by Gavin Chait
Joshua leans forward in his chair, studying Samara. ‘I have seen your craft, and I have made some assessments. You knew that it might malfunction and that you would be injured. I assume that your extra weight has something to do with your ability to heal from such tremendous damage?’
‘Yes, that is true, although my first concern was surviving the vacuum outside the prison. I needed to shield myself to survive. I was much heavier when I jumped into space.’
Samara sips his tea. It is black, sugarless, and he enjoys the tannic flavour.
‘I am a member of the Nine, though, so I am heavier than most. Normally, there is only a small amount of the symbiont fluid in one’s body. When I became one of the Nine, Symon was augmented with new functions aligned with my military role. He now almost fills me completely and has turned my body into a single solid mass.’
‘Can you shoot laser beams out of your eyes?’ asks Isaiah, who seems quite taken with the idea and has recently discovered a trove of ancient comics in the sphere.
‘I am a bit more apprehensive, but I would certainly like to know your capabilities,’ says Joshua.
‘Fast healing, able to withstand any level of concussive injury, ability to project my awareness to greater distances, able to blend my appearance to suit the environment. I can’t shoot lasers out of my eyes,’ he grins at Isaiah. ‘All of this is outside the connect and of a battleskin. The Nine, in full attack mode, are the equivalent of half of this planet’s military.’
Isaiah’s eyes are almost wide enough to fill a bowl.
‘I thought you said that you are not a danger to my people,’ exclaims Joshua, rising a little in his chair. Esther looks extremely worried.
‘I am not a danger to you or your people.’
‘Then what is driving you? I cannot even begin to imagine the suffering you have gone through, what it must have taken to jump into space in such a craft.’
[Ah, good one.]
‘I have a duty to my people. I am one of the Nine.’
‘No, I am dedicated to my people also. I am not sure I could do what you did if that was the objective.’
[Very good.]
Samara’s face twists as he tries to turn to the wall while maintaining eye contact. His emotions, so close to the surface, are in danger of erupting. ‘I –’ he wipes tears from his eyes. ‘My people will leave soon and I cannot lose Shakiso. I don’t want her to go before I can join her. If she cannot find me, if she believes I am dead –’ he starts to tremble.
He looks up, his golden eyes shining and wet. ‘I love her and miss her.’ The words are filled with more hope and yearning than they should carry.
Joshua crouches close and pulls Samara to him, embracing him. He looks over his shoulder at Esther, whose eyes are similarly filled with tears. He nods. ‘Samara,’ he says, ‘that I understand.’
Isaiah has not seen adults in such emotional pain before. He understands that he misses his father when he is away and tries to imagine what it must be like to fear never seeing him again. I wonder if Father feels that for Mother? He notices for the first time the way his mother is looking at his father: the strength of joy and faith and adoration in her eyes. He realizes he has seen the same look in his father’s when he looks at his mother.
He remembers his father’s tale of rescuing his aunt and looks at it with new insight. He has always taken it to be an adventure story. Now he realizes the sacrifices one makes for the people one loves. It is a big realization for a small boy, and he is silent in the grace of his knowing.
‘Drink your tea and tell us what you need.’
Samara sips carefully and calms himself. He feels drained and, at the same time, lighter, as if he is no longer carrying this burden on his own.
‘The base of Achenia is on the equator about 2,400 kilometres out to sea. I need to build a boat and borrow one of your spare turbines. Then I need to travel to Calabar to print a battery.’
‘They have insufficient metal there,’ says Joshua.
‘I know. Or, at least, we guessed as much.’
‘How do you know? We only worked this out a few days ago.’
‘Nigeria’s economy is fragmented and disconnected from the world. Most things are printed from local cellulose and few trade goods are brought here. There was never much mining in Nigeria, and now there is little metal traded from outside,’ says Samara.
‘Symon and I designed the craft with our needs in mind. The gyroscope gimbals are aluminium. We can cut that up and take it to Calabar. Sell the scrap to one of the digesters.’
‘Why not build an aeroplane if you are going to build so much?’ asks Joshua.
Samara shakes his head. ‘There are three ways I could travel to Achenia: paddle, motor or fly. Paddling is the easiest to arrange but would take me about forty days from now, by the time I am healthy enough to go. That is too long.’
‘Why?’
‘A decision will be made to go twenty-two days from now. I must be home by then or they will leave without me. We will not wage war on Earth, we will simply go.’
Joshua thinks of the refugees and nods his understanding.
Samara continues, ‘Flight is another possibility. I have one wing, the one I arrived in, but there are insufficient materials to extend and improve it for use. Plus, your water turbine could not become a jet engine and it would be impossible to print a motor here to act as a propeller. And I’d now need an even larger energy source than before, which means even more metal.
‘If I committed to flight, I’d have to build the craft in Calabar, which would attract a great deal of attention over almost a week. Yes, the flight would only be a few hours, but that sort of interest might ruin my chances entirely.’
Joshua can easily imagine the curiosity of the militia in Calabar and realizes how impossible such a task would be. He whistles softly. Samara’s need to stay in Ewuru – now that he is here – looks inevitable, given the options.
Samara finishes his tea and places the mug on the floor beside the mattress. ‘My final alternative is going by sea. That has its own problems. A boat will be difficult to power through all the oil in the Bight of Bonny with any safety.’ He shakes his head, looking apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, you already know about this.’
‘Yes, but I am impressed at your knowledge and planning,’ says Joshua, his admiration genuine.
When the oil rigs were abandoned over a century ago, and the safety valves failed, the ocean was covered in a thick stifling layer. All the villages all along the coast were evacuated. No one sails in those waters. Few even travel far down the river from Ewuru. Joshua knows such a journey, out into the bay, will be difficult.
Then he remembers, ‘What about the rockets? There were many attached to the pod.’
‘They’re extremely toxic, and Symon ensured they were burned out by the time we landed. We had intended to pack extras into the capsule, but we were concerned about what would happen if the interior was compromised.’
Joshua tries not to think of the carnage he and Daniel had discovered inside the pod. If a rocket had gone off in there as well . . . Not worth thinking about.
‘I originally hoped to be in southern Cameroon. I would have been outside of the oil zone but still close to the equator.’ He shrugs. ‘Travelling by home-made propeller is not an exact science.’
Esther interrupts. ‘Please, I should make dinner. Are you able to eat?’
‘Yes, I would very much appreciate that.’
‘I am making egusi. Would you be able to eat this?’
‘Fermented melon seeds and spicy prawn paste?’ Samara’s mood is lifting.
‘Amongst other things, yes,’ she says, surprised at the levity in his voice. ‘We will have it with fish, and spinach and rice on the side. You know Efik food?’
‘My grandfather makes a tremendous pepper soup.’
Esther smiles and heads to the kitchen, from where they soon hear the sounds of preparation. Isaiah is torn between wanting to help in the kitc
hen and snack a little, and staying to hear the stories. Snacking wins.
‘Makes?’ says Joshua. ‘Your grandfather is still with us?’
‘Yes. He is 177 and leads one of our most important technology firms. He designed Symon.’
‘And your grandmother, mother, father?’ he asks incredulously.
Samara looks as if he may weep again. ‘My father—’
‘It is well. Please, I am sorry for your loss.’ Joshua is shaken, interrupting in embarrassment. What must a society be like where people expect to live for ever? ‘Do people not normally die amongst your kind?’
‘We do,’ his voice heavy with sadness. ‘There are still accidents. Young people who fly too fast, or too close to the moon. There are murders. We are still human and we suffer as people do, but not many choose to go on their own. My father,’ he calms himself again. ‘My father chose to go.’
Samara looks away. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I find it difficult to speak of him. About his choice.’
Joshua wants to ask a great many questions, but he stops himself. He can see Samara’s exhaustion. He also realizes that he may never have a chance to learn from an Achenian again.
‘I want to know so much. How your society works. What technology you have. How you are able to maintain self-sufficiency. Your music, your art, your stories –’ he notices this last has had an effect on Samara.
‘My father was our greatest storyteller. If you wish, I will tell you one of his most famous stories?’ asks Samara, his voice filled with restrained enthusiasm.
‘I would appreciate that. We enjoy stories, although we have yet to produce a great storyteller. If you are strong enough, when we return to Ekpe we would be honoured to hear your father’s story.’
The house is filled with the smell of spices – cumin, nutmeg, chilli, and the mix of crayfish paste and chicken stock – along with sounds of chopping and laughter from the kitchen.
‘That smells very good,’ says Samara.
‘Yes. Normally we enjoy cooking together, as a family. Tonight, you are our guest.’
‘Thank you. My wife and I also enjoy cooking together.’
Strange how our appreciation for food makes even one as alien as he seem more like me, thinks Joshua. ‘What would you be eating?’
‘We eat mostly salads and fish. Very fast cooking so that the food is still raw, but hot.’
‘You have water in your city?’ asks Joshua.
‘Oh, yes, an ocean. A river runs through our central valley. My home is just beneath the top of a waterfall in the temperate zone, and I can see clear across the valley from our deck. We have a water-cycle to manage our air, and the ocean has fish. We even have whales.’
Joshua is stunned. ‘Whales? In space?’ He feels a pang of something that he cannot place. ‘Your home sounds beautiful. I would love to see your world.’
‘Of course. When I return, you and your family will be my guests.’
‘Dinner is ready,’ says Esther, rapping on the door frame.
Samara’s tale
A Conspiracy of Women
The war is over. The energies of the neighbouring states of Malpensa and Iliham are spent. Nine years have been devoted to a brutal slaughter that has spared neither rich nor poor, old nor young, the soldier from the farmer.
Thousands of tiny children have been orphaned, left in despair by refugees during the war at the secure border fastness of the Lady of Divine Light.
The nuns at that ancient Order take no sides in the battles that have whiled away the centuries beyond the great stone walls of their large and rambling estates. They welcome and care for all who are abandoned at their gates and remain entirely self-sufficient.
However, this is different. It is a war that is already being called ‘a war to end wars’ by those who would set public opinion. And it is true that something that was whole has been broken. The spirit that inflames the two nations has been snuffed out.
Every winter, when the harvest has been gathered and securely stored, the young men of the two states turn their imaginings to glory – to battle.
The war that began so traditionally nine years ago gave way to a muddy, dirty, depraved slaughter. As from a nightmare, the leaders of the two states awoke to find themselves covered, as to the elbows and thickly caked under their grubby and torn fingernails, in grizzle and blood and bone; their treasure spent; the beauty and wonder of their youth turned ugly and old; a horror and stench of decay all about; and the only winners the rats grown fat on the bodies of the fallen.
Some say it is the new mechanized guns that can convert a cohort of smart young men into so much mulch in only a moment. Some say it is the gas and artillery levelling towns and killing families far from the battlefield. Some say it is because not a single family has remained untouched by this war and that even the two opposing kings mourn the losses of favourites and loved ones.
Whatever it is, the flame is extinguished and the two peoples’ only thoughts are to rebuild, to mourn and to dedicate their lives to never taking such gifts for granted again.
All of this is welcome news to the nuns of the Lady of Our Rest, but the aftermath has presented Maria Stapirova, mother superior of the Order, with a bit of a headache.
‘We have 7,341 babies and young children to care for,’ she begins at the weekly confabulation of the nuns, a meeting that has been held unbroken by her antecedents for over four thousand years.
‘While our resources are vast, they are not unlimited. Neither will it be possible for us to care for all these children to adulthood. It is not seemly,’ she states primly.
‘Our problem is that Malpensans will only adopt Malpensan children while Ilihamers will only consider Ilihamers and that we are unable to distinguish between our wards. Given the confusion, no one will adopt anyone.’
The nuns nod discreetly at this neat description of their predicament; many carefully scratch at clotted lumps of baby food ruining their staunchly plain vestments.
‘The governing factor here is that the men of both nations – our fathers-to-be – refuse to bring into their homes the sons and daughters of the men responsible for the deaths of their brothers, fathers and friends.’
More steadfast agreement and a susurration of scraping chairs as nuns shift knees bruised by constant kneeling to chase after escaped and errant toddlers.
‘What we need is a plan. An approach so daring and so ambitious that it cannot possibly fail.’ Her eyes gleam and her steel-grey hair burns in the sunlight streaming on to the dais where she stands.
And so Maria Stapirova, the 531st mother superior of the Order of the Lady of Divine Light, lays out an audacious plan before her sisters.
Three months pass. Three months in which winter gives way to the fledgling kindling of spring and the shadows loosen their grasp.
The holdings of the Order shelter within a wide and deep valley cut by the last ice age through the Neralanova mountain range that divides the kingdoms of Malpensa and Iliham.
The thick and high stone wall running across the entrance to the valley serves as both fortification and entrance to the neat and densely woven town beyond the gates.
Every year, as the winter snows up in the mountains warm, as the meltwater hastens down sheer and jagged cliffs, as the Derissa River swells into a torrent, a wind germinates in ever-gathering swirls.
The sudden gust that explodes out of the valley has, for thousands of years, been counted as the first true day of spring.
The force of the wind carries the pungent scent of fresh earth, and moss, and green leaves, and early flowers. It sets the heart racing and fills the imaginings with warmth and sunshine.
It has been named La Cafeyana and Little Sister and The Duke and Mazenova. Each century seems to throw up a new name capturing the spirit of the age.
This year, after the war, the wind has no name. No matter. It does not mind.
One bright morning the conditions are perfect and the wind leaps from the channels and gullie
s where it has been hiding.
It races down the cliffs of the mountain, gathering the fragrance of ice and dripping water and moss and ferns. As it nears the irrigated farmlands of the Order it collects the scents of freshly turned earth and the newly growing shoots from sprouting seeds. It husbands its strength before tangling with the woods above the Derissa, snatching the taste of blossoming fruit trees as it passes. Down through the spicy textures of cumin and vanilla and liquorice before being blocked beneath the steep rise up to the village of the Lady of Divine Light.
There it seems to lie spent. But, no, it is only resting. A ploy.
It roils and boils and twists and spirals, building itself into an explosive force. And then, born laughing and nameless, it erupts out of the valley, carrying its message of life and light.
As it goes, in a moment of humour and spirit, it snatches up all the laundry that the nuns have laid out early that morning. Caught unawares, the nuns can only watch as a colourful confetti of skirts and shirts and trousers goes parachuting up into the great blue sky.
Chuckling at the sport, the wind spreads out over the villages and towns of Malpensa and Iliham, and there something extraordinary happens. For the wind, with what can only be devious forethought, drops the nuns’ laundry neatly on to the washing lines of young couples across the two kingdoms. Astute observers note how some of the billowing clothes appear to steer their way into place.
The wind disperses, dissipates, a mere zephyr and then a dissolving whimsy. Gone for another year and leaving behind the lingering scent of spice and the returning spring.
If this had been all, it would already have been sufficient to earn the wind a new name. A young poet who saw the clothing flashing by was already toying with either of The Laundress or The Washerwoman when something entirely unprecedented happened.
From within each shirt and dress and trouser, from beneath a rainbow of fabrics ripe with the pungent smell of soap and softener, peers a small face.
Then a stretch and a yawn and tiny bodies emerge. The babies and young children are hungry and soon set up a fearsome bedlam as they demand their breakfasts.