Midnight Robber

by Nalo Hopkinson

  UNIVERSAL ACCLAIM FOR AN AMAZING NEW TALENT

  NALO HOPKINSON

  Winner of the Aspect First Novel Contest

  Finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award

  MIDNIGHT ROBBER

  “It’s been many a day since I’ve read anything so bursting with robust, inventive energy and singing language . . . a wonderful job.”

  —Suzy McKee Charnas, author of Walk to the End of the World

  “A lovely novel and a rousing adventure, with a unique setting and complex, intriguing characters.”

  —Vonda McIntyre, author of The Moon and the Sun

  “Transports you not only to a different world, but to a different way of looking at the world. This is what SF is supposed to be and so often isn’t: provocative, intelligent, original.”

  —Delia Sherman, author of Through a Brazen Mirror

  “In rich and vibrant language, Hopkinson tells a universal tale of a young woman’s struggle to reclaim her life from dark forces.”

  —Candas Jane Dorsey, author of Black Wine

  BROWN GIRL IN THE RING

  “An impressive debut precisely because of Hopkinson’s fresh viewpoint.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Simply triumphant.”

  —Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina

  “Fusing Afro-Caribbean soul and speech in an intriguing landscape of spirits . . . a terrifying battle between good and evil.”

  —Black Issues Book Review

  “A wonderful sense of narrative and a finely tuned ear for dialogue . . . balances a well-crafted and imaginative story with incisive social critique and a vivid sense of place.”

  —Emerge

  “A parable of black feminist self-reliance, couched in poetic language and the structural conventions of classic SF.”

  —Village Voice

  “Splendid. . . . Superbly plotted and redolent of the rhythms of Afro-Caribbean speech.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A book to remember.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Active, eventful . . . a success.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Rich and rewarding . . . one of the best debut novels in years.”

  —Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

  “Unique . . . elements of SF, fantasy, and horror blended into a story as hot as a pot of Pickapeppa sauce.”

  —Halifax Daily News

  “Stunning novel . . . gets into the nitty-gritty of some tough urban issues.”

  —Ottawa Citizen

  “Highly imaginative and masterfully plotted.”

  —African American Literary Book Club

  “Wonderful . . . magically delightful and grimly violent and frightening.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Grateful acknowledgment is given to David Findlay for permission to reprint his poem “Stolen” © 1997 by David Findlay.

  MIDNIGHT ROBBER. Copyright © 2000 by Nalo Hopkinson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  For information address Warner Books, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

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  A Time Warner Company

  ISBN 0-7595-8202-5

  A trade paperback edition of this book was published in 2000 by Warner Books.

  First eBook edition: March 2001

  Visit our Web site at www.iPublish.com

  Stolen

  I stole the torturer’s tongue

  it’s the first side of me some see

  the first line you hear

  first line of defense when I say

  “See this long tongue illicitly acquired—doesn’t it suit me well?

  hear these long words assiduously applied—

  don’t I wield them well?

  wouldn’t you be foolish if you tried to tackle me in anything so complex as a kiss or a conversation?”

  I stole the torturer’s tongue!

  hear this long tongue!

  feel this long tongue!

  this tongue sometimes my only tool not mine entirely but what is?

  I was raised protectively of/as/by other peoples’ property—I got over that

  this tongue is yours too if you can take it

  I stole the torturer’s tongue!

  man wouldn’t recognize this dancing, twining, retrained flesh

  if it slapped upside the empty space in him head—

  it will, it has; he’ll pay for the pleasure;

  watch him try an’ claim as his own this long, strong old tongue’s

  new-remembered rhythms. . . .

  hear this long tongue!

  fear this long tongue!

  know this tall tale to be mine too, and I’ll live or die by it.

  I stole the torturer’s tongue!

  © 1997 by David Findlay

  Oho. Like it starting, oui? Don’t be frightened, sweetness; is for the best. I go be with you the whole time. Trust me and let me distract you little bit with one anasi story:

  It had a woman, you see, a strong, hard-back woman with skin like cocoa-tea. She two foot-them tough from hiking through the diable bush, the devil bush on the prison planet of New Half-Way Tree. When she walk, she foot strike the hard earth bup! like breadfruit dropping to the ground. She two arms hard with muscle from all the years of hacking paths through the diable bush on New Half-Way Tree. Even she hair itself rough and wiry; long black knotty locks springing from she scalp and corkscrewing all the way down she back. She name Tan-Tan, and New Half-Way Tree was she planet.

  Yes, this was a hard woman, oui. The only thing soft about Tan-Tan is she big, molasses-brown eyes that could look on you, and your heart would start to beat time boobaloops with every flutter of she long eyelashes. One look in she eyes, and you fall for she already. She had a way to screw them up small-small like if she angry, just so nobody wouldn’t get lost in the melting brown of them, but it never work, you hear? Once this woman eyes hold you, it ain’t have no other woman in the world for you. From Garvey-prime to Douglass sector, from Toussaint through the dimension veils to New Half-Way Tree, she leave a trail of sad, lonely men—and women too, oui?—who would weep for days if you only make the mistake and say the words “brown eyes.”

  But wait—you mean you never hear of New Half-Way Tree, the planet of the lost people? You never wonder where them all does go, the drifters, the ragamuffins-them, the ones who think the world must be have something better for them, if them could only find which part it is? You never wonder is where we send the thieves-them, and the murderers? Well master, the Nation Worlds does ship them all to New Half-Way Tree, the mirror planet of Toussaint. Yes, man; on the next side of a dimension veil. New Half-Way Tree, it look a little bit like this Toussaint planet where I living: same clouds in the high, high mountains; same sunny bays; same green, rich valleys. But where Toussaint civilized, New Half-Way Tree does be rough. You know how a thing and the shadow of that thing could be in almost the same place together? You know the way a shadow is a dark version of the real thing, the dub side? Well, New Half-Way Tree is a dub version of Toussaint, hanging like a ripe maami apple in one fold of a dimension veil. New Half-Way Tree is how Toussaint planet did look before the Marryshow Corporation sink them Earth Engine
Number 127 down into it like God entering he woman; plunging into the womb of soil to impregnate the planet with the seed of Granny Nanny. New Half-Way Tree is the place for the restless people. On New Half-Way Tree, the mongoose still run wild, the diable bush still got poison thorns, and the mako jumbie bird does still stalk through the bush, head higher than any house. I could tell you, you know; I see both places for myself. How? Well, maybe I find a way to come through the one-way veil to bring you a story, nuh? Maybe I is a master weaver. I spin the threads. I twist warp ’cross weft. I move my shuttle in and out, and smooth smooth, I weaving you my story, oui? And when I done, I shake it out and turn it over swips! and maybe you see it have a next side to the tale. Maybe is same way so I weave my way through the dimensions to land up here. No, don’t ask me how.

  New Half-Way Tree is where Tan-Tan end up, and crick-crack, this is she story:

  TOUSSAINT PLANET

  Quashee and Ione? For true? His good good friend and his wife? Mayor Antonio of Cockpit County stepped up into the pedicab. “What you staring at?” he growled at the runner. “Is home I going.”

  “Yes, Compère,” the runner said through a mouthful of betel nut. She set off, and every slap her two feet-them in their alpagat sandals slapped against the ground, it sounded to Antonio like “Quashee-Ione, Quashee-Ione.” He could feel his mouth pursing up into a scowl. He sat up straight, tapping impatient fingers on one hard thigh. Not there yet? He slumped back against the seat. A trickle of sweat beaded down from the nape of his neck to pool at his dampening collar. Ione, running a fingertip down he head-back and grinning to see how the touch make he shiver. Antonio muttered, “What a thing to love a woman, oui?”

  The runner heard him. She glanced back over her shoulder. Corded muscle twisted along her back, stretched on either side from her spine to the wings of her shoulder blades. Grinning, she panted out, “What a great thing for true, Compère. Three z’amie wives I have. Woman so sweet, I tell you.”

  Nothing to say to that. Antonio made a sucking sound of impatience between his teeth. He tapped his temple to alert his earbug; started to identify himself out loud to the pedicab’s ancient four-eye, but remembered in time that pedicab runners only used headblind machines. This cab couldn’t transmit to his earbug. He sighed, powered the transmission console on manually and selected a music station. Old-time mento rhythms gambolled noisily in the air round him. He settled back against the soft jumbie leather seat, trying to get into the music. It jangled in his ears like “Quashee-Ione, Quashee-Ione, eh-eh.”

  Ione, mother of his one daughter. Ione, that toolum-brown beauty, the most radiant, the loveliest in Cockpit County. When Ione smile, is like the poui trees bloom, filling the skies with bright yellow flowers. A laugh from Ione could thief hearts the way mongoose thief chicken.

  Ione and Antonio had grown up neighbours on two wisdom weed farms. Fell in love as children, almost. Time was, Ione used to laugh her poui flower laugh for Antonio alone. Time was, Antonio and Ione were the night cradling the moon.

  Maybe all that done now? How it could done?

  Antonio tapped the music off. Under his breath, he ordered his earbug to punch up his home. It bleeped a confirmation at him in nannysong, and his eshu appeared in his mind’s eye.

  “Hot day, Master,” grumbled the house eshu.

  Today the a.i. had chosen to show itself as a dancing skeleton. Its bones clicked together as it jigged, an image the eshu was writing onto Antonio’s optic nerve. It sweated robustly, drops the size of fists rolling down its body to splash praps! on the “ground” then disappear. “What I could do for you?” The eshu made a ridiculously huge black lace fan appear in one hand and waved it at its own death’s head face.

  “Where Ione?”

  “Mistress taking siesta. You want to leave a message?”

  “Backside. No, never mind. Out.” Antonio flicked the music station on again, then nearly went flying from his seat as the pedicab hit a rut in the road.

  “Sorry, Compère,” laughed the runner. “But I guess you is big mayor, you could get that hole fill up in no time, ain’t?”

  Runners didn’t respect nobody, not even their own mother-rass mayor. “Turn left here so,” Antonio said. “That road will take we to the side entrance.” And it was usually deserted too. He didn’t feel like playing the skin-teeth grinning game today with any of his constituents he might run into: Afternoon, Brer Pompous, how the ugly wife, how the runny-nose little pickney-them? What, Brer Pompous, Brer Boasty, Brer Halitosis? Performance at the Arawak Theatre last night? A disgrace, you say? Community standards? Must surely be some explanation, Brer Prudish, Brer Prune-face. Promise I go look into it, call you back soon. No, Antonio had no patience for none of that today.

  Slap-slap of the runner’s feet. Quashee-Ione. Jangling quattro music in the air. Quashee-Ione, eh-eh.

  Too many hard feelings between him and Ione, oui? Too much silence. When she had gotten pregnant, it had helped for a little while, stilled some of her restlessness. And his. He had been delighted to know he would have a child soon. Someone who would listen to him, look up to him. Like Ione when she’d been a green young woman. When little Tan-Tan had arrived, she’d been everything Antonio could have wished for.

  In a hard-crack voice, the runner broke into a raucous song about a skittish woman and the lizard that had run up her leg. Antonio clenched his teeth into a smile. “Compère!” he shouted. She didn’t reply. Blasted woman heard him easy enough when it suited her. “Compère!”

  “Yes, Compère?” Sweety-sweety voice like molasses dripping.

  “Please. Keep it quiet, nuh?”

  The woman laughed sarcastically.

  “Well, at least when we get closer to my home? Uh . . . my wife sleeping.”

  “Of course, Compère. Wouldn’t want she for hear you creeping home so early in the day.”

  Bitch. Antonio stared hard at her wide, rippling back, but only said, “Thank you.”

  Antonio knew full well that his work as mayor was making him unpopular to certain people in this little town behind God back. Like this pedicab operator right here.

  And like she’d read his mind, the blasted woman nuh start for chat? “Compère, me must tell you, it warm my heart to know important man like you does take pedicab.”

  “Thank you, Compère,” Antonio said smoothly. He knew where this was going. Let her work up to it, though.

  “Pedicab is a conscious way to travel, you see? A good-minded way. All like how the cab open to the air, you could see your neighbours and them could see you. You could greet people, seen?”

  “Seen,” Antonio agreed. The runner flashed a puzzled look at him over her shoulder. She made a misstep, but caught herself in the pedicab’s traces. “Careful, Compère,” Antonio said solicitously. “You all right?”

  “Yes, man.” She continued running. Antonio leaned forward so she could hear him better.

  “A-true what you say. Is exactly that I forever telling Palaver House,” he said in his warmest voice. “In a pedicab, you does be part of your community, not sealed away in a closed car. I tired telling Palaver House allyou is one of the most important services to the town.”

  The runner turned right around in her traces and started jogging backwards. She frowned at him. “So if we so important, why the rass you taxing away we livelihood? We have to have license and thing now.” Her betel-red teeth were fascinating. “I working ten more hours a week to pay your new tariff. Sometimes I don’t see my pickney-them for days; sleeping when I leave home, sleeping when I come back. My baby father and my woman-them complaining how I don’t spend time with them no more. Why you do this thing, Antonio?”

  Work, he was forever working. And the blasted woman making herself such a freeness with his name, not even a proper “Compère.” Antonio ignored her rudeness, put on his concerned face. “I feel for you and your family, sister, but what you want me do? Higglers paying their share, masque camps paying theirs, pleasure workers and rum shops pa
ying theirs. Why pedicab runners should be any different?”

  She had her head turned slightly backwards; one eye on him, one on the road. He saw the impatient eye-roll on the half of her face that she presented. “Them does only pay a pittance compared to we. Let we stop with the party line, all right?”

  “But . . .”

  “Hold on.” She wasn’t listening, was jogging smartly backwards to the road’s median to avoid a boulderstone. Her feet slapped: Quashee-Ione. Quashee-Ione? She pulled the pedicab back into the lane, turned her back to him, picked up speed. Over her shoulder: “Truth to tell, we come to understand allyou. The taxes is because of the pedicabs, ain’t?”

  Antonio noted how businesslike her voice had become, how “me” had multiplied into “we.” Guardedly he asked her, “How you mean, sister?”

  “Is because we don’t use a.i.’s in the pedicabs.”

  An autocar passed in the opposite direction. The woman reclining inside it looked up from her book long enough to acknowledge Antonio with a dip of her head. He gave a gracious wave back. Took a breath. Said to the runner, “Is a labour tax. For the way allyou insist on using people when a a.i. could run a cab like this. You know how it does bother citizens to see allyou doing manual labor so. Back-break ain’t for people.” Blasted luddites.

  “Honest work is for people. Work you could see, could measure. Pedicab runners, we know how much weight we could pull, how many kilometres we done travel.”

  “Then . . .” Antonio shrugged his shoulders. What for do? A-so them want it, a-so it going to stay.

  The woman ran a few more steps, feet slip-slapping Ione? Ione? An autocar zoomed past them. The four people inside it had their seats turned to face one another over a table set for afternoon tea. Antonio briefly smelt cocoa, and roast breadfruit. He barely had time to notice the runner give a little hop in the traces. Then with a jolt and a shudder the pedicab clattered through another pothole. Antonio grabbed for the armrests. “What the rass . . . ?”

  “Sorry, Compère, so sorry.”

  “You deliberately . . .”

  “You all right, Compère? Let me just climb up and see.”