Rosewater

by Tade Thompson

  ‘Nobody from my class is unaffected,’ I say. ‘Wild strains are diminished, maybe gone, I don’t know.’ I fall silent as I think of Molara.

  ‘Son, the real mystery is why this is only happening now. Get something straight, Kaaro: nobody likes you.’

  ‘Why does everybody keep telling me this?’ I’m irritable.

  ‘Because it is true. Nobody is supposed to be able to do what you do. The human mind is supposed to be the last sanctuary of a free human. Even prisoners are not supposed to give up the sanctity of their thoughts. Then people like you come along. There is bound to be resentment. Resentment in human populations leads to both chaotic and organised attempts at destruction of the object.’

  ‘Prof, I get it. I’ve learnt a little bit about human behaviour in the last decade. What I want from you is insight. Who wants us dead? Who is killing the sensitives?’

  There is a beat where he says nothing and I have the impression that he either shrugs or takes a drag on a pipe or cigarette. ‘I do not know, but think in terms of candidates, Kaaro. I am trying to avoid a prolix dissertation here, but consider what you have found out from the Americans. No country on the planet has had more time or resources devoted to the study of xenoforms. They had a budget of millions, maybe billions, while in comparison, Nigeria had just me, a mycologist and dendrochronologist. Their response to all this study? They ran and hid. Think about that for a moment, then think about this: the religious people don’t like the idea of you because you challenge the concept of their various gods. Only gods and prophets are supposed to know the hearts of men, so look out for the Jesuits. Examine your own house. There is a definite group within the government which does not support the use of sensitives, or any study of xenomorphs for that matter. They have, over the years, used pretty incendiary language and asked for deracination of our department. Considering the fact that we report all information upstream, and that we have no information on them coming downstream … well, we have always walked in the shadow of death. Consider, also, nature. The xenoforms are unnatural. I personally consider them biological machines, biotechnology, rather than living organisms. Machines get instructions from somewhere. Maybe the owners or designers of the machines set timers that are winding down. Or maybe your bodies have finally recognised them as alien and, in the process of shutting them down, a massive autoimmune process has been triggered.’

  ‘Which is it, Prof?’

  ‘Pay attention, Kaaro. I said, I do not know. I have only theories for you.’

  ‘Right. Fantastic. Now I’m supposed to do something heroic, right?’

  ‘Please. For one thing, you’re not the type. Second of all, I am tired of women and men of destiny. The idea of a singular hero and a manifest destiny just makes us all lazy. There is no destiny. There is choice, there is action, and any other narrative perpetuates a myth that someone else out there will fix our problems with a magic sword and a blessing from the gods.’ Ileri coughs after talking.

  ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘No. Not in the way you are. I am just old, Kaaro. My own biological clock is winding down. Entropy catches up with us all.’

  ‘I was never really sure if you were one of us,’ I say.

  ‘I am not. I just know how to move information around. From study into my brain and from my brain into others. I am going to hang up, Kaaro. I think I am being traced. One thing is most important to me. You were not my best student, that honour goes to Ebun, but you were the most skilled, and the most respectful. I have no children of my own, and I would not like to die before you.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  He clicks off. The reanimates have shuffled out of sight.

  I go back to Ubar to take another run at Eleja, but it doesn’t help. I leave again.

  As soon as I clear the protected building in Ubar my phone messages come in. Clement has sent me a text:

  Why are u trying to kill me? What did I ever do to u?

  What the hell is wrong with the world? What does he think I have done or am doing? He’s the one who tried to kill me with that iron golem thing. There is a voicemail and I guess it’s from him, but I get another surprise.

  ‘Kaaro, it’s me. Don’t worry, I’m fine. I know this seems strange, but I’ll explain. I’m all right, my love. I did lose my phone function, though. I’ll see you later tonight.’

  Aminat. Alive, just like that idiot Badmos said. I dial her phone, before I remember that she’s lost it. Then I call Clement.

  ‘Why won’t you leave me alone?’ he says, by way of greeting. His voice is hoarse. ‘I’m not a threat to you. I never have been.’

  ‘Will you shut up? What is your problem?’

  ‘My problem? My problem is you’ve been attacking me for weeks!’

  I get a bout of dizziness.

  ‘I tried appeasing you at work. I bought you coffee, snacks, everything. I tried to be your friend. You did not stop.’

  ‘Clement, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Stay away from me!’

  He hangs up.

  The world has gone mad, but I have to chart and quantify the madness for my own safety. On the train back to Atewo I access the news and there is perhaps a paragraph on the explosion. The building involved is described as belonging to the Drug Authenticity Directorate and has been the subject of many threats since inception of the organisation. Huh. Aminat is a drug inspector, or at least works in the same building as drug inspectors. Fake drug manufacture in Nigeria is an industry into itself. Almost every hospital has found some of its injections to be river water and its pills to be chalk. Inspections are a public safety concern. Bombings of inspectors is an old tradition dating back to the early 2000s. Not a very popular job and, if some exposes are to be believed, rife with corruption.

  Passengers are congregated to the windows on the right. Utopicity is throwing off what we tend to call reverse lightning. Shards of electricity puncture the night sky and disappear beyond, like the world’s most expensive firework show. Power supplies, phone coverage, and Nimbus will suffer tonight. The ganglia will be firing at the dome and the dome will be firing at the sky. Wormwood is having a nightmare. A warning will go out to air traffic controllers. I try to listen to my fellow commuters, but what I get is elation and half-realised schadenfreude. They stay away from me because of my cough.

  I come off the clockwise train at Atewo. Yaro is there licking a discarded food wrapper. He catches my scent and follows for a few steps, but I am busy and he is held back by his wound, which is teeming with maggots. I have no food to give him so I speed up. I receive a text from my flat. It tells me someone is in there. This is not an S45 agent. My flat is configured not to register their presence. Is it Clement? I’m two streets away. My first instinct is to rush over there, but I have no access to the xenosphere, I have no gun. I can call in S45, but if it is Clement they’ll know that my abilities aren’t working and bring me in for a medical overhaul. Is that such a bad thing? The way I’m coughing …

  On the other hand they might take the opportunity to place a more sophisticated implant in me. That palaver I do not want.

  I call a neighbour. I say my flat sent a text detecting gas and can he please go and check. He calls back.

  ‘There’s no gas leak. Your girlfriend’s making pancakes, and it must have been the smoke.’

  I thank him just as I reach my street and I enter the flat just as Aminat baptises the pancakes in honey. She has a glass of red wine in the other hand.

  ‘You know, I think this wine has acquired an edge. How long has it been open?’

  I am in her arms, and I am kissing her. ‘How did you escape?’

  ‘You smell of smoke,’ she says.

  ‘I thought you were dead.’ I look at her. My people would pour sand on her, which, if she were a ghost, would make her disappear according to Yoruba folklore.

  ‘Yes, about that …’

  ‘Hello, Kaaro.’

  Layi stands in my bedroom doorway wearing
a towel around his waist, with three or four chain links left on the manacle around his ankle. The last one is deformed.

  ‘How are you here? I thought you don’t ... how is he here?’ I look from Aminat to Layi and back. What I don’t mention is the absurd thought that I always seem to see him in a state of undress.

  Aminat says, ‘He saved me, Kaaro, but don’t ask any questions. Please. Just ... I’m just grateful to be alive.’

  I kiss her.

  Layi does not say anything. He is in good humour as usual. He claps his hands. ‘Shall I have some wine?’ he asks.

  ‘No, definitely not. You are not allowed alcohol.’ Aminat extricates herself from me. ‘The car will be here any minute. Are you ready?’

  Layi spreads out his arms. ‘It’s not like I have anything to pack.’

  I am puzzled, but I don’t ask. I take a shower again, because I did not change my clothes at Ubar and I feel like the smell is on me. I probe for the xenosphere and I experience a slight turn, some vertigo, and a non-specific sense of dread that is not from me. I feel what might be Aminat, but nothing from Layi. It’s a start. It’s better than the last time I tried.

  I call S45 and ask for a home address on Clement. They give it to me without asking for authorisation or reasons. I put on a suit, although each time I cough I feel unworthy of it. When I emerge Layi is hugging her sister goodbye. From her left shoulder he looks at me. He is wearing my clothes, although the trouser cuffs are at mid-calf and his muscles bulge out of my shirt. I do not mind, and he knows this. He smiles at me. I almost want a hug myself looking at his beauty. I hear a car horn from downstairs and he runs off, chain rattling like a cow bell.

  Because of my gratitude that Aminat is alive I decide to pay the taxi fare. I read off the registration number, enter it into my Financeware via my mobile and give instructions. It registers an error. I think nothing of it, I’ve probably punched in the codes wrong. I’ll do it later.

  Aminat turns to me. ‘You look good in a suit.’

  ‘Don’t try to distract me. What the fuck, Aminat?’

  ‘Can we at least sit down? Is there any more wine anywhere? I have decided I like being alive.’

  When the merlot has finished breathing I pour her some and sit opposite. I do not want any alcohol. The xenosphere returns in pulses of alien mentations and I don’t want to delay it.

  ‘Layi is only my half-brother,’ says Aminat.

  ‘Which half?’ I ask.

  ‘We share a mother.’

  ‘I didn’t know your mother was married before.’

  ‘She wasn’t. Layi is between us siblings. She had him … well …’

  ‘An affair?’

  ‘No. Not exactly. My father believes it to be a rape, but a few years ago my mother told me the truth. She went with a friend of hers to some kind of tent revival on a beach. There were rumours that an angel had landed there.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘You know how Lagosians love their prophets. Thus, there was Brother Luke (the only true vessel of the Lord, monstrously fat with six wives at last count), there was Jesu Bariga (a paranoiac who thought he was Jesus and had hundreds of followers none of whom had ever cracked open the Bible), there was Guru Maharaji, there was Omotola of the Nine Bells (obvious charlatan, civil war veteran, twitchy doctrine), and there was Joachim of the Lord’s Flame, who claimed to have access to an angel of the Lord. Which, maybe he did.’

  I sigh. I remember that Aminat has books on talking to God.

  ‘Just hear me out, okay? Joachim of the Lord’s Flame used to be known as Joe-Joe Abbadon, also known as Junior Agbako. He ran a gang of armed robbers who operated the Lagos-Ibadan expressway for eighteen months until they accidentally shot and killed an off-duty police constable. It was not an accident to shoot the man, they just didn’t know he was a policeman. As such things go, the Nigerian police rained its righteous fury upon them and most of the gang ended up tied to stakes and gorodom on the sands of Bar Beach, executed on live television. Joe-Joe evaded capture, shaved his head and moustache, laid low for some years, and reappeared on the same Bar Beach as a white-garment prophet calling himself Joachim of the Lord’s Flame.

  ‘He built a bamboo beach hut, veiled and painted with gaudy red crosses and orange flames drawn by a five year-old in crayon. The prophet himself wore a dazzling white gown and a hood that covered most of his head. This might be because he did not wish to be recognised given his larcenous past, but he claimed to have been burned in the fire of the Lord. He preached in the open air and carried a bell tied to his sash like a leper of old. His message was garbled, incoherent, and punctuated with swigs from a bottle of Holy Water. There was speculation that the Holy Water was filled with an entirely different kind of spirit and the smell of Beefeater Gin hung around Joachim, even in the early hours of the morning.

  ‘Joachim was an obvious, desperate, and inebriated charlatan to be sure, but there was something real in the hut. A few choice members of his congregation had been allowed to enter, six in total, the only ones persistent enough to endure the required purification rituals. One of them had been struck blind. Another went insane and had been in the Mental Hospital at Aro for countless years. Two could only eat fluids and pureed foods from then on. One was so badly burned that she died within hours. A butcher from Ajegunle survived. In a manner of speaking. He did not talk much anymore, but when he did speak he could only say, “Joachim is a true prophet of the Lord.”’

  ‘Of course,’ I say.

  ‘The message turned out to be some grandiloquent pap designed to move the crowd to empty their pockets into the collection bowls. Joachim himself was a lanky cadaver in a red lined white robe. He spoke with the scratchy deep voice of a constant smoker. After his message and the offering he directed my mother into the hut.’

  ‘And he raped her in there?’

  ‘No. He apparently stayed out. Her memory of it isn’t good, but she was sure of one thing: she did have sex. She said she couldn’t guarantee that it was non-consensual and that the angel in there was on fire, but that the flames were black.’

  This makes me stop. I remember seeing Aminat surrounded by black flames in the xenosphere. It could be an image she manufactures from her mother’s story.

  ‘She came back to herself wandering the beach. The revival had packed up and moved on. Later she found herself pregnant with Layi. He was beautifu l —’

  ‘He still is.’

  ‘Oh, I know. I know. But you can believe he was … his father was an angel. We found out early, though: he burns.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He ignites, spontaneously combusts, explodes, I don’t know, something. He never does it when anyone is watching, but we see the aftermath. That’s why there are fire extinguishers and sprinklers all over our house.’

  I remember seeing all the safety equipment when I visited.

  ‘He’s burnt the house down once, as you saw.’

  ‘Why the chain?’

  It is her turn to sigh. ‘We … we also think he flies.’

  I start to laugh, but it turns into a cough, and then I see that she is not joking.

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Has anyone seen him fly?’

  ‘No, but he escapes, and not by the doors. We see a hole in the roof and scorch marks. You saw the melted chains.’

  ‘Aminat, has anyone asked him?’

  ‘What do you think? Of course we’ve asked him. He doesn’t talk about the fires or his escapes. He just doesn’t answer.’

  She drains her glass. I think of Femi telling me to keep away from this family. At the time I thought she was talking about Aminat’s husband, but this …

  ‘How did you get out of the building alive?’

  ‘I have no memory of it. I was there, furious with you, going inside. Next, I was here, on the floor, and Layi was standing over me, grinning, naked as the day he was born.’

  ‘I don’t believe in angels, but I suppose it’s possible that a
n alien was in that tent. I’ve seen a few species in books and encountered some over the years. Your husband had one and it almost killed me. The problem is they aren’t genetically compatible with humans and many of them died after the Visitation.’

  ‘I’m just telling you what my mother told me, Kaaro.’ She leans back in the chair. ‘And I’m alive when I should be dead.’

  I stand. ‘Go easy on the booze. I’m going to pay someone a visit. I won’t be long.’

  ‘I have to retrieve my online files anyway. Do you mind if I stay here?’

  ‘Just don’t blow the place up.’ I kiss her and leave for Clement’s place.

  INTERLUDE: ADRIFT

  Rosewater, 2065

  The Yemaja cult walks its route through the streets, southbound. The procession is led by a priestess in white wearing clear beads, with acolytes carrying carvings and statuettes of the goddess. They lead a bull and seven rams along with them. The procession is half a mile long and at the tail end is a two-foot statue of Our Lady of the Leaking Breasts.

  I know why this is happening and I’m ambivalent. In June, the Yemaja overflowed its banks and flooded the poverty-stricken districts of Ona-oko and Idowu. Fourteen people died, many rendered homeless. The Yoruba call the flood Omiyale. Yemaja is the goddess of rivers, so if there’s a flood she must be angry. Hence the procession. I follow because … well, I don’t know. In legend Yemaja’s husband was Orunmila. Orunmila is the second most powerful of the Yoruba gods and the father of divination. There are those who say what sensitives do is like divination and I know that at S45 there are sensitives who use Ifa geomancy.

  Which means nothing, but I still feel an affinity to the goddess, and a part of me wonders if the gods are aliens. So I follow all the way to the banks of the river we named after her. They dance and chant and pray, legs dirty with spattered mud. They slaughter the rams one after the other, then the bull, and the acolytes enter a convulsive possession trance. The priestess is the only one in apparent control while she respectfully listens to the message from her goddess.