After the Flare

by Deji Bryce Olukotun

  “We’ve got two more rounds of testing scheduled, oyibo,” one of them objected.

  “We’re done with testing,” Bracket declared. “Turn on the pipes. We’ll work in shifts and start slow. It’s time to fill up this damn tank.”

  He stood at the edge of the pool as the first tap opened up, watching the liquid spurt out brown, then yellow, then foamy white and plunge fifteen meters down, splattering on the concrete. The water slowly began to form a puddle that stretched and coiled, slithering along the walls. It took an hour before the liquid coated the bottom and another hour before the thinnest film glistened along the surface. Eddies of air rippled over the water like a pond.

  But the walls held. Bracket didn’t hear any creaking. He didn’t spot any cracks in the edifice. The water was buttressed by steel and rebar and the careful design of some of the world’s best structural engineers. He went inside to check the monitors, then ordered the other three pipes opened to full capacity. What started as a trickle became a torrent of rushing liquid.

  Lorraine would never have believed the sight of it, a major structure designed by Kwesi Bracket from scratch. A facility he was in charge of. Him, the underachiever, whose own loyalty, she believed, had wrecked his career and their marriage. He stuck out his hand and the Geckofone dropped into his palm. He took a picture. Then another. Maybe he would send one to Lorraine.

  He realized, then, listening to the sloshing of the water, that he had nothing to be afraid of. Josephine had done this for him. She had believed in him, in her way. It wasn’t a soft touch. But it was a touch.

  CHAPTER 10

  On the doorstep to his trailer, Bracket found a weathered soccer ball with the panels scratched soft from being kicked along the dirt soccer field. One of the Nigerians must have lost it during a pickup game, boisterous matches with swift passing and plenty of showboating. He picked the ball up and was about to press his hand to the door panel when he heard someone behind him.

  “As-salaam alaikum,” a voice said.

  He turned to see Walid, a member of his crew. Al Walid had changed from his work uniform into traditional Hausa pantaloons and slippers.

  “Amin. Alaikum salaam,” Bracket replied. “Your shift isn’t until tomorrow morning, Walid. You should get some rest.”

  “Please. For you.” He handed Bracket something wrapped in a gold-colored handkerchief, tied at the top in a knot.

  “You know our policy. I can’t accept gifts for doing my job.”

  His crew often gave him presents or invited him into their homes. He had obliged them when he first came to Kano, feeling honored, but he’d learned it was better to refuse everything or it seemed as if he were playing favorites. Walid waved his hands, not allowing Bracket to give it back.

  “Please, it’s for you,” he said. “May God be with you.”

  “And with you. Get some sleep.”

  The man walked quietly away between the barracks. Bracket dropped the gift next to several others in the drawer of his desk, then poured himself two fingers of whiskey in a highball glass.

  He swished the spirit through his teeth, marveling to himself over the memory of the water cascading into the pool.

  That was me, he thought. I did that.

  But he had no one to celebrate with. Seeta had a girlfriend back in India and seemed to be feeling troubled enough by that to stay away. The Loom had no pornography on it, as far as he knew. He hadn’t indulged in augmented sex videos back in Houston because he wasn’t single until after the Flare, and then there was no pornography to watch. He’d heard that Côte d’Ivoire was more permissive than Nigeria when it came to sex entertainment, and that you could mod your Geckofone in downtown Kano to stream the French-language videos and pretend someone was in the room having sex with you with vibrating haptic nodes attached to your penis. Seemed like too much trouble.

  He heard a knock on the door.

  “I brought you some palm wine,” Seeta singsonged. “Beats bloody Guinness.”

  He let her in, amazed at his luck, and she brushed past him to settle down on his bed as if it was the most natural place for her.

  “I don’t agree with you about palm wine. I’d take Guinness over that any day. But this,” he said, holding up his whiskey glass, “beats them both.”

  “Pour me one. You’re going to need another too. I’ve got some bad news.”

  Earlier she might have sent him into a panic, but the thought of the pool filling with water had calmed him. He could handle this. He could handle anything. He sat down on a chair and saw she had tied her hair back in a bun. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was wearing makeup. The rouge was awkwardly applied, but it was charming that she had tried.

  “Go on then.”

  “I went down to your kiddie pool, Kwesi, and ran some acoustical tests. The entire structure is excellent. It’s even better than the rocket platforms. You have done a superb job. Damn, this is good.” She swigged the whole glass down.

  “I’ve got a good team,” he said, relieved.

  “The quiet American. That’s a first. Well, there’s one thing you might not know. My readings picked up something else. Not in your pool. But very close by.”

  “You mean a fault line? A sinkhole?”

  “No, not a sinkhole. It’s—can you pour me another?”

  Bracket refilled her glass, but a little less this time. He didn’t want to get drunk tonight.

  “Let me back up a little. My instruments use sound waves to test for anomalies that could threaten structural viability. Cracks, breakages, whatever. I can run the test at multiple frequencies, and the resulting image gives me an overall picture of what’s there. I’ve detected all kinds of strange things before. Once, in Sriharikota, I came across an entire fossilized skeleton of an ancient deer. It was as if the creature was about to leap right out of the soil from twenty thousand years ago and start scampering about. When I found it, the government stopped the launch for two weeks so the archaeologists could dig out the bones. My boss cut me out of the publication credits, but I was happy to have contributed to the history of my culture. Anyway, fuck him.”

  Bracket sipped.

  “What I found near your pool is different. It’s not a fossil, and I’m not even quite sure where it is exactly. The readings were completely haywire. All I know is that whatever is down there under the ground is very large. And it’s alive.”

  Bracket coughed up a swallow as the whiskey went down his windpipe. “You think something is alive in the ground?”

  “Yes, but I’m not even sure what to call ‘it.’ It’s like a field or an entity, maybe. It’s very large, at least as big as your pool, and it seems to move in all different directions at once. Don’t look at me like that—I’ve checked the instruments. They are working one hundred percent accurately. I have never heard anything like that before, Kwesi. Here—you don’t have to take my word for it. Listen.”

  She removed her equipment from her backpack, an omnidirectional microphone and two much smaller shotgun mics that she could use to laser in on a sound source. He warily took the headphones.

  “This is the recording from your site,” she said. Bracket heard a low pitch for about ten seconds, which began to grow higher and higher until he could hear it no longer. “That’s an A tone.”

  “What’s an A tone?”

  “It’s the note that orchestras tune to. Shorthand for four-forty hertz. I was cycling through the frequencies when I realized something was projecting sound, not just responding to the acoustic imaging.” She pressed a button on her recording device. “Now listen to this.”

  He heard an undulation, the wet pounding of a heartbeat moving at regular intervals, the firing of a fleshy valve pushing liquid along a channel. The sounds did not repeat, though; instead they oscillated with an eerie, deep resonance. It reminded him of a humpback whale record that his mother used to play when she was meditating.

  “So why do you assume it’s alive?” he asked.

  “I’ve never h
eard anything like that in the soil. It’s normally a much more subtle soundscape.”

  “Not a bird or an elephant or something aboveground?”

  “What elephant? When did you see an elephant in Kano?”

  “I don’t know, we’re in Africa, right?”

  “This non-native elephant would live underground. It would swim through the earth, like a mole, with the rest of its herd.”

  “Do you think it’s a threat to the pool? Is it coming closer?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I heard movement, but it wasn’t directional. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly.”

  “Thanks for checking it out,” he said quietly. “That’s good to hear you think it’s safe. I think we should keep this to ourselves for now. I’m on thin ice with Josephine as it is.”

  The image of Abdul’s body, sinking into the earth and disappearing, flashed before him. But it was too much to think about an underground monster right now. Detective Idriss had suggested there might be someone sabotaging the project, and Bracket had considered a suicide bomber, but he hadn’t prepared for this. He needed to focus on getting the pool filled.

  “Listen, Kwesi, I know I was acting strange earlier.”

  “We’re all acting strange these days, Seeta.”

  “No, I mean, I ignored you. I was mean to you. I haven’t done that in years. I never even did that to Malavika.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I was ashamed of myself for sleeping with you. It felt like I’d cheated on her, you know.”

  “No one should be ashamed of wanting companionship.”

  “See, that’s what I mean. I haven’t dated a man since I went to university. After I met Malavika, I never wanted to touch one again, much less sleep with one. But you know, the Flare wasn’t good for us. She didn’t handle it well. Neither did I. And some of the things we said to each other, I regret them.”

  “There’s no need to apologize to me—”

  “Look, what I’m saying is that we broke up. Malavika and I broke up. Before I was even called to join this mission. I didn’t realize how long it had been until you talked with me. I’ve pushed everyone away for long enough. I don’t need you to be my lover or anything. You are not conquering me. This isn’t a conversion. Please.”

  He could feel it happening again, the tears wetting his shoulder, her fingers on his belt. Their bourbon tongues were meeting in the middle. He’d fallen for his wife like this, attracted by her sharp reversals of affection, and he knew the tenderness would be gone in the morning. The family split asunder. Now Seeta’s hand was on his groin and she had pulled it out. Freed. The warmth of her mouth, him drawing her hips to his face. Stop it, Kwesi. This will do you no good in the end.

  He heard the sound again in his dreams, an electric buzz, sand grinding on sand, then turning fluid. Seeta was spinning music for him, filling Naijapool with liquid sound, the acoustic waves spilling over the concrete walls in a torrent. Then a crash at the front of his trailer woke him up. There was someone else inside.

  “Kwesi!” Seeta whispered.

  He put his finger to his lips in the dark. “Don’t move.”

  “That sound,” Seeta said. “Do you hear that?”

  “I can hear it.” He got up slowly. “Turn on the light when I say. Quiet now.”

  Bracket slipped from the covers and moved toward his desk at the front of the trailer, maybe ten steps away. He could hear someone clumsily pushing around things on his desk and opening drawers. In the thin light of the window he could make out a silhouette. He paused, holding his breath. If he was lucky he could catch the man off-balance. Seeta would turn on the light, and then Bracket would tackle the intruder at the hips.

  He crept another step forward and shouted: “Go!”

  Instead of the lights coming on, three blasts of piercing sound slammed into him, dazing him. He felt an enormous weight shift on the floor before him. Something knocked him hard in his chest, hurling him to the ground with impossible force. “Light, Seeta!” he screamed.

  “I can’t find the switch!”

  He scrambled back to his feet. The attacker was huge. He leapt forward to try to tangle up his legs, but his hand burned with pain. It felt as if he’d grabbed on to an electric wire. Something wasn’t right. That thing—what he had grabbed, the energy of it—it made him feel a strange longing. The intruder staggered backward before steadying himself. Then Bracket felt himself lifted up by the force of a wave and tossed toward the bed. His back smashed into the corner and he crumpled across Seeta’s legs.

  “Ugh!”

  The lights finally snapped on. Something towered over them. A presence of shifting light, a being so large it reached the ceiling. He couldn’t get a fix on it, its outline rapidly spurting in and out of focus. Bracket thought he could see long, sinuous, bipedal limbs and they disappeared, and the head seemed to be covered by a tufted crown of electric wires, and then these too blurred out of sight. He couldn’t see any eyes or find a head.

  Bracket could sense the thing observing him, the light shifting to and fro, trying to decide what to do. He didn’t dare attack it again. He didn’t even know if it could bleed. With each movement the thing hummed.

  “Go on!” Bracket shouted at it, as if it were a stray dog. “Get out of here!”

  The beast floated across the trailer and flung the bed end over end toward them, so that Bracket and Seeta tumbled back against the wall. Then it ripped the front door from its hinge and leapt high into the night air. It glided on its own energy, landed in a cloud of dust, and hurtled away in a whir of deep, reverberating sound that he could feel in his chest.

  CHAPTER 11

  There was water in the rock, pressed from the sediment by the sheer force of the sand and the wind. The moisture made your wrapper cloy at your skin, the dirt cling to your kneecaps. This room could have served as a watering hole during the great drought, Balewa thought, if her clan had only known about it, and nurtured herds of zebu cattle fleeing the scorched earth of the Sahel. Instead, thousands had migrated to the cities, where they had picked garbage to survive, and never returned to the proper life again.

  She watched the liquid trickle down the wall into a stone basin adorned with strange writings that she had yet to decipher. Like the mystery of the water, she still had much to learn about this cold place.

  “Do you want something to drink?” Abir asked.

  Abir had intricate, looping patterns of scarification on her cheeks that twisted below her ears, carved by her mother when she was a toddler from rubbing charcoal into the slashes of a razor blade. Balewa had a cluster of four tiny dots that ran from her nostrils to the top of her high cheekbones like a birthmark.

  “I’m not thirsty, Abir.”

  “You should eat something, Balewa.”

  “I don’t want to eat.”

  “You’ll get sick if you don’t eat.”

  “Maybe that’s what I want.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense. No one wants to get sick.”

  Balewa was curled on a mat, still troubled by the explosion. In her mind’s eye she could see the young girl’s body coming apart before her eyes, as if in slow motion, the limbs and the blood enveloping her. She could feel the terrifying power of the blast that had screamed at her like an evil spirit. She could still smell the burnt flesh.

  She hadn’t gone back to the market in Kano since it happened, partly because she felt so sick and partly because the other women wouldn’t allow it, not since they’d learned that the police were looking for her, suspecting that she had been involved with the suicide bombing somehow. No Wodaabe girl would ever blow herself up like that, the women had insisted to the detective, who had arrived at their mats at the marketplace peering suspiciously through his glasses. The detective didn’t reveal anything—he only asked questions.

  Balewa had hoped to stop the Jarumi from harming anyone by surrounding the attacker in the field of her Songstone like a cocoon, but she’d become distracted
when she’d seen the young girl, and she had mustered enough strength, at the last moment, to protect only herself. The blast from the suicide vest flung her five meters away. She landed largely unharmed, save for a ringing in her bones, as if the notes on her lips had penetrated her very blood and infused it with nitrite and carbon and burnt flesh. The Songstone had saved Balewa.

  “You really need to eat something,” Abir insisted. She was three years older than Balewa and had been a constant presence by her side since the attack.

  “I told you, Abir, I’m not hungry.”

  “Starving yourself to death won’t help anyone.”

  “I’d rather practice with the stones.”

  “Fine. After that, you have to eat your nyiiri.”

  The other three women had already left for the marketplace, leaving Abir to look after Balewa. They feared, perhaps rightly, that Balewa might try to harm herself through some drastic measure. For her part, Balewa didn’t mind spending time with Abir, who was the most gentle and understanding among the women from her clan. Abir had suffered at the hands of the Jarumi too, but she still managed to draw from some source of resilience she’d secreted within herself.

  Balewa grabbed her favorite Songstone from its perch on the wall, where it had been ensconced when they first discovered this room. It was heavier than any small stone she’d ever picked up, weighed down by some mysterious force. There were several other stones on the wall to choose from, but Balewa had been able to provoke a response only from the one she had used in the marketplace. Abir had managed to awaken two of the other Songstones—there were about a dozen—but the rest of them remained inanimate, their powers, whatever they were, locked within.

  Balewa began to sing the same melody she’d used in Kano to build the field around her, warming the stone with a couple of bars of music. The black thing slowly responded to her voice and vibrated with an energy that at once thrilled and frightened her. She kept at it, adjusting notes here or there, changing pitch or octave as best she could. Before long, the stone began to heat up, enchanted by her music.