The attorneys sign. She signs. As she bends over the documents I can smell cigarette smoke on her. I knew that bitch had no self-control.
When it’s my turn I make a point of reading the whole document, beginning to end, like you’re supposed to with all legal documents and which nobody actually does. I stretch out the minutes until I smell the fear in her, the fear that I’m going to back out at the last minute. Lead her to her heart’s desire and destroy it.
But this is business, not pleasure. I sign with an exaggerated flourish. I don’t belong to myself anymore. I’m Helena’s mule. And wicked fast there’s a flicker of something in Helena’s harried face.
Relief? But it’s more than that. Victory. Like she’s looked into the abyss and defied it. Like she’ll live forever.
But she won’t. I’m forty-seven. This body is good for maybe thirty more years, if she’s careful. It doesn’t make sense, that look of sheer triumph for the chance at a quarter-century in an aging body.
It bothers me. It stays with me as Bernie pats my shoulder and the gaggle of suits converges on that frail green figure and the guards escort me away, down that corridor with its emerald view. I have one more week to live with my own self intact. I should be making my peace with that.
But instead I’m consumed by that look, that half-smile, sly and triumphant.
That woman, I think, riding down the elevator, is not stupid. That woman is like me. What would I do in her place?
I am she and she is me. I would strive to live forever.
So I lie in my bunk, staring at the seams in the cement ceiling and I become Helena. I, Helena, am a good businesswoman, very thorough. I have all the ruthlessness of my cousin the baby-killer and all the control she lacks. I find out everything there is to know about Cece. I find out she’s a good little soul, utterly unlike her mother. I know how she’ll respond to love, someone taking a genuine interest, especially from someone in her mother’s body. I know how she can be manipulated. Helena will own her, body and soul. She’ll go wherever Helena takes her. She’ll trust her, like a babe-in-arms, like a baby in the bathtub. Like the Rimbaughs and the Alcotts trusted me.
Once my body is finished, Helena will shed me like a carapace. Good at business, she’ll make her money breed and no law will apply to her, and how long can Bernie last, anyway? She’ll take Cece, and when Cece is worn out she’ll take the child. She’ll breed my family like cattle, like her money, and the virus will map her onto their brains ad infinitum.
Clever bitch. I have to admire her. But it’s risky. What happens when you move from brain to brain, pushing yourself into those wet little crevasses over and over? Would you even notice yourself changing, like a frog in a hot pot? After a century of it, would you even be human?
Maybe the solution isn’t to meat-hop from body to body. Maybe as her bodies – my generations – fail her she’ll harvest what she needs – heart, liver, lights – from my grandchildren. Eat them fast, eat them slow, kidney by kidney.
I’ll be damned if I let anyone ride my generations like mules.
But I’m the idiot who signed the papers, beguiled by the idea of Cece and little Cece frolicking in a wonderland of no want. Better for her to face the world as it is. Better for her to struggle. I’ve signed and taken that from her, and the lawyers have their cut and the DOJ has its very juicy cut and no one will give a damn if I want to get out of it.
I close my eyes and dream I’m in an empty city with jagged buildings and elongated streets stretching forever. I round a corner and a familiar figure stands there, laughing at me. I can’t tell if the face is Barnes or Grimes. Grimes or Barnes. The features shift like the tide.
***
Fuck me, I’ve had my hour of self-pity. Three nights to plan. Couple years ago, before I went full solitary, I traded three packs of gum and a twist of what I said was meth for a finger-length, sturdy piece of plastic someone cracked from beneath an old bunk. It’s been sitting in the bottom of my toilet tank for anyone to see – no one paid any attention. I fish it out and carve a slit down its length, and fit in a thin shard of metal that came from the weather sealing at the bottom of a door. Now I have a blunt, loose-handled knife. I trade a quickie with one of the guards who’s been trying to get a taste of me for years for the half-hour loan of a lighter and two cigarettes. I flush the cigarettes and heat the plastic until I can mold it around the metal nice and firm. I’ve got a tiny strip of emery board I managed to hold on to since they put me here and with that I put an edge on that blade that could slice a baby’s hair in two.
After my mom chucked all that crockery at my so-called grandpa, after he left, I followed him. Told him I wanted to hear his side of the story. I decided if he wanted to fuck a fifteen-year-old, my mom was right to hate him and he deserved what he got. Back seat of his Camry, his pants down around his ankles. I had a screwdriver in my sock. Always did, ever since I was thirteen. Useful as a knife and won’t get you in trouble. He didn’t even notice when I put the tip at the hollow of his throat. Punched it right through. I tossed the screwdriver in the bushes where the truckers peed behind the diner. Lazy cop never found it. We left the next day and my mom never knew. My only gift to her.
Cece’s coming this morning to say goodbye. My knife’s too pretty not to use.
I rehearse it in my head like a dance. Last time I’ll see her, they’ll let us together, we’ll hug. I know how to carry the knife so a search won’t find it. We’re the same height, just about. I’ll cradle her against my shoulder, arms crossed behind her head, nudging it into position. I’ll hold the knife, blade-out, against my wrist. And then I’ll pull back firm into the carotid artery beneath her jawline. Deep, and I’ll hold her up. I’ll do it right, she won’t even know what happened, and she’ll bleed out before the guards realize what’s happening. My only gift to her.
***
They pat down Cece more thoroughly than me, which makes sense; no-one expects anything to go out of death row, only in. Cece’s big blue eyes and freckles face me the whole time with a kind of intensity I haven’t seen since the trial. They leave us together with one guard at the door, bored with us already. Cece hugs me quick, then takes my hands, unsure of what to do. She looks good. Her hair is styled and her skin’s cleared up. Her nails are short and manicured, and her belly curves out a little under her short sleeved linen shirt. Pregnancy suits her.
“I don’t understand.” She almost calls me Mama like she did before the trial, but she can’t do it. I’m surprised that it hurts me that she can’t. Instead she swallows. “You signed something? And there’s a trust fund?”
“I stopped the appeal.”
“But…they said you had a chance…” Her grip tightens on my fingers. I’m a murderer, but no-one wants their Mama dead. Not usually.
“I’m tired of fighting, Cece.” God, I sound so movie-of-the-week. “It’s time to let this end.”
“But they said the jury…”
Blah, blah, blah, media saturation, jury was prejudiced, Bernie’s last ditch half-assed attempt. It was a remote jury so that dog won’t hunt. Cece blabs on; I don’t listen. I let go her right hand and brush my left palm across my crotch, retrieving my pretty knife.
“Cece,” I say, stopping her white noise. I try to make it portentous and meaningful, like a normal person would. “Cece.” I step forward into her embrace. She wraps her arms warm around my back. The guard tenses, watching for something passed between us. I feel a dull flash of anger. Back off. It’s my daughter, asshole.
I slide the knife forward, into place, into position behind her ear. I brace to push in and pull back and take her weight.
There’s a freckle on her shoulder, just where it meets the neck. She’s always had it, even as a newborn. I remember cradling her close, smelling that spicy newborn smell, curious if I’d feel anything for her. That freckle stood out on her waxy new skin, before she’d seen the sun. It’s been years and years since I’ve seen that freckle.
I have to do it
now.
I can’t.
I want to. The blade wants to. It wriggles in my hand like a live thing.
I stare at that freckle and I can’t.
I feel the hot bulge of the baby against my belly and I pull away from her, palming the knife so Cece and the guard don’t see it. Hell, Cece can’t see anything, she’s crying too hard, her face all salty snot. My eyes are dry as sand. I feel sick down to my bones.
Cece’s still crying when the guards lead me away. I feel strange, fluey. My head’s fuzzy, my feet lead-bound. I wait until the barred door bangs behind me and the automatic catcalls of the other prisoners fade into silence, and then a great wave of nausea takes me. I barely make it to the toilet, spilling a bitter thin stream of vomit.
I sprawl on the floor at the base of the toilet. Eventually I heave to a sit, knees tucked beneath my chin. When I try to get up my belly roils, so I stay there a long time, thinking. Cece. Helena. Grimes. Barnes.
If this is caring, then what a terrible thing God made.
So Helena thinks she’s won. I know I can beat her. I know I can hide out in my nerves, in the electric impulses of my body, and take it back. I can imprison her as I’ve been jailed, give her a taste of helplessness that’ll make cancer seem like a walk in the park. And before I snuff her out, I’ll rape her mind, strip out everything she knows. I’ll learn her secrets, how to be her enough to fool everyone around us. I can make sure Cece and the baby have everything they want.
Or, if I choose to live forever, I can take them. Helena’s wrapped them like a Christmas present. Thirty years left in this body. Will it be enough?
Why not live forever?
The nausea takes me again and I barely make the toilet as my throat burns. Too late for appeals. Tomorrow Helena rides me until I can buck her off. Together we’ll be unstoppable.
I run a finger along my jugular, feeling the blood beat beneath the skin, pulsing red and lovely to the brain Helena’s bought and paid for. Like I said, my knife’s too pretty not to use.
My only gift to her.
***
Samantha Henderson lives in Southern California with humans and other animals. Her short fiction and poetry have been published in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Realms of Fantasy, The Lovecraft eZine, Goblin Fruit, Bourbon Penn and Weird Tales, and reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Science Fiction, Steampunk Revolutions and the Mammoth Book of Steampunk. She’s the author of the Forgotten Realms novels Heaven’s Bones and Dawnbringer.
BOOK ZONE
MAKING WOLF
ROSEWATER
Tade Thompson
plus author interview
WICKED WEEDS
Pedro Cabiya
ISRA ISLE
Nava Semel
THE KRAKEN SEA
E. Catherine Tobler
EUROPE IN WINTER
Dave Hutchinson
THE TOURIST
Robert Dickinson
INVASION
Luke Rhinehart
DAUGHTER OF EDEN
Chris Beckett
plus author interview
SLIPPING
Lauren Beukes
TADE THOMPSON: THERE IS NO “HOME”
Review & interview by Maureen Kincaid Speller
MAKING WOLF
Rosarium Publishing pb, 278pp, $15.95/ebook $4.99 (Sep 2015)
ROSEWATER
Apex Publications pb, 360pp, $16.95 (Nov 2016)
The private investigator, as Fredric Jameson reminds us in his recent book on Raymond Chandler, is positioned “inside the microcosm, in the darkness of a local world, without the benefit of the federal Constitution, as in a world without God”. Marlowe is a man alone, belonging nowhere, and that is part of his attraction. We are fascinated by his lack of encumbrance. The truth, though, is that most of us live remarkably encumbered lives, and private investigators are no exception. The problem, however, is that in fiction encumbrance is too often translated into novelty, leaving us with investigators who are little more than distinctive tics (jazz-loving, beer-drinking, divorced, cat-loving, depressed, quilting) bolted onto a puzzle that needs solving.
But the world loves crime and mysteries, so it’s no surprise that many sf writers have turned to writing futuristic detective stories. Blade Runner showed us what the mean streets of the future might look like: dirty, grubby, and full of cool, shiny stuff. What is not to like? And yet, too often, precisely what I do not like about investigators in space is that everything is all about the cool, shiny stuff. It’s a different form of novelty, perhaps, but still nothing more than that: all surface, often highly reflective surface, but no depth. Chandler knew about depth; it shows in the ways in which he constructed his worlds if not always his characters.
Tade Thompson also knows about depth, and in his writing it’s the characters who show it. In both Making Wolf and Rosewater it’s the people and their situations that immediately engage our attention rather than the worlds in which they’re set. And rather than being faced with one-dimensional characters, each with an easily identifiable marker, we’re dealing with morally complex people. There are no good guys or bad guys, insofar as everyone has their reasons for what they do, responding to situations that don’t always immediately make sense. You might even call it ‘real life’; writ large, perhaps, but it nonetheless feels plausible.
Take Weston Kogi, the protagonist in Making Wolf. He has returned home to Alcacia, a tiny African country, after living in London for many years, to attend the funeral of his aunt, the woman who raised him. Such a simple show of respect, one might suppose, and yet, as Thompson shows us, Kogi is performing an emotionally and politically dangerous act. To begin with, what is “home”? The past is a different country, of course, but Kogi departed amid harrowing scenes as a coup broke out; the country he is returning to is literally not the one he left. He’s aware that his time in London has changed him; he’s aware too that the people he’s likely to see will have expectations of him. The returning immigrant, it is hinted, will of course have made good, and everyone believes Kogi is a policeman in Britain rather than a security guard, because that is the story he told them before he returned.
Kogi’s position as an outsider enables him to take the longer view when two different militias ask him to look into the death of Papa Busi, the country’s much-loved leader, who has recently died in mysterious circumstances. Terrifying as it is to be juggling the demands of two different groups with a tendency to shoot first and shoot again to make sure, alongside the bewildering experience of returning to his “home”, Kogi goes about his work conscientiously, even though a resolution seems to be maddeningly out of reach. This is a brutal novel, and I don’t just mean the physical violence, of which there is a lot. Insofar as Kogi still possesses any illusions about his life, in London or in Alcacia, they are well and truly ground out of him during the course of the narrative, leaving him emotionally destitute and uncertain of his future.
If Kogi begins his story with a few shreds of optimism still intact, Kaaro, the narrator of Rosewater is already infinitely more world-weary; as we learn more about his early life, this becomes unsurprising. Isolated from his family by his abilities as a sensitive, but mainly because he has used those abilities to become a thief, Kaaro has deliberately become the ‘man alone’, careful to keep aloof from everyone around him, even those who attempt to reach out to him in friendship. Very few succeed in breaking through the carefully constructed shell, though one is his colleague, Bola. Through her, Kaaro meets Aminaat, with whom he tentatively begins a relationship.
We’re in a world in which aliens have long since landed, and have actually buried their way into the earth, manifesting themselves as a series of biodomes, emerging mushroom-like. Rosewater is the suburb that sprang up around the biodome – Utopicity – that appeared close to Lagos. Once a year Utopicity opens and those in the vicinity are cured of their illnesses. This doesn’t always go quite to plan – those buried too close to the biodome are likely to be accid
entally resurrected, and then have to be disposed of – but many people have been genuinely cured as a result. The question is, what is going on inside the dome? No one knows but at least one government department hopes that Kaaro’s abilities as a sensitive will answer that question.
But while this is a part of the story, it is not all of the story. Thompson employs a complex double chronology to explore Kaaro’s early life, as he meets other sensitives and learns to use his abilities more appropriately, alongside the older Kaaro, suddenly aware that his fellow sensitives are starting to die, and unsure how to act. It is Kaaro’s interactions with people and his attempts to navigate his own emotional turmoil that prove the greatest interest in the story, although, like Kaaro, the reader always has one eye on what’s going on elsewhere. This sidelong engagement with the environment is extremely satisfying for those of us who aren’t that wedded to intricate world-building. There is always enough world to fill in the gaps as necessary but the focus is squarely on the people who live in and around Rosewater, and their relationship with the biodome, unknowable as it seems to be, unknowable as Kaaro himself seems to be. The similarities between the two entities are striking and certainly not coincidental.
I hesitate to use the word ‘gritty’ of Rosewater or Making Wolf; perhaps, instead, I should say that they are very ‘tactile’ or ‘physical’ novels, in that Thompson is very good at evoking intense sensations with just a few words. One emerges from these novels feeling dust in one’s mouth, sweat on one’s skin, one’s senses assaulted, and one’s intellect satisfied.
***
What led you towards reading/writing genre (assuming you think specifically in genre terms) – crime, sf, etc – and contributed to your literary aesthetic? For example, I was struck by the use of comic imagery in your collaboration with Nick Wood in AfroSF 2. And I suspect some people are going to get a (maybe misplaced) District 9 vibe from Rosewater.
Interzone #267 - November-December 2016 Page 12
