Nigerians in Space

by Deji Bryce Olukotun

  For some reason he had skipped showing the pool to the tour, when he normally lingered at it; the story about the cauldron and the borax had been extemporaneous, but true, gleaned from a text he read when he was a boy looking away to the stars. It was back now: why? Because even at that age he’d wondered at the parents of Harran, their responsibility, their inability to protect the sacrificial child, all for a few words of prophetic gibberish. It was a tale of failed protection. Or of communal protection, the boy seized to protect the community.

  He got it now: his legs had drawn him to the well because it was where he had last shared a moment with Dayo, advised him dutifully about selling the lamp and tried to help him avoid repeating his own mistakes. Beaten him too hard after Home Affairs? Not enough? But what could he, as a father, have done? He’d caught Dayo smoking drugs and consorting with a criminal. It was his duty to set him right. Either him, or the police, and Dayo, when he got older, would thank him for not turning him over to the police.

  The part that troubled Wale was that Dayo didn’t cry when he beat him with the belt and sat there and took it, even when the belt snapped up and drew blood from his lip. Then, as the blood ran down his shirt, Dayo had held up his hand and said: “Enough.” Dayo said enough, as if the decision to beat him had been mutual. Dayo hadn’t been mad. He’d been impassive, as if he had gone to an unreachable space. And for a Yoruba the greatest sin was to recede, to deny your participation in the game.

  “What are you looking at?” a voice asked.

  Wale struggled to his feet, realizing he’d left his flashlight in the lab. He turned to see the girl in the niqab from the tour.

  “How did you find me here?” He found himself protecting the manhole.

  “I saw you walking over here,” the woman said. “I hoped you might answer a few more questions.”

  “The tour is over. Please come back next month.”

  “Is there someone down there?” the girl said, suddenly anxious. She dropped her composure for a moment.

  Wale retreated to the manhole and started dragging the lid over. He had to pause to recover his balance. The girl moved beside him; wrapped in black, smelling of sweet tobacco. “I never considered that—” Then she said desperately: “Daddy?”

  Here he was looking for his son out in the field and the girl had called for her daddy. This odd conflation of desires confused him, and he let her pass. She produced a flashlight from somewhere and shined it down into the manhole. Again: “Hello?”

  Recover your wits, breathe in, Wale, breathe in the damp air.

  “They used the pools of mercury,” he said quickly, “as giant lenses for stargazing. Quicksilver is a metal that has been utilized through the ages to take the pulse of the Earth. Bridging the states of liquid and solid, such a strange element must be seen as a gift from the cosmos. In my opinion.”

  She shined the beam all over the manhole, getting down on her knees.

  “And you like to look at it,” she said, calm again, standing up and straightening her skirt. “You see something in there, is that it, Doctor? One of those prophecies?”

  “Please, come back later, Miss. I’ll be happy to show you another time. As my people say, if night does not fall in your presence, it will be difficult to walk in the darkness. You won’t know where to step. Look: The moon is behind the clouds.” He closed the lid shut and began heading back to the lab. Daddy? Doctor? Had she said ‘Doctor’ again? Too much drink, too much boiling in his belly. With her long legs the woman did not have difficulty keeping pace. But alas, he understood: the mental hospital was just over the hill. Valkenberg loony bin. He should have suspected, what with the veil and the questions. The patients scrambled over the fence all the time, jabbering non sequiturs when they slipped into the tour; he’d had crayons thrown at him, green, and a fried samoosa, mince, on one of the tours. Who in her right mind would think that her father was living under a manhole?

  “But Doctor—”

  “Miss, you will be expected back at the hospital. It’s policy. You’re not meant to leave the grounds at night.”

  “Please excuse me, Dr. Olufunmi, I’ve been rude.”

  “—it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve been there myself. I don’t take my medicine, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of, really. I’ll call Dr. Moodley. He’ll be understanding.”

  She was close to him now, uncomfortably so. He moved away. With maniacs one never knew when a limb would strike out; there were nerves involved, impulses.

  “I’m a journalist and was hoping to ask a few questions about your tour. They’re very popular.”

  “A journalist who asks for her daddy in the ground,” Wale declared, “will not receive answers to her questions. Good night.”

  He was nearly at the lab now and his shoes were wet from the dew and he was thinking that another Guinness might, in the end, clarify the situation for him. He had no intention of calling Dr. Moodley at the mental hospital for fear of being reprimanded himself for not taking his own medicine, but he kept repeating the threat to the woman until he was at the door.

  “Please, Doctor. It’s a mistake. I was shaken, you might say, by the setting. I didn’t really think my Daddy was in the ground, the word is Kinyarwanda for—for ‘cat’. Would you look at me? I’m a journalist. Look at me.”

  “You’re a bad liar. Night, miss. Please give Dr. Moodley my regards.”

  “At least look at me,” the girl said. “Then you will know.”

  The key was not working and became stuck to the grooves in the lock. He fiddled with it, shaking it about, until it bent. Then he turned back, angry at her.

  The clouds had retreated with Cape Town rapidity behind the mountain and had streamed out over the ocean, Devil’s Peak robust and starkly present. When Wale wheeled on her, the girl was clothed in a band of pale blue light and her sleeves were up. The light was trembling within her skin. Within her.

  Something is at play here, Wale thought. Something is afoot. Light does not behave in such a manner.

  “Just a few questions, Doctor,” the girl said.

  She beckoned him to follow her and he followed, her scintillating arms searing into his mind like a photostat, as they made their way across the grass towards the McClean. He could not keep his eyes from her bare arms. He wanted to see more, to know what the light would do with her body, sensed that in such light there would be possibilities.

  They arrived at the telescope.

  “Take me up,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Do it, Doctor.”

  “Are you sure? What do you want to see? The McClean can’t catch much now. It’s preferable to use the Dell.”

  “Do what I said.”

  That was her first mistake, for the electricity was still off. When they stepped inside the atrium to the telescope it was dark. Wale began questioning himself. He felt disoriented and angry that he was being forced to give a tour after hours. And he was beginning to feel menaced by her, that beneath her veil loomed a sinister intent.

  Impulsively his fist shot out into her gut. She crumpled. He opened the door and ran.

  Don’t look back, he thought, if you do she will have you. She will luminesce. Call Dr. Moodley, as much for you as for her, he will put the guts of pills in your blood. The capsule will dissolve naturally, you will feel better.

  But he had scarcely run a few paces when the woman was ahead of him.

  “Stop!”

  There was a pistol in her hand. When he balked, she fired a shot into the air, saying “non, stope, stope” and he backstepped towards the McClean, where, when he turned, she was before him again, holding her stomach. The woman was as fast as the light and clothed in black. Now she was nudging him forward with the gun until he realized there were two women in niqabs, the same height, one with sleeves up, the other sleeves down, one smelling of vanilla tobacco, the other of rosewater. It was not double vision but two distinct entities working together.

  “Open the door,” the
first woman said, coughing. She was still bending over slightly from the blow. The other pushed him into the room.

  The two women spoke to each other in French and the gun passed from the second woman to the first. The second woman was pleading about something, in a tender way, to have the other rebuke her sharply. A name slipped out: Béatrice. Béatrice handed the other one a small cloth bag. Then the one with the bag ordered Wale to take her up to the voluminous dome of the McClean. Béatrice was left behind.

  “I told you,” Wale said, “the Dell is better. The McClean can’t view much with the light pollution.”

  “Do what I said.”

  Wale had lived in Cape Town for more than ten years, so he had been mugged before and learned not to question the motive. But who was this woman? She was finely dressed, tall, elegant, seductive. She had the skin of jewels and sequins. He had the sense that he could overpower her except the frigidity of her voice, and the fact that the other woman would surely be waiting, made him reluctant. She also hadn’t demanded anything.

  But an opening was an opening. Her second mistake. When Wale saw that she had given him room to move, he swiftly pulled the lever to raise the hydraulic floor of the telescope. The floor lurched. He heard the woman tumble to the ground and he ran to the wall to open the door before the floor ascended above it. He turned the knob, shoving it open. There was just enough time to crawl through before the floor was too high. A light trained on his face. The girl pulled the trigger of the gun and a bullet sparked over his hand, ricocheting up and out of the dome. He froze as the hydraulics readjusted. The floor began rising up steadily.

  “I missed on purpose. Next time I will not. Now move.”

  The woman used the flashlight to point him towards the telescope in the center of the room. He noticed the ladder to the viewfinder had fallen over, but he couldn’t think of how to use that fact to his advantage.

  “Sit down on the floor,” the woman said. “Away from the wall.”

  He did as ordered, bringing his knees to his chest, with the smell of the pine rods from his earlier tour still lingering in the air.

  “I do not wish to be violent. But since you are dangerous I have no choice. Answer my questions and you will be free to go.” She produced a photo of a little black girl and a man in a colorful urban neighborhood. It was old, faded, with the corners weathered by thumb prints, and anyway he didn’t recognize the man. “I am looking for this man.”

  “I’ve never seen him.”

  He tried to give the photo back to her.

  “Never is a strong word. Hold onto that and I will help you refresh your memory. The photo was taken in 1993. There were certain events that transpired in that year of which I’m sure you’re aware.”

  The photo did not jog any memories, but the year could not have been forgotten. It was the year of the theft, the year he had left Houston. Of the end of his family.

  “1993. Yes. The Hubble telescope needed servicing in December,” he said, neutrally. “The Bulls won the title for the third time. I’m sure there’s more.”

  “Don’t play stupid.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I think you know, Doctor,” the woman said.

  “You’re wearing a veil. I can’t see what you look like.”

  The woman grew silent again. They sat there in the quiet, Wale racing through all means of escape. There was only the emergency ladder at the edge of the floor and he couldn’t imagine descending it without an injury. He couldn’t compel his body to hurl down it, even with a gun in his face.

  “I’ll ask you again. Have you met this man?”

  He examined the photo again, pretended to look at it. He snapped his finger. “That’s right. I met him once at the Rotary Club in Pinelands. We had some discussions, nothing conclusive. More of a social encounter.”

  “You lie.”

  “I’m telling you what you want to hear. You must understand my situation.”

  “Too well. It’s the truth that will save you.”

  “Ah, but you see, interrogations have little to do with the truth. If you want truth, let me go. Let it come of my own volition.”

  The light wavered down onto his belt, then picked back up, as if she’d been considering something. “It’s too late for that. Have you seen my father?”

  So that was who it was. He took another look at the photo. Father and daughter, though he saw little resemblance. “No. Please, I’m a bamboo peddler, not a Doctor. I don’t even get paid to work here.”

  The woman stomped over and whacked him across his face with the butt of her gun. His front teeth grew numb, and he waited for the pain to come. When it did, he spat blood.

  “Stop it! Stop pretending! You’re not a bamboo seller. I know your history.”

  “But—what history? I’ve lived here for twenty years.”

  “You were lead scientist of lunar geology at the Johnson Space Laboratory in Houston. In May 1993, you disappeared with no explanation.”

  When he looked at her blankly, she told him about Onur and the other scientists from his lab at the JSL. The shock of hearing these names distracted Wale as he tried to recall their faces. He could remember Onur gobbling donut holes. Rilker swaggering down a hallway to the water cooler. But it conjured the same feeling as seeing someone through the rear view mirror of a car and driving away.

  “Pay attention!” She shot the gun into the ceiling. The sound reverberated in the dome like a cannon. “There were eight of you in Brain Gain. They’re all dead now. You’re the last one. It’s only you, Doctor!”

  It wasn’t the gunshot but that name, Brain Gain, that set the flames of his memory ablaze. The air in the room began to move, as if it was being heated from below. As if the entire dome was a great cauldron with flames underneath and he was boiling in the borax. They were in the temple of the moongod and the cauldron of memories had been lit. The priestess was approaching, reaching to yank up his head. And what words were slithering in his throat, whose would they be?

  A voice, distended and rich as marrow, said: “It was Bello.”

  There was silence. He could see a pinpoint of light poking through the dome where the bullet went out, faintly, for the clouds had swept back over. He thought he could hear the girl breathing oddly, wheezing even. But in the cauldron he didn’t trust his words or his hearing.

  “Say it again,” the girl said.

  “It was Bello,” the Doctor continued. “Bello who ordered me to steal the twenty-three. He said I needed to show commitment. I was doing what I was told. It was a harmless contingency sample. Of course, there was historical significance, but it was worthless geologically. I took it.”

  He had not imagined that in the boiling borax there might be a kind of release. That the words channeling through his head might be soothing, that prophecies could coat his voice box like eucalyptus oil. He told her about Bello, the failed drop point and his flight to Cape Town.

  “I hid. I did, I’ll admit it. I hid, but only because Bello didn’t show. People were being killed. I wanted something better for my family.” The woman raised the gun as if to smack him again. “Okay, it wasn’t only my family. I wanted to go to the moon! But that’s all I ever wanted to do! To go up!”

  There was a longer pause now. She was giving him time, he realized. He could keep talking. Either that or dive down the emergency ladder.

  “All I wanted to do was go to the moon. You’re going to shoot me for that? For wanting to be an astronaut? Then fine, do it. Shoot me. But know that you’re robbing a son of his father!”

  Dive now for the ladder, he thought. Dive now or die.

  His body didn’t budge. There was the sound of a switch, of metal sliding. And he was staring into a halo of bright light.

  “Tell me about Nurudeen Bello.”

  “You’ve seen him?” he said, suddenly hopeful.

  “He was with my father when he disappeared.”

  “I see.”

  He found himself repeating Bello’s w
ords from way back in Houston, the ones he’d used to convince Wale to defect. That he was the great mind returning home to steer Nigeria to a brighter future, that there were innumerable benefits from a space program: communications satellites, trickle-down technology, accurate population censuses, extraction of valuable minerals from the lunar surface. Somehow it all came out sounding shallow, when Bello had assured him they’d be gallivanting about the moon in a few years. What else was there to say? Yes, Wale had believed it. Yes, he would probably believe it again.

  “You think it was a scam.”

  “No, no, no. It was no scam. Bello was in the government in Abuja, he was an adjunct minister. He was a dreamer. A dreamer who was very good with words.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He disappeared. No one knows what happened and I can’t go to Nigeria anymore.” He swallowed. “Because I’m a refugee.”

  He was considering how to better justify himself when his cell phone began to ring.

  “Don’t answer that,” the woman said. “Hand it to me.”

  He begrudgingly handed it to her. If it hadn’t been a clamshell phone then he could have answered it, or used the voice recorder, done a hundred things better. The woman looked at the screen.

  “Who is Dayo?”

  “A drinking mate.”

  He heard the woman rustle in her bag and turn quickly, hiding her face, to light a cigarette. Vanilla, as he had guessed. The scent did not mix agreeably with the pine smoke already in the air. Vanilla smelled of home; pine of mountain escapes.

  “Where is the sample you spoke of? The sample you stole.”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  The light was back on his face. “Why not?”

  Because it is with Dayo, he thought. It is with my son, and you will not seize him, too.

  “Because if I am the last one,” he declared, “the killing will stop with me.”

  For a second he thought she was going to let him go, but she crossed her legs. Her voice hardened. “I don’t believe you.”