The Book of Phoenix (14 page)

“WaZoBia” means “come, come, come” in the three most widely spoken Nigerian languages. Yoruba, Hausa, and Ibo.
Wa
in Yoruba means “come,”
Zo
in Hausa means “come,” and
Bia
in Igbo means “come.” The word “come” is an invitation of togetherness, and represents unity and diversity in community. Phoenix, WaZoBia was a radical student group bent on challenging the ever-present and meddling oil companies and corrupt military Nigerian government. No campus cults for me. I wanted to join a group that was about more than
wahala,
petty trouble
.
I really
did
want to change Nigeria.

At some point, WaZoBia decided to overthrow the government. Maybe it was after the fuel riots. How can you be one of the world's last leading producers of crude oil, and yet still have a shortage of kerosene and vehicle fuel? In Nigeria, we use solar generators but solar powered cars are rare, and it's next to impossible to find a place to recharge an electric car, especially outside of Lagos and Abuja. Hybrid vehicles are still quite popular, some even still use fuel-powered cars. So fuel is still in demand there.

But no, no, I remember now, it wasn't the riots that convinced us that it was time to overthrow the government. It was the introduction of the Anansi Droids 419. The Anansi Droids were, how do I explain them? They were digital android killer soldiers! They were the size of dogs and looked like shiny silver spiders. They were robot spiders. The Nigerian government's engineers created the prototype. Can you imagine? We came up with these things ourselves FOR ourselves. We're so colonized that we build our own shackles. Some young engineer by the name of Obinna Ukamaka came up with the idea after reading a science fiction story about robot spiders guarding the pipelines of the Niger Delta. Life imitated art, except this particular story was actually
critiquing
the government not giving them a blueprint. The author must be rolling in her grave.

Chevron, Shell and a few other oil companies helped fund the project. The purpose of these machines was to prevent pipeline bunkering by guarding them . . . by any means necessary. Though the machines were supposedly artificially intelligent, they killed senselessly. If you so much as touched a pipeline, they came running and tore you apart. These pipelines ran right through the backyards of villages. They ran alongside roads, past schools. Within the first month, hundreds of people were killed.

None of us in WaZoBia could live under a government that would sell out its people so thoroughly, so brutally. We were strongly united in this understanding. We'd grown up with technology. And everyone knows that after the prototype is put to use successfully, they upgrade and then they upgrade that next generation and so on. The Anansi Droids were a slippery slope, especially with Nigeria possessing a still sought after resource.

The daughter of Nigeria's Vice President was a member of WaZoBia. Three of us could build bombs. Four of us had fathers high up in the military, five of us had been area boys before entering the university and had only recently shrugged off bad habits, one of us was a mistress of the Nigerian president himself, and one of us could walk through wooden doors.

Our plan was perfect. We had guns. We could get in. And none of us was afraid to kill or die. We were idealists. We'd all seen our parents, families, ourselves, suffer. And we knew we were capable. But there must have been an informer. That is the only way to explain what happened the night before we were to put our plan into action.

We'd gathered at Rose de Red's house. She was the leader. She could shoot a gun like her soldier father, and she could shout like her Minister of Communications mother. She had a small apartment in the capital of Abuja close to Aso Villa, the office and residence of the president. We'd all travelled there, some by air, others by car or bus. None of our parents knew where we were. They all thought we were at the University of Lagos preparing for exams.

We sat in that room on the 4th floor with white walls and expensive leather furniture. Rose de Red came from an oil rich family. She knew so much. We were all accounted for. Everyone in WaZoBia. We were smiling, young, excited. Right outside the window you could see the Aso Villa. It was a warm night. Our weapons were ready. WaZoBia's most charismatic member, Success T, was getting everyone excited before Rose de Red spoke by shouting, “Victoria, Victoria, Victoria acerta to the great of the great Nigerian students, both home and abroad . . .”

And that's when the door banged open and masked men in black suits burst in with AK-47s. Without hesitation, they opened fire. I was sitting in a chair near the balcony window right in front of Success T. The lights stayed on so I saw it all.

Success T's chest exploded. Rose de Red's left eye popped as a bullet smashed through it. WaZoBia members tried to run, but there were too many men in black with guns. The room that moments ago had been immaculate and full of optimism now smelled tangy with gunpowder, blood, urine, and was full of death. The window behind me shattered. And through it all I just stood there. Right before the meeting, in my hotel room, I'd taken a shower and the soap dried my skin. It was itchy, and I realized that I'd forgotten to bring lotion. So I'd used some of my special shea butter. I'd brought it for the next day, when we planned to storm the capital.

But I don't think I'd have been shot even if I
hadn't
put the shea butter on. They didn't want to kill me. How else can I explain the people who grabbed me, put a sack over my head, and dragged me out of there? How can I explain being cuffed, blindfolded and shoved onto a plane by men and women with badges on their chests of a hand grasping lightning? How else can I explain why they took me across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States without a passport and drove me straight to Tower 7? Was that an accident?

The Big Eye agreed to serve as the strong arm of the United States and Nigerian governments and the invested oil companies who wanted to prevent a coup d'état for their own various greedy reasons. And the Big Eye got to grab the engineering student they'd heard could walk through wood. They killed two birds with one stone.

Who are the Big Eye? Are they a secret part of the American government or a powerful private corporation? Is there a difference? To me, it doesn't matter. It's the same ends. So while they did what they did to me over the years in Tower 7, fusing and altering my body and forcing me to show them how to use my father's juju, Nigeria remains under the latest crippling military rule as oil companies suck the last of its black blood.

I knew I could escape them once they succeeded in enhancing my ability to the point where I could walk through all matter. I only learned that they'd coated all the outer walls with their “just in case Mmuo escapes” substance when I ran face first into the wall and lost consciousness. The only way I escaped was because I came to in time to sink to the room below.
I was trapped in Tower 7 until
you
got me out, Phoenix. I've never been able to properly thank you for this, dear.

Come back to us. We need you
.

I came back.

Mind.

Wings.

And other flesh.

Under the blue sky. In the city.

This time it is different. I will be different. I am different. I was different. You must know that by now. You've watched me, heard me. I speak my life into existence with each expressed breath I take. I tell you a story within which are more stories. Universes within universes. We are all spinning like small suns. I am like my own sun.

I could feel my lips. “Praise Ani,” I breathed, for Mmuo's story was on the tip of my mind when I finally found I could speak. Mmuo laughed loudly. I blinked as I looked at him. It was the first time I'd ever seen him wearing clothes. He wore white pants, leather sandals, and a beaded necklace. This was a lot for a man who never wore clothes at all. He looked different.

“What is Ani?” Saeed asked, frowning, as he grasped my hand. He must have wondered if I'd lost my mind.

“She's the goddess of the land,” Mmuo said. “I spoke of her to Phoenix while she was recovering. I guess Phoenix heard me.” He looked at me knowingly. “Good.”

“She's the sister of the Author of All Things,” I said to Saeed. Then I smiled. I was weak but I felt so good. The air was fresh and I inhaled it deeply.

Saeed helped me up. My muscles worked and my skin prickled, absorbing the sunshine. Mmuo averted his eyes from my nakedness. Saeed didn't. His eyes swept from my body to my wings. “When they made you,” he whispered. “Something good was touching their minds.”

I smiled, basking in his gaze.

“When they made you, planets must have aligned,” he said. “When they made you, they made one of a kind.”

Saeed, always the artist. Maybe he'd draw me next. I looked up, through the trees, at the sun. I shut my eyes and was happy. Absolutely, completely happy.

Saeed gave me a small jar of yellow raw shea butter. “Thank you,” I whispered. I coated my skin with it, the nutty smell reminding me simultaneously of my happier days in Tower 7 and my happiest days in Wulugu, Ghana. The dress Saeed gave me was yellow and the back was open for my wings. It wasn't heat resistant. It fit perfectly. Then he handed me the black burka. I looked at it, perturbed, as I stood tall in my dress. Then I looked back at the sun, and then back at it. Thick, black, rough. I put it on. I was the veiled hunchback, again. This time on a different continent. But I had plans.
We
had plans. The first was to get out of there before the Big Eye spotted us.

Mmuo reluctantly shrugged a t-shirt over his lean muscular chest. “We leave these walls and enter barbarism,” he said.

 • • • 

It was broad daylight and I could see the tall tall buildings clearly. We had to walk several blocks to get to Mmuo's car and as we walked, I held Saeed's hand and gazed up. The palm, iroko, and ebony trees that grew between the buildings reminded me of Ghana. In Ghana, men would climb the palm trees to tap palm wine. Here, they pruned the palm trees until only the top had the bushy leaves. I could never see this from the top of Tower 7, and when I was running I didn't care. Now, I had to smile. The trees looked naked.

Beyond the trees loomed the tallest human-made structures I'd ever seen, aside from The Backbone. At first, I clung to Saeed and listened hard for the sound of walls crumbling and buckling. I'd seen Tower 7 and the Axis fall. It was more than easy for me to imagine these ones doing the same. When I realized the appearance of the buildings falling was just an illusion created by the sheer height of them, I began to relax and enjoy their enormity.

The buildings flashed and chattered even in the daylight with commercials, TV shows, the latest news. One building was covered with a giant screen that only showed a little girl smiling and smiling. As we passed it, the girl puckered her lips. People around us exclaimed and started moving quicker. Some laughed, two women yelped and started running, covering their heads with their briefcases. I found out why moments later when a spray of mist burst from the mouth, dampening everyone. We were right in the middle of it all.

Mmuo loudly sucked his teeth. “These people dey craze,” he muttered. “Waste of solar power.”

The mist felt wonderful in the heat. It blew beneath my burka and dress, cooling my entire body. I giggled, delighted. It was all so silly. It was nice to see a lighter side of the city for once.

The sidewalks were packed with people coming and going, Asians, Africans, blended, Hispanics, Muslims, Hassidic Jews, Hindus, suited businessmen, a blind woman carrying a very loud navigation companion. Americans and visitors. All kinds of people who unknowingly accepted the existence of the towers. Who reaped the fruits of the tower's callous labor. Few of them looked twice at me.

They talked on their portables. They drove in solar and hybrid vehicles. They sat in office buildings draped with eco-clean vines. I wondered how many of these people were “mild speciMen,” speciMen who turned out too normal to work with; these people were released and begrudgingly accepted and integrated into American society. And who in amongst these people was a “quiet clone”, always hiding his or her belly-button-less waist? Who had a cybernetic limb that had replaced one damaged by an accident or by a birth defect?

“It's going to be a tight fit,” Saeed said when we got to Mmuo's car.

I turned to the side, squeezing in. My second time in a car was an even tighter fit than my first time, when I'd gotten into Sarah's car in Ghana and fled my soon to explode home. My wings were bent in such an excruciatingly awkward position that I hissed with pain. The seats were not made for a Phoenix. But it was the only way to get away from the area without the Big Eye seeing me. I decided this would be the last time I got in a car. It didn't turn out to be true, but the sentiment certainly was.

Mmuo's balcony was wide,
facing downtown. The Backbone was in clear view. I wondered if Mmuo had gotten this apartment with me in mind. He'd put a lawn chair out here but I pushed it aside, preferring to sit on the floor. I pulled my knees close to my chest and shut my eyes as the breeze cooled my face. Mmuo's apartment was on the twenty-first floor, and though the air smelled like exhaust and the mosquitoes still hung around, at least I was high up. These days, I was most comfortable when I was high up. I sighed and relaxed my shoulders and wings as I let it all crash down on me. I was here. With friends. I was alive. I was free.

“Phoenix.”

I wiped the tears from my face as I looked up at Saeed. Then I looked away. He sat down beside me and for a moment we were quiet, looking at the world before us. The apartment was in the city but far enough away from the busiest part to have more trees than tall buildings. A tall palm tree grew so close to the apartment building that I could reach out and touch its top leaves.

“What are you thinking about?” he finally asked.

I looked him square in the eye. “I was thinking about apples,” I said, feeling a sudden flash of anger. My temples ached, and I shut my eyes again. “I was thinking about how they taste.”

Saeed muttered something in Arabic.

“I will learn Arabic one day,” I said. “Just so you can't do that anymore.”

“I said that you don't know me,” he said, looking annoyed. “You're too young to understand a man like me. You're only three years on this earth.”

“I've died,” I said. “Three times. Have you?” I twitched my wings in annoyance.

He looked away and sighed. “Phoenix, you really don't understand.”

I felt the heat in the middle of my forehead first. Then, in an instant, it had reached the tips of my toes, fingers and wings. Saeed frowned at me but he didn't move away.
Good
, I thought.
Stay. I hope it burns.
A tear fell from my left eye, and I could feel the warm mist brush my eyebrows as the tear slowly evaporated.
What if I burn and take this entire building with me?
I mused.
Saeed, Mmuo, New York.
I fought back tears, shocked by the power and violence of my rage. “Why did you try to leave me?” I finally asked. “You saw the bad thing they were doing and then you just decided to subtract yourself as if you were Allah or Zeus? Who are you? What makes you . . .”

“Wake up Phoenix!” he snapped. “Think. What does your mind tell you about what happened? You can read all those books yet you still can't unravel the
truth
.” He muttered something in Arabic.

I wanted to shout. I wanted to scream. But those things have never come naturally to me. I was quiet. But my body felt hot. And in the darkness of the evening, there was a glow around my eyesight.

“Calm yourself,” he said, finally moving away. “People will see you.”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Behind my lids I saw a blazing sun slowly set. Then it was just the dark again; I was calm. I heard him move back to me. He took my hand and squeezed it. Then he brought it to his lips and kissed it. His lips were so cool and they felt good.

In my calmness, I realized something. I opened my eyes and looked into his. My heart was beating like crazy. Saeed's beard was bushy and a rich black. His eyes were clear and dark. He had a strong nose. His face reminded me of the imam in Ghana who'd built the mosque that looked like a sand castle, but Saeed was much younger, and there was nothing Muslim about Saeed.

“Tell me what they did,” I said.

“Ah, so you
do
have critical thinking skills,” he said quietly.

“Tell me.”

He pulled at his beard and rubbed his face. He nodded. “Ok,” he said. “Ok. Phoenix. Well, remember the lines? The lines on the floor?”

I nodded. Every speciMen deemed tame and trustworthy “walked the line,” a computerized line that would appear on the floor and lead you where you were supposed to go when there was no doctor or guard to lead the way. “Mine was yellow. Yours was red.”

“I hated that line,” he said. “I would have nightmares about it. I had nightmares about a lot of things there.” He pressed his lips tightly together.

“One day, I stepped off the line that was leading me to the lab,” he said. “They were so slow to respond. They were so used to us behaving. Only Mmuo had escaped them and even then, they saw that none of us followed his example. I was halfway across the floor, when they caught up with me. But by then, I'd seen their device, whatever it was. I still had the apple in my hand. I'd planned to paint it. But by then, I was squeezing it as I tried to cope with what I was seeing.

“Before that night, Mmuo and I had been conspiring. We had a plan of escape that was actually quite similar to yours. I cannot read but I've listened to many audio books. There is a verse in a poem that has always stuck with me. I didn't have to even try to memorize it. The poem was so powerful that it stuck to my brain the first time I heard it: ‘Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,' by a man named Yeats.

“The towers have changed
life
. Not just in the States but all over the world, I suspect. You know this more than me, but I sense it. All the cures, inventions and enhancements have changed so much. But the core of the tower's philosophy has always been rotten. And in due time, it will collapse on itself and everything will go down. Mmuo knew this, and I knew this. We were planning escape because we didn't want to be there when it happened, and we wanted to
make
it happen, if that makes sense.

“I was dying inside, Phoenix. They brought me here after living on the streets of Cairo. I had no family, just survival, primal powerful survival. Yet after only a few years in Tower 7, I was dying inside. They did things to me, they changed me, and I watched them do worse things to others. I'd come into that dining hall and see the changes with my own eyes. Then I met you, and I watched them do things to you.

“You came to me that first day. I had never seen anything like you. You do not know what you look like to others, Phoenix. No words can describe it. Yet, I knew you were doomed. There were female Big Eye who wanted me as their plaything but saw how much I felt for you, and they would tell me things, raw painful facts. They wanted to draw me away from you. The Big Eye women are cruel in ways you would not want to know. But the fact is, I knew what you were, Phoenix. Destined to burn. A weapon.

“Then I met Mmuo and once we got to know each other, he saw in me a partner in crime. I saw in him someone who had escaped. We fed off each other. He visited me often, but not too often. The Big Eye knew it but did not worry. Our time was close but not yet.”

My eyes stung.
How come he had never spoken of all this with me?

“Never,” he continued. “I would never have left you. I was waiting for the right
time
. Ask Mmuo.” He paused. “But seeing that device, all that death, death from I don't know when, I forgot all that. Phoenix, it showed a time and place where mounds and mounds of Africans were dead! What were they doing? When was . . . ?”

“I didn't see Africans,” I said, frowning. “I saw Caucasians.”

He stared at me for a long moment, then shrugged. “Genocide is genocide. Maybe you saw them looking through a different time and place.”

I nodded, wanting him to continue.

“When I saw that machine, I went mad,” he said. “I don't remember much other than red. Red lines, many of them, clouding my vision. I still had the apple in my hand that I'd taken from you. That was red, too.” A blank look crossed Saeed's face. “I burst into that room and threw it at the Big Eye. I threw a scanner and anything else I could get my hands on to destroy that black machine. I don't remember if I caused any momentary break in transmission. I was just picking things up and throwing them. It took ten Big Eye to restrain me. They dragged me back to my room and beat the hell out of me. All through, I kept thinking about you. You didn't know anything and there was always so much hope in your eyes. I kept thinking about what would happen to that hope if I told you about what I'd seen or if I never returned to you.” He paused, frowning at me. “But now I see something new in your eyes. Now, when I look into them it's like looking into a mirror. Your innocence is gone.”

“Death will do that,” I wanted to say. But I did not.

“They left me for a few hours,” he continued. “I floated in and out of consciousness. Then they must have decided that I was damaged goods because later that night, they burst into my room and injected me with something that was supposed to kill me but didn't. That's how I woke up in the morgue in the US Virgin Islands in Tower 4. There was a tag on my finger that said ‘Dismember. Organs will self-preserve. Use for transplant'. I was more valuable to them dead than alive.”

I waited for him to go on and tell me exactly what happened then but he said nothing. I was glad. I'd gone digging for answers and pulled up something naked, ugly, and upsetting. However, by the next day, I was still simmering.

“There is no ‘long time ago' for me,” I snapped. Saeed and I were sitting in Mmuo's car while Mmuo was inside, buying groceries. Saeed had been telling me about his other life, when he was “a homeless kid in Egypt,” and I just didn't want to hear any more.

I had no real reason to be irritated, but I was. I didn't want to hear his tale of torture, survival, and misery. I didn't want to hear about how his father had indentured him at the age of six to a successful but physically and verbally abusive pharmacist who wanted a child slave, not an apprentice. I didn't want to hear how his mother never spoke a word of protest as she watched the pharmacist drive away with him. I didn't want to hear about how Saeed ran away at the age of seven from the pharmacist the night the man beat him unconscious because his paranoid over-medicated wife didn't like the “conniving” way Saeed had looked at her. I didn't want to hear about how he lived for three years on a digital dumpsite making money by burning old computer parts and selling the exposed copper wiring.

Saeed stopped talking. He smiled. “People like you have always been.”

I frowned. I didn't understand what he meant. I didn't want to understand anything. Or anyone. I just wanted to be free of all the weight, free of my constant anger, free of being a fugitive, of Saeed's awful recent and distant past, of all our murky futures. At least for a little while.

However, I had to stay in the car. It was the closest to being in public that Mmuo felt I should be. After seeing the in-depth news stories that marked me as a dangerous, murderous speciMen that authorities were “close to securing,” I agreed with him. They gave me no name, but the lesser viewed stories showed images of my face from when I'd “brought down The Axis” building, and none of them referred to me with a pronoun other than “it.” Saeed insisted that the Big Eye were making sure every journalist “coordinated” in the image presented of me. A woman was not dangerous, so no need to panic. An African was a threat, so do not hesitate to kill her. A winged human being was an abomination, not angelic; so when it's over, forget her death quickly.

Still, my days in Ghana had taught me that I was no longer a creature who could be comfortable being indoors for long periods of time. I never knew whether this was because I was a winged creature now or because of some sort of fallout from my days in Tower 7. I banged my fist against the car door. A beeping sound came from the front seat and my door opened. The car thought I wanted to get out. It really was a “smart car.”

Saeed reached over the seat, leaned across me and shut the door. He looked into my eyes. I instinctively leaned back.

“They're looking for you, Phoenix.”

I scoffed. “They are looking for a non-human nonentity.”

“No, they are looking for
you
,” he said.

“They won't find me,” I said, looking away.

“Maybe, but you'll have to run,” he said. “Wherever you expose yourself, you'll have to flee from there.” He paused. “And we can't follow you, either.”

Everything in me clenched and the pain of it surprised me. My wings pushed my burka away and slapped the car ceiling. I gasped, regaining control. Saeed looked around as he quickly pulled my burka back over my wings. Tears squeezed from my eyes as I took a calming breath.

“Relax, Phoenix,” Saeed whispered. “Relax.”

I grimaced and sniveled, rubbing my temples. The pain.

He climbed over the seat and sat beside me cradling me with his arms. I leaned against him, shutting my eyes. I never saw darkness. Just red. Especially in the sunshine. I lifted a hand and slowly ran the back of it over Saeed's short beard. The roughness felt good against my skin. I turned my hand and stroked it with my fingertips.