Грегори Бенфорд - Not One of Us - Stories of Aliens on Earth

I am the answer.

“You tell me you are the answer to every human need and question, but what does that mean? What is the answer to your answer?”

I am the answer, the silent, hanging cross said.

“That is no answer!” I screamed at the cross. “You do not even understand the questions, how can you be the answer? What power do you have? None. You can do nothing! They need me, not you. I am going to do what you can’t.”

I did not run from the chapel. You do not run from gods you no longer believe in. I walked, and took no notice of the people who stared at me.

The next morning, I went into Nairobi to get a job. To save money I went on foot. There were men everywhere, walking with friends, sitting by the roadside selling sheet metal charcoal burners or battery lamps, or making things from scrap metal and old tires, squatting together outside their huts with their hands draped over their knees. There must have been women, but they kept themselves hidden. I did not like the way the men worked me over with their eyes. They had shanty-town eyes, that see only what they can use in a thing. I must have appeared too poor to rob and too hungry to sexually harass, but I did not feel safe until the downtown towers rose around me and the vehicles on the streets were diesel-stained green and yellow buses and quick white UN cars.

I went first to the back door of one of the big tourist hotels.

“I can peel and clean and serve people,” I said to an undercook in dirty whites. “I work hard and I am honest. My father is a pastor.”

“You and ten million others,” the cook said. “Get out of here.”

Then I went to the CNN building. It was a big, bold idea. I slipped in behind a motorbike courier and went up to a good-looking Luo on the desk.

“I’m looking for work,” I said. “Any work, I can do anything. I can make chai, I can photocopy, I can do basic accounts. I speak good English and a little French. I’m a fast learner.”

“No work here today,” the Luo on the desk said. “Or any other day. Learn that, fast.”

I went to the Asian shops along Moi Avenue.

“Work?” the shopkeepers said. “We can’t even sell enough to keep ourselves, let alone some up-country refugee.”

I went to the wholesalers on Kimathi Street and the City Market and the stall traders and I got the same answer from each of them: no economy, no market, no work. I tried the street hawkers, selling liquidated stock from tarpaulins on the pavement, but their bad mouths and lewdness sickened me. I walked the five kilometers along Uhuru Highway to the UN East Africa Headquarters on Chiromo Road. The soldier on the gate would not even look at me. Cars and hummers he could see. His own people, he could not. After an hour I went away.

I took a wrong turn on the way back and ended up in a district I did not know, of dirty-looking two-story buildings that once held shops, now burned out or shuttered with heavy steel. Cables dipped across the street, loop upon loop upon loop, sagging and heavy. I could hear voices but see no one around. The voices came from an alley behind a row of shops. An entire district was crammed into this alley. Not even in St. John’s camp have I seen so many people in one place. The alley was solid with bodies, jammed together, moving like one thing, like a rain cloud. The noise was incredible. At the end of the alley I glimpsed a big black foreign car, very shiny, and a man standing on the roof. He was surrounded by reaching hands, as if they were worshipping him.

“What’s going on?” I shouted to whoever would hear. The crowd surged. I stood firm.

“Hiring,” a shaved-headed boy as thin as famine shouted back. He saw I was puzzled. “Watekni. Day jobs in data processing. The UN treats us like shit in our own country, but we’re good enough to do their tax returns.”

“Good money?”

“Money.” The crowd surged again, and made me part of it. A new car arrived behind me. The crowd turned like a flock of birds on the wing and pushed me toward the open doors. Big men with dark glasses got out and made a space around the watekni broker. He was a small Luhya in a long white jellaba and the uniform shades. He had a mean mouth. He fanned a fistful of paper slips. My hand went out by instinct and I found a slip in it. A single word was printed on it: Nimepata.

“Password of the day,” my thin friend said. “Gets you into the system.”

“Over there, over there,” one of the big men said, pointing to an old bus at the end of the alley. I ran to the bus. I could feel a hundred people on my heels. There was another big man at the bus door.

“What’re your languages?” the big man demanded.

“English and a bit of French,” I told him.

“You waste my fucking time, kid,” the man shouted. He tore the password slip from my hand, pushed me so hard, with two hands, I fell. I saw feet, crushing feet, and I rolled underneath the bus and out the other side. I did not stop running until I was out of the district of the watekni and into streets with people on them. I did not see if the famine-boy got a slip. I hope he did.

Singers wanted, said the sign by the flight of street stairs to an upper floor. So, my skills had no value in the information technology market. There were other markets. I climbed the stairs. They led to a room so dark I could not at first make out its dimensions. It smelled of beer, cigarettes, and poppers. I sensed a number of men.

“Your sign says you want singers,” I called into the dark.

“Come in then.” The man’s voice was low and dark, smoky, like an old hut. I ventured in. As my eyes grew used to the dark, I saw tables, chairs upturned on them, a bar, a raised stage area. I saw a number of dark figures at a table, and the glow of cigarettes.

“Let’s have you.”

“Where?”

“There.”

I got up on the stage. A light stabbed out and blinded me.

“Take your top off.”

I hesitated, then unbuttoned my blouse. I slipped it off, stood with my arms loosely folded over my breasts. I could not see the men, but I felt the shanty-eyes.

“You stand like a Christian child,” smoky voice said. “Let’s see the goods.”

I unfolded my arms. I stood in the silver light for what seemed like hours.

“Don’t you want to hear me sing?”

“Girl, you could sing like an angel, but if you don’t have the architecture…”

I picked up my blouse and rebuttoned it. It was much more shaming putting it on than taking it off. I climbed down off the stage. The men began to talk and laugh. As I reached the door, the dark voice called me.

“Can you do a message?”

“What do you want?”

“Run this down the street for me right quick.”

I saw fingers hold up a small glass vial. It glittered in the light from the open door.

“Down the street.”

“To the American Embassy.”

“I can find that.”

“That’s good. You give it to a man.”

“What man?”

“You tell the guard on the gate. He’ll know.”

“How will he know me?”

“Say you’re from Brother Dust.”

“And how much will Brother Dust pay me?”

The men laughed.

“Enough.”

“In my hand?”

“Only way to do business.”

“We have a deal.”

“Good girl. Hey.”

“What?”

“Don’t you want to know what it is?”