A Killing in the Sun

by Dilman Dila

  They sat in the canoe for nearly an hour. It was so silent that Obil could hear the colonel pacing on the bridge. He thought about his own boat. It had an outboard motor. He had purchased it just three months earlier using a loan. He transported passengers across the lake to the islands. He made a tidy sum every day, but he would need another two years to pay off the loan. He wondered if these soldiers would pay him. Whenever district officials hired him, they paid, not a big sum, but as much as he would have earned that day.

  The crackle of a radio broke the monotony. Obil looked up to see the Colonel had stopped pacing. He spoke into his radio. He then leaned over the balustrade and gave the lieutenant a thumbs-up.

  The lieutenant stumped out his cigarette. He opened a bag and took out three diving masks. Without a word, he gave them to the divers. He then took out underwater breathing apparatus, and gave each man a set. The other two men had obviously used the gear before. They knew how to dress up in them. One helped Obil to wear the equipment, and gave him a crash course on their usage.

  “You can swim,” the man ended. “Don’t worry too much about these things. They are just to help you breathe and see properly underwater.”

  Finally, the lieutenant gave them each a flashlight. “You can go in,” he said.

  The two men went in first. Their dives were orderly and professional. Obil hesitated. He thought the two little splashes they made were too loud. He met the lieutenant’s eyes and what he saw pushed him into the river.

  The water was surprisingly cold. His muscles tensed. For a few seconds, he could not swim. He sank to the bottom, under the weight of the gas tank on his back. Panic overcame him. He had never been afraid under water, not since he first went in with his father at the age of eight, but the strange equipment made him feel suffocated.

  He got a grip of himself just as he hit the riverbed. He held on to a tall boulder with one hand, took deep breaths until he was calm again. The mask enabled him to see in the darkness, but it gave everything a green tint. He saw the other two men had turned on their flashlights, and were scouring the riverbed.

  What are we looking for, he wondered.

  There was nothing in the water. No wreckage of vehicles. No fish. No frogs. No plants. Just rocks. It then struck him that the river was unnaturally deep. When he had last visited it, the rocks had shown through the surface. Even in the middle of the rainy season, it only swelled marginally. Now, the rocks were about thirty feet under the surface. The riverbed must have sank lower, and sucked more water from the lake. That would explain the unnatural stillness of the water. That such a phenomenon never hit the news meant the soldiers were indeed hiding something.

  But what could have caused the riverbed to suddenly sink?

  They searched the area beneath the accident spot, went round in a big circle, peered under every boulder, but still did not find anything. Then the two men led the way downstream, though it did not make sense to Obil. The nearly motionless waters could not move a blade of grass. There was no reason for the vehicles to be far away from the bridge.

  After thirty minutes of searching in vain, they went back to the canoe, and instead found an army yacht. It had three machine guns and artillery on the deck. There were soldiers in yellow spotted uniforms behind the guns. The lieutenant, the colonel, and a bald man in civilian clothes, stood beside one gun. The civilian wore a dark suit that concealed his short and stout structure.

  “This is duck shit,” Obil said as he climbed onto the deck. He tore off the mask and the breathing apparatus. “There was no accident.”

  “Shut up,” the lieutenant said.

  “What did you see?” the colonel said.

  Rocks, Obil wanted to say. “Nothing, afande,” he said.

  “Nothing?”

  “We didn’t see the vehicles,” Obil said. Then he looked at the other divers and asked, “Were we supposed to be looking for vehicles?”

  The other two divers nodded in unison.

  “We saw no traces of the cars,” one of them said. “Not even of the passengers.”

  “Nothing?” the civilian said, frowning. His eyes bore deep into their sockets. To Obil, he jerked about like a puppet as if the puppeteer had accidentally touched a string. He tore a notebook from his pocket and drew a line on a page. His hands trembled. “This is the bridge,” he said. “This is where the accident occurred.” He put a star in the middle of the line. “Now, where did you search?” he stuck the book in Obil’s face.

  Obil scratched a circle around the star. “Here,” he said. “It’s the only logical place to search. If the cars crashed in from here,” he placed the nib on the star, “then they have to be somewhere here.” He drew another circle to stress the area he had already drawn. “The vehicles couldn’t have moved anywhere. The river is stationary like a lake of mud.”

  The civilian snatched the book from Obil and glowered at the page. His eyes darted from the book to the bridge, the frown deepened. His eyes seemed to disappear under the shadows of his brows.

  “Where did they take the vehicles?” the colonel said. Obil discerned panic in his voice.

  “Who?” Obil said. He felt very thirsty, his mouth so dry that his tongue crackled like a dead leaf. “Who took the vehicles?”

  No one replied to him.

  “What are you hiding under the bridge?”

  Only the lieutenant seemed to have heard. “Shut your mouth,” he said, and blew chunks of smoke at Obil

  “Go search there,” the civilian said, pointing to the western bank of the river, right under the bridge.

  “But Afande,” Obil said. “If the vehicles crashed in from the middle, how could they move thirty meters over huge boulders to the banks?”

  “Just go and search,” the civilian said.

  Obil turned to the colonel. “Afande,” he said. “There is something you aren’t telling us. We need to know –”

  A gun cut him short. The lieutenant put the barrel on his temple.

  “One more word,” the lieutenant growled. The safety clicked off. “Just say one more word.”

  “Leave him alone,” the civilian said. “You can ask questions, but you won’t get any answers now. First, find the vehicles.”

  Obil felt the gun leave his skin. He heard the safety click on.

  “What are you waiting for?” the colonel said.

  The other two men dove in. This time, even though he was trembling inside, Obil dove like the expert he was.

  He tried to concentrate on the search. He thought if he did exactly as they told him, he would return home alive. He would wear his new clothes on Christmas and take Amito to dance in the city. That, however, did not take away his fears. They had told him to search, but they had not told him what exactly to search for. The vehicles? What if he stumbled onto some military secret, would they not ensure he never tells anyone? They would kill him. He would never wear his new clothes. He would never propose to Amito.

  Unless he escaped. He could swim under water, up the river to the lake. He could easily steal a boat in the night from one of the many nameless fish markets on the shore, and speed away into Tanzania. They would never find him there.

  He could make it.

  It might mean losing Amito forever. She loved him. She wanted to be with him. If he ran to Tanzania, he might have to forget her. He would try to send word to her so she could join him, but if the soldiers intercepted that message… But if he stayed, the soldiers would surely kill him to protect their secret. He had to go.

  He swam fast upstream.

  Just as he passed under the bridge, the flashlights of the other two men fell on a metal. They were near the western bank, right under the bridge, where the civilian had told them to search. Obil swam to them, until he was close enough to make out a bus and two vans. According to the witnesses, all three vehicles had fallen in at a particular spot. The first vehicle, the bus or the pick-up, depending on the witness, tore the steel and concrete guardrails and the others followed through the s
ame gap. They should have been in a mangled heap on the riverbed, not in a perfect queue as though parked in a garage.

  As he swam around the vehicles, more questions troubled him. How did the civilian know where the vehicles would be? Who was that civilian?

  The bus bore no evidence of an accident. No dents, no broken windows, no broken lights, nothing dented. It had come to a stop in the riverbed as it would have done by the roadside to drop off a passenger. He swam in through an open window. No corpses. No passenger luggage. No evidence that humans once traveled in it. He searched the two commuter taxis, but it was a similar case. There was no mess. Not even the bits of debris passengers often discarded.

  They scoured the area around the vehicles, looking under every rock, and still found no evidence of the passengers.

  The two men, with gestures, indicated that they were giving up. They returned to the yacht. Obil watched them swim back downstream. He could guess what the civilian would tell them, once he heard about the find. ‘Go search this place,’ and once they searched that place, they would certainly find something. But what? The bodies?

  What if they saw something that the army did not want them to ever talk about again?

  Obil turned off his flashlight and swam fast upstream, using the night vision feature of his mask. It was blurry, the green disorienting, but it enabled him to avoid the boulders. Aruri landing site was about five miles away, at the source of the river. He could easily steal a boat from there in the middle of the night, and flee across the lake to Tanzania. If he kept close to the riverbed, the soldiers on the banks would never see him. He had enough oxygen to keep submerged for many miles. In any case, by the time he ran out of gas, he would be very far from the bridge.

  He had gone about a mile upstream when he came upon a cylindrical rock. It reminded him of a pillar he once saw in a picture of an ancient Greek temple. It was seven feet high. He swam to it, and saw that a design of strange flowers and fish was carved on it. It could not have been the work of nature. At its foot sat a circular rock, smooth and flat, about four feet in diameter, a teddy bear stuck underneath. Some witnesses had spoken of a girl and a teddy bear in a truck. He turned on his flashlight, and searched the surrounding area, but did not see the truck.

  He did not want to know what the two stones stood for, why they were set in the middle of the river. If he did, he could unravel the mystery. But his life was already in danger. Certainly, by this time, they had noticed his escape. By running away, he had brought the wrath of the army upon his head. The soldiers on the banks were probably already running about in a frenzy, searching for him. Maybe the helicopters he had seen grounded earlier were now airborne, darting over the water’s surface. Maybe they would fire canons into the river to force him out. They would hunt him for the rest of his life. But if he unraveled the mystery, he might use the knowledge to bargain for his life. If they caught him, he could claim that he was not running away. That something caught his attention and he went on his own to investigate. Maybe they would buy the ruse and thank him for using his own initiative.

  He grabbed the teddy bear by one ear and gave it a tug. The circular stone moved a little. He pulled harder. The rock moved again. A hole appeared under the stone. When he pulled a third time, he met resistance. Something in the hole pulled back. He let go of the teddy bear and it sank into the hole. The stone slid away, uncovering a pair of eyes. Yellow eyes. They were not exactly eyes, just two bright shining yellow discs staring up at him.

  In a panic, Obil turned to flee. He could not get away. The thing grabbed his legs. Its skin was cold and scaly, like fish. It had human arms, but with umpteen very long fingers. They coiled around him like snakes, and pulled him into the hole. He sank into a large cave. And there he saw the truck, but it could not be a real truck for it was transparent. The thing ripped off his mask. He could not see anymore. He felt it grab the breathing apparatus. In spite of his panic, he took a long breath such that when it tore the equipment off his nose, he was ready.

  The thing dragged him a short distance, and then shoved him against a wall. It wrapped something around his body. He felt like a giant snake had trapped him. He could not move his arms or legs. It made him lie supine. Minutes passed. He could not hold his breath any longer. He let go. Water rushed into his mouth, into his lugs, he struggled. Then something long and spongy was shoved into his nostrils, down into his lungs, and he could breathe again. His lungs were full of water, but he was not drowning.

  Someone struck a match. It burned bright. He puzzled, for fire and water could not mix. But here was a match burning in the water. Or what looked like a match. It never went out. Behind it was a man. He was stark naked and had an unkempt beard. His eyes were bright yellow discs. His hands ended in a mess of creepy, long fingers, one of which held the match. His toes were webbed. Obil closed his eyes. He thought it was all a nightmare. All he had to do was wake up, and the monster would be gone, but when he opened his eyes again, there it still was. It held a tiny creature that looked like a catfish in one finger. It shoved the catfish into Obil’s mouth.

  Obil fought back. He clamped his teeth, but the fish forced its way down his throat. He screamed into the water.

  The monsterman swam away. As it went down the cave, Obil saw people lying in rows on the floor, tied up in giant green ropes. They were all stark naked. Like the monster man, they had umpteen fingers and webbed toes. They seemed to be sleeping. Something pumped inside their bellies like a second heart. Their chests rose and fell steadily, bubbles escaped from their mouths and noses with each breath they took. Floating beneath the roof of the cave was luggage. He took that to be the passengers’ luggage. They floated in little groups – bags alone, clothes alone, purses alone, shoes alone, even coins had their own little pile. He noticed one odd pile of diving gear and army uniforms. The army divers had ended up in this cave.

  Then the light went out and Obil sank into a dreamless sleep.

  When he woke up, he at once became aware of the metamorphosis that had occurred to him. He had a dozen fingers in each hand, a dozen webbed toes in each foot. He could see in the darkness, but his vision was yellow and blurry. He could not tell the difference between rocks and the people he had seen lying on the floor, but he could hear them. He at first thought he was hearing the chaotic chatter of conversations in a market. Yet he was under water.

  We are inside your head and you are inside ours, somebody said that to him. It was a complex sort of telepathy that involved the same mind in different bodies. They had access to his brain, and to his soul, just as he had access to theirs. They had the same consciousness. He knew each of their histories, right from their respective births. They knew his history too, even things that he thought he did not know about, like his birth in a canoe as his parents rushed to a maternity clinic on the mainland. They knew that he was an expert swimmer at the age of four and a professional diver by the age of eight. They knew about his new clothes, and about Amito.

  He was conscious of other memories too, of a strange world with a yellow sky, that had no sun, no moon, or land. A water world with only one kind of creature, that looked like catfish, whose reckless activities had caused apocalyptic evaporation. He had memories of travelling through the stars with six siblings in a vessel that looked like a cylindrical stone, in search of a new home, with hundreds of eggs waiting to hatch, and finding this world. Finding his home. As a survival strategy, they had to develop an endosymbiotic relationship with the species they found in the new world, and especially with the dominant species. Humans. These memories and histories did not make sense.

  “What did you find?” a voice asked. He knew that voice. The civilian.

  He looked around, wondering if the man was in the cave. But how could he be audible under water?

  “Nothing,” another voice said. He knew that voice too. One of the other divers. “We did not see the cave.”

  Obil understood what was happening. The catfish was listening to the conversation in the
yacht. It had an omnipresent ability. He became aware of the angry truck drivers five miles away shouting at the soldiers to open the road so they could go home. He became aware of the frenzy on the river banks. There were soldiers on every inch of the river, all the way to Aruri, poking the water, searching for him. Helicopters darted about. Boat loads of kichwa red zoomed up and down the river. He ignored all these happenings, and focused on the conversation that mattered most to his survival.

  “The cave has to be there,” the civilian was saying. “It has to be.”

  Obil felt the divers looking at each other. He could feel the fear in their blood.

  “Where are they keeping the bodies?” the colonel asked.

  “Who is keeping the bodies?” the diver asked.

  “We should pull out those vehicles and see what we can find,” the civilian said.

  “What do they want with the bodies?” the colonel asked.

  “Who knows,” the civilian said.

  “We should bomb the river,” the colonel said.

  “Maybe that’s what the Americans will do,” the civilian said. “They are coming tonight. I’m done here.”

  Obil went into protective mode. If they bombed the river, it would destroy him. Them. They had to move. The seven creatures, the size of full grown catfish, could fit in the cylindrical space vessel and fly away to safety, but the hundred or so human beings they had transformed could not. They would have to swim upstream, keeping to the bottom of the river to avoid detection, and hide in the lake. It was so deep that they could safely hide at the bottom until the time was right to establish peaceful contact with their new neighbors.

  Obil wanted to cry. He would never wear his new clothes again, or propose to Amito. His memories of her, his dreams of a future with her, mingled with the a hundred other memories of loved ones, with a hundred other broken dreams. He could not cry. He felt relief for he had escaped death in the evaporated world. He dreamt of a new life at the bottom of the lake, this was his home now.