Ian McDonald - Chaga

‘You are the best goddam cameraman I ever worked with,’ she yelled. ‘I will miss you like death.’

‘There is no death,’ Tembo yelled back. ‘Jesus has beaten it, ten nil. We will meet again, as surely.’

‘Thank you for saving us once, and then saving us again,’ Mrs Tembo said.

That is the way to think of it, Gaby thought. Twice-saved. That way your ordeal and the Black Simba kid’s death do not go for nothing.

Faraway hugged Mrs Tembo, who pretended to be scandalized, and the children, and then Tembo. He held his dear friend a long time, like a man does who knows he will never see this dear friend again.

‘It will be good in Zanzibar,’ he shouted. ‘It is like paradise down there in the spice island. Maybe not your paradise, but my paradise. Sun, sand, cool palms, cool beer, warm nights, hot hot big-breasted women who smell of cinnamon and cloves. Listen, I can hear them weeping for your great gift, Tembo.’

Tembo and his family gave their cards to the woman and they went up the ramp into the belly of the big plane and Gaby could not see them any more. She and Faraway stood back and waited for the plane to fill and the ramp close. They shut their ears to the astounding blast of Lotarev engines lighting up at once. Dostoinsuvo moved off its stand. Until now, Gaby had not been certain Tembo and his family were safe. She waved, knowing it was supremely unlikely she would be seen. The plane turned at the end of the runway, made its run and took off.

‘Ah,’ Faraway said, watching the smoke trails turn over the distant towers of Nairobi. He sounded like a man who has felt part of his body die.

‘You’ll see him again; you’re his Deputy Station Manager, for goodness sake.’

‘I will not see him again. I am not going to Zanzibar. I have been decided on this for a long time, Gaby. I told you that night at Tembo’s, when he and I tried to make an African out of you: when the time came, I would take my chances with the Chaga. I am not leaving. The Chaga is the future. It is Kenya as she should be. I want to be part of that. Tembo has children to fear for; he has made the right choice for him. But me, what kind of future could it be without the incomparable Faraway?’

‘You pick your moments, man.’

‘Some things there is never a good moment to say.’ He smiled. Gaby could not resist it. ‘Surely you know that the only reason I stayed so long is because I thought I would get the chance to fiki-fiki the woman of my dreams. So I go to the new world happy now, because how many men in this world have made the woman of their dreams howl like a jackal?’

‘You.’ She play-punched him.

‘Gaby, I know you do not love me. I do not need you to love me. I am happy, like I said. It does not hurt me that you still love Shepard – I have seen you try to hide the look on your face every time his name is mentioned. I heard you shout his name when the bomb went off on Jogoo Road. At least you had the good manners not to shout it when my bomb went off inside you. Listen, I am such a great guy, I will tell you where you can find him. He is at the Kenyatta Conference Centre. They are clearing out every last trace that UNECTA was ever there. Hurry. You may still catch him before he leaves for here.’

She found herself running

She found herself pounding through the incongruously deserted arrivals hall, a running woman with ten cleaners waltzing polishing machines over the mosaic floor.

She found herself struggling into her colour-of-the-day vest as she hooted her way through the evacuees outside the main gate. She hoped she had not killed anyone as she rammed the zebra-striped Landcruiser toward the open sunflower of the Kenyatta tower.

Two Polish Sokol utility helicopters flanked the entrance to the Centre. White UN trucks were scattered around them. A mobile crane was trying to lift the bronze UNECT Afrique emblem off its plinth. People bustled like city-building termites in and out of the doors with trolley-loads of documents and filing cabinets. The cordon of soldiers stopped Gaby half-way across the square.

‘Press,’ she said, waving her DF108 in the soldier’s face and pointing to her orange jacket. He politely barred her way. Incredible, that nations gave people like this licence to kill in their name. She emptied a golden stream of Krugerrands out of her purse into her hands. ‘All right. How much?’

Two did it.

She grabbed a civilian loader by the arm, swung her around, sent her armful of document folders spinning across the coloured tiles of the square.

‘Dr Shepard. Where is he?’

The woman frowned. Gaby left her to her scattered files and arrested a tall Sikh with a UNECTA badge pinned to his turban.

‘Dr Shepard. I have to find him.’

‘Fifteenth floor.’

This time, as on that first morning when she had stood awed in this cavernous foyer and felt she was a member of a great invisible communion, no one gave Gaby a second look. She pressed the elevator button, pressed it again, hit it three times as if that would make it come any faster, but all it did was go up and keep going up, so she took the stairs. After five flights she slumped against the window, gasping. The thought of Shepard finishing up there and pressing the elevator button to go down gave her strength for another five. Panting, heart smashing against her ribs, she leaned her forehead against the glass. She could see the imperceptibly curving event horizon of terminum across the northern suburbs. The pillars of the hatching towers, each as tall as the Kenyatta building, receded into the distance like the watch towers of some monstrous rampart. Like Jake before him, Faraway was bound for that. Did it have to take all the men she cared about? Tembo. She had done right by Tembo, in the end. Children made things different, difficult. She saw columns of smoke rise up across the city. Things burning down there. Killings. She thought about the vengeance the Black Simbas had visited on Haran and his posse. She had seen the smoke go up from the Cascade Club when they torched it, but she did not know what had happened to Haran. She hoped he was dead, and that Mombi had survived to make it across the line into the coloured country beyond.

She closed her eyes, willed her heart to slow it’s beat.

Shepard.

She kicked open the door to the fifteenth floor and fell through it.

‘God,’ she whispered, ‘I’m dying.’ She picked herself up and ran along the curving corridor, opening each door she came to and shouting ‘Shepard!’ into the room. Every room was the same; a pie-wedge of carpet, glass wall and abandoned tube steel office furniture.

‘Shepard!’

She could have missed him. She could have been round this corridor a dozen times. Where were all the people? The Sikh had said they were up here, clearing out fifteen. They had moved on. They had moved down. Elevator well. They might still moving stuff into the elevators. Check there. She did and saw the sliding doors close on an elevator-load of civilians laden with cardboard boxes. At the front. Right between the closing doors. Looking right at her.

‘Shepard!’

He recognized her. His eyes widened in surprise. He opened his mouth to speak. He started forward. And the doors sealed in front of him. Gaby wailed and hit the call button with the heel of her hand. The illuminated numbers above the door rapidly diminished, stopped abruptly at eight. Gaby rushed out of the elevator lobby back to the stairs. Fifteen. Fourteen. Easier to go down than up, but not much. There’s a lot of gravity in that central stairwell. Don’t look down between the handrails. Thirteen. Twelve. Turning on to eleven, she saw it out of the window and stopped dead.

The big bat-winged thing came in silent as a secret wish across the smoky skyline of Nairobi. It did not seem natural in the air; it seemed to fight and dodge the air currents, side-slipping and swooping and warping its leather wings. It flew by defiance, and thus Gaby knew, with fundamental certainty, that it was going to hit the tower. It was going to hit the tower two levels below her, on the ninth floor. She knew she could not make it. She stood on the eleventh floor landing and watched the thing swell to fill her vision. Bat wings obliterated the view. She cried out and covered her face. The thing hit the Kenyatta tower like an artillery shell. Gaby reeled toward the big drop at the centre of the stairwell as the building shuddered. She stared into the abyss and threw herself back. Clangings and distant crashings of falling objects rebounding from the stairwell walls came from beneath. Gaby ventured as close as she dared. She could hear a high-pressure hissing; water lines broken, or the doodlebug releasing its spores?