Rosewater

by Tade Thompson

  ROSEWATER

  Tade Thompson

  Apex Publications

  Smashwords Edition

  “This thrilling, ambitious novel offers a deftly woven and incisive blend of science fiction, psychology, action, and mystery. Highly recommended.”

  — Kate Elliott, author of Black Wolves and Cold Magic

  “Tade Thompson’s combustible imagination and sophisticated intellectual footwork identify him as a high-caliber novelist, and Rosewater showcases a deep love of science fiction even as Thompson is pouring gasoline on its tropes and igniting them. Bring it on.”

  — Tricia Sullivan, author of OCCUPY ME and SHADOWBOXER

  “An outstanding, sophisticated novel at the cutting edge of science fiction, set in a complex future Africa. The only problem I had with it was in putting it down.”

  — Liz Williams, author of the Detective Inspector Chen series

  “Part thriller, part mystery and part phantasmagoric journey across a strange yet not-too-distant future, and reminiscent at times of both Roger Zelazny and Nnedi Okorafor, Rosewater is the hardboiled, Nigerian alien invasion story you always wanted and now simply couldn’t do without!”

  — Lavie Tidhar, author of A MAN LIES DREAMING and CENTRAL STATION

  “Rosewater is a book that belongs in any true science fiction reader’s collection; Tade Thompson is at the forefront of African science fiction and a writer you need to keep your eye on.”

  — Milton Davis, MVMedia Publishing

  “Taking a fresh approach to what science fiction can look like, Rosewater is equal parts mystery and mind-bending adventure through an Earth twisted by numerous alien visitations and a psychic landscape that unites the living and the dead.”

  — Charles Payseur, Quick Sip Reviews

  “Part cyberpunk, part post-colonial noir, full-blown weird: telepaths, implants and aliens in a future Nigeria? I’m sold. Rosewater is a fine blueprint upon which future science fiction stories should be written.”

  — Fabio Fernandes, We See a Different Frontier

  CHAPTER ONE

  Rosewater: 2066

  I’m at the Integrity Bank job for forty minutes before the anxieties kick in. It’s how I usually start my day. This time it’s because of a wedding and a final exam. Not my wedding, not my exam. In my seat by the window I can see, but not hear, the city. This high above Rosewater everything seems orderly. Blocks, roads, streets, traffic curving sluggishly around the dome. I can see the cathedral from here. The window is to my left, and I’m on one end of an oval table with four other contractors. We are on the fifteenth floor, the top. A skylight is open above us, three-foot square, a security grid being the only thing between us and the morning sky. Blue, with flecks of white cloud. No blazing sun yet, but that will come later. The climate in the room is controlled despite the open skylight, a waste of energy for which Integrity Bank is fined weekly. They are willing to take the expense.

  Next to me on the right side Bola yawns. She is pregnant and gets very tired these days. She also eats a lot, but I suppose that’s to be expected. I’ve known her two years and she has been pregnant in each of them. I do not fully understand pregnancy. I am an only child and I never grew up around pets or livestock. My education was peripatetic; biology was never a strong interest. Except for microbiology, which I had to master later.

  I try to relax and concentrate on the bank customers. The wedding anxiety comes again.

  Rising from the centre of the table is a holographic teleprompter. It consists of random swirls of light right now, but within a few minutes it will come alive with text. There is a room adjacent to ours in which the night shift is winding down.

  ‘I hear they read Dumas last night,’ says Bola.

  She’s just making conversation. It is irrelevant what the other shift reads. I smile and say nothing.

  The wedding I sense is due in three months. The bride has put on a few pounds and does not know if she should alter the dress or get liposuction. In my opinion, women have two beauties. The outward appearance that everyone sees and the inner, secret beauty that is true and that women show only to the one they love.

  Bola is prettier when she is pregnant.

  ‘Sixty seconds,’ says a voice on the tannoy.

  I take a sip of water from the tumbler on the table. The other contractors are new. They don’t dress formally like Bola and I. They wear tank tops and t-shirts and metal in their hair. They have phone implants.

  I hate implants of all kinds. I have one. Standard locator with no add-ons. Boring, really, but my employer demands it.

  The exam anxiety dies down before I can isolate and explore the source. Fine by me.

  The bits of metal these young ones have in their hair come from plane crashes. Lagos, Abuja, Jos, Kano, and all points in between, there have been downed aircraft on every domestic route in Nigeria since the early 2000s. They wear bits of fuselage as protective charms.

  There are those among us who are shining ones. We know them on sight-we are caught in a vortex and drawn to them as are everyone else. Bola is one of these. I often catch myself staring at her without knowing why. She often catches me staring at her and winks. Now she unwraps her snack, a few wraps of moin-moin.

  ‘Go,’ says the tannoy.

  The text of Plato’s The Republic scrolls slowly and steadily in ghostly, holographic figures on the cylindrical display. I start to read, as do the others, some silently, others out loud. We enter the xenosphere and set up the bank’s firewall.

  Every day about five hundred customers carry out financial transactions at these premises. Wild sensitives probe and push, trying to pick personal data out of the air. I’m talking about dates-of-birth, PINs, mothers’ maiden names, past transactions, all of them lying docile in each customer’s forebrain, in the working memory, waiting to be plucked out by the hungry, untrained, and freebooting sensitives.

  Contractors like myself, Bola Martinez, and the metalheads are trained to repel these. And we do. We read classics to flood the xenosphere with irrelevant words and thoughts, a firewall of knowledge that even makes its way to the subconscious of the customer. A professor did a study of it once. He found a correlation between the material used for firewalling and the activities of the customer for the rest of the year. A person who had never read Shakespeare would suddenly find snatches of King Lear coming to mind for no apparent reason.

  We can trace the intrusions if we want, but Integrity isn’t interested. It’s difficult and expensive to prosecute crimes perpetuated in the xenosphere.

  The queues for cash machines, so many people, so many cares and wants and passions. I am tired of filtering the lives of others through my mind.

  I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city …

  On entering the xenosphere there is a projected self-image. The untrained, wild sensitives project themselves, but professionals like me are trained to create a controlled, chosen self-image. Mine is a gryphon.

  The wild ones have self-images that are not accurate, that do not map to their current selves. It is not deliberate. It takes time for a mental image to correspond to the actual person, although it varies with individuals. A bald man may have a more hirsute self-image for years.

  My first attack of the day comes from a middle-aged man from a town house in Yola. He looks reedy and very dark-skinned. I warn him and he backs off. A teenager takes his place so quickly that I think they are
in the same physical location as part of a hack farm. Criminal cabals sometimes round up sensitives, yoke them together in a ‘Mumbai-combo’-a call-centre model with serial blackhats.

  Either way, I’ve seen it all before. I am already bored.

  During the lunch break one of the metalheads comes in and sits by me. He starts to talk shop, telling me of a near-miss intrusion. He looks to be in his twenties, still excited about being a sensitive, finding everything new and fresh and interesting, the opposite of cynical, the opposite of me.

  He must be in love. His self-image shows propinquity. He is good enough to mask the other person, but not good enough to mask the fact of his closeness. I see the shadow, the ghost beside him. I don’t mention this out of respect.

  The metal he carries is twisted into crucifixes and attached to a single braid on otherwise short hair. This leaves his head on the left temple and coils around his neck, disappearing into the collar of his shirt.

  ‘I’m Clement,’ he says. ‘I notice you don’t use my name.’

  This is true. I was introduced to him by an executive two weeks back, but I forgot his name instantly and have been using pronouns ever since.

  ‘My name …’

  ‘You’re Kaaro. I know. Everybody knows you. Excuse me for this, but I have to ask. Is it true that you’ve been inside Utopicity?’

  ‘That’s a rumour,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, but is the rumour true?’ asks Clement.

  Outside the window the sun is far too slow in its journey across the sky. Why am I here? What am I doing?

  ‘I’d rather not discuss it.’

  ‘Are you going tonight?’ he asks.

  I know what night it is. I have no interest in going.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I say. ‘I might be busy.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  This boy is rather nosy. I had hoped for a brief, polite exchange, but now I find myself having to concentrate on him, on my answers. He is smiling, being friendly, sociable. I should reciprocate.

  ‘I’m going with my family,’ says Clement. ‘Why don’t you come with us? I’m sending my number to your phone. All of Rosewater will be there.’

  That is the part that bothers me, but I say nothing to Clement. I accept his phone number, and send mine out of politeness, but I do not commit.

  Before the end of the working day I get four other invitations to the Opening. I decline most of them, but Bola is not a person I can refuse.

  ‘My husband has rented a flat for the evening,’ she says, handing me a slip of paper with the address. Her look of disdain tells me if I had the proper implant we would not need to kill trees. ‘Don’t eat. I’ll cook.’

  By eighteen hundred hours the last customer has left and we’re all typing at terminals, logging the intrusion attempts, cross-referencing to see if there are any hits, and too tired to joke. We never get feedback on the incident reports. There’s no pattern analysis or trend graph. This data is sucked into a bureaucratic black hole. It’s just getting dark, and we’re all in our own heads now, but passively connected to the xenosphere. I’m vaguely aware that a chess game is going on, but I don’t care between whom. I don’t play so I don’t understand the progress.

  ‘Hello, Gryphon,’ someone says.

  I focus, but it’s gone. She’s gone. Definitely female. I get a wispy impression of a flower in bloom, something blue, but that’s it. I’m too tired or lazy to follow it up, so I punch in my documentation and fill out the electronic time sheet.

  I ride the elevator to street level. I have never seen much of the bank. The contractors have access to the express elevator. It’s unmarked and operated by a security guard who sees us, even though we do not see him or his camera. This may as well be magic. The elevator seems like a rather elegant wooden box. There are no buttons and it is unwise to have confidential conversations in there. This time as I leave the operator says, ‘Happy Opening.’ I nod, unsure of which direction to respond in.

  The lobby is empty, dark. Columns stand like Victorian dead posed for pictures. The place is usually manned when I go home, but I expect the staff have been allowed to leave early for the Opening.

  It’s full night now. The glow from Utopicity’s dome is omnipresent, though not bright enough to read by. The skyline around me blocks direct view, but the light frames every high rise to my left like a rising sun, and is reflected off the ones to my right. This is the reason there are no street lights in Rosewater. I make for Alaba Station, the clockwise platform. The streets are empty save the constable who walks past, swinging her baton. I am wearing a suit so she does not care to harass me. A mosquito whines past my ear, but does not appear to be interested in tasting my blood. By the time I reach the concourse there is a patch of light sweat in each of my armpits. It’s a warm night. I text my flat to reduce internal temperature one degree lower than external.

  Alaba Station is crowded with commercial district workers and the queues snake out to the streets, but they are almost all going anticlockwise to Kehinde Station which is closest to the Opening. I hesitate briefly before I buy my ticket. I plan to go home and change, but I wonder if it will be difficult to meet up with Bola and her husband. I have a brief involuntary connection to the xenosphere and a hot, moist surge of anger from a cuckolded husband lances through me. I disconnect and breathe deeply.

  I go home. Even though I have a window seat and the dome is visible, I do not look at Utopicity. When I notice the reflected light on the faces of other passengers I close my eyes, though this does not keep out the savoury smell of akara or the sound of their trivial conversation. There’s a saying that everybody in Rosewater dreams of Utopicity at least once every night, however briefly. I know this is not true because I have never dreamed of the place.

  That I have somewhere to sit on this train is evidence of the draw of the Opening. The carriages are usually full to bursting and hot, not from heaters, but from body heat and exhalations and despair.

  I come off at Atewo after a delay of twenty-five minutes due to a power failure from the north ganglion. I look around for Yaro, but he’s nowhere to be found. Yaro’s a friendly stray dog who sometimes follows me home and whom I feed scraps. I walk from the station to my block, which takes ten minutes. When I get signal again my phone has four messages. Three of them are jobs. The forth is from my employer.

  ‘Call now. And get a phone implant. This is prehistoric.’

  I do not call her. She can wait.

  I live in a two-bed, partially automated flat. I could get a better place if I wanted. I have the funds, but not the inclination. I strip, leaving my clothes where they lie, and pick out something casual. I stare at my gun holster, undecided. I cross the room to the wall safe which appears in response to signals from my ID implant. I open it and consider taking my gun. There are two clips of ammo beside it along with a bronze mask and a clear cylinder. The fluid in the cylinder is at rest. I pick it up and shake it, but the liquid is too viscous and it stays in place. I put it back and decide against a weapon.

  I shower briefly and head out to the Opening.

  How to talk about the Opening?

  It is the formation of a pore in the biodome that covers Utopicity. Rosewater is a doughnut-shaped conurbation that surrounds Utopicity. In the early days we actually called it The Doughnut. I was there. I saw it grow from a frontier town of tents and clots of sick people huddling together for warmth into a kind of shanty town of hopefuls and from there into an actual municipality. In its eleven years of existence Utopicity has not taken in a single outsider. I was the last person to traverse the biodome and there will not be another. Rosewater, on the other hand, is the same age, and grows constantly.

  Every year, though, the biodome opens for twenty or thirty minutes in the south, in the Kehinde area. All the people in the vicinity of the opening are cured of all physical and some mental ailments. It is also well-known and documented that the outcome is not always good, even if diseases are abolished. There are reconstructions that go
wrong, as if the blueprints are warped. Nobody knows why this happens, but there are also people who deliberately injure themselves for the sole purpose of getting “reconstructive surgery.”

  Trains are out of the question on a night like this. I take a taxi which drives in the opposite direction first, then describes a wide, southbound arc, taking a circuitous route through the back roads and against the flow of traffic. This works until it doesn’t. Too many cars and motorbikes and bicycles, too many people walking, too many street performers and preachers and out-of-towners. I pay the driver and walk the rest of the way to Bola’s temporary address. This is easy as my path is perpendicular to the crush of pilgrims.

  Oshodi Street is far enough from the biodome that the people are not so dense as to impede my progress. Number fifty-one is a tall, narrow four-storey building. The first door is propped open with an empty wooden beer crate. I walk into a hallway that leads to two flats and an elevator. On the top floor, I knock, and Bola lets me in.

  One thing hits me immediately: the aroma and heat blast of food which triggers immediate salivation and the drums of hunger in my stomach. Bola hands me field glasses and leads me into the living room. There is a similar pair dangling on a strap around her neck. She wears a shirt with the lower buttons open so that her bare gravid belly pokes out. Her heavy breasts push against the two buttons keeping them in check and I wonder how long the laws of physics will allow this. Two children, male and female, about eight or nine, run around, frenetic, giggling, happy.

  ‘Wait,’ says Bola. She makes me wait in the middle of the room and returns with a paper plate filled with akara, dodo, and dundu. She leads me by the free hand to the veranda where there are four deck chairs facing the dome. Her husband, Dele, is in one, the next is empty, the third is occupied by a woman I don’t know, and the fourth is for me. Dele Martinez is rotund, jolly, but quiet. I’ve met him many times before and we get along well. Bola introduces the woman as Aminat, a sister, although the way she emphasises the word, this could mean an old friend who is as close as family, not a biological sibling. She’s pleasant enough, smiles with her eyes, has her hair drawn back into a bun of sorts, and is casually dressed in jeans, but is perhaps my age or younger. Bola knows I am single and has made it her mission to find me a mate. I don’t like this because … well, when people match-make they introduce people to you whom they think are sufficiently like you. Each person they bring is a commentary on how they see you. If I’ve never liked anyone Bola has introduced me to does that mean she doesn’t know me well enough or that she does know me, but I hate myself?