Binti, The Complete Trilogy: Binti ; Home ; The Night Masquerade

by Nnedi Okorafor

  My therapist was named Saidia Nwanyi. She was a short squat Khoush woman who liked to sing to herself when no one was around. I learned this on my first visit to her office. It was in Math City, so a five-minute walk from my class. I was uncomfortable that day. Similar to the Meduse, in my family, one does not go to a stranger and spill her deepest thoughts and fears. You go to a family member and if not, you hold it in, deep, close to the heart, even if it tore you up inside. However, I wasn’t home and the university was not making seeing a therapist a choice, it was an order. Plus, despite the fact that it made me extremely uncomfortable, I knew I needed help.

  So I went and as I approached her office, I heard her singing. I stopped and listened. Then the tears came. The song she sang was an old Khoush song the women, Khoush or Himba, sang as they went into the desert to hold conversation with the Seven. I’d heard my mother sing it for weeks whenever she returned. I’d heard my oldest sister sing it to herself, as she polished astrolabe parts for the shop. I’d sung the song to myself whenever I snuck into the desert.

  I entered Dr. Nwanyi’s office with wet cheeks and she’d smiled, firmly shaken my hand, and closed the door behind me. That first day, we talked for an hour about my family, Himba customs, and the rigid expectations placed especially on girls in both Himba and Khoush families. She was so easy to talk to and I learned more about the Khoush that day than I had in my entire life. In some ways, Himba and Khoush were like night and day, but in matters of girlhood and womanhood and control, we were the same. What a surprise this was to me. That first day, we didn’t talk about what happened on the ship at all and I was glad. Afterward, I walked to my dorm room feeling like I’d visited a place close to home.

  Eventually, we did go deep into my experiences on the ship and doing so brought up such rawness. Over those months with Dr. Nwanyi, I learned why sleep was so difficult, why my heart would beat so hard for no reason, why I’d walked into the Oomza desert that day, why I had such a tough time at solar shuttle platforms, and why I couldn’t bear the thought of boarding a ship. But now, something had shifted in me. I was ready to go home. I needed to go home.

  The day after the showdown between Okwu and its professor, I’d made an appointment with Haras, the University Chief. When we met, I told it how urgent my need was and Haras understood. Within a week, the university had given Okwu permission to travel and gained agreement from the Khoush city of Kokure and my hometown of Osemba to allow Okwu to visit as an ambassador. Okwu would be the first Meduse to come to Khoushland in peace.

  The swiftness of these arrangements astonished me, but I moved with it all. One does not question good fortune. Home was calling, as was the Earth desert into which I would go with the other Himba girls and women on pilgrimage. Okwu and I were issued tickets to Earth not long after quarter’s end. My therapist, Dr. Nwanyi, hadn’t wanted me to go so soon, but I insisted and insisted and insisted.

  “Just make sure you breathe,” she’d said as I left her office hours before the journey. “Breathe.”

  Launch

  I followed Okwu through the enormous entrance to the Oomza Uni West Launch Port. Immediately, my sharp eyes found the doorways to docked ships far beyond the drop-off zone, ticketing and check-in stations and terminals. I opened my mouth to take in a deep lungful of air and instead coughed hard; Okwu had just decided to let out a large cloud of its gas.

  When I finally stopped coughing and my eyes focused on the docked ships, my heart began to beat like a talking drum played by the strongest drummer. I rubbed some otjize with my index finger from my cheek and brought it to my nose and inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled its sweet aroma. My heart continued its hard beat, but at least it slowed some. Okwu was already at check-in and I quickly got behind him.

  The Oomza West Launch Port was nothing like the Kokure Launch Port back home. The hugeness of it was breathtaking. Since coming to Oomza Uni, I’d seen buildings of a size that I couldn’t previously have imagined. The vastness of the desert easily surpassed these structures, but where the desert was a creation of the Seven, these buildings were not.

  The great size of the Oomza West Launch Port was secondary to the great diversity of its travelers. Back at Kokure, almost every traveler and employee was human and I had been the only Himba in a sea of Khoush. Here, everyone was everything . . . at least to my still fresh eyes. I was seventeen years old and I had been at Oomza Uni for only one of those years now, having spent the previous all on Earth among my self-isolating Himba tribe in the town of Osemba. I barely even knew the Khoush city of Kokure, though it was only thirty miles from my home.

  The launch port was like a cluster of bubbles, each section its own waiting space for those in transit. There were whole terminals that I could not enter, because the gas they were filled with was not breathable to me. One terminal was encased in thick glass and the inside looked as if it were filled with a wild red hurricane, the people inside it flying about like insects.

  Just from standing in line and looking around, I saw people of many shapes, sizes, organisms, wavelengths, and tribes here. I saw no humans like me, though. And if I had seen a fellow Himba, it was doubtful that I’d see any with Meduse tentacles instead of hair. Being in this place of diversity and movement was overwhelming, but I felt at home, too . . . as long as I didn’t look at the ships.

  “Binti and Okwu?” the ticketing agent enthusiastically said in Meduse through a small box on her large dome. She was a creature somewhat like Okwu, jellyfish-like and the size of a storage shed, except her dome was a deep shade of black and she had antennae at the center with a large yellow eye. Over the last year, I’d learned (well, brashly been told) that the females of this group of people had the long antenna with the yellow eyes. The males simply had a large green eye on their dome, no antenna. This one used her eye to stare at Okwu and me with excitement.

  “Yes,” I responded in the language of my people.

  “Oh, how exciting,” she said, switching to Otjihimba, too. “I will tell all my male mates about today . . . and maybe even a few of my female ones, too!” She paused for a moment looking at her astrolabe sitting on the counter and then the screen embedded in the counter. The screen hummed softly and complex patterns of light flashed on it and moved in tiny rotating circles. As I watched, my harmonizer mind automatically assigned numbers to each shape and equations to their motions. The agent switched back to Meduse, “Today, you’ll be—” She paused, letting out a large burst of gas. I frowned. “You will both be traveling on the human-geared ship, the Third Fish. Do you . . .”

  The talking drum in my chest began to beat its rhythm of distress, again.

  “That’s the ship we came in on,” Okwu said.

  “Yes. She may have experienced tragedy that day, but she still loves to travel.”

  I nodded. The Third Fish was a living thing. Why should she die or stop flying because of what happened? Still, of all ships for us to travel on, why the same one inside which so much death had happened and we’d both nearly died?

  “Is . . . is this alright?” the agent asked. “The university has given you two lifetime travel privileges, we can put you on any ship . . . but the time may . . .”

  “I do not mind,” Okwu said.

  I nodded. “Okay. Me neither. The spirits and ghosts of the dead don’t stay where they’re freed.” I felt my right eye twitch slightly.

  “Great,” the ticketing agent said. “You’ve both been given premium rooms near the pilot quarters.”

  I hesitated and then stepped forward. “Is there any way I can have . . . the room I had on the way here?”

  The agent’s eye bent toward me and she released a small cloud of gas. “Why? I . . . I mean, are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s quite small and near the servant quarters,” the agent said. “And the security doors are . . .”

  “I know,” I said. “I want that room.”<
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  The agent nodded, looked at her astrolabe and then the screen. “I can get you the room, but I hope you are okay with it being in a slightly different place.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “The Third Fish is pregnant and will probably give birth when she arrives on Earth. The newborn will be a great asset to the Earth Miri 12 Fleet, of course. What’s good for passengers is that her pregnancy means the Third Fish will travel faster. But it also means her inner rooms and chambers shift some and will be a little more cramped.”

  “Why will she travel faster?” I asked out of pure curiosity.

  “The sooner she’ll get to Earth to bear her child,” the agent said with a grin. “Isn’t it fascinating?”

  I nodded, also smiling. It really was.

  * * *

  “We’re honored to have you both aboard,” the boarding security guard said to me in Khoush a half-hour later, after our long walk to the gate. He was human and looked about the age of my father. He had a long beard and white Khoush-style robes. My fast-beating heart flipped just seeing him. Few on Oomza Uni dressed like this and, suddenly, home felt closer than ever.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, handing him my astrolabe to scan. On Oomza Uni, all humans and many nonhumans used astrolabes and they were scanned so regularly that doing so no longer bothered me as it had that very first time when I’d left home.

  I glanced back at Okwu and whispered, “Say thank you or something.” But Okwu said nothing. It clearly didn’t appreciate the guard not bothering to look at or speak directly to it in its language.

  “Meduse are too proud to use astrolabes, so this part of security does not apply to it,” the guard said, clearly picking up on Okwu’s irritation. He handed back my astrolabe.

  As I took it, I looked past him at the entrance to the Third Fish. The hallway leading inside was the same warm blue it had been that fateful day over a year ago. “Sure,” I said, with a wave of my hand. “It’s fine.” Was it blue when I exited? I wondered, as I put my astrolabe into my pocket next to my edan. I couldn’t remember; I hadn’t been paying attention. I’d had other things to worry about, like trying to prevent a battle. Something red caught my eye on the security guard’s uniform. A breath caught in my chest as I focused on the small red beetle. It walked right over where the man’s heart would be. Red point on white. Red point. On white. I frowned, knowing what was coming, but unable to stop it. The flashback that hit me was so strong I twitched.

  Heru’s narrow chest.

  His kaftan was white.

  A red dot appeared on it like a cursor on a blank screen.

  On the left side.

  Left side.

  Left side. Where his heart lived.

  It had been beating. Calm. Happy.

  Then it was a muscle, torn through.

  The Meduse stinger was white and blood stained it easily.

  That red dot bloomed like a rose on the bushes that liked to grow in the desert.

  Heru’s blood. Some spattered on my face. As his heart tore, as my mind broke.

  Five five five five five five five five five five five five five five five five five five five.

  “Binti of Namib?” the guard asked.

  I’d spoken with Heru’s parents twice. The first time, his mother only gazed at me through the virtual screen and cried. Openly, unflinchingly, she’d stared at me as if she could reach out and touch her son through my eyes. The second time, Heru’s brother, only a year younger than Heru, called and demanded I recount every detail. He didn’t care that it made me weep or that it would lead to a full week of nightmare-packed nights for me. And neither did I. Heru’s brother looked so much like him, same granite black hair and bushy eyebrows. After those two calls, I heard nothing from Heru’s people.

  “Binti of Namib?” the guard asked, again.

  “Oh,” I said, looking up. I shook myself a bit. “Sorry.”

  “You may board the ship.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I turned to Okwu and I had to stare at it for several seconds, as I prevented myself from falling into another nasty flashback, this one involving Okwu and how it had initially tried to kill me. Then I said to it in Meduse, “You first, my friend.”

  * * *

  Crossing the threshold and stepping onto the ship was easy enough. I felt the talking drum in my chest, but that was all. Okwu floated off to its room on the other side of the ship and I was glad to be alone. I needed to be alone. I needed to experience this alone.

  I passed a few people in the hallway to the sleeping rooms. It felt strange to be among so many humans again. Too quiet. I clutched my silky shawl closer to my body, feeling people’s eyes on my okuoko and my otjize-covered skin, especially my arms, neck, and face. Even among the many races at Oomza Uni, it had been a long time since I’d felt so alien.

  I started my breathing techniques the moment I saw my room’s door; if I began treeing, I’d never experience the full effect of my terror and thus wouldn’t be able to address it properly. This was one of Dr. Nwanyi’s requests, not in this moment (she hadn’t wanted me to take this trip), but in the idea. “When you face your deepest fears, when you are ready,” she’d said. “Don’t turn away. Stand tall, endure, face them. If you get through it, they will never harm you again.”

  I took deep, lung-filling breaths as I approached the door. Still, a violent shudder ran through my body and I leaned against the golden wall for support. “Everything is fine,” I whispered in Otjihimba. I switched to Meduse, “Everything is fine.” But everything wasn’t fine. I was walking toward the door, my back stiff, my mind full of equations. I was carrying a tray heavy with food from the dining hall, and everyone on the ship was dead. Chests torn open by Meduse stingers; the Meduse had enacted moojh-ha ki-bira, the “great wave.”

  Leaning against the wall, I pushed myself within feet of my room’s door. A woman with a staring small child walked by, greeted me, and entered her room doors away. The hallway grew quiet as the woman’s door locked behind her. The shhhhhp of the door sealing itself seemed to echo all around me. I began to see stars through my watering eyes.

  Heru.

  He was lovely. I liked him.

  Then his eyes changed because a Meduse ripped through his heart. All my friends who should have been in my class. Dead. I am the only human on Oomza of my year because all others are dead. All dead. All dead.

  I smelled their blood now. Heard the ripping. No screams, because that required un-torn lungs. Gasps. Spilling. I’d come here. My choice.

  I held my otjize-covered hands to my nose and tried to inhale the sweet scent, flowers, clay, tree oils. But I couldn’t breathe. I pressed my hands to my chest, as if I could cup my own beating un-torn heart, as if I could calm it. For a moment, everything went black. Then my sight cleared. I whimpered.

  “Shallow breaths, increased heart rate, you’re having a panic attack,” a stiff female voice said in Khoush.

  “I am,” I whispered. I didn’t like for my astrolabe to speak, but Professor Okpala had had me set it to speak whenever I had a panic attack. I’d protested back then, but now I understood why.

  “I suggest you drop into mathematical meditation.” The voice was coming from my pocket, in which my astrolabe was warming and vibrating gently.

  “If I . . . do, I learn . . . nothing,” I gasped.

  “There is time to learn, Binti,” the voice said. “This won’t be your last panic attack. But there’s no one in this hallway but me and all I can do is notify the ship’s medics. Help yourself, drop into meditation right now.”

  Everything went black, again. And when things came back, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop seeing Meduse stingers tearing through bodies with surprised faces. Heru, Remi, Olu . . . I could not force myself to inhale and get air into my lungs. My chest was burning when I finally gave in. I “slipped
into the trees” and dropped into meditation.

  Ahhhhh . . .

  The numbers flew, split, doubled, spun like the voice of the Seven.

  And soon they were everywhere and everything.

  I grabbed at Euler’s identity, e^’7bi × π’7d + 1 = 0, and I went from plummeting to gently floating down a warm rabbit hole with soft furry walls and landing on a bed of pillows and flowers. When I looked up from this fragrant quiet place, the narrowed telescopic view made things above clearer. I was on the Third Fish, a peaceful giant who was like a shrimp and could breathe in outer space because of internal rooms full of oxygen-producing plants that served as lungs. The violent death of many had happened on this ship, of my teacher, my friends, but not for me. No, not for me. I’d lived. And I’d become family with the murderous Meduse.

  “Mmmmm,” I said, from deep within my chest. My heart beat slowly. I reached into my pocket and brought out my edan. Quietly, I whispered my favorite equation and the blue current etched into the edan’s fractals of fine grooves and lines. I still did not know what it was, but after studying with Professor Okpala and studying the edan itself, I knew how to make it speak and later sing. I went to my room’s door and let the door scan my eyes. It opened and I stepped into the room where I had learned to survive.

  * * *

  My first sleeping cycle (for there isn’t even any night and day in space, let alone ones that are on Earth time) was full of violent nightmares so sharp that I could barely tolerate being around Okwu the next day. I’d never told it about my panic attacks or nightmares and I didn’t tell it now.

  Such things did not move Okwu and all it would say was that these would not kill me and I should strengthen myself and push past it all. Meduse don’t understand the human condition; my emotional pain would only irritate Okwu when it couldn’t make my pain instantly better. So, instead, I kept my distance from it that first day, saying I needed time to think. The ship had a separate gas-filled dining hall for Okwu and it found the food there so delicious that it spent most of that first day there. Being on the ship had no effect on Okwu; it felt right at home and easily reveled in the luxuries the ship and the university provided.