Dominion
Page 14
I stood up full of nervous energy. Suddenly aware that I was patterning myself on Lloyd, I stopped and gripped the back of the visitor chair. “I’m not asking you to stop your research. Eventually, it will occur to them that if you could share across one close genetic group, you should be able to do so with others more distantly related. They will remember that we are one human family.” I took a breath. “When that happens, I want standards in place for such sharing. And remuneration for the memory donor.”
“It sounds like you have a donor in mind.”
“I considered asking you. Or Victor. But your memories belong to your children. I’m proposing that you give my memory—my ability to speak German—to Victor. He would be the more dramatic demo for Lloyd.”
I saw a wave of anger mixed with—what? guilt?—cross Desmond Walker’s face. “You’re asking me to experiment on my family?”
“Victor and I are in the same haplogroup: L1c,” I said. Releasing my grip on the chair, I seated myself again. “You said that your human trials have been done. I suggested Mr. Johnston because he’s such a strong character. He would charm the board with his stories in English; he would certainly do so in German. But, if you have another subject I will accept that. Mind you, I want to meet the person that you propose to give my memories to before you do that. There are other options.” I paused and ticked them off for him.
“Second: if you tell me that you are ready now or even next week to transfer a L1c haplogroup memory to an IJ haplogroup subject, I would jump at that.” I saw his surprise at my naming one of the European haplogroups. Yes, Doctor Walker, I did my homework, I told him silently. “Third: if you want me to go to Lloyd and tell him to give us two years and we will have that same demo for him, I’ll do that.”
“You don’t think that he’d wait,” Dr Walker said.
“No, I don’t,” I said.
“When do you want a decision?”
“By the end of the week,” I said. “That will give me time to float the idea with a lawyer and discuss what type of protection we can offer the initial subject.” I saw the word ‘protection’ enter Walker’s consciousness and wondered what machinations had been needed to have QND hire Victor Johnston directly.
✦✦✦
I didn’t ask. Four weeks later, I watched with others in the lab building as Victor Johnston regaled that board member with his memories second-lining with his krewe on Mardi Gras morning. His German was as colloquial as a native teenager. Standing in the back of the meeting room, I clutched the legal documents that would guarantee Victor a position until he retired and a pension afterwards. As the memory donor, I had only insisted that the memories attached to my genes be given to no other person. I have frozen that moment in my mind: Victor regaling the board members after the formal test was completed, Lloyd smiling and nodding his head at my success, and Desmond Walker carefully defining the current commercial opportunities of his work and emphasizing the future possibilities.
I don’t know where Victor Johnston is now. Eventually, he tired of being a guinea pig; he tired of having that “bougie Black girl”, as he called me, in his head. No use explaining that I could not be extracted. He disappeared and Dr. Walker would not tell me where his godfather had moved. I could have queried human resources and found out where his checks were directed but I respected his wishes. I moved on; I listened to my father and started to date again. The Toil and Toliver family chart is waiting for another entry. I may be the last generation to pass down my story the old-fashioned way.
CONVERGENCE IN CHORUS ARCHITECTURE
DARE SEGUN FALOWO
ONE
I
STRUCK
In escape from sword and fire of war, Osupa was born.
Osupa was the sixty-something members of various tribes that had escaped from war in the city of Ile-Ife. Osupa was the land on which they survived and thrived. Osupa was the perfect rectangle on which stood fourteen circular huts made of solid sunbaked mud, all roofed with dense layers of dried banana leaves.
At the center of Osupa was a shrine—a large box of mud with a roof of thatch, supported inside with the trunks of many young trees. This was where the Awo Meta (Fatona, Fagbeja and Awojobi) lived. The mud walls of the square hut were covered in chalk drawings of the moon and three orisha: Esu, Orunmila and Obatala, each bearing in their arm the object depicting their role in the machine of the oracle of Ifa. The oracle itself was not depicted, because you would meet it if you walked into the shrine.
They had found the smooth hard land of Osupa hidden behind a wall of trees and bushes full of thorns in which babies cried under the glare of a full moon, the bombs and fires kissing the sky behind them. It was Ifa who led them to Osupa. It was Ifa who spoke guttural through the throats and saw through the eyes of the Awo Meta. The people followed their calls and the sway of their white garb and pointed staves through the night and into the teeth of the forest until they found the flatland which seemed to have been prepared, waiting for them. The Awo Meta stuck their staffs into the earth at the center of the space and called it Osupa, the moon.
As a sacrifice, the people of Osupa dug out a square for the shrine of Ifa that night before they all went to sleep, but the Awo Meta and stayed awake, enchanting and drawing a ring of aabo (protective light) around the land that they had claimed. This made them invisible to the eyes of the demons, mercenaries and blood-drunk soldiers who would wander out of Ife in search of slaves and fresh kills.
In the morning, the Awo Meta showed the men—whose numbers were half that of the women—the breadth of the land, where the farm should lay and where the kitchen shed should stand. The men got to work cutting down branches and thatch to begin building. Outside the ring of light was a lake abundant with mud and from this lake the women collected mud in the large open gourds that once held their clothes and other personal objects.
While the people worked on their new houses, they forgot to mourn their dead; but after they had finished building their houses and the shrines, there was a loud weeping across Osupa by wives who had lost husbands and husbands who had lost wives and mothers who had lost children and children who had lost innocence.
The Awo Meta began to call meetings inside the shrine every seven days, teaching the people of Osupa songs of farewell to the dead, songs of healing and songs for the moon. And when the people sang these songs, the great sound of their hearts rose out of their mouths and travelled through the black night, seeming to touch the starry firmament above.
Osupa grew into its rhythm with the passage of three full moons. The widows found new husbands and sisters, and the widowers found new wives and brothers. The children were adopted by those who fell in love with them. There was bush rat and corn and yam and pepper and salt, and it wasn’t rare to see the entire settlement of Osupa gather around fires to feast and dance and offer praise to Ifa and Olodumare for their survival. The aabo held strong and the war became like a bad dream that faded under the warm touch of a lover. Everything was going well. The people were in peace. The oracle and the three babalawos were joyous with their home and shrine.
Until Fagbeja threw cowries that flashed purple and filled the shrine with black smoke.
Until the storm came.
✦✦✦
The Awo Meta did not tell the people of Osupa about the coming tempest. Instead, they told them that Olodumare was coming to visit. They made the people wear white and smear the blood of wild duck across their foreheads and thresholds, and then they made the people sing to Olodumare, the Fount and Cradle of All.
The Awo Meta partially believed their own lie and guessed the tempest to be the coming of a lesser orisha to cleanse their land through rain and flood. That night, enormous bulbous clouds rose black in the west, bleeding purple lightning and cold winds that made the forest howl. The people of Osupa curled up in their huts and prayed to Olodumare as the rain began.
✦✦✦
The storm quieted just as dawn b
roke. Everything was heavy and wet. The water had risen to their knees and broken into their huts, lifting clothes and baskets of food and foundering the roof of the kitchen shed. Some huts, uprooted by the storm, lay half crumbled a distance from the line in which the other huts stood.
The people of Osupa began to fish for their belongings in the water. The shrine was unperturbed. Awojobi, the oldest of the babalawos—tall, with long hair plaited all back to his neck, and eyes laced with venom and kohl—called all the youth together and charged them to go check the damage to the farm. The older men set about rebuilding the broken huts. The Awo Meta prepared to cast a new aabo, the old one having been broken by the storm.
The clouds that had brought the storm remained heavy in the sky, casting their shadows over Osupa.
✦✦✦
There were about twenty young men and women in Osupa. Most of them were orphans who had found new parents.
The quietest of these orphans was a young man named Akanbi. Wherever he went, he always wore on his head a gold and green abeti aja given to him by his father. It was woven with a rare heavy thread that made it stand firm.
Akanbi led the party of youth towards the edge of Osupa where the farm lay. Immediately behind him, walking side by side, were Gbolahan and Gbemisola Olohun, the twins with voices like heavenly trumpets. The rest of the youth were a distance behind, carrying baskets and hoes. But for those bonded by shared loss, no one spoke to each other. The only thing that brought them all together were the nights of praise when crop was abundant.
Akanbi stopped at the edge of the farm. The farmland by the slope was submerged by the lake which had burst its banks, so that only the tips of ripe corn poked above the still water like lumps of tangled light.
“Olodumare is angry at us for escaping our fate in the war.” Gbolahan Olohun was melancholic in a way that only one possessed of so much beauty could be. “We are lucky nobody died,” his twin sister said. “I think what the Awo told us to do helped. The duck’s blood…we are safe. Thank our Fathers and Mothers Past.” The remainder of the party arrived and gasped at the sight before them. Some swore under their breath against the orisha and Olodumare.
“Bring me baskets,” Akanbi said. “And any one of you who can swim follow me, please.” His voice was surprisingly deep for one so small and shy-eyed. He was ridiculously polite and told great stories about orisha and elemi, the spiritseen, punctuating the most fantastical and horrid episodes with a coy smile and a twinkle in his eye, swearing he knew because he came from a family with an ancestral braid that led back to Orunmila.
Akanbi took the basket and walked into the farm, slipping under the water with a silent splash, the basket trailing the surface like a ritual boat. Three other swimmers followed after him. Gbemisola could swim. Gbolahan could not and harbored the secret thought that his death would be by drowning. He stood at the edge of the farm with the others. Beside him, two girls spoke excitedly about the rage of the storm and the power of orisha.
It began to sprinkle light rain. The swimmers broke the surface near the middle of a row of cornstalks.
The storm clouds drifted, growing and stuttering, all lightning with no thunder.
✦✦✦
The baskets slowly filled with wet cobs of corn and big red peppers. The swimmers drifted languorously through the submerged farm, rising to take breaths before sinking back into the underworld of water and wavering green stalk. Above, the morning light from the side of the sky not shaded by the storm clouds was milky, and nearly non-existent beneath the surface, but it was clear enough to see and pluck the softened harvest.
The storm clouds leaned into the morning even more and rumbled with new thunder. The boys and girls on shore began to call to the swimmers to return, feeling the drizzle was about to intensify.
The light grew dim and the air became cold again like it did the night before. The four swimmers began to approach the shore with three full baskets between them, kicking their legs and supporting the baskets with one arm while paddling with the other. The storm continued to roil, eating up the rest of the dawn without letting loose.
Lightning flashed and for a moment, everything seemed made from white stone. The returning thunder caused the earth to tremble and made most of them duck against their will. Gbolahan Olohun called on his sister to be faster. They still had to walk up the slippery underwater slope to set the baskets down before they could come out completely.
Two of the swimmers, tall brothers who lived close to the River Osun before the war, came out first. Akanbi and Gbemisola waited in the water to support the baskets from sinking. The brothers stood on solid ground just as the patter of light rain stopped. The remaining light took on an electric texture and the youth on the shore of the drowned farm wondered if their skins were glowing in the night that the clouds had brought.
A fork of lightning fell onto Osupa from above, pure and effervescent. The reporting thunder shook the earth deeper and all those standing fell to the ground, shivering from the sound. The baskets and the swimmers holding them slid back to the bottom of the farm.
Witnesses say they saw slow lightning touch the heads of Akanbi and Gbemisola Olohun with small bright hands.
✦✦✦
They carried the lightning-struck and the dripping harvest to the village, running without a sound to conserve energy. Gbemisola’s and Akanbi’s bodies were limp and their eyes were rolled back to reveal only the white. The swimmer brothers and Gbolahan carried them into the shrine before the Awo Meta who were deep in a singular act of divination. The flat wooden tray before the babalawo was covered in fine white sand in which single or twin marks that told of many futures lay in vertical rows. They sat at its angles with their bodies held erect and eyes lowered.
Gbolahan was the first to shout for help, and his voice was so keen in its terror that Fagbeja and Fatona fell out of concentration. Awojobi rose to his feet in one sleek motion and was beside the tangle of bodies in a blink, asking questions. The brothers lowered the bodies of Gbemisola and Akanbi to the ground and stood back. Gbolahan shivered as he threw himself across his sister, caught between sobbing and silence.
“What happened?” Awojobi asked. Fatona and Fagbeja had recovered and were standing by his side. The three of them looked indestructible as a unit, as they had looked ever since the day they found Osupa together. Their eyes were hard as they stared at the situation before them.
“Lightning!” Gbolahan shouted to Fagbeja. “Lightning struck them while they were in the water. Aaaaah! Please help.” Fagbeja, a small but mighty man with white hair everywhere, pulled Gbolahan off Gbemisola and give him several small slaps on his wet cheek. He wiped Gbolahan’s tears with his pure white wrapper and told him to toughen up. S’ara giri!
Gbolahan swallowed the coming waves and yelled with panic, “Don’t let her die, Baba!”
Awojobi was already in a crouch, laying his long-fingered right hand across the heart and temples of the fallen ones. Fatona was just as tall as Awojobi but had no single hair on his head. He pulled the swimmer brothers aside and asked more questions about the quality of the light and the air before the incident. When they responded, his mouth dropped in bewilderment. He turned to Awojobi, who nodded in confirmation.
The rest of Osupa was already gathered around the entrances to the shrine, some peeping in and others speculating.
Their work done, the stormclouds dissolved to let the late morning sun burn away the rain that had soaked into everything.
Akanbi’s guardian, the old woman who he had clung to and helped as he ran away from the war, wormed her way into the shrine and limped towards where he lay. She put her hand to her mouth and stood as she watched Fagbeja send the people away from the entrances to pull down the white sheets of cloth that served as doors.
“What happened Baba Awojobi?” she asked quietly as she watched Fatona and Fagbeja layer mats and old cloth on the floor to make beds.
“Nothing, Iya Akanbi,�
�� Awojobi said, as he chewed a bitter root and his mouth turned dark green. “The children have just been called to see. They’re dreaming vivid.” The two babalawos lifted the limp bodies of Akanbi and Gbemisola and placed them on the two lengths of cloth.
“Dreaming?” Iya Akanbi asked.
“You won’t understand yet, Iya.” He put his hand on her shoulder and guided her towards the billowing door, where Gbolahan stood riveted, eyes on the prone body of his sister.
“Iya, tell the boys to bring us any dry firewood and oil and leaves that they can find.” She nodded, still confused, and then walked through the cloth door. Gbolahan stayed. Fatona and Fagbeja had begun to lay out strange powders in lines around the beds they had made for his sister and Akanbi.
“Go and help them find dry wood, Gbolahan.” Awojobi spat the bitterness from his mouth to the floor. “You cannot be here.”
✦✦✦
In one of the futures that the Awo Meta saw for Osupa, there was an exodus. In another, there was an expansion. They never saw the birth of two elemi, stripped of their skin by lightning, then called into the mind of Olodumare to see.
The three men, weary with worry over the fate of Akanbi and Gbemisola, walked around the fire that they had built near the heads of the dreaming ones. They had not slept all day and now the night was here. They could see the lanterns of the people of Osupa parading outside their shrine. They could hear people greet and console Gbolahan who had stayed outside since he and the boys returned with some dry thatch and wet wood.
The moon was a sliver of silver in the night above.
Fagbeja, an expert alchemist and brewer of potions, was boiling a broth, sweet and acrid, in a black pot on the fire whose warmth had managed to stop the random shivers of Akanbi and Gbemisola.