Nnedi Okorafor - Lagoon

The woman Adaora had named Ayodele came slowly down the stairs, Anthony and Agu a few steps behind her.

“Please. Sit down,” Adaora said.

Ayodele went straight to the computer and sat in the black leather chair. Anthony and Agu looked at each other and cautiously followed Ayodele into the room, afraid to get too close.

“Nice crib,” Anthony said.

“Yeah,” Agu said. “What is it your husband does, again?”

“He’s an accountant,” she said, as she rummaged around in her equipment drawer. “I am a professor at UNILAG. So we do OK.”

Agu nodded as he looked at some of the books in the cases.

When Ayodele touched the computer’s flat screen monitor with a graceful finger, the background picture (of a menacing dragon-like lionfish in a blue ocean) flickered the slightest bit. “You people have your own…” – she giggled, a creepy dove-like sound that raised the hairs on Adaora’s arms – “little inventions.”

“Yes,” Adaora said. “That’s a computer. Your, eh, people don’t have them?”

Ayodele laughed at this.

“They don’t need them,” Anthony muttered, as he tiredly rubbed a hand over his face and put his veil over his head.

Adaora set a clean slide beside her microscope. She glanced at Ayodele and hesitated. Every time she looked at her, there was a disorienting moment where she was not sure what she was seeing. It lasted no more than a half-second, but it was there. Then she was seeing Ayodele the “woman” again.

Adaora cleared her throat and pushed these observations, along with thoughts of what she’d seen in the water, from her mind. “Come here, Ayodele,” she said. “I… I’d like to take a skin sample.” As she handed Ayodele a Q-tip, Adaora visualized the size, shape and color of magnified cheek cells. It had always been like this. When she was afraid, nervous or uncomfortable, all she had to do was focus on the science to feel balanced again. It was no different now.

“You don’t believe I am what I said I am?” Ayodele asked, scrutinizing the Q-tip. She held it up and touched the soft, white, cottony bud.

“I… I do. But I… it’s important that I see for myself,” she said. And make sure I am seeing what I know I’m seeing and know what I know I know , she thought frantically. “Then we can get you something to eat. Do… do you eat?” She cringed at how silly she sounded.

“Eat?” Ayodele paused, seeming to think it over. “OK.”

Adaora took a Q-tip, opened her mouth and rubbed the tip on the inside of her cheek. “Swab the inside of your mouth like this,” she said.

As soon as Ayodele did so and handed the Q-tip to Adaora, Ayodele went to the fish tank and stood beside Anthony.

“I should be back in the club, chale ,” Anthony said, staring at a butterfly fish as it darted by. “I only went out for some fresh air. I had a headache.”

“Too much rhythm?” Ayodele asked.

He frowned, turning to look her in the eye. She smiled back, pleasantly. Always so pleasant.

“I know why the Elders like you,” she said.

Anthony held her gaze a bit longer, then turned back to the aquarium. “Can you change into one of those?” Anthony asked Ayodele, pointing at a red shrimp with white stripes.

“I can,” she said, pressing her face against the tank. “You know that.”

Anthony nodded. “You can change yourselves but you can change the fish, too, right?”

“Precisely,” Ayodele said. “We give them whatever they want.”

“Damn,” he said. Then he nodded with a small smile. “Respect.”

Adaora slipped the slide onto the microscope’s stage and took a look. It didn’t take long to see what she needed to see. She switched to the lens of the greatest magnification just to make sure. She chuckled, feeling an ache of excitement deep in her belly. “ Shit! ” she whispered.

Again she pushed away crowding memories of what she’d witnessed under the sea. How she’d been floating and breathing beneath the water in whatever contraption they’d built down there on the reef-like structure. How one of them had touched her arm and she watched as it became coated with lovely iridescent fish scales and her fingers webbed together. How the sensation of the changing felt more like rigorous vibration than pain. How they’d known that that was what she wanted so that she could horrify her husband. How easily they’d changed her back. She squeezed her eyes shut. Focus, focus, focus , she thought.

Agu sat on the stool beside her.

“So, what do you see?” Agu asked.

Adaora stepped aside. “You tell me,” she said, motioning to the microscope.

He put his eye to the lens.

“Do you know what cells normally look like?” Adaora asked.

“Yes. I remember from secondary school.”

As he looked, Adaora watched Ayodele gazing at the fish. She met Anthony’s eyes and she gave him a slight nod. He cocked his head and mouthed, “This is crazy.”

Adaora nodded in agreement. They both shifted their gazes to Ayodele, who was still looking at the fish.

“Well, Agu?” Adaora asked, after a minute. “What do you see?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, still looking.

“You… you see them, right?”

“Tiny balls? Moving around and sort of… vibrating?”

Adaora nodded vigorously. “Yes! That’s her skin… magnified.”

Agu’s battered face held a deeply uncertain expression. “But…”

“I don’t think it is cellular matter.” She leaned against the lab table.

Agu touched his bruised nose. “Does that mean…”

“One thousand times!” Adaora whispered loudly, ignoring Agu. “That’s how strong the magnification is. She’s made of tiny, tiny, tiny, metal-like balls. It’s got to be metal. Certain types of metal powders look like that at two hundred times. I think that’s why she can… change shape like that. You saw how… how… when we were…”

Agu wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah. I saw.”

“The balls aren’t fixed together as our cells are,” Adaora said.

Agu just looked at her blankly.

“I always wondered,” Adaora continued. “Much of the world’s most famous extraterrestrial material, mainly meteorites, has fallen right here. In Nigeria .” She was speaking more to herself now. “Last year a big one fell in Tarkwa Bay. I was testing the water for pollution when it happened…” She started looking around. “I should write all this down!” She grabbed a pen and paper and started jotting down notes, focusing on each word she wrote. Not wanting to focus on Agu. If she focused on him, her world would fall apart. She could feel him looking at her. She took a deep breath, fighting down tears as she thought about the fight with her husband. “So… what happened to your face?” she asked.

“It was punched.”

“I see that, but by who?”

“By my ahoa ,” he said. When Adaora looked at him questioningly, he said, “My ahoa … my comrades, my fellow soldiers.” He sucked his teeth. “Don’t act like you didn’t listen in during my phone call in the car.”

She had, all of them had. Agu had used her phone to call his parents in the small town of Arondizuogu. He’d told them to leave their home immediately and hide with relatives because hired thugs were going to descend on them. “Tell Kelechi and his wife, too. Leave the yams! You can grow those back but you cannot grow your life back, o!”

Adaora had felt embarrassed and sorry for Agu when he handed back her phone. And for minutes, no one in the car said a word, not even Ayodele.

“But what did you do?” Adaora asked now. “Why are they coming after your family?”

Agu looked at her with his fully open eye and squinted with his swollen right one. “I tried to stop one of my own ahoa from raping a woman.” He paused, a disgusted look on his face as he remembered. “We’d pulled her over on the Lagos–Benin Expressway. This fine woman; she was drunk. Lance Corporal Benson, my superior, he got out of hand with her. I… I punched him in the gut.” He paused, frowning. Then he looked into Adaora’s eyes. “He went flying like a sack of feathers!”