Rosewater

by Tade Thompson

  I wonder what the rest of my classmates are doing for the organisation.

  I wonder about Oyin Da and I look to the biodome. The outline is indistinct and I remember something Alhaji said during every Harmattan season.

  Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

  Hover through the fog and filthy air.

  It gives me no comfort.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Rosewater, Lagos: 2066

  After a fortnight I am reasonably healed. I return to work in a black suit and wield my walking cane. If people noticed my absence they do not speak of it. I notice Bola’s absence but do not speak of it.

  I settle into my seat near the window overlooking the city. At the firewall table, to my right is an emptiness. We prepare to read Orlando by Virginia Woolf from the prompter. Just as the banking hours are set to start I am interrupted from entering the xenosphere. A secretary-type taps me on the shoulder.

  ‘The management wants to have a word,’ he says.

  ‘Right now?’ This has never happened. All previous transactions have been by email or phone.

  The man nods and indicates that I should follow him. This is my first day back and all the time I’ve worked here nothing has required me to meet with management. They generally tend to stay away from the sensitives. Clement’s eyes follow me as I walk out. I am a bit sad. I have read Orlando and was looking forward to reading it again.

  I am ensconced in an office, air conditioned with an air lock separating me from a desk with three people seated. There is one of those starfish-shaped conference speakerphones on both sides of the glass.

  ‘Mr Kaaro, are you well?’ one disembodied voice says. The people don’t move so I cannot tell which one it is.

  ‘I’m fine. Who am I talking to?’

  They are in the dark and are virtual silhouettes. One is shaped like a woman.

  ‘We are people in authority. We make decisions,’ says one voice.

  ‘Decision makers in Integrity Bank,’ says another.

  ‘Kaaro, did you see Bola while you were away?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ If they are asking, they know. There is nothing to hide, I don’t think.

  ‘What opinions did you form of her illness?’

  ‘She lost her pregnancy,’ I say.

  ‘You are being evasive.’

  ‘Okay, my opinion is that she did not feel well enough to work. I am her friend; I went over to support her.’

  ‘Is it your opinion that what is wrong with her is contagious?’

  ‘Not to men. Or women who take birth control seriously.’

  ‘Are you taking us seriously, Mr Kaaro? Do you really think levity is the right approach?’

  ‘I do not think her illness is contagious.’

  ‘What do you base that opinion on?’

  Sweet fuck all. ‘I am not a doctor; it’s not my area of expertise,’ I say.

  ‘Let’s talk about your area of expertise. Did you form a mental or mind link with Bola?’

  Lie. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The xenosphere is not … it is composed of multiple, networked fungi-like organisms floating in the air. Links are formed and broken all the time, whether sensitives intend to or not. It is the reason you are talking to me from behind a screen. It is why we spend time rubbing antifungal cream when we go out in public. So when I sat down with Bola it is entirely possible that a connection formed. Or not.’

  They know something, but I don’t know what. I do not, however, need to cooperate with them.

  They are silent for a time while they consider the information.

  ‘What?’ I ask, all innocence and righteous indignation.

  ‘Did you speak to any of the other sensitives today before work?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Other than your physical injuries do you have any other illness symptoms?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Flu-like symptoms? Fever? Burning urine?’

  ‘No. Nothing.’ Burning urine?

  I know what is coming. Having offended the Irish House of Desmond the eponymous Orlando is banished by the king from the English court.

  ‘We would prefer it if you did not return to work today, or until we ask you to return. We will of course pay you for a full day’s work today.’

  ‘How generous,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t be like that.’

  Home.

  I am not sure if I have been fired or not, and I am equally in the dark as to what I did wrong. The situation does not apply since I am a contractor. I am not worried-fiscally, I am secure. I receive my S45 pay. I have various safety deposit boxes and protocols of escape worked out with Klaus.

  The suits at the bank are worried about contagion. I wonder if I should also be worried.

  I have messages, some freelance work. Some junk. One official email from S45. It’s so secure that it requires a password, my mother’s maiden name and an 18-digit personnel number to confirm my identity. The message is from Femi.

  Dear Kaaro,

  After years of service I have decided to step down from my role as Divisional Lead. Please join me to welcome Japhet Eurohen who will be taking over my role.

  I trust you will extend to him the same spirit of hard work that you did me.

  Sincerely,

  Mrs. Femi Alaagomeji

  What?

  I have not heard from Femi in ages but I presumed she was busy. What kind of internal coup is going on? I dial my direct emergency line for Femi — never used before since it was for absolute, life or death situations only. The line does not connect. I put my phone down and it rings. Unknown number.

  ‘Hello,’ I say.

  ‘You rang a restricted number.’ Male voice. ‘Identify yourself.’

  ‘Mr. F. U. Asshole.’ I hang up. That was juvenile, but reflective of my mood. I grab my prepacked emergency bag and my car keys. I strap on holster and gun.

  I’m on my way to Lagos in less than ten minutes.

  I have been to Femi’s house once before. I was cocky and young and did not consider consequences. It is evening when I arrive in Lagos, full night by the time I negotiate the traffic. Bats are returning to their caves and fruit trees in flocks that cover the sky. They make screeching sounds that remind me of electronic warning beeps.

  Where do fired secret agents go?

  The lights are on, there are no sentries and, other than the sounds of traffic, all is quiet. The weight of the gun is alien, a metallic tumour growing out of my chest into its holster. I drive slow, examine all parked cars, of which there are few. In this part of Lagos the cars are behind high walls. They can afford complex security systems. I will not be breaking in. My hesitation is more to do with being welcome. Mostly, I know that I will not be encountering open arms. Femi has always been difficult for me to read. She is not warm, but she has never been a bitch. She has been a dick, but mostly when I deserve it, which is a lot of the time. Whether I am welcome or not, I do know that she will not be happy.

  You are always a complication, Kaaro.

  How many times have I heard her say that?

  I am a complication. I complicate.

  My phone vibrates but I ignore it. There have been countless calls since I last used it. I power it down and get out of the car.

  It’s a warm night. If not for my weapon holster I would wear something cooler, but I need a buba to cover up. I freeze when I hear a sound to my left. I see eight fingers appear on a gate, then an unshod foot. A skinny teenage girl hoists herself over the top and leaps down. A pair of shoes flies over after her, possibly by an accomplice. She puts them on as a car comes around the corner. She notices me then. Her eyes enlarge briefly until she can tell than I am neither a robber nor her father. She places an index finger against her lips and silently shushes me. The car approaches too fast, burns rubber in coming to a halt, and zooms off with her.

  I go to the house next door and ring the bell. I know Femi has surveillance cameras and scan
ners. I raise my hands to elbow level. I sport a benign facial expression, although I haven’t needed to use one for a long time. The xenosphere is so silent, it’s eerie. I cannot worry about that right now.

  A voice comes back, distorted, neither male nor female.

  ‘Kaaro? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I have to see you, Femi.’

  ‘You don’t work for me anymore, Kaaro. And I have company.’

  I wait.

  ‘Get in here. Walk around the back,’ she says.

  Femi’s backyard is the size of a football field. The grass is patchy, green and brown. She has two fowls, a peacock and a turkey. Odd pets, ill-tempered, always at each other’s necks. The turkey also hates visitors and it attacks me three times until I kick it in the neck. I suspect both of them to be COBs.

  Femi appears. I have not seen her in years. The shadow of who she was is there, but her waist is thicker, her hair is frosted with grey and her face is fuller. She is a beautiful, elegant, and intelligent woman, but not the Femi Alaagomeji I met in ‘55. She is holding a digital clock which is counting down towards something.

  ‘Is that a bomb?’ I ask.

  ‘It might as well be,’ she says. ‘You will have been seen.’

  ‘No, I was careful.’

  ‘You are wasting seconds. Scanners, remote viewers, your implant — they know you’re here. A team is or will be on the way. What do you want?’

  ‘I got an email —’

  ‘I’m out, Eurohen is in. Yes. Questions?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Performance. Internal politics. I could not deliver on a problem. Next?’

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘Your problem, Kaaro. Your people, sensitives like you, they’re dying. I have not been able to stem the tide or find out why.’

  ‘Dying?’

  ‘Lose power, get sick, die.’

  ‘How many?’

  She hesitates.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Classified. I cannot tell you this. Move on.’

  ‘I could yank it out of your thoughts.’

  ‘No, you idiot. Wasting time. Do you think I would meet with you if there was any risk of that? Sterile environment here. Tick-tock, Kaaro.’

  ‘Theories?’

  ‘They think that the sensitives are diseased.’

  ‘We’ve always been diseased, Femi. That’s how we do what we do. A benign infection.’

  ‘Maybe not so benign, maybe a different disease.’ She draws me to herself and I think she will kiss me but she taps my neck with a mobile phone. ‘Your personnel file and some classified info on other sensitives, to your implant.’

  ‘What should I do?’ I’m worried now, plus the clock makes me tense.

  ‘I can’t tell you that, Mr. _______’

  She knows. I can’t speak from the sheer surprise.

  ‘What? You think you have any secrets from me?’ She laughs. ‘I’m on your side, Kaaro. You should look up your parents, though. Bad home training.’

  ‘Tick-tock, Femi.’

  ‘Touché.’

  ‘What can you tell me about the new guy?’

  ‘Better politician than I. New ideas.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Sensitives on government payroll should be used to support the government in power, which the politicians love.’

  ‘Isn’t that what we do?’

  ‘Not exactly and not all the time. I have had carte blanche, answerable only to the office of the President at Aso Rock. They asked me to subordinate to Special Offices. I refused. They reassigned me.’

  ‘What’s Special Offices?’

  ‘Essentially, cloak and dagger related exclusively to re-election.’

  ‘It’s two years to the next presidential —’

  ‘All re-elections. They want us to be part of the team.’

  ‘Terrorism, crime, inequity, and this is what the administration prioritises?’

  ‘Focus, Kaaro. You’re losing perspective.’

  ‘What should I focus on?’

  ‘Death. Extinction. People like you are dying. Find out why. Find out how to survive. Have you considered that this might not be a natural disease state? That it might be enemy action? An engineered biological agent? These are questions you should be asking yourself.’

  My heart speeds and each of her words clouds my thoughts. I still can’t feel the xenosphere.

  ‘Who’s in there?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ She is taken aback.

  ‘Your date.’

  ‘Nobody. A writer. He writes poetry and short stories excoriating the West for colonialism, lamenting the loss of America, and defining the “African Identity,” whatever that is. Tedious, tiresome stuff. He is published because of the implicit leniency contract that exists between us and the foreign publishing industry.’

  ‘But you’re dating him.’

  ‘Writers are interesting to me. He’s attracted to the money he sees in me, looking for a patroness perhaps.’

  ‘Interesting exchange.’

  ‘Kaaro, I’ve always liked you. You’re irreverent but you deliver on your tasks, most of the time. But you’re a buffoon, not very bright.’ She strokes my cheek, then turns her back on me.

  The turkey edges in my direction. The timer is closing in on zero and I think I can hear a car in the distance. I start to leave.

  ‘One more thing,’ she says. ‘Ditch the Aminat girl. She’s trouble.’

  ‘Fuck you. I’m not taking relationship advice from someone who used the corpse of her dead husband as bait.’

  She pauses, and I don’t need the xenosphere to know I’ve hurt her.

  ‘Thank you, Femi. For everything. From the start. I know you helped me and I’ve never thanked you properly.’

  ‘Get off my property, Kaaro. And it’s Mrs. Alaagomeji to you.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Unknown, Lagos: 2055

  It takes me a few hours, but I have an idea about how to find the Bicycle Girl for S45.

  ‘He had a wife,’ I say.

  ‘Who had a wife?’ asks Femi.

  ‘Aloysius Ogene. Professor of theoretical physics and the so-called butcher of Arodan. He was married, according to the records you gave me.’

  Femi sits down opposite me on the table. ‘Okay, he had a wife. Why is that relevant?’

  ‘Maybe I should let you think about it for a bit.’

  ‘Kaaro, I’m a busy woman. Get to the point.’

  ‘Remember how my abilities work? I can find anything as long as it belongs to the person who wants it found. Professor Ogene disappeared, so did Bicycle Girl and all the inhabitants of Arodan. It’s a stretch, but Ogene and Bicycle Girl might be in the same place. Do you see what I’m thinking here, Mrs. Alaagomeji?’

  ‘I see. You want to use the wife to find Ogene.’ She smiles, and it hits me like a blessing from on high.

  ‘I do. Except that there is no real identification here. It mentions that he was married, but ends there.’

  ‘Leave that to me,’ says Femi. ‘Do you want to go to her?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Put me in a room with her and I can find her husband. Assuming, er … that he’s not in a mass grave somewhere.’

  ‘You are not funny, but still, good job. Take a break.’

  ‘When are you taking a break?’

  ‘Kaaro, you may be mistaken as to the nature of our relationship.’

  ‘Oh, we have a relationship now?’

  They house me in a dank, poorly-lit en suite room which is part of the complex and does not exactly seem like a prison, but cannot be far off. Maybe it is a retro-fitted jail cell.

  First off, I take a monumental nervous shit, all emissions soft and explosive, something I have been incubating for hours. My belly always indicates when I am nervous. The light in the toilet flickers with uncertainty. When I turn the tap on it coughs orange-brown sludge before clearing up. The soap will probably corrode my skin in less than a day. I cannot believe S45 c
an have a place like this unless it is deliberate. They are well funded.

  I enter the room while the cistern still hisses with filling water, muted by the closed door. There is a bed with a brown cover, no pillow, and a chest of three drawers beside it. I open each in turn and find scraps of paper, a rubber band, a New Testament Bible (Not For Sale!), and an old biro. I lay on the bed and fish out my mobile phone which they had returned to me. Good signal. They are probably monitoring any calls from it, but then, they seem to know a lot about me already. I call Klaus.

  It rings twice, before connecting. ‘Hellow, yew,’ said Klaus. His accent can be confusing at the best of times.

  ‘You low, low, bottom-feeding, oath-breaking, asshole, deep-fried motherfucker. When I finish this job —’

  ‘Calm down, Kaaro.’

  ‘When I finish this job, I’m going to drive a steak knife into your eye sockets and twist. Then I’m going to beat your eyes into scrambled eggs.’

  ‘Omo, relax.’

  ‘Don’t call me omo, I’m not your child. And don’t tell me to fucking relax. You gave me up to the authorities.’

  ‘Are you finished?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Enough with your whining, Kaaro. Have yew not been paid well?’

  I had. Femi did not take the initial advance away from me, and had promised more.

  ‘See? Do yew see who is looking out for yew? Did yew think to give Klaus his twenty-five percent? No. Instead yew hurl insults and hurt my feelings.’

  ‘Shut up, Klaus. The only reason you would have gone along with this is if they shat a lump sum in US dollars right in front of you. And it’s fifteen percent.’

  ‘I think after this job, yew should take a vacation.’

  ‘If I’m still alive!’

  ‘Don’t be silly. If they kill yew, they have to kill me, and I am not ready to see the heavenly gates just yet.’

  ‘You’re going to the other place, fat boy.’

  ‘Again with the insults. Listen, I have many jobs lined up. Finish with those people and let’s make rich, okay?’

  Let’s make rich. Mad motherfucker. After hanging up I contemplate phoning my parents, but I do not wish to link them to me just in case S45 decides to harass them. I go to the window to look outside. The view is fake. About a foot from the window the fuckers have erected a massive painting of a blue sky and clouds. I punch the glass in frustration.