Aminat can still run.
In spite of the upheaval and the crowds in the street, she follows a phantom, a transparent image of the hellhound who seems to want her to follow. As soon as she is almost on him, Yaro turns a corner and runs.
He stops at a building and disappears.
“Don’t let him be dead, don’t let him be dead,” Aminat says or thinks.
She dashes up the stairs to get to Kaaro who she can feel in her mind. She breaks into the room and is confronted with a room full of reanimates, although she knows he is still in there. They are passive, so she pulls three out of the room to make space, then she starts pushing them out of her way. When they are too slow she uses a hip toss and over-arm throw to speed things up. She hears the dog yapping after a few moments.
“Kaaro!”
She finds him huddled in a corner, awake but weak, mumbling, alive. She crouches and covers him in kisses. He stinks of dried sweat and his clothes are crusty, but she clutches him all the same. She even pets the mongrel.
“What are we…? Hi…” says Kaaro.
“Hi,” says Aminat. “Send your drones away.”
“Why?”
Aminat steps out of her fatigues. “Why do you think?”
Later, they walk hand in hand through the celebrating crowds. Aminat’s injuries hurt more, but she doesn’t mind. The dried blood can stay until she gets back to base. Wounds probably need suturing too. Discarded soldiers’ uniforms line the streets, and there seem to be more reanimates than ever. There are no dead lying on the ground, and Aminat knows Alyssa has succeeded. People scramble for drones and COBs, maybe as souvenirs. In the air, flakes of ash from the Beynon float about. Soft mossy substance underfoot, not terrestrial, at least not originally. Femi was right: the real war is with the aliens. Some people, singing, come along and hug them both, then depart with joy. The very air seems sweeter, but that must be an illusion, surely.
Aminat says, “Baby, what now? We’re the frontline of a concerted alien invasion. What do we do?”
Kaaro shrugs. “I don’t know. To be fair, they don’t want to kill us. Just… occupy us.”
Kaaro had related the death of Anthony, and in the remix of the knowledge, something occurs to Aminat. Monkeys and statuettes of twins… then it comes to her.
“I have an idea, but we have to go back to the mayor’s bunker, or wherever he is right now.” Aminat drags Kaaro through the people drunk with happiness, towards the mansion.
The mayor’s office seems to be kitsch and trying too hard to Aminat, easily the ugliest office she has ever visited.
“You’re sure this will work?” asks Jack Jacques.
“It’s better than what you have right now,” says Kaaro, “which is just the threat of annihilation. This gives us some control. Anthony figured it out and tried to tell me, and Aminat made sense of it.”
“It’ll work,” says Aminat.
“They’re here,” says Lora.
Alyssa has changed. She is taller, for one thing, well over six feet, and with a higher muscle-to-fat ratio than before. She has also changed her skin colour. Anthony also did this, but his were various comical shades of brown, to blend in. Alyssa has no pretensions about fitting in, and is now various shades of green, with seaweed hair and her skin varying between chartreuse and olive about the folds. There are organelles on her body, crystalline, like embedded diamonds, placed randomly, even on her face. Her eyes are black and large enough to obscure the white, which is only visible when Alyssa side-eyes. The air around her is charged, literally. Aminat can feel her body hair rising with the static. She wears a flowing gown, probably made of something degradable. She knows she can wear whatever the fuck she wants and still be taken seriously.
“I speak for Wormwood,” says Alyssa. “I have decision-making proxy for both of us.”
“I speak for humanity,” says Jack, without a hint of embarrassment or humility. “We would like to offer you something in exchange for the protection and care you have always provided for us.”
“What would we need from you?”
“A place for your people,” says Jack. “A home for the Homians.”
I told him not to say that. How do we know if they appreciate poetry or if it’s an insult on their planet?
“Jack Jacques, we are already taking the home we want. We do not need you to give this to us.”
“You’ll have to wait for years doing it your way. I’m offering you something now.”
“We are patient, Jack Jacques. We have different understandings and experience of time and entropy.”
“Your way will kill us, just like you killed Alyssa Sutcliffe to take her body. I don’t believe it’s what you want, or at least, what you all want.”
“No, the death of your kind is regrettable, but it’s no different from you killing cattle and swine to survive. Many of you may regret animal death, but if it came between you and survival…” Alyssa spreads out her arms, then lets them fall to her sides.
“There is another way. Aminat?”
Aminat takes the floor, and tries not to think of how much the future of humanity rests on what she’s about to say. “Your predecessor, Anthony, left a message before dying, but we couldn’t figure it out for a while. Monkeys and a wooden statue of a twin. The monkeys have to do with the origin of twins in Yoruba mythology, and the wooden statues are receptacles of the souls of dead twins, which the mother carries around and treats as if still alive.”
“Interesting. Actually, not really interesting, but what does this have to do with my people?”
“The reanimates,” says Aminat. “They are empty of souls, like the wooden carving. They are so devoid of will even Kaaro can control them. Your people can transmit their consciousness into them and live here, with us, side by side. And when our people die, you can simply transmit into that body. Your culture, your civilisation can start a new chapter living with humans in harmony.”
“Since when have humans lived in harmony with anybody? Even with each other?”
“Since now. You know it’s a good idea because you’re still in the room,” says Jack, and he has his signature smile now. Odd to see him in a wheelchair.
“I need to consult on this,” says Alyssa.
“I thought you had proxy?” says Aminat.
“For Wormwood, yes, because we are one, but not for the entire Home population. You’re asking me to alter a fundamental plan agreed aeons ago. I need to consult.”
With that she sits where she is, gown pooling around her, eyes closed.
“How long will this take?” Jack asks Kaaro.
“Who knows? I’m hungry.”
In the day room Kaaro eats a tower of crackers with ground nuts because that’s all there is. There are crumbs all over his shirt front, and when he speaks, bits fly out of his mouth. He is uncouth and Aminat loves him.
“Can’t you eavesdrop on the conversation in the xenosphere?” she asks.
“I tried. Got kicked out.”
Through the bay windows, two guards walk a prisoner past. Femi Alaagomeji. She glances at them, but then looks straight ahead.
“She’s going to a deep, dark hole like for ever,” says Kaaro.
Aminat rises, races after. “Wait.”
“Are you happy? You saved your little city,” says Femi.
“I am, kind of, yes.”
“That’s because you’re simple. But then, I only ever employed you because of what was between your legs.”
Aminat’s first assignment. Her ex-husband. “That would hurt my feelings if I thought it was true.”
“You should have just followed my orders, Aminat. Now you have the dubious honour of having doomed humanity.”
“And you’ll have the dubious honour of being right, if not compassionate.”
“Baby, it’s time. They’re calling us in,” says Kaaro.
“I’ll visit you in prison,” Aminat says.
“We’ll see,” says Femi. “The president and Jacques will make a deal. I’ll be out in days. I want you to spend time thinking of what I’ll be doing on the other side of the inevitable border, what my focus will be.”
Aminat wants to hit her then, but turns to attend the meeting instead. Time enough for Femi afterwards.
“We accept your offer. We will begin transmitting into the reanimates as soon as is practicable. I expect arrangements for housing and welfare of my people to begin just as swiftly.”
“It will be done,” says Jack. He stretches out his right hand. “Welcome to Earth.”
On their way out they run into Taiwo, who knows Aminat as the ex-wife of his criminal associate, and Kaaro as an undercover cop. She feels Kaaro cower and she subtly steps between them.
“Well, well. One traitorous wife and one traitor,” says Taiwo. “How’s your husband?”
“Ex-husband. Rotting somewhere, for all I care,” says Aminat.
“And this is your man, now? This amebo?”
Aminat moves closer to the gangster. “Go away, Taiwo. We want no trouble.”
Taiwo smiles with his eyes and teeth, a slow predator’s smile. “It’s going to be interesting living in Rosewater from now. I mean, look at me, a free man, all sins forgiven, and a war hero.”
“That sounds well rehearsed,” says Aminat. “How many times have you repeated the war hero bit?”
Taiwo leans in, talking to Aminat, but aiming the words at Kaaro. “In this new future of mine I’ll have nothing else to do but look up old friends. Exciting times ahead. Boys, let’s go. I feel the need for an expensive hooker, Viagra, and some ketamine.”
“Assholes come thick and fast here,” says Aminat. She holds Kaaro’s shoulder. “I won’t let him hurt you, my love.”
“I’m tired of all this, Aminat, I’m tired of fighting. Taiwo almost killed me one time. He should be in prison, not venerated.”
She holds his gaze. “I will not let him harm you.”
Her phone rings. It’s Lora. “He wants you.” She transfers the call to Jacques.
“Where are you going?”
Aminat shrugs, knowing he can’t see her. “Home, with one man and his dog.”
“Do you want a job?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ve just got off the phone with the president. We had an arbitration by… an interested third party. Anyway, we’ve been granted city state status, in principle, although there are many constitutional bits to work out. I need a head of security, Aminat.”
“What makes you think I’m qualified to lead?”
“If I can do a job I’m unqualified for, surely you can? Besides, I saw you in action. I want you.”
Aminat looks at Kaaro. “I’ll have to think on it.”
“Take all the time you need. I’m kidding. You have twenty-four hours.”
And with that he is gone. She is about to tell Kaaro when she notices his eyes have gone glassy. She follows his gaze and there’s Oyin Da, the Bicycle Girl herself, thinker, anarchist, time-traveller and former crush of Kaaro’s. She always brings trouble.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Aminat spits.
“I want to speak with Kaaro,” says Oyin Da.
“You can’t,” says Aminat. “We’ve been through a lot, and he wants to go home. He literally just said that to me.”
She nods, twice, seems about to say something, then turns to leave. “Do not let Femi die in custody, Aminat. It would be bad for everyone.”
She seems to walk into the air, there now, gone in a second.
Aminat relays the information to Lora, then takes Kaaro home where she is uncharacteristically domestic to tease him out of his funk.
She even feeds the hellhound.