“Peace be unto this house, bitches!” says Aminat, holding a bottle of vodka in each hand at shoulder height. She shakes her shoulders in a pantomime of the limbo.
Bea snatches the bottles, gives Aminat a half-hug and immediately resumes the creation of punch. “You took your time, girl. I started to think you got left for dead somewhere.”
“Aminat!” squeals Efe. She kisses the air and slides off the strap of Aminat’s handbag. “Drop this, and come with me. Fisayo had her boobs done.”
Bea rolls her eyes. “Let the woman land first, before you start your amebo.”
Efe links arms and leads Aminat deeper into the room. “She used one of those lab-grown implants, from her own DNA. It feels natural and she says there aren’t any scars.”
“Isn’t she an identical twin with—”
“Yes, o. Even her husband can’t tell them apart.”
Bea snorts. “I’m told her husband hasn’t been telling them apart.”
They burst into laughter and the evening begins.
“Where’s Ofor and Little Ofor?” asks Aminat.
“They went to the village. Mother-in-law,” says Efe.
“Haba. You no follow?”
“No, please leave me. I hate the woman. She’s always like, ‘Efe, this is how you should chop ata rodo’ and ‘Is that how long you’re going to fry plantain?’ Abeg.”
They catch up on their lives as much as possible, and drink. It is Efe’s house and outside the bay windows the north ganglion is visible. Tonight it flickers and emits the occasional bolt of dry lightning. They stare at it and Aminat sees the blue light reflected on her friends’ faces. Efe has a rounded face and light skin, shorter than the others, garrulous but good natured. Bea is skinny, full of angles and sarcasm. Aminat has known them for ever and loves them. Meeting up every few weeks is the only thing that keeps her sane sometimes. She wishes she could tell them that she is going into space, she needs to tell them, but she cannot. Instead, she just accepts that if she had told them, they would have supported her. She knows this, and is calmed.
The conversation goes on, but Aminat only superficially engages. She participates, but is removed from it all. She does not drink much, and only half-listens to Efe’s description of all the home security innovations her husband has installed. It’s more like a hobby of Ofor’s, trying to stuff as much new technology into the property as possible. Aminat just enjoys the cherubic smile on her friend’s face when she talks about her husband’s silliness and the joy in her voice when her son comes up in conversation.
On the way home she fields calls from her mother complaining about her father. She listens like a dutiful daughter and hangs up after what she deems a reasonable time. She drives up to Atewo with the dome glowing bright blue in the night. Closer to street level the darkness is dotted with pinpricks of light, not from houses, but from droppers. This is the reason nobody builds on this stretch of highway. Droppers are xenoflora that try to mimic human form in order to draw prey in. The shapes look ridiculous in the daytime, like cardboard-cut-out people with bio-luminous eyes. They are surprisingly effective at night with either children or people from out of town. A curious person would find themselves bathed in corrosive fluid and slowly consumed. The mayor has been talking about exterminating them for years, though his wife’s charity says the opposite.
Aminat parks, takes off her shoes, and walks barefoot to the house. The security protocol picks up her RFID and lets her in. The house is dark, but Aminat chooses to leave it that way. Yaro growls once and comes to her, wagging his tail, butting her shin with his cold nose. She strokes the monster’s head briefly. She does not understand their relationship. Yaro is Kaaro’s dog and he has never properly warmed to Aminat. He sends mixed messages by dog standards.
“Where’s your master?” she asks him.
“In here.”
Yaro pads ahead of Aminat and comes to rest just beside Kaaro’s left foot. Kaaro sits at a desk, reading a book. His face is caught in the glow from the table lamp and he has that gentle smile. Aminat knows she loves this man because of how she feels each time she sees him. This indescribable feeling from the pit of the stomach that is like being sick and super-powered all at the same time. She drops her shoes near the door of the study.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” says Kaaro. He gives a short wave.
“My feet are killing me. What are you reading?”
“Bill Hicks. Love All the People.”
“I don’t know who that is. Before my time, no doubt.”
“Before mine too.”
He stands and they kiss. His hands wander all over her body before coming to rest on her back. “Hmm. Aromatic vodka. How are the girls?”
“They live long; they prosper. Enough about them. How’re you?”
“I’m cool. You know, you forgot to ring your father, and he’s kind of jealous that you spoke to your mum.”
“Shit!”
“Don’t worry. I talked him down. Layi says hello.”
“We’ll go down next week.” Aminat squeezes Kaaro’s buttocks, a signal for privacy. She closes her eyes and waits.
Everything shifts. They are no longer in the house. No chance of surveillance here.
Kaaro, her lover, brings them both to a place where events roam with questionable chronology. Time is compressed or extended. Space is whatever they need it to be. He has brought them to a grassy meadow impossibly wide. It is bright and breezy. Bees flit from flower to flower. The tips of each blade of grass sway in the wind and snap, floating upwards in the air, swirling, disappearing into the sky. In the distance there are mountains, and beyond that, a colossal creature, head in the clouds, mouth perpetually open. This is Bolo, Kaaro’s mental guardian. The scene looks to Aminat like a Goya Black Painting.
“Have you redecorated?” asks Aminat.
“No, I was exploring before you came in,” says Kaaro. “I’m experimenting with the defensive properties of wide-open spaces.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Bolo will protect me.”
Kaaro is thought to be the last of the sensitives, humans with a variety of strange abilities endowed by the xenoforms. Aminat is not privy to all the information, but the xenoforms have a network of data in Earth’s atmosphere and sensitives could access it, including the thoughts of other humans and some ability to read the future. Kaaro calls himself a quantum extrapolator because Anthony, the alien avatar of Wormwood, called him that. Something happened, and the aliens decided to kill all the sensitives, though nobody seems to know why. They almost killed Kaaro, but Anthony saved him. Kaaro had worked with S45, but quit after he almost died in service. Femi Alaagomeji tries continuously to be subtle, but she wants Kaaro back at work.
Aminat strokes Kaaro’s cheek. “I love you. I just wanted to say that.”
“Don’t say it yet.” Kaaro smiles. “I need to concentrate to keep us here.”
Aminat sees a disturbance in the grass almost a mile away. An object displaces the blades and travels at great speed towards them. “Something’s coming.”
“I know. There are many of them. Do not worry about it.” Kaaro points to other directions.
There are five other similar disturbances in the foliage. They seem intent, and Aminat cannot relax the way Kaaro seems to. “Who are they?”
“Bogey men from my imagination, people I’ve encountered or make up. Since we’re in my mind they take on reality. It’s been a bastard keeping them at bay recently.”
As he speaks, his image doubles, then a ghostly version of Kaaro lifts off into the air and floats away.
“That’s new,” says Aminat. “What is it?”
“Yeah, that’s a possible me. Idle wonderings of what might have been. It’s not important.”
More versions of him break away at irregular intervals. It is distracting to Aminat, but she focuses on him. “Is it safe to talk?” she asks.
“Yes. How was Efe?”
“You know Efe. Tonight she said to me that the way to make a man crazy about you is, after having sex for the first time, to say nobody ever made you come like that. Or that you’ve had to fake it with other men. She gave a whole alcohol-fuelled lecture on this.”
Kaaro smiles. He likes her friends, or at least acts like he does.
“Kaaro, they want me to go into space,” Aminat says, serious all of a sudden.
“For real?”
“Yes. They want me to go to the Nautilus, dock, take samples of the air and biological samples from the astronauts there.”
“Or their remains. Nobody has heard from that space station for years.”
“They don’t tell us everything. Who knows if there have been supply missions all this while?”
“Do you trust them?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, S45 is not exactly known for being truthful, or sharing. Femi is—”
“Ruthless, yes, you told me. I don’t know. I have only known for a few hours.”
One of the bandits seems to be getting incredibly close, only fifty yards away, and Aminat feels exposed and without any means of defending herself.
“Kaaro—”
A column of wood descends from the sky and crushes the intruder with an almighty bang. The ground, such as it is, shakes, and the gentle floating of the grass tips is disturbed by the shockwave. Bolo stands over them.
“I told you not to worry,” Kaaro says. “What happens next?”
“Training, I suppose. I’ve let myself go, haven’t I?”
“No fat on you, baby.”
“Yes, but I have to do six months endurance training. I have to get back to fighting weight. Tonight was a kind of farewell to alcohol.”
“And other things?”
“What do you mean?”
“Other kinds of exercise…?”
“Bring me out of this place, and we can test your endurance.”