Sali and The Five Kingdoms

by Oumar Dieng

  I wondered what the men could be talking about. Their voices were drowned out by the noise of the running water. While I was still mad at Dad for going abroad, I hadn’t seen him in a long time and was intent on learning more about Mom’s past.

  “Sali,” said Grandma, who, judging by the droplets of water by my feet, had been trying to get my attention for a while. “You should go talk to him,” she said softly. “He is the only father you have, you know.”

  “I know, Grandma,” I replied, gently putting the plate on the counter. “But lately it feels like every conversation we have ends in a fight.”

  “All the more reason to clear the air,” said Grandma. She pulled the piece of cloth I was using right out of my hands and pointed to the living room. “Go ahead. I can finish up here. Go!”

  Grandpa was sitting in his recliner, a drink resting on the end table. Dad was sitting across from him in an armchair. I had the sectional couch all to myself, at an equal distance between the two men. As if on cue, Grandpa retracted the footrest of his recliner, sat up, and left the room.

  Silence.

  After a short awkward moment, I broke the silence. “So. How is London?” I asked, hoping that my discomfort would go unnoticed.

  “Good,” said Dad. “Very good. You’d like it there. The city is so vibrant and diverse. It truly makes me feel like I am at the center of it all. I mean, you can take the supersonic train through the Channel Tunnel and go under the sea. I go from Folkstone, United Kingdom, to Calais, France, in no time. It is truly an engineering feat!” He paused for a moment, and as if he read my thoughts, he changed the subject. “Enough about me. How about you?” he asked. “Your grandfather tells me that you landed an internship?”

  “Yes. I started last month.”

  “That’s great news! I am very happy for you.”

  Our conversation continued for what seemed like an eternity. Dad and I both knew that we were avoiding the obvious conversation: Mom. We intuitively must have felt that it would ultimately bring up some strong emotions. At least, I felt that way. I figured since he had just arrived that day, I did not want our first real interaction to cause any quarrels. So we talked about work, the weather, politics, how the city had changed, and several other futile topics.

  Grandpa walked back in the room and asked Dad, “Are you ready to see the motorcycle engine I just found at the flea market?”

  “What motorcycle engine?” I asked, intrigued. Grandpa had kept an old motorcycle in the garage for many years, but he never really got it to work.

  Grandpa turned to me. “It sounds like you want to see it too, Sali, ain’t that right?”

  I thought, Not really, but I kept my thoughts private. Deep down I wanted to spend as much time with Dad as possible. If he was going, so was I. “Yes. I wouldn’t miss it for the world! Let’s go.”

  “Better be careful, George,” Grandma yelled across the kitchen.

  Grandpa waved us over, signaling that we follow him. We weaved through the house to get to the back door, across the courtyard, and into a shed. Grandpa grabbed the padlock that held the door sealed and punched in a four-digit code to unlock it. He pulled the door open and walked in and flipped the switch. The neon lights flickered a few times and flooded the space with a blinding glow.

  “There it is,” said Grandpa, nostalgic. “My pride and joy!”

  “Does it still run?” asked Dad as he touched the rusted handlebars.

  “No. This old thing hasn’t seen the road in decades.” The old thing Grandpa was referring to was his motorcycle; it was an old World War II–era motorcycle he had found at a garage sale well before I was born.

  Grandpa headed to the back of the room and stopped in front of an inconspicuous and neatly stacked pile of boxes. “Give me a hand, will you?”

  “I thought you were showing us the motorcycle,” I asked.

  “I have something to show you first, back here.” He pointed at the boxes.

  Dad and I helped move the boxes out of the way to reveal a large gray tarp. In one swift motion, Grandpa yanked the tarp, revealing a five-foot-by-three-foot whiteboard. Grandpa carefully flipped the top part of the board about a hundred and eighty degrees on its horizontal axis, revealing an intricate collage of images, newspaper clippings, redacted documents, maps, Post-it notes. Everything was meticulously arranged; articles pinned with thumbtacks connected to city and location names, and locations linked to specific events and event dates.

  “Grandpa, what is this?” I asked, my eyes glued to the amazing collage.

  “This is what your father and I have been working on.”

  “I don’t understand,” I asked, confused.

  Dad explained. “Last month, I received a package at work, inside of which there was a soil sample …”

  “A soil sample?”

  “Yes. A soil sample and a note.”

  “What did it say?”

  “I sent it to your grandfather …”

  “Right here!” Grandpa interrupted.

  Dad walked up to the board. He pointed to a small bag pinned to the board and ripped it off. Then he pulled the note as well. He showed me the note and the soil sample. “All the note said was ‘look back thirteen years for the missing.’ It was thirteen years ago that your Mom …” Dad stopped.

  “… that Mom disappeared,” I said, finishing the sentence for him.

  “Yes. Exactly,” Dad said. “At first I thought it was just a prank, but I recognized the soil sample. Additionally, I searched for disappearances in the country around the time your Mom disappeared. At first I only found a couple of reports of people being reported missing in similar circumstances. But things got interesting when I broadened my search and went back thirteen more years, and thirteen years before that. I found dozens of incidents of people missing in the same area, going back two hundred years! That’s when I asked your grandfather to help.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” I asked.

  “Well, honey, I didn’t want to burden you with this. What if it turns out to be a wild goose chase?”

  “Worry me? Really? Here I was racking my brain wondering if you ever really loved Mom. If you even cared that she may be alive somewhere out there!”

  “Sali …!”

  “No. Don’t touch me!” My heart was racing; I felt hot, flustered, and angry as I pulled away from Dad. “You didn’t believe me when I said that Mom vanished. So why? Why now?”

  “Sali, I am sorry. I didn’t know that’s how you felt …”

  “How could you know? You didn’t stick around for me to tell you how lonely I felt.”

  Dad had gotten closer to me as I poured out all my contempt for him for the situation. He stood in front me. “I am so sorry for having put you through this. In my own way, I was grieving. And the only way I knew how was to solve other people’s problems through my work.” His voice shaking. He added. “I never meant for things to go down the way they did. And I certainly never meant to hurt you. Do you believe me?”

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. My eyes came across a pile of news clippings and a faded picture on the board. One of the faces looked familiar from a distance. I got closer to the board and pointed at the picture. “That’s Dr. Freitz!”

  “You know him?” Dad asked.

  “Yeah. He is the co-worker I told you about; left a note on my car a few weeks back.”

  “What did he want?” Grandpa asked.

  “To talk to me about Mom. He said that he and Dad worked together at GT.”

  “Yes, he led our research team. He was brought in after GT bought BRIT. Did he threaten you?” Dad said, concerned.

  “No, Dad. He just wanted to talk … Did you just say that GT bought BRIT?”

  “Yes. A number of years ago now.”

  “Wait. Are you telling me that GT owns BRIT?”

  “Yeah. Why do you ask?”

  “You are telling me that the company you and Mom worked for owns BRIT, the very same company that ha
s now offered me a job? That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “That’s a hell of a coincidence if you ask me!” said Grandpa.

  Dad turned to Grandpa. “I think we need to talk to my old boss, Simon Freitz.”

  “I seriously doubt you’ll find him,” I said. “He was very paranoid when we met. He kept looking around constantly as if he was being followed.”

  “Where did you get this picture from?” asked Dad.

  “From this old file folder in your old desk. Here, take a look.” Grandpa opened the drawer and handed the folder to Dad, who promptly dumped the contents on the desk. He went through the various documents and came across another picture. It was a picture of him, Dr. Freitz, and some other co-workers.

  “There!” he said, pointing at the background in the picture. “We used to go to this cabin to fish. If he is lying low, this is probably the place where he’d go.”

  As Dad was talking to Grandpa, I continued looking through the documents, and right away a piece of paper caught my eye. It reminded me of the chemical formula that Dr. Freitz had when we met.

  “Dad? What is this?”

  He looked at me and sighed. “It’s a formula from work.”

  “Your co-worker Dr. Freitz talked about CR-17. What is that?”

  I could see that Dad was worried about how much Dr. Freitz had told me. However, he agreed to tell me about CR-17 under the condition that I didn’t bring it up with anyone. Dad seemed to hesitate a bit. He looked at Grandpa, who nodded as if to say, “I think it’s time to tell her.” Dad pulled a chair and sat across from me.

  “About thirty years ago, after I graduated from college, I had an opportunity to travel abroad and work on a project to combat desertification in Africa. It was the perfect trip really. I had never been outside the country, so the timing was perfect. I was part of a group of volunteers from around the world: Europe, the US, Asia, Australia. Over the course of six months, we planted thousands of trees in the surrounding villages. The trees were meant to anchor the dunes and slow the advance of the sand on arable land. But we were fighting a losing battle; for every tree we planted, we lost two more to the harsh conditions. The group had some pretty smart people, including a plant geneticist by the name of Emily Dubois.”

  “Wait. Emily, that’s Mom’s name. I’ve heard bits and piece of this story before. You are talking about Mom, right?”

  “Yes,” said Dad. “But you haven’t heard the circumstances under which your mom and I met.” He continued. “Emily and I thought that there had to be a better way of fighting desertification. So we decided to put our heads together to come up with a solution. One day, after spending four hours under the sun planting trees, your mom jokingly said, ‘Not even a super-plant could survive here.’ That got us thinking; what if we could make the plants more resilient to the conditions?

  “From that moment forward, we shifted our focus from planting trees to finding a way to strengthen the trees. Our methods were crude, the equipment rudimentary, but we managed to create a serum that, once injected into the stem of the plant, made it last a lot longer and survive the harsh conditions. Within two months, we successfully planted three times the trees, and ninety-five percent of them survived. Best of all, we were able to apply the same treatment to most plants, including the sorghum crops.

  “The local government started taking an interest in our work. All of a sudden, we went from mere volunteers to leading pilot programs all over the region. Your mom and I incorporated a company called Good Teranga, from the local language for ‘good hospitality,’ and the original name of Galactic Teranga.”

  “No way!” I said in disbelief. “You started GT?”

  “Originally, yes. But we needed money to continue doing our work. So when investors approved our funding, we sold the company. We thought that a larger company with more resources could help more people than we ever could. At the time, the company was just starting up. We made sure that the new owner shared our philosophy of helping people and the environment, just like your mother and I set out to do.” Dad stopped to take a breath. His tone changed. “In hindsight, we were a bit naive.” He stared ahead and collected his thoughts. “We were all so young and wanted to do work we loved and help people in the process. I never imagined that the company would become the giant conglomerate it is today.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I observed.

  “Well, it is not a good thing either,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because in twenty years, the company has changed a lot. It is now a publicly traded company, which means that its focus has shifted from social responsibility to making sure its stock price remains high and that stockholders are satisfied.

  “A couple of years ago, a lab in Costa Rica sent us soil samples by accident.”

  “The same one you recently received?” I asked.

  “Yes, the very same,” Dad said. “They were meant for the research unit in the headquarters at BRIT. Only, we didn’t know that until after we finished testing the sample. The sample was labeled ‘CR-17’; ‘CR’ for the country where the sample was collected, and ‘17’ for the zone in which the sample was found. We noticed some irregularities in the soil.” Dad stopped again and looked at Grandpa. He proceeded. “When I tested the sample, I found trace amounts of a mineral that is not on the periodic table.”

  “What do you mean, not on the periodic table?” I asked.

  “I mean there is no mineral on Earth with that composition. The mineral simply does not exist … on Earth.”

  “That’s not possible. Could it have come from space, like a small meteor?”

  “That’s highly unlikely because meteors come in as a rock. This was in soil form. Anyway, I needed your mom’s expertise. She went to Costa Rica to confirm the source of the soil. When we found out the soil was amazingly fertile, we combined it with the seed we had developed and the serum. The results were … unnatural.

  “When the new board got wind of our discovery, they wanted to move forward with our research and go to production with minimal testing. The problem was that we needed to do more testing to find out if there were any long-term effects of using a mineral that none of us truly understood. At first I thought this was just because GT needed a new product to wow the new board of directors they had just elected. But it became increasingly clear that they had no intention to research the soil thoroughly before using it for crops. So we decided to hide the research we had done but particularly the chemical makeup of the soil. Simon had a piece of the formula, I took a piece, and your mom took a piece. Sadly, we don’t know what happened to your mom’s piece.”

  After his story, Dad made me promise not to repeat what I had heard to anyone, especially my co-workers at BRIT.

  7

  The Cabin

  Dad and I pulled up at the end of a long and narrow gravel path. We wouldn’t have known it was there had we not been looking. After heading north for an hour, I couldn’t wait to get out of Grandpa’s pickup truck. Dad had insisted on driving. We hadn’t talked much during the trip, but he was concerned that I meet with Dr. Freitz. He felt it was a bad idea.

  “Simon has always been a little strange,” Dad said. “It’s not that I don’t trust him. It’s just that he is … well … strange. And I think you should let me go meet him alone,” he said.

  “Dad, no. If there is even a chance that he knows anything about Mom, I want to be there to learn about it!”

  Dad caved and let me accompany him. Perhaps he realized that I would have gone on my own anyway.

  The path was just big enough for the pickup to pass through it. At times, Dad had to maneuver to avoid stray thorny branches that stuck out too far into the path. When we finally hit the edge of the path, we got out of the car and went the rest of the way on foot. We could see the cabin at a distance. There was a lot of green; there were trees everywhere. The cabin was at the edge of a small isolated bend in the riverbed, with calm waters and clean-smelling air
. The cabin seemed deserted: there was no indication that someone lived there. The stack of firewood resting on the side of the house had grown cobwebs in places.

  We went around to the back of the house to see if anyone was on the premises: no one. We finally walked up to the front door and knocked: no answer. After several attempts, Dad turned the knob, and the door opened to our surprise.

  “Hello? Anyone here?” Slowly Dad pushed the door open. He stopped at the threshold and called out again, louder this time. “Hello? Is anyone inside.”

  Still no answer.

  Dad walked into the cabin. I followed. We walked hesitantly toward the center of the room, where a computer was left on the table.

  Suddenly the door slammed shut behind us.

  “Don’t move!” said a man.

  Realizing the danger, Dad stepped in front of me, arms spread wide.

  The man pointed a gun at Dad. “Take one step and I will blow your head off!” he threatened.

  “Wait! Don’t shoot! I’m here with my daughter. We’re just looking for an old friend of mine. We did not mean to intrude.” The man remained quiet. Dad continued to plead. “Listen, we will just be on our way, OK?”

  “Jerome? Is that you?” the man said to Dad unexpectedly. He stepped away from behind the door; his face caught the light.

  “Simon!” exclaimed Dad.

  Simon lowered his weapon and shook Dad’s hand. “Sorry. I didn’t know who you were.” He put his weapon on the counter. “How did you know I was here? Did you come alone? You didn’t tell anybody where you were going, did you?” He was obsessively looking out the window as he asked the questions.

  “I remember you mentioning once that you would like to retire and live by the water,” Dad said. “Since this place is far from the city, I knew there was a chance you’d be here. And yes, it’s just us.” Dad turned toward me to introduce us. “This is my daughter—”