Year's Best SF 17

Wahala NNEDI OKORAFOR

I wasn’t lost. I wanted to cross “The Frying Pan of the World, Where Hell Meets Earth.” I was fighting my way through this part of the Sahara on purpose. I needed to prove to my parents that I could do it. That I, their sixteen-year-old abomination of a daughter, could survive in a place where many people died. My parents believed I was meant to die easily because I shouldn’t have been born in the first place. If I survived, it would prove to them wrong.

The sun was going down and the “frying pan” was thankfully cooling. Plantain, my camel, was walking at her usual steady pace. We’d left Jos three days ago and we were still days from our destination, Agadez. I’d traveled the desert many times … well, with my parents, though, and not here. I was okay, for now.

I was staring at the small screen of my e-legba, trying to forget the fact that I might have made a terrible mistake in running away and coming out here. It was picking up the only netcast available in the region, Naija News.

“Breaking News! Breaking News, o!” a sweating newscaster said in English. He stared into the camera with bulging eyes. He was wearing an ill-fitting Western-style suit. It was obviously the reason for his profuse sweating.

I chuckled. Everything on Naija News was “breaking news”. Drama was the bread and butter of Nigerians. Even our news was suspenseful and theatrical. It was why our movies were the best and our government was the worst. I laughed. I missed home.

“Make sure you listen to what I am about to say, o! Then turn to those beside you and tell them! Tell everybody,” the man stressed. Spit flew from his mouth, hitting the camera lens as he spoke. He wiped his brow with a white handkerchief. I could see individual beads of sweat forming on his forehead. “This is no laughing matter, o!”

“Let me guess,” I muttered. “Another farmer! has lost his flock of goats in a spontaneous forest. Someone’s house! is infested with a sparkling lizard. Another boy! turned into a giant yam.” I smiled, ignoring my chapped lips. This kind of “breaking news” happened all the time.

“It’s heading this way right now!” the anchorman said. He clumsily held the microphone and wiped his brow again. He switched to Igbo. “This is utterly unbelievable!”

I laughed loudly. So unprofessional! How many of his viewers would understand that?

He coughed, smiled sheepishly, and switched back to English. “A space shuttle carrying people from the Mars Colony is going to land in the Sahara, o! These people had been on a spacecraft for months! Cooped up like chicken! It landed on the moon. From there they got on to the space shuttle to return to Earth. Communication with the shuttle has been spotty but we know where it will land.” He moved closer to the camera, turned his head to the side, and opened his eyes wider. “If you encounter it, do not approach. Biko nu, stay away! Help will arrive. Officials will be there in two or three days! Don’t—”

The picture distorted and the sound cut off. From far off came a deep boom! I felt the vibration in my chest, like a huge talking drum. Plantain growled. “Shh.” I patted her hump. “Relax.”

She stopped and I jumped off, looking to the south. I saw nothing but sky and sand for miles. A startled desert fox family was running across the sand about two miles away. I looked into the sky with my sharp eyes. There. About fifteen miles away.

“Oh,” I whispered.

Within seconds, it zoomed overhead like a giant white eagle. Plantain groaned loudly as she dropped to the sand. I knelt beside her, craning my head and shielding my eyes from the dust it whipped up. It was flying so low that I could have hit it with a stone. This was the first flying aircraft I’d ever seen. I watched it land a few miles away, sliding to a stop in the sand.

It was a snap judgment, though it came from deep within me. “Let’s go see!” I said to my camel, climbing on. “Before all the ambulances, government officials, technicians, and journalists show up!” I was in the middle of nowhere. It really would be days before anyone got here. I couldn’t believe my luck. People from Mars!

As we headed there, I felt a pinch of embarrassment. I wondered if those onboard knew what we had done to ourselves here on Earth while they were away. People had been living on Mars for decades before the Great Change. We should have been super advanced like the people in those old science fiction books, jumping from planet to planet, that sort of thing. Instead we had destroyed the Earth because of stupid politics and misunderstandings.

I wanted to go inside the shuttle and breathe its trapped air. After so many years, that air wouldn’t be Earth air. I am a shadow speaker. My large catlike eyes, my “reading” abilities, they’re extraordinary, but they are all because of the Great Change, aka stupid human error. I’m as tainted by nuclear and peace bombs as one can get. I was born this way. But those on that ship hadn’t been here when it happened. They were untouched. I wanted to see and touch them. And I wanted to read them.

Some of them were probably born on Mars. What had it been, over forty years since anyone last heard from the colonies?

“Faster, Plantain!” I shouted, laughing.

“I don’t believe this,” I muttered, my heart sinking.

Already, a small spontaneous forest had sprung up around the shuttle, enshrouding it with palm trees, bushes, and a small pond to its left. Vines had even begun to creep up the sides of the shuttle. I guess this was the Earth’s way of welcoming it home. The sun was now completely down and there were several sunflowers opening up near the bottom of the ship.

Plantain slowed her stride when we reached the trees. An owl hooted and crickets and katydids sang. An instant oasis in the middle of the Sahara. Yet another result of human idiocy. I’d known spontaneous forests all my life, but their spontaneity and inappropriateness always bothered me. It wasn’t hard to imagine a time when this was not normal.

I looked around cautiously, ready for anything. I couldn’t tell if this was the type of forest that was full of stuff like stinging insects and rotten fruit or stuff like succulent strange vegetables and colorful butterflies. We passed a tree heavy with rather normal looking green mangos. That was a good sign.

The shuttle was about the size of an American football field. It took us a while to amble all the way around it. Not one opening. It was night, but I could see perfectly in the dark, another shadow speaker privilege. I knocked on the ship’s white metal skin. No response. Minutes passed. Nothing happened.

I was exhausted. We’d been traveling for hours before seeing the ship. I’d been so excited that I hadn’t eaten or been hydrating myself properly. Stupid. Suddenly, all at once, my neglect disarmed me. I fell to my knees, weak. Plantain trotted to the small pond and started drinking. Eventually, Plantain returned to me, gently clasped the collar of my dress with her teeth, dragged me to the water, and dumped me in the shallow part.

I laughed weakly. The water was cold. “Okay, okay,” I said, pushing myself up. Cupping some of the water in my hands, I looked closely at it, searching for bacteria or strange microorganisms that might make me sick. The water was wonderfully fresh and clean, so much better than the water my capture station pulled from the clouds. I drank like crazy.

After having my fill, I laid my mat under a tree, sat down, and ate some bread and dried goat meat as I gazed at the ship. Don’t they want to come out? I wondered. They had to have been on that shuttle for weeks. I brushed my teeth and lay down. As I drifted off to sleep, I thought, Tomorrow.

I woke an hour later to Plantain’s soft warning grunt. I opened my eyes to a star-filled sky. Something was humming and splashing in the pond. I listened harder. It sounded like a person. Finally. Someone’s come out, I thought, sitting up. But the shuttle looked as it had an hour ago, no openings anywhere. Maybe the door’s on the other side? I crept to the pond for a better look.

He was standing thigh deep in the water wearing only his blue pants. As he waded deeper in, he hissed with pain. The way he moved, with his hands out, it didn’t seem like he could see in the dark at all. I stood up for a better look. His things were on the ground, closer to me than him. A ripped satchel, a tattered blue shirt, and a silver, very sharp looking dagger.

Quietly, I snuck to his things. I was about to reach for his dagger when he suddenly stopped. He was up to his belly; his back to me. He whirled around and before I realized what was happening, he flew at me. Fast like a hawk! I leapt to the side, grabbing his satchel. Items fell from its large hole.

He landed and snatched another small dagger from his wet pocket. Then he eyed me with such rage and disgust that I stumbled back. He addressed me in Arabic, his dagger pointed at me, “Filthy abid bitch,” he spat. “I’ll slice your belly open just for touching my things.” His wet face was scratched up, and one of his eyes was nearly swollen shut. There were more fresh scratches and bruises on his arms and his chest.

I blinked, understanding several things at once. First, he’d been recently beaten. Second, he was a windseeker, one born with the ability to fly, a product of the Great Change, tainted like me. Third, this meant he could not have been from the ship.

I was so appalled by his mauled condition and his words that I just stood there. He took this as further evidence that I couldn’t possibly understand him.

“Allah protect me,” he said, lowering his dagger. “Can this night get any worse?” He looked my age, had skin the color of milky tea and a hint of a beard capping his chin. And he had the usual windseeker features: somewhat large wild eyes and long onyx black hair braided into seven very thick braids with copper bands on the ends.

“What is wrong with you?” I asked in Arabic, regaining my composure. He looked obviously shocked that I could speak his oh-so-sacred language. Most black Africans in Niger spoke Hausa or Fulanese. I deliberately looked him up and down and slowly enunciating my words said, “There are no slaves in these lands.” Abid meant slave in Arabic.

“Hand me my things,” he demanded. “Now.”

Instead, I read him. I was close enough to him. The first thing was the scent of turmeric. I tasted something spicy, garlicky … a dish called muhammara. Ahmed, that is his name. He’s from … Saudi Arabia.

He flew this far? I wondered as I swam within his past, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling. I was me but I was him. Duality. My heart was slamming in my chest as it always did when I read people.

As fast as I could, I soaked information from him like a sponge. … From a lavish home. The seventh of five sons and four daughters. All normal. Except him. Ahmed’s father loomed large to me. Larger than Ahmed. Father did not smoke or drink. Father prayed five times a day. Father hated spontaneous forests and the fact that the way to the nearby village was not always the same whenever he walked there. Father owned three black African slaves and he often cursed their black skin and burned hair.

Father hated how the quality of the air was different. And he constantly dreamed of Mars. The new world, a fresh world, the place of his birth. He was an important man in the crumbling local government. Too important to have a windseeker son, one of those strange troublesome polluted children. Ahmed understood that Father thought him ruined.

As I looked into Ahmed, I heard him step toward me. When in a reading state, I’m basically helpless. I can’t pull out of it quickly. One day, I will learn to not be so vulnerable.

Looking into Ahmed, I was surprised to find poetry and gentleness, too. Ahmed loved salty olives. Short curvy women. The beaded necklaces around the necks of black-skinned women he’d see working at the market. The open sky. Music moved him. His quiet mother, whose hands were always writing adventure stories in the notebook she hid from Father …

It came as it always did. In disorganized fragments, details, like a sentient puzzle more concerned with the shape of its pieces than putting itself together.

The day Father drove him away was the day news came about his grandfather on the shuttle returning to Earth. The first since the Great Change. Ahmed had assumed he’d never see Grandfather. During the celebration of the news, Father had turned to Ahmed. Had sneered at Ahmed. Father was ashamed of the bizarre son he’d have to present to his father whom he hadn’t seen since he was four years old. Ahmed ran away that night. A windseeker must fly … not even Father’s heavy hand and words could change that.

“You abeed are the lowliest of all Mankind,” Ahmed was telling me. “A polluted abid … you are an aberration of the devil.” These wicked words against the compelling melancholy of his past made my head ache. I fought to pull myself from him. A last fragment came to me, just before he shoved me to the ground … As Ahmed flew from the only home he’d ever known, he received a message on his e-legba. From Grandma. The attachment she’d sent took up half the space on his hard drive. Coordinates, linked tracking applications, schedules … for Grandfather’s space shuttle arrival. “Meet him,” Grandma’s message said. “He will love you.”

“Stop it!” he shouted, shoving me so hard that my breath was struck from my chest. I fell to the sand.

“Your father drove you away,” I said, quickly getting up. I backed away from him and dusted the sand from my long dress. My heart was still pounding as I fought for breath. “Yet … you speak to me … with the same words that you fled.”

“You’re Nigerian,” he growled, looking a little crazed. “I can hear it in your accent! You all are nothing but thieves!” he pointed to his pummeled face. “Who do you think did this to me? They didn’t just take my money, they tried to put a virus on my e-legba to empty my bank account! Double thievery!”

His motions, again, were so quick. Before I realized it, he’d grabbed a flashlight from the ground and flashed in my face.

“Ah!” I exclaimed, shielding my sensitive eyes, temporarily blinded. He clicked it off. “What are you doing here?” He began using his feet to gather to himself the other items that had fallen from his satchel.

For a few seconds, all I could see was red, figuratively and literally.

“Give me my bag,” he snapped, when I didn’t respond to his stupid question. I threw it at him, more things falling from the hole. He glared at me and I glared back.

My mother grew up in northern Nigeria and had traveled with her parents all over the Middle East before the Great Change. She’d told me about how black Africans were often treated in these places, but I’d never encountered it with the Arabs I met in Nigeria. My mother said it was an old, old, old problem, stemming from the trans-Saharan slave trade and before that. I only half-believed it was real. But I knew the words abeed and abid, the Arabic singular and plural forms for black or slave. Ugly, cruel words.

“What is it you’re doing here?” he suddenly asked again, once he had all his things in his satchel. “How did you know to be here?”

“I didn’t,” I snapped.

“Then get out of here,” he said. “Didn’t you hear it on the news? You people never know what’s best for you!”

“You know what? I’m here to see what’s in that ship, so stay out of my way!” I said. He stepped forward. I stood my ground. He glanced over my shoulder at the ship.

“We’ll see,” he said. He flew up into the air and eventually descended behind some trees.

“Don’t mind him,” I muttered to Plantain, who was yards away, preoccupied with a patch of fennel she’d found near a tree. “I’m not going anywhere.” I returned to my spot on my mat and sat staring at the ship, listening. Waiting.

Seven hours later, I woke to Ahmed crouching over me, a rock in his raised hand. Every part of my body flexed. I stayed still.

He had the wild look of someone about to do something terrible in the name of those who raised him. I stared at him, willing him with all my might to look into my eyes. Look, I demanded with my mind. It was my only chance. If he didn’t, he’d kill me, I knew … and it was not going to be a painless, quick death. I strained for his eyes. Look, now! PLEASE!

He looked into my eyes.

He looked for a long long time.

His face went from intense to slack to horribly troubled. He dropped the stone beside my head. He whimpered. Tears welled in his eyes. I smirked. Good. To look into the eyes of a shadow speaker is to court madness. Or so the rumor went. All I knew was that people who looked right into my eyes for more than a second were never the same afterward.

He sat before me, his hands not over his eyes but over his ears, terror on his face. I began to feel a little ill. Not guilty. No. I hadn’t done anything. I was actually awash in rage. He’d been ready to cave my head in and now while he grieved over whatever he was grieving, I wanted to kick his teeth in. He wasn’t paying attention to me. He was just sitting there holding his head. I could do it. But to do such a thing was not in me; it was evil. Unlike him, I couldn’t murder. But he’d almost brutally killed me. My conflicted feelings made my stomach lurch.

Naked faced, he started weeping. His eyebrows crinkled in, his mouth turned downward, and his eyes narrowed as he wept softly.

“Look at me! I deserved to be robbed and beaten by your people!” he sobbed. “They should. …”

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

“Fisayo,” he whispered. It was odd to hear him speak my name. The sun was just coming up. “I …”

There was a loud hissing sound and we both looked toward the ship. A door had appeared on its side. The shuttle was finally opening.

Wiping his face with the heel of his hand, Ahmed got up. I scowled at him as I got up, too, wishing he’d stop his sniveling.

“Get it together,” I snapped. “Goodness.” He nodded, sobbed loudly, but then quieted a bit.

He was still weeping as we approached the shuttle. The sunlight was quickly bathing the desert. In the Sahara, the sun rises fast and steady. Even in a spontaneous forest. As we walked, I noticed many of the trees and bushes in the forest had disappeared or were withering, and the pond had gone foul and brackish.

“Will you stop it?” I whispered. I didn’t know why I was whispering but it seemed right. “Tell me what we should expect. Do you have information about how many are on board?”

He brought out his e-legba, clicked it on, and read for a moment. He took a deep breath. “Your eyes are evil,” he whined.

I scoffed. “It’s not my eyes, Ahmed. It was you.”

He sniffed loudly. “It says here that there are …” His voice cracked. He sniffled again. “There are supposed to be thirty-one people on board.”

As the sunlight and the heat increased, the vines on the shuttle quickly dried and began falling off, leaving the shuttle exposed. The door that had opened gave way to darkness inside. I could only see the wall, as the passageway went directly to the right.

“Why isn’t anyone coming out?” I asked.

As we moved closer, Ahmed pulled himself together … at least he stopped weeping. “So really,” he asked. “Why are you here?”

I hesitated. Then I shrugged. “I just happened to be a few miles away when I heard about it on my e-legba.”

He wiped at his eyes again. “You’re not here to steal from them?”

“No! Of course not!” I was getting more nervous the closer we got; it was good to talk about something else. “You were going to kill me.”

“I was.” He paused. He frowned as more tears began to dribble from his eyes. “I … I’m sorry.” He rubbed his temples. “I don’t think you’re human.”

“I don’t think you are either.”

We were standing at the door. Inside the shuttle, the walls were plush red and busy with buttons, small blank screens, and other things. To the right, the corridor went well into the ship. Ahmed sobbed loudly. He turned to the side, pressed a finger to his left nostril, and blew out a large amount of snot. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking distraught again, his voice strained as he tried to hold back more sobs.

“Ugh,” I said, turning to the side. I couldn’t look at him anymore. “Look … I’m going in, are …”

Ahmed had stopped weeping entirely. I frowned, turning back to him. He looked as if he was seeing a ghost. He grabbed my hand. I turned to the door just as something large and red slammed me to the ground. Hot glass! Hot glass! I frantically thought Ahmed hadn’t released my hand and was thus yanked back as I fell. I could hear Ahmed yelling but all I saw was a layer of red and all I felt were pain and heat. It was as if the world was submerged under soft ripples of red tinted waters. I could see a wavy red sun, the ship, and Ahmed kicking and kicking at whatever was on top of me.

I heard it hissing in my ear. A creature with a heavy solid body like glass. Dry, hot, and buzzing. No, not buzzing. Vibrating. I could feel it, down deep inside me. I struggled to understand. But it was pressing on my throat. A part of me could only think one thing: Look into my eyes! Please look into my eyes! If it was a thing, a creature maybe …

I was looking through … its head. Oblong but empty. Then I was falling. Shaking. Vibrating. Falling. Into. Red. The CoLoRs it knew and loved. The CoLoRs of HoME. Where everything was all kinds of RED. Until it was fOuNd. For VIbRAtINg too much with CuriositY. I fell deeper. Beyond myself. I have no words to describe it. But it was alive. Not in the same way that I knew life, but it was alive.

As its weight lifted off me, my entire body flared with pain. Nevertheless, I lived. And I knew why. I knew what the creature was. I knew many things about it now. I tried to laugh. Instead I coughed hard and everything around me throbbed red.

It stood before me. Too heavy now and sinking into the sand. It looked like a crude glass bipedal grasshopper. It was impervious to Ahmed’s attacks. Kicking it was like kicking transparent stone.

“From Mars,” I breathed as I got to my feet. My neck ached painfully and I had to bend forward. “It’s a …”

It suddenly turned to Ahmed and sent out so much vibration that I could feel it in my chest. I coughed, pressing my hands to my chest. Then it leapt at him.

“No!” I croaked. “Stop, wait!”

But Ahmed was ready. He jumped back and shot into the sky. The creature fell forward and started sinking fast into the sand. I shielded my eyes, searching for Ahmed. The creature had sunk halfway into the sand, before Ahmed returned. “What is it?” he asked, hovering several feet above my head.

I laughed, rubbing my neck. I was beginning to feel a little better. “It’s an alien.” Then I sat down hard on the sand.

In a matter of minutes, I’d gone from fighting off a racist windseeker armed with a rock to fighting off a Martian alien. As I sat there contemplating this, I stared at the door.

“You know why it didn’t kill me?” I asked, rubbing my temples and shutting my eyes. Ahmed sat beside me, anxiously looking at where the alien had sunk.

“Why?” he muttered. He hacked loudly and spit to the side. He was done crying.

“Because I’m Nigerian,” I said.

“What?” Ahmed said, frowning at me. “How would it know that? Why would it care?”

“It was held captive, and the only person to treat it with any respect before it managed to escape was a man named Arinze Tunde, a Nigerian.”

“How do you …” His eyes widened. “You read an alien?”

“It read me more,” I said.

“That cursed thing could read genetics or something?”

“Guess so,” I said. “That’s what the vibrating was. You felt it, right?”

“Yeah, like being touched by sound.”

I got up and waited a moment to make sure I was steady. Ahmed got up, too. For a moment, I felt dizzy, then everything stabilized. As I dusted off my dress, I said, “And you know why it wanted to kill you?”

Ahmed shrugged.

“Your grandpa was the one who captured it.”

He stared at me blankly as I quickly walked to the ship. I turned to him. “Come on!” I said. “The passengers are locked in some room. We need to get everyone off right now. The alien is going to make the shuttle take off again.”

“My grandfather?” Ahmed said as I ran inside. “Alien? Didn’t it just sink into the sand? There’s another one?”

The soft humming was continuous and the lights flickered as we walked down the narrow corridor single file. The padded walls added to the narrowness. Everything was spotless, no dust or dirt in any corners. And everything smelled like face powder.

“I don’t like this,” Ahmed said, moving faster. “Not at all.”

I smiled. Windseekers hate tight places. “Inhale, exhale,” I said, staying close behind him. “We’ll find the passengers and then get out. Relax.”

As he loudly inhaled and exhaled as he walked, I took a moment to look behind us. So far we’d moved in a straight line and I could still see the sun shining in from the open door. I felt a little better. If it was a trap, the door probably would have shut. Eventually, the corridor did break off in three different directions. We took the one in the middle and came to a large metal door with a sign on it that said CONFERENCE ROOM B. Ahmed was about to touch the blue button beside the door. I grabbed his hand.

“What?” he said, accidently looking into my eyes. He quickly looked away, squeezing his face as if I’d stuck a pin in his arm.

“Don’t start that again,” I snapped.

“It’s your damn eyes!”

I rolled my eyes. “Let’s knock first.”

“Fine,” he said, gritting his teeth. He knocked three times. The sound was absorbed by the hallway’s padding. We stood there, listening hard.

I sighed, “Maybe, we could …”

“Arinze?” a woman called from behind the door.

Ahmed grabbed my arm, and I stepped closer to him.

“Please!” a man shouted in English, banging on the door. I couldn’t place his accent. “Open up. Just …”

“Is that English? What are they saying?” Ahmed asked me in Arabic. “I can’t understand.”

“They want us to open the door,” I said. I stepped up to the door. “We’re … we’re not him!” I responded in English. I turned to Ahmed and switched back to Arabic. “I told them we’re not Arinze.”

“Let’s open it,” he said.

“Okay.”

He was about to and then stopped. He turned to me, looking guilty. “You should step back.”

I understood. My eyes. Who knew what they’d think? And I didn’t want anyone looking into them.

“Okay,” I said, stepping behind him. “Makes sense.”

He touched the blue button and there we were facing about thirty sweaty dirty people all crammed at the door. Hot air wafted out. It reeked of sweat, urine, feces, and rotten fruit. Ahmed and I coughed.

Ahmed stood up straight. “We’re here to—”

“Take her down!” a man shouted in English. There was a mad rush as they all tried to lunge for me through the narrow corridor. I stumbled back as Ahmed jumped in front of me, using his body to block the way. Five men tried to shove him aside but he somehow managed to remain lodged.

“Stop it!” he shouted in Arabic.

“We can handle her!” someone said in Igbo. “Just get out of the way!”

“We’re getting off this damn shuttle!” another said in English.

“Stop!” Ahmed screamed in Arabic, pushing them back with all his might. “She’s not—she’s human!”

No one listened or maybe they didn’t understand. Everyone started shouting at the same time. Sweat gleamed on Ahmed’s face as he fought to keep himself in the passageway. I ran back several feet but I wasn’t about to leave Ahmed.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a blast of wind flew through the passageway. It knocked me off my feet and I slid several feet back. Then everything went silent. I slowly sat up. Everyone in the passageway had been blown back into the conference room. They murmured as they sat up, rubbing their heads, arms, confused.

Only Ahmed remained, hovering, his seven long thick braids undulating as the windseeker breeze circulated his body. The passengers stared at him. I smiled broadly, though once again, I was shaking all over.

“She, we are not …” Ahmed switched to French as he landed on his feet. “We are not whatever you’ve been dealing with! Does anyone understand me? We’re here to get you out!”

“How do we know that?” some woman asked in French from behind everyone. Good, I thought. Someone understood.

“Speak in French,” I said. “I can speak that, too.”

Ahmed looked at me. I winked. I can speak six languages, Arabic, Hausa, French, Igbo, Yoruba, and English. My father liked to call me the daughter of Legba—the Yoruba deity of language, communication, and the crossroads—because I picked up languages so easily.

“Why else would we unlock the door?” Ahmed snapped. The woman translated for those who couldn’t understand.

Silence.

“Stupid,” I muttered, stepping closer to Ahmed.

“This is Fisayo and I’m Ahmed,” he said. “We’re … Do you know what’s happened on Earth since you left?”

More confused murmuring. The general consensus was that they knew something bad had happened but they weren’t sure what.

“She and I have been … affected. We’re not aliens. One of you is my … my grandfather. Zaid Fakhr Mohammed Uday al-Rammah.” Before the woman could translate for the others, Ahmed repeated himself in Arabic, listing his name, his grandmother’s name, and his village. There was a soft gasp from near the back and the crowd slowly parted, allowing a tall wizened man to come forth. He was about eighty and wore blue garments whose armpits were dirty with sweat, and a deep blue turban.

There was a long pause as the two stared at each other.

“Why do you look like a punching bag?” Ahmed’s grandfather asked in Arabic. He motioned to me. “Is this girl your wife? Have you two been quarreling?” A few people chuckled.

“Uh …” Ahmed said. “We’re …”

“Come here,” his grandfather said.

Ahmed slowly stepped up to him and the old man looked him up and down. “You don’t look like my son.”

Ahmed scoffed. “The last time you saw him he was about four years old.”

I held my breath. Then I let it out with relief as the old man smiled and laughed softly. “You are really my grandson?”

Ahmed brought a picture from his pocket. “This is you, Grandma, and my father just before they left for Earth.”

His grandfather stared at it for a very long time.

“That … monster will let us out now?” someone impatiently asked behind them.

Ahmed’s grandfather was crying. “I haven’t seen this photo in … such a long time. It’s why I came back.”

“There’s one more of us,” an African woman said in Igbo, pushing to the front. She wore jeans and a dirty purple sweater. Ahmed looked back at me and I stepped forward. The woman hesitated, glancing at and looking away from my eyes and said, “He’s being held captive in the cockpit, I think.” She pointed behind her. “It’s through the conference room.”

“Arinze,” I said.

She nodded.

“Troublesome sellout,” Ahmed’s grandpa mumbled. “Nigerians.” He spoke the name of my people like he was spitting dirt from his mouth. I frowned.

The women who’d spoken Igbo sucked her teeth loudly and deliberately. “Keep talking and see wahala, old man.”

Even when they lived and were born on Mars, people were still people.

Ahmed’s and my eyes met for a half second. Then he looked away. “I’ll go,” I said.

“I’ll go with you,” the Igbo woman said.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “I know what’s going on. Just … wait for him outside.” This time, I was the one who didn’t want to meet her eyes. I switched to English. She spoke Igbo with an English accent, so I suspected she’d understand, as would more of the others. “You all need to get off. There isn’t time. This shuttle is going to take off soon.”

“What!” a man said. “Impossible! There can’t be any fuel left. …”

People started translating for each other, and there were more exclamations of surprise.

“Who cares,” a woman said. “Show us out of here! I can’t stand being on a shuttle any longer!”

Everyone began pushing forward again. As they crammed past me, I told Ahmed, “Go with them. They need someone who knows … Earth.”

“Okay. But hurry out,” he said, taking and squeezing my hand. His other was holding the hand of his grandfather.

“I’ll be all right.”

I watched them all file down the corridor. Then I walked into the conference room to attend the strangest meeting of my life.

The conference room was spacious with a high ceiling and windows the size of the walls (which were currently covered with the ship’s protective white metal exterior). Near the back were shelves of books and three exercise bicycles. This large room was probably normally beautiful. But at the moment it was filthy and stinky. There were plastic tubs brimming with urine and feces and sacks of garbage. Had they been allowed to leave the room for anything? How long had they been trapped in there? I hurried to the door on the other side.

It easily opened and led into another passageway that was even narrower than the other one. It went on and on. I passed sealed doorways on my left and right. I frowned realizing something. Maybe the creature was allowing the doors to open. Maybe it had opened the door to the outside so that Ahmed and I could come in and rescue the people. I had so many answers, yet I had even more questions.

Finally, I reached a small round door. It felt like metal but it looked like wood. Nervous, I took a deep breath, tugging at one of my long braids. Suddenly the door slid open and I was standing before a tall very dark-skinned Nigerian man. Behind him was a round sunshine-filled room. The cockpit window must have been recently opened, for I hadn’t seen this on the outside. Every inch of wall was packed with virtual sensors, small and large screens, and soft buttons.

In the middle of it all, manipulating the ship’s virtual controls, was the … thing. It looked like something out of the deep ocean. Wet, red, bloblike, formless. I imagined that it would have fit perfectly into the glasslike thing that had attacked Ahmed and me outside.

It smoothly pulled its many filament-like appendages in, rose up, and molded itself into an exact replica of my face, shifting and changing colors to even imitate my dark skin tone. I gasped, clapping my hands over my mouth. It smiled at me.

Terrified, I looked up at Arinze who was still standing there. “I—”

His face curled, and he grabbed me. He pushed me back and slammed me against the wall. For the third time in the last hour all the air left my chest. I grabbed at his hands and dug my nails into them. His grip loosened and I seized the opportunity to slide away.

My eyes located a wrench. I grabbed it and raised it toward one of the screens. Arinze froze and the creature melted from my shape back into a blob.

“I swear I’ll … I’ll smash this!” I screamed, utterly hysterical by this point. “May the fleas of a thousand camels nest in your hair!” I was hurting all over, shaking, full of too much adrenaline and there was a red alien in the middle of the room with appendages snaking out in multiple directions like some sort of giant amoeba! I strained to keep the tears from dribbling for my eyes. The last thing I needed was for my vision to blur. I focused on the alien, sharpening to a molecular level. … I immediately pulled back, further shaken. I hadn’t seen cells; I saw something more like metal balls.

“Please don’t break that,” Arinze said in Igbo. His accent was vaguely Nigerian, Yoruba. But not quite. How long had he been on Mars? He had to have been born there. He looked about thirty. Yet he had three short vertical tribal markings on each cheek. So they were still practicing that tradition even on Mars?

“We need that to navigate properly,” he said.

“You just nearly killed me!”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was … I thought you were going to hurt it. It’s … it’s like a snail without a shell until it makes a new living shell.”

I didn’t lower my wrench.

“That’s … that’s why it attacked you,” he said. “Then we realized a lot of things.” He paused. “What are you?”

“I’m human. A shadow speaker.” I shook my head. “It’s a long story.”

He stared at me. I knew he was making up his mind. I’d made mine up. If he tried anything, I’d smash the screen and then smash his head. “Arinze,” I said, quickly. “I know who you are. I know you have befriended this creature. You understand each other.”

“How do you know?” he snapped. “What can you know?”

The creature stretched a narrow filament and touched Arinze’s forehead. Affectionately. Arinze seemed to relax.

I felt a pinch of envy. I was constantly getting attacked because of what I looked like. This creature had no shape and could look like anything it wanted. And then it could create an exo-skin that it could wear or send to do what it asked … at least until it sunk into the sand on a planet with stronger gravity than it was used to. I wondered why it had chosen to make its exo-skin look like a giant bipedal grasshopper.

“It ‘reads’ things through vibration,” I said. “I am similar. I read things by closeness and focusing. I read it as it read me. You know I’m right. It has told you. Trust it.”

“Put the wrench down,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“How do I know?”

He sighed and sat on a stool, now rubbing his own temples. “You know. You both know.”

I didn’t put it down. “Please,” I said. “I’m tired of fighting.” I leaned against the controls, feeling very, very tired. “What is it about me that everyone wants to attack? I just came here to greet you people. To see.” I sighed, tears finally falling from my eyes. Why did everyone think I was evil? One of the last things my mother had said to me before I ran away was that I was wahala, trouble.

He frowned. “Did I hurt you?”

I waved a hand at him. It was too much to explain.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“So am I,” I said, sitting on the floor.

There was a clicking sound as the alien’s appendage screwed something in beneath the front window controls. There was a soft whirring. The creature’s body twisted up and leaned toward Arinze.

“I’m not held captive here,” he said. “They all think I am but I’m not.”

“I know.”

“It’s been ugly on this shuttle,” he said. “We had to lock them up. Were they all okay?”

I nodded.

“Good. I’m … I’m going to go back with it. It’s not the only one that’s been discovered by the Mars government and there were some government officials on this shuttle who will alert those here on Earth. If I don’t go with this one, to help it speak to its people, there will be a war. It tells me so. Like here. It was war, right?”

“Yes. Nuclear and something else.”

He nodded. “I have to go back.”

“You’ve never been outdoors, have you?”

“No. But …” he said. He looked at the creature, a sadness passing over his face. The creature was focused on getting home. “What’s happened to Earth?”

“It’s a long story.”

He chuckled. “Have you heard news of Nigeria? My grandparents are from there.”

I smiled. “Nigeria is still Nigeria.”

“One day …” He took my hands. “You’d better get off the ship.”

The creature moved a filament across the green virtual grid above it and the shuttle shook hard enough to make me stumble.

“Go!” Arinze said. “Hurry!”

I made for the door and then turned back. I ran to Arinze and shook his hand. “I hope you come back,” I said.

Before I ran off, quickly like a striking snake, the creature reached out and touched my forehead with a moist appendage. It was neither warm nor cold, hard nor soft, absolutely foreign. Only one image came to me from its touch: An empire of red dust in a place that looked like the Sahara desert. Here strange things grew and withered spontaneously. As they did now on Earth. The communities of these creatures were more like the Earth of now, especially in the Sahara. I breathed a sigh of surprise. Then I could feel it more than I heard it. A vibration that tickled my ears. My people do not understand Mars Earthlings, but they will understand when I tell about you, Fisayo. You are not wahala. You are the information I needed.

Arinze was pushing me. “Go!” he shouted.

I went.

I barely made it off the shuttle before it started rumbling. Plantain was there, waiting. I jumped on her and she took off. We joined the others two miles from the shuttle as it launched into the sky with impossible power and speed. I’d seen what the alien did to the shuttle when I read it, but I didn’t have the capacity to understand its science. The Igbo woman who’d wanted to come to the cockpit with me cried and cried when she didn’t see Arinze with me. Ahmed stood close to his grandfather. His grandfather had his arm over his shoulder.

Ahmed and I did not say good-bye. As they were all deciding if they should wait for officials to arrive or try to make it to the next town, Plantain and I left. There was too much to say and no space to say it. Plantain and I headed south, back home, to Jos. Crossing the Sahara to Agadez was a silly idea. I needed to have long talk with my parents.

There was other life on Mars. Even after all that had happened here on Earth, I had to work to wrap my mind around that. Allah protect Arinze and the one he’s befriended; provide them with success. There’s been more than enough wahala.