There is so much going on, so much he is worrying about, that Kaaro feels unable to fit everyday activities in, but he does this and more, the more being teaching Layi fine control.
They are in the back yard of the house. Because of the rains the day before, the paler green undersurface of the leaves is on show. The sun has dried all the puddles, but the soil has that mulchy, fertile smell to it.
“Take your time,” Kaaro says.
“I am,” says Layi, laughing.
They stand side by side. Three feet away are seven pails, upended, crudely numbered with a black marker. Each covers a target object. The aim of the exercise is to heat, set fire to, boil or annihilate the objects without melting the buckets.
Layi is in town for the first ever Rosewater Pride. He has hinted at moving. Kaaro picked him up at the airport.
“I didn’t know you were gay,” he said.
“To be fair, I don’t know either. I am sometimes attracted to men, though. I’ll be marching in solidarity. That way, if I turn out to be gay later, I can say I was part of history. And I might meet hot guys.”
“That’s so self-serving.”
“I know. I’m terrible. Shall we begin?”
That was two hours ago.
Kaaro would rather not be doing this, but he is supposed to be retired, and how can he refuse Layi’s earnest face? His guilelessness? Kaaro does not have time for this given the work he has to do, but Layi is practically family, plus the last time the boy lost control he burned the family home down. That led to Aminat working for S45 to stop them from taking Layi into custody indefinitely. They trained her to look after Layi, and that developed into sending her on missions.
“I have an idea,” says Kaaro. “Do you mind if I visit your brain for a minute?”
“As long as you ignore any images of naked folks.”
Kaaro feels around Layi’s consciousness, finds what controls his ability and folds his willpower around it. He visualises the target through Layi’s eyes and… lets go. The object pops into flame underneath the bucket.
“Wow, you’re good,” says Layi.
“Now you,” says Kaaro.
Bucket number three explodes along with the glass of water inside.
Kaaro and Layi look at each other.
“I’m sorry, I’m not concentrating,” says Layi.
“You’re wasting my time,” says Kaaro.
“Yes, because your old ass is busy doing important things, right?”
“Can we just go again? Stop destroying my buckets.”
Yaro barks twice, and Kaaro knows Aminat is back.
She is weathered and exhausted. There is also blood on her. The xenosphere around her churns with information like an overripe fruit waiting to burst.
“What happened?” says Layi. He rushes to his sister and they hug.
She puts up a hand. “It’s not my blood.”
“Can you talk about it?” asks Kaaro.
Between Kaaro and Layi, they take Aminat to the lounge. Kaaro gets a damp cloth and wipes off the grime and dirt.
“Somebody with firepower and training just killed a number of Taiwo’s men. We don’t know who, but they are very serious.”
“A power play? Someone moving in?”
“Probably. But we don’t know and nobody’s talking.”
When Aminat is looking slightly more human, Kaaro leaves her with Layi, locks the dog out of the bedroom and lights a cigarette. He transitions into the xenosphere within seconds, navigating his defences without thinking: a maze, a number of phrases, sequences of light and dark. His guardian, Bolo, awaits.
“Come with me,” says Kaaro.
Bolo is Kaaro, but not. The giant is a concentration of the most feral parts of Kaaro’s subconscious. Like the subconscious, Kaaro takes him everywhere now.
At the edge of his own consciousness, represented by a rocky cliff falling off into an abyss, there are floating humans, representing their minds. He is vaguely aware of the communal subconsciousness, of the residual fear from the chemical attack and the activities of Koriko, gathering the dead after the shootout.
Layi’s proximity he can feel as a burning flame, which is primarily how the xenoforms manifest in the boy.
Kaaro seeks and finds a thread he has hidden and waiting, and he pulls. The thread yanks him up and into the deep xenosphere. Bolo keeps time with him like a satellite. He moves at speed, transforming into his gryphon avatar without even thinking about it. The consciousnesses around him bounce off him as if they are helium balloons. If they are asleep, they will have brief nightmares; if awake, unexplained gooseflesh. No harm done.
The thread leads straight to the mind of Bad Fish. In this place, its representation is a woven string of neural tissue that connects with the back of the hacker’s head.
“Oh shit, it’s you again,” says Bad Fish. His eyes grow wide. “What the fuck is that?”
Bolo crashes down, and his hair sweeps the floor, which is a mental representation of where Bad Fish is, some hack farm in Lagos.
“You don’t have to worry about him. You look good,” says Kaaro.
Bad Fish is heavy-set, robed as usual, though his belly pushes gently against the fabric. He is a religious figure for the hackers and the script kiddies, with skills that are deemed celestial. For real, Yahoo-yahoo boys worship him, work for free, while they await his blessings and teaching. He once helped Kaaro get S45 encrypted data off his implant, but then tried to steal some of it. As a result, Kaaro has something on him, although he would like to think they are now friends of a kind. To appreciate his powers, you’d need to know that Bad Fish has hacked the defunct space station the Nautilus, and used a particle weapon without breaking sweat. He saved Aminat’s life during the insurrection. Twice, maybe. She and Kaaro haven’t had the opportunity to pay him back.
“What do you want this time?” asks Bad Fish. He seems sober and in the moment, which is unlike him.
“What are you doing right now?”
“Some police just raided my shop. I had to decant to a temporary accommodation. My saints are reconnecting my stuff.”
“What’s that?”
Hanging in mid-air is a deep-sea diving suit held up by multiple thin cables that lead off into nowhere. Kaaro does not know what it symbolises, but it’s on Bad Fish’s mind.
“My pride and joy. Something I’m working on. It connects to every hardware address of every implant. It synchronises with any cameras or surveillance devices close by. I can get into phones from there. Kaaro, with this suit, I can see everybody everywhere.”
“Why?”
Bad Fish shrugs. “Because I can. It came to me in a dream one day.”
“What dream?”
“I don’t know, a dream. I saw a thing, a spider-like being, but not. It was one big eye at the centre of a black body and hundreds of legs. Each leg connected to someone. I woke up and drew the blueprint of this suit.”
That’s Molara. He’s seen her in a dream, or a nightmare.
He strokes the arm of the representation of the suit, then turns back to me.
“Why are you here, Kaaro?”
“Your country needs you.”
“Oh, you motherfucker. Are you working for S45 again?”
“Just wait, brother. Listen. I may have been mistaken about Rosewater. It’s not the health utopia it’s billed to be. It’s a cancer that will slowly eat the human race until there are none of us left.”
“How has this change of heart come about?”
Kaaro explains his visit to Femi Alaagomeji in prison, and the meeting in Nigeria.
“Wait, are you saying Miss Aminat doesn’t know you’re here?”
“Yes. We can’t involve her. She works for Jacques.”
“You… I’ve always liked your lady, Kaaro. You’re generally a fucking idiot, but she is… refined and cheerful. And she’s grateful when you do something for her.”
“I’m grateful when you do things for me.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I say thank you all the time.”
“But you don’t mean it. You’re mocking. Your voice says it all. Miss Aminat says thank you with her voice, and there’s laughter in there.”
“I’ll tell her when I’m done.”
“What does ‘done’ entail? What do you want from me, Kaaro? This time.”
“We might need that particle accelerator again.”
“Going to war again?”
“Not with Rosewater. With the aliens. We need them stopped or neutralised.”
“Doesn’t S45 have access to the Nautilus?”
“The Nautilus was officially decommissioned, Bad Fish.”
“Yes, I saw the fake videos. Naughty.”
“Do you still have access?”
“Don’t insult me. Of course I do.”
“Will you help us?”
“Sure. But what do I get?”
“Survival! If we don’t win, the human race perishes.”
“Yeah, so you say. What do I get?”
“What do you want?”
“Full immunity for whatever I might have done in the process of finding enlightenment.”
“Hacking offences only.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll talk to the boss.” Kaaro glances at the suit. “We’ll be needing this too.”
“For what?”
“Keeping track of everybody. The government of Rosewater is monitoring electronics. The alien is monitoring the xenosphere, so a lot of what I do has to be curtailed. You can be our eyes and ears.”
“You’re saying it like it’s some kind of privilege.”
“Can you come to Femi, in Abuja?”
“I can but I won’t. You want me to enter the lion’s den. I can do this remotely as long as the police leave me the fuck alone. You can tell Femi Alaagomeji that. Tell her to tell them to leave me alone.”
“I’ll relay this.”
“I need it all in writing. Signed. Stamped. Notarised.”
“Jesus, fine, I’ll relay your needs. Where should she send it?”
“Tell her to create the documents. I’ll know.”
“Hey, do you know anything about the killings in Rosewater last night?”
“I’m not on the clock until those documents—”
“Bad Fish!”
“Okay, okay… I don’t know if it’s related, but Kehinde, Taiwo’s twin brother, is back.”
Oh.
Oh shit.
“I have to go. Nice seeing you again. Mwah, mwah, mwah!”
Aminat needs to know this.