As prisons go, this isn’t bad.
It’s solitary again, which is understandable, because they don’t want her talking to anyone. This is a well-lit room, no bars on the doors or windows, a bed with comfortable linen, a table with writing implements, nothing electronic, and books. The walls are lime green, and there is no art, but Femi has done a few sketches and pinned them to the wall. The colours are limited to red, blue, black and green biros, but she makes do.
The coffee is good.
There is a guard outside the door who controls the locks. Each day she is allowed to wash while her room is cleaned. By the time she returns, all the notes she has written are gone, replaced by fresh paper. It is not an exaggeration to think they might be examining her shit.
She thinks she might be in Abuja, but it’s difficult to tell. Her knowledge of the president tells Femi he would not want her far from him. He likes to keep his enemies fully humiliated and visible at all times. Which is why Jack Jacques frustrates him. But fuck him. Femi has to adjust to her new life. For now.
She freshens up as much as possible because she is expecting her solicitor. She did not resist when they came for her, making no attempt to run even though she had opportunity to do so. She asked for her lawyer.
No need for a showy, expensive trial; she confessed, much to the chagrin of the lawyer, who seemed genuinely perplexed that all Femi wanted her for was to negotiate conditions and to sneak in good food. She couldn’t explain if her feet were put to the fire. A part of her thinks that now that her task is done, she has no reason to resist whatever destiny holds for her. Maybe she is suicidal. She is certainly fatalistic. After caring about one impossible thing for years, to find the thing possible and finished is anticlimactic. But here she is, the one who defended humanity from colonisation, hoping that the lawyer remembers to bring the watercolours she asked for.
The guard escorts her to the private room, the one that ostensibly is not monitored or bugged. Femi doesn’t buy it, but she can no longer muster enough outrage to care. She has a separate bathroom, instead of a bucket in the corner. That has to be worth something.
The lawyer looks all of sixteen years old, all perfect braids, perky boobs and immaculately pressed skirts. She did remember the art supplies and got them approved. They are the kind you give primary school children, though. With the lid doubling up as a water reservoir and a selection of seven pots with basic colours. There is a single brush. It doesn’t matter. It’s a start.
The lawyer hands over some photographs. “They want to know what these statues are.”
Stills from drone footage. Can’t tell where from exactly because there are no landmarks captured. It’s daytime. Rubble everywhere in the shot, yet there are three stone images of humans right there on the surface. Just approximate shapes really, but recognisable. All of them are different shades of grey. Here and there, cracks can be seen.
Femi hands the photos back. “Those aren’t statues.”
“What are they, then? Because they look like statues to me.”
“Whatever broke up the rest of the city would have broken up statues, don’t you think?” Femi sucks her teeth. “Those aren’t statues. They’re casts.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Because you’ve never lived in Rosewater. There’s a bug in the air; when you inhale it, you don’t know until you fall asleep. It multiplies, and secretes a hard, concrete-like covering. The bug eats the human, who cannot move, trapped inside this stone jacket. When it finishes with the human, it just abandons the hollow cast. Hence those.”
“So they used to be human?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t it kill people before now?”
“Because Wormwood used to heal people as the damage was occurring. The bug couldn’t take root. It’s not the worst thing in Rosewater, believe me. During the rebellion, there was this thing that made people burst into flames.”
“I see.” The lawyer puts the photos away. “I have news.”
“Go on.”
“They’re offering life.”
“Which prison?”
“Chelu godi–there are conditions. You have to be a consultant for all matters to do with the aliens and Rosewater. You have to tell everything you know. If you hold back, the deal is off, and they execute you the next day.”
“Fine. My condition is I get to choose the facility.”
“You… Femi, you don’t have much negotiating power.”
“It’s Mrs Alaagomeji,” says Femi. “And you’re wrong about that. They need me because they have to make excursions into Rosewater now, whether it’s walled off or not. There’s danger, but there are organic abominations that might have biomedical applications, and there might be energy resources. They don’t know their asses from their elbows, and they need me.” She smacks her own bottom. “I know my ass from my elbow.”
After the meeting, Femi colours in some of her previous work. There is a knock at the door and her guard looks in, then steps aside as a woman enters. She is over fifty, elegant, corpulent, wearing an Ofi wrapper and a lace blouse.
“I’m sorry about this; I’m just coming from church,” says the woman.
Femi doesn’t even know it’s Sunday.
“Who are you?” she asks.
“It doesn’t matter. What you need to know is that I’ll be president in six months.”
“That’s a bold statement.”
“But true. Have you heard of the Tired Ones?”
Rumours. A cabal of kingmakers who install their people in key positions. A conspiracy theory. Illuminati shit.
“You’re going to tell me that’s real?”
The woman smiles, and adjusts her blouse. “Never mind. I did want to tell you that I’ve read the reports, and between the lines. What you’ve done is heroic, and one way or the other, I’ll make sure you get your due.”
Femi snorts and says, “You’re going to be president, so I’ll say this to you: were society more reasonably organised, there would be still less need of great abilities, or heroic virtues. It’s a paraphrase of Wollstonecraft.”
The woman laughs. “Femi, where’s Jack?”
Femi shrugs. “Dead?”
The woman nods, and keeps her head down, staring at her shoes. “I swore him in, you know? His batch of Tired Ones. I had high hopes. We all did. Then he chose that putrefying mudbath as his base, which everyone could have ignored, except he picked a fight with the outgoing president.”
“Who did you bribe to get in here?” asks Femi.
The woman looks back up at her. “You’ll say if you think of anything? If you hear from him or of him?”
“I don’t even know who you are,” says Femi.
“Keep watching the Nimbus broadcasts,” the woman says. “I’ll be the one in Aso Rock.”
She exits.
Crazy bitch.
Crazy connected bitch.
In the first of her interviews, Femi is questioned by delegates from India, China, Korea, Russia and the Philippines. They are polite, friendly even. She cooperates. Their tea is good, and as a gesture of goodwill, the Indian delegate sends an assortment of leaves.
At two in the morning, she wakes up and Oyin Da is standing beside her bed.
“I thought you were gone or disappeared,” says Femi.
“I thought so too, but it turns out Junior has learned a thing or two about repairing and maintaining the xenosphere the way the aliens used to. She taught Nike and me, so we take shifts. Either way, oblivion postponed. We live.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Oyin Da.”
“Do you want company? We have no enemies to discuss this time, no allies to gather, no aliens to vanquish.”
“Yes. We no longer have much in common, and I don’t even know if I like you,” says Femi. She points to the watercolour on the wall beside the bed. “Tell me, do you like art?”