Rosewater

by Tade Thompson

  I sleep for an uncertain time, but it is dreamless and restful. I open my eyes to find Femi and the short, muscular driver in my room. I yawn and sit up.

  ‘Don’t tell me, you love to watch me sleep. That’s very romantic, Femi,’ I say.

  ‘Get up. It’s time to go to work,’ says Femi. ‘We’ve found Aloy Ogene’s wife.’

  The driver drops a suit on the bed. ‘Put this on.’

  ‘I don’t dress like this, man. Thanks, but can I see what else you have?’

  The driver’s eyes narrow.

  ‘I’m just kidding. How the hell do you guys make it through a working day? You’re all so serious.’

  I haven’t dressed formally in about five years, but they get the size right, and while it isn’t a label, it does fit and the fabric feels good on my skin. I plan to make a greater effort with clothes after this caper. Nike Onyemaihe’s wisdom twists inside me, contorts against the idea of clothing made expensive by a name. I suppress this.

  Three in the morning. The professor’s wife is called Regina. The driver and I park outside her house, waiting for her to return from a job as a cleaner. She lives in New Ajegunle which is much like Old Ajegunle in being a haven for the poverty-stricken and the criminal. Open gutters run alongside each road with the effluvium of desperate lives refusing to budge and leaving a miasma in the air. Children walk about, even at this hour, running unknown errands and staring at the car with envy and malice. Groups of smoking young men investigate, see the number plates and move on.

  Only one street light works, but even that gives a weak and jaded view. The driver whistles a tune. He has ignored all of my overtures. Perhaps they have been instructed not to talk to me.

  ‘That’s her,’ says the driver.

  Regina Ogene is a gaunt shadow creeping in the night. She walks as if in pain, and one of her feet drags slightly like that of a stroke victim. She holds one handbag and opens the house gate with the other hand. She lives in a face-to-face, which is a bungalow with one central corridor that runs from front to back, and a row of rooms with doors opposite each other. Bath stalls and other facilities are shared in an outhouse at the back, and while it is not the worst accommodation available in Lagos, it is close. Very close.

  ‘Femi should have come along,’ I say. ‘Look at me in this fucking suit. I’m going to frighten the lady.’

  ‘Show her the badge. Everybody cooperates when they see the badge.’

  I leave the car and catch up with the woman as she tries to open the front door.

  ‘Mrs. Ogene?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ says the woman. ‘Don’t hurt me. There is some plantain in my bag. You can have that.’

  ‘I’m not a thief,’ I say, but that is not true, so I rephrase. ‘I’m not here to steal from you. I’m here about your husband, Aloysius Ogene.’

  She stops fiddling with the door. ‘I haven’t seen him in years.’

  ‘I know. I just want to speak about him.’

  In the end she only lets me inside when I show her the badge, for which I do not blame her. Suit or no, I do not cut a confidence-inspiring figure. Something about my posture or how my hands don’t stay still or how much I talk all the time.

  At first we are in darkness, with very little filtered light from a window. She strikes a match and lights a kerosene lantern, making the room come to life. Regina has a single metal-frame spring bed by the window, made up with Ankara. Underneath it she has stored items in cardboard boxes and plastic buckets. Two pairs of sensible shoes wait patiently at the foot of the bed. To the left her clothes hang off a wooden rack, the whole assemblage covered with a polythene dust shield. Some books rest in neat piles, forming columns rising to three feet, but the light is not good enough to read the titles by. The centre table is a sad Formica-plywood hybrid that she may have scavenged from a dump. She puts the lantern on it next to a spent candle. On the right she has pots, pans, and a sooty kerosene stove, all arranged on the narrowest refrigerator I have ever seen. Above all this a wall-mounted fifteen-inch television screen stands implacable, like a judge. The room holds a muggy, moist smell, but the smoke from the lantern displaces it.

  She exhales, and sits on the bed. ‘You have something to say about my husband. Tell it to me.’

  Despite the worn out clothes and the defeated air around her, Regina is a beautiful woman. She looks like she is in her mid-fifties, but her frame is thin and her eyes sharp, though narrow. She has an oval face and a small mouth with a large lower lip, but thin upper one. Life has given her many lines which fan out the angles of her eyes and mouth.

  ‘Mrs. Ogene, I need to find the professor,’ I say. ‘Do you have any information that can help me?’

  She smiles, the most bitter expression I have ever seen, and I have seen many such.

  ‘You people.’ She shakes her head.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Aloy went to work on February 28, 2044. I have not seen him since. Your people informed me that he had been arrested —’

  ‘My people?’

  ‘Police! You informed me that he was a murderer and that he was being interrogated, that I would see him soon. Then you told me he had escaped, then that he attacked a prison guard and was shot and killed. Then that he was executed. The stories never end! I have no body, I have no gravesite, I have no official letter stating that he was dead or guilty. A year later a constable dropped this off.’

  She opens a small box and places a broken pair of glasses on the table along with a pen and a book. The glasses have some of the lens left on the right side and light moves and twists on the surface. I look closer and can see scrolling text. It is one of those lens displays that were popular a while back. Whole Nimbus feeds on the go. Variety of power sources. Remarkable that this one is still functional, if broken.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I say. This is the right time to touch her, now that I have her thinking about the professor. It will make her trust me. I need a pretext while I wait for the knowledge to come.

  ‘You are not like them,’ says Regina. ‘I don’t think you’re one of them.’

  ‘Why would you say that? Are you trying to hurt my feelings?’

  Again the bitter smile. ‘You’re too meek. You seem nervous, afraid even. You don’t have the arrogance or air of danger they have, like children given live ammunition instead of toys.’

  ‘I can be dangerous.’

  ‘Is Kaaro your real name?’ she asks. ‘Are you a real agent of S45?’

  I sigh, and move from my standing position at the door. I sit on the table. ‘Mrs. Ogene, I do work for S45, but I’m not an agent. They call me in for special assignments. It is important that I find your husband.’

  ‘So you do not believe him to be dead,’ says Regina.

  ‘I don’t know. Mrs. Ogene, I would like to hold your hand.’

  ‘What?’ She shrinks back.

  ‘No, no, sorry. That’s not what I mean.’ I hold up both hands. ‘I’m a finder, Mrs. Ogene. I can find your husband, dead or alive.’

  She scoffs. ‘I have tried finders, Mr. Kaaro. Criminals, all of them. They took my money and sent me to places no decent woman should have to visit. And for what? I was almost raped once because I went …’ She gathers herself, takes deep breaths. ‘Finders are no help. People like you are frauds, and the ones that are not fake are Shifts.’

  ‘I am a Shift,’ I say. I decide to be honest, or as honest as I can be without implicating myself. ‘Or rather, I was a Shift. I stopped doing that a while back.’

  ‘What does S45 want with my husband?’

  ‘They don’t want him. They want someone they think he’s with, someone who may have taken him.’

  ‘And you will bring him back to me?’

  ‘I don’t know if he’s alive.’

  ‘If he is dead, will you bring me his body?’

  I nod, and she holds out her hands. I take them, skipping the display I reserve for my customers and marks.


  The room changes, the darkness sweeps in, and I feel myself lost in rushing winds as if falling from an aeroplane or rotating in a tornado. Regina Ogene is gone, nowhere. My body is gone, disintegrated in a thousand criss-crossing light rays. Not ordinary light. This light has swirls and curves, crayon marks made by a bored God.

  What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck.

  I cannot speak. It is not wind. It is I who is rushing. My … presence, my consciousness keeps moving and changing direction too fast for me to think. Alternating light and dark, shadow and flash, a rainbow of impossible colours, extended spectrum. I want to stop, to get off, to find my bearings. The weightlessness, the lack of a single vector, the loss of control … is this dying?

  What did Regina Ogene do to me?

  I let go of the tenuous control I had and scream into the void.

  Without lungs you can scream forever, and I do.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Lagos, Rosewater, Akure, Kano, Abuja, others: 2066

  There are three figures around my car when I emerge from Femi’s house. It is dark and I can’t tell their genders, but they examine my vehicle like ants around a sugar cube. They may be thieves, but more likely they are from S45. I spy an idling SUV about fifty yards away. It is similar to every other one used by the agency.

  They spot me, which is not difficult seeing as I am just across the road. Running is not an option — I’m still hobbled from my injuries.

  ‘There he is,’ says one.

  I draw my gun from the holster.

  ‘Gun!’ says one.

  ‘No, he never carries.’

  I pull the trigger. I hear an almighty bang and the flash almost blinds me. The kick is so strong I drop the weapon. Deliberately.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  They take cover, surprised.

  ‘I told you it was a gun,’ says one, in a plaintive voice.

  One of them likes strawberry ice cream and resents being out here. This is how I know the xenosphere is back. The shot still rings in my ears and it’s difficult to concentrate, but I am desperate. My mind expands outwards — I am told that the brain’s electrical activity is like an epileptic seizure — one of the men is of the Machinery and is thinking of pain as malfunction. I have no time to be gentle. I tell their nerve endings, the temperature receptors, that they are burning, that there is flame all around. The men begin to scream and roll around on the ground, thrashing about. If I had time I could make their skins blister with partial-thickness burns, but I am in a hurry. I flee on foot, on the margins of pain.

  I know that I can only evade S45 for a short time, but it’s crucial that I download what’s in my implant before they catch up with me. I first think of Klaus. He’ll know a lowlife with the necessary technology and flexibility of morals. But then I think of my last visit to Lagos.

  I cut through an alley and have to bat away the leaves of wild sugar cane. I can hear traffic, but it is muffled. I will never wear a gun again. What was I thinking?

  I come to a road busier than Femi’s. I wait, calming myself, looking for evidence of a defensive perimeter. I am not a priority. If I were, there would be a drone tracking me. I look around for COB cats, but I see none. I pick a taxi out of traffic and pay him up front to take me to Olusosun. I tell him I will pay double if he will shut the fuck up.

  Bad Fish fiddles with a machine. He works in a Celestial Church white robe. Olusosun used to host a thriving market with a tiny rubbish dump beside it. The dump grew and the market failed. As it covered a larger area scavengers moved in — a growing local economy. The tech scavengers can be seen everywhere in Africa, picking bits and bobs of retrieved technology and repurposing laptops, implants, performing identity hacks, building illegal new configurations of what already exists.

  With a lot of charm, money, and some xenosphere manipulation, I am given audience. The workspace is cloaked by bespoke scan jammers. It can only be seen by human eyes or directed satellite. Bad Fish and his cohorts are post-hackers, survivalist entrepreneurs. Olusosun Dump is his home and he is a Celestial in many ways. He is the best of a group of blindingly intelligent tech wizards who ply their trade here, in the twilight.

  ‘You have an Ariyo Chip,’ says Bad Fish.

  ‘If you say so. Is that bad?’

  ‘Be still. Not bad, just … old. But old is good.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Easier to manipulate.’

  Bad Fish hands me an old tablet. The screen is dark, a directory is open and there is a list of folders.

  ‘This is everything on your implant. I can print—’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘Do you want it uploaded to Nimbus?’

  ‘No. Too dangerous for both of us.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. Where do you want the data?’

  I think for a second. ‘Download the data to the tablet then block all connections so that it’s a local device. Disable its ability to connect with anything. Delete the files from my chip. And clear any of your RAM that may contain it.’

  It takes him less than a minute. ‘Done.’

  ‘Bad Fish, I can read your mind. I know you intend to keep a copy and will attempt to extort money from me.’

  ‘I —’

  ‘I don’t blame you for trying, but I warn you: don’t. I’ll know if you do.’

  ‘I —’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I hollow out a gigantic King James Bible and seal the tablet in it. I go to a courier service and send it to myself at Rosewater.

  I am ready to be captured now. I take a taxi to the Bar Beach, buy some suya, and sit eating on a small sand dune until I hear footsteps.

  I go quietly.

  I have never been to any of S45’s Lagos Field Offices. This is where I videoconference with Eurohen. I am treated well. I have a Diet Coke and shortbread biscuits on the table beside me. I enquire after the men I “burned” and am told they are well, but shaken. I send them apologies by proxy. The boss keeps me waiting for twenty-one minutes before the plasma field springs to life.

  ‘Kaaro! It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.’ Eurohen’s voice is effeminate, but enthusiastic.

  ‘Unfortunately, I cannot say the same.’

  ‘Ahh, I see. Loyalty to Alaagomeji. Good. Excellent. I like that.’

  I swear the guy has blond highlights in his hair.

  ‘You like history, Kaaro?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘I do. July 11th, 1943. The Gulf of Gela, Sicily. A friendly fire incident leads to the shooting down of twenty-three C47 aircrafts. One hundred and fifty-seven service men lose their lives, and over two hundred were wounded. Do you know this story?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. What you need to learn, the takeaway message is that a lack of coordination of resources costs lives.’

  This meeting runs with a filigree of irritation. I stay silent.

  ‘From now on, coordination. Laser focus. All parts working together. Agencies, arms of government, parties —’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘Sir, I am miles away from my home base. I’d like to go home tonight. What are you saying, exactly?’

  ‘I want you to trust me —’

  ‘Then meet me in a room with contiguous air.’

  ‘Oh, I intend to. I have nothing to hide.’

  That’s new. Stops me in my tracks.

  ‘I have a whole new focus for you, for sensitives. Mrs. Alaagomeji was … competent, but she lacked vision.’

  ‘I have a focus, sir, an interrogation.’

  ‘That’s not focus. It’s an assignment. What I want is for you to join a church.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you not feel the love of our Lord and Saviour?’ He smiles.

  ‘Get to the fucking point,’ I say.

  ‘Calm down, agent. You still work for me.’ He did not seem annoyed. I wish I had time to read the file they had on me before this meeting.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’


  ‘Think nothing of it. In fact, think to yourself, what would Jesus do?’

  ‘He’d say “get thee behind me, Satan” under these circumstances. Sir.’

  Eurohen laughs. ‘I want you to join a church, a big one with a congregation of millions. I want you to gain their trust using your abilities and, when the time comes, I will instruct you on how to use that trust.’

  On my way back I watch the street lights pass me like UFOs. My flat texts ambient conditions to me. Temperature, twenty-seven Celsius, humidity eighty-nine percent, wind two miles per hour. No intrusions.

  I am allowed to finish my current case before they get me doing God’s work.

  If I live that long.

  My night is full of bad dreams and sex with Molara. Then the next day I take delivery of the tablet. It looks different in the light of day. It is meant to have a metallic sheen, but it is dull. I power it on and start to read.

  I check my personnel file first because I need to know what they are holding over my head. I am relieved at the demographic data. It lists me as “last name unknown.” This means Femi found out my surname but kept it to herself. There is the usual home address, religious affiliation (none or unknown), height five-ten, weight one-seventy pounds, race black, ethnic group Yoruba, date of birth uncertain.

  There is a free-text entry by Femi.

  Kaaro started working for us in 2055. We sought him out because our sensitives were unable to find Oyin Da, a.k.a Bicycle Girl, which was a priority for the administration at the time. Bicycle Girl has some uncertain involvement in the disappearance of all the inhabitants of the village Arodan in 2044. Since then she has been a symbol of anarchy. In her talks she appears to have a neo-socialist bent.