Sunday morning finds Aminat up early, trying to remember training drills from her competitive sports years. The sun is not shining, but there is enough reflected light from the dome to give everything an orange hue.
The road in front of the house is empty. Aminat stretches, lunges, cranes her neck, then sets off on a jog. After two minutes she sprints for fifty metres, then slows again for another two minutes, then repeats the sequence. Track and field required the ability for explosive bursts of speed and Aminat still hears the voice of her coach telling her that jogging was shit as training for a jumper. Aminat is a hybrid athlete who does well in long jump, triple jump and high jump. No use in pole vault. Her body is her instrument. Any introduction of a foreign object like a pole or a relay baton and she freezes up. Not in combat, though. Aminat does surprisingly well in fire teams, or on her own, which is odd for a person who is almost a pacifist. Working for S45 makes her realise that she is capable of killing a person, and she is not quite comfortable with that, but since she now works in a lab, it’s unlikely to happen.
Back in Queen’s College in Lagos Aminat is a legend, still holding the school records in several events. Some national attention, but life and her brother Layi got in the way of Olympic glory.
She runs past a few constables who wave at her. Sometimes she thinks Rosewater has the most polite police force in the world. Of course, she lives in Atewo, which is relatively affluent with regular and wide roads, clean streets, good houses, no overcrowding. It is a far cry from the slums of Ona-oko or Kehinde. Aminat does not suppose the police are polite over there.
She stops and stretches. She has been going for half an hour. The sun is out, cocks crow and church bells ring. The big boss bell comes from the cathedral. It is the newest cathedral in Nigeria and modelled after the Lagos cathedral. It is interesting to have a Norman Gothic building in what is sometimes called The City of the Future.
Aminat tries not to think of space. The coming journey frightens her, but that won’t stop her from doing it. She has never studied the Nautilus too closely, but she plans to. She is about to start running again when her phone rings. It’s the lab.
“Yes?” She has a frisson of fear, knowing nobody would call her on Sunday if it were not important.
“Boss,” says Olalekan, “you have to come in, like right now. Priority one.”
Aminat hangs up and summons her car. She sends a text to Kaaro in code so that he will know that she is safe, but at work. She jogs on the spot, picturing the car starting, the garage door opening, tracking initiation locked on her ID and counting down the metres. She can hear the whine of the engine.
The car stops in front of her and she gets in. “Path lab,” she says, and the car leaps forward. She allows auto-drive to take her north-west, on the outskirts of the city, where buildings are flatter and the dome looks like a massive deformed soap bubble rising out of a child’s toy brick city. Aminat spends the time wiping sweat and secure-texting Femi, priming her for something urgent.
The lab is in a non-descript two-storey building, petesi in Yoruba, which is standard for most S45 outposts. There’s a Goodhead store next door. Aminat takes manual control and parks a few houses down, then jogs. She knocks, is allowed in by a dozy guard, then descends to a sublevel.
Olalekan is crouched over a workstation, clad in his ever-present Yankees cap. A hulk of a man, Olalekan is a gentle giant of prodigious intelligence who is somewhere on the queer spectrum, although he has never been clear about it to Aminat. His eyes are soft, like the rest of him. He lacks angles of any kind, and bent over like this makes him look like an oversized pastry.
“I am underdressed and sweaty, Lekan. Tell me you have a very good reason for this.”
“I do,” says Olalekan, in his infinitely patient voice. “Seventy-nine per cent.”
“What?”
“There is a human being, a female, walking about in Rosewater, with a xenoform count of seventy-nine per cent. It came in two minutes before I called you.”
“Make room.” Aminat takes over the terminal and examines.
For eighteen months Aminat’s team has been using samples from routine blood tests to get xenoform count estimates. This way they can not only observe the effects and pace of the slow take-over, they can map the progression in individuals and cross-reference it geographically. Before today the highest Aminat has ever seen is forty-three. There has never been a subject with more xenoform than human cells. This level, seventy-nine, is unheard of.
“It’s a mistake,” she says. “An artefact.”
“No mistake. I had them run it again a few minutes ago.”
“Why are you calm?”
“I’m not calm. This is me excited.”
“It would help if you spoke a little faster, or you were fidgety.” Aminat phones Femi Alaagomeji.
Before Aminat can say anything, Femi asks: “Who the fuck is Alyssa Sutcliffe?”
Aminat has no time to change. The car auto-drives to the address Olalekan fishes out of the hospital database. Trust Femi to know about the subject before Aminat.
“Who the fuck is Alyssa Sutcliffe?” Aminat sucks her teeth. “Who. Is. Alyssa. Sutcliffe? Fuck should I know?” She counts off pages that Olalekan hashed together for her.
Alyssa Briony Sutcliffe, née Matlock. Born in London, England. Age, thirty-seven. Husband, Mark Anthony, thirty-two, artist, late of Pretoria. One child, Patience Adeola.
Alyssa Sutcliffe is a naturalised Nigerian. Health émigré to Rosewater. Multiple sclerosis. Works as admin manager for Integrity Insurance.
Mark Sutcliffe’s xenoform levels are twelve. Patience’s levels are not detectable as she hasn’t had blood tests on the system. Whatever caused the spike in Alyssa is not environmental at first glance.
Aminat stares at her picture. Pretty brunette white woman. The car takes a sharp turn and Aminat drops the photo. She takes the opportunity to look out of the window. Suburbs. Identical streets, identical rows of houses. Identical decorative palms every one metre of road. How do these people tell themselves apart?
The area is mostly an expat enclave, and in a place as multicultural as Rosewater, that is saying something. Some white children playing on their yards stop and stare at the black woman driving by.
“Arriving at destination in three, two, one… mark,” says the auto-drive.
“Manual,” says Aminat, and drives past the address, makes a U-turn and parks. No activity in the house. “Scan security nearby.”
“Pending… pending… done.”
“Report.”
“Standard measures in all domiciles.”
“Indwelling?”
“No indwelling. No vehicle signature.”
Nothing unusual, then. They’re out. It’s Sunday. Might have gone to church like good little Anglicans.
Who the fuck is Alyssa Sutcliffe and why is she fucking up my space trip?
Femi would not be sending her to the Nautilus until this is sorted out.
There’s no point going off into parts unknown if we’ve got this mystery woman who is mostly alien running about. How do we know what exactly she is? Is she a human becoming an alien or an alien becoming a human?
I don’t know, ma’am.
Neither do I, but I’d like to know. I don’t like not knowing and I don’t like mysteries. Do you like mysteries, Aminat?
No, ma’am.
Then find out who this person is and bring her in for testing. Don’t worry, aburo, the Nautilus will still be there when we have Alyssa Sutcliffe.
By which she means when Aminat has Alyssa. The inside of the car starts to smell of dried sweat. No corner shops in this suburban hell, no spare clothes in the car, no deodorant.
Aminat starts to itch.
The absolute wrong attire for a stake-out.
Time passes.
The radio tells her about a boot print found on a road in the banking district in Alaba. It has crushed the asphalt to make its impression. The boot print appeared overnight and has caused a panic. People worry about the size of it. They interview some people. What giant made the print? Is this a new alien invasion like the doomsayers predict?
Aminat changes the channel. It’s a hoax. Like a crop circle. That’s why they picked the banking district on a Saturday night. No witnesses.
Something occurs to her and she calls Olalekan.
“Boss?”
“Lekan, I’m on Nkrumah Street. Do a search for me. Any blood tests done in this area. Check the xenoform levels, see if any are particularly high.”
“We’d have picked them up,” says Lekan. He sounds like he is eating.
“I’m thinking relatively high. Close to the forties. It wouldn’t have triggered an alarm on an individual level. I want to see if there is a cluster of high percentages in this area.”
Lekan takes half an hour.
“Negative.”
“No high levels?”
“No high levels. In fact, there are low levels and many undetectables.”
Odd. But at least this means Aminat does not need to cordon off the area.
On the old classic channel she listens to the Drifters, “Under the Boardwalk.”
She tries not to fall asleep.