The Hangman's Replacement: Sprout of Disruption (BOOK 1)

by Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

  “Thank you kindly, Tedward. I’m excited about the simulations. But what do we call the item itself?”

  “I have several suggestions. What do you think of ‘Mortality Inducing Apparatus’? M-I-A? Nice, banal, and boring.”

  “Hmm. I don't like the word ‘mortality’. All synonyms for death attract attention.”

  “Sure. So I guess ‘Mortality Compliance Equipment’ is also out of the question. What about ‘Vertebral Extension for Non-Medical Orchestrated Uses’? VENOMOUS.”

  “No. It sounds like we are smuggling endangered species. Mambas and such. Besides, it does not evoke a noun. It has adjectival connotations. What else do you have?”

  “How about Spinal Distension Lever: SPINDLE?”

  “Of course!” laughed Doll Eyes. Tedward grinned awkwardly. Was the client laughing at him or was he appreciating his work?

  “SPINDLE is perfect! The British will love it! It sounds like a harmless gift for granny. It evokes Christmas jumpers, mince pies, and mulled wine! And yet the acronym is technically correct. The machine does stretch the spine. We just won’t tell them how much distension it is capable of. Thank you, Tedward. We will instruct the sender to use your words as articulated. He will not like it, but he must live with it.”

  “Why won’t he like it?” asked Tedward. He disliked people who were unimpressed by his eloquence.

  “He is a strange man. The Carpenter likes to call a spade a spade. Incidentally, he wants to apply the same frankness to our transaction.”

  “He wants to call a ‘gallows’ a ‘gallows’?”

  “Exactly, Tedward. But there is no way we’ll let him do that. The Carpenter only gave in after we threatened to take our business to his rival. He accepted our terms in spite of his ‘dignified revulsion as an Englishman’.”

  “Well, I extend my own revulsion despite my talent for dignifying the vulgar in English.”

  “Are you saying that gallows are vulgar, Tedward?”

  “Of course they are. But SPINDLEs? Those are perfectly dignified.”

  “Verily. Your cheque will be in the mail today.”

  “No, thank you. This assignment didn’t take a lot of time. My advice is free. But if you insist, you may pay me in kind.”

  “I did not insist but let’s hear it.”

  “I have a client who would benefit from your influence. He owns a brewery that makes a delicious but brain-numbing array of beers.”

  “I think I know where this is going. Continue.”

  “My client wants his beer to be the official brew of death row. He lobbied for the privilege before the last hangman retired. The authorities turned him down. But now that we are getting a new executioner, he wants to give it another shot. His proposal is quite reasonable, actually. Before each prisoner is executed, he should be allowed to pick a beer to accompany his last meal. Surely a last meal deserves to be washed down by a last beverage?”

  “I didn’t know they still did last meals, Tedward.”

  “They do.”

  “I will take your word for it.”

  “My word is as golden as a pint of Impure Thoughts. This tasty brew is a star in the euphoric constellation of flavours that my client has created for the death row inmates.”

  “With your able assistance of course?”

  “Naturally. But that’s not all! For the honour of becoming the signature sponsor of Mazambuko’s death row, Mhondi Breweries will also donate six months worth of food and medical supplies to the prison. Everyone wins. All the prisoners get good food and medications for their ailments. The authorities get the credit for negotiating the humanitarian package and for making inevitable deaths more tolerable. And most importantly, the condemned men enjoy a cold one before they dangle. The bitter end is not so bad if you experience it through the bubbles of a Mhondi signature ale. Indeed, it’s true ‘hoppiness’ in a bottle.”

  Tedward paused to allow the pun to unravel itself. After it fully uncoiled into the unimpressed silence at the other end of the line, he decided to return to the more pragmatic angle of his pitch.

  “To be frank, my client’s proposal is no different from other sponsorship deals. Cigarette companies sponsor soccer tournaments. Politicians sponsor campaigns in support of abstinence. So why can’t a beer company sponsor hangings?”

  “I can think of several reasons, Tedward. Your first examples involve contradictions. Maybe even hypocrisy. However, both are so common that the public would protest if both practices ended. People don’t like sudden changes to established patterns. But beer and death row? Such an odd combination establishes a pattern that was not there before. Such pairings attract negative attention. Like mackerel and Cabernet.”

  “Well –”

  “Your client is a man of interesting rationales, Tedward. Even if his request was among the accepted inconsistencies, personally, I disagree with him. No man should ever be hanged while intoxicated. Mhondi Beer has 18.5% alcohol content. Every bottle has half a litre of that foul concoction. Even the hardiest inmate would feel the warmth in his eyeballs. How can the dying man reflect on his misdeeds if he’s tipsy?”

  “Well, I am not sure my client’s motivations are as … inspired as your reflections.”

  “To the contrary. His motivations are very inspired, I’m sure. Inspired by profit. But his gain would be our loss. We don’t need the controversy, Tedward. Out of respect for you, I will ask my associates. I am sure they will dismiss your request outright.”

  “My client will be disappointed.”

  “No he won’t, Tedward. He will use the refusal as a rallying point for another series of petitions. That will keep him in the news for long enough to whip up a profitable controversy.”

  “You may have a point there. Well, I have done my job as a messenger. If you know anyone who needs excellent communications solutions, please refer them to me. TGMS: We crystallize the fog of your brilliance.”

  “Well, I wish you would crystallize everyone’s fog into brilliance. I know a bunch of business graduates who have been forced to live in a mist of misdirection for many years. Damn ivory towers. Anyway, this is not the time to discuss my soapbox issues. Keep at the good work, Tedward. Keep at it.”

  “I will. But first, I must recover from my hangover. It’s work-related.”

  “That’s the best kind. You are not working hard if you are not getting drunk. At least for some clients, anyway.”

  “I will take your word for it. Well, good luck with your ‘medical scenario’.”

  “Thank you, Tedward. There will be several.”

  * * *

  The Wayward Son

  Doll Eyes hung up the phone. For a while, he was lost in his own thoughts. Somehow, the call had triggered a cherished memory that was more pleasant than their current business.

  “Ah. Kristabelle ...” muttered Doll Eyes to himself. His guests shared blank stares before refocusing them on their host. Doll Eyes suddenly snapped back to reality. His rapport with nostalgia was no more intimate than any of his relationships: brief, intense, and fleetingly sentimental.

  “Last week, one of you gentlemen asked me why we needed special gallows to be made by a special carpenter. I decided it was best to delay my response until you were all in the same room. Let’s start from the beginning. As you know, we are not dealing with an ordinary plant infestation. These demon sprouts have been programmed with memories of events that happened long before they were created. When planted in the right place, they can ‘remember’ the locations of certain ... things. They dig up the past. Your past. Our past. Sadly, history does not always shine a flattering light on the people we once were. Each memory these plants ‘remember’ will sicken us.”

  Doll Eyes paused to acknowledge a man with a confused expression.

  “I don’t understand. How does the plant’s ability to find buried bodies affect us? Sure, it sounds sensational, but I don’t believe any bodies it finds will be tagged with our names and street addresses? Unless, of course, so
meone was foolish enough to leave such information on the corpses.”

  Doll Eyes waited for the muffled laughter to subside.

  “Name tags would only be useful to the police. But we are not worried about them. They work for us. The plant we are dealing with is more complex. It cannot be arrested or threatened. Though it was created by a scientist, the vine has an ‘extra-scientific’ impact. To put it simply, our flame lily is like an undisciplined son. Imagine your wife comes home and your kid shows her a piece of female lingerie that he found in your toolbox. Interestingly, it does not belong to his mother. Your marital bliss quickly goes sour. But what can you do to the boy? He is just a child, right? He did not pick up the axe and bury it in your skull. He simply facilitated the process. Still, does that make you feel any better about him?”

  Heads shook all around the table. A few men in the group shook their heads with the energetic vigour of a recent memory. Doll Eyes leaned forward and glared at his guests with his intense green eyes.

  “Our flame lily behaves like the wayward son in my example. If you keep a blood-soaked dagger under your floor boards, the plant will find it and wave it around for the neighbours to see. The flame lily’s colourful petals will ensure no one misses its attention-grabbing display. What else can you expect? Its actions are consistent with the behaviour that has been engineered into its genes. So if someone uses the vine to find something you want to keep hidden, that person could direct your ghastly secret to infect you with a terrible disease. This person could be a malicious enemy or the loved one of your buried history. Either way, if they can resurrect your past, they can send the germ-infested ... problem ... looking for you. The affliction it causes has no cure. Some refer to such a scenario as ‘justice’. Others call it vengeance. The choice often depends on personal circumstances. However, in Shona, we all call it ngozi.”

  There was a loud gasp from a man on the right side of the table.

  “Did you say ngozi?”

  “I did,” replied Doll Eyes.

  The man laughed with the reverence of a warrior expressing respect for an adversary’s brilliant manoeuvre.

  “In the Igbo language of Nigeria, ‘Ngozi’ is actually a name.”

  “What does it mean?” asked Doll Eyes.

  “Blessed. It’s my middle name. And my daughter’s too.”

  “How I wish we were dealing with a Nigerian Ngozi,” replied Doll Eyes. “For your sake, I hope the ngozis that are vexing us in Zimbabwe do not infect your blessings in Nigeria.”

  “I pray that the nine thousand kilometres separating Zimbabwe and Nigeria also agree with your hopes.”

  “Well, the distance between our countries is only that much if you travel by road. This plant does not need intra-continental highways to find you. It can take the direct path to Nigeria.”

  “But surely, there is a way to suppress these things? We may call it by different names, but this affliction is common to the entire African continent. Every country has people who specialize in dealing with such problems. Why can’t we just hire them to take care of this situation?”

  “You are right,” replied Doll Eyes patiently. “There are problem solvers who work in this area. They know how to bury disruptive histories under huge boulders. I am sure you have many in Nigeria. But this problem is different. We believe the flame lily can burrow into the most carefully buried histories. It can pick the most sophisticated locks that the best experts have installed to restrain ngozis. If enough people can get their hands on some shoots of this plant, we will not be able to stamp out all the fires it will ignite. The best problem solvers on the African continent are not up to the task. Even if they were, there aren’t enough of them to extinguish the grassfire we are expecting. That’s why we must keep the infestation under control. I don’t think any of you gentlemen want to be ‘remembered’ by such a plant?”

  Again, all heads shook. This time, they did so before the interpreters could enlighten the non-English speakers.

  “Neither do I,” said Doll Eyes. “Our problem is that this plant grows like a weed. It also appears to have the ability to intensify the strength of the infection. Further, it is indiscriminate. It does not care about our ethnic backgrounds, religions, or political affiliations. In fact, some of you are bitter rivals in other forums, but today, you are united by your hatred for this plant.”

  One of the guests interrupted.

  “But I thought the plant was not motivated enough to cause the havoc you speak of. The professor who discovered it said so, no?”

  “Are you willing to bet your life on his word?”

  The man shrugged. Doll Eyes continued.

  “The flowers at Great Zimbabwe were just a provocation: a little slap in the face to notify us that we’ve been invited to a fight. So gentlemen: consider yourselves provoked. But brawlers beware: This war demands your brains more than your fists.”

  A burly man in the corner shook his head in disappointment. Doll Eyes nodded understandingly.

  “We must approach this flame lily as though it is already dangerous. The person who designed it invested too much trouble. This is not a false alarm. The future that this plant threatens may arrive sooner than we expect. When it gets busy, it will not limit itself to Zimbabwe’s borders. It was bred in this country, but you all know that it has ambitions to spread across the entire African continent: from The Cape to Cairo, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. It is only a matter of time before the pandemic is activated. In fact, that day may have arrived already. We recently discovered a potential infection. The man is showing symptoms. We cannot be sure that a ngozi is causing the illness, but all evidence points to it. We are monitoring him very closely. We must take this plant seriously, or it will spread like a weed overdosing on plant steroids.”

  “Steroids, which are also known as ‘fertilizer’,” said a kind-looking man. He had a warm smile, round spectacles, and a soothing voice. He wore the demeanour of a mid-level civil servant: a man whose commitment to meeting deadlines had placed him on the short-list for the “Employee of the Year” award. If he simply volunteered to organize the Christmas party for his peripheral government department, he was sure to win over his fellow competitors.

  “I suppose ‘fertilizer’ also works,” replied Doll Eyes with a shrug. The wheels in his head were turning. There was something peculiar about this soft-spoken man. His oddly-timed comment had crystallized the unease that Doll Eyes had felt about him upon entering the room. What had such a genial man done to end up in such a meeting? This was not a gathering of small-time crooks and killers. It was a symposium for men with the capacity to apply an expansive scale to any atrocity. Of course, many of them had done so out of necessity. But this man looked like everyone’s favourite uncle. He was immediately trustworthy – sincere. Doll Eyes dismissed the thought and returned to business.

  “Our best chance is to develop immunity against the disease. Emptying death row is the vaccine that will allow us to do this. Many of you have asked how this action will save us. I cannot elaborate. The history is complicated. The lesser you learn, the safer you will be. All you need to know is that salvation lies in the death penalty. The executions will concentrate the widespread problem into human quarantines. If our effort succeeds, it won’t matter if these flowers infect all the planets in our solar system. We will be immune.

  “Though we will be fighting this problem in Zimbabwe, all of you must play a role. You must refrain from worsening the problem. Stop creating fertilizer for this plant in your home countries. Stop burying secrets that can be unearthed. Stop creating them.”

  Doll Eyes read the mind of a skinny man halfway down the table.

  “It will not make any difference if you bury your secrets in concrete coffins. Believe me, it has been tried. I suggest you stop tempting fate altogether.”

  The skinny man shrugged. He had his own views on the matter. Doll Eyes knew this man could not be converted. He decided to focus his persuasion on the rest of the gr
oup.

  “We can’t save a burning house by hosing the front door with water while we hose the back door with gasoline. That is what some of you gentlemen have been doing. For example, someone attacked Dr. Denis Mukwege and his hospital. Friends of that same person have also been busy in Goma.”

  Doll Eyes paused to let the names sink in. Only one man at the table seemed to recognize them. He pursed his lips and feigned ignorance.

  “To the person who was responsible for that attack: Stop. You are fuelling the flames.”

  A man with a large head interrupted.

  “I think we all agree that we do not want to fuel the flames of this disease. But surely you can tell us more about how our baking exercise will thwart this flower?”

  “All I can say is that the two are inseparable. The baking exercise is supposed to vaccinate us against the flame lily’s mischief. What I will say is that our cake needs more time to cook than this flower needs to take over the continent. We can’t speed up the baking process by simply cranking up the heat. So, to buy us time, we are working on a parallel strategy. It will allow us to slow the flower’s growth by starving it. One of our most effective weapons is the legal system.”

  Doll Eyes noticed a number of bewildered faces.

  “You know the legal system? It has judges, lawyers, and courtrooms ... ?”

  Slowly, the confused faces brightened. They looked as though they had finally recognized a passing acquaintance they had not seen in years.

  “Yes, that legal system. We are working to criminalize the possession, use, and exportation of these plants from Zimbabwe. I am told we are on solid ground on that front. There is no justification for any citizen to own such plants. They have no nutritional value. In fact, one could argue they rob the soil of nutrition. Worse, they contain colchicine. This chemical is a ‘spindle poison’: It can inhibit cell division and lead to all sorts of medical problems. Anyone caught with these plants will face a stiff prison sentence.”