Rosewater

by Tade Thompson

‘Just sign the fucking document, Kaaro.’

  Klaus told them my real name! I will never work with that Belgian bastard again. Tintin and fruity beer can go hang. I scribble across the dotted lines where an ‘x’ indicates that I should. I open the tin, dip my thumb in the ink pad and leave my fingerprint. I hand the paper back to the woman and clean my thumb against my thigh.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m from Section Forty-five.’

  ‘I already know that. What’s your name? What’s your rank?’

  She smiles, and even though it is mocking, my heart accelerates. ‘You don’t know much about us, do you? We don’t run this organisation on hierarchical principles, Kaaro. We don’t hold ranks. Planar philosophy. That means flat.’

  ‘I know what planar means.’ A lie.

  ‘Good, so don’t go asking to speak to my supervisor or manager or anything like that.’

  ‘I won’t. How do you run an organisation without bosses?’

  ‘Surprisingly well. Much better than any other organisation in Nigeria, I’ll tell you that.’

  ‘Tell me your name. Please. I can’t just call you a number each time I need you or dream about you.’

  ‘You talk too much.’

  ‘I’ve been told. Name?’

  ‘I am Mrs. Femi Alaagomeji.’

  ‘Mrs?’

  ‘Recently widowed.’

  Of course. Husband interred in mass grave. ‘Pleased to meet you, Femi —’

  ‘Mrs. Alaagomeji.’

  ‘Femi. As an act of faith, can I get some food?’

  ‘Perhaps later.’ She places the lighter on the table in between us. ‘Tell me, have you heard of the Bicycle Girl?’

  ‘Sort of. Wasn’t she some girl who was murdered in Ibadan back in 2044 along with her entire village? Her ghost appears to people from time to time and they go all hysterical. It’s an urban legend.’

  ‘It’s not an urban legend,’ says Femi.

  ‘It’s an urban legend,’ I say. I suck my teeth, dismissive. Inside, though, I’m churning. I remember my brief glimpse of a raised fist and a closing gap in space on a drunken night. ‘Listen, seventy-six percent of urban legends are deliberately crafted, did you know that? It’s a form of storytelling. Anyway, what’s the significance of Bicycle Girl to you?’

  ‘We want you to find her.’

  ‘You don’t need me. You need Dan Akroyd and that other … what’s his name? Who did The Life Aquatic and snogged Scarlett Johanssen?’

  ‘Kaaro.’

  ‘I’m not a finder of ghosts. Actually, forget that. Feed me and I’ll find you as many ghosts as you like.’

  ‘Kaaro, read the file. I’ll get you some rice and oku eko.’ She pushes a button on the lighter and a holo-screen pops up in front of me. ‘Then make up your mind.’

  The file is the written report of one Corporal Folashade Olomire and most of the information is related to the interrogation of a Professor Aloysius Ogene, expert in theoretical physics. The problem is his RFID chip has him as travelling from Lagos to Arodan on February 28, 2044. He goes missing from the grid until March 14, 2044 where he walks up to a police checkpoint on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, confused and asking for his wife. This would have been a simple missing persons issue, except that the entire population of Arodan disappeared. The document also contains embedded photographs. Femi has been good to her word and I chew as I read. I am so hungry that I do not taste anything, just swallow. I don’t even care that they serve me oku eko, which means ‘The Corpse of Lagos’, cheap mackerel that nobody likes to be seen eating. Hunger is the best spice, they say.

  On the matter of the one thousand, one hundred and seventy-five civilians missing from the village known as Arodan, the subject, Aloy Ogene, had nothing to say. He insisted he did not murder them and indeed no bodies have been found. He continued to speak of a young girl called Oyin Da, native of Arodan, who sought him out at the university and took him to the village to see a machine. See attached jpg image 478 for a sketch he made.

  The sketch looks nothing like a machine. The man must have been tortured within an inch of his life because he could not draw a straight line. I cannot decipher the symbols so I set the photo aside. There is a machine, if not real, at least in Ogene’s imagination. Move on.

  Ogene would have us believe that the girl, Oyin Da, activated this machine after he made suggestions that could improve its function, whatever that may have been. He claims she disappeared along with all the inhabitants of Arodan immediately after.

  A pop-up photo floats above the text showing Ogene. Round face, flat on top, short hair, strands of grey in his eyebrows. I have never been to university, but I think this is what a professor would look like. Which means a professor probably doesn’t look like this. I swipe away the image and continue.

  Preliminary scouting and deep forensic examination did not reveal any such machine or related schematics. I attended the site personally. My initial impression was that Ogene had a psychotic delusion. He said a colonial scientist called Roger Conrad had built the machine but returned to England around 1960, leaving the engine behind. Oyin Da had repaired it, according to Ogene. Curiously, he stated that Oyin Da spoke no English and communicated in Yoruba or in phrases from a Yoruba Bible translated into English.

  Through contacts in the British Embassy and communication with MI5 in London, I was able to establish that a Conrad did in fact exist, may have arrived in Nigeria circa 1953 and settled somewhere in Yorubaland carrying out some unspecified duties for the British Government (Nigeria was a British Colony at the time). He may have had a contingent of soldiers with him. He returned to London in 1961, spent seven years in a county asylum and was released under the Care in the Community programme. He committed suicide in 1975.

  I come to an embedded audio file called ‘interrog excerpt 11-10.’ I tap it. A male voice speaks, deeper than I would have expected for an intellectual, but hesitant, broken in parts and fearful.

  ‘I woke up with a start, the notes I made on the schematics gone. The noise, the din from the engine was impressive and frightening. I got countless pings from the Cyborg Observation Beasts, the hawks. There were up to a hundred hawks outside, all facing the bicycle block, recording the event.

  ‘The sound from the machine rose in pitch. Light flowed like the aurora borealis from the only entrance. The whine was all over Arodan, twinned with the stammer of Doppler. Villagers staggered out to investigate. It sounded like it was reaching for a crescendo, after which something would happen. Smoke pumped out the top blacker than the night sky. Some hawks flew through it, as if to taste the nature of the soot. Oyin Da’s mother yelled something at me, but I could not hear over the din. She ran off into the night.

  ‘The hawks began to fall out of the sky. My glasses cracked. I fell to my knees. My entire brain was on fire with vibrations and just before I fell unconscious I was aware of a bright light.’ Aloy Ogene pauses and sobs, then continues.

  ‘When I woke it was daylight and I was alone. It was two weeks later and I stumbled around until I came to a police checkpoint. They arrested me, charged me with murder.’

  ‘Actually, we’re charging you with genocide because of the ethnic cleansing of the people of Arodan.’ A female voice now, confident, merciless. Probably Corporal Olomire. ‘You are Igbo. The people you killed were all Yoruba. It’s tribally motivated.’

  ‘So now I’m a mass murderer.’ Sardonic laugh. ‘But where are the bodies?’

  The recording cuts off abruptly.

  The next part is labelled ‘transcript from cell microphone.’ Various pop-ups state the highly classified nature of the material and threaten all manner of punishment. I dismiss them.

  Timestamp: 26/04/2044 16.13:21

  [Unknown sound on recording]

  [Unknown sound on recording]

  Unidentified_1(female): Oh, my. Your face. They tenderized it. I’m sorry. I came as soon as I could.

  Unidentified
_2(male): Hurry up. It’s costing a lot of energy to keep open.

  Unidentified_1: All right!

  Prof A. Ogene: Oyin Da?’

  Unidentified_1: I’m sorry I got you involved in this. Come with me.

  Prof A. Ogene: My work

  Unidentified_1: There is only death for you here, Professor Aloy.

  [Unknown sound on recording]

  [Unknown sound on recording]

  Unidentified_1: You’re going to love this place, Prof.

  [Unknown sound on recording]

  ###Recording Ends###

  A fish bone gets stuck in my throat and I cough, drink some water, and cough some more. I gesture to the guard, point to my own back, but the man is a hologram or statue. When the bone dislodges I give the guard my middle finger and continue my reading.

  Now it is an audio file titled ‘Debrief excerpt 08-22.’

  ‘His locator chip was gone. We searched the cells, the surroundings, the nearest buildings, everywhere.’ This is Olomire speaking.

  ‘Any blood or body fluids in his cell? I mean as signs of a struggle.’

  ‘There is always blood and shit … excuse me, waste material in the cells. It’s a prison. Prisoners struggle all the time. The place is full of his DNA, if that’s what you mean, but from old struggles, bowel opening, and masturbation.’

  ‘Did you ask his wife?’

  ‘Did we — listen, we are not amateurs, you know? Just because we lost a prisoner does not mean —’

  ‘Corporal, please answer the question for the record.’

  ‘Yes, we asked the prisoner’s wife. She was unable to help.’

  ‘Unable or unwilling?’

  ‘She was catatonic with grief.’

  ‘Did she think he was dead?’

  ‘No, but at the time he had been charged with mass murder. That can be upsetting if you are of delicate disposition. This woman certainly was.’

  ‘I see. Then what happened?’

  ‘I filed my report and awaited instructions. I received them and carried them out.’

  ‘And what were these?’

  ‘Declare that Professor Aloy Ogene died in custody before he could be executed, and state that he had been buried in a secret location to prevent vandalism by the victims’ relatives.’

  The recording ends.

  I stretch and scratch my belly.

  Ogene missing, Oyin Da missing, wife catatonic somewhere. And this is eleven years ago. Everybody knows about this ghost story, but only the superstitious believe it. Having read the file, I have some more questions, but cannot dismiss the story of Bicycle Girl as fiction, especially since I know she exists. Kind of. I saw a fist which could belong to anyone. And I was drunk.

  Femi comes back in. Her make-up is perfect and I receive a fresh dose of her perfume. She sits opposite me and deactivates the holo-screen. It shimmers in the air, then winks out.

  ‘Well?’ she says.

  ‘Interesting,’ I say. ‘I have some questions.’

  ‘I’ll answer what I can.’

  ‘Section Forty-five receives all the data feeds from the hawks, right? The COBs?’

  ‘I can’t confirm that.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll rephrase. I’m guessing S45 can access the COB servers. The report said there were many hawks around on the day Arodan villagers and Bicycle Girl disappeared. What about that information?’

  ‘All data retrieved from that area between February 28 and March 14 2044 was corrupt.’

  ‘What happened to Ogene’s RFID chip?’

  ‘Missing. Deactivated. Nobody knows.’

  ‘Femi, I’ve listened to your fairy tale. While I admit it’s rather entertaining, I’m not sure what you want me to do with the information.’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ says Femi. She sits back in her chair and smiles. ‘Kaaro, we want you to recruit Bicycle Girl for us.’

  ‘Er … what?’

  INTERLUDE: MISSION 3

  Rosewater, 2057

  I fucking leave it too long.

  I trip on a plastic garbage can and go sprawling. I feel none of the scrapes and I do not bother to dust myself off. I keep running in the night. My phone polymer vibrates but I ignore it. I know who it is. Taiwo wants to taunt me or delay me while his Gujarat-bot hunts me down. Shitty-fuck!

  At least the roads are better than a year ago. There are many tarred and graded roads. The skyline in Rosewater is spiked with cranes and the occasional skyscraper. The multinationals have finally moved in and all day, including Sundays, the sound of construction rings out. The Yemaja is cleaner because rudimentary sewage systems are being built.

  I run. I cannot hear the bot behind me, but that doesn’t mean anything. Indian robotics is the best in the world and the engines run silently. The only noise I expect is detonation when it bombs me. My chest hurts and I can almost see my ancestors calling to me from the grave. I turn into a blind alley, spin, and run into an adjacent space.

  It is a night without moon, and visibility is poor because it’s Harmattan season and dusty particles from the Sahara Desert suspended on a trade wind lower temperatures and threaten laundry and breathing everywhere. This will not slow the construct. It seems one of Taiwo’s lieutenants hacked my implant and it’s broadcasting a homing signal. I imagine the actual message.

  I’m here, come and find me! I’m here! Yoo-hoo! Come get me, Indian robot of death!

  I briefly consider digging out my implant, but dismiss it out of hand. It’s deliberately too deep to get to without nicking a major artery and killing myself. I could get an underground hack to discontinue the message, but no time. I only have — had a fifteen-minute head start.

  I see a chute, narrow. I would barely fit in there, but I’m pretty sure the bot can’t. I slide in. It’s the entrance to a kind of silo. I find myself amidst cobs of maize packed into burlap sacks. Dark. I stop breathing to force my heart to slow.

  I am still connected to Taiwo. My distance reading has been reducing recently. Professor Ileri says this is because with increased construction there are more disruptions to continuous connections. The xenosphere is more broken up.

  A crawling creature moves across my foot. There will be rats here, but I’m not worried.

  Femi tells me over the last two years I have given S45 terabytes of information on the twins. I know this, I say. S45 has enough to put them away, I say. Just dotting ‘i’s and crossing ‘t’s, she says. Any day now, she says. Right.

  I mine Taiwo’s brain indiscriminately, sucking as much as I can through the tenuous link we have. I don’t know what use it will be if I’m dead, but it’s better than —

  I hear the slam and whine. The Gujarat bot is outside, slapping against the entrance. Now I don’t understand what I was thinking when I chose this enclosed space. It’s an attack construct. It will decide to launch a grenade in a minute. One exit. Brilliant.

  ‘Kaaro!’

  Oh, this is just outstanding. Taiwo is talking to me through the robot’s public address system.

  ‘Kaaro, I know you’re down there.’

  ‘Hello, boss,’ I say.

  ‘Odale ni e,’ he says. You are a traitor.

  ‘Ta lo so yen fun yin, egbon?’ I say. Who told you that, Respected Brother?

  ‘Pa nu mo! Mo ti mo fun oshu meji.’ Shut up. I’ve known for two months.

  The construct has a cutting implement and it is widening the opening. Fragments of cement and brick fall inwards and a cloud of dust rises. There are no weapons in here.

  From our mental connection I see that he does not want me blown up. He wants me slowly disembowelled, and he wants the event recorded.

  ‘Mi kii nse olopa,’ I say. I’m not a cop.

  He laughs. It rings hollow through the speakers. ‘Okuro ati odale.’ Liar and traitor.

  Cracks appear and the walls give way. I fear the entire structure will collapse on me, but it holds. The rats squeal with fear and I hear them scramble. The construct is eight feet high with a variable width. It a
djusts for manoeuvrability. It looks like a tank, with no humanoid features at all. A squat vertical black alloy cylinder resting on a horizontal one. A force field glows around it, protecting it from debris and dirt and insults. Something whirrs and twists inside, a note becoming higher as if it is charging a weapon. A small cylinder, a muzzle this time, detaches from the frame and points at me. Even the floor vibrates.

  ‘Ile l’omo owa ti n mu ‘na roko,’ I say.

  The construct stops, powers down, reconfigures. The cylinders collapse into themselves, compacting the structure. My phone rings. I answer as I scramble over rubble to get out of the space, leaving the construct behind.

  ‘Hello, Taiwo,’ I say.

  ‘What have you done? That’s an expensive piece of equipment!’

  I am not sure what I’ve done, but I may have pulled out the backdoor deactivate phrase from Taiwo’s mind. I’m not about to tell him that, though. I don’t know if he knows about sensitives. Less is more.

  ‘I think you should ask for a refund,’ I say. ‘Awon agba ni gbogbo oro lo lesi, sugbon kii se gbogbo oro laa fesi si.’ The elders say, there is an answer to every question, but it is not every question that we answer.

  I hang up.

  Outside, as I emerge, I find guns trained on me. S45 has finally heard my distress call. They tell me to keep my hands where they can see them.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I say, and walk away.

  Femi Alaagomeji calls and calls, but I am in no mood and ignore her.

  I catch my own reflection in a shop window and I look hideous. I know that units will be moving in to capture Taiwo and his people. Simultaneously they will raid his businesses and arrest his brother. I hope they have adjoining cells. They hate each other, though I’ve heard Kehinde is crueler. Perhaps he will kill Taiwo.