Lagoon

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “Please, listen to me,” Ayodele was saying. “Consider me, consider us. As you have much to offer, so do we.”

  Unoma pulled her car over to the side of the road to watch Ayodele on her phone. There were several cars in front of her that had also pulled over. Every single one was filled with people holding their mobile phones.

  * * * *

  In Lagos, father, mother, and boy child sat in their family room, watching the alien on their old television. The adults wondered if what they were witnessing was real. Or maybe this woman on TV claiming she was from outer space was some sort of elaborate hoax. The mother had flipped through the channels, and the alien was speaking from every single one. But how hard could it be to take over Nigeria’s broadcasting networks?

  The boy child soaked in every word. Why not? It was so cool, sha!

  “We come to bring you together and refuel your future,” Ayodele said. “Your land is full of a fuel that is tearing you apart.”

  * * * *

  In Saudi Arabia, the Nigerian president, the First Lady, and two other officials, Yuusuf and Nicholas, were in the president’s hospital room watching Ayodele on Yuusuf’s mobile phone. It was a cheap phone he’d bought in Lagos. He hadn’t turned it on in weeks, since he’d arrived in Saudi Arabia with the president. Why would he, when his phone service didn’t reach outside of Nigeria? However, minutes ago, it had turned itself on and started communicating a most peculiar message from a strange woman.

  “We do not seek your oil or your other resources,” she said. “We are here to nurture your world.”

  A single thought went through the president’s mind: Benson was telling the truth.

  * * * *

  Ayodele looked out at the people. Kola was directly in front of her with the camera, and so it seemed that when Ayodele looked at the crowd before her, she looked out at all the people watching on large and small screens in Lagos. The expression on Ayodele’s face was serious, almost threatening. Intense.

  “So, what will you do?” Ayodele asked.

  Her captivated audience was completely silent.

  Then . . . BOOM!

  CHAPTER 25

  THE BARRED BEACH

  Bar Beach was deserted. There were now barricades preventing anyone from coming onto it. A minute after the second great sound eruption, military men and police who’d been guarding the place had dropped or pocketed their mobile phones and run off. The noise was enormous. It was bigger and richer than the one from the previous night. All the car and building windows within a one-mile radius were shattered; birds, insects, and bats fell to the ground; dogs barked; cats hid; lizards scurried; several forms of bacteria died, and others germinated. The noise this time was so profound that many of the weaker multicellular organisms in parts of the ocean closest to the source were obliterated. This kind of noise would awaken goddesses, gods, spirits, and ancestors.

  Only Private Agu sat on the beach, yards from the water, sopping wet. The cut on his forehead had begun bleeding again, but the swelling on his face had gone down . . . some. The sea cow had left him about a fifth of a mile from the beach. As he’d started swimming to safety, a rip current nearly dragged him back out to sea to his death. Thankfully he knew to swim parallel to it and managed to make it to shore.

  He’d crawled out of the water and turned to see if the sea cow was anywhere in sight. It was gone. It probably hadn’t even witnessed his brief struggle in the water. And that was when he’d heard the sonic boom. It knocked him off his feet, and he fell, face-first, into the sand, where he lay for a long moment, his ears ringing. He didn’t cover them. He didn’t wipe the blood from his face. He forgot for the moment about finding his way back to Adaora’s house to find them: Adaora, Anthony, and the possibly evil Ayodele. Instead he just sat there. For nearly twenty minutes, he sat there.

  Gradually, he realized something was happening. He squinted at the sea. At first all he could see were tiny weaving lights against the darkening sky. Then he became aware that he was no longer alone on the beach. There were people with mobile phones and flashlights. He could hear voices raised in excitement.

  A crash came from the street behind him, but his attention was drawn to something that was lying on the beach, huge and black against the city lights. Was it another monster? He’d seen plenty in the sea as the manatee had brought him to shore. But if it was, why would these people be here? It was black and nearly the size of a bus, and there was a crowd around it.

  “A whale?” he whispered, squinting harder. It didn’t help. He got up and stumbled toward the huge lump, but then his legs collapsed and he sat down hard on the sand.

  There was a man running from the lump up the beach. He changed course and ran to Agu, a grin on his face. He was carrying a big whitish chunk in his arms. “Na from street you come?” he asked.

  “No,” Agu said.

  The man laughed. “You look like say na from de street you come. Anyway, no wahala. People dey craze. Na only God fit provide. E get big fish for there wey from water come. De fish face look like autobus, but e get plenty meat for body.”

  “What . . . ?”

  “Go get your own before other people take am finish, o!” the man said. “Na sea pork! De meat is so sweet!” He took off with his meat before Agu could say more. Agu felt as if the world had turned upside down. Everything seemed dreamlike. He looked toward the street where the flames of a burning building lit up the area. He saw and heard people milling about vigorously in the streets and cars and trucks beeping as they tried to get through. It looked like a riot. Yet here were these people carving up what could only be a whale. Even in the midst of such chaos, people were still people. Still hungry and hoping to take advantage of a good situation.

  As he sat, he saw shapes in the water, illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun, moving toward the land. They grew, rising out of the waves, coalescing into recognizable shapes. Human shapes. They were people, hundreds of people, walking straight out of the ocean onto Bar Beach. First they were wet. Then they were dry. At least, that was how it looked to Agu in the waning light. Some passed by only a few steps from him. Others walked farther up and down the beach. Several walked out of the water mere feet from the dead whale. The Lagosians were so preoccupied with securing their share of the bounty that they never looked twice at the space people walking out of the sea.

  Some of them were dressed in various types of traditional garb, some in military attire, some in police uniforms, others in Western­ized civilian clothes. Most of them were African, a small few Asian, one white. All were completely dry, and Agu could smell roses and seaweed as they drifted past him. All of them could pass for Lagosians.

  They walked up the beach as an enormous object, all shifting oily black spires and spirals and brown and yellow lights, rose out of the water. It swallowed up the darkening horizon with its girth.

  Only then did the people carving up the whale pause to look up. Then they took their meat and got out of that place as quickly as possible.

  PROLOGUE

  THE BONE COLLECTOR

  For a tarantula, he is not very big. He lost a leg battling a pepsis wasp five years ago. But he is healthy. He lives well. This patch of forest is good for him—full of plump, slow-moving, and juicy prey, and rich dark places to catch them.

  Nevertheless, the tarantula believes that life is best lived by embracing the changes that come his way. So he gently places a leg on the warming pavement; the leg beside the space of the one he lost. This leg is the most sensitive, always has been. With it, he can feel the soul of the great spider artist of the land, she who weaves all things into existence.

  There is no vibration on the road. No approaching human vehicles. But he knows that when they come, they come fast and hard. He has crossed this highway many times. And always in the late evening when the surface is cool. Like now.

  Still, each cross
ing has been a close call. First he would feel the vibrations, and then a vehicle would appear on the horizon. He’d scramble for the other side, wondering if it was finally time to be reborn. But he had always made it and gone on to experience the meaty bloody bounty of the new patch of forest.

  Today it is time to seek fresh pastures again. Something dynamic has happened. Last night, he felt a vibration so intense it made his entire body shudder with pleasure. Then hours ago, he felt an even more intense vibration, down to the finest hairs on his body, the spinners in his abdomen, the bottoms of each of his feet. The vibration was glorious. It was a call for change.

  Now, he will answer that call.

  The moment his sensitive leg touches the pavement, he starts running. Strangely, losing a leg has made him faster and more agile. This has always been to his advantage in capturing food and mating. Despite the physical pain, the blow to his identity that the loss of the leg caused, he knows that that wasp did him a favor.

  He is only a third of the way across the road when the rumbling comes. The vibration. But not the delicious vibration of last night, or of hours ago. This one is average, expected, uninspiring. A human vehicle. The tarantula scrambles faster, certain that he will make it across. Certain of his extraordinary speed.

  Crunch.

  * * * *

  Once Adaora’s car passes the small stretch of road flanked by forest, this portion of the Lagos–Benin Expressway stretches its old tired asphalt with ease and comfort. The crushed body of the large, seven-limbed tarantula sinks into the road’s sun-warmed surface like fresh palm oil on hot bread.

  Ayodele will be fascinated at this aspect of her new world. She has yet to realize that there are other things inhabiting Lagos besides carbon-based creatures. There are greater beings of the earth, soil, sea, lagoon, and land. This stretch of highway has named itself the Bone Collector. It mostly collects human bones, and the bones of human vehicles. But sometimes it likes the chitinous bones of spiders, too.

  CHAPTER 26

  PAPA

  The boy was there. He had no mobile phone. He had never touched a computer. The cramped room he shared with seven other homeless boys had no television. He had no access to any type of screen, large or small. He hadn’t even been immunized against polio. But he was there. Standing before the wrought-iron fence with the hundreds of other people.

  To his left was a group of colorful, odd-looking folk who were arguing with a group of mean-looking men. And to his right, dressed in white, were people who’d been “born and born again.” They were the type who would bring him into their home which was really a church to feed him pounded yam and meatless egusi soup as they talked about the magic white man who used to live in the desert.

  Despite all these interesting things happening around him, his attention was on something else. The woman he knew wasn’t a woman was speaking.

  Papa, the man who took care of him and the other boys, had brought him and four others after hearing on the news that there was a gathering in front of this house. Such gatherings were good places to pick pockets and beg. The boy was not good at picking pockets. He was too slow, too distracted. Something always caught his eye. A woman’s shiny shoes, a man’s funny way of speaking, an insect on his shoulder. And next thing he knew, he’d forget what he was doing, sometimes with his hand still in someone’s pocket.

  Today, the distraction was the woman who was not a woman. Even before she started speaking, he noticed her. Oh, he had seen her. She was a lizard and then she was a woman. He saw her run out of the house as a lizard, between the tall dark-skinned man’s legs. It hurt his brain to process the sight of the tiny green lizard swelling and inflating into a mysterious woman with scary eyes.

  Vaguely, he remembered her from Bar Beach just before the water had taken the three people. The memory of the stolen people was stronger than most in his head, but he still could not make sense of the one who was the woman who was not a woman. He could not comprehend the fact that he was seeing her a second time. He could only feel a remote sense of recognition and curiosity.

  He’d pressed his face to the fence and listened but barely comprehended a word she said. Still, he understood he was witnessing something deep, just as he had witnessed the three people taken on the beach by a grasping fist of water. One of those people had been that dark-skinned man whose legs the lizard had run between. That he remembered.

  The boy grinned as the woman spoke. She had a voice like the sweetest candy. He rarely got to eat candy. He especially liked minty chewing gum; it made his thoughts clearer. And when he chewed, the motion of his mouth made him know that if he tried really, really hard, he could speak. His voice would rush up his throat like warm honey and he would produce words and they would make sense.

  Yes, he liked the odd woman’s voice very much. As he grinned, he felt warm wet saliva dribble from the sides of his mouth down his chin. Drooling would earn him a slap on the back of the head if his guardian noticed, but he couldn’t help it. Not right now. He was imagining he could speak, and doing so was worth the punishment.

  When the woman finished talking, there was silence. Everyone around him just stood there. But he liked the looks on their faces. People were dreamily staring at the woman or their mobile phones. He turned this way and that. It was as if he were the only living person in a sea of people-trees. No one moved. They all just smiled pleasantly, as if they were imagining charming possibilities and surprising potential. As he was.

  “See what the Lord has brought us?” one of the born and born again people finally said, breaking the silence. He held up his hands, making his bright white robes billow. He was heavyset, and his shiny black leather shoes were the type worn by men who drove shiny expensive cars that they would park in the driveways of those gated houses the boy was never allowed near. The last such house he’d walked past, the gateman had sneered at him and pointed his big gun at the boy and said, “Boom!” as he laughed and sat back on his stool. Yes, this man looked as though he would hire a man like that.

  “These alien beings will be embraced by the Lord!” the man said.

  “Enough!” someone shouted back. “This isn’t the time for that!”

  It was a woman’s voice. The boy looked around, but he was too small and could not see who it was.

  “Enough?” the man in white responded. “The size of the Lord’s flock will never be large enough! Not until he has gathered all of his sheep! Today is a new day. A day when—”

  The boy followed the stone with his eyes as it sailed through the air. It hit the bishop on the butt, leaving a dirty mark on his immacu­late robes. He yelped and whirled around, furious. There were squeals of protest from the people near the bishop.

  “Hey!”

  “O ga, o!”

  “Chineke!”

  “What the hell!”

  Then something flew in the opposite direction. A bottle of mineral, the liquid inside was brown, possibly Coca-Cola. It must have missed its target, for it landed on the ground, shattering, splashing a young woman with glass and liquid.

  There were exclamations in three different languages, none of which the boy could understand, except for the Pidgin English.

  The man in white raised his hands, pleading, “I . . . I didn’t throw—”

  The boy turned around and saw his guardian a few steps away. The other boys had already pressed themselves to him. None of them looked like they had stealing on their minds. Except one boy named Oyo, who was extracting a man’s wallet from his pocket. The man looked down into Oyo’s eyes and slapped him across the face. Their guardian flared up and punched the man in the belly.

  The mute boy laughed silently and was about to run to his guardian when he heard another hard slap. He jumped, and for a moment, because the sound was so familiar to him, felt his own cheek sting and warm up. He turned around and saw the bishop had fallen. There was a tall, sour-faced
man with an open hand standing over him and another woman and man yelling at the bishop.

  BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

  The gunshots made the boy crouch low to the ground, hiding his head in his arms. He stayed there, even as people started running. Two men beside him were throwing punches and then a third jumped in. A woman was shrieking in a high-pitched voice that made the boy want to tear his hair out. Then she grunted as something smashed into the side of her head.

  “Heeeeeeey!” several men beside her exclaimed. Something crashed to the ground. Two soldiers shot in the air to get people’s attention. This only caused more chaos. When the boy saw a soldier’s chest blow open from the impact of two bullets, he took off with everyone else. Where was the white smoke coming from? He sneezed and coughed, his eyes tearing up and his nose running. The air smelled sour, bloody, dirty. His chest burned when he inhaled. His ears felt stuffed with cotton. He didn’t know where he was going. Or where his guardian had gone.

  There.

  His guardian. Dragging the four other boys down the street. The mute boy raised his hand and waved, before being overcome by a fit of coughs. He wished he could scream. He needed to scream. He glanced at the house, looking for the womanlike creature with the sweet voice. If he could only hear her speak again, he was sure he could force his voice to work. But she was gone. There were people on the lawn. Some trying to get into the house. There was a group of people embroiled in a terrible fight. Why was everyone fighting?

  He could not think about that now. He tried to run toward his guardian, but the people around him were running in the opposite direction. People on the other side of the crowd must have tried to come toward his part of the crowd, because now the boy was pressed between five older boys as the crowd squeezed. He couldn’t see his guardian anymore. He struggled, but his feet weren’t even on the ground and the crowd was moving away.