The Rosewater Insurrection

by Tade Thompson

  Aminat says, “Baby, what now? We’re the frontline of a concerted alien invasion. What do we do?”

  Kaaro shrugs. “I don’t know. To be fair, they don’t want to kill us. Just… occupy us.”

  Kaaro had related the death of Anthony, and in the remix of the knowledge, something occurs to Aminat. Monkeys and statuettes of twins… then it comes to her.

  “I have an idea, but we have to go back to the mayor’s bunker, or wherever he is right now.” Aminat drags Kaaro through the people drunk with happiness, towards the mansion.

  The mayor’s office seems to be kitsch and trying too hard to Aminat, easily the ugliest office she has ever visited.

  “You’re sure this will work?” asks Jack Jacques.

  “It’s better than what you have right now,” says Kaaro, “which is just the threat of annihilation. This gives us some control. Anthony figured it out and tried to tell me, and Aminat made sense of it.”

  “It’ll work,” says Aminat.

  “They’re here,” says Lora.

  Alyssa has changed. She is taller, for one thing, well over six feet, and with a higher muscle-to-fat ratio than before. She has also changed her skin colour. Anthony also did this, but his were various comical shades of brown, to blend in. Alyssa has no pretensions about fitting in, and is now various shades of green, with seaweed hair and her skin varying between chartreuse and olive about the folds. There are organelles on her body, crystalline, like embedded diamonds, placed randomly, even on her face. Her eyes are black and large enough to obscure the white, which is only visible when Alyssa side-eyes. The air around her is charged, literally. Aminat can feel her body hair rising with the static. She wears a flowing gown, probably made of something degradable. She knows she can wear whatever the fuck she wants and still be taken seriously.

  “I speak for Wormwood,” says Alyssa. “I have decision-making proxy for both of us.”

  “I speak for humanity,” says Jack, without a hint of embarrassment or humility. “We would like to offer you something in exchange for the protection and care you have always provided for us.”

  “What would we need from you?”

  “A place for your people,” says Jack. “A home for the Homians.”

  I told him not to say that. How do we know if they appreciate poetry or if it’s an insult on their planet?

  “Jack Jacques, we are already taking the home we want. We do not need you to give this to us.”

  “You’ll have to wait for years doing it your way. I’m offering you something now.”

  “We are patient, Jack Jacques. We have different understandings and experience of time and entropy.”

  “Your way will kill us, just like you killed Alyssa Sutcliffe to take her body. I don’t believe it’s what you want, or at least, what you all want.”

  “No, the death of your kind is regrettable, but it’s no different from you killing cattle and swine to survive. Many of you may regret animal death, but if it came between you and survival…” Alyssa spreads out her arms, then lets them fall to her sides.

  “There is another way. Aminat?”

  Aminat takes the floor, and tries not to think of how much the future of humanity rests on what she’s about to say. “Your predecessor, Anthony, left a message before dying, but we couldn’t figure it out for a while. Monkeys and a wooden statue of a twin. The monkeys have to do with the origin of twins in Yoruba mythology, and the wooden statues are receptacles of the souls of dead twins, which the mother carries around and treats as if still alive.”

  “Interesting. Actually, not really interesting, but what does this have to do with my people?”

  “The reanimates,” says Aminat. “They are empty of souls, like the wooden carving. They are so devoid of will even Kaaro can control them. Your people can transmit their consciousness into them and live here, with us, side by side. And when our people die, you can simply transmit into that body. Your culture, your civilisation can start a new chapter living with humans in harmony.”

  “Since when have humans lived in harmony with anybody? Even with each other?”

  “Since now. You know it’s a good idea because you’re still in the room,” says Jack, and he has his signature smile now. Odd to see him in a wheelchair.

  “I need to consult on this,” says Alyssa.

  “I thought you had proxy?” says Aminat.

  “For Wormwood, yes, because we are one, but not for the entire Home population. You’re asking me to alter a fundamental plan agreed aeons ago. I need to consult.”

  With that she sits where she is, gown pooling around her, eyes closed.

  “How long will this take?” Jack asks Kaaro.

  “Who knows? I’m hungry.”

  In the day room Kaaro eats a tower of crackers with ground nuts because that’s all there is. There are crumbs all over his shirt front, and when he speaks, bits fly out of his mouth. He is uncouth and Aminat loves him.

  “Can’t you eavesdrop on the conversation in the xenosphere?” she asks.

  “I tried. Got kicked out.”

  Through the bay windows, two guards walk a prisoner past. Femi Alaagomeji. She glances at them, but then looks straight ahead.

  “She’s going to a deep, dark hole like for ever,” says Kaaro.

  Aminat rises, races after. “Wait.”

  “Are you happy? You saved your little city,” says Femi.

  “I am, kind of, yes.”

  “That’s because you’re simple. But then, I only ever employed you because of what was between your legs.”

  Aminat’s first assignment. Her ex-husband. “That would hurt my feelings if I thought it was true.”

  “You should have just followed my orders, Aminat. Now you have the dubious honour of having doomed humanity.”

  “And you’ll have the dubious honour of being right, if not compassionate.”

  “Baby, it’s time. They’re calling us in,” says Kaaro.

  “I’ll visit you in prison,” Aminat says.

  “We’ll see,” says Femi. “The president and Jacques will make a deal. I’ll be out in days. I want you to spend time thinking of what I’ll be doing on the other side of the inevitable border, what my focus will be.”

  Aminat wants to hit her then, but turns to attend the meeting instead. Time enough for Femi afterwards.

  “We accept your offer. We will begin transmitting into the reanimates as soon as is practicable. I expect arrangements for housing and welfare of my people to begin just as swiftly.”

  “It will be done,” says Jack. He stretches out his right hand. “Welcome to Earth.”

  On their way out they run into Taiwo, who knows Aminat as the ex-wife of his criminal associate, and Kaaro as an undercover cop. She feels Kaaro cower and she subtly steps between them.

  “Well, well. One traitorous wife and one traitor,” says Taiwo. “How’s your husband?”

  “Ex-husband. Rotting somewhere, for all I care,” says Aminat.

  “And this is your man, now? This amebo?”

  Aminat moves closer to the gangster. “Go away, Taiwo. We want no trouble.”

  Taiwo smiles with his eyes and teeth, a slow predator’s smile. “It’s going to be interesting living in Rosewater from now. I mean, look at me, a free man, all sins forgiven, and a war hero.”

  “That sounds well rehearsed,” says Aminat. “How many times have you repeated the war hero bit?”

  Taiwo leans in, talking to Aminat, but aiming the words at Kaaro. “In this new future of mine I’ll have nothing else to do but look up old friends. Exciting times ahead. Boys, let’s go. I feel the need for an expensive hooker, Viagra, and some ketamine.”

  “Assholes come thick and fast here,” says Aminat. She holds Kaaro’s shoulder. “I won’t let him hurt you, my love.”

  “I’m tired of all this, Aminat, I’m tired of fighting. Taiwo almost killed me one time. He should be in prison, not venerated.”

  She holds his gaze. “I will not let him harm
you.”

  Her phone rings. It’s Lora. “He wants you.” She transfers the call to Jacques.

  “Where are you going?”

  Aminat shrugs, knowing he can’t see her. “Home, with one man and his dog.”

  “Do you want a job?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’ve just got off the phone with the president. We had an arbitration by… an interested third party. Anyway, we’ve been granted city state status, in principle, although there are many constitutional bits to work out. I need a head of security, Aminat.”

  “What makes you think I’m qualified to lead?”

  “If I can do a job I’m unqualified for, surely you can? Besides, I saw you in action. I want you.”

  Aminat looks at Kaaro. “I’ll have to think on it.”

  “Take all the time you need. I’m kidding. You have twenty-four hours.”

  And with that he is gone. She is about to tell Kaaro when she notices his eyes have gone glassy. She follows his gaze and there’s Oyin Da, the Bicycle Girl herself, thinker, anarchist, time-traveller and former crush of Kaaro’s. She always brings trouble.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Aminat spits.

  “I want to speak with Kaaro,” says Oyin Da.

  “You can’t,” says Aminat. “We’ve been through a lot, and he wants to go home. He literally just said that to me.”

  She nods, twice, seems about to say something, then turns to leave. “Do not let Femi die in custody, Aminat. It would be bad for everyone.”

  She seems to walk into the air, there now, gone in a second.

  Aminat relays the information to Lora, then takes Kaaro home where she is uncharacteristically domestic to tease him out of his funk.

  She even feeds the hellhound.

  Interlude: 2067

  Eric

  I can’t leave the way I came, the celebrations and the crowd density are insane in the south-west, so I break even further north, hoping to work my way through the ruins of what was the financial district, and hike up the hills, make contact with S45 when I’m beyond the waste processing plant. The bombing has been uneven here, with some high-rises broken to the foundation and others oddly intact. I walk through concrete canyons paved with broken glass, holding Nuru’s tentacle as a weapon. The suckers stick to my forearm sometimes, but the tip always points outward. I can feel a pulse in it, like it’s developed a heart. I’m plagued by phantoms as I walk, ruin-dwellers afraid of my confidence and scampering like cockroaches. Someone takes a potshot at me, but the grapheme absorbs it. I don’t even bother to chase the person down.

  I avoid roads where there are new ganglions, but it’s hard. They are everywhere now, which is good for Rosewater, but bad for me.

  I see a crater with a downed drone, and seven skeletons around it. I’m guessing it had an incendiary payload that went off after a delay. These poor scavengers got caught in the blast.

  I’m starving and running out of drinking water, but I’ll be out of town by nightfall, so I’m not worried about that. I do look in some of the buildings, but the taps aren’t on yet. The new mossy green layer on the ground absorbs sound and sticks to the boot. I try to eat it, or squeeze moisture out, but it’s bitter, and that might mean toxic. I take ten-minute breaks every half an hour during which time I try to search the xenosphere, but it’s full of what I can only call neuro-static, all flashing lights and incoherence. In the quiet moments I still remember the ambush, and the fear at the moment I thought I was going to be killed, the scattering of Nuru’s body parts in the blasts. When I think this the tentacle twitches, as if it remembers, at which point I wonder if it’s accessing my thoughts in some way, but then I see three people coming towards me. They are armed with cudgels and maybe a gun.

  I rise to them, but the tentacle does all the work. Of its own volition it streaks out at the first person’s face and drives a spike through. She drops. It detaches and wraps around the arm of the one with a gun then it reverses its track, coming away with clothing, skin and muscle, desleeving the bones. The screams of its owner echo all around us. The third is changing his mind, but the tentacle, sensing only a fraction of my movement or intent, whips across the neck and tears out a handful of flesh from the side of his neck. Blood fountains as he staggers for three steps, then stops.

  The tentacle becomes inert again.

  I search them, and come away with one locust bar, and two unspecified protein sachets, which usually means blended cockroach and ant. No water. I chew two squares of the locust, and keep moving.

  I soon come to three topless boys taking turns to drink out of a tubular plant shoot. They say it’s their plant and I have to pay. I give them the unspecified protein, then I drink. The water is sweet with a hint of chalkiness. After a bit of suction it flows, and rushes abundantly, so I rub some on my head. Then I see her standing where I was. The tentacle is not reactive. She is tall, with variegated green skin and black studs here and there, which are either piercings or growing out of her. She’s wearing a flowing gown that the wind is trying to take away from her. She does not look pleased to see me.

  “You’re Eric. The assassin.”

  And, just as suddenly, I know. “You’re the new proxy for Wormwood.”

  “Even so.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “You have crimes to answer for.”

  “First of all, they’re not crimes. I am an agent of the legitimate government of Nigeria, which includes Rosewater, although I don’t yet know what’s happened with this armistice. I’m an agent on orders. Secondly, why do you care? You’re an alien. This does not concern you.”

  “I need to keep this area safe because my people are coming.”

  “And you can do that. I’m walking away, so even if you consider me dangerous, letting me go would be the thing to improve the safety of Rosewater.”

  “Or I could kill you and be sure.”

  At this point, though, I see hesitation, and I gamble that she is torn. With all my will-power I turn my back on her and take another gulp of the fresh water. “You could, but I’ll tell you what: kill me quick. I have no patience for listening to words from an alien in league with someone as evil as Jack Jacques. I wish I had succeeded.”

  I fill the canteen I found on my trek, and walk away from her, expecting to be disintegrated or crushed or given a stroke any minute. It doesn’t happen, although I sweat for a mile despite the sun going down. Once it is nightfall, I no longer sense her around me, although she is everywhere in Rosewater. I start to wonder about the speech I gave her, and the words do not seem like my own at all. In fact…

  “Kaaro,” I say.

  The gryphon appears to me in the xenosphere. “Bawo ni?”

  “What else have you left in my head?” He sounds a lot cheerier than I would have expected.

  “Nothing, nothing, I swear. This is all in real time. I didn’t puppetmaster you, Eric.”

  “And yet.”

  “And yet I may have given you a nudge or two, for old times’ sake. The rest was all you, I swear. Some intercollegiate stuff, agent to ex-agent.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just making sure you’re really gone. And Eric?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t ever come back here. Gryphons are territorial.”

  I walk past the processing plant, the marker of city limits. I don’t know exactly everything that happened here, but I am glad to be out. I look back and there is a large area of darkness where the dome used to be. All the dozens of new ganglia glitter like stars. A breeze carries the smell of waste from the plant.

  I give Rosewater the middle finger. “Fuck you.”

  I hold it up for some minutes, then I signal for a pick-up.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The Sutcliffes

  It has been four hours since Mark and Pat Sutcliffe returned home. They work in silence, solemn, unresponsive to the noise and jubilation outside. Their war is not over because Alyssa is m
issing still.

  In their absence the house has been looted, stripped clean of possessions and vandalised, but not burned down like some on the street, and not hit by bombs. Mark is one to count his blessings. Pat is alive, well, if a little thin, and more grown up than he would have liked. She sweeps, he carries the heavy stuff. The plan for today is to clear a simple sleeping space for the two of them, then tomorrow, they will continue to work. There is some food, meagre, but hunger-breaking. The things Mark fears are the roving rats, the swarms, but since the new incarnation of the alien, they seem to have retreated, as have the droppers, and nobody has spotted a cherub in a long while.

  He glances at Pat, pained by her shorn hair and her thin look. He knows he himself is much thinner, and his hair is just as short. Lice.

  He’ll have to find a way to secure the property. The last few weeks have been spent on the move, keeping himself and his daughter safe, sometimes by hiding, sometimes by alliances and joining groups. Mark has done violence for the first time in his life, finding a vein of savagery he did not know possible, and at times his dreams are full of blood and choking. He does not know if he will ever pick up a brush to paint without pain spilling out, but maybe that’s a good thing.

  How will his daughter learn to be a child again? Will she smile? Will she laugh?

  “Hey, Pat, on what side does a chicken have the most feathers?” he asks.

  “On the outside,” says a voice from the door, the last thing either Mark or Pat is expecting.

  Alyssa.

  Alyssa.

  From the xenosphere, Alyssa watches the family reunited, watches them hug each other and cry, watches them close the door on the outside world and start living their lives again.

  The Alyssa in there is as real as she can get. All the memories she could scavenge are in her. Alyssa’s ID chip is in her. They will think her traumatised or just confused, and they will make excuses for her lapses.