Toxic (32 page)

“
Sí, pero
... you weren’t wearing a life jacket right then,” Hector insisted.

Her voice became a screech. “Screw you!” she cut in, her teeth clenched, leaving the deck. “Why don’t you all go fuck yourselves!”

Her version of the story.

What gave that dealer the right? There was no link between her and the alien. That was unthinkable. Unimaginable. Insane. The cradle of humanity. Her world. Why did one of them care about what happened to a native?

The sound of voices woke her up with a surprise. Through the porthole, she saw Bruce, who was holding back Alva. She had her hands on her distraught face. Her hair was everywhere and her practically hysterical behavior worried the nurse, who came out from her refuge. Almost the whole group was on the pier. Dew was missing. Her throat went dry. A bad feeling came over her when she moved towards them. In front of their evasive glances, she knew that she wasn’t going to like the explanation. Masters made the first move.

“Dew disappeared.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Elaine yelled, annoyed. “And I told you to not leave him alone. Ever!”

“He was with Alva at the shopping mall. We’re not really sure what happened there.”

“I want to talk to her.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

Elaine overruled him. She took the singer aside. Pushing her around wouldn’t help at all. Alva looked like she was in a state of shock. Her cries and confusion were the logical outcome of the euphoria before her departure. The symptoms of depression were becoming more and more clear. Between two sobs, she explained that she hadn’t seen Dew leave the boutique.

“It’s not your fault.”

The diva fell into her arms.

Elaine made a sign to Masters to join her.

“I’m going to stay with her. Find Dew right away. With a bit of luck, he shouldn’t be far.”

The colonel and Bruce left right away to look for the Asian. The nurse asked for Hector’s help to move Alva into the cabin. The Colombian was looking at her with a worried expression. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s going through depression.”

His lips formed into a surprised “o.”

“Is it serious?”

Her regular drug use, her sense of provocativeness, rehab... The pieces of the puzzle were being put together in her clinical mind. While the disorder often presented itself as severe, in general, courses of antidepressants allowed for the patient to be stabilized. Except that in this world, there was no longer any treatment of that kind. Only the good old kind of therapy was left. After having barely escaped death the night before, the shock had come back multiplied. And it didn’t look like it was going to get better.

“She needs to rest.”

Hector agreed. They laid her down on her bed. Elaine lowered the curtain on the porthole and then they left.

With the touching attentiveness of the desire to make herself useful which is typical of children, Alison carried a bag of supplies onto the deck. The nurse helped her to get the others on board and then to sort them out. The harvest had been sparse. They piled up the canned foods and lined up a package of sugar, dried legumes and a box of lentils, which drew a sincere “uuughh” from the young girl. Elaine smiled at her.

“The advantage is that they keep for a long time. Very nutritious as well.”

“Yeah. Mom said the same thing.”

Elaine caught herself. She hesitated before finding the adequate response.

“Moms always know what’s right.”

“Were you one as well?”

The question took her by surprise.

“I...”

Suddenly, Hector called them. “
¡Mira!
They’re coming back!”

Elaine went down to the dock. Masters had a face that conveyed no deceit. He held Dew’s cap in his hands, his lips reduced to a fine line. Bruce had a spiteful look on his face. The duo brought one piece of good news:

“We know where he is,” the colonel spat out.

And one bad piece of news:

“He didn’t disappear. He was taken,” the biologist continued, presenting them with a piece of paper on which the proof was stretched out in capital letters:

IF YOU WANT TO GET YOUR FRIEND BACK, COME TO THIS ADDRESS
.

W
hat would Africa be without the white people?

Mirha had heard that question one day when the television still worked. On the small screen of back then, an entrepreneur dressed in a dark suit and with a honey-like soft voice had called out to his audience filled with rich guests. All of them white, of course.

The woman took off the scarf wrapped around her head upon which an important bowl was balanced. Once the container filled with water was down on the red earth of the trail among the rocks, she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She looked back to make out how far back her neighbor, who always fell behind, was.

She ended up rejoining her, with a smile on her lips despite the persistent pain in her back that had been there for some time.

“
Hali ya hewa ni joto zaidi kuliko jana. Nina ki,u
,” she said in Swahili.

She was right. The heat was stifling. Mirha took out a plastic goblet from the inner pocket of her sky blue tunic. She drank a sip and then served her friend.

“
Sisi ni karibu na nyumbani.
”

Yes, they were close to the village. Mirha observed the hill in front of them. The group of cob shacks built on its side created a sort of clay-colored oasis surrounded by the green sea. The place bordered on Kakamega National Park. Native trainers were still caring for the animals despite the supply difficulties.

The two women found themselves a little more than a half hour’s walk from their homes. That, on the other hand, hadn’t changed: potable water was still far away. But that wasn’t important, Mirha told herself.

The war now belonged to the past. Children had fun among the dwellings. Cries of joy resounded from those who were enjoying themselves, putting smiles on the faces of the elders. The luxurious hills resembled a garden of Eden rid of hate and greed. Generous Nature provided for their needs. Husbands and children no longer needed to carry weapons or to get high to kill their neighbors. Women were no longer raped. Instead of fighting for a handful of pebbles, fit men worked the earth. From then on, guns were used for hunting and to feed the family. Africa without the whites, without civilization, without money: it was paradise.

Then why did she remember the businessman in the dark suit? He had said something else about emptiness and nature. The speech was already from long ago and she had difficulty finding the exact words. Westerners were from the former order, that of conflict, now a thing of the past. That, at least, she had remembered, even if the villagers were unaware of the reason for their disappearance and the disintegration of their societies.

All of a sudden, her friend’s gaze froze and her eyes filled with disgust. Mirha made out a blue glow at the base of her neck. She squinted reflexively. Her neighbor swayed and then fell onto the bowl which broke on the trail, spilling its precious liquid. Mirha cried.

She felt burning stings on her neck like needles penetrating her flesh. Her legs gave out subtly. During her fall, she saw the insect with metal reflections, enormous, black and sinister, floating above her.

Hell had come back.

Naakrit was gleeful. Standing on the cargo ramp of the T-J flying over the jungle, he observed the progress of the raid. No products should escape them. He was counting on around ten thousand captures during this first quarto-diem. The attack targeted around a hundred towns and mobilized more than six hundred drones, three hundred of which were charged with collection and transportation to Nairobi airport, along with one third of his troops. The mercenaries hadn’t been in such an operation for the past two octans.

The Primark ordered the pilot to go to an area outside of the field of vision of Jave, who was sitting on the bench.

Surprised and curious, the emissary got up and moved forward.

“You want to go down?”

Below them, the panicked humans tried to flee towards the tall grass and jungle, pursued by the robotic hunters and trackers. The beams from the sonic weapons touched their bodies, which collapsed like machines deprived of their energy source. The lights, similar to tiny blue diamonds suddenly exposed to full light, burst almost everywhere around them. The plain was covered by screams of terror.

The T-J made a tight turn and then slowed above a square farming zone bordered by plants with large leaves.

“It would be a shame to pass up such an opportunity,” the reptilian declared.

A moment later, he jumped from the ship, which remained in stationary flight. Jave hesitated. The Primark seemed to have been overcome by a sort of excitement stemming from euphoria, galvanized by the hunt. The Lynian had no desire to give himself over to such behavior. As the master of this planet, Naakrit held the right to life or death over all or almost all. This fact was accounted for in the contracts that allowed for his exclusive ownership of the holding. Whether he abused it or not wasn’t taken into account.

The emissary jumped in turn.

The impact of his feet on the path’s red ground raised a cloud of mineral dust. Jave closed his nasal vents. He was wearing a light suit equipped with his reactive protection and an agrav belt, but not his helmet. His eyes contracted until becoming vertical slits. Everywhere he looked, he didn’t see any signs of the Primark. However, deep tracks in the ground indicated that he had gone into the farming area.

The Lynian chose to go up the sloping field. When he got to the corner, he stopped and turned to view the panorama. On the plain, swarms of robot devices were behaving like a living being made up of dozens of limbs. Together, they formed the equivalent of a perfectly coordinated organism. The succession of stings and synchronized movements level with the trees reminded him of a dance. A macabre dance punctuated by wails and dry thuds accompanied by the bursting of blue sparks. The yells were becoming less and less as the captures became more and more.

A nearby “tacktack” clicked in the air. He turned in the direction of the source. A human weapon, he guessed. Even though he had never seen them in action, the tera-servers held a ton of information on their weapons technologies. They were not even close to equaling and even less so surpassing those of the mercenaries, but as his mentor had told him one quarto-diem,
One simple blade is just as sure at killing as a beam of particles if you know how to aim.

Jave didn’t feel like he was in danger, even when the man emerged from the underbrush, waving his gear equipped with a grip and a long, narrow tube. His face expressed surprise, which was soon overcome by a look that the Lynian interpreted as a mix of fear and disgust. He pointed his large brown eyes as well as the barrel of his gun at the emissary, who was a good four heads taller than him. He took two steps back. Jave didn’t move, not particularly impressed by the intrusion. He wasn’t a soldier, to judge by the rags he wore and his bare feet. To put it simply, a villager had taken up weapons to defend his own life.

“
Wewe ni pepo!
” he screeched, sporting a look of terror, his hand trembling.

The translator proposed three possible phrases. All of them were related to a system of beliefs. What could he respond to that? Yes, from his point of view, he was probably a demon to a certain extent. He didn’t have the luxury of telling him that in reality, he was mistaken. A glow appeared at the base of the human’s neck and he crumpled one instant afterwards. The drone that had just fired raced by. Jave observed the machine until it disappeared behind the hill. Transporters were already at work on the battlefield. They moved along in a line at a low altitude, with their open metallic insides swallowing the bodies piled up by the robo-loaders.

Jave went into the farming area. He spread the bamboo shoots and the shrubs, which cropped up between the tall trees with large leaves. A deep roar caught his attention. He turned around in the middle of a path.

The stout animal faced him. The two protrusions above its nose made it look like much more of a threat than the human with whom he had just crossed paths. Jave put his hands on his vibroblade. As for wild fauna, the Collective’s explorers stuck to one universal rule: never turn your back on an unknown species. The emissary waited, stoutly planted on his legs. The tera-servers informed him that it was a white rhinoceros, a species on the edge of extinction, a situation that was well known to him. He stayed still and contented himself with studying the animal. The large horn was the focus of all attention as well as the humans’ greed for products, according to the information. Indisputably, it functioned as a weapon. As for its therapeutic and aphrodisiac properties, the Collective estimated that if buyers existed, the merchandise had value. It’s nature and the superstitions associated with its use weren’t important.

The charge was sudden and rapid. It was incredible, Jave realized, the speed of the movement of such a massive creature. He stared at the quadruped that was in the process of driving at him. Its thick skin resembled a sort of armor. Its feet, which were similar to pillars, crushed the vegetation, leaving behind leaf-shaped tracks. The animal maintained its horn at an angle to skewer its adversary and to lift him up with a movement of its head.