Bad Fish has been writing for hours. He is not typing code into a program; he is writing the lines in pencil on paper. Well, his acolytes are. He is lying on the floor of the hangar, still in his suit, which apparently he does not take off. He dictates; his minions write. Other minions maintain the suit and presumably feed him and somehow take away his waste. Femi does not know how he commands such obedience or respect, but he is certainly capable of amazing feats. He is in control of Nigeria’s derelict space station, the Nautilus. He has maintained it remotely and even managed to divert refuelling missions from other countries so that the correcting jets keep it geostationary, without which it would hurtle to the Earth. Nigerian scientists don’t know this, of course; they expected it to crash-land years ago, prompting the president to declare that it was held in place by the hand of God.
Femi has heard of Bad Fish’s exploits in security briefings, but never knew it was the work of one person.
Every so often, through the night, she hears him say, “Type it, compile it, test it.” His people scurry away, weave their arcane webs and return, whispering their report in his ear. Then he will start again. He does not tire, he does not falter, he is one hundred per cent in the moment.
At least he knows what he’s doing. The professor seems frustrated with progress.
Femi is frustrated with her position. She has had hundreds of texts from the president, some of them even coherent. She has sent only one response:
I was never working for you in the first place.
When she first became the leader of S45, and her people had just been killed by Wormwood, she set events in motion to destroy the alien invaders. But then she found out that the federal government was hedging its bets, allowing the slow replacement of humans because, hey, like climate change, all of that’s in the abstract future. The president’s men told her to publicly resign, but secretly she was to keep working on a solution. Though not too hard, in case the aliens won and alliances were needed. Even Femi wasn’t sure exactly which side she was supposed to be working on, but she had her own mission: to kill the aliens or drive them away.
A story passed down in Femi’s family told of the village’s first contact with a white man, a wiry, religious specimen with a caravan of porters, whom they welcomed with food and who went everywhere examining battlements and shrines and food stores. One of the porters warned, in Yoruba, that the man should be put to death, but nobody listened to him. By the time more white men came with their black collaborators, it was too late. Resistance resulted in swift death. Only malaria and indirect rule attenuated the harshness of the colonists. Femi has never forgotten the story, and if she had children, it is a story she would pass on to the next generation. In time, autonomy and a budget got her a lot of knowledge, but little progress. The president pulled the plug after a bout of cold feet, and Femi washeed up in Rosewater, no budget, no resources, pretending to her team that she was still in S45 while trying to think up a plan. Her contacts and exotic bugs made her aware of the election the president demanded. The war was the best way to cordon off Rosewater from the rest of the country, so she…
At times, she thinks of the people dead because of her and she has pause, but she can’t pause, because the aliens are still on Earth. Afterwards, she can pay for her crimes–prison doesn’t scare her, and death is unimpressive.
The president at least thought she was working against Jacques and was imprisoned because of that. Which is why she was reinstated after the exchange.
But now, with all the news bulletins and the texts, she can’t help reliving the moments of Ranti’s death, how she shot him in his sham head, how he crawled on the floor to avoid the shots, how Dahun finished him off, Jacques’ rage at being manipulated into complicity.
She gets a trawler-bot message. It must be unaware that her clearance has been revoked and is working the last approved query she made.
“Oyin Da,” she says.
The ghost appears.
“I need you to go to Rosewater,” says Femi.
“All right. Why?”
“I followed up on the data you gave me. I’ve found Owen Gray. He’s still alive, and he lives in Rosewater. I’m betting that’s not a coincidence.”