As the car comes to a stop, Jack doesn’t know exactly how far he wants to take this. He doesn’t know if he thinks he is calling Hannah’s bluff, or if he’s just trying to occupy his mind while Lora gets fixed. A hot jolt to his heart when he thinks of her. He wonders what causes that sensation, the heat, as if the blood suddenly boils, then cools again, and only in the heart.
He still seethes as he leaves the car. It drives off as instructed. Jack is dressed in the kind of clothes he wore in ’55 and ’56, Camp Rosewater night clothes, anonymous. In the daytime he used to wear a suit, deliberately cheap, so that the hoi polloi thought him one of them who wished to ascend. In the night he ran with criminals, with the twins, in dark blue jeans and dark blue sweats. He has a beanie, but it’s a warm night. He would stand out more wearing one.
It’s the right address because he can see Hannah stepping out of shadow, also disguised in casual clothes, although her grace in motion cannot be muted. A certain angle to the articulation of bones, a specific tension of the ligaments and tendons, just the right muscle tone, and you get a person whose every movement is an inspiration. She is also trained to move in a way that garners maximum attention, but without her gifts, that training would be as dust in a sandstorm, lost, unnoticed, irrelevant.
“I didn’t know if you’d come,” she says.
Jack shrugs.
“I know you love her. How is she?”
“You know these tech people. They say nothing. You wanted to show me something?”
She crooks her finger at him and leads the way. It’s a high-rise building, but with flats or rooms for rent. Not a luxury palace. It smells of human defeat and shit. There are brown hands painted among the graffiti, standing out, pointing the way. As they climb and turn corners, there are more hands at intervals on the walls.
“Antwerp hands,” says Hannah.
“What?”
“Belgian chocolate hands, reminders of the rubber plantation workers’ hands that they chopped off in the Congo. If we ever build a time machine, I have dibs on killing Leopold II.”
“Hannah—”
“We’re here.”
A musty smell emanates from the flat as the door opens. There are bunks and pallets and sleeping bags lined up on the floor. There are shelves up the wall for sleeping above one another like in a slave ship.
“We don’t have enough money to keep them how they deserve,” says Hannah. “Do you want to count them?”
“No.” Jack rolls up his sleeves and sits on the floor. “But I want to interview them.”
And he does.
He asks them to speak to him of death and undeath, stories of accidents and murder. Unlike their poster boy in the court case, these women and men and children have varying degrees of bodily function, but they are indeed alive and they know themselves. This gives Jack pause. Hannah knows when to shut up and let him percolate. He is not sure to what extent he should be angry with her.
“What happens when we put aliens in them?” he asks.
“We don’t know. We’ve never studied one.”
Jack remembers the “failures” he and Lora saw in the Honeycomb, and wonders if that is why the aliens tried to hide them.
His phone buzzes. It’s a government number, but one he does not recognise.
“Hello?”
“Sir, you need to come back to the mansion.” The voice is familiar.
“Who’s this?”
“Blessing, sir.”
“Blessings to you too. Who is this?”
“No, Blessing Boderin. I’m your lawyer.”
“Ahh. Right.”
“You need to come back, sir. The staff called me when they didn’t know what to do. They can’t find Lora.”
“Slow down. What’s the problem?”
“You have visitors, sir. From the Honeycomb. They are adamant, sir, they will only talk to you.”
“Okay, put them on the phone.”
“Face to face, sir.”
Jack sighs and glances at Hannah, whose expression is deceptively blank. “I’m not ready to speak to them yet.”
“Do you want me to stall?”
“No, I’m on my way.”
To the left of Jack’s desk, in his office, he has a sofa and lounge chair set for less stressful meetings. Chief Scientist Lua, who might as well be the Homian ambassador, sits opposite, with Koriko. Koriko is not really present. Lua brought some spores, which she blew at Jack, and Koriko appeared as a hallucination, albeit an interactive one. Jack doesn’t like this and vows to go heavier on the antifungals next time. Neither of the aliens has said a word.
“What do you want?” he says. “I’m busy.”
“Are you?” says Lua.
“Look, I’m not sure what you’re doing. Maybe you have some adviser on human affairs and the person said you should use silence as an opening gambit, to cause unease in the other person. I’ve done it myself. A lot of people rush to fill that space with words because we humans, well, we detest emptiness and voids of all kinds. We tell ourselves nature abhors a vacuum, which is absolute bullshit. There’s more of outer space than there is atmosphere, and that’s vacuum all the way down. I’m aware I just did what I’m speaking against. Or did I?”
“What are you talking about?” asks Lua.
“Nothing, Chief Scientist. Would you like to tell me why you are here?”
“What have you done to the… xenosphere?” asks Lua. Koriko says nothing.
“Come again?”
“Is my English faulty? I said what have you done to the xenosphere.”
“I thought that’s what you said. What’s wrong with the xenosphere?”
“Do not play one of your human games with me, Mayor Jack.”
“Don’t worry, Chief Scientist. I’m not.”
“What have you—”
“Done to the xenosphere. Yes, I know. Asking the same question again and again is surely going to get you a different result. Please keep trying.”
“Does this seem amusing to you?” asks Lua.
“Why don’t you just tell me what happened?”
Lua sighs in a most human gesture, her green sclera almost glowing. “After the tragic shooting of the parade—”
“By your people, the synners.”
“After the parade, Koriko brought the bodies to the Honeycomb for… processing, as agreed. Only it did not work.”
“How? What went wrong?”
“No signal. The xenosphere is gone. I took some air and soil samples. The xenoforms are still there and the network with humans is intact, but the pathways are full of noise. We can’t send messages to the Home moon that houses our people; they can’t send messages to us.”
“And somehow you think this is my doing.”
“Yes.”
“How? And why?”
“I don’t know. That’s why we’re here.”
“You’re wasting your time. You should go and find the real culprit. What is most concerning to me is that you think I did it. We’re partners. Do you not have a concept of agreement where you come from? Do accords and contracts not mean anything? Because that makes me nervous that you will cast aside our arrangement as fast as you think I have done.”
The hologram/hallucination does nothing but look strange. It does not make eye contact, and Jack thinks it’s not really Koriko. Just an impression of her brought by Lua to intimidate or to remind Jack of the human position in the relationship.
“Does that thing talk?” he says, pointing.
“Mayor, you will give a directive to your people reminding them to cooperate with us, and to take no steps to impede us. You will use all your resources to find out if anyone is acting against us, neutralising the xenosphere.”
“No, and no,” says Jack. “This is the wrong time to give any directive at all. I don’t know if you listen to our news, but people are fragile. They’ve found out that the reanimates are not really dead.”
“Well of course they’re not dead,” says Lua. “The xenoforms can heal and rebuild any body, and the mind is a complicated emanation of the body. It takes a little bit longer, but it will ultimately heal.”
So the Homians have known this all along.
“You seem surprised,” says Lua.
“You had this information and you still went ahead with the plan to place your people’s consciousness into our bodies.”
“It was your idea, Jack. You and your people came up with the solution so that you could survive the war. It is all one to us whether you die now or later, but rest assured that you will not be on this planet as things currently stand. Make the declarations and start investigations.”
“No. What I promised to give you is our recently dead and the reanimates. I said we could talk about the welfare of Homians in Rosewater. I did not give you a seat at the policy table. I—” Jack’s phone cuts him off. Outside, the rising sun marks the end of a challenging night.
“Yes?”
“It’s Dahun. Come home. To my house.”
“Is she alive?”
“I don’t know. The robotics people have finished.”
Lua says, “Mayor Jack, I must insist.”
“I will look into your problems with the xenosphere, but I will not make an inflammatory announcement. Now fuck off, I’m busy.”
Jesus, so much pillar to post today!
After arriving on Dahun’s street, it takes half an hour to get to the address because Sola and Morinola seem to have called in reinforcements. The entire road is clogged up with lorries, although they appear to be clearing out.
Sola updates Jack while the rest of the technicians pack up. Lora is lying on a table, naked but for two strips of makeshift clothing made of… is that duct tape? Fucking engineers. They also appear to have left the scars in place.
“We’re done. Our invoice will come in shortly,” says Morinola.
“I’ve seen it. Already paid.”
“Thanks. You might get an evaluation survey—”
“Get the fuck out of my house,” says Dahun. He tells Jack he caught them fornicating during a lull.
When they are all gone, Jack asks, “What is that music?”
“It’s a cartoon. Captain Actionheart. I like to have it playing in the background when I’m working. The engineers are big fans, it seems.”
“Can you change it?”
“I… er… don’t have anything else. I just moved in.”
“Jesus, just turn it off, okay? I need to say something to Lora, and the phrase must be just right or she might go into lock.”
Sound killed, Jack bends and whispers into Lora’s ear: “Ranti omo eni tiwo nse.” Remember whose child you are.
Lora sits up and looks around, fixes on Jack, then on Dahun, then back to Jack.
The inadequacy of the duct tape becomes obvious. “Fetch some clothes,” Jack says.
Dahun leaves.
Lora gets off the table and approaches Jack.
“Sir?” she says.
“You’re all right!” says Jack. He hugs her. “I’ve already lost one sister. I don’t intend to lose you.”
She isn’t hugging him back, so he stops. “I don’t remember what happened, sir. Not all of it.”
“Understandable,” says Jack.
“Were we physically close before?”
“No.”
“So when you hugged me…?”
“I was afraid for you, that’s all.”
“All right.”
“How’s your memory for events before the… trauma?”
“Something is missing, sir.”
“What do you mean? Damaged?”
“No. Something specific has been taken out of my memory. I placed hidden checksums that nobody knows about and they do not match.”
“What’s been taken out?”
“I don’t know, but I can feel its absence.”
“I’ll call them.”
“No, don’t. They did this deliberately. Maybe they were paid, maybe it’s loyalty to Nigeria. We don’t know. But if they know we’re looking, they’ll hide.”
Dahun returns with some robes.
“Do I have to return to work today, sir?” asks Lora.
“No, you don’t. What are you planning?”
“I’m going to find Blessing Boderin and copulate with him rigorously. Sir.”
Jack raises his hands. “I don’t want to know.”
“Me neither,” says Dahun.
Jack turns. “I have a job for you.”
“Boss, we have to talk terms. This isn’t right. I’m grateful that you swapped me and all, but I am not a police officer.”
To Lora, Jack says, “When you finish dressing, go to the car. It will take you anywhere you want to go. You might find Boderin at work, though.”
He sits with Dahun, Jack on his chair, Dahun on the sofa.
“There will be recompense, I promise.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to find the synners and bring them in. All of them. I don’t care how long it takes.”
“By any means?” Dahun points an index finger and pulls an imaginary trigger.
“No. We want them alive. One, they are bargaining chips, and two, they still have human in them, as I recently found out.”
“So bargaining chips, but you hope never to part with them.”
“Now you’re getting it. You’re about smart enough to work in my cabinet.”
Finally he can rest.
Finally.
He is bone tired. Hannah is nowhere to be seen, but Jack is not worried. That woman has her ways of staying safe.
The night’s events bubble through his head and he wonders if he should take a pill.
He hears gentle sounds, the rustle of clothes, the soft air pressure of climate control.
“Hannah… I’m glad you’re back.” His eyelids are so heavy that he can’t keep them open.
“I am not Hannah,” says a voice.
Adrenaline shoots into Jack, throws him out of any sleep haze. Vision sharp and ready.
Koriko. Real, not hallucinatory.
“What do you want? How did you even get in here?” Jack wonders what she did to the bodyguards who must have tried to stop her.
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” She speaks with a menace he has never heard from her. She usually has an air of indifference about her.
“I knew that wasn’t you at the meeting. Have you gone to catch up with… Lua?” He wants to stall so he can reach a weapon.
“You’re not the only smart one, Jack Jacques. I want you to think on that.”
Jack feels discomfort in his trousers, but not in a sexual way. He sees that his leg stump is growing.
“What are you doing? What the fuck are you doing? I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask you to do this!”
Koriko sits on the bed. She smells like she has been rolling around in horse dung. A serpentine curls itself around her leg. Why does she need a robot?
The regrowth hurts Jack. The knee knits together and nerve fibres flare out. The tibia and fibula articulate in cartilage first, then bone.
“Stop. I want you to stop.”
The healing continues. The skin stretches out over budding toes, and nails extrude, too long.
“Stop this, you fucking alien asshole. Stop. I do not want this.”
“I hope you have food in here. You need the mass to grow the leg, otherwise it has to draw matter from other parts of your body. Not good.”
It takes an hour. During that time, Koriko watches him passively, uninterested in his howls of rage. He gobbles up whatever food there is in the suite, because growing the leg triggers an insane hunger that is impossible to resist. When it is done, he lies back, comparing the two legs. They are the same, although the new one does not have… It’s not time yet. He did not want this and now he knows that the little scars that made his leg unique are gone.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks Koriko.
She gets up to leave. “You know how many healings we’ve done since after the war? Well, get used to something different. We won’t heal anyone from now on. I won’t permit it. Not until you fix what you have broken.”
“You stupid alien bitch, we haven’t touched your damn xenosphere.”
“Lua says there is no record of the xenosphere ever failing so completely in the history of our people. It has to be sabotage, and it only benefits you humans.”
“Are you out of your mind? There’s nobody with the resources or the ability to…” Oh. Oh shit.
“How do you think the people of Rosewater will view you when they no longer have universal health, yet you have a brand-new leg? Hmm?”
“I am going to kill you,” says Jack. “One way or the other, no matter how all this ends, I will kill you.”
“You will not,” she says, at the door already. “We do not die. You can’t even kill this body, and even if you could, I would grow a new one. And we know how ‘all this ends’, Jack. Humans lose. It’s only a matter of when. You know how to reach me.”
She is gone.
Jack immediately turns the room secure, asks the AI to run a sweep and find the bodyguards, all of whom appear to be unconscious but alive. Then he calls Lora.
“Put your panties on and find out where Aminat is,” he says. “I smell Kaaro’s hand in this, and I want to know if he really is dead. Find out if there is a body. Start with bringing in Aminat.”
Next, press conference to warn the people of Rosewater to be careful of injury.
In one crazy moment he contemplates amputating the new leg.
But he doesn’t. This was his war wound, the reminder to everyone that Jack Jacques was no longer physically perfect, that he had suffered for their sins and, like all heroes, had paid a price. He tried a prosthetic once, but had it removed when he saw the public reaction. He still needs the political capital to keep Rosewater together.
But fuck it.
He goes to the wardrobe and selects a white suit, one of the older choices, its cut out of fashion, but one that reminds him of the early days in Camp Rosewater.
He showers in cold water and tries a new body cream formula.
He wears the first cufflinks Hannah ever gave him.
He checks his reflection one last time. “Okay. Humans versus aliens. Let’s go.”