The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021)

by Oghenechovwe Ekpeki

  “You should talk to Helene,” he interjected.

  “I will. However, you know that she’s taking an early leave, don’t you?”

  “For the baby, yes, of course,” Dr. Walker said in a level voice. “But she will be back. There is no need for you to worry over the details of this project. I know you want to understand everything—”

  “Dr. Walker, Lloyd has asked me to take over management of the Engram project.” I could hear the chatter die on the other side of the line. “I am the new project manager,” I said, realizing that I was emphasizing the news for an unseen group. I needed to be as clear as possible. “I want to start going over the project plan when you’re available.”

  The line was silent. “Dr. Walker?”

  “You should come to the lab tonight,” he said finally.

  “Actually, I have a dinner engagement tonight.”

  “The lab is on the Westbank—on the other side of the river. I am messaging you the address now.” I heard a murmur over the phone line. “I’ll be certain to update the system so that it’ll let you in.” The connection broke.

  Well, shit, I thought. I should just let him sit there and wait for me. But on the other hand, I was considering shutting down the man’s team. I should give him the chance to make his case. If I got there early, maybe I could still pick up a decent meal somewhere and be home by eight for dinner with my dad.

  * * *

  QND’s lab was an odd pair of buildings on the west bank of the Mississippi River, still within New Orleans city limits. I parked, carded myself in and paused to wonder in which of the two buildings was Desmond Walker’s office. He had sent 201 as his office number, but both buildings had a second floor. I parked myself in front of the elevator in the first building, punched a button and listened as the antique mechanism inside woke up.

  The first floor was dark, but I could hear voices. I soon spied a pair of figures, one pushing a mop bucket, both deep in conversation. The lights of the hallway connecting the diatomic buildings activated, flickering on and off, creating a virtual spotlight as the two walked. The elevator car arrived at the same time they did. Both men were vaguely Hispanic. The first nodded to me; the other ignored me, ranting instead about some local sports figure.

  “I’m looking for Dr. Desmond Walker,” I said. “He’s supposed to be in room 201 but he didn’t mention that there were two buildings.”

  “You’re in the right place,” the darker man said. He was the one who had acknowledged my presence earlier. “No one’s in building two.”

  The two men trailed me into the elevator and punched the button above my second-floor selection.

  “I’m sorry if I’m keeping you here late,” I remarked, noting the skipped floor.

  “Dr. Walker always works late,” the second man said. “Him, he has his own man to clean that floor.”

  I noted the severe look that passed from the first man to the second. The second fell silent and stared at the elevator console.

  “You not the reason we still here,” the first man countered. “It’s a big office—two buildings and all.” The elevator shuddered to a stop.

  “201’s at the end of the hall,” the second janitor continued. “Ignore the other doors. It’s all one big room, but Professor Walker will be closer to the last door.”

  “Thank you,” I said, stepping out. Both men avoided my face as the door clanged shut and I turned to the brightly lit hall. Despite the ’60’s exterior, the interior had obviously been gutted and redesigned. I was met with a gleaning hallway of glossy white tile, banded by polished steel and glass. As the janitor had mentioned, there were doors on my left leading into the work room; the only door that was open lay at the end of the hall. I could hear the muffled sound of jazz music from the local favorite station, WWOZ, echo off the hard ceramic walls.

  Desmond Walker had altered his office attire slightly to match his current environment. A white coat replaced the suit jacket that hung on a nearby clothes tree. The tie had been loosened. He didn’t rise to meet me but twisted around from his perch on a lab stool to watch me enter. Unlike his work office, this workspace was spare, the stark image of efficiency. The worktables held only computer interfaces and electronic equipment that I assumed were microscopes.

  “Maybe you want to start by telling me why you didn’t mention that you were the new PM this afternoon,” he said.

  “I’ve worked on projects where every morning the PL sent a smiley face to the PM as a status report,” I said, ignoring his lecturing tone. “That’s not what I wanted.” I pulled a nearby stool closer to me and gritted my teeth at the grinding sound of its metal legs on the tile floor. “Was there anything you would’ve preferred to say?”

  “I might have given you more time,” Dr. Walker said.

  “Lloyd gave me the project two hours before I spoke to you. I tried to read what I could before our meeting so that I could ask semi-intelligent questions, but…” I shrugged. “The project plan was skimpy to say the least. Helene’s notes don’t mention epigenetics at all.” I looked across at his stern face. “Did Helene never ask? Or did she not care?” I didn’t voice my more unwelcome fear—that he had spent QND money on his own dream project without consulting anyone.

  Maybe my fear showed in my voice because he leaned over the worktable, thumbed a virtual keyboard to life and began pounding the keys with fury.

  “I am forwarding you the research papers I’ve published,” he said. “They go back to 2020.”

  “Wait—QND has only been in existence since 2037,” I said.

  “My research is why Delahousse brought me in,” Dr. Walker said tartly. “Didn’t Helene tell you that?”

  “No—wait—yes—maybe. In her own way.” I peered over the images of papers on the embedded screen. “I will need someone to explain this to me. My degree was in chemical engineering, not biology and certainly not genetics.”

  “Why should I waste the time of one of my team to explain genetics to you?”

  “Because Helene may have been indulgent, but she reports to Lloyd just like I do,” I answered. “His directive was to bring this project to conclusion or kill it. Neither of which means that you get to run a pure research project that has no commercial application.”

  He started to protest but I raised a hand. “Yes, I know—I could pass my knowledge of German down to my kids. There are cheaper ways to accomplish the same thing. I can’t see QND continuing to pay for this unless you have something more.” I paused. “Not unless you tell me that you have Delahousse on speed dial and can bring him in. Everyone gives me the impression that he started QND and then disappeared except for the annual board meeting.”

  Dr Walker was shaking his head.

  “No? There’s a story there, I’m sure. Listen, I’m willing to go to bat for you with Lloyd, but you have to give me something!”

  Dr Walker was silent for moment and then brought up another file. “Sit down, I’m going to give you a genetics lesson.”

  I groaned. “I don’t have time. I have dinner tonight with my father.” I was immediately angry at myself for being so specific. Walker didn’t need to know anything about my personal life. I needn’t have worried, for he ignored my outburst and continued talking.

  “Do you know what a haplogroup is?” he asked. I shook my head.

  “No?” he continued. “You’ve never taken a DNA test?”

  “That’s my father’s thing,” I said. “I think that he had me do one of those cotton swab tests. He has the results.”

  “Well, a haplogroup is just a name of the group of genes that you inherited from your parents. Your father can show you your results. Over dinner.” So he had heard after all. “Since the 2000s most people do DNA tests to find out where their family originated.” He displayed a chart. “You know that homo sapiens originated in Africa. Therefore, every human on Earth descended from one woman in Africa.”

  The chart was shaped like a tree with a trunk labeled L0-Eve.


  “If she’s Eve,” I interjected, “why is she L0? Not A0? Or even B0? Is it L0 because of Lucy?”

  “Lucy was not in the homo sapiens species,” he said. “The labels were assigned in the order that the homo sapiens gene groups were discovered.” He clicked on the trunk of the displayed tree and highlighted two branches.

  “Then let me guess. They started in Europe. And then, oops! Discovered that L0 was actually the oldest.”

  I think he chuckled even though he hid it well. “No, but it doesn’t matter. L is a letter as good as any other. As my last paper indicates, I can give the memories of anyone on this line, say the L1b mutation to another person with that same mutation.”

  “Helene said that you were ready for human trials,” I said.

  “That paper was written two years ago,” he said. “Those trials have been done.”

  I sat back down on a nearby stool and stared at him. “So when you said that you could give my knowledge of German to my kids, you meant now. Not, maybe after additional study.”

  “Yes, now.”

  “Then what are you working on now?”

  There was a clatter in one of the darkened areas of the lab. I watched lights spring to life at the far end. Dr. Walker waved briefly. “That would be Victor. He cleans this floor.”

  “One of the janitors said that you had your own man for this floor,” I said.

  “Yes, well,” he paused. “It’s better when the team is deep in development that they aren’t disturbed by the cleaning staff.” He looked back at the screen. “You asked what I was working on now.”

  I nodded even as I noted his odd sidestep about requesting one particular person to clean his floor.

  “You’re African-American. Your primary haplogroup is probably one of the first branches of the L0 group.” He expanded one of the tree branches on the display. “If it were L1b, I could certainly give your memory to another one with that haplogroup. Right now, the team is verifying that it is true for every mutation down the line: L1b1a, L1b1a1’4, L1b1a4 and so on.”

  “Why?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why is that important?”

  “Because you’re right. Passing your knowledge of German down to your descendants is not commercial. But everyone on Earth is a descendent of L0. If I could give your knowledge of German to anyone that would be commercial.”

  I felt cold and suddenly sick. “Does QND have a company ethicist?”

  “What?”

  “Ever since Henrietta Lacks, I thought that every pharmaceutical company had some type of ethicist or lawyer or someone to vet their work.”

  “QND was not set up like a normal pharmaceutical company, but I’m certain that we have lawyers. However, I don’t see the problem.”

  “Shit.” I rubbed my temples, remembered my makeup belatedly, stared at the traces of mahogany foundation on my fingers, then looked up at him.

  “Can you separate my memory of learning to drive, or German, or walking into this building this evening from anything else I know?”

  “Not as yet,” he said cautiously.

  “I didn’t think so. And if I agreed to sell you my German, how much are you going to pay for the other stuffs? Learning to drive, the memory of my mother’s death, My first sexual experience? Because I sure as hell am not going to give you those for free!” I kept my voice low, aware of the figure moving around at the other end of the long room. “My memories are me after all. You’re proposing to sell me.”

  Desmond Walker’s jaw was tight as he turned and closed down the screen display. “So you will close down the project,” he said.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I’m going home to have dinner with my Dad over a video screen.” I stood up. “I’ll even ask him my haplogroup as you suggested. I need to think what to do.”

  * * *

  “…And all of that history was sand. Easy to sweep away and ignore by the next generation.”

  “What?” I looked up from my plate where, deep in thought, I had been pushing a meatball around the swirls of red sauce.

  “Oh, so you are still with me,” my father said. “I wondered if you had rigged up a video loop like one of those crime capers that your mother loved.”

  I stared up at him. Thanks to my new video screen, it looked as if I had punched a hole in the kitchen wall into a neighbor’s opulent bedroom. My father was centered in the window, but behind him hung a tapestry of an improbable frieze of two women in flamenco outfits standing in a plaza surrounded by market vegetables. It had taken two years, but he could finally mention my mother without his normally rich voice wavering like a mourning blues melody. He stood out from his lavish surrounding, a slim dark man with grey hair cut as short as it had been during his army days. He was dressed in a black polo shirt and khakis.

  “Are you still mulling over that decision that you needed to make at work?” he asked.

  Smiling, I touched two fingers over my mouth.

  “Yes, I know you can’t talk about work. But I saw something about your company on the news this evening. QND is GMO-ing mosquitoes. That isn’t your project, I hope?”

  “No, but—” I decided to give into my curiosity. “What did they say?”

  “Depends on who you listen to. Some say QND is releasing a genetic menace; some say that the company is a social justice warrior promoting a project that benefits Africans more than Americans.”

  I shook my head as I pushed my plate away. “There will be a formal press conference later; but no, that’s not my project. I did hear most of what you said earlier. You found Josiah Toil. You talked about the buildings that he probably worked on. You said that you had reached a dead end. What does that have to do with history written on sand?”

  A smile split his face and he laughed. “My multi-tasking daughter!”

  Joining his smile, I got up and tossed the remains of my take-out dinner. The meal had been a little too good. I would have to hit the gym the next day. “Well?” I asked.

  “Josiah had three daughters and two sons. The oldest son died in a Jim Crow prison.” My father frowned. “The girls just disappeared after adulthood. Do me a favor and don’t change your name when you get married.” I ignored the prompt and he continued. “You women are hard to find after marriage. I wish that Elene had insisted that we hyphenate our surnames. She had no brothers. So as far as I know, you’re the last of the Tolliver line.”

  “Is that why you asked me to do the DNA test?” I leaned against the granite counter and poured myself a shot of sparkling water.

  “Part of the reason. The gene company tries to find matches for you. The Toil genes passed to you from me and the Tolliver genes passed to you along the matriarchal line.”

  “And all the way back to Eve,” I mused aloud.

  Dad raised an eyebrow that the video caught perfectly, and I grinned.

  “One of my coworkers tried to give me a genetics lesson today. He said that some genes go back to the first human woman, Eve.” I bowed elaborately. “Where do the Tollivers hail from? My coworker said that DNA tests tell you what country you originate from.”

  “Oh, you are old, Candace,” my father said. Reaching behind himself, he pulled a laptop from beneath papers and flyers stacked on the bed. “Haplogroup L1c”

  My hands tightened on the glass. I had not expected to get my question answered so easily.

  “From central Africa around Chad, the Congo, or Rwanda. Home of the original humans.” He looked up. “Sorry, that’s still a wide area. That’s where your shortness comes from. You were right to blame your mother’s genes for that. I can send you the results if you want.”

  “Send it on.” My own laptop was still in my briefcase. “And the sands of history?”

  “Candace, I was just trying to wake you out of your funk,” he protested. I watched him pour a sliver of bourbon into a shot glass. I insisted on an answer.

  He looked away, sipped his drink once, twice and then looked back at me. “I hit a wall; this alw
ays happens. Josiah Toil was just a Black laborer, so his work wasn’t recorded. Every generation,” he paused, “like Black Wall Street, like all of the Black towns after the Civil War, like the Black miners at Matewan.”

  “We know all of that,” I said quietly.

  “No, we rediscovered all of that. It gets wiped away and then two generations later people say ‘we were kings and queens in Africa’. Well, sure. But we were city planners, architects, engineers, bricklayers, and professors here in America.”

  “And Army officers,” I said.

  He chuckled. I was glad to hear real laughter after his bitter tirade.

  “You can help me with a puzzle at work,” I added. “Why would someone insist on his own cleaning staff for a lab? He says he’s afraid the normal staff would disturb his team.”

  “And you don’t think that that’s enough? Is he afraid that his work would be stolen?”

  “The guys that I met worship the ground he walks on.”

  “Does QND have a policy against hiring relatives?”

  “Sort of. They don’t want spouses or relatives to have to do performance reviews on each other. But I think the cleaning staff are contractors.”

  “You can ask, you know.”

  “I doubt the guy who runs the lab—”

  “No, the janitor. I doubt that your guy thought to swear his janitor to secrecy. He’s probably proud of the job. Ask him.”

  Lifting my glass, I toasted my father.

  * * *

  “What’s a parian?” I ask tossing myself into a chair in Desmond Walker’s office two days later. Not for the first time I wondered why a project leader had an office with a door that closed while I had a cubicle. Open door policy, Lloyd had said.

  Desmond Walker made an elaborate point of putting his keyboard to bed and turned to me. “I think you know that it means godfather. Victor called me after you talked to him. He was worried that he’d done something wrong.”