“Despite all of that, I’m glad you’re here. In spite of your insipid emotionality and your questionable choice of men, I quite like you. You’ll survive all of this, and I’ll give you a medal, and promote you. Your one job was to get this asset to me, and you did it. The president will be pleased. There is no way out of here without my authorisation and she’s not getting out of that chamber without me releasing her, so sit down, get a glass and toast the end of the war.”
Alyssa has seen Aminat and raises her hand in a weak wave. Aminat responds, but feels hopeless. There is no plan, no eventuality hack to get her out of this. She wonders if Kaaro is walking into some trap because Femi does not seem worried about his mission. The walls vibrate even all the way down here.
“Don’t worry, nobody is sending bunker breakers to these coordinates,” says Femi.
“Can I talk to her?” asks Aminat.
“Be my guest.”
Aminat indicates to Alyssa the radio buttons.
“Are you okay? Do you need anything?” she asks.
Alyssa shakes her head.
“I can hear you if you speak,” says Aminat.
“I don’t have anything to say.”
“I’m sorry,” says Aminat.
The rumble seems closer and Aminat begins to doubt Femi’s assurance. Even the soldiers seem uncertain.
“Are you sure—”
The far wall in the chamber cracks from floor to ceiling all at once, before buckling and breaking apart, flinging some debris with such force that one chunk of masonry bounces off the screen and spiderwebs it. The transmitted force flings Aminat to the ground and shatters the wine bottle with the glass. One of the rifles goes off, but probably by accident or from fear. With shock Aminat watches Femi activate the test. The view of the screen is broken into multiple fragments, functionally opaque, but whatever the attack is continues. Metal groans, plaster falls and everybody screams, including Alyssa on the other side of the screen. No sounds of explosions, though. There is a winding, tightening sound, high-pitched, as if something is stretching, which reaches a crescendo and everything shatters. Aminat keeps her head down, with her hands wrapped around it, trunk curled up, foetal. It’s not a detonation, it’s a demolition, and when the noise dies down, and there are no girders or beams groaning, and the dust no longer makes her cough, Aminat looks up.
It’s not luck that has kept rubble from smashing her head open.
This roll-up is larger than the one that died in the woods. Its mouth alone is fifteen feet high when open, which it is. Alyssa stands at the entrance to that maw, hair flying back and forth with the breathing of the beast. It has curved itself to form a roof with its body, which saves not only Aminat, but Femi and the guards as well.
“I’m going to ask you to do something strange,” says Alyssa.
“I’ve done strange things,” says Aminat.
“You know the story of Jonah?”
“I am not getting inside that thing.”
“It’s a she, and getting in is the only way. She can take us all the way back to the surface. Here, there is only death and betrayal.”
“What about them?” Aminat points to her unconscious superior.
“They can come too. The creature is a gentle soul and wouldn’t leave without them anyway. I would have acted differently. Let’s make haste, the tunnels may collapse.”
“I have to tell you something,” says Aminat. “You need to go inside the dome.”
She tells the story to Alyssa as they both drag the soldiers and Femi into the roll-up’s mouth. There are blunt teeth the size of traffic bollards at various points all around, and it is dry, and smells of dust and earth. Aminat had expected saliva, but roll-ups tunnel by passing the earth and rock through themselves.
“Is this safe?” Aminat asks.
“We’ll soon find out.”
“Does it know where to go?”
“We’re communicating, Aminat. Have no fear.”
Inside the roll-up is warm, and they stay in what corresponds to a pocket in the cheek. It’s snug, but not exactly uncomfortable. Aminat is pressed against Alyssa in the dark. The unconscious ones lay at their feet.
“Did they hurt you?” asks Aminat.
“No. They took samples of everything, but none of it hurt. Your commander is committed.”
The movement begins, and the dust fills the close air as a train of rock and debris passes them. Pebbles break off and hit the passengers. Sometimes it is larger stones and Aminat is sure she has been cut and bruised, though not seriously. The creature moves at maybe five miles an hour, and the pulsing movement of its wall is coupled with the passage of heavy earth, the kind Aminat has only encountered at construction sites. Every five minutes or so an explosion of sparks breaks the darkness apart as the creature swallows an inexplicably live power cable. Aminat is starting to feel a rising claustrophobia when the darkness starts to abate. She swallows to equalise the inner ear pressure and strains her eyes to see anything at all.
They breach and Aminat has never been so happy to see the light. They break out just outside the dome. The roll-up keeps her mouth open so they can exit. Alyssa exchanges a moment with her, then the roll-up backs away into the soil, twisting on her own axis, leaving a crater with burst water mains and generous mounds of rubble in her wake.
Alyssa faces the opening in the dome.
“Do you need me to go with you, girl?” asks Aminat.
“I really don’t.” She walks into the dome like she’s been doing it all her life. She stops at the threshold. “Aminat, thank you for taking me to your friend’s house. I’m happy to have seen that side of humanity, the warmth, the loyalty. I have a favour to ask of you. If I don’t survive this will you find my husband and child and… comfort them?”
“Of course,” says Aminat. “But I thought you weren’t Alyssa Sutcliffe.”
“I am today.”
When she is swallowed in that darkness, Aminat drags the unconscious three out of the open, lest they attract bombs. This done, she runs towards the Beynon to find her lover.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Jacques
“He accepts the surrender in principle, but he will only officially accept it in person. Not a representative, Jack, he wants you.” There is a hiss on the phone line for some reason. Jack changes to the other ear in case it’s tinnitus, which a lot of people have these days, being common in combat zones.
“He’s going to throw me in a prison somewhere, isn’t he?” says Jack.
“I don’t know.”
“Safe passage for my people?”
“Your wife and immediate staff get a pass, but not combatants. Any war crimes will need to be accounted for. Heads always have to roll in this situation, you know that. If there are no atrocities, then, fine, they can walk free. But there are no polite wars, Jack. There are always people who go too far. Even regular people snap in wartime. We just don’t include them in the documentaries or the history books unless they’re systematised like the Nazis. And you have criminals as troops, Jack. You knew the risks.”
Jack sighs. “Where do I have to do this?”
“Aso Rock.”
The president is going to kill me in a very public place in a sensational manner because he needs to make an example of me, to discourage any other insurgents.
“Don’t think I enjoy this. I’ve personally invested a lot in your potential. I know what this silence from you means.”
I bet you do.
“I accept,” says Jack. “Ask him to stop the bombing and give me a date and time to be in Abuja.”
“He’ll expect the green-white-green to be flying in your mansion by the end of today, and he’ll send a transport for you.”
“I’m sure we can find a flag somewhere.”
“Jack, you’re doing the right thing. I—”
Jack hangs up.
“Lora,” he says.
“Sir.” She has been outside the room. She is wearing all black, in mou
rning for her writer.
“I’d like to ask a favour,” says Jack.
“Yes?”
“I’d like to use a small part of your memory to store some documents, to be released under certain conditions.”
“What conditions?”
“Death by unnatural causes, even if those causes are legal.”
“Like an execution?”
“Precisely that.”
Something is wrong with the air behind Lora, like a sped-up gathering storm, the reverse of thrown confetti, a gap that forms a human shape, then detail fills in.
“What’s that?” asks Jack.
Lora turns around, but apparently sees nothing. “What’s what?”
It is a woman, black, in a dark green body suit, head bare, hair in an afro. No weapons.
“Mr. Jacques, you don’t know me and have no reason to listen to me.”
“But you’re going to tell me something anyway, right?”
She stays absolutely still. “It’s short and simple: wait.”
“For what?”
“You’ll know it when you see it. Don’t do anything just yet. Instead, I advise you to wait. Goodbye.”
Her form dissipates.
Lora says, “Who were you talking to?”
“You didn’t see her?”
“No.”
Jack pulls the room surveillance and it shows Lora, and it shows him talking to air. This time there is no distortion like with the Alaagomeji woman.
“Mr. Mayor, are you well? Mentally, I mean?”
“I’m fine. Let’s just back this data up, shall we?”
Who the fuck was that? Or rather, what was that? Neither Lora nor the cameras could pick her up, which means it could just be in Jack’s head. Great. Hallucinations are just what he needs right now. Or. Or maybe his mind is trying to tell him something in a roundabout way. Maybe he’s rushing to surrender. But he cannot see any other way out. He is outnumbered and outplayed, the people of Rosewater hate him. And he has already agreed to surrender. In principle.
What if it isn’t just in his mind? Some kind of implant hack? A secure message tunnel? But who is she, then? What’s her affiliation? She’s not with the feds because they only want one thing. Antithetical. The Hausa people say, The dance changes when the drumbeat does. Jack is not sure what drumbeat he hears.
Lora’s phone rings and she takes the call, then looks at him. “Sir, something’s happening to the plant.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kaaro
The plant has all but consumed the apartment block that contained it. It now wears remnants of brick walls, cabling, tortured water pipes and segments of roof like reminders of lost loves. Kaaro watches through a window from an abandoned building a block away. It’s moving, too, and not seismonastic movements in response to touch, like fly traps or touch-me-nots. It is initiating movements with its tendrils and whatever projections it has. Several feet above, the cherubs fly in random patterns.
In the darkened room with him there are sixteen reanimates, whom he brought along to be shields, to protect his body when he goes into the xenosphere. The room smells of desperate, unwashed humanity, and it is at times difficult to breathe, but there is a price to pay for everything.
He cannot feel Aminat any more and imagines she has descended the sublevels of the Ubar facility. He feels a pang, but he cannot entertain it.
In the sky he sees the bombers disengage, but the drones keep formation. He does not know why, and Dahun is not answering his phone. The guards around the plant seem to have walked away as well.
There is a portrait of Nelson Mandela on the wall. Kaaro toasts it and drains the glass of ogogoro he found in one gulp. He glances at the blank-eyed reanimates and they remind him of the monkeys that surrounded Anthony’s ghost. Yaro whimpers and falls asleep again. Time.
He closes his eyes and disables his routine defences, finding himself beside Bolo, with Yaro in front. A churning pillar of darkness is yards ahead, and between Kaaro and the enemy, Molara. Blobs of dark miasma break off the main mass, drift around, then rejoin it.
“That’s our target?” Kaaro asks.
“Yes. The host?”
“It’s being done. Let’s go.”
“Aren’t you a little underdressed?”
Kaaro allows himself to transform into the gryphon and fluffs up his feathers.
“That makes me so horny for you. Did I ever tell you that you are my favourite human?”
“Shut up, Molara.”
The gryphon screeches, a combination of a lion’s roar and the call of a raptor. A light spot forms in the middle of the darkness and a face forms.
“What do you things want? What are you?” it asks.
Molara speaks. “You’ve grown too—”
“You know what? I don’t care. I’ll just kill you.”
The face disappears and dark, shadow versions of cherubs separate out and fly towards them. Kaaro doesn’t like the floating so he grounds the environment. Scrubland for miles. Works for now. The cherubs surround him. Where is Yaro? It hurts when they touch him, and they gouge at his mindbody and tear. He flaps his wings to dislodge the cherubs, swipes with his claws and bites the head off one. It is bitter to his soul and he starts to feel dizzy, as if poisoned, and he begins to flash between the xenosphere and Rosewater where his body is. He falls and darkness overwhelms him as the cherubs swarm over him. The pain stops him from thinking of a defence.
A roar brings him back. The darkness parts and the cherubs screech as they are caught in the jaws of a slavering canine with five heads. Six heads. Yaro? Why not out-Cerberus Cerberus. Each time a cherub comes close he buds a new head with a longer neck and bites hard. He’s a fucking hydra now.
Molara is a fire-breathing butterfly, changing size with the exigencies of battle, spreading devastation everywhere.
Bolo jumps into the main black pillar cloud, swallowed up, pummelling as he goes. Kaaro feels cold in his heart at the same time, and though he senses Bolo fighting in there, he thinks it might have been a mistake.
“Oh shit, Kaaro, you’re dying,” says Molara. She seems more curious than distressed.
Kaaro looks down and sees that he is bleeding from his heart all over his fur. It’s not so bad, the cherub attacks don’t hurt any more and the cold can be… can be…
Fuck.
Everything splinters he knows the battle
Continues…
But…
Shit, where the fuck…
It comes back together all at once. He is in a chair, but cannot move, ordinary chair, wooden, uncomfortable against his backside, the room itself large, he cannot see the walls they are so far away. A foot from him, a boxer stands working a heavy bag, spraying sweat droplets with every punch, and ignoring Kaaro.
“Hey,” says Kaaro. “Where am I?”
The boxer stops punching and seems to just notice Kaaro, chest rising and falling.
He says, “Cilvēka, nevis paša kultūras attēlojums vienmēr būs subjektīvs, lai cik objektīvs būtu autors vai novērotājs. Pat antropolog“ijā ikdienas lasītājs atzīmē pakāpenisku objektivitātes pieaugumu gadu desmitiem. Paraugu un metožu izaicinājums un pretprasība ir norma. Margaret Meads darbs Samoā (agrāk Rietumsamoas salā) kādreiz tika uzskatīts par sēklu. Esmu šeit dzīvojis un, lasījis citas etnogrāfijas, vislabāk esmu teikusi, ka laiks ir laiks. Napoleons Chagnons uzskata, ka Yanomamö ir kara vārds, ir vienlīdz atvērts izaicinājumam. Eriksens sacīja, ka sociālās / kultūras sistēmas apraksta veidam jābūt atkarāgam no savas interesēm.”
“I have no idea what you—”
The environment fragments again.
Hold on
Try to
Control
The fall is
He grips the tree branch and hangs by the arm. All around the arboreal environment… monkeys of all kinds… silent, staring. Where has he seen this before? Why is he thinking of it now? He almost has it when
Gone again
<
br /> It
It is
This is how dying is done in the xenosphere. Falling.
I don’t want to die.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Aminat
A shit ton of weapons that Aminat doesn’t know how to use and all the soldiers have gone home, that’s what she has to work with. The plant is bigger, and the weapons didn’t work on it, according to her briefings. Standing helpless. Thinking. Okay, not thinking, just being helpless and wallowing in pity. She fires off a few rounds from her rifle and they bounce off the vines without scratching the integument. She tries explosive rounds, a burst of plasma, a chemical shot, nothing. Zero.
Four reanimates are on the street just standing there, without will, nobody home, and cherubs swoop down and crush them in grips, then take them into the plant. They don’t struggle. It makes sense, if it grows, it needs material to grow from.
Then two cherubs come for Aminat. She fires at them, incendiary. They both keep coming without heads. She fires again, slices them in half. They fall, but still writhe.
More. They have noticed Aminat.
This won’t end well. What was I thinking? A solo assault on this… whatever it is?
Drones and COBs draw closer, hover, for better shots at her demise, no doubt. Some analyst in six months’ time will come across the footage and release it on to Nimbus as a snuff film for degenerates to jack off over. Beyond the machines, a skein of geese make their way across the sky, but stop and hang there.
The drones aren’t hovering; they are stationary. The quadcopter blades are not moving, yet the drones do not fall. Nothing moves, everything is still, even the air.
“Don’t panic,” says Kaaro from behind her.
He is in gryphon form, and he is moulting, feathers floating everywhere.
“Baby,” says Aminat. “Aren’t you supposed to be—”
“I’m not really here, and nothing has stopped, it’s just reeeeeally slow while you become aware of this. I placed a small tangle of xenoforms in your nervous system to be activated in the event of a certain combination of thoughts and emotions. Okay. In a minute you’re going to see Bad Fish—”
The Rosewater Insurrection Page 28
