‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ What can I do to help?
Valentine shrugs and even the air appears to be the weight of the world.
‘Come to Rosewater,’ I say. The Opening will heal you.
‘No, my place is here,’ says Valentine. It didn’t help your friend Bola and it hasn’t healed you.
‘I can make space for you, just like you did me.’ I’m not sick.
‘Long time ago, that was.’ Aren’t you? I can see Molara, you know. How long has that been going on? Does Aminat know?
I —
You’re sick too, Kaaro. Find the cure or die. I’m going to stay right here with my love. You should tell Aminat the truth.
‘How do you know them?’ asks Aminat.
‘They took me in when I was a wayward teenager.’ I am driving away. ‘I … Aminat, I have something to tell you.’
I pull over to the side of the road because I do not trust myself to drive safely. Normally, I am afraid of physical confrontations and the pain of a broken nose. This feels worse. My heart beats so hard that my words come out with tremulousness.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asks. She leans forward slightly and the seatbelt presses into her.
‘I am not the kind of guy you think I am. I’ve done many things that I am ashamed of.’
‘But this is one specific thing, right? What have you done?’
I tell her everything. I tell her about Molara, about the sex, about the gryphon, about the nature of my job with S45, about Klaus and my stealing. I tell her about the agama lizard I killed for no good reason when I was eight. When I can’t think of anything else to confess to I trail off, breathing heavy. And cough.
She doesn’t say anything. Just stares straight ahead at the cars and trucks that pass us hissing on the asphalt.
‘Say something, Aminat. What are you thinking?’
‘I don’t know, Kaaro, why don’t you read my mind?’
That hurts and I recoil, sure that I have fucked this relationship up royally.
‘I’m not like other people, Aminat. I ... I don’t feel the way other people do. My parents disown me and I don’t care. I take that which doesn’t belong to me. I know that my morals are broken in some fundamental way. But if I didn’t care about you I wouldn’t be telling you any of this and —’
‘I love you, Kaaro.’ She says this in a matter-of-fact way, still not looking at me. ‘I am in love with you. I was afraid of telling you before now.’
I don’t know what to say to this. I have never been in love. I had a gargantuan infatuation once. One time. It got me into big trouble. My throat tickles so I cough again.
‘Aminat —’
‘I’m a big girl. I know there is a difference between being in love and having a relationship. I know there is a difference between love and trust.’
‘I —’
‘Do you still want me?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Then you will have to earn my trust.’ She looks at me now. ‘You have never been with this woman physically?’
‘Never. I wouldn’t even know what she looks like.’
‘Have you been with anyone else since you’ve been with me?’
‘What? No. Jesus.’
‘Drive. Kaaro. When we get to Rosewater take me to my office. I forgot something.’
‘I don’t know where your office is,’ I say. I start the engine. ‘Come to think of it, I don’t know what you do.’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Kaaro. It’s a good thing my brother likes you.’
I think of the black flames surrounding her mental image in the xenosphere, but I do not ask.
We stop at a motel and spend the night.
A sound jolts me awake. The sheets rustle and Aminat shifts against me, but remains asleep. We are in bed and I feel a sense of unfamiliarity and displacement, but it passes quickly. She breathes into my temple and I turn to her to inhale her exhalation, to confirm that she is here.
Love.
This is an unfamiliar state of mind for me. I used to troll hospital wards for a reason to get up in the morning. I go to the terminal wards and I see and listen to terminal thoughts. Whatever the dying person regrets not doing, this I do.
I am a ghost in the hospitals. It is another kind of stealing. I steal dreams, I steal hopes, I steal entire lives.
Thoughts are different in hospitals. There is a primal life affirmation thing going on. It is the perfect antidote to my apathy. Was. Since Aminat I have not needed to.
I walk into St Joseph’s or The Omojola Clinic, and I first sit in Casualty. I do not even need to access the xenosphere at first. The conversations are angry, fearful, anxious, and often incoherent. I sit down and listen to this as an appetizer.
‘Why are they taking so long?’
‘What were you thinking?’
‘So much blood.’
‘What’s taking so long?’
‘Stay here. I’m calling your mother.’
‘I swear, it was an accident.’
‘Why is it taking so long?’
‘You think they’re just in there playing?’
‘I’m bleeding to death here.’
‘God, this hurts.’
‘Walahi talahi, I will kills someone here unless I get help.’
‘I need some attention here.’
I can only really stand this for five, ten minutes at most. It becomes self-indulgent after a while. In Casualty the inner tends to match the outer thoughts and there is no need to go into the xenosphere.
I drift into the corridors like a ghost, avoiding stretchers accompanied by rapid-talking, scrubs-wearing professionals, lazy, random mentations from the anesthetized patients. Children’s thoughts blasting out of the paediatrics floor, energetic, hopeful, brightly coloured, as soon as they are recovering. The sick ones are muted, but no less hopeful.
The palliative care wards are usually out of the way, in a quieter part of the hospital. The xenosphere is full of ghosts here, shades of the thoughts of people long-since passed on. Repetition keeps the pathways alive within the network. Their self-images do not see me, but drift. They are information clots in the world mind. Not alive, although they are capable of interaction. Their responses are exactly what they would have done when alive. I can and have talked to them. They talk about their lives, what they did, what they didn’t do. Hospital spectres look diseased or injured, bleeding, leaking pus, coughing despite having no lungs, still manifesting the symptoms of the disease that took them.
Many of the people here will die too quickly, before the next biodome opening. Hepatocellular carcinoma. Six months to live.
Regrets wash over me. I should have called her. I should have said sorry. I wanted to see Olumo Rock. I have never been out of this country. I should have had children. Why did I kill him? I worked too hard, and for what? I wonder what happened to her? I wonder what happened to him? I shouldn’t have … I want … I need … there’s still time …
I leave. I can only take so much, but what I do take energises me for the next month. I exercise more, eat healthy, phone friends, and go out. I go to the holo-museum and visit Venice, Taiwan, Niagara Falls. I cook an unfamiliar meal and fuck it up. I resolve to be happy, and force myself to see what is good in my life. I stare at the lush vegetation that surrounds the dome, the illegal farms that try to tap into the hyper-fertile soil, and the cursed government officials who turn up to clear the foliage from time to time.
This works for a while, but the apathy always creeps back in. I wake up and I do not exercise. I drag myself into Integrity Bank, I look at but do not see the wild roses and hibiscus that flourish on my way to work. Life greys out again.
Sometimes I mine the memories of people I’ve encountered, but it doesn’t help because when I’m in this mood only the negative aspects of their lives bubble to the surface. I see only black.
I touch Aminat’s cheek. She opens her eyes immediately. Light sleeper.
‘Hi,’ she says.
Sun beams play across her flank. At this moment I buy into whatever the love songs and poems say. I believe the wispy, whimsical feelings and the waking up together in the dawn sunlight.
She reaches out to touch my hand, then guides it to the warm place between her thighs.
‘Wake me up,’ she says.
Here we are. We return to Rosewater in silence most of the journey. It is good when feelings are formless and left unsaid, but Aminat says she loves me. Expression weighs passion, both measures and limits it. We both know that I am spending the silence assaying my own heart.
We arrive outside her office and she tells me to wait in the car. I ache all over because of my injuries and because of all the driving. She does not kiss me when she leaves the car, but she gives me a look that I feel all the way from my eyes to my loins. She loves me. Do I love her? I have never loved before, but I have never felt as strongly about someone as I do about her. I watch her walk away.
There are no signs, so I do not know what the office block is. I am too ashamed about not showing interest in her work before now, so I do not ask.
Just before she gets out of earshot I say, ‘I love you.’
‘What?’ she says, turning.
‘Nothing. I’ll see you ... we’ll talk when you get back.’
It’s daytime, but outside working hours. There is only a guard. He smiles and laughs at something Aminat says to him. He lets her in.
Some kids play football on the road and squeal with delight whenever the ball flies past the two rocks they use as goal posts. The ball bounces off the car windscreen and loses momentum on the ground. The boys holler at me. I step out of the car and line the ball up with my foot. I swing back my foot to kick, but I never get to take the shot.
The blast throws me against the side of the car. I hear nothing but a vague ringing in my mind. Debris everywhere. Black smoke stains the air and spreads through the sky. Flames roar and frolic around what is left of the structure.
I can’t move. The car alarm goes off. I see a burning child. I wish I had not looked.
Aminat.
Aminat, I love you. Come back.
I burst into the xenosphere and see the black flames immediately.
INTERLUDE: MISSION 5
Kainji Dam, Niger State 2057
Ahh, the anger, the suppressed rage. It amuses me, though I keep this to myself. I try to work a piece of stock fish from between my incisors with my tongue.
We are in a control room in Kainji Dam. I am the only sensitive. With me are six special forces men from a unit so classified, they won’t tell me its name. They wear ultra-light body armour, carry ultra-light, ultra-destructive weaponry, and they are tensed for action.
‘Kaaro, anything?’ the CO asks.
‘It’s still raining. I can’t help you. I need clear weather, remember? Unless you have access to Shango or any other thunder gods, we’re stuck.’ I stick my finger in my mouth, using my nail as a toothpick. It doesn’t work.
A narrow, rectangular slit shows dark grey skies which occasionally light up with lightning. The rain is torrential, unending. Lake Kainji must be engorged by now, and the turbines should be working at full capacity, except not all the turbines are functional. They never have been since the Italians finished building it in the sixties.
Insurgents have threatened to blow up the dam and S45 has loaned me out for this mission. I am only required to detect if and when the insurgents arrive on site. The brutal men of war around me will do the rest.
I look at these guys. Motherfucking Danladi can eat them all for breakfast without getting out of bed.
The CO pulls a knife and bites the blade. ‘I don’t know Shango, but this iron is Ogun and I swear that nobody’s blowing up this dam tonight. You’re coming with us.’
‘What? No. I’m not a field agent.’ Now I’m angry too. And afraid.
‘You are tonight. Boys, let’s go.’
We trot off into the downpour.
First chance I get I intend to run away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Lagos: 2055
Gun.
As soon as I think it, as soon as I know that I need to escape, I see the path to the gun. It’s a girl’s gun, a twenty-two. Pearl-handled. Silvery, high-sheen polish, elegant case. Loaded.
I have no intention of firing it, but I need Femi to believe I will.
I am back in the kitchen before she returns. I am confused by something I saw in my reverie. A conversation. I am sure it is from the future. I have never been able to do this, but I have heard of sensitives who can. Over the years I have had flashes of other abilities and this is a flash of pre-science. The conversation is between Femi and a woman I do not know.
‘Did you sleep with him?’ asks the strange woman who is seated at a desk and writing on sand which has been smoothed out on a ceramic tray.
‘Who?’ asks Femi.
‘The shift. Kaaro.’
‘No.’
‘Hm. You should have. You were meant to.’
‘First of all, ew. Secondly, ew. That’s all I have to say on the matter.’
‘If you had … well, that was our last chance to control him.’
‘What do you mean? He’s a mercenary. Money controls him.’
The woman raises an index finger like a school teacher. ‘No. He only thinks money controls him, but in fact it does not.’
‘What, then?’
‘Love.’
‘Love of whom?’
The woman shrugs. ‘You won’t find Bicycle Girl through him. That thread is dead now.’
The vision ends there.
I don’t know who the woman is, but sand-pressing or sand-writing is a form of divination known to the Yoruba. It is similar to geomancy. Jesus is said to have done it when he saved the adulterous woman from a mob. I’ve never seen or heard of a woman performing it, but I suppose anything is possible.
I push the revolver into my waistband at the small of my back. No matter what happens I can’t sleep with Femi. The vision was a clear warning against that. I do not know how she would control me, but I do not care to find out. I don’t know what the love business is all about, but since I am not in love with anybody I won’t bother myself about it. Besides, love is for pussies; real lovers get pussy.
I find the coffee cold and fire up a fresh brew. I feel uneasy, partially because guns make me uncomfortable, but also because of the vision and a general aura of apprehension. This jumble of emotions makes me jittery and I drop a mug on the floor by mistake. I’m picking up the pieces when Femi comes back in.
‘I … there’s a copter coming for us,’ she says. She either looks worried or I am picking the vibes up from her.
‘I’m not going,’ I say.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I have to go, therefore you have to go. I’m not leaving you here.’
‘I’m not staying here, but I’m not going with you, either.’
‘Kaaro, I don’t have time for this.’
I pull out the gun.
‘Have you lost your mind? You’re not going to kill anyone,’ says Femi. ‘Kaaro, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you don’t need to threaten me. I thought we were getting along.’
‘We were not getting along. You were getting what you wanted, but we were not getting along.’
‘Calm down and put the gun down, Kaaro. That pistol is an antique and it’s worth a lot of money. It was used by the Oyenusi gang in their crime spree in 1972. It’s probably faulty and will misfire if you pull the trigger.’ Femi has a complete lack of fear, like she can reach out and take the gun from me, but she wants to see where this scenario leads.
‘I’m only borrowing it. I just want to get off the boat, Femi.’ I smile at her because who wouldn’t? ‘You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever kissed.’
‘I’ll be the last girl you’ll ever kiss if you don’t stop pointing an offensive weapon at a federal agent. It is a crime, you know.’
Femi sighs. ‘I’m going to have some coffee.’ She moves without paying me any attention. A part of me thinks I should shoot once, to make her afraid or something, but I do not have the will. Besides, I’ve never used a gun. Classical music plays through the house. ‘That’s Mendelssohn. This violin concerto always makes me sad. My husband had liked it, particularly the first movement, but I can’t put my finger on the name. I’m a Ludwig person myself. Op. 9 is one of the highlights of human civilisation.’
‘That’s nice. I’m not a fan.’
‘No, you wouldn’t be.’ She pours some coffee into a mug and offers it to me, but I ignore it. ‘I can’t tell you everything, but my relationship with my husband was complicated.’
Wande Alaagomeji had been her one indiscretion in S45. He was a pretty boy guard she had noticed and fucked. It turned out she enjoyed having sex with him enough to want him around longer. By this time Femi’s family had given up hope that she would ever marry. Her mother said she was ‘too strong headed,’ while her father said she was ‘too much like a man.’ Wande was from the right tribe and family, and stupid enough to know his place. It was convenient to get married.
Femi and Wande had one year of endless cavorting, with brief interruptions by work. Then Wande started getting restless about his career, wanting to rise in the ranks and hinting that Femi should use her influence. Nepotism didn’t work in S45, but the boy wouldn’t believe her. She pushed for him slightly, abutting on the boundary of propriety and raised eyebrows. It affected her in some ill-defined way, and the relationship lost its lustre. The sex became less fantastic, more mundane, until it ceased to exist. She knew he was dipping his wick elsewhere, but did not care. Their house had twelve-foot ceilings and was large enough for them to live separate lives. ‘I once went six weeks without casting eyes on him,’ she says.
Rosewater Page 21