Rosewater

by Tade Thompson

‘But … but there is something you could help me with.’

  Aminat is uncertain about this. I can tell from the way she shifts this way and that, causing a susurrus from her summer dress. The sound makes me want to stop, kneel in front of her, and stick my head between her powerful thighs.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ she asks.

  ‘Nope. Not at all.’

  I am standing in front of my safe, she behind me so close that I can feel her breath on the back of my neck. The safe is in a wall, and open. There is no combination. I instruct the flat and it disengages the lock. There is cash, some medicine, insulin if you must know. No, I am not diabetic, but I have had the notion for a while that if I were to suffer from a chronic illness I would like to take my own life in my own way. There are contact lenses that link to Nimbus as was fashionable some years back. The pair still work, but there were a few cases of phlyctenular conjunctivitis that put people off using them. There is a bronze mask of a Benin woman which I stole from my father. It is the only item of stolen property that I keep.

  There is a sealed cylinder, transparent, about six inches in height. It is on its side and the slime seems inert, lying like a water level taking up a third of the volume of the container. I unscrew the cap.

  Some of the slime sticks to the cover, draws out, and snaps back to the parent mass. I tip it into my palm. Rivulets of action begin on its surface though I do not know if it reacts to the oxygen or to the heat from my hand.

  Aminat takes a step back.

  ‘This is not one of your smartest ideas,’ she says.

  ‘Actually, none of my ideas is smart,’ I say. ‘At least I’m consistent.’

  I struggle to remember what Anthony said about this when he handed it to me. Something to use when I’m in trouble? I’m not in trouble, although I am about to start some. The last time I used this I freaked out and thought it was going to kill me. I feel that same emotion churning my belly right now, but I tamp it down and rub the slime on my head. It is cool to the touch and spreads like shower gel. It moves in all directions down my head, dripping over my forehead. This is the part I don’t like. It initially splits over both of my eyebrows and tracks down, but it makes up for that soon and covers my eyelids, which I snap shut just in time to keep it out of my eyes.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asks Aminat, voice frayed with creeping alarm.

  ‘No,’ I say. I know how to put a stop to this, but I don’t.

  The slime covers my nose and enters my nostrils, coating the inside. I sneeze, but it does not dislodge anything. I open my mouth to sneeze again and there is slime in my mouth, coating my teeth, my tongue, the insides of my cheek and a short distance down my throat. I struggle against this. I heave and wretch, but do not vomit. It is a hundred wriggling maggots in my mouth with a slightly salty taste.

  ‘Kaaro!’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I manage to say, but I’m not.

  The material keeps going down my chin, around my neck, coating my chest, back, arms, groin, thighs, and feet, including the soles. My clothes disintegrate and fall off. I cannot breathe. My nostrils are blocked and my throat spasms. I try to pick my nose or remove the slime from my mouth but the growth is too profuse to stop.

  ‘Kaaro, I don’t like this. I’m going to get help.’

  ‘No.’

  Calm down. Think. Relax.

  I’m not breathing, but my brain is not screaming for oxygen and I do not feel faint. I am alive, my heart still beats. I stop struggling. I am in mild pain because each minute ripple of the slime seems to stroke a nerve ending. My eyes are closed, but I am aware of my environment. The xenosphere is cut off, but I suspect the slime is sending information directly into my nervous system and drawing oxygen from the air.

  ‘Kaaro?’

  ‘It’s … I think it’s all right, baby. It’s strange.’

  ‘You look strange. You look like a sculpture made of mucus.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Meanwhile, I’m hungry.’ I walk to the fridge and start eating.

  I wake up feeling cold. I do not remember when I fell asleep, but I open my eyes. The fridge door is open and every item of food is unwrapped and gone. All around the kitchen cabinets are open and there is a supreme mess although the vacuum robot is whirring around cleaning the floor. There is no sign of the slime. I am naked. A pool near me suggests that I may have wet myself.

  ‘Aminat!’

  ‘In here,’ she says from the living room.

  I join her and see what she is looking at.

  ‘I was worried about you going off on an adventure with your ex-girlfriend, but now I’m not,’ she says.

  Okay.

  Oyin Da comes to me at the appointed time in the appointed place-my suya spot. I’m offering Yaro strips of meat, but he’s so ill that he won’t eat. His flank wound heaves with maggots and Ahmed has been trying to shoo him away, saying he’s bad for customers.

  ‘I’ll come back for him shortly,’ I say. ‘I’ll get him fixed up with a vet.’

  ‘Kaaro, we don’t have time,’ says Oyin Da.

  I say my goodbyes to the boys and walk with her.

  ‘I analysed the different coordinates from your chip and I’m sure I can get us into the facility.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Your career with S45 will be over after this. Even if we get out in time they will find out that this was you.’

  ‘Let me worry about that. Last time you and I went on a mission you went native.’

  ‘That won’t happen with a government agency.’ She stops, looks around. We are in a secluded spot. It’s dark. Nobody who is not using night vision can see us. ‘Remain still.’

  I’m thinking of how she no longer has Afro-puffs when we transition. I’m expecting nausea, but it doesn’t happen. Instead a sense of being stretched out over an instant and time dilation, and a wrenching of the spirit. It’s dark where we arrive and I feel for the xenosphere immediately. I find it. They are not expecting a sensitive and have not suppressed it with antifungals. Maybe. There is static from Oyin Da. She’s found a way to block me, which is unsurprising given how long she has had to work with and against the xenoforms. There are no guards in the immediate area, but I can pick up the remnants of their thoughts, neurotransmitters still buzzing around with the old patterns in the same pathways. I search for any references to Tolu Eleja or his appearance. I see the beatings and casual brutality and his panicked thoughts and fatalism. I see where he is held. I nod to Oyin Da, but we do not speak as agreed. Places like this have sonic recognition and I don’t quite want to announce our presence. I set off and she follows.

  We’re still on level minus four in the Ubar complex. I am moving swiftly, like a rumour. I have never been this fast, even when young. I am at the age where you have to work for the physical gifts you take for granted in your twenties, yet I move like my body is weightless. It is like playing a video game. I use the cognitive schematic I put together from the residual patterns in the xenosphere to guide myself, discarding wrong turns and experiencing false familiarity, borrowed deja vu.

  I am before his room. There is a keypad, but I do not have to use it because there is someone inside with Eleja. The door is unlocked — I know this before I touch it. I know that there will be an alarm as soon as I enter the room. I am miffed that I can’t tell what Oyin Da is thinking. I discharge an interference pattern inside the room. Nobody in there would be able to think. I also instruct their brains not to see me or Oyin Da.

  The room is sparse, a bunk, a chair, a commode. The prisoner is on his knees, hands handcuffed in front of him, with the guard standing in front of him, holding a doubled-up belt. There are welts on Eleja’s face, neck, shoulders, and arms. I see in the guard’s mind that this is not a sanctioned interrogation and that he is just bored on a night shift. I make him take the handcuffs off Eleja and fellate his own sidearm. He will continue to do this as long as he is awake. When he is exhausted he will sleep, but his dreams will be full of this action, and when he wakes he
will continue.

  There is a camera, but I think this casual cruelty would have made the guard kill the feed or ask a buddy to look the other way. I expect an alarm any second regardless.

  I go to Eleja and use everything I know to strip back his defences. I am aware of the slime’s effect, enhancing my abilities, making this all so much easier. It is like swimming, not laying siege. It is easy. I get past the red herrings and the false memories and the crude conditioning.

  I have no time for games. Who are you, and why are they interrogating you?

  And just like that I know.

  Before I can talk the alarm sounds. It is silent, but I feel a pulse in the xenosphere, a thrill of panic and an awakening flow of adrenaline and dopamine. No longer need to be silent.

  ‘Oyin Da!’ I say, startling Eleja. He had been unaware of me until now, pondering the odd behaviour of the guard.

  She walks into the cell. ‘Well?’

  ‘Take him. Time to go.’

  I sense them coming with weapons and sealing exits. They can see us and Oyin Da’s image has triggered a primal frenzy since she is a known dissident. It takes Oyin Da a minute or two to load her transporting program. I wink at her and leave the cell.

  ‘Halt!’

  How many times have I heard that?

  Bright lights shine, and I can see nothing. I send out a wave of disorientation into the xenosphere, but nothing happens. They must be protected against sensitive attacks. I hear something rolling on the floor and I know to cover my ears. I cannot warn Oyin Da, no time, and she’s wearing some white-noise device. I hope she’s gone. The flash bang does what it does. I am deaf as well as blind. I feel very few of the rifle butts that converge on my head.

  I feel far away, removed from it all.

  The last thing I am aware of is the disappearance of Eleja from the xenosphere.

  Yaro sleeps the guiltless drugged sleep of anaesthesia while the vet debrides his wound. There is a kidney dish beside the surgeon and it is full of maggots. The vet incapacitates the maggots with chloroform and cleans them out, then he uses a suction tube on the copious amounts of pus. He removes the dead skin and muscle and exposes viable tissue. I know all this because he gives a running commentary while he works. The stench is overwhelming.

  ‘I’ll have to keep him overnight to inspect the wound again tomorrow,’ says the vet. He is washing his hands while Yaro twitches with canine dreams. ‘Sometimes the maggots may be dead, but still in the wound. I think I got them all but —’

  The door flies open and two uniformed, armoured militia people come in.

  ‘Kaaro, put your hands in the air,’ says one. Her voice is artificial, electronic. She speaks from behind an airtight helmet.

  I obey. ‘I am not armed and I am not resisting,’ I say in a calm voice. I’m scared because these are not thinking people and I do not know their orders.

  ‘Where is the prisoner?’ asks the militia.

  ‘What prisoner?’ I ask.

  ‘The one you liberated from Ubar.’

  ‘What? I haven’t—’

  ‘Don’t play games. Tonight you infiltrated a secure facility and liberated a suspect.’

  ‘Officer, I have been here all evening. Ask the good doctor. I brought my dog for surgery.’

  The vet has his hands up and water drips down his forearm, wetting his scrubs. He seems as frightened as me and he nods his head vigorously.

  I say, ‘I do not have your prisoner.’

  This is true, I don’t.

  It’s six hours before they release me. During this time they carefully reconstruct my day. They check surveillance built-in to my apartment. They check the GPS logs of my implant. They question Aminat. They show me a video of the breakout. I see clearly a person who looks like me, but there is no corresponding signal from my implant. The timestamp on my implant states that I am nowhere near Ubar at the time. The doppelganger disintegrates while being clubbed. When the mist clears there is nothing left. Not even a smear on the floor. I almost feel sorry for them because they have an empty cell, a soldier giving oral sex to his gun, and video footage of a ghost. Jobs will be lost over this, but not mine.

  ‘That’s not me,’ I repeat. ‘Did you find any of my DNA? No, you did not. Because that is not me. No, I don’t know who it is or what it is.’

  When Aminat picks me up I assume we are under surveillance and we only speak of our outrage at the unlawful detention and harassment. We live our lives as if nothing happened.

  I take Aminat into the xenosphere while we sleep. I am my true self, not the gryphon. I show her my maze and we walk in it, holding hands.

  ‘It worked, then?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. The slime duplicate dissolved into the constituent cells and dissipated. S45 is confused, and they think maybe Wormwood created the duplicate after my jaunt to Utopicity.’

  ‘Are you in trouble?’

  ‘Not really. Maybe. I don’t know. I play the victim. I don’t care. They suspended me with pay, which is fine. I don’t want to work with them anyway.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Eleja? He was a guy with a theory. He and a group of others figured out the invasion but more than that, they figured America’s drawbridge is related to that. They formed a group which is trying to get into the American Colony in Lagos. They were going to capture some of the Americans and force them to reveal the secret. They thought they were saving the world.’

  ‘So what have you done with him?’

  ‘Oyin Da will take care of him, maybe use his knowledge, get into the colony, find something to reverse the problem.’

  ‘And why won’t you do this?’

  ‘Because I am not the saving-the-world type. I am not a hero, Aminat. I’m just a guy in love with a girl. I’m the last sensitive. They don’t need me at the bank because there are no more attacks. I’ve been made redundant by the death of all the psychics, but that’s okay, because I don’t really care about the job. All I want is to spend my days with you. Nothing else.’

  ‘Is that a marriage proposal, Kaaro?’

  ‘This memory will self-destruct five seconds after you wake up,’ I say.

  I pause for a minute, unsure.

  ‘Baby.’ I say.

  ‘Uh oh, tone change,’ Aminat says. ‘Must be serious. What have you done this time?’

  ‘I saw Shesan.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted to free him.’ I pause. ‘Baby, I don’t know how to say this. He says you’re a cop.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Did I what?’

  ‘Free him.’

  ‘What? No … er, no, I couldn’t. He’s … no.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Well? Are you an undercover police officer?’

  Cherry blossoms float in the air, disdainful of gravity. We are at the edge of my zone of the xenosphere. My giant guardian is patrolling, his long braids dragging on the floor in his wake. Scattered here and there on the grass are miniature tanks, five feet long, three high.

  ‘Are these toys?’ Aminat asks.

  ‘No, they’re Goliaths. Hitler’s mini-tanks designed to halt the advance of the allies in WWII. I saw them in the newspaper. My mental detritus washes up here. And you’re trying to distract me from the question.’

  ‘That’s not it. I’m trying to organize my thoughts.’

  ‘It’s a binary, yes-no kind of question, Aminat.’

  ‘Do you want to read my memory?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m never going to do that.’

  ‘And nobody can hear us here?’

  ‘Speak freely.’

  ‘I work for S45.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Are you assigned to watch me?’

  ‘No, just relax and listen, Kaaro. Years ago, in Lagos, my brother ignited and burned our entire house down. You know this already and you’ve seen him aflame. The debris was still smouldering when S45 agents came and took him away. He was young
, confused, naked, and crying. They took blood and skin samples from me, my father, mother, our entire family. My younger sister was away, but otherwise, everybody had to give samples.

  ‘They didn’t release Layi so I made several legal challenges. One night, in the midst of it all, I was walking home when a car pulled up alongside me. I was prepared to take off my shoes and run. There were a lot of abductions in Lagos at that time. The driver was this stocky, muscular type. There was a beautiful woman in the back who knew my name and asked me to get in.’

  ‘Femi Alaagomeji,’ I say.

  ‘The same. She asked me what I was hoping to achieve and I said I wanted my brother home. She asked me pointed and reasonable questions about public safety. I said I would look after him. You’ve met Layi. He can’t hurt people. Nobody even got singed when the house burned.’

  ‘So she got you to join S45.’

  ‘Not at first. She said I would need a specific skillset to be able to safely look after someone with my brother’s abilities. She proposed to provide me with training.’

  ‘Yeah, that sounds like her.’

  ‘I trained for six months in Maiduguri.’

  ‘Did you get Danladi?’

  ‘Motherfucking Danladi? No, he’s left, but his legend lives on. After training Femi said they might as well give me honourary S45 status. She outlined the perks, and said I’d be doing the work of an agent anyway. I came up with the adaptations that keep Layi safe. Femi modified them slightly, and my brother was released into my custody.’

  This must have been why Femi was against the relationship from the start.

  ‘When Shesan started courting me, I had no idea about his criminal enterprises. After we got married, Femi summoned me and handed me a new brief. Layi had been stable for years. She ordered me to spy on my husband. I was very effective before I got tuberculosis.’

  ‘And me? Am I your next assignment?’

  ‘No, Kaaro. Our meeting was a chance occurrence. Femi Alaagomeji did everything to discourage me from being with you. She’s never asked me anything about you. Nothing secret, anyway. As we both know, there are other people watching you, and besides, she knows more about you than I do.’