“I don’t follow, sir.”
“I want to know when I’m in danger. I want to know when I’m in a trap. I want to know, I want to know, I want to know. Mo fe mo gbo-gbo e. Tell me every fucking thing from now on. No more surprises.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
His phone buzzes. Priority text from the president.
YOU LITTLE SHIT. DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU’LL GET ANYWHERE?
He has kept up a steady stream of malicious texts for hours now. Jack knows the guy to be petty, but this is a whole new level.
“Can I block the president?” he asks Lora. “I mean, what if he wants a truce?”
“He won’t come through you direct for that, sir.”
“He’s not saying anything useful. I should block him.”
“You don’t have time. You have to meet the councillors.”
Shit. “Really looking forward to that.”
A lot of pampered politicians complaining about not being consulted. We did not sign up for this. Upstarts taking the opportunity to grandstand. Crypto-loyalists making trouble. Ten per cent of them leaving the city, but most of the rest supportive. Jack can read a room easily, but he has no time to soothe them. He does apologise, but he cuts the meeting short.
Next he meets with the seventeen major building contractors in Rosewater. The representatives seem nervous, like they expect him to have them all shot. He tells them to relax and he smiles at quarter wattage. He tells them he expects them to create an accurate map of all the bunkers in Rosewater. He dismisses their protestations, makes vague allusive threats and gives them a twenty-four-hour deadline. They start filing out of the room, but he stops them, looks at the clock and tells them the hours will be spent in this very room. They start pooling resources.
He retreats to his office. He looks at his hands. They are dry from washing them after glad-handing the ward councillors. He uses a cream with eucalyptus and closes his eyes to soothe his fading headache. “West wall,” he says to the room, and the brick becomes transparent, or seems so. Minute cameras on the outside project images on the inside. He can see a large part of Rosewater from here, and the centre of the panorama is the dome in its recent spiky incarnation, with patchy discoloration. Is it prescient? Preparing for war in some fucked-up alien way? Many had speculated at the reason for or meaning of the sharp projections, but it is all conjecture as far as Jack can tell. The Yemaja flows freely and powerfully on its way to the Niger River. The presence of Wormwood has an unexpected positive effect on the river. The verdant growth halted the gully erosion that had plagued the Yemaja, a trophic cascade that led to increased tree height, which brought more diverse birds, small mammals, pools and shallows, an explosion of biodiversity. The alien species mixed in, yes, but also the Earth creatures. Rosewater is arguably the greenest city in the world and keeping weeds controlled requires a significant budget. Cracks to asphalt from under-growing vegetation is a serious problem, but Jack recognises that this is a good problem to have. The jury is out on whether eating alien animals and plants is harmless, but the woods in and around the city teem with game. The Rosewater Botanical Garden has pretty much every known species and some unknown ones. To think the land was aberrant savannah before this, before Wormwood. As much as it is a blessing, Jack can’t help seeing the vegetation as cover for enemy troops. They are out there already, but will we see them? The dome can survive anything, even a direct hit from a particle weapon, but maybe the government has more advanced ones? We just have to hold Rosewater long enough for the Nigerian government to bankrupt itself. Jack wishes the dome covered the whole city. Eight million souls would be safer.
“Music, ‘Bilongo,’ Ismael Rivera.”
The song starts and Jack dances. If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, he will dance before any fires start in Rosewater. He sings along to the call-and-response—he does not speak Spanish, but salsa calms him. By the time the song finishes he feels buzzed. He is in a good mood when a phone call cuts through all screens and protocols, glowing on his forearm.
Calling: The Tired Ones.
Oh, shit.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Aminat
“That smooth-talking, Gucci-wearing, oath-breaking, two-faced, degenerate, time-wasting, half-smiling, fascist, gluttonous, idiotic, phlegmatic frog-fucker!” says Aminat.
“You’re upset,” says Alyssa. “I thought you had calmed down.”
Alyssa’s arms are covered in insects. A few mosquitoes have bloated abdomens from sucking blood, but otherwise the insects seem at rest and calm.
“Aren’t you going to brush those away?” Aminat says.
“They don’t bother me.”
“I don’t want you to catch malaria. I have no idea how that will affect testing. Besides, it’ll be a nightmare carrying you across the city.”
“I’ve never had malaria.”
“Oh, the pleasures awaiting you. Are you hungry? We should get food and supplies. Plus, I need the ladies’ room. Mo fe ya’gbe.”
They stop at a place called Wallah Joe’s. They first clean off sweat from their armpits and groins with damp cloths in the rest room. They take seats at the crowded eating tables and wolf down eba with fish stew. The place has the usual hum of conversation and although a white woman does draw a little attention, most are too hungry or intent on news holograms to be bothered. There are all kinds of international reactions. Russia, apparently, has recognised the Rosewater Free State, the first country to do so. Yeah, but what about Ukraine, assholes? What about America? There are still those commentators who blame Russia for America’s disappearance from the world stage, and the world.
Aminat has been calling Femi, leaving messages, getting no response. Olalekan has been silent too. Normal S45 crisis protocols are not working. The truth is, she needs the break to plan her next move. Aminat has no confirmation that the lab is still there. The same team of soldiers may have struck, meaning Femi might be dead, Lekan too. The thing about the government is dissent and rebellion present the opportunity for purges, and Femi is a person with a target on her back.
And I hitched my star to hers. Well, more like she forced me into a corner. It was either work for her or lose my brother to faceless S45 agents who would have experimented on him. We may all die anyway.
Aminat watches an EU analysis of nuclear war projections. Russia’s recognition of Rosewater is being seen as a move for influence in a world arena that China has been courting for decades, going back to the 1970s. The alien represents a potential advantage worth going to war for.
The more she thinks about it, the more she is convinced that she should go home, get Kaaro and that stupid dog of his, then slip out of the city, maybe drop Alyssa off at Ubar.
Sitting across from Alyssa, Alyssa who is not eating.
“Not hungry?”
“What’s our plan?” asks Alyssa.
“I’m taking us across the city to a lab. We’ll detour to my home first. I want to be sure my boyfriend is okay.”
Alyssa nods.
“You don’t have to come.”
“Aren’t I in your custody?”
Aminat picks at a morsel of food. “I can’t contact my people, and the city is at war with Nigeria, or will be. Everything is uncertain. I don’t think it would be unreasonable for you to ‘escape.’”
“I want to come.”
Aminat throws up her hands. “Why?”
“I’m an alien.”
“I know that.”
“I’m incomplete.”
“I know that also.”
“I am neither the Alyssa human nor whoever I’m meant to be. Something went wrong. I want to find out what. It might be important.”
“Are you hostile to humans?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“But I—we are going to replace you. The Alyssa human is gone. There is a fast field of information in the air, but I only get sporadic input from it.”
“I know about that. We call i
t the xenosphere. Not everyone can access it.”
“I’m supposed to be able to, but something is blocking it. Maybe your lab tests can tell me why.”
Aminat gets a flashback of a man turning into a mush splat on the protective screen. “Your choice, sister. You know those tests can kill you.”
“Kill. An interesting concept.”
“Do you know what I am thinking?” asks Aminat.
“No, not exactly, but I know you don’t mean me any harm, though you’re concerned for me because you think I’m going to die. Aminat, this mind is a copy of stored individual-specific information. The ‘me’ you are concerned about is already dead, and possibly died before you humans got around to using language.”
Two men who have obviously colluded sit on either side of Aminat and Alyssa. The one beside Alyssa is in a singlet and his hands look like spades with barely opposable thumbs. His friend smells like boiled cabbage gone off and crowds into Aminat.
“What are fine ladies like you doing without escorts?” asks the one with Alyssa.
“We are escorting each other,” says Alyssa.
“No need,” pipes the one beside Aminat. “We’re your escorts now.”
“I don’t have time for this,” says Aminat.
The man beside her places his arm around her shoulders. “Why don’t we slip around back? I have something to show you. You’ll like it.”
Aminat doesn’t look at him. “Let’s not.”
Alyssa says, “My friend and I were talking about something private. Please go away.”
“You’re very rude,” says the one beside Alyssa. “Such a pretty girl and rude.”
“Pretty, rude and married,” says Aminat.
“I won’t say anything if she doesn’t.” Overt leering now.
The hand around her shoulders, the cabbage arm starts to sweat around the armpit. Enough of this. Aminat punches the man just under the nipple, short and fast, leaving an imprint of oil from the stew. The arm flies off her shoulder and he lets out a grunt. He does not know he has a broken rib, not just yet, but the pain kicks in when he tries to draw breath. He cannot scream with any competence and therefore gasps as he clutches his chest.
She looks across the table. “Your friend needs medical attention.”
Every eye in the place is on them now, something Aminat has wanted to avoid. The other man rises and picks his friend up, shooting a baleful look at them before they leave. Alyssa has been observing the exchange like a play put on for her benefit.
“Come on, Your Highness. We have to go.”
The dome is two hundred feet if you don’t count the spikes projecting off the apex, which can add twenty, thirty feet easy. It is black today, and from outside Wallah Joe’s Aminat can see the massing of cyborg hawks like a dark cloud. She knows what it means, and anyone prosecuting this war should have the sense to control the vast COB server farms and use the data for strategic strikes. It’s what she would do.
“We’ll go south, then south-west, working our way around the dome, though not close to it.” Aminat buys a rucksack and jettisons her handbag after transferring what she owns. Nobody is accepting naira, and all the transactions are by eru, Rosewater’s parallel currency, a combination of barter and digital IOU notes which proliferated in the early days and persisted despite attempts to stamp it out. The IOUs can be redeemed with goods or services, as long as both parties agree to the value, which Rosewater folks pretty much always do.
Aminat toys with taking the train. The station isn’t far, but being in a carriage is like being in an unsprung trap. Soldiers could wait for her at the next station if an autoscan picks her ID out of the air. She has never understood animals that chew off their own limbs to escape until now. When do they figure things are hopeless?
“We need implant hacks,” she says to Alyssa.
“Why?”
“So we don’t get picked up.”
“By enemies?”
“And friends who may not know they are friends.”
“How do we get these hacks?”
The insects have started to irritate Aminat, so she brushes them off Alyssa’s forearms. “I don’t know, but I’ll think of… look.”
Behind a tree, a small, grey, hairless, glistening creature peeps at them. Its round eyes seem to glow, but Aminat knows it to be stored ambient light.
“What’s that?” asks Alyssa.
“It’s a homunculus. I’ve never seen one this far inside urban areas before. More importantly, it’s alone. Never seen that before either, though I’ve heard of people snatching them from the bush.”
“I remember them now.” Alyssa walks towards it, stretching out a hand like one would to a strange dog.
“Hey, don’t. They’re poisonous.”
“To humans, yes.” Alyssa crouches and the homunculus touches her hand. It makes that mewling noise they make, but doesn’t seem distressed. “You know they’re practically immortal? They can resist any infection and only die if you kill them.”
The toxic slime does not appear to affect Alyssa. The homunculus comes closer and rubs its cheek against Alyssa’s shoulder. A wet patch forms on the fabric and Aminat realises she must stay away from that.
“You look at that dome and you see an animal, gigantic, useful to your society, benign, but an animal all the same. What I see is a machine. This is what we came up with after terraforming engines disappointed us. Instead of changing the environment, we change the organisms and live in them. In you.”
“How has that worked out for you? On other planets?” asks Aminat.
“I don’t know. There’s no data on that.”
“You’re the first one, and that didn’t go so well, did it?” Aminat stops walking. “Shouldn’t I just kill you? You sound a lot like you’re going to kill all of us.”
“Maybe you should.” Alyssa pets the homunculus. “But don’t you need me to… experiment on?”
“We can experiment on your corpse. This has worked out for humanity. Some of our best cures were discovered by working on corpses.”
“You realise I don’t bear you ill will, right? I quite like humans.”
“Just follow me so I can drop you off.” Aminat walks a little faster. After a while she looks back and sees Alyssa following half a yard back, and two steps behind her, the homunculus, tiny legs moving faster. And the insects are back on her arms and neck.
“Wonderful,” she says.
About four in the afternoon they take a break. She tries to contact Olalekan, and the attempt triggers an automatic download to her phone, a video file and an executable. She puts on the screen glasses and streams it there. It’s a video feed from the lab, low quality, black and white, Olalekan’s workstation at a point above it. Aminat remembers the camera placement and Lekan looks right up at it. There are patches of sweat on his shirt and his face glistens. He is not smiling.
“Boss, I don’t know if you’re going to get this. They’re outside, trying to get in. I’ve sealed the place, but they’re determined, so it won’t hold. They’re soldiers, I’ve checked their IDs. They shot the support staff, destroyed or stole what records they could find and are looking for me. I haven’t heard from Mother, but I’ve found her. They’re holding her in the mayor’s mansion, but that’s Jacques’s people, not these guys. I sent you a file. If you activate it you can fry your ID chip. You need to do that or they will find you. Try to find Mother; she’ll know what to do.” There is the sound of a door screeching and electrical complaint. “It’s too late for me.”
Olalekan is slammed against the console close to him, and through the gauzy definition Aminat identifies a gunshot wound. He is hit on the head and stops moving entirely. The blood looks like dark honey.
Fucking Nigerian Army bastards.
Teardrops on her forearm make her realise she is crying. She turns off the screen, wipes her eyes, and puts it back on. The homunculus is sunning itself near Alyssa’s feet. She examines it with scientific curiosity.
She sees the executable file, just glowing beside the video clip. If she fries her chip her phone won’t work, her gun won’t fire, and she’ll lose currency. Fuck mission protocol, she calls Kaaro.
“Hello.”
“God, it’s good to hear your voice,” she says. She almost starts crying again.
“Baby, how now? Olalekan said you had to do an overnight or something.”
“He’s dead, Kaaro.”
“What?”
She tells him the story, tells him everything that she thinks is not classified, including Efe’s death and her part in it. “Be ready. I’m coming to get you, my love. Don’t go out. It’s crazy out here. I’ll keep you safe, okay? I just need to get home, and… I might not have my phone.”
“Might I suggest something else?”
“Go.”
“Can I come to you? Drive to you?”
“I don’t know if anyone’s watching the house, baby. I want you to act natural, as if nothing is wrong.”
“Right. Right. Am I in danger?”
“No. I don’t know. Don’t worry, I’m coming. Get your gun from the safe and load it.”
“I don’t like guns.”
“Just do it, Kaaro; do it because I said so.”
“All right, I’ll try. Aminat, don’t kill your ID chip. Camouflage it.”
“I don’t know how to—”
“I know a guy. Let me make some calls.” He pauses. “You sound different. Are you okay?”
“I… I had to… Kaaro, I killed some soldiers.”
“I’m sorry they made you do that, baby.”
He comforts her. She cannot remember what he says, but Kaaro does it in a short time, tells her he loves her, then gets off the phone to find his guy.
She walks over to Alyssa, who is leaning on a traffic bollard.
“What are we doing?”
“We march on. My boyfriend, who used to be a criminal, is going to find us a way of fixing the IDs.”
People stare at them as they walk. Some have never seen a homunculus. Some know very little about xenofauna, and they think the homunculus is a kind of deformed human. Aminat doesn’t like the attention, and tells Alyssa.
The Rosewater Insurrection Page 15
