” she said.
He did not bother to take them. Wearily, “What nationality?”
“Not sure if they’re from the victims, sir. Mozambican, Malawian, but mostly Zimbabwean.”
Not Nigerian. Not... his brother’s people. Not yet, anyway.
He opened a sterile bag for her and she dropped the papers in, with black gloved fingers. He sealed lives away, with one thick brush of his thumb.
“Take this to the van,” he said brusquely. “Call the meat squad in.”
She almost curtsied in deference—he was a senior detective who had been around for many years, after all. Even more than you think, girl, he thought, watching her bustle back to the van and wishing he could meet someone who would stand up to him, just a bit.
Like this crowd.
He walked towards the end of the plastic rope, pulled taut between two stakes, but with enough give for him to stalk several metres into the crowd, without snapping. The mob moved back slowly, grumbling, ready to strike again.
He smiled, waiting for something to happen, fingering the mask in his pocket.
Slowly, in ragged groups, the crowd dispersed, trailing back to homes and places of meeting, a lucky few perhaps even to various jobs.
Behind him, bodies were removed.
But he could smell the muggy wind picking up now, lacings of moisture in the air as grey clouds boiled in from the horizon.
He stood alone in the field as rain lashed down on his face, cleaning the air and the ground. He could smell damp earth and sense the stirrings of worms beneath the ground, a few broken thorn trees in the distance standing out suddenly in the flares of sheet lightning.
Life goes on, he thought, but is this only the beginning?
All things start, but when will it end?
Shit, he’s soaked—his suit will shrink on him if he’s not too careful, time to go home.
Or, at least, just a place to sleep.
1975
Cape Town
He could hear sounds on the Foreshore, near the docks, sounds that did not belong; the sound of deep drilling, within a bank filled with gold Kruger rands.
Intel had it that a foreign force had slipped in quietly to town, looking for easy pickings. There were no easy pickings on his watch...
There was a security van waiting for pick-up on the kerb outside, but he could tell the markings were fake, they had been sprayed a little too loosely, a little too unprofessionally. It took him one big bound to land on its roof, buckling and crushing it with the pounding weight of his feet and fists. There was a scream from a driver in the front carriage, a scream over breaking glass.
He stepped calmly through the plate glass doors, showers of glass sliding off his impervious skin. The white tellers and customers were calm when they saw him, splayed on the ground as they were, hands clasped above their heads. His mask and cape were well known around here, his power even more so.
A semi-professional operation then, they at least had a man holding the forecourt of the bank, alert and armed, opening fire in fear when he spotted the giant superhero.
Black-Power moved with easy speed—speed that no man could get a lock on. A left jab caved the man’s skull, sending him sprawling across the polished floor in a spiral of blood, his gun mangled by a crunch from ’Power’s right hand.
Deep inside the vaults, the drilling stopped.
Black-Power bounded outside to land on the wrecked getaway van again, a man crawling away from the wreckage as sirens started to howl. Best keep the fight outdoors, where the chance for collateral damage was less.
A man stepped outside, and Black-Power felt the weight of sudden unease. This man was tall, compactly built and walking with the ease of someone so capable as to fear very little.
“If you surrender now, I will spare you the might of Black-Power,” he boomed.
The man started and looked as if he were suppressing a laugh: “Brother, is that you?”
Black-Power stepped off the broken van and approached cautiously. A tall man indeed, not much smaller than he, neatly dressed, but sporting a huge fuzz of head hair. His features were sharp, mobile, familiar...
It had been a long time.
A very long time.
“What the hell have you done to your hair?”
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