Ian McDonald - Chaga

‘What about him?’ the skateboard kid asked. He wanted to shoot Faraway. He wanted to shoot him very much. He wanted to blow his head up like an exploded melon, spraying red flesh and black seeds of wisdom.

‘Leave him,’ the leather coat said. ‘He is tribe. We go. Now.’

The skateboard kid flipped up his board, caught it with one hand and jumped into the back of the car beside Gaby. The Plymouth smoked away from the shattered pickni. There was blood, glass, and shotgun cartridges all over City Hall Way, and Faraway standing in the middle of them in his bright orange colour-of-the-day jacket. The Lambretta picked up its passenger and wove off through the traffic.

The man with the bald head and the drooping moustache in the leather coat turned in his seat to Gaby.

‘Good morning Ms McAslan. Sheriff Haran’s regards, and he wishes you to come with us discuss your account.’

They took her up the front stairs. At some time a bullet had killed one of the neon waterfalls flanking the door. The bouncer did not stand outside any more, but scrutinized the street from a metal slit.

The balcony bar smelled of sweat, stale cigarettes and the high-end tang that remains when the characteristic chemicals of expensive perfumes neutralize each other. The main ceiling lights were on. You could see the cigarette burns on the carpet. Down in the white tiled pit, rows of shower heads sprayed steaming water over twenty naked men languidly soaping each other. Gaby wondered, as she always had, where the Cascade Club bought its water.

Haran was on his throne in his glass-floored office at the top of the stairs marked ‘private’ in two languages. Leathercoat and the Skateboard Kid sat Gaby in a chair facing him and stood by the door. They did not think she might try to escape. They just wanted to look scary. Haran had one of them give her a moist wipe to clean the blood and brain off her face. When her condition no longer nauseated him, he spoke.

‘I’m disappointed. Really. I have to hear from others that you are back in my country. Gaby, I would have thought you would have called on your old friend and ally before now.’

‘You killed those Black Simbas. You fucking murdered them. They never stood a chance.’

Haran sat back in his ebony throne and contemplated the woman before him.

‘We are at war, Gaby. You yourself have realized this, by choosing sides.’

Gaby turned in her chair to accuse the Skateboard Kid.

‘He wanted to shoot Faraway. He wanted to blow his fucking head apart.’

‘He is tribe,’ Leathercoat said. ‘I would not let him do it.’

‘But it was exceedingly unmannerly of him,’ Haran said. ‘My own tribal brother. Flesh of my flesh. Would you like me to have him killed, by means of apology?’

He would, she knew. It would be a cheap price for Gaby’s moral anguish.

‘I don’t want any more killing. I’m sick of killing and dying, do you understand? I’m sick of it always being the easy option.’

‘There, Simeon,’ Haran said. ‘Now you owe the m’zungu your life.’

‘What do you want, Haran?’

‘Always to the point, Gaby. Very well. The posses are finished. The East African teleport is in tatters. The network of agents, operatives and enforcers has collapsed. There is no demand for the commodity I supply any more. Therefore, according to the laws of economics, I should relocate my industry to a place where materials and markets are plentiful.’

‘You want out.’

‘I speak to you without shame or guilt. I want out. I will get out.’

‘So you’re leaving Mombi to face the shit.’

‘Mombi thinks there is a place for the likes of us in the new Kenya. I have always lacked her patriotic fervour. Perhaps I lack her vision too. But what I know is that there is no place for Haran in this new nation. I will get out. You will get me out.’

‘You blow people away in the middle of City Hall Way on the long shot that I can somehow take you out as hand luggage? Sick joke, Haran.’

He rippled his fingers. Gaby could hear the joints cracking.

‘Excuse me if I do not laugh, Gaby. The news agencies have been getting their local people exit visas from the UN. I believe it should still be possible to make a late application directly to East Africa Command.’

‘If you know so much about it, then you’ll know it’s impossible without an affidavit from the station chief.’

‘Gaby, I have refrained from mentioning this so far, but I feel I have to remind you that you were forced to leave this country with your affairs unsettled. You will recall the considerable investment I put into opening the way for you to break the Unit 12 story; an investment for which I do not think it is unreasonable to expect a return.’

‘You’re calling in your marker.’

‘You owe me, Gaby. I anticipated there would be a problem with obtaining a new visa, so I will settle for a visa that has already been issued to someone else.’

‘Now you are joking.’

‘Shall I show you how my sense of humour works? I believe I shall.’ Haran nodded to Leathercoat. He and the Skateboard Kid left the glass-floored room. They were gone some minutes. Haran sat unmoving, looking at Gaby over the tips of his touching fingers. If Gaby had had a cigarette, she would have stubbed it out in his eye socket. When she heard the enforcers’ feet on the stairs, they sounded heavy, burdened.

They came into the office with Missaluba, the Black Simba bodyguard, between them. They had stripped her down to panties and epoxied her to a large sheet of melamine. They leaned her up against the wall of the office. She struggled, but the adhesive bond was permanent. Her lips had been glued shut.

‘Remain in your seat, Gaby,’ Haran said. Leathercoat moved behind her chair to ensure her obedience. Haran opened a drawer and removed an object which he set on the top of the ebony desk. It was a heavy-duty staple gun. Gaby had seen her father use such to staple wire fences. It could drive a half-inch staple clean into a solid pine post.

‘Hurt her,’ Haran said.

The Skateboard Kid took the staple gun and went to the woman glued to the board. He pressed the muzzle of the gun to her left nipple. He pulled the trigger. The woman grunted and tried to thrash on the melamine board, but the glue held her immobile.

‘I will get out, Gaby. You will get me the visa.’

‘Oh Jesus. Oh fuck. Haran, I can’t give you anyone else’s visa, they’ve got photographs.’

‘Hurt her some more.’

The Skateboard Kid pierced the other nipple and put a staple into the palm of each hand. Gaby wailed as if the staples had been driven into her own meat.

‘Why will you not help this woman?’ Haran said. ‘Is it because she is black? Or is it that she is African, and her life is cheaper than a European’s? Or is it because she is a woman that has not had children? You must hate her very much to let her suffer such pain.’

She matters, Gaby thought, head bowed. But so do the people you are asking me to betray. All I have is a choice of evils, and I am too white, too European, too sterile in my womb, to be able to decide between them.

She looked at her feet and shook her head. Her hair fell around her face, a covering veil.

‘So. Hurt her a lot.’

Smiling, the Skateboard Kid put a neat row of staples, two centimetres apart, into the woman’s body from forehead to pubic bone. Gaby surged from her chair, roaring and raving. Leathercoat pushed her back. The Skateboard Kid was meticulous in his work. When the Black Simba girl tore the skin off her lips in a cry of agony he stopped what he was doing to staple them together. Gaby threw every name and curse at him but the Skateboard Kid kept stapling, kept smiling. He had a hard-on. When he finished the vertical line, he started on her breasts. He swore when the gun ran out of staples after the first breast and he had to reload. The Black Simba girl had stopped screaming, She hung silently from the melamine board, insane with pain.