Changa

by Ian McDonald

  They were still digging up the junction of University Way and Moi Avenue. Bi-lingual signs thanked drivers for their patience in co-operating with the Ministry of Transport’s five-year road-improvement scheme. A five-year plan, when in four years there would not be any roads to improve: Gaby suspected the digging paralysing Nairobi was a cabalistic deal between the City Fathers, contractors and a syndicate of newspaper sellers, snack vendors and windscreen washers.

  The man with the Stop/Go sign was letting them through two at a time this morning.

  ‘Bastard!’ Gaby shouted as he flicked his sign to red before she could jump him.

  Suddenly there were three men in her ATV. Two in the back, one in the front. They had Afro hairstyles, platform soles, ankle-length leather coats and big smiles.

  ‘Haran begs the pleasure of your company,’ said the one in the front. ‘Please follow the limousine.’ He nodded to the road mender, who turned his sign immediately to green for Go. The pink Cadillac pulled out and passed. Gaby tucked in behind it. It led her to the Cascade Club. The place had not long closed. It looked weary with all the house lights on, like an aged, aged prostitute who has to go out to the shops and shrinks from the naked sunshine. The air was close and humid, breathed through many sets of lungs. Down in the pit women were diligently scrubbing mould off the white tiles. It smelled, Gaby thought, exactly like the Pirates of the Caribbean in EuroDisney.

  The posseboys did not take Gaby up to the glass-floored office, but by a circuitous route past staff toilets and store-rooms filled with shrink-wrapped pallets of alcohol to a wide, covered balcony around a lush courtyard garden of palms, bananas and creeping figs. Higher palm fronds overhung the balcony rail. Waiters in white jackets carrying silver trays attended a number of immaculately laid tables. The patrons were all African or Indian. Haran’s table was apart from the others and overlooked a flaccid fountain. A silver coffee set, two cups and a PDU were arranged on the linen cloth. A lift of his finger dismissed the posseboys. Haran rose from his cane chair, lifted the head of his fly-whisk and bowed slightly to Gaby.

  ‘Ms McAslan. A delight to see you again. Please, sit, have some coffee. Esther.’

  A young black woman moved from where she had been standing behind Haran and pulled a chair out for Gaby. She was dressed in a black leather bikini over a sheer mesh bodystocking. Black knuckle-studded biker’s gloves matched black biker’s boots. Gaby recognized the uniform of Mombi’s possegirls. She wore a lot of heavy jewellery, but, unusually, no neck-chains, only a mismatched choker that seemed to have been woven from strands of iridescent fibre. In place of a pendant, a small printed circuit board with a single red LED eye nuzzled in the hollow of the young woman’s throat.

  ‘Smartwire,’ Haran said. ‘One of the first benefits of Chaga research, so we are told. Coiled long-chain molecules that contract dramatically under an electrical charge. Not quite dramatic enough to guillotine a head right off, but enough to sever the carotid arteries if I press the button. But Mombi has her own necklace on one of my boys, so everyone’s arteries will be staying unsevered, I think.’ The possegirl poured coffee. Milk was offered, sugar, sweeteners. Gaby waved them away. The coffee was exquisite. She expected no less of Haran.

  ‘So, Gaby, not only are we menaced by the Chaga, we now have this Hyperion event as well. I understand you have a nickname for it already, what is it, the BDO?’

  ‘The Big Dumb Object,’ Gaby said, noting the switch to her forename. Haran was like the Chaga, he moved slowly, but inexorably. He reached his points, disclosed his informations, changed the landscape of his relationships at his own speed, in his own time and none other. ‘From the same anonymous NASA wit who named the Iapetus probe after the author of The Lord of the Rings. This one is from the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.’

  ‘My education must be incomplete,’ Haran said. ‘I have read neither of these volumes. Perhaps I should. The times are changing, Gaby, and I must change with them, or history will run me down like a chicken on the highway. There is a time for war, and a time to make peace. There are too many new faces on the street and they have grown up hungry and vicious. Their means are dishonourable: virtual sex parlours, VR-dildonics, videodrugs; their methods distasteful: blackmail, extortion, addiction, kidnapping. They place no value on human life. You can understand, my friend, that they must be shown who is the power in this town if we are to avoid general anarchy. In such times, your oldest enemy is to be more trusted than those who catch at your coat-tail and call you friend, friend.’

  ‘You’re putting out diplomatic feelers?’

  ‘We have exchanged embassies.’

  ‘Or hostages.’

  Haran glanced at the PDU on the table-cloth. UPI NetServe menus scrolled down the screen. The hypertext expansion point blinked on the liquid rollscreen.

  ‘My net is coming apart in my fingers, Gaby. Every day I lose connections. People; my people, who trust me to protect them. Against the police, against my rivals and enemies, like Mombi was once, who would snap them up like a leopard a dog; yes, I can protect them from these, but against the Chaga, against those who serve it . . .’ Haran took a flexible minidisc from the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘Leave us, Esther. This is a private matter between myself and my client.’

  She had the adolescent scowl nicely. Gaby envied her her firm ass.

  The video sequence was appalling. There was no syntax, no narrative. The camera veered from side to side, faces were out of focus, or upside down or loomed to fill the screen. The soundtrack was shouting and hard breathing and the constant shatter of a hovering helicopter. You saw swooping panoramics of a dusty Kenyan town, you saw jolting images of military vehicles, as if taken by a running man. You saw white soldiers shot from expressionistic angles, you saw sun-burned faces beneath blue helmets swim into extreme close-up. You saw lines of people, and armoured personnel carriers. You saw town and soldiers and sky whirling madly around, then you heard raised, shouting white-man voices, heavily accented, and saw something that looked like a zipper, and the dark interior of a sports bag, and heard running footsteps, and heavy breathing, and the sequence ended.

  ‘They took his deck, all his equipment, they took the camcorder on which he shot this secretly, they even took the expensive shoes off his feet,’ Haran said evenly. ‘But they did not take the disc, and now I have it, and will make them pay for what they did to one of my posse.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Azeris. Ex-Soviets. It does not matter. They all do it. Especially the ones from the countries that are as poor, or poorer, than this. What they do not keep for themselves, they sell in the Nairobi markets. If you go down to Jogoo Road or Kariokor, you will find it all laid out on the stalls. If they do not have what you want, you can place an order and the soldiers will loot it for you from the next village they evacuate in the name of the United Nations. But you must pay more for this premium service.’

  ‘Haran, why are you showing me this?’

  The Sheriff laid his fly-whisk on the table.

  ‘I am asking you as a favour to expose the ones who did this to my boy. I do not care about the others, but no one, not even the UN, touches one of Haran’s. I will not have it said that I cannot protect my own.’

  ‘You want me to do a report on institutional corruption in the United Nations forces.’

  ‘Listen well, Gaby McAslan. This is what I want. I want the men who did this to my man exposed and humiliated in every nation on Earth. I want their own sisters and mothers to close their doors to them when they go back to their homes; I want their fathers and brothers to turn away and spit when they pass for the shame they have brought their families.’

  Sip your coffee, Gaby McAslan. Do not let this smooth bastard see the value of this thing he is giving you, for he has the eyes of a Shanghai jade-seller, who sets his price by the dilation of his buyer’s pupils. Already, she was listing the Must Knows and the Must Never Knows, the Faithfuls and the Faithlesses. Tembo and Faraway; she would tak
e them, they knew the country, they knew their job, they knew discretion. They would not tell the troll bitch-queen from hell Santini, or T.P., who would give it straight to golden boy Jake. No, she would keep it secret until the moment she rolled it for Thomas Pronsias Costello in his little glass office and when syndication deals lit up the East African teleport like a stained glass window, then she would see who was talking Junior East African satellite news correspondent. Already she was rehearsing the little doxology: Gaby McAslan, SkyNet News, Kenya.

  ‘This does me as much of a favour as it does you,’ she said.

  ‘Is this not then the most excellent way to do business?’ Haran said. ‘This way, I know I can trust you to do what I ask. I will have one of my boys deliver details of the unit in question and their current location. I presume you will be at the Sondhai woman’s for the foreseeable future?’

  ‘For the foreseeable future.’

  ‘Good. I have detained you long enough. I would not want to make trouble for you with your employers, when I am in need of their good graces. I am most glad you can do this little favour for me.’

  He extended a gloved hand. Gaby did not take it.

  ‘Haran. I need to ask a favour in return of you.’

  ‘You are aware that what I have asked you to do is in repayment for the favour I did you in the Independence Day thing. This will be a fresh account.’

  ‘I am aware of that.’

  Haran folded his hands in his lap, like a priest awaiting a confession.

  ‘What is it you would ask me?’

  ‘Peter Werther.’

  ‘I gave you him as a token of our relationship.’

  ‘Dr Daniel Oloitip says he’s disappeared.’

  ‘One does well not to pay too much attention to what Dr Oloitip says.’

  ‘He says he hasn’t so much disappeared as been disappeared. By the UN. A joint US/Canadian airborne force hit the What the Sun Said community up at Lake Naivasha and took him.’

  Haran studied the outspread fingertips of his gloves.

  ‘These are serious allegations Dr Oloitip is making.’

  ‘Haran, I want you to find out if this is true, and if so, where Peter Werther is.’

  ‘Are you asking me as a favour?’

  He was looking right at her. She had never seen his eyes so clearly. They were like two spheres of lead.

  ‘I am asking you as a favour.’

  ‘Finding out and finding where are two favours.’

  ‘Then I am asking you as a favour, twice. And I will owe you, twice.’

  Haran snapped his hands shut. The lemon-yellow leather gloves made a soft, rustling snapping, like a lizard trapping an insect.

  ‘I shall do what I can. I can promise no more than that. You understand that things are not so simple with the UN, or I would not have had to ask you the favour I have. My boys must be discreet if they are not to be discovered. It may be that they will find nothing. But you will still owe me the favour. Two favours.’

  ‘Haran, I knew from the moment I met you I would always be owing you.’

  He smiled. Like his lead eyes, she had never seen him smile before. She wished she had not seen him smile now.

  ‘I shall have one of my boys escort you back to SkyNet. The streets are no longer as safe for visitors as they were, especially for white women. I am afraid there are thieves and conmen on every street corner.’

  Gaby got up from the table. Mombi’s handsome envoy had returned with fresh coffee. Haran gently ran his gloved right hand along the possegirl’s jawline. Gaby shuddered.

  ~ * ~

  20

  ‘Ten years ago this dusty, rutted dirt road would have been nose-to-tail with tour buses heading to the game lodges of West Tsavo National Park. Now the only vehicles that move along it are United Nations truck convoys. I counted fifty go past me ten minutes ago. Their dust still hangs in the air. And the place to which they are headed, where once Masai cattle and wild animals existed peacefully together, has turned into something from the Old Testament: an entire nation of refugees.

  ‘In the last census two years ago, the town of Merueshi had a population of three thousand. Today UNHCR estimates there are over one hundred thousand people camped out around Merueshi. In those two years, the Chaga has come. Terminum is just two kilometres to the south of us, ten minutes’ walk, and that, the UN says, is close enough. Everyone, and everything, is to be moved, down to the last cow and goat, the last stick of furniture.

  ‘From fifty kilometres around, the people have come to Merueshi to be evacuated. Some have their own transport, others were brought in by truck and bus, most have walked carrying all their worldly possessions. Now they wait to be taken north, and they wonder if the UN trucks will reach them before the Chaga does, and if they do make it out of here, what kind of life can they expect in the townships?

  ‘To be forced away from everything you have ever known is hard. What is intolerable is then to have even those few, precious things you have managed to salvage taken from you.

  ‘I’ve come to Merueshi, to the very edge of the Chaga and this scene of near-Biblical desolation, to investigate reports of widespread looting and extortion of refugees’ property. Not by criminals or gangs of bandits, those certainly exist, or even by profiteers selling space on their own truck trains, but by the very United Nations soldiers who are meant to be protecting them. I have received evidence of black marketeering in stolen goods by one particular unit of Azerbaijani soldiers under the flag of the United Nations.

  ‘And cut it.’

  ‘We’re still running,’ Faraway said behind the camera. ‘You can say it if you want to.’

  ‘Oh, all right then. You can edit this later. I’ll give you a mark.’ Gaby made a chopping motion with her right hand across the camera’s field of vision. ‘Gaby McAslan, SkyNet News, Merueshi, Kenya.’

  ‘And we are out.’

  ‘Did it look good? Is this sleeveless denim thing all right? No sweat stains under the armpits? If you made my ass look fat I will hang you by your balls. God, was my nose too shiny?’

  Faraway doubled over with laughter.

  ‘You bitch just like Jake. You looked fine. You always look fine to me, Gaby. Mighty fine indeed. Two things, if you please. One, don’t swipe at flies with your hand, and two, your hair was blowing across your face. It might be a good idea to shoot it again.’

  ‘Jesus, Faraway. That bastard helicopter will come back. I know it. And I’m never as fresh the fourth time.’

  She could see that Faraway was considering a sexual riposte, but instead he said, ‘Jake would do it again.’

  ‘Fuck Jake.’

  She knew the look.

  ‘All right. We’ll do it again. Got the camp framed? I’ll give you a mark.’

  ‘One moment please. There seems to be a problem with the white balance.’

  ‘I knew it. You haven’t the first idea about that camera, have you? We should have waited for Tembo to come back. I don’t know why he trusted you with it.’

  ‘You trusted him with your Nissan.’

  ‘That’s different. He has to get the boy. I can’t go: the only white woman in fifty miles? What kind of relation is he anyway?’

  ‘Wife’s sister-in-law’s cousin.’

  ‘Blood is much thicker than water in this country.’

  ‘But not so thick as money. And remember, I am only doing this because you promised to let me see you with no clothes on. Five minutes. In the middle of my living room.’

  ‘You can’t possibly hold me to that; come on, it was five o’clock in the morning, I would have promised anything.’

  Faraway grinned behind the eyepiece as the lens closed in and pulled out into a wide-angle.

  ‘You have always known that what I want most in the world is to undress you and then fiki-fiki you as you have never been fiki-fikied before, Gaby McAslan. Is it red down there too?’

  ‘Shut your gob and we’ll go for another take.’

  The bas
tard helicopter came back. It turned high in the air and swooped down low across the camp from its station to the east. Children hid from the hammer of its blades. Women pulled sheets over their heads to protect them from the dust. Lop-eared goats plunged and kicked on their hide tethers; a shit-smeared cow broke loose and careered between the huddles of people. Men in frayed shorts, faded T-shirts and baseball caps with the names of fertilizer companies on the front shooed it away with outspread arms. The helicopter hovered a moment over the refugees, delighting in the chaos it created, then put its down nose and slid up over the low hill where Gaby and Faraway did their fourth take of the news report. Dry brown grass raged and stormed. Dust flew up in a suffocating cloud. Faraway fought with the velcro closures on the camera hood. Gaby watched her prompt notes fly away from her. Combing her hair from her face, she could clearly see the pilot in the forward cockpit raise a forefinger in an obscene gesture. Gaby screamed curses into the roar of rotors shredding air. The helicopter banked again and slid away north along the line of the road in search of others to intimidate.