Binti, The Complete Trilogy: Binti ; Home ; The Night Masquerade

by Nnedi Okorafor

  I’d always found those huge black plants terrifying, they looked like they’d eat you if you got too close. And they surrounded themselves with a coppery stink that smelled so close to blood that the first time I came to the station, I had what I later understood was a panic attack. I’d stood on the platform staring blankly as I held that smell in my nose. Then came the flashes of memory from that time so vivid . . . I could smell the freshly spilled blood. Memories from when I was in the dining room of a ship in the middle of outer space where everyone had just been viciously murdered by Meduse.

  I had not ridden the shuttle that day. I didn’t ride it for many weeks, opting to take swift transport, a sort of hovering bus that was actually much slower and used for shorter journeys. When I couldn’t stand the slowness and decided to try the solar shuttle again, I’d pinched my nose and breathed through my mouth until I got onboard. Once we started moving, the smell went away.

  A native operated the scanner and I handed her my astrolabe to scan. She narrowed her wide blue eyes and looked at me down her small nose, as if she didn’t see me take this shuttle often enough to know my schedule. She batted one of my okuoko with a finger; her hands were bigger than my head. Then she rubbed the otjize between her fingers and motioned for me to enter the shuttle’s cabin.

  I sat where I always sat, in the section for people my size near one of the large round windows, and strapped myself in. The shuttle traveled five hundred to a thousand miles per hour, depending on how charged it was. I’d be in Weapons City in fifteen minutes and I hoped it wasn’t too late, because Okwu was planning to kill his teacher.

  * * *

  The moment the house-sized lift rumbled open I ran out, my sandaled feet slapping the smooth off-white marble floor. The room was vast and high ceilinged with rounded walls, all cut into the thick toothlike marble. I coughed, my lungs burning. Wan, a Meduse-like person, was feet away, engulfed in a great lavender plume of its breathing gas. It didn’t have Okwu’s hanging tentacles, but Wan still looked like a giant version of the jellyfish who lived in the lake near my home on Earth. Wan also spoke Okwu’s language of Meduse. I’d been down here plenty of times to meet Okwu, so it knew me, too.

  “Wan, tell me where Okwu is,” I demanded in Meduse.

  It puffed its gas down the hallway. “There,” Wan said. “Presenting to Professor Dema against Jalal today.”

  I gasped, understanding. “Thanks, Wan.”

  But Wan was already heading to the lift. I pulled my wrapper above my ankles and sprinted down the hallway. To my left and right, students from various parts of the galaxy were working on their own final projects of protective weaponry, the assignment this quarter. Okwu’s was body armor, its close classmate Jalal’s was electrical current.

  Okwu and Jalal were taught together, stayed in the same dorm, and worked closely together on their projects. And today, they were being tested against each other, as was the way of Oomza Weapons Education. I was fascinated by the competitive push and pull of weapons learning, but I was glad mathematics was more about harmony. Okwu being Okwu—a Meduse of rigid cold honor, focus, and tradition—loved the program. The problem was that Okwu hated its professor and Professor Dema hated Okwu. Okwu was Meduse and Professor Dema, a human woman, was Khoush. Their people had hated and killed each other for centuries. Tribal hatred lived, even in Oomza Uni. And today that hatred, after simmering for a year, was coming to a head.

  I reached the testing space just as Okwu, encased in a metallic skin, brought forth its white and sharp stinger and pointed it at Professor Dema. Feet away, Professor Dema stood, carrying a large gunlike weapon with both her hands and a snarl on her lips. This was not the way final exams were supposed to go.

  “Okwu, what are you doing?” Jalal demanded in Meduse. She stood to the side, clutching a series of what looked like thick fire-tipped sticks with her mantislike claws. “You’ll kill her!”

  “Let us finish this once and for all,” Okwu growled in Meduse.

  “Meduse have no respect,” Okwu’s professor said in Khoush. “Why they allowed you into this university is beyond me. You’re unteachable.”

  “I’ve tolerated your insulting remarks all quarter. Let me end you. Your people should not plague this university,” Okwu said.

  My lungs were laboring from the gas Okwu was copiously breathing out as it prepared to attack its professor. If it didn’t stop doing this, the entire room would be filled with it. I could see Professor Dema’s eyes watering as she resisted coughing as well. I knew Okwu. It was doing this on purpose, enjoying the strained look on Professor Dema’s face. I only had seconds to do something. I threw myself before Okwu, pressing myself to the floor before its okuoko, which hung just below its weaponized casing. I looked up at Okwu; its tentacles were soft and heavy on the side of my face. Meduse immediately understand prostration.

  “Okwu, hear me,” I said in Khoush. Since arriving at the university, I’d taught Okwu to speak Khoush and my language of Otjihimba and it hated the sound of both. My theory is that this was partially due to the fact that for Okwu the sound of any language was inferior to Meduse. On top of this, Okwu had to produce the words through the tube between its okuoko that blew out the gas it used to breathe in air-filled atmospheres, and doing so was difficult and felt unnatural. Speaking to Okwu in Khoush was irritating to it and thus the best way to get its attention.

  I called up a current, treeing faster than I ever could have back home. I’d learned much from Professor Okpala in the last year. My okuoko tickled, the current touching them and then reaching for Okwu’s okuoko. Suddenly, I felt that anger again, and some part of me deep down firmly accused, “Unclean, Binti, you are unclean!” I gnashed my teeth as I fought to stay in control. When I could not, I simply let go. My voice burst from me clear and loud; in Khoush, I shouted, “Stop! Stop it right now!” I felt my okuoko standing on end, writhing like the clusters of mating snakes I often saw in the desert back home. I must have looked like a crazed witch; I felt like one, too.

  Immediately, Okwu brought down its stinger, stopped pluming gas, and moved away from me. “Stay there, Binti,” it said. “If you touch my casing, you will die.”

  Professor Dema brought down her weapon as well.

  Silence.

  I lay there on the floor, mathematics cartwheeling through my brain, current still touching my only true friend on the planet even after a year. I felt the tension leave the room, leaving myself, too, finally. Tears of relief fell from the corners of my eyes as my strange random anger drained away. My okuoko stopped writhing. There were others in the cavernous workspace, watching. They would talk, word would spread, and this would be another reminder to students, human and nonhuman, to keep their distance from me, even if they liked me well enough.

  Okwu’s close classmate Jalal put down her weapons and hopped back. Professor Dema threw her gun to the floor and pointed at Okwu. “Your casing is spectacular. You will leave it here and download your recipe for it to my files. But if we meet outside this university where I am not your teacher and you are not my student, one of us will die and it will not be me.”

  I heard Okwu curse at her in Meduse so deep that I couldn’t understand exactly what it said. Before I could admonish Okwu’s crudeness, Professor Dema snatched up her weapon and shot at Okwu. It made a terrible boom that shook the walls and sent students fleeing. Except Okwu. The wall directly to its left now had a hole larger than Okwu’s nine-foot-tall five-foot-wide jellyfish-like body. Chunks and chips of marble crumbled to the floor and dust filled the air.

  “You didn’t miss,” Okwu said in Khoush. Its tentacles shook and its dome vibrated. Laughter.

  Minutes later, Okwu and I left the Weapons City Inverted Tower Five. Me with ringing ears and a headache and Okwu with a grade of Outstanding for its final project in Protective Gear 101.

  * * *

  Once on the surface, I looked at Okwu, wiped marble dus
t and otjize from my face, and said, “I need to go home. I’m going to go on my pilgrimage.” I felt the air close to my skin; once I got back to my dorm room and washed up, I’d reapply my otjize. I’d take extra time to palm roll a thick layer onto my okuoko.

  “Why?” Okwu asked.

  I’m unclean because I left home, I thought. If I go home and complete my pilgrimage, I will be cleansed. The Seven will forgive me and I’ll be free of this toxic anger. Of course, I didn’t say any of this to Okwu. I only shook my head and stepped into the field of soft water-filled maroon plants that grew over the Inverted Tower Five. Sometimes, I came here and sat on the plants, enjoying the feeling of buoyancy that reminded me of sitting on a raft in the lake back home.

  “I’ll come too,” Okwu said.

  I looked at it. “You’ll land in a Khoush airport, if you’re even allowed on the ship. And they’ll . . .”

  “The treaty,” it said. “I’ll go as an ambassador for my people. No Meduse has been on Earth since the war with the Khoush. I’d be coming in peace.” It thrummed deep in its dome and then added, “But if the Khoush make war, I will stir it with them, like you stir your otjize.”

  I grunted. “No need for that, Okwu. The peace treaty should be enough. Especially if Oomza Uni endorses the trip. And you come with me.” I smiled. “You can meet my family! And I can show you where I grew up and the markets and . . . yes, this is a good idea.”

  Professor Okpala would certainly approve. A harmonizer harmonized. Bringing Okwu in peace to the land of the people its people had fought would be one of the ten good deeds Okpala had insisted I perform within the academic cycle as part of being a good Math Student. It would also count as the Great Deed I was to do in preparation for my pilgrimage.

  Humans. Always Performing

  Two weeks later, I powered up the transporter and said a silent prayer. The Seven were in the soil of my home and I was planets away from that home. Would they even hear me? I believed they would; the Seven could be in many places at once and bring all places with them. And they would protect me because I was a Himba returning home.

  Still, my transporter did nothing. I stood there, out of breath, staring at the coin-sized flat stone. I’d rolled my hard-shelled pod into the lift and then across the dormitory hall to the entrance. The effort had left me sweaty and annoyed. Now this. The shuttle was a half-mile walk down the uneven rocky pathway. I’d been looking forward to the fresh air before the days on the ship. However, the walk wouldn’t be so pleasant if I had to push my heavy traveling pod up the pathway. I knelt down and touched the transponder, again.

  Nothing.

  I pressed it hard, knowing this wouldn’t yield any better result. It wasn’t the pressure of the touch that activated it, but the contact with my index fingerprint.

  Still nothing.

  My face grew hot and I hissed with anger. I brought my foot back and kicked the transporter as hard as I could. It shot into the bushes. I froze with my mouth hanging open, astonished by my actions and the deep satisfaction they yielded. Then I ran to the bushes and started pushing the leaves near the ground this way and that, hoping to spot the tiny thing.

  “Don’t do that, you’ll get all dirty before you’re even on the ship,” someone said from behind me as strong hands grasped my shoulders and gently pulled me back. It was Haifa. “Let me help you.”

  “All the way to the shuttle station?” I said, with a laugh.

  “I’ve been studying all day,” she said. “I need the exercise.” She was wearing a tight green body suit made of a material so thin that I could see the bulging muscles on her long graceful arms and legs. Her astrolabe was attached to a clip sewn into her suit. As with the astrolabes of almost every student in my dorm, I’d tuned up its design and performance and now hers shined like polished metal and operated in a way more suited to her meticulous plodding way of thinking.

  Haifa was much taller than me and one of those people who found motion so easy that she couldn’t resist moving all the time. The day I met her, after asking me many questions about my okuoko, she’d told me that though she’d always been female, she’d been born physically male. Later, when she was thirteen, she’d had her body transitioned and reassigned to female. She’d joked that this process took longer than my getting stung in the back with a stinger to become part Meduse. “But it’s why I get to be so tall,” she’d bragged.

  Every morning, she jogged several miles and then lifted logs at the lumberyard up the road. “The better to compete with people from other places,” she now said, stepping to my pod. “Not easy being a human in the weapons department; we’re so weak. Plus, I owe you,” she said, gesturing to her astrolabe.

  She started rolling my pod before I could say “yes,” her thick black braids bouncing against her back. As she went, I swiped otjize from my forehead with my index finger, knelt down and touched the finger to the red Oomza soil, grounding the otjize into it. “Thank you,” I whispered. I ran to catch up with Haifa, clutching my satchel to the side of my long silky red-orange wrapper.

  “You think your family is going to like your new hairstyle?” Haifa asked, as she pushed and rolled the pod over the rocky path. A large succulent plant pulled in one of its branches as we passed it.

  “It’s not hair,” I said. “They’re—”

  “I know, I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m being obnoxious. How come you’re going home so soon, anyway?”

  I stepped over a particularly large stone. “It’s just time.”

  She looked over her shoulder at me as she rolled my pod. “Why isn’t that monster here to help you? Does he know you’re going?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m meeting Okwu at the launch port.”

  “How did it score top of the class on the quarter final? I hear it paid off the professor.”

  I laughed, nearly jogging to keep up now. “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

  “Or just carry a big gun at all times so that people will always tell the truth,” she said, giving the pod a push.

  About a hundred meters from the shuttle station, Haifa decided to outdo herself by picking up my pod and sprinting with it. When she reached the front of the shuttle station, she put the pod down, did a graceful backflip, and gleefully jumped up and clicked her heels. A few people waiting at the shuttle platform applauded with whistles, flashes of light, and slapping tentacles. Haifa took a dramatic bow for them. “I am amazing,” she declared, as I walked up to her.

  A person who looked like a two-foot-tall version of a praying mantis clicked its powerful forelegs. In a sonorous voice, it said, “Humans. Always performing.”

  The shuttle arrived, gliding on the smooth green oil path, and the five people waiting crowded quickly onboard. I was last to board, pinching my nose to avoid the blood smell of the pitcher plants. Haifa loaded my pod inside for me, gave me a tight hug, and leapt through the large round shuttle window near the entrance like a missile. Moments later, the shuttle got moving; it never waited for long. “Tell Okwu I send my insults!” Haifa shouted as the shuttle passed her. She started to run alongside the shuttle and for a moment, she kept up.

  “I will,” I said.

  “Safe travels, Binti! No fear, Master Harmonizer, just as you belonged in the desert that night, you belong in space!” Haifa shouted and then the shuttle left her in its wake of blasted air, which blew her thick braids back. Holding on to the rail beside me, I turned and watched as we sped away from her. She did one more flip and waved enthusiastically. Then she was gone because we’d reached the day’s cruising speed of seven hundred miles per hour.

  I stood there for a moment, feeling the usual moment of lightheadedness as the shuttle stabilized its passengers, and then I quickly went to my assigned window seat. I had to squeeze past two furry individuals and they protested when my otjize rubbed off on their furry feet and one of my okuoko brushed one in the fur
ry face.

  “Sorry,” I said, in response to their growls.

  “We’ve heard about you,” one said in gruff Meduse. “You’re a hero, but we didn’t know you were so . . . soily.”

  “It’s not soil, its—” I sighed and smiled and just said, “Thank you.” Both of their astrolabes began to sing. They grabbed them and began another conversation among themselves and four others projected before them in a language I didn’t understand. I sat down and turned to the window.

  Fifteen minutes later, when we stopped in Weapons City, I met up with Okwu, who was coming from a meeting with its professor; somehow the two hadn’t killed each other and I was thankful. One day the Meduse and the Khoush will get over themselves, I thought. The treaty was a good start.

  An hour later, we arrived at the launch station. And that’s when I began to feel ill.

  * * *

  The three university medical center doctors who’d examined me said I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because of what happened on the ship last year. For the first few weeks, I was okay, but eventually I started having nightmares, day terrors, I’d see red and then Heru’s chest bursting open. Sometimes, just looking at Okwu made me want to vomit, though I never told it this was happening. And then, months later, there were the random instances of intense focused fury that invaded my usually calm mind.

  Eventually, Okwu and I were ordered by the departments of mathematics and weapons to see therapists. Okwu never mentioned how its sessions went and I didn’t ask. You just don’t ask a Meduse about such things. I doubt it told any of its family, either. In turn, Okwu never asked about my sessions.