‘So he’ll go free?’
‘He’s in a coma. He’s a multiple amputee and he was in shock so long that doctors don’t think he’ll ever regain full function. He’s lost fifty per cent of his kidney function. Liver’s all fucked up. I don’t think that qualifies as going free.’
‘The bodyguard?’
‘Dead. You don’t want to see the body. The floater was ravenous.’
I don’t want to see. The agent berates me for not carrying my firearm and leaves. There is no direct communication from Femi and I wonder why. She did say she was busy with some American thing and now I think it must be serious because she always calls me when I’ve fucked something up.
Aminat visits, looks horrified and guilty.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, crying, holding me in a way that, to be honest, hurts my bruised ribs, but is pleasant in other ways. I don’t wince or cry out, but I could.
‘Why are you sorry? You didn’t set a carnivore on me or hit me with a taser.’
‘I didn’t think Shesan could ... I mean —’
‘You are still married to him.’
‘Technically, yes. I’m still married to him, but not because I care about him or love him. I ... we never got round to the paperwork. He’s always been jealous but I never dreamed that he would ... and now you’re here in hospital.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ I say. This is true. I actually like hospitals. On weekends I frequent emergency departments and chemotherapy wards, drifting in the xenosphere. The dying have wonderful insights on life and there is much to learn from them, from their regrets. A washing machine repairman dying of laryngeal cancer had only one recurring thought:
There is no excuse for making an angel cry.
I still do not fully understand what it means, but it was tinged with anguish.
‘Layi said he has you in his prayers,’ says Aminat.
‘But he can’t visit,’ I say, remembering the chain.
‘No.’ She insinuates herself on to the hospital bed, scrunching her long limbs and dropping her shoes to the floor.
I make room.
INTERLUDE: MISSION 2
Rosewater, 2056
Burials. One of the first customs that change as a result of the biodome rising are burials. Coffins must be welded shut and graves are now filled with cement, rather than soil. This is why.
I live in a ramshackle prefab in a place we’re calling Taiwo. It is named after a gangster, a twin. The other twin, Kehinde, lives on the opposite side of the dome. They had a massive falling out and cannot stand the sight of each other. They split the gang in two and parcel out the crime in the Donut. My current assignment has been to read them both and closely document the key players of crime in the conurbation. I am in a quasi-undercover state. I hang out with them and gather information from their thoughts. I do not go on raids with them most of the time. I know, from reading Taiwo’s mind, that I have their trust. They think I’m slightly kooky, but reliable, although not useful in a fight. One member of the gang thinks I might be gay.
We live as if it’s a commune in a single, large hall. Shared flatulence breeds trust. The ill-gotten gains are in a pit, sealed, locked. The opening is patrolled by a Gujarat-built attack construct. I have been trying to bend conversation to the bot so that I can get Taiwo to think about where he got it from. S45 wants to know. So far, no luck.
Every day I document my findings in tiny, tight handwriting rolled up into a cylinder the size of bubble gum. At precisely 0200 hours I wake up to take a piss and one of S45’s silent-running drones swoops down. I fit the intelligence in a compartment and it lifts off. All the while my head is in the xenosphere, scanning for observers. There are none, and even the Gujarat-bot dreams of electric sheep.
On this day, the drone doesn’t lift off and there is something for me. Instructions. Coordinates I’m to go to. It must be important if they want me to risk my cover with the Taiwo gang.
I jog for a mile to an alleyway where I’ve hidden a stripped down buggy. The Donut is slowly resembling a real town now, albeit a mostly wooden one. There is steel and concrete but it is slow. It’s more like a frontier town than anything, a bit spare, a bit lawless. I feed the coordinates into the guidance system and take off over the dusty streets. There is no moon and I run into potholes frequently. I am linked mentally to one of the gangsters, and there has been no alert. He dreams of roasted corn and one of the camp-followers.
Closer to the coordinates I can see better because of the south ganglion. It glows brighter than the biodome does, phallic, potent. There is an after-smell of those daft motherfuckers who get themselves electrocuted. There are other cars congregated, but not as many houses. I know this place. It is where we bury the dead.
The headlights pool to form a lit area. I do not add my buggy to the illumination. I stop a yard or so before the nearest and walk the rest of the way. There are people and they seem to all be clad in night and mystery.
‘I’m Kaaro,’ I say. ‘Who’s in charge?’
‘You’re the S45 guy? You seem kind of young,’ says one of the shadows. ‘Corporal Remilekun. Army.’
‘Well, Corporal, why don’t you tell me what the problem is?’
‘Can’t you just read my mind?’ he says. The others laugh.
I see him better now that my eyes have adjusted. He is cocky, large, muscular, and armed with a rifle. He wears a beret. I hate Remilekun on sight. I hate him because I know him of old. He is exactly the kind of person who used to beat me up when I was a child, the kind I used to run from. Ileri’s voice comes back to me.
Do not deploy your gifts frivolously. You are dangerous and not to be trifled with. Your wrath can turn humans mad. This you must avoid. Be professional and a professional at all times. But that is not to say you should not teach a lesson where one is tactically necessary. What am I saying? If someone stands between you and your assignment do not hesitate to fuck them up.
I exhale, feel for his mind. He is not calm. Sensitives make him uncomfortable, and his self-image is small, dwarfed by a gun that is almost the same size as he is. I isolate him. I drop him into darkness of a density he has never seen. He fires his gun, but even the muzzle flash is lost in the unrelenting black.
‘Help!’ he calls out. ‘Officer needs assistance. Is anyone there?’
Oh, you want company, Remilekun? I’ll give you company.
Eyes open in the blackness. Large eyes, small eyes, cat’s eyes, blank eyes, jaundiced eyes, bloodshot eyes, glowing eyes. Every kind of eye that he remembers with horror. Remilekun squeals like a goat being slaughtered, and when he is on the verge of wetting himself I bring him back.
He drops to the ground, sits with his knees drawn up, and looks rapidly around him, trembling. His men crowd around him, unsure.
‘Is anybody else in charge here?’ I ask.
Eventually, with begrudging respect, they point me at the problem. Noise where there should be none. Knocking, banging, screeching, like something out of a Victorian horror novel. Some implants from dead people appear to have spontaneously re-activated, which is what led the patrolling army to the cemetery in the first place. They have two diggers, an armoured vehicle, some jeeps, and about ten men. Nine, if you take out Remilekun.
The ganglion crackles and throws off thunder. Some night birds complain.
Accounting for the soldiers on the surface and still keeping my link to the gangster back at Taiwo, I feel for life, for living minds. Nothing, but I can’t be sure it’s not the dirt that blocks the xenoforms.
‘Dig them up,’ I say. I go to my buggy to snooze while they do my bidding.
While waiting I try to reach Anthony. This is a new hobby of mine. I want to get inside the biodome. Is this praying? Am I praying to the space god? How did it come to this?
Someone kicks the door of my vehicle. I open my eyes.
‘They’re ready.’
There are sixteen coffins. The air is full of the smell of moist soil and rot. Some of these d
ead people were not embalmed.
This time I see without Remilekun’s distortion field. The men are not all army. Some are militia, others civilians, area boys. The land is torn up, as if ploughed. The coffins are laid out like seeds, rather than harvest. I step into a trench that drops me in the exact mid-point between all of them. There is no sound. The men stare down at me.
‘I thought there was supposed to be noise,’ I say.
‘Stopped once we started digging.’
They are all relaxed, guns slung on shoulders, smoking. A stray dog wanders into the light pool, but yelps when someone throws a stone. I do not see Remilekun.
Back in Taiwo, the thug I am connected to stirs, turns, and falls asleep again.
Behind me, the south ganglion thrums. I wonder how many charred corpses are at its base today.
I don’t close my eyes.
I reach out, feel for the xenosphere —
One of the soldiers called Kofo has thousands of dollars in his pockets. He won’t miss a few hundred —
The din startles me right out of the trance. Each coffin burst open, splinters flying in the night. I lose connection to Taiwo, to everything. The reanimates come for me, reaching, pushing, and shoving each other. Revulsion flows through me in the wake of the foetor. I panic and I don’t know how but I incapacitate all of the soldiers. I hear them shout in pain. I run. Those hands on me.
Fuck. Get the fuck off me.
My hand-to-hand training flies away. I swing my fists in blind panic.
I run. I run in the direction of the ganglion. In the direction of away from the fucking reanimates.
There are no thoughts coming from the reanimates. I can’t white-noise their minds because they have none. There are too many arms holding on to me, too many bodies weighing me down, slowing my sprint. I fall to the dust.
Why do they want me?
I hear a shearing sound, that noise that is always heard at the butchers. Steel cutting into flesh and bone. Wet thuds and cleavage. I hear his mind before I see him.
Remilekun fights his way through the mindless ones. He does it because he does not want to have to explain my death to his superiors. His contempt for me is like poison gas.
The other militants wake now and they join the fight.
The reanimates die.
Again.
Later, there is a bonfire. The reanimates are burnt and scattered, accompanied by Yoruba maledictions. I am quiet. They all fear and hate me, but fuck them. I drive my buggy back to Taiwo, with the biodome to my left, trying to beat the rising of the sun.
I sip my coffee, but immediately want to spit it out. These coffee beans have definitely not been partially digested by a mammal for better flavour. It smells better than it tastes, so I bring the rim of the mug close to my nose and just inhale.
‘Kaaro, are you listening to me?’ asks Femi.
‘Yes, Ma,’ I say. This is only partially true. I am also watching the TV screen where Jack Jaques, a local loudmouth, is trying to convince the camera that we need Rosewater to have its own mayor. We don’t have mayors in Nigeria. The guy is a lunatic.
‘Your report is a mess. You almost got people killed,’ Femi says. She speaks from a plasma display generated from a matchbox-sized holo box. The signal is decoded by my implant. Any other person within eye sight will see a blur, and will hear white noise. The coffee shop is empty apart from the tired barista anyway.
‘They were soldiers,’ I say. ‘And assholes.’
Femi’s eyes go even narrower than before. ‘You fried their brains while they were on an operation.’
‘That was an accident.’
‘You ran away, Kaaro.’
‘I am not a tactical agent. I gather intelligence, Femi. I don’t fight, I don’t shoot, and I definitely want nothing to do with undead hordes rising from their graves to eat my brains.’
She massages her temples. ‘Reanimates don’t eat brains, you ignorant fuck.’
‘Well, they weren’t looking for a group hug,’ I say.
She sighs. ‘Kaaro, you have to realise that there is internal resistance in S45 to the use of sensitives. You are more accurate than most, but you seem to cause twice as many problems as everybody else. Not everybody loves you.’ She says the last sentence slowly, and in English.
‘What are you saying?’
‘An agent can’t run away from a firefight. You’ve had the training, you have a weapon. Where the situation calls for it, you will use both. There will be unpleasant consequences if this happens again, so grow some testicles.’
‘Can I borrow yours?’
‘Keep making jokes. See what happens when you get one person killed. Just one. Get back to that gangster and stop neglecting to check in.’
The plasma dissipates. I don’t know why she’s angry. I told her clearly last year that I didn’t want anything to do with their precious agency. I focus on the TV.
Jaques talks about how much revenue Rosewater brings to the country from health tourism alone. A lot of it goes into the federal coffers, but he feels it needs to be invested locally. The Federal Government taxes the health tourists who come every year to be healed at the Opening. They also tax the people who just want to see the biodome, evidence of First Contact and the reconstructed and reanimates. Rosewater currently gets none of that revenue. The first Opening last year had less than a thousand people. This year up to five hundred thousand people thronged around the biodome. Some had to be carried there on pallets. Busloads and truckloads of AIDS sufferers came along. The mud tracks that pass for roads in Rosewater cannot cope with that kind of traffic.
‘This influx should be taxed and regulated. That is as it should be. The revenue, however, should come to us. We built this town with our bare hands. We dug latrines, cleared the bush, chased off wild dogs, and suffered black fly bites because we belong here. With the revenue we can have good roads, transportation, modern sewerage, electricity that doesn’t depend on local generators, civil defence, and every other accompaniment of basic human civilisation. This is not the Wild West. This is not a frontier town. This is the twenty-first century.’
Jacques is a convincing little shit, I’ll give him that.
I get up, pay my bill, and walk into the mud.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lagos: 2055
In the Seven Sons Beer Parlour I drain my tankard, burp onto the back of my hand, and seek the needed words from within my beer-soaked brain. A woman who can listen, who wants to listen, is rare, and I love to talk. The woman nods as if she understands what I have just said, which is doubtful.
‘It’s not as simple as you think,’ I say. ‘Most people, when they go looking for something, they think they know what they’re going to find.’
She asks me what I mean.
‘Everything is changed by virtue of being lost. What you find, your object, your idea, your person, your thing, is not really what you lost.’
She asks me if I will be able to do the job.
‘Yes.’ I say this with some sorrow, but I take the money.
A wedding ring glitters on the hand that pays me. The skin is smooth, well-nourished, fair. Her clothes are expensive. Her watch, her necklace, her earrings, none of them cheap. Her face is unlined, her eyes clear, her hair thick and healthy. I want to bite her cheek, not out of malice, but to see how rich her flesh tastes. She has never suffered from malaria or dysentery. No microbe can stick to her skin.
‘You are a beautiful woman,’ I say.
‘Thank you.’
‘It’s not a compliment, ma’am. I’m saying it because being beautiful it’s likely that you are desired by someone, maybe a spouse. Now, it may be that this spouse is who you are looking for, who you want found?’
I make it sound like a question, but the woman does not deign to respond.
‘Ma’am, customers who go looking for their spouses are seldom happy with the results, in my experience.’
‘I see.’
‘No, I don’t think yo
u do. Attractive customers, such as you … well, they have very little experience of rejection.’
‘I think I’ll be fine,’ says the woman. ‘How do we do this?’
‘Give me your hands.’
I don’t really need to hold her hands, but I have found that some form of participation increases customer satisfaction. Theatrics, no matter how subtle, lead to better tips and bonuses. I also want to touch her, to feel that silky skin. It does not disappoint. It feels like being held by a cloud, there and not there, with muscles that have never known manual labour. I do not even think she has ever typed on a keyboard. Every machine she has ever owned has been touchscreen or holofield.
I find what she is looking for in less than a minute. The path is clear as the whites of her eyes.
‘We will need an automobile,’ I say.
She calls for the bill and signals to a man sitting by the bar. He nods and walks out of the bar. I do not know him, but the rich woman did not get here by taxi or bus. Klaus, the mad Belgian, just told me to be at this place at this time, and that it would be a woman. No names. The woman knows that I am an unregistered finder, or a registered finder doing unregistered finding for extra cash. Klaus has never led me wrong.
Bill paid, make-up fresher, the woman leads me out to wait for her car.
The driver parks precisely one foot from my feet. It is a Sports Utility Vehicle, black, tinted windows. The woman gets in the back and I follow, although I should not. Nobody knows where I am and if this is a government trap I may spend the rest of my days in detention without trial.
‘Where to, boss?’ asks the driver.
In that voice I detect volumes. Education. This is a cultivated informality, a mask donned to put a commoner at ease. This is no driver. The depth of the register, the teeth in his mouth, the muscles on his turned neck. At the very least, this is a corporate bodyguard.
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