Lament for the Fallen (12 page)

‘We didn’t know what to do. Our society – even though we had been in space fifty years and our technology was very advanced – was not very different from your own.

‘The intelligence was left alone for weeks while we struggled. Very distinct views started to emerge. Eventually, still in great confusion, an accord was reached and a delegation was sent to ask the machine what it wanted us to do.’

Joshua motions for Samara to stop so he can talk.

His voice is cold, his words precisely spoken. ‘We do not study much of our own history. I imagine that many of us have looked at the world in Calabar and beyond and assumed there is not much to know. That is not true.

‘Some of the oldest civilizations are Nigerian. We are of the Efik people, and Calabar was our capital. We were slave traders. We would sell slaves on trust to visiting ships from Europe and then go out and capture people from smaller tribes to make good on our promise.

‘There is an island at the entrance to Calabar town called Parrot Island. If traders had not come for some time, then the kings of Calabar would go there. They would sacrifice an albino child to bring the white men so that they might sell them slaves.

‘The slaves of the new world? Far too many came from here, and they were not taken. They were sold by our people.

‘They did this because they had no respect for the lives of people not of their family, not of their tribe, to be different, to be other. Even now, in Ewuru, we divide ourselves based on who has been living here longer, where we come from, the language we speak. Children fight. Adults are angry.’

He pauses, emphasizing his determination. ‘We must not make the same mistakes as in the past. We must have compassion even for those whom we fear. We must recognize the authority that others have to live their lives as they wish. We must not become slave traders.’

Joshua’s voice is strident, passionate. His hands are clenched as if trying to force the awareness across. He stares from face to face, spending more time on the students in the artificial intelligence group. Some are weeping. He feels terrible, but this needs to be done.

He motions again to Samara.

Samara takes a deep breath, appreciating too the importance of this lesson. ‘The machine had been thinking. It understood our problem and had been waiting for us to return. The structure of a new society was developed, one that had never been tried before. We agreed that no new self-aware artificial intelligences would be created. Any system would stop short of full intelligence. This machine would be the first and last.

‘The machine told us that it wanted to study advanced synthetic intelligences, ones that partner with us. These became the basis of our symbiotic intelligences. They can never be free-standing, for they are only intelligent for as long as they are part of our own minds. If you are to study intelligent systems, then I would advise that you study these.

‘The machine cloned itself until there were three critically linked minds. It chose a name for itself, The Three, and a gender – she is female. The Three has become one of our wealthiest citizens, but she also serves a crucial role. She is our final arbiter of law. If ever the Five – our highest court of judges – cannot reach an agreement, only then will that case be referred to The Three. She has never been called to make a decision, and it is highly unlikely she ever will, but she is the most impartial citizen in Achenia. She has earned our trust, respect and love many times over.

‘We will never make another.’

13

Tapping on the door with her walking stick and pushing it open without waiting.

‘Mama,’ says Miriam, warmth and delight in her voice. She is sitting, half staring out the window at the view across the Ekpe House and to the river, and half at the slate in her lap. She rises, leaning on the table with her left hand as she reaches for Mama with the other.

‘Please, sit. It is such a pleasure to see you.’

‘I was here for a check-up and wondered if you would be in.’

Miriam laughs. ‘Where else?’ She claps her hands. ‘Ah, let me see,’ and shouts out into the corridor, ‘Alicia, please, tea for me and Mama Chibuke.’

The room is small and sunny, with a window the full width and height of the outer wall. The white concrete floor is cool underfoot and the walls starkly blank. Miriam has pulled a blind down to block the afternoon sun. Her tiny desk, cluttered with mementos and gifts from grandchildren and friends, is against the side wall, with her back to the window. The second chair faces the window alongside the desk.

Mama sits carefully and then leans back, resting her stick against her thigh.

‘Do you still consult?’ she asks.

‘Oh, no,’ says Miriam, ‘No more patients. Sometimes,’ gesturing at the flat panel on the wall, ‘I review cases so I can remember how,’ laughing. ‘And you, my sister, how is your knee? Still troubling you?’

Mama smiles and shrugs, ‘I am old, sister. It hurts but Doctor Ifedi has helped,’ waving a small package.

‘Ah, he is so young. I remember when he started school.’

The door bangs open and a hefty young woman in white struggles stoutly in with a tray upon which are two mugs of tea. She shakes her head at the two women and deposits her burden on the desk between them, before turning and leaving as abruptly as she arrived.

‘Thank you, Alicia,’ calls Miriam at the retreating back, ebbing and flowing like the tide.

‘That one,’ giggles Mama.

Miriam is laughing too. ‘She thinks I should be with the other old women, sitting in the market watching the world go by.’

‘Drinking tea in the market is one of life’s pleasures,’ says Mama, smiling.

‘But not when it is an obligation. Now, Mama, what news?’

Mama, carefully adding her fifth teaspoon of sugar, stirs and takes her time before answering. She blows across the surface of the mug and takes a sip.

‘There have been fewer fights,’ she starts.

‘Joshua spoke to the children,’ nods Miriam.

‘Yes, but about the rights of sentient machines, not about sentient migrants.’

Miriam shrugs, indicating her disagreement, but she will hear Mama first.

‘It is this sky person who has changed thinking. He is an admirable man, yes?’

Miriam smiles, ‘Many of our young women think so.’

‘Haai, you are wicked, Miriam,’ says Mama, grinning and slapping her on the leg.

Miriam guffaws loudly and leans back, wiping her eyes. Each drinks their tea, reflecting on nicely built young men.

‘He is truly foreign, not just from a different part of the country. His stories, too, are about overcoming conflict. I think that has shown our people how little difference there is between us.

‘What happens when he goes, though? Will that be enough? People forget.’

Mama rubs at her knee, feeling the puckered ridge about the scar tissue.

‘I never told you. I once had grandchildren,’ she says.

Miriam leans forward. She takes Mama’s hands, looking sad, ‘No, Mama. You have never spoken of it, and I have never pushed you.’

Mama nods. ‘It is true. I have lost much.’

Four years ago, late in the dry season, Mama and her husband are awoken by a noise in the street outside. Tchad is a vast dry pan where the lake used to be, and the wind sometimes whips up into thick dust-laden fog.

For the last week, Dikwa has been shrouded in fine, clinging murk as the harmattan winds blow down from the north and the emptiness over Tchad. The village fields are coated in it, and the harvest is beginning to fail. Many people have already begun to leave, heading for Maiduguri or N’Djamena, small towns to the south. Every year, as the crops hurt, more people leave. A village that used to number in the thousands has now only just over one hundred, dominated by the elderly.

Usman nudges her awake, kisses her gently on the shoulder. ‘I will go see. Maybe that goat has found its way loose again.’

She merely rolls over, pulling the blankets closer, not rousing fully. Listening as the door opens and the howling of the wind grows louder as he pushes his way outside.

Shouts, panic in the voices, one scarcely a whisper, and she is instantly awake. Pulling on her nightgown, wrapping it tightly and slipping on her sandals, she reaches the door just as Usman comes inside.

His eyes are wide, and he is trembling. ‘We must go! We must go!’ Clutching her arm and dragging her outside.

Sokoto is on the ground, leaning against the fence. Her son is covered in blood. A deep cut across his shoulder has laid bare the bone. He is not moving.

‘He is dead,’ whispers Usman. ‘He came to warn us.’

Mama stifles a wail. She would run to her son. Cradle his head in her arms. Kiss the brow she would caress as a child. But Usman is pulling her, hauling her away and behind the house. ‘Look,’ pointing up the road.

She can see houses on fire. Men armed with machets running between the buildings, dragging people outside and hacking at them with the long rusty blades. ‘The children?’ sobbing.

Usman nods and leads the way. The wind drowns out the screams, robbing the massacre of its urgency and horror.

They creep through the narrow streets between the houses. There is no method to the murder. The militia run randomly, attacking anything and nothing. Madness behind their howls.

A group of men are hacking at a body in the middle of the main street. They toss the head between them, laughing, taking turns to kiss it and smear its blood across their cheeks. One man, standing slightly removed from the group, is transmitting to the connect. Pus and infection streams from what looks to have been botched surgery around the two tiny cameras embedded in his forehead.

Through one window they can see three men raping a child. They cannot tell whether it is a boy or girl.

It is silent at Sokoto’s house. The door hangs loose and they can see that the militia have been. Usman motions her to stay hidden behind the tool shed outside.

He is in nothing but slippers and a gown. An old man crouched and frail, creeping slowly up the dusty and stony path to the front door. He disappears inside.

Mama can hear nothing. She jumps when she sees a group of raiders swaggering up the main street. They are blood-spattered, their feet muddy and clotted, their trousers and shirts fouled and torn. They are sharing a cigarette and a slate, passing the panel between them, transfixed by slaughter broadcast from somewhere nearby.

Mama sees a curtain pull back on one of the windows. Usman points, out the back window where two shapes drop into the bushes and freeze.

Militia are coming up the road, banging on doors. These seem more methodical, rechecking where they have been and marking houses with red paint as they go.

Usman appears briefly in the window. He looks sad.

‘My wife.’

He mouths the words, smiles gently and stares as if willing the moment to last for ever. Then he nods and is gone. The words catch in her breast.

He bursts from the front door and runs around the house, into the narrow streets to the north, shouting as he goes.

The militia, who had been gradually and unconsciously surrounding her, shout and give chase. She hears them catch him. The sound of metal on flesh.

Mama, not daring to think, rushes to the bushes, takes hold of the two children and runs.

It is hours before she dares stop and hold the two children. They are weeping, tears smeared and bloody.

Their mother is dead too. They are all that is left of Dikwa.

They have no plan. Nowhere to go. They head south.

Other refugees join them from other villages. No one knows why. The brutality has been broadcast. If anyone was going to come to help they would be here now. They are on their own.

‘I think it is the water,’ says one old man. ‘They believe we are stealing it, that if we are dead then the waters will return.’

‘They kill because they can,’ says a young woman. ‘Who will stop them?’

Emma is her name. Mama tries to remember it. So young and pretty. She is silent as she is raped at one of the endless military checkpoints along the road.

All the soldiers know of the violence. Some are even watching it happen, laughing as they do.

‘I no longer feel anything,’ Emma says as Mama helps her with the bleeding.

The group is always changing. Some die, falling along the way. Some go west, or east, chasing after faint family echoes. New people join them. They bury Emma under a tree near the road. Her fistula became infected. There is no medicine.

Mama keeps her grandchildren close, holding on to their small hands. Sumaira is but eight, her brother, Waseem, is ten. They have not spoken.

It is safer as they go further south, but not safe.

The forest is denser, and they find fruit in the trees. They are always hungry, but they will not starve.

Each village they reach, they are chased away. Unwelcome. Unwanted.

One night they are alone. The group has been dwindling for weeks. They are sleeping under a fallen branch just off an old road. The children have slept poorly, their stomachs empty. Mama holds them tightly.

When the men fall on them, it is almost as if all know the inevitability.

Mama is silent as the men take their turns with her. Their breath, poisonous and foul with rotten homemade sorghum beer, gasping against her dry breasts. They make the children watch.

Mama hopes they will have their fill and leave. When they turn to the children, she fights, biting one, tearing at another. They beat her and she feels her knee snap where a machet strikes it. Then she is unconscious.

When she wakes, blurry and confused, Waseem is dead and Sumaira is unrecognizable as anything that was once human. She sobs into darkness, holding their small bodies.

She is aware of being found. Of being loaded on to a cart. Of a long journey. And then the first she remembers is of a hospital room in Ewuru and of a round, compassionate face.

Miriam sat with her every day.