Lament for the Fallen (24 page)

‘Joshua tells me Ismael told you about China?’ asks Samara.

They nod.

‘The war changed everything. Many cities survived the debris cloud by breaking orbit and heading out into space. There are two cities around Mars, a few around Titan and the rest just touring the planets. There are few cities left in orbit.

‘Before, our struggles had been for independence. Now it wasn’t so peculiar to hear people discussing leaving the solar system.

‘The griots are different, more interested in the journey of our culture than in being in any particular place,’ he says. ‘There are tourists who visit the different orbital cities, and there are artists and musicians who travel into orbit to perform. The griots were drawn from the best of these artists. Soon after we developed the symbionts, a group of fifteen or so griots developed their own version. They wanted to be able to make music out of any physical thing.

‘They chose to manage their symbionts without a synthetic intelligence. That is incredibly difficult and takes decades of training. They lack our connection to each other. It is impractical, but the control it gives them is remarkable.

‘Their performances, particularly in our enhanced environment, are –’ Samara struggles to find a way to describe his experience, and gives up. ‘There are no words.’

‘No,’ agrees Sarah. ‘There are no words.’

Food arrives, along with a steaming pot of tea, which Jason pours into mugs for each of them. The dough-like breads are sweet and very hot. Each tears off chunks and chews happily.

‘After the war, six of them formed an agreement and came back to earth. They spread out across the planet, each choosing a region. They broke out of our connect long ago, but I understand they are always in contact with each other. They travel constantly, carrying stories and music from place to place.’

‘Why?’ asks Daniel. ‘We all appreciate them. I do not think the harvest would feel the same without them, but I am not sure of what this achieves?’

‘When Pazzo and his men came to Ewuru, I wondered why the Balladeer stayed an extra night. I had the feeling that Pazzo was going to cause trouble, but when he saw the Balladeer he panicked. They did nothing. I imagine we do not always see the changes that he brings about,’ says Joshua.

‘Why would anyone fear them?’ asks Daniel.

Samara grins, ‘They’re not helpless. The right frequency, like the right story, in the right place can move mountains.

‘They believe that by telling stories and music from different cultures, people will set aside their differences and freely choose a peaceful path. They are not thinking in terms of decades but in terms of thousands of years. They have no intention of going anywhere.’

‘And you, and your people?’ asks Sarah.

‘We will go out into the unknown. A group intend to return in one thousand years. My wife is keen. I have agreed I will follow her.’

‘It seems so strange to plan for so long into the future,’ says David.

‘Well, yes,’ says Daniel, ‘but, for myself, what are we to do today?’ he asks to laughter.

‘I am not sure,’ says Joshua, ‘but I believe Behzad will have a cousin?’ They are relaxed, happy together.

‘I thought Calabar was too dangerous for us?’ asks Samara.

‘It is not a war zone,’ says Joshua. ‘It is dangerous to attract attention. Being too smart, too creative, too successful – these things attract the men with guns; but we are simple villagers here to sell our goods, be amazed at the sights of the great city and stock up on essentials before we go home. We can disappear amongst the thousands who do this every day.’

Behzad has, indeed, a cousin. ‘He can take you to the marina and Tinapa; he has a jeep. I will call him for you.’

‘What is Tinapa?’ asks Sarah.

‘You will see,’ he waves his hands. ‘We show many visitors. Very cultural.’

Samara feels as if it is his first day alive. Everything is new. The sounds, the smells, the people. He realizes Shakiso is right: there is a difference between reality and the synthesized world of the connect.

They wait outside in Henshaw Market for Behzad’s cousin.

Cheering from a group of people attracts them. They sit and stand in ranks, all craning to see two men sitting in the dust beneath a rubber tree doing battle over a wooden board.

‘It is nsa isong,’ says Daniel, indicating the two rows of six pits in the board. ‘You play by capturing seeds.’ He pauses, deciding that the explanation is too much hard work. Grinning instead, ‘You watch.’

The men glare at each other, sweat sheening their brows. Their hands moving swiftly, picking up and sowing the seeds clockwise around the board. Scarce has one distributed his load before the other is moving. They try to give each other as little time to think as possible. Each time a pit contains only four seeds the gathered crowd howls in support and the seeds are rapidly captured.

They watch for only a few minutes before an antique electric jeep shudders to a halt behind them. It is one of the old platform chassis, with the motors sealed in oval-shaped modules over each wheel. The battery is inside the short bonnet. Its lid is a badly fitting cellulosic reprint held on with bits of string. White steam rises from around the gaps.

The main driver’s compartment is still mostly there, but the back consists of two narrow sofas bolted on to the chassis and facing each other, with a striped awning mounted on a frame over the top providing some shade. You can almost see tread on one of the tyres.

‘Don’t worry, don’t worry,’ says the young man scraping his way out of the navigator’s seat. The door hangs lifelessly. He carefully picks it up, putting it back in place. The door on the passenger side looks absolutely immaculate. It probably is not used much.

‘My name is Thomas. I will be your guide. Please, give me a few minutes and then we can go.’

He starts fiddling with the knots holding down the bonnet, teasing them loose. As he raises it, a cloud of steam erupts from the open-cast battery. He has two big bottles of acid stored inside the battery compartment.

Thomas’s faded red djellaba is flecked with yellow, acid-scorched holes from regularly tending to the battery. The others take a respectful step backwards.

‘That is going to catch fire some time today,’ says Samara, merely as observation.

‘Oh, no, it’s always like this,’ Thomas assures them.

‘Past good fortune does not imply continued success,’ says Samara, again, merely as observation.

Thomas looks vacantly at him, then, closing the bonnet and carefully retying his knots, ‘It is done now. Please, wait for me to get in and then you can get in, too.’

Jason reaches for the passenger handle as Thomas climbs back inside. The handle comes off in Jason’s hand. He stares at it inanely.

Inside the cockpit, Thomas soundlessly clutches at his face with one hand while snapping his fingers with the other. He looks like a man who has just been abandoned by his gods. The others stand around quietly, mournfully contemplating the violated door handle in Jason’s numb fingers.

Thomas scrapes his way out once more. Settling his door in place. Straightening his djellaba. Walking in a short, hoppy, fastidious stride around the vehicle. Delicately taking the handle from Jason. ‘I told you to wait. Why didn’t you wait?’ He deflates, pulls a tube of glue from his pocket and carefully reseals the handle to the door.

Nobody moves as he returns to his seat.

He leans across and opens the passenger door from the inside. ‘You get in now,’ he says.

Still, nobody moves.

‘Please, you get in now.’

Jason climbs into the front while everyone else settles themselves into the sofas at the back, their knees jammed uncomfortably together. Thomas scrolls about on the console map setting waypoints before delicately pressing the big green ‘go’ button. The vehicle reverses, gently easing its way out of the market and on to Calabar Road.

There are few other vehicles and none appear in any better condition than the one they are in.

‘Can they not print more?’ asks Daniel.

‘It’s a little more complex than that,’ says Samara. ‘You can’t print a whole vehicle in one of those machines. Which means you need people who know how to conceptualize an entire vehicle across different fabricators, create a manifest of all the appropriate components, print them and then put the whole thing together afterwards. Then there are the control systems that have to be loaded.’

They cross over a large intersection with Mary Slessor Road. A giant statue of the great lady cradling twins stands on an island in the traffic circle.

Hundreds of people are walking by the sides of the road. They carry umbrellas and bags of shopping. There is an endless series of tables, covered in fruit, meat, fish and other basics. Umbrellas and sheets protect the stalls from the sun.

Angular crosses from churches, interspersed with mosque minarets, tower above the shacks.

‘There are those here who have the skills to build those components,’ says Abishai. ‘So why no new vehicles?’

‘The militia are dangerous in this city, and the printers are careful. They have little incentive to produce what only the militia could afford but will only steal. The printers keep these vehicles repaired, but little else,’ says Joshua.

‘And the helicopters?’ asks David.

A fire station, its garage doors wide open, is filled with gutted trucks that have long since stopped responding to alarms.

‘Most likely those were purchased a long time ago. That’s not new technology, but it isn’t in the sphere. Probably Chinese army surplus shipped here before the war. I imagine when they stop running no one will be able to get them going again.’

They come to another traffic circle, this one with two improbably large six-fingered hands clasped as if in prayer, the thumbs unnaturally far from the fingers.

There are houses here now. One is painted with a fading hand-lettered notice all across the outside of its walls, ‘Beware 419’.

A group of barefoot nuns cross the street, their white habits blinding in the searing sunshine.

They avoid the rusting hulk of a grader left where it broke down in the middle of the road a century ago. Other skeletal vehicle remains follow. Relics of the peculiar contradiction of a community no longer physically connected to the world, with continuing access to its ideas, but living in a city where their aspirations are subject to the conflict of its warlords.

They turn on to Ikom Highway and head out of Calabar.

‘Where do you think he is taking us?’ asks Sarah.

‘Probably to that Tinapa place,’ says Abishai.

‘As long as we stay on this side of the river, we’re out of the connect and I’ll be happy,’ says Samara.

They pass a series of giant concrete squares. They must once have been intended for a sewerage pipeline. They have been covered in tarpaulins and converted into single-room houses. Children play in the spaces between them. Washing lines are strung from one to another. There are occasional brave little boxes of flowering plants.

A group of people are dancing together, beating cellulosic ekwe, playing bamboo flutes and goje made out of old oil cans. The singer dances alone in the centre, his eyes closed, his face is rapture.

A river crosses a dip on the highway. Other vehicles are lined up there, along the side of the road, their owners industriously washing them with buckets drawn from the water. A man lies asleep on the roof of one, a blanket over his chest.

Their vehicle gingerly crosses the river and rises again up the other side. They are the only ones travelling further than the river, and the road is almost smooth, unlike the pitted, rutted mess they have been travelling on.

‘We’re almost there,’ shouts Thomas. Smoke is starting to emerge from the bonnet again.

On the other side of the hill is a parking lot. Through the trees is a vast set of buildings. An ape rests sadly with its head buried under a tree, one concrete arm broken off, its feet still bonded to a giant once-ball-like object.

Thomas leads them through the trees along pathways and staircases of what appears to have been a shopping centre. Glass is still in some of the windows, exposed concrete and hanging roots inside each of the old shops.

Sarah stares mystified at a faded plastic sign propped on the inside of one window. ‘Bastardo. Taste the grape with love from Odessa to Tinapa,’ she reads, the words making even less sense when spoken.

‘I’ve been to Odessa,’ says Samara, beside her. ‘I don’t know if they ever made wine but, if they did, I wouldn’t drink it.’

There is nothing else inside the shop. They move on.

Paths through the leaf litter and matted vegetation indicate that Tinapa is regularly visited. They walk, speaking in hushed voices as if at the site of a great tragedy. Something about the place speaks of lost empire.

Daniel whispers to Thomas, ‘When was this place last used?’

‘Oh,’ says Thomas, ‘it was never, never used. None of the shops or offices ever had businesses in them.’ He leads them down a ramp between the trees.

‘That gully used to have a lake in it. The river is just over there,’ he points ahead of where they are walking, ‘but the big man who built this place owned this land and wanted a river view, so they dug out the lake.’

‘I do not understand,’ says Abishai. ‘Why show us this place?’

Thomas grins, ‘It is from the time of the big men, when oil was valuable and they spent our people’s money as they wished. They could build such places without a care. There was a place – there where the monkey was – where they could make old Nollywood movies, but none were ever made.

‘It reminds us of how small are our warlords now. All they have is brutality, but they are little men, with little –’ he holds his forefinger and thumb up to his face, peering through the tiny space between them.

‘Come, I’ll show you the hotel. No one ever stayed there.’

On the way back, Jason once more in the front and the others locked knee-to-knee on the sofas, they say little.

Are the warlords as hollow as the imperialists in the Balladeer’s story, wonders Joshua.