Rosewater

by Tade Thompson

  ‘Parents are happy when I find their lost children,’ says I. Except my mother and father, but I keep that to myself.

  Klaus wags his finger. ‘Children are not possessions. That’s what most parents do not understand. They are custodians, not owners.’

  ‘Fine, whatever.’

  ‘I have a client for you. Quality.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Seven Sons Beer Parlour. Tomorrow. Do not fuck this up, Kaaro. She paid cash just for me to set up the meet.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Listen, you can’t go slobbering over this one. Keep your torpedo in the tubes. This is upper crust, my friend. Icing. Not the dregs you are used to.’

  ‘How does she look?’

  Klaus takes a deep breath and exhales noisily. ‘She looks like an angel walked into your dreams and fucked the perfect girl you have wanked to since you were twelve until the perfect girl got pregnant, had a daughter, and brought her up on milk and honey until she finally left your dreams and materialised in front of you.’

  I whistle.

  ‘Indeed. Believe me, her shit does not stink.’

  When I think of Femi the spinning shifts gears, slows down. I remember her perfume and the lift of her breasts, and the silly pout around her mouth. The tubes of light resolve into one tunnel.

  I aim for it and am born into more light.

  I wake in a hospital. White walls, white sheets, white ceiling with a ventilator above me. Phallic rubber tube down my throat. I attempt to remove that, but find my arms tethered with an IV tube on one side and a monitor clip on the other. To my left a fifty-inch display screen pulsates with knowledge about my condition. It seems to throb with an excitement at every peak and trough of my vital signs which makes me very uncomfortable. I remove the tubes, monitors, and intravenous fluid lines. I don’t bother looking for clothes. I do not hesitate. In the hospital gown, I leave the room, knowing that the single guard has taken a nature break. I go down the corridor barefoot and unerringly end up in a changing room where I pick up a bunch of keys that someone has lost. I put on theatre scrubs from the fresh laundered pile, pick up a lost wallet, and leave the building wearing the equivalent of green pyjamas. In the car park I walk right to the Volvo, use the key from the found ring to open it, and drive away.

  I am in a daze, and part of me suspects I might still be in that dream, that contaminated coma world. I think only of Femi and speed up. I discard the vehicle fifty yards from her home, engine running, door open. Let the Area Boys joy ride it.

  I ring the bell outside the forbidding fence and stand in the light so that the cameras can pick me up. After a minute a door cut into the metal gate swings open and I walk through. I walk down a short, palm tree-lined drive, and she meets me at the front door. She has her right wrist to her mouth as if she is smelling a perfume sample, but she is talking. Probably has a phone implant. She is casual, wearing sweat pants and a loose white pullover, with a colourful scarf binding her hair.

  ‘You have just got someone fired,’ says Femi. ‘You shouldn’t have been able to walk away from the hospital.’

  ‘Can I get a hug?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come on. I’ve been sick.’

  ‘You still are if you think I’m going to hug you. How did you escape?’

  ‘I’m a finder, Femi. I can escape from anywhere.’

  ‘Come inside.’

  She steps aside, and gestures towards the interior of the house. As I pass her I steal a kiss. It lands on her lips and her knee lands right in the centre of my crotch. I fall to the marble floor and clutch my genitals, curled up into a foetal position and resisting the overwhelming urge to vomit. The pain is a visceral thing, shooting up and down my body in successive waves. I lick my lips through the red haze and smile at how she stares down at me.

  ‘Totally worth it,’ I say in English.

  Later, I sit at her dining table sipping Hennessey.

  ‘This is the quality. Klaus was right about you,’ I say.

  ‘And I’m starting to think he was wrong about you,’ says Femi. She sits opposite him and seems to have forgiven his indiscretion. ‘You haven’t done the job you were contracted to do.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. Where’s Regina Ogene?’

  ‘Safe.’

  ‘Can we get to her?’

  ‘I can have you at her location in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Good. I’ve been thinking about what I read in the files and some rumours I’ve heard while drinking or at work. Do you know what the Lijad is?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Neither do I, but I’ve heard tell. It appears and disappears today in Enugu, tomorrow in Lokoja. It’s never in the same place longer than an hour. It moves so fast sometimes that it is thought to be in two places at once.’ I act like I know, but it all comes second hand from Alhaji.

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘Nobody knows.’ This is not entirely true. I remember my drunken encounter with the Bicycle Girl outside a bar.

  ‘Then why are we talking about it?’

  ‘Because I think your Bicycle Girl is in the Lijad.’

  INTERLUDE: MISSION 4

  Rosewater, 2059

  All hail the Ocampo Inverter!

  I am waiting to be picked up.

  Kaaro … Kaaro … dipthongs. Dip your tongue.

  I shake the thought out of my head. I am standing in the shade of a kiosk, watching the launch of the North Ganglion Power Station. There is a canopy and a stage where a few official muckity-mucks pontificate. The feedback from the PA system is horrendous. It worsens my headache. There is a small crowd, maybe a hundred people. There are a few stands interspersed among the people which bear scale model reproductions of the power plant. There is one right beside me. There are bottles of champagne up on the stage, and some fizzy shandy drink for the hoi polloi. I am tempted to drink but I don’t want the bubbles to worsen my headache. I have to concentrate to keep other people’s thoughts out of my head.

  These days I use ketoconazole. It seems to work better than clotrimazole. The problem is the thick layer on my skin makes me sweat in the afternoon sun. And I think I smell.

  This close, the biodome looms over everything, and everybody in Rosewater glances at it every hour, as if it has apotropaic powers. I look at the model station. A team of scientists finally figured out how to exploit electricity from Wormwood’s ganglia in order to power the city. This time last week the air would have been split with the din of petrol and diesel generators. Fights occasionally broke out when neighbours found out that people had tapped electricity from them by means of extra-long extension cables.

  Until now, the most construction we’d seen around both north and south ganglia has been elaborate warnings and fences. Both ganglia are skirted black with carbonized flesh from the dead. Animals and birds know to keep clear, yet even though we are at the top of the food chain, humans don’t have enough sense to avoid the area.

  Nobody has been able to explain why Wormwood would leave two pylons of nervous tissue out in the air. Some say it uses them to broadcast thoughts, others that it harvests the thoughts of people. Speculation within S45 is that they serve as sensory organs and weapons. Me, I think that Wormwood wants us to exploit the electricity the way we are now. It’s not really malicious the way humans are, but you need to have met it to know this.

  I remember a drunken night when I tried to link with the south ganglion, to see if I could find Oyin Da or Anthony or anyone on the other side of the biodome. I got no humans, but in the thought stream there were entities made of electricity, elementals, friendly. They were sentient, I think, but we did not understand each other. They had no physical form, but moulded their charges to mimic my body. I was surrounded by eight of them frolicking around me. They projected imagery that I did not understand although occasionally there was an asteroid or a space station and a moonscape covered with countless machines and mechanical butterflies flitting from o
ne to the other picking up and depositing informational pollen. Of Wormwood’s thoughts I understood nothing at all. The nature was too alien without Anthony to translate.

  The scientists use the Ocampo Inverter and all of a sudden we can connect to the national grid, right voltage, right frequency. DC to AC. You can still see the ganglion, but nobody unauthorised will get near it since there is a building around it as well as security.

  Kaaro … Kaaro … dipthongs. Dip your tongue.

  I look at the people milling about. They will be getting their first ever electricity bills because, hey, Ocampo Inverters don’t come cheap.

  Estimated population three million. Come for the healing, stay for what exactly? What unites the citizens of Rosewater? I even ask myself. I am ordered to be here, stationed here, but it has the emotional pull of home. I am a Lagosian. I do not miss Lagos, but I am from there. At some point, between 2055 and now, I lost the affinity for Eko Ile.

  Dip your —

  Dip.

  Detonator. Check the detonator.

  I stand straighter. That is a clear determined thought from someone in the crowd. Shit, it’s a fucking suicide bomber. I check the time. My pick up isn’t here. I hate suicide bombers. Their heads are always full of mushy rhetoric, faulty logic, and grim fucking resolve. Just after they activate the detonator there is some regret, but still. I fucking hate suicide bombers. I briefly wonder if I can just wander away, ignore this and change the rendezvous point, but I know that won’t work. My implant tracks me, tells them where I’ve been. It won’t do for the record to show that I was here minutes before some fanatic detonates some C4.

  Where the fuck are you, piece of shit?

  I don’t have my gun. Brilliant, Kaaro.

  Fuck are you …?

  It’s disorienting doing this with my eyes open and while scanning the crowd visually, but I can’t take any chances.

  Got him. He’s wearing a crash helmet and agbada, working his way towards the stage. He wants maximum carnage. I can’t stop him from here, but I phone dispatch.

  ‘Identification?’

  I give it.

  ‘Situation?’

  I can’t remember the code.

  ‘There’s a bomber, a vest.’

  ‘Caller, I need —’

  ‘Yes, a code. I can’t remember, but a whole bunch of people will die if you don’t act right now.’ I speak in an urgent whisper. In my mind I can hear the batshit suicide bomber rhetoric warming up.

  ‘I’m on your location.’

  ‘Is there a bird?’

  ‘Affirmative. Localise.’

  ‘Blue crash helmet, grey cotton fabric.’

  ‘I’ve tagged the target. Neutralize in three.’

  ‘Roger, dispatch. Out.’

  It’s not quite three seconds. My arm isn’t even by my side when the drone shoots a high-speed, high impact adhesive round. The shock wave throws most of the people around my bomber into the air like bits of chaff. At the centre is a brown congealed mass, like a frozen splash of water. Four people including my bomber are caught in the trap, sealed, unable to move. I’m fascinated. I’ve never seen this before, although I’ve been briefed about it.

  All the celebrants rush from the stage, and people disperse, stampeding. Except me. I walk in the opposite direction, towards the adhesive trap. There are no thoughts coming from inside, perhaps because even xenoforms can’t survive in there.

  My pickup arrives.

  She’s driving. She smiles as she pulls up. She remembers what I remember.

  Kaaro … Kaaro … dipthongs. Dip your tongue.

  Like this?

  Mmm.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Rosewater: 2066

  ‘Where have you been?’ says Aminat.

  I do not answer at first. I open my apartment door and let her in. She is shaking, though whether with anger, cold, or grief I am yet to find out.

  ‘Dealing with some work stuff,’ I say. I lead her to the sofa.

  ‘I called and called.’

  ‘I had to ignore my phone. I went to Lagos,’ I say. ‘What can I get you to drink?’

  ‘I thought … you and I …’

  ‘I was busy, Aminat. Calm down.’

  ‘Do not tell me to calm down.’ She snaps off each word, each consonant crisp with the force of her rage.

  ‘I know you’re upset, but I’ve had a weird time and I’m getting a drink. Do you want one?’ She is wearing a sleeveless top, but even from where I stand I can see the gooseflesh on her shoulders. I get us both Jack Daniels because … well, it’s what I would want and she’s not saying a damn thing. She holds the glass, but does not sip.

  ‘How did Bola die?’ I ask.

  ‘She got up briefly after you visited her. Walked around the house, chatted with her kids, did some paperwork around finances, asked to see her will. It’s as if she knew she was going to die. She phoned me, or I phoned her. I cannot remember which. We talked and she joked with me, told me she loved me, asked about you. I got a message the next morning that she didn’t wake up.’

  She blurts this out and there is a lack of inflection to her words, a blankness to her face. She’s in shock, almost entranced. Her forehead glistens.

  ‘I’m really sorry —’

  ‘Stop. Don’t even say that. What did you do? What did you do to her? Did you kill her?’

  ‘What? No. Why would I —’

  ‘Then what did you do?’

  I sigh. ‘Aminat, you know what we do, right? You know something of what Bola and I am. Were. I mean … you know about sensitives?’

  ‘You’re psychics of some kind. You can tell if there’s an attack on the bank.’

  ‘Well, yes, sort of. Bola developed an illness that only affects our kind. The idea of a deceased person, a loved one, especially if this person was a spouse, it takes root and becomes a persistent memory pattern.’ I don’t know how much to tell her. Most people have some idea that there are people like me, but do not understand the full extent. The details of the xenosphere being composed of alien microorganisms is classified. From a lay person’s perspective psychics were once unreliable and have been more reliable since 2012 or thereabouts. I have to be careful what I tell Aminat.

  ‘And?’ she says. She finally samples the Jack.

  ‘I helped to remove that pattern. It was of Dominic. There is no reason for her to have died from my actions, so it must have been something else.’ I do not say that whatever it is may be causing the death of many like me.

  She stares at me with bloodshot eyes. I do not expect her to cry as she has probably done a lot of that already. Emotion from her is pawing at the xenosphere, but I resist the temptation. Upset people are the easiest to read.

  ‘Why don’t you get some rest,’ I say. ‘Sleep a bit. Do you have to phone your office?’

  ‘I already have.’ She drains the drink and lifts the glass in my direction. ‘Another.’

  I oblige.

  Soon, she is asleep on the couch. I consider taking her to the bedroom, but I don’t want to wake her. I just remove her shoes, adjust her legs, and cover her with a wrap.

  Bola is dead. I allow that to hit me and I feel the grief. We all loved her a little and she was always pretty decent to me. Then self-preservation kicks in: I have been exposed to her. Do I have what she had? Am I even now incubating the seeds of a destructive pestilence that will kill me?

  ‘Double lock,’ I say, and the apartment seals the front door and windows with titanium bars. I go to my bedroom, to the dresser, and open the bottom drawer. I have an ancient pack of Benson and Hedges and a lighter. I sit at the foot of my bed, on the floor. I quit smoking years ago, but what I am about to do is difficult and dangerous. In order to make it work I need a ritual, and lighting a cigarette is part of that.

  ‘Sound, bedroom only, Marvin Gaye, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” low volume.’

  As soon as the percussion hits I select a cigarette, push it between my lips slowly, and l
ight it. Reality eddies as I view it through the haze of cigarette smoke. I take two lungfuls, then I put the cigarette out in my empty glass. I exhale, focussing on the billows of smoke rising to the ceiling.

  I recall snatches of Professor Ileri’s voice.

  What we call the xenosphere is larger than we think. What we use is the tiny periphery that connects us and the people in our immediate environment. You’ve heard of how photosynthesis involves quantum physics? This lattice of xenoforms connects throughout the atmosphere of the Earth, but not just the present time. It is in the past and the future, and in alternate versions of our planet. It is an easy place to get lost in.

  I am about to enter the wild, the open sea, the drop off, the full xenosphere.

  At first I see green. This is expected. I am in a maze, walls of hedge, well kept, tall. Above me the sky is blue and clear, free of clouds. The walls of the maze will always be this height. I am the gryphon. If I flap my wings I will fly, but never higher than the wall. That’s the way I designed it. The way in is the way out. If an entity can make its way through this maze I will be vulnerable to it. Working the maze is not just a matter of direction. There is texture, there is the temperature and ambient sound which changes every ninety seconds. There is the smell which varies in a specific order from floral to cut grass to manure and back. At predetermined intervals I say certain phrases, seemingly random.

  Andare in gondola fa bene alla salute. A ride in the canoe is good for your health.

  Getting any of these wrong results in a transformation of the environment into a diamond cage.

  At the end of the maze there is a guardian, a fearsome, sixty-foot version of a Hawaiian carving I own. It is dark brown, with a gigantic head, large eyes, teeth all around its mouth, and relatively small, muscular limbs. It’s more of a place marker, a milestone. Beyond this is wild country. Here there be monsters. The first thing I see is mirrors, too many to count, each showing a reflection of a different me, the real me and not the gryphon. Each represents a different thought pattern taken to its logical conclusion. There is fat me, short me, Chinese me, steroidal superhero me, and so on. Or maybe this represents different quantum realities, different worlds.