George Martin - Suicide Kings

“Never. But how is she even alive if she’s really in that pit?”

And how long will she stay alive? That was a question Michelle hadn’t wanted to ask, even in her own thoughts.

“Time to tear the roof off the temple,” she announced. “Has the square been cleared?”

“The police have it cordoned off.”

“Then let’s do it.”

“About fucking time.” Hoodoo Mama hopped up, grinning. “One roof, coming the fuck off.”

Michelle smiled at Joey, but only for a second. The guilt of what they’d done still ate at her.

Then there was a loud snapping noise, like cheap firecrackers. The midnight sky appeared above her. She could see the blue-white light of the stars. There were zombies walking across the joists, some carrying plywood, others grabbing chunks of the roof and pulling it off.

Michelle told Ink and Hoodoo Mama to leave. Juliet started crying. “ Bbbbbut, I want to be with you.” Her nose was red.

Michelle wished she had a Kleenex to dry her tears. At the same time, she felt irritated with Juliet. There were worse things happening in the world.

“And I wish I had a pony,” Michelle said. “But I don’t know how this is going to work. I just want you safe when I start.”

Joey put her arm around Juliet. “C’mon, Ink. Bubbles is a dick-flavored pain-in-the-ass, but she’s right about being careful. She swallowed a nuke, remember?”

“You do know I didn’t actually eat that nuke, right?”

Juliet gave Michelle a kiss on her forehead. “I love you,” she whispered. A wave of stomach-churning guilt poured through Michelle as they left.

She waited until she couldn’t hear them anymore. Then she waited longer. Above her she saw a sparrow fly down and perch on one of the joists.

“Joey, get that goddamn zombie bird off my temple,” Michelle said. The sparrow gave a nasty squeak, then flew off. Some of its moldy feathers drifted down to her.

It was time to get down to it.

For a moment, she was terrified, but then the thought of bubbling again zinged through her body. It wasn’t as good as sex, but it was damn close. Michelle flexed the fingers of her hand, and then opened them to the sky. One first, she thought. See how it goes.

Liquid heat slid down her arm into her palm. She watched as the bubble grew. It wavered slightly, and she let it go. It drifted up and bounced against the wooden beams, then rose toward the pale stars.

Wednesday,

December 2

President’s Hotel

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Jerusha woke in her room at the President’s Hotel at what the room clock insisted was 5:30 a.m., but to her body felt more like the middle of the night. She could hear Wally snoring in the adjoining room like a venting steam locomotive. She lay there for several minutes trying to will herself back to sleep, but her mind was racing with all that she needed to do, with worry about the plane flight with Finch, with even more worry about how they’d cross Lake Tanganyika and what might be waiting for them in the PPA.

Judging by Wally’s snoring, he was worrying about nothing at all. She envied him that.

Jerusha threw aside the covers. Twenty minutes later, she was showered and dressed and striding out the lobby doors onto the embassy campus. The American Embassy compound was a dreary fortress: a series of rectilinear concrete buildings set behind a high security wall. To Jerusha it looked more like a prison than anything else. The ambassador had told them at dinner that this was the third embassy site they’d had in Dar es Salaam, that the campus sat on the site of what had been called the Old Drive-In Cinema, and droned on how the land gave them so much more room to expand at need.

The desk clerk had told her where the baobab tree was on the grounds; she headed in that direction. Rain had soaked the grounds overnight, and the grass was steaming as the day’s heat rose, but for the moment, the air was cool enough that the humidity wasn’t a bother.

She found the baobab easily. Up close, the tree was even more impressive than the one she’d glimpsed on the street, and even stranger. The trunk was massive-it would have taken a dozen people holding outstretched arms to encircle it. The trunk was furrowed and dented, branching above into nearly leafless main branches that diverged quickly into a tangled maze of branches and twigs. Birds were nesting in the hollows of the tree: several burst up into the air as she stroked the trunk. She saw a lizard sliding quickly around the trunk away from her, and dark squirrels chattered angrily at her from above.

There were pods hanging down from some of the branches, and a few on the ground at Jerusha’s feet. She picked one up: a gourd roughly the size and shape of a football, the outside covering leathery and hard. It was heavy in her hands.

“Monkey fruit,” someone said, and Jerusha turned to see a man in the uniform of the embassy staff stepping out of an electric golf cart a few yards away, the back stuffed not with clubs but with spades and rakes and trimmers. “That’s what some people call it.” His voice was heavily accented with Kiswahili or one of the other local languages, a lilt that Jerusha found charming. “Baobab fruit is very nourishing. The animals love to eat it: monkeys, baboons, elephants, even antelopes. They break open the gourds to eat the fruit and the seeds are discarded or end up in their droppings, and so new baobabs come up.”

“The seeds are in here?” Jerusha hefted the gourd.

The man nodded. His skin was the color of thick cocoa, but the black hair was liberally salted with grey. “You’re the one grows plants?” he asked.

It was Jerusha’s turn to nod. “My name’s Jerusha Carter,” she said. “Sometimes they call me Gardener.”

“I’m Ibada. I keep the grounds for the embassy. Toss that here.” He held out his hand, and Jerusha underhanded the gourd to him. He slid a long knife from a sheath in his belt and pressed the heavy blade into the gourd, splitting it open. Jerusha could see pulpy fruit inside, laced with large seeds. “The baobab is the Tree of Life in Swahili,” he said as he cut the fruit open. “That one there, it’s an old, old one. It’s been growing since before the birth of your Christ.”

Jerusha looked at the tree again, trying to imagine all that history that had passed since it first sprouted. It was impossible. “They look so… strange.”

“One tale says that the gods gave each of the animals a seed to plant. Poor baobab was the last, and it was given to the stupid jackal, who planted the seed upside down so that the roots came out on top.” He laughed, and Jerusha had to laugh with him. He was pulling seeds from the pulp, gathering them into one large palm. “Tree of life, remember? You’ll find the leaves used as a vegetable. Kuka, they’re called-my mother used to make kuka soup. Here, look…”

He handed one of the halves of the gourd to Jerusha and poked a finger into the pulp. “You know cream of tartar? That originally came from this fruit. Down in the market, you can buy dried pulp covered with sugar; it’s called bungha. Or you can mix it with milk or porridge. Very versatile.” He took the gourd from her again, took her hands, and poured a dozen of the seeds into her cupped palms. “Those-grind them down and you can use them to thicken soup, or roast them, or grind them to get oil. But I think you will use them for growing, eh?” He smiled at her.

“Thank you, Ibada,” she said. The seeds were cool and wet, and she could feel the great trees inside them, waiting to spring forth. “Later,” she whispered to them. She opened a pouch of her seed belt and let them fall inside. The pouch felt heavy and comforting.

“This is why you came to the tree, no?” he asked. “You could feel the call of the Great Mother in her?”