The Rosewater Insurrection Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Tade Thompson

  Excerpt from Afterwar copyright © 2018 by Lilith Saintcrow

  Excerpt from One Way copyright © 2018 by S. J. Morden

  Author photograph by Carla Roadnight

  Cover design by Charlotte Stroomer—LBBG

  Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Simultaneously published in Great Britain and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2019

  First Edition: March 2019

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962101

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-44908-3 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-44906-9 (ebook)

  E3-20190126-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prelude: Camp Rosewater: 2055: Eric

  Chapter One: Rosewater: 2067: Alyssa

  Chapter Two: Aminat

  Chapter Three: Anthony

  Excerpt from Kudi, a novel by Walter Tanmola

  Chapter Four: Alyssa

  Chapter Five: Aminat

  Chapter Six: Bewon

  Chapter Seven: Anthony

  Interlude: 2055, Lagos: Eric

  Chapter Eight: Alyssa

  Chapter Nine: Aminat

  Chapter Ten: Bewon

  Chapter Eleven: Jacques

  Chapter Twelve: Alyssa

  Excerpt from Kudi, a novel by Walter Tanmola

  Chapter Thirteen: Anthony

  Chapter Fourteen: Aminat

  Chapter Fifteen: Jacques

  Chapter Sixteen: Anthony

  Chapter Seventeen: Aminat

  Interlude: 2066, Lagos, Unknown Location: Eric

  Chapter Eighteen: Jacques

  Chapter Nineteen: Anthony

  Chapter Twenty: Alyssa

  Chapter Twenty-One: Jacques

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Aminat

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Anthony

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Jacques

  Interlude: 2067: Eric

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Aminat

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Jacques

  Excerpt from Kudi, a novel by Walter Tanmola

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Anthony

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Kaaro

  Interlude: 2067: Eric

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Aminat

  Chapter Thirty: Jacques

  Chapter Thirty-One: Aminat

  Interlude: 2067: Eric

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Walter

  Interlude: 2067: Eric

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Jacques

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Kaaro

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Jacques

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Aminat

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Jacques

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Kaaro

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Aminat

  Chapter Forty: Alyssa

  Chapter Forty-One: Jacques

  Chapter Forty-Two: Aminat

  Interlude: 2067: Eric

  Chapter Forty-Three: The Sutcliffes

  Acknowledgements

  Extras

  Meet the Author

  A Preview of Afterwar

  A Preview of One Way

  By Tade Thompson

  Praise for Rosewater

  Orbit Newsletter

  For Cillian,

  who just wandered in

  Prelude

  Camp Rosewater: 2055

  Eric

  I am not an assassin.

  I’d like that to be clear, yet I am cleaning my gun as I start this telling, having already stripped and cleaned my rifle, with the intention of killing a man. Orders.

  For most Africans, the explosive discovery of a meteor-borne alien in London and its growth underground meant little. Our lives didn’t change much. We peddled a more interesting variety of conspiracy theory, but that was it. A cup of rice was still expensive.

  Even when we lost North America, China and Russia jostled to fill in the power and economic vacuum. A cup of rice became even more expensive.

  But now it’s here, in Nigeria, and that means, for me at least, extrajudicial murder.

  I wait outside the command tent, broadcasting white noise like I’ve been trained. My boots are dirty from the mud I’ve had to wade through. Even now, standing to attention, I’m about an inch deep, and I squish when I move. There is a muffled argument from within, a man and a woman, the woman’s voice more assured and familiar to me. There is a rustle and a man either charges or is thrown out. He stumbles, regains his balance. He pulls at his shirt tails to straighten them. He is like me, lean, light on his feet, with hair just growing out of the recruits’ buzz cut. But, like me, he’s broadcasting white noise, and he discovers my mind almost at the same time I do his, which is impressive because he is still emotional from the argument. We make eye contact.

  He nods in greeting. “Did Danladi train you?” he asks.

  “Motherfucking Danladi,” I say.

  “He’s the only one worth a damn,” he says.

  Behind him, the dome glows, then crackles, starting with the ganglion. It’s windy, but recent rains mean there is no real dust. Camp Rosewater exists in two modes: dust storm or mud bath. We both get a whiff of the open sewer. I feel him probing at my mind, inquisitive, just on the border of politeness. I can tell that he is stronger than me, and I slam down all my defences.

  His expression does not change, but he offers a hand. “Kaaro,” he says.

  “Eric,” I say.

  “At ease, Eric. Where are you from?”

  “Lagos and Jo’burg.” No matter how short I keep my hair, people know that half of me isn’t black. Some try to take advantage because they see this as a marker of privilege.

  “Well, Eric-from-Lagos-and-Jo’burg, be careful. She is in fine form.”

  He heads out into the twilight and is soon lost in the crowd outside the barrier. I’m still wondering about him when she calls me in.

  I don’t know what to call her, so I just say, “Ma’am.” She does not introduce herself, but she is the leader of Section Forty-five. S45 is not a government department you’ve heard of. They report directly to the president, they handle the unusual with a cadre of agents who are unsung, and people like me are either employed as their predators or hunted down as prey. They started out saving fake witches from fundamentalist churches, but are now responsible for all alien phenomena. She’s new in position, but acts like she was born into
it. Her pupils and irises are black like coal, and it’s hard to maintain the gaze, so I avert my eyes. Inside the tent is cool and dry. I am now in my socks because she insists on footwear staying outside. Her bodyguard is stocky and stays two paces behind, hands clasped together in front of his jacket, holding his tie.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” she asks.

  “I was told to report.”

  She smiles, but her lips don’t part and her eyes remain the same. “I need you to neutralise a problem.”

  She wears her wealth like a sidearm, like Europeans used to wear swords, obvious, obtrusive, a reminder of station to the observer, deliberately gaudy, especially distinctive in Camp Rosewater, especially effective against less fortunate subordinates. Like me.

  I do not know what she means. “Problem, ma’am?”

  “Do you know Jack Jacques?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Do you know anyone in Rosewater?”

  “No, ma’am. I came straight from Basic. Before that, I was in Lagos.”

  No thoughts coming from her. I have been warned of this. The higher-ups have a form of protection.

  She says, “Jack Jacques is a troublemaker. Most people think he is a joke, but I can see where he is going. He has to be stopped. The president wants him stopped.”

  I think she means for me to arrest him, and I nod with enthusiasm. I am keen to prove my worth to S45. I will follow orders to the letter because it’s my first assignment. Her bodyguard steps forward and shows me my orders, complete with presidential seal, a document that requires both my handprint and proximity to my implant for unlocking.

  The first thing I see is a smooth, unlined face, a black man, looking straight at the camera, a hint of a smile about the eyes, but not quite, the way a child suppresses laughter for a passport picture. Jack Jacques appears to be in his late twenties and is handsome, just shy of effeminate because of his hard jaw. His lips are thick, but to me belong on a woman’s face.

  “I’ll leave you to familiarise yourself with the details,” says my leader. “Don’t let me down.”

  She and her bodyguard exit one end of the tent, while I go back the way I came.

  Where is your issued weapon?

  In my billet.

  Surrender it to the quartermaster. You can’t use official hardware for this detail. Can you get a gun?

  I don’t think I’ll need to discharge a weapon.… Eric, what do you think this assignment entails?

  I can arrest him without—

  “Arrest”?

  She said—

  Unless you mean cardiac arrest, I think you need to read your orders more carefully.

  Not a lot is known about Jack Jacques. The name is thought to be an alias. He appeared in Camp Rosewater almost a month after the alien dome emerged. The first record is an arrest by army boys. No charge. Seems he was a loudmouth. Poor documentation. A line of text saying he refused to identify himself for twenty-four hours. Reading in between, I think he may have been tortured. After his release, pamphlets begin to appear all around the dome, cheap, black-and-white productions on poor quality paper.

  How long must we endure an existence that the rest of Nigeria, and the world, has left behind since the pre-antibiotic era? We call on the Federal Government to provide housing, public transportation, roads, modern sewage systems and, above all else, potable water.

  Jack Jacques

  This is accompanied by a poor reproduction of a photo of Jacques in an ill-fitting suit.

  Here he is as signatory to a petition banning the consumption of alien flora or fauna. Here is a statement from an informant about a gathering of troublemakers and leftists. She says Jacques was there, but nothing specific about his contribution.

  No address, no known associates.

  I have never killed before, but my employers think I have, which is why I’ve been tapped for this assignment. When S45 wants you, they find ways of questioning your close friends. I know who snitched. Except, it can’t be snitching when there’s nothing to snitch about. When I was fifteen my family experienced a home invasion which ended with one of the robbers dead, skull crushed. The police report says I caved his head in with a paperweight, but my sister killed him accidentally, her intention being to stun. My sister has a history, so we agreed as a family that I should wear the jacket.

  I am shaving my head with a blade attached to a comb. My crew cut will identify me as military, so I’m getting rid of it. My mirror dangles on a string tied to a crossbar in the tent. It sways gently, and I move with it to keep up with my reflection, weaving like a boxer. When I finish, I change my clothes and step out to the camp.

  It’s busy like you wouldn’t believe. About four in the afternoon and the vultures are swooping down on the market areas, eating the hollowed-out carcasses left by butchers. Camp Rosewater is basically shanties hugging the alien dome all the way around, except where the electric pylons, the ganglia, project as towers of alien neural tissue. It is a mess of tents, wooden shacks, corrugated iron improvisations and lean-tos. There is a barter-based economy mixed with the regular Nigerian naira. The camp grows daily as people arrive from… everywhere. New people simply stake out land at the periphery and build. There are one or two new concrete structures—churches, mosques, temples, weapons depot for the military detachment sent to keep order. There are micro-farms because close to the dome you can quite literally grow anything anywhere. I have, in my tent, an iceplant, bought because the flower girl insisted that it would protect me from ghosts. In two days it has sprouted three magenta flowers. Throw seeds in the mud, they burst into healthy crops in no time, and weeding is a full-time job here.

  There are brothels, open lines for the female prostitutes, euphemisms like “sports centre” for male ones.

  I walk in a stream of slow-moving piss, in an alley darkened by the proximity of adjacent buildings. A thousand conversations achieve anonymity in their own cacophony. My shoes are ruined, but this is what I want. The clothes are worn, but okay, which means I will not be excluded from anywhere, neither will I be robbed.

  My first plan is to go into a beer parlour, but I find something better, a night club.

  I don’t dance.

  My right hand still glows from the luminous door stamp, and this glow passing through the glass makes my drink look like lava. I have no idea what the music is, but it seems to depend on heavy bass. The floor is full. When you come in there is a row of kids who clean your shoes, then you are pushed by the press of the crowd on to the dance floor, a concrete slab polished by the innumerable shoes shuffling. Cheap implant scan at the gate, to pick out cops, though it fails to parse my ghosted identity. In the west corner sits a squat turret bot, keeping the peace.

  Nobody in this place is thinking of Jack Jacques. Finding that out gives me a headache from the effort of reading them. I do this for two nights before I get a hit.

  It’s a memory of Jacques, of meeting him. The person is outside the club, leaning against the wall. I get up to leave and in so doing, bump into someone. I feel the intent to hit me even before I apologise. I move to avoid, barely, to mask my training. The lurching ape swings past me and hits someone else. I tread on his instep and he falls flat. In the confusion I slip out.

  She is smoking, barefoot, wearing a dress of indeterminate colour, no make-up and hair hanging limp after being straightened. She can hear me, my footsteps, but she doesn’t look at me. I have cigarettes, singles that I bought inside for this very eventuality. I don’t smoke, but I know how, so I light up. In the glow from her cigarette end I see that she keeps her gaze on the ground, even though we lean on the same wall, feeling the vibration of music, and the radiant heat from dozens of bodies.

  “I am off duty,” she says. I no dey duty.

  I nod, drag on my cigarette.

  “And I am armed.”

  I look at the skin-tight dress and wonder where she has hidden the weapon. I read the threat she feels from me as a reflection of actual violence over
her life and the lives of women she knows and has heard of. I adjust my body language to be as non-threatening as possible. She is not thinking of Jacques right now.

  “I should probably go and jack off,” I say.

  It works, she remembers.

  I get my first sense of what Jacques looks and sounds like in real life. He is wearing a white suit in the memory I steal. His head is almost at the ceiling of her love shack, which tells me he’s tall. He has a black tie, and a hat—a dog-eared hat, abeti aja, like the Yoruba wear. He is unselfconscious and gives the impression of being clean despite the filth around him.

  “You get ciga to give me?” asks the woman. She has finished hers and has a hand out. I give her one. Through the armhole of her dress I can see the tail end of a tattoo. It will be the name and village of her mother. People get raped and murdered here, and even with implants it is not always easy to track down the next of kin, so Camp Rosewater women get tattoos.

  The memory of Jacques plays again. She finds him attractive, and is grateful that he smells good. The memory loops back and for a millisecond it is me she sees in the white suit and the hat, before it transforms back into Jacques.

  Jacques says, Take off your clothes.

  She says, How you want am? Front or back?

  Jacques says, I want you to bounce on the bed and moan as if I am fucking you really hard. Then, I will pay you double. You’ll also tell anybody that we fucked, especially the young men with me. Can you do that?

  She can, and she does.

  The next day there is a burning truck, not far from my tent.

  I sleep fitfully. When you take in someone else’s memory it struggles to find its place among your own. Your mind knows it to be alien and, I think, tries to purge it. Failing that, it replays the memory while trying to categorise it. This is why I don’t like reading memories, and I am grateful for the suppression training at S45. I see more detail in the scene, his short fingernails, his skinned knuckles, the crooked incisor, the bulge of his cock suggesting he was aroused, but disciplined. In one replay of the memory, he stops talking and looks at me.

  “I see you, Eric,” he says. “I will be ready when you come for me.”

  Then his eyes explode and he vomits. I wake.