by Gavin Chait
Jason is chopping a wedge on the far side of an obeche tree that looks as if it might fall across the sentinels. This way, when next the great winds come howling up the river valley, the tree will fall the other way.
He stops, buries the machet in the trunk and wipes sweat from out of his eyes.
‘Samara says a display would be too slow. He would have to see the information, interpret it and then act on it. He just knows and responds. He says it is like going home. If we have to go home from here, we do not think about it, we just go. We know.’
‘They are not like implants, then? His biology has changed, all mixed together.’ Sarah considers. ‘Why the glowing eyes, though? I mean, that would be very visible in the dark.’
‘He says it is a fashion style. Part of their uniform. He had forgotten about it. He says it makes the Nine look more intimidating when they are on duty.’
Aaron closes a panel on the sentinel he has been testing, carefully storing his scope in a satchel. ‘Even before the other enhancements, then, he can respond faster than any trained soldier? I would love to know about those other abilities.’
Jason stands in the centre of the path. ‘I was out very early this morning, before the sun came up, and I saw him standing on the hill outside the south gate. He had his arm like this,’ he puts his left arm out, level with his shoulder, and his elbow bent. ‘He just stood like that.
‘I saw a bat hawk flying at the edge of the trees, beyond the wheat fields. He was staring at it and then it changed course, flew straight towards him and landed on his arm.’
The others let out a breath, like a sigh.
‘He raised his right arm, slowly,’ showing them, his right index finger pointing towards a space just above his left wrist. ‘He stroked it very lightly, just above the beak. I thought I saw some of that silver liquid in his blood smeared on to the feathers, but then it was gone. Then the bird took off and flew straight up into the sky. It flew in a wide circle about the village and flew north. I lost sight of it.’
The others look mystified. ‘What was he doing?’ asks Leah, her hands tight around her staff.
‘I was not sure if it would be well to disturb him. He noticed me and smiled and walked towards me. He told me that he is able to impart a little of his symbiont into other creatures to act on them. With the hawk, he is able to control it, transmit what it sees and feels back to himself. He wanted to get a sense of the land around the village.’
‘Can he do that to anyone?’ asks Sarah.
‘I asked that too, but he just smiled and said he has to be careful, a little goes a long way.’ Jason shakes his head.
‘It is well he is not our enemy, and I fear for the Americans when he gets home,’ says Leah. ‘And there are nine of them?’
‘There are thirty of us,’ laughs Sarah.
‘We are volunteers, part-timers. Not a professional army,’ says David, speaking for the first time. He is usually silent, standing on the periphery of the group.
Sarah smiles kindly at him. She likes this young man, rises and walks over to him, placing her hand gently on his arm. He responds instinctively, half-smiling back, warming to her touch.
‘But who are we fighting, David? Militia – untrained, undisciplined, poorly equipped. They are not soldiers either. And we fight for the ones we care about. They fight for plunder,’ she says.
‘That is true, David,’ says Aaron. ‘We are careful. We have not had any problems in years.’
The five stand for a while. Sarah shares her water bottle and they drink, resting in the closeness. Their clothes are wet and cling to them. They are a team, recently graduated from the university. Young, finding intimacy, finding love.
Time enough for scare stories later. They laugh together and return to work.
The sun is a yellow caress through the canopy. Dust and insects glow against the dapple of the forest.
15
Isaiah has never been the centre of attention before, and he finds he is enjoying it, finding his voice.
The children are sitting cross-legged on the bank of the river beneath the kola tree, where they have taken to exchanging stories. They will not dive from the jetty today. Boys and girls, delight on their faces at the chance to hear a new tale. Many have wooden spoons sticking out of their waistbands. Others are carrying whisks or colanders or other equally improbable items that have appeared in Samara’s stories.
Isaiah does not have a samara, but he was listening last night as the adults had dinner, Aunt Miriam and Aunt Abishai, with Edith (who feels more like an older sister, so he does not wish to call her aunt) and his parents. And Samara.
He was supposed to be in bed, but he long ago learned that he could hide just outside his room, behind the sofa, and hear everything happening in the kitchen. Plus, how could he not listen? It is almost offensive that he was expected to go to bed when there was the chance of learning a new story.
‘Under the ocean,’ he starts.
The children giggle and shuffle, restless. One punches another on the arm, ‘Pass it on.’ More laughter and a minor scuffle before they settle and let Isaiah continue.
‘Under the ocean are many cities filled with miners. They have been there for a century. This is very deep. Kilometres below the surface.’
‘How far is that?’ asks one little girl, her front teeth missing and her knees skinned.
‘Almost all the way to Calabar,’ shouts one boy, quickly punched by another.
‘Not that far,’ says a serious-looking girl.
‘Well, how far then?’ asks a buck-toothed boy.
‘Maybe to Tait Island,’ says another boy.
‘Oh, that is far.’
They settle again.
‘Yes, it is far, and it is very deep there, and the pressure of the water is very great.’ Isaiah crouches, opening his shoulders to carry the weight of the water. He is finding the manner of a storyteller, patient with interruptions, feeling the pace of the narrative, responding to his characters.
‘There is a city directly beneath the ocean at the bottom of the cable that binds Achenia to Earth. It is called Romanche, and it sits at the edge of a great trench that goes even deeper down to the bones of the Earth.
‘There the people mine for rare minerals. They build great structures in the bedrock. Opening up caverns and filling them with light. They herd vast schools of fish and grow immense fields of kelp. And they never –’ he slows and lowers his voice, widening his eyes and spreading his arms, ‘– never come to the surface.’
The children are his now. Their mouths are open, their eyes wide, their breath his breath. Some are dropping their shoulders, crouching too.
Isaiah stands straight and looks out over them, across the river, as if at a distant horizon.
‘They have technology like Samara, but they use it differently. Their houses are pressurized and linked so that they do not need to go outside. But when they do, they do not wear special suits. They dress just like us.’
The children are a chorus of aahs and oohs.
‘How do they breathe in the water?’ asks the same serious-looking girl. The others nod wisely. Breathing under water is hard!
‘Their lungs would collapse under the pressure of the water. Like when you press on beans and crush them.’ He squeezes his fists together and some of the children wince. ‘So they have filled their bodies to make them solid. The pressure cannot touch them. Instead they have grown fibres, like the gills of a fish, so that they can breathe. These fibres grow in long hairs from their faces. They look like heavy dark beards, down to their waists. They can still eat like us, but they breathe through their beards. Both the men and the women.’
‘How can they tell each other apart?’ and there is thrilled laughter and a sudden outbreak of minor punching.
‘When they are naked,’ shouts another. Another chorus of oohs and aahs.
Isaiah nods. ‘Samara went there on a trade mission. This is long, long ago, before he became a soldier, when he
was only as old as my aunt. The miners were to help him bring fish and coral and plants and whales up to Achenia.’
‘He cannot breathe underwater!’
More giggles, and, ‘No, but he can hold his breath for, like, hours.’
Isaiah stands very straight, his chin the edge of a square with his throat. He is Samara. ‘Samara cannot breathe underwater, and so he wears a special skin that they make for him. He visits their caves. Their people are much shorter than him, almost square. He has to crouch in their houses, but their caves are enormous. He sees their robot miners, the way they tunnel directly into the rock. He is there for months as they collect all the things they wish to carry into the sky.’
‘How do they get it there?’
‘For the plants, coral and slow-moving creatures, it is easy. They make gigantic –’ so wide with his arms and eyes, ‘– boxes and they place them on the space elevator and it is carried straight up into the sky. It travels for days, slowly, up until it reaches the city.
‘Now,’ he drops, he is hunting, ‘they need to catch whales.
‘The miners have platforms they travel on in the water. They allow them to go very fast. They are tracking a group of whales over many miles along the trench. They are migrating and they have young ones with them. When they realize that they are being hunted, they dive deep, into the trench.
‘Down they go. Down into the darkness and the cold.’ He wraps his arms around his body, shivering. The children are hugging each other in excitement.
‘Samara is leading one group of miners, while another comes from the other side. He goes deeper and deeper. It is so dark that he cannot see very well. Suddenly –’ his voice is a shout and the children jump, ‘– there is a shape in the water. Something is hunting him.’
The children are silent now. They barely breathe. Stay very, very quiet.
‘He cannot scream. He cannot call for help. He races, but the shape is gaining.
‘It is the size of a building. It has two giant tentacles, and they are reaching for him. Closer –’ the children are going pale, ‘– closer –’ their eyes cannot get any wider, ‘– closer –’ shrieks as Isaiah jumps at them.
‘It has him.’
He stops. He stands. He almost saunters, as if he is done. The children are horrified. He cannot leave them like this. ‘What happened?’ a strangled cry.
Isaiah turns, crouches, his arms raised, hands hooked like two tentacles.
‘It is pulling him towards its mouth. He fights. He struggles. Its eyes are bigger than his head. Its mouth is close now, and its suckers are digging into Samara. The suckers have rings of tiny teeth, and they are cutting into his skin. If they break through, he will drown.’
‘Save him,’ shouts the serious-looking girl, tears in her eyes.
‘He is still fighting; his feet are almost in the mouth of the beast. He is pushing with all his might, but the creature is stronger. They tumble in the water, falling deeper.’
Now, the reality is that at this point in the story, there hiding behind the sofa, Isaiah had made a little sound.
It was not a big sound. He was being careful, biting his fist so as to stop his own cries of terror from being heard. He was sure that the adults could not hear him, but Samara had suddenly stopped talking.
There was a scrape of chairs and then, after a moment of silence, he had felt a looming presence. Looking across the living room he had seen Samara staring back at him.
Samara grinned, wrinkled his nose and then turned around.
‘What was that?’ asked Joshua. ‘Is that young rascal out of bed?’
‘Oh, no, my mistake,’ said Samara, and then he continued. Which is how Isaiah is able to complete his tale. Otherwise things might have gone very badly for him at this point. Children can be quite unforgiving.
‘There is a flash of light and a jolt of electricity in the water. The miners have found him. They have electric lances, and they shock the beast. Samara escapes.’
The children cheer as Isaiah does a little bow.
‘But what happened to the beast? Did they kill it?’ asks one sensitive child. After all, it was just an animal looking for food.
‘No, they shocked it but –’ he pauses flamboyantly, ‘– this is how giant squid made it to Achenia.’
He grins as the others applaud. Then a group of boys pick him up, carry him to the jetty and throw him into the water. After all, he is still just one of them. Then they jump in after him, because it is hot and that is what children do.
Isaiah is laughing in the river, shooting jets of water at those still on the shore.
Joshua, standing at the top of the slope, has been listening. On his face a mixture of pride, wonder and awe.
16
‘You are making an impression,’ says Joshua. They are walking back towards Ewuru from the south-west. Samara is returning from a long run, and Joshua decided to meet him along the path.
‘How do you feel about that?’ asks Samara. There is kindness in his voice, an awareness that he will leave traces.
Joshua is slow to respond. The path is wide enough for them to walk abreast without crowding each other. They share the comfortable silence of old friends.
‘I am not entirely certain,’ looking at Samara, as if searching for the answer there.
‘Even as we try to suffocate the warlords we struggle to accept each other. Prejudice and violence. They follow us home.
‘I do not know. I hope there will be a time of harmony and I may even live to see it. Your people are ahead, but not so far that I cannot see what we could be.’
They are walking slowly, ambling.
‘I believe we will build a new society over the old one. We do not need to wait for it to die first.’
Samara nods in understanding. ‘We had to do something similar. Not in the same way. We had to overcome the resistance of a long-lived people who had no wish to change. The new way has created satisfaction. It is not perfect. I don’t wish to deceive you, but we have developed something that works well.’
Joshua stops, Samara stopping with him. ‘You know how we are. I said I would like to know more about the way—’
Joshua’s words are cut short as Samara seizes his arm. He is looking at the sky.
‘Helicopter. At the village. Screams.’ And then Samara is sprinting, straight for the village.
[It is a ghost. One of those pesky near-silent ones. Expect mounted artillery, perhaps grenade launchers. They can carry six. This will be the outer limit of its range and it must return soon. If it came from Calabar.]
Joshua stands still, shocked, and then runs to catch him. Samara is disappearing into the forest ahead of him. He can hear gunfire now and the warning screams of the sentinels. He bursts from the trees.
Across the fruit orchard he can see figures running. Some fleeing behind the village walls, others racing out, carrying rifles.
Daniel is shouting from the top of the wall, directing scouts to emplacements along the slopes. Children are running up from the river, crying in fright. The artillery tower is firing back, but the helicopter is armoured. He can see sparks as it takes direct hits, but none penetrate. Even this close he cannot hear the rotors.
A group of scouts along the west path crouch and fire their rifles up at the helicopter. It fires a grenade towards them and they flee, diving to the ground as the explosion flings up a fountain of earth and torn cassava.
Joshua is frozen, watching in fascination as the path begins to shower up in a line towards him. Then he is flung to the ground as Abishai tackles him. The helicopter turns back towards the village.
‘Here,’ shouts Abishai, shoving a rifle into his hands before standing and running back towards the village. Joshua runs after her. Then he sees Samara.
He is amongst the children coming up from the jetty, shielding them and getting them to safety. He is carrying one in his arms. The child looks very familiar.
‘Isaiah!’ and Joshua is running. Samara gently pass
es the child to one of the scouts. His shirt is scarlet with blood. Then, faster than a man, he sprints directly at the village wall.
The wall is made of pounded clay. Readily available, easily maintained, extremely robust. It is five metres high, and there are now deep pockmarks from where artillery shells have drilled along it. Samara hurtles along the fortification, using the holes to fling himself upwards. He somersaults over the edge and on to the broad walkway at the top. Then he is racing along the parapet towards the helicopter.
Daniel stares aghast as Samara leaps from the edge. The helicopter is ten metres away and still four metres higher than the wall. It is tilted down, firing into the maize fields at the scouts there. He can see the two men in the cockpit, concentrating on the ground, four men in the crew cabin firing bullets and grenades from behind shielded canopies. They are laughing.
Samara lands on the transparent canopy in front of the pilot. The helicopter rolls and goes screaming upwards. The pilot twists and turns, trying to shake him loose. Samara does not move. The helicopter rises up over the village and is gone from Daniel’s view.
Abishai, guiding the last stragglers into the heavy buildings in the apex of the market, sees the helicopter come overhead. She runs up Ekpe Road and around the amphitheatre to the edge of the cliff. The helicopter is hovering over the river, still careening and rolling in an effort to shake Samara loose.
Samara’s eyes glow gold. His face is wrath. The men inside the helicopter are screaming. She holds her breath.
Samara does not break his gaze as he raises his right arm. He leans back. He snaps forward. Once. The canopy cracks. Twice. The canopy evaporates.
Samara is inside.
Abishai tries not to remember what happens next. She sees the top half of a man, his intestines and spine hanging loose, flung out of the cockpit. A body follows. This one is headless. The helicopter points at the centre of the river.
A moment before it hits the water she sees Samara leap out and to the side. The helicopter smashes into the river downstream from the fish traps. It sinks. Vanishes. No one escapes. A trickle of blood drifts in the current.
