The Rosewater Insurrection

by Tade Thompson

  “Sir.”

  I wade through the marshland in the dark. My palm lights up with the compass phone app, directing me to Ona-oko. Mosquitoes alight on me, but I’m not worried because I have a dermal patch to prevent malaria. It’s government issue, so probably unreliable, but I’m counting on the fact that they need me alive. Some asshole tried to cure malaria by gene-editing the plasmodium parasite that causes it. Worked for most strains, but a hardy, drug-resistant plasmodium emerged that just kills the few people who get it. So, prevalence is down but mortality is up. Way up.

  There are ghost lights, and I can smell the methane as I slog along, and the gurgle of the Yemaja is distinct. There are droppers every few yards, faux-human bodies swaying in the night breeze, unblinking eyes watching me, imploring me to join their corrosive embrace.

  I can hear a drum in the distance calling me in as the ground gets drier. I could swear to some seismic activity, but that might just be due to the difference between marsh and red sand.

  I am inside the city limits and this is the key moment, the reason they had to find me, and not use another agent. The alien will kill anyone seen as an outsider with evil intent. S45’s hope and mine is that Wormwood will recognise me and count me as a part of Rosewater. I realise I have slowed my pace and await, with ragged breath, a lightning strike from the south ganglion.

  It does not come and I approach the first settlements. The drummer is a ten-year-old and I touch the back of his palm to transfer some money.

  Welcome to Rosewater. It stinks less than it used to.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Aminat

  The circuitous route has them in the slums of Ona-oko, where, given that it is dark, they will have to bed down for the night. Aminat can feel the distant vibration beneath her feet, the one that is not traffic, or the trains. She knows the roll-up is following Alyssa in a subterranean path, just like the homunculus is overground.

  “We’ll rest here,” says Aminat. “Send that abomination away because nobody will rent us a room with it hanging around.”

  They find a single room that accepts what currency Aminat still has. Alyssa showers while Aminat waits. The window is sealed and the air conditioning works, but the abomination is on the roof and keens like a forlorn puppy.

  Kaaro calls, and her belly flutters.

  “I love you,” she says, in lieu of “hello.”

  “I love you. I’ve got a solution for your ID chip problem, but I have to conference someone in. Did I ever tell you about a guy called Bad Fish?”

  “I think I’d remember a name like that.”

  “Bad Fish is this tech-bandit from Lagos, a celestial.”

  “What’s a celestial?”

  “It’s a church, but it’s also a person who has skills with repurposed technology and post-hacking… it doesn’t matter. The fact is he can adjust your implant remotely. I have to conference him in.”

  “Helloooo.” Bad Fish sounds high.

  “Baby, this doesn’t sound like a good idea,” says Aminat.

  “It’s fine. He won’t steal any data because he knows that I’ll know if he does, and that I know how to find him always, right, Bad Fish?”

  “Of courseeeee.”

  “Bad Fish, are you drunk?” asks Kaaro.

  “No, and I’m sssshocked you’d think so.”

  “You kind of sound like you are, Bad Fish,” says Aminat.

  “That’s because I’m penetrating a space station at the sssssame time as talking to you. Overclocking, overclocked. Too many brain cycles.”

  “We can call you later—” says Kaaro.

  “Nonsense. I’m ready. Let’ssssss do this. Ai m’asiko lo n’damu eda.” Aminat hears tapping from the other end, like a keyboard. “I’m sending a file to your phone. Execute it. I’ll use the signal to do what I need to do. What I’ll create is an overlay identity. You’ll be able to switch back if you need to.”

  It takes half an hour to do, first Aminat, then Alyssa. Later, when all is quiet and she is trying to sleep, Aminat feels a weird turn, then she is in that field, that strange place where Kaaro takes their minds for privacy. It’s night, with a full moon this time, and Bolo, the giant with dreadlocks, stands guard at the edge of the frontier as usual.

  Kaaro stands in the ankle-high grass, waiting for her. That dog, Yaro, is beside him, wagging its tail maniacally.

  “Lose the dog, Kaaro,” says Aminat.

  The dog dissipates and they sit in the grass.

  “I didn’t know you could bring animals in here.”

  “In theory, I could. A dog has a brain, neurons and sense organelles on its skin that the xenoforms can connect to. But that’s not the dog. That’s present because I’ve been spending all my hours with Yaro. It’s a residual image, nothing more.”

  “Okay.”

  Kaaro points. “What’s that?”

  It’s a discoloration in the air, a blackness, tendrils of concentrated night, alien, yet familiar to Aminat. “That’s Alyssa.”

  Kaaro stares for some seconds, then grunts.

  “She’s not harmful,” says Aminat.

  “If you say so. Anyway, I have something to show you. Lie down.”

  She does, and the sky changes from darkness interrupted by stars to a scene.

  In Lagos, within a massive rubbish dump, shielded by metal placements that look random but are carefully selected, Bad Fish stands in a white kaftan with a grey helmet on his head. Wires lead from the back of the helmet to several terminals about which acolytes fuss. There are sixteen high-performance fans cooling the hardware, yet everybody sweats. Bad Fish gives a thumbs-up and the acolytes switch the thing on. The helmet lights up on the inside, a view that Aminat sees because Kaaro has put her in Bad Fish’s head. At first it seems like a profusion of numbers to Aminat, but she understands within seconds. Each person’s ID chip has a unique hardware number which it broadcasts for a short distance. Bad Fish has acquired the number for every single one on the government database and used them to create a virtual map of Nigeria, or, rather, Nigerians. He sees everyone and it makes his heart swell with pride.

  He points like the conductor of a grand symphony. “COB feeds and street cameras!”

  In the background hard drives strain with the effort of keeping up with the processing required. He picks out one chip hardware number and he gets all the displays currently observing the person cross-referenced with a map. A stream of data about the person scrolls down one of the screens. Bad Fish is positively orgasmic. He picks a few other random numbers and has the same effect. Then one of the machines catches fire, triggering pandemonium.

  Kaaro brings her out.

  “In its own way it’s like the xenosphere, or a crude facsimile. He has interesting ideas, that one.”

  “He’ll get caught,” says Aminat.

  Kaaro shakes his dreamlike head. “He’s too smart, too savvy, too hungry. Where are you, Aminat?”

  “I’m making my way to you,” says Aminat.

  “Is that a reference to the Spinners’ song?”

  “Old man, you need new music.”

  “We both do. There hasn’t been any good music since 1995.”

  Aminat runs her hands over the grass, marvelling at how it feels real, and how it smells like all the meadows she’s ever been in. She moves closer to him and even Kaaro smells like he normally does. She brushes her lips against his neck and drops her hand in his lap.

  “Are we going to—”

  “We surely are.”

  Afterwards, lying back in the grass, Kaaro entertains her with Northern Light Simulations.

  “Have you ever seen the aurora borealis?” she asks.

  “No, but the planetarium has VR that’s apparently better than the real thing. That’s where my simulation comes from.” He plays with her nipple. “What’s Alyssa Sutcliffe like?”

  “She’s playing messiah to all the alien animals. I don’t quite know what to make of her.”

  “Never turn your bac
k on her.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  The illusion starts to break down and images flicker.

  “Kaaro, what’s—”

  “There’s a storm front coming your way, it’s disrupting the xenosphere. I’ll get… and—”

  Aminat finds herself back in the hotel room, in the dark, the cries of the homunculus keeping her company. Alyssa appears to be speaking to it from the window, but Aminat cannot figure this out, tired as she is, and falls into a tarry blackness.

  She remembers. Or dreams, all is one.

  Her first lab, where she does the first work on human–xenoform percentages, with her first crew, gathering the first batch of data. Femi sends a message: Delete data, disband team, get out and I will be in touch. Aminat follows the instructions, or is in the process of doing this, and she hesitates to delete the data because of how hard they worked to get it. Back then, the xenoforms could only be grown in a living being, the best being the liver of rats. The actual scientific team disperses fast, and Aminat goes back to work to… Well, the work is finished, but she needs to get away from Kaaro. He has just told Aminat about some affair he had with some woman in the xenosphere, Molara. It sounds disgusting, and she should have walked away, but she loves him by then. He is stupid, a shabby dresser and clueless about most things, but under the surface there is pain and beneath that, a good soul. He’s also really cute. Aminat does not need the xenosphere to tell her this. She is distracted when she goes to work, and boom.

  The bomb does not cause pain at first, just a sense of disorientation and the shockwave to the ear. Instead of pain and torn flesh, Aminat feels warmth and crackling flames.

  “Sister, I heard your scream,” says Layi, her brother, surrounding them both in his own alien-hybrid flame.

  Between Aminat and Femi, they find those responsible, people from within S45 who are collaborators with the invaders, and they purge them. The plotters are scattered to Enugu and Kirikiri prisons. The people who planted and detonated the bomb are dead. Femi shows Aminat images of the corpses.

  “I didn’t take it personally,” says Aminat.

  “Then I will inflame thy noble liver and make thee rage,” Femi says. “Nobody fucks with us.”

  She neglects to say who us is.

  Her next assignment is to assemble a new team in a new lab, on the quiet, with as little documentation as can be managed.

  She wakes with Alyssa standing over her, dressed.

  “There is a problem,” says Alyssa.

  “What problem?” Aminat sees that the second bed has not been slept in.

  “Look out of the window.”

  Aminat rubs her eyes and stumbles over to the window, even though her bladder is full and she would rather go to the toilet. Part of her brain notes that the homunculus has gone silent.

  She gasps, and cannot believe what she is seeing.

  There is brown water flowing through the streets, a flood, covering the first storey of most buildings. No cars in sight, probably all submerged. Some trees float by. How bad was that storm? There has never been a flood of the Yemaja in Rosewater since Aminat has lived there, and none that she has heard reported.

  “Is this normal?” asks Alyssa.

  “No,” says Aminat. “No, this is not normal at all.”

  They access the news reports. After what is a trivial rainfall, barely an inch in some places, the Yemaja breaches its banks. Video footage pours in from people trapped in buildings, observers at a safe distance and drones. Mothers and fathers and children cling to improvised floatation devices. The fisher folk who live and work near the river use their boats and canoes to ferry the stranded. Slum-dwellers wave from rooftops. Some channels make a biblical connection, stating the timing of the flood does not augur well for the newly declared state, or that it is punishment.

  “We need a boat,” says Aminat.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jacques

  “It’s a dam,” says Lora. “They dammed Yemaja, downstream. We’re in the river valley, and Ona-oko is in the floodplain, susceptible to flooding.”

  “Smart. Not a shot fired and they have our own people quoting the most apocalyptic parts of Exodus and saying, ‘Let my people go.’” Jack kills the image of the flood. “What are we doing for those folks?”

  “Evac is underway. Temporary shelter in the stadium, then we’ll need better ideas.”

  “Start a database of second homes in the city. I want all the empty properties mapped and the owners contacted. They need to be on standby to take people in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He calls Dahun. “Let’s go see our prisoner. Meet me at the cell.”

  The prisoner’s clothes are different. She is more plainly dressed and Jack imagines someone got her something to sleep in. She is not surprised to see them. If anything, she seems amused, and her eyes glitter like those of a trickster demon.

  She says, “Let me guess. Dam. Flood. Religious stories planted in the news. Stop me whenever you like.”

  Jack is surprised. “How do you—”

  “I devised the strategy. I wrote the song, I dictated the tune. You really want us working together on this, Mr. Mayor. You don’t bench your striker in the World Cup final.”

  “What comes next?” says Jack.

  She shakes her head. One of the strap muscles on her perfect neck stands out as she does. She is singular, this Femi Alaagomeji. “You give me my phone access, you let me check on my agents, and you remove me from this ridiculous room. We could have avoided this if you had listened to me yesterday.”

  Jack looks at Dahun who shrugs. “I can put a man on her.”

  He looks at Lora.

  “We’re in this situation because of her. She knows a lot more than anybody here. To enter into a deal with such a person is ill-advised, even if we’re being told there is a wider perspective, a perspective to which only she has access.”

  “Your right-hand woman is smart,” says Alaagomeji. “But she is operating under particular parameters that prevent her from seeing far enough.”

  Jack exhales. “We’re setting you free within the mansion. You’ll be under guard and if you step outside you will be shot. Your phone will be released for communication but it will be monitored.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Mayor.” Alaagomeji stands and is all business.

  Dahun stands in her way. “Not so fast. What did they use to penetrate the dome?”

  For the first time Alaagomeji seems stunned. “They what?”

  She has spent fifteen minutes watching and rewatching footage. Her phone has been beeping with received messages, but she hasn’t paid any attention to her wrist.

  “So this wasn’t part of your protocol?” asks Jack.

  “No, this is something new.” She leans back from the image and massages her lower back. “Did it self-repair?”

  “A thin mesh has formed, but the wound is still there,” says Dahun. “We have eyes on the ground.”

  “Which of you is in charge of security and murder and stuff?” asks Alaagomeji. “Don’t waste time with emotional hand-wringing. Just tell me. That was my job.”

  “Why?” asks Jack.

  “You’re going to need your best people for what I’m about to say. You need to get a guy called Kaaro. He won’t come willingly and he has the ability to… neutralise inexperienced people.”

  “Why do we need him?”

  “He can talk to the alien. He’s a powerful sensitive. We need to know what went through the dome and why it’s taking so long to heal.”

  “Can’t we talk to him on the phone?”

  “Bad idea. He doesn’t like the government, he doesn’t like me personally, and I already know from his file that he despises you, Mr. Mayor. He’ll soon have a second reason.”

  “What’s that?”

  She starts to access her phone. “You may have killed his girlfriend by declaring Rosewater independent, and I think he fancies himself a tragic lover who will avenge her death with pre
judice. Excuse me, I need to make a call. Don’t send the men after him before speaking to me. I have specific instructions on how to take him safely.”

  Lora stares at Jack like he has betrayed her.

  “Don’t,” says Jack. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Sir, I didn’t say anything,” says Lora.

  “That’s what I’m not in the mood for.”

  “What would you like me to do, sir?”

  “I want you to arrange bank transfers. Money to all the ward councillors.”

  “For what service?”

  “Bribes, Lora. We are bribing them for their support. We need to ratify the declaration.”

  “What if they take the money and still come out against you?”

  “Bribes have a second function. Blackmail. We keep the records. Those who will not be bought will be blackmailed.”

  “And the ones who will not take the money?”

  Jack smiles. “Keep a list. I also want you to pay the heads of the radio stations, and the freelancers with influence.”

  “I’ll get to it. Anything else, sir?”

  “Yes, I need a journalist, or a writer. Someone needs to write our account of this… this thing.”

  “I’ll drum up some names, sir.”

  “Thanks. Lora?”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m sorry. I think we need her.”

  “You are not required to agree with me, sir.”

  “When you start to use words like ‘required’ I know you’re angry.”

  Lora is expressionless. “You have larger problems than my emotional state, sir. Focusing on them is an indulgence you can’t afford at this time.”

  “Okay, to be continued. I want it noted that I apologised.”

  “Your wife wants you, sir,” says Lora.

  “Now? Is it important?”

  She shrugs as she walks away. She never shrugs at him like that. Jack hates it when she is angry.

  Coincidentally, when he returns to his office, one of his wife’s advertisements is playing on the flatscreen.

  She sits there with liquid eyes and perfect hair, staring soulfully at the viewer with a sincerity that some might think is an act, but Jack knows to be real. After all this while he still feels that tug on the heart when he sees her, even a 2D image like this.