I was right to tie my life to the lights in the sky, Gaby McAslan thought. The Ford drivers, the Markys and Hannahs with their beautiful homes and beautiful children could no longer rely on the external universe being too big and remote to touch their internal lives. The universe was coming to them as much as to the man she had seen wheeling his wife in her wooden cart up Tom M’boya Street, or the matatu touts fighting at the bus stop, or the laid-back policeman or the food sellers setting up their sidewalk stalls. But the street people would be ready. They knew intimately that the universe is a place at best indifferent, at worst hostile. They would not flee screaming the sky is falling! the sky is falling! when they learned what had happened out at Saturn, what would be happening over their heads in six years. Six years is a long time under the eye of God. Much can happen. They would be ready, and if the sky did fall, they trusted that their arms were strong enough to hold it up.
19
The pink stretch limo had been behind her since she turned out of Miriam Sondhai’s drive. It made no attempt to hide, it could not have easily, even among Nairobi’s UN and diplomatic plates. Many UNECTA staff lived in Miriam’s district, stretch limos in all colours were commonplace, but never so
They were still digging up the junction of University Way and Moi Avenue. Bi-lingual signs thanked drivers for their patience in co-operating with the Ministry of Transport’s five-year road-improvement scheme. A five-year plan, when in four years there would not be any roads to improve: Gaby suspected the digging paralysing Nairobi was a cabalistic deal between the City Fathers, contractors and a syndicate of newspaper sellers, snack vendors and windscreen washers.
The man with the Stop/Go sign was letting them through two at a time this morning.
‘Bastard!’ Gaby shouted as he flicked his sign to red before she could jump him.
Suddenly there were three men in her ATV. Two in the back, one in the front. They had Afro hairstyles, platform soles, ankle-length leather coats and big smiles.
‘Haran begs the pleasure of your company,’ said the one in the front. ‘Please follow the limousine.’ He nodded to the road mender, who turned his sign immediately to green for Go. The pink Cadillac pulled out and passed. Gaby tucked in behind it. It led her to the Cascade Club. The place had not long closed. It looked weary with all the house lights on, like an aged, aged prostitute who has to go out to the shops and shrinks from the naked sunshine. The air was close and humid, breathed through many sets of lungs. Down in the pit women were diligently scrubbing mould off the white tiles. It smelled, Gaby thought,
The posseboys did not take Gaby up to the glass-floored office, but by a circuitous route past staff toilets and store-rooms filled with shrink-wrapped pallets of alcohol to a wide, covered balcony around a lush courtyard garden of palms, bananas and creeping figs. Higher palm fronds overhung the balcony rail. Waiters in white jackets carrying silver trays attended a number of immaculately laid tables. The patrons were all African or Indian. Haran’s table was apart from the others and overlooked a flaccid fountain. A silver coffee set, two cups and a PDU were arranged on the linen cloth. A lift of his finger dismissed the posseboys. Haran rose from his cane chair, lifted the head of his fly-whisk and bowed slightly to Gaby.
‘Ms McAslan. A delight to see you again. Please, sit, have some coffee. Esther.’
A young black woman moved from where she had been standing behind Haran and pulled a chair out for Gaby. She was dressed in a black leather bikini over a sheer mesh bodystocking. Black knuckle-studded biker’s gloves matched black biker’s boots. Gaby recognized the uniform of Mombi’s possegirls. She wore a lot of heavy jewellery, but, unusually, no neck-chains, only a mismatched choker that seemed to have been woven from strands of iridescent fibre. In place of a pendant, a small printed circuit board with a single red LED eye nuzzled in the hollow of the young woman’s throat.
‘Smartwire,’ Haran said. ‘One of the first benefits of Chaga research, so we are told. Coiled long-chain molecules that contract dramatically under an electrical charge. Not quite dramatic enough to guillotine a head right off, but enough to sever the carotid arteries if I press the button. But Mombi has her own necklace on one of my boys, so everyone’s arteries will be staying unsevered, I think.’ The possegirl poured coffee. Milk was offered, sugar, sweeteners. Gaby waved them away. The coffee was exquisite. She expected no less of Haran.
‘So, Gaby, not only are we menaced by the Chaga, we now have this Hyperion event as well. I understand you have a nickname for it already, what is it, the BDO?’
‘The Big Dumb Object,’ Gaby said, noting the switch to her forename. Haran was like the Chaga, he moved slowly, but inexorably. He reached his points, disclosed his informations, changed the landscape of his relationships at his own speed, in his own time and none other. ‘From the same anonymous NASA wit who named the Iapetus probe after the author of
‘My education must be incomplete,’ Haran said. ‘I have read neither of these volumes. Perhaps I should. The times are changing, Gaby, and I must change with them, or history will run me down like a chicken on the highway. There is a time for war, and a time to make peace. There are too many new faces on the street and they have grown up hungry and vicious. Their means are dishonourable: virtual sex parlours, VR-dildonics, videodrugs; their methods distasteful: blackmail, extortion, addiction, kidnapping. They place no value on human life. You can understand, my friend, that they must be shown who is the power in this town if we are to avoid general anarchy. In such times, your oldest enemy is to be more trusted than those who catch at your coat-tail and call you
‘You’re putting out diplomatic feelers?’
‘We have exchanged embassies.’
‘Or hostages.’
Haran glanced at the PDU on the table-cloth. UPI NetServe menus scrolled down the screen. The hypertext expansion point blinked on the liquid rollscreen.
‘My net is coming apart in my fingers, Gaby. Every day I lose connections. People; my people, who trust me to protect them. Against the police, against my rivals and enemies, like Mombi was once, who would snap them up like a leopard a dog; yes, I can protect them from these, but against the Chaga, against those who serve it…’ Haran took a flexible minidisc from the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘Leave us, Esther. This is a private matter between myself and my client.’
She had the adolescent scowl nicely. Gaby envied her her firm ass.
The video sequence was appalling. There was no syntax, no narrative. The camera veered from side to side, faces were out of focus, or upside down or loomed to fill the screen. The soundtrack was shouting and hard breathing and the constant shatter of a hovering helicopter. You saw swooping panoramics of a dusty Kenyan town, you saw jolting images of military vehicles, as if taken by a running man. You saw white soldiers shot from expressionistic angles, you saw sun-burned faces beneath blue helmets swim into extreme close-up. You saw lines of people, and armoured personnel carriers. You saw town and soldiers and sky whirling madly around, then you heard raised, shouting white-man voices, heavily accented, and saw something that looked like a zipper, and the dark interior of a sports bag, and heard running footsteps, and heavy breathing, and the sequence ended.
‘They took his deck, all his equipment, they took the camcorder on which he shot this secretly, they even took the expensive shoes off his feet,’ Haran said evenly. ‘But they did not take the disc, and now I have it, and will make them pay for what they did to one of my posse.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Azeris. Ex-Soviets. It does not matter. They all do it. Especially the ones from the countries that are as poor, or poorer, than this. What they do not keep for themselves, they sell in the Nairobi markets. If you go down to Jogoo Road or Kariokor, you will find it all laid out on the stalls. If they do not have what you want, you can place an order and the soldiers will loot it for you from the next village they evacuate in the name of the United Nations. But you must pay more for this premium service.’
‘Haran, why are you showing me this?’
The Sheriff laid his fly-whisk on the table.
