Nalo Hopkinson: Midnight Robber

About a half-year later, Ione’s favourite parasol flew away from her in the garden, and Franklyn laughed to see her running after it. Just for that little piece of mako, Franklyn gave way to Jairam. Jairam was a dougla boy, Indian and Euro blood from Shipmate Shiva that had settled two continents away. Jairam’s mammy was descended from the longtime ago East Indians, the ones who had crossed the Kalpani, the Black Water on Earth to go and work their fingers to the bone as indentured labour in the Caribbean. Jairam was a pretty, pretty man with curly black hair and sweet, pouty lips. All the same though, he could never get a joke. Ione soon tired of his long, serious face, so Jairam lost his place to Quashee. By coincidence, it was about the same time that Antonio threw over a certain Shanti for a pretty piece of sweetness name Aïsha.

Now, Quashee was to hang around a little longer. He was the first one of this string of lovers to really sweet Ione: his skin was smooth, black and hot; just so cocoa-tea will warm your body on a cool morning. He managed to keep Ione entertained for a few years well. By then, Tan-Tan was seven, and she was so used to seeing Quashee round the place, she was calling him “uncle.” Nice arrangement for Ione, oui. Hard-working husband and a harder lover.

Things couldn’t go on so for good. Cockpit County is a small place, and you know how them back-a-wall, smalltown people stay. Eventually, Antonio came to find out about his wife and Quashee. Jealous Jairam whispered some badmouth something in his ear one day.

At first, Antonio didn’t believe, but all day long he kept seeing Quashee in his mind’s eye. That good-for-nothing grin. The long, lanky way he would lope after the ball on the soccer field that would have people sighing and fanning themselves for how pretty he was. If Ione was horning him in their own house Granny Nanny would have the images in her data banks, but no-one could override Nanny’s privacy protection. Nanny only chose to reveal information that she judged would infringe on public safety.

Like plenty people in Cockpit County, Quashee had a way to pass by the house in the evenings to pay his respects to Mayor Antonio and wife, Ione. Antonio had always felt say Quashee was really paying respects to their good red rum, but now he was wondering. Quashee and Ione? For true?

And that is how the story start.

“Is a argot of she operating language, seen?” Maka’s voice was muffled through the filter he wore over nose and mouth. He inspected the beaker on the stove, frowned at it.

“Nannysong? How you mean, ‘argot’? All this time me think say it is her operating language.” Antonio longed to take his own filter off, but Maka said the fumes could be harmful. He stayed close to the door, ready to run outside if it looked like the experiment was getting away from Maka. He touched the nearby wall of Maka’s house, still bemused at there being no eshu, at the way that runners chose to live inside dead material.

Maka smiled. Laugh lines ran deep grooves beside his mouth, making his leonine features even more arresting. With one foot he hooked a stool closer to his worktable. Looked at it approvingly. “Is my cousin make this, you know? Work the wood with she own two hands. First one she make that ain’t give nobody splinters.”

Labour. Back-break. Antonio grimaced at the memory of the calluses on Beata’s palms. “Me nah understand oonuh, but your way is your choice. Tell me about this creole then, nuh?”

Maka sat on his cousin’s stool. In their terrarium on the worktable, mice scurried around. “When Nanny get create, she come in like a newborn adult; all the intelligence there, but no knowledge. You follow me?”

“Hmm.”

“She had was to learn, she had was to come to consciousness. Them days there, the programmers and them had write she protocols in Eleggua, seen—the code them invent to write programmes to create artificial intelligence?”

“Yes, me know.” Old-time story. Antonio sipped at the rum he’d brought to share with the Obi-Bé’s son. He savoured its sweet burning at the back of his throat. Maka raised his own glass to him, threw back a swallow.

The liquid on the burner was bubbling. Maka consulted the notes on the table beside him, written on stained, wrinkled sheets of the headblind paper that Antonio found so wondrous. Code that Nanny couldn’t automatically read!

Maka turned down the heat, added another substance to the mix. “Well,” he continued, “something start to go wrong. It get to where the programmers would ask Nanny a question, and she would spew back mako blocks of pure gibberish. Them think say the quantum brain get corrupt. Them prepare to wipe it and start over.”

“Them kill Granny Nanny?” The thought was obscene.

“Nearly. But she save she own self. Is Marryshow she break through to first. You know he was a calypsonian, yes? Just trying a thing, he run the Nanny messages through a sound filter; tonal instead of text-based, understand? The day them was set to wipe she memory, Nanny start to sing to Marryshow. She brain didn’t spoil, it just get too complex for Eleggua to translate the concepts she was understanding no more; after Nanny was seeing things in all dimensions—how a simple four-dimensional programming code would continue to do she? So she had develop she own language.”

“Nannysong.”

“Nah. If you was to transpose nannycode to the tonal, humans couldn’t perceive more than one-tenth of the notes, seen? Them does happen at frequencies we can’t even map. Nanny create a version we could access with we own senses. Nannysong is only a hundred and twenty-seven tones, and she does only sing basic phrases to we; numbers and simple stock sentences and so.”

“Like the proverbs she used to sing to we in crêche.”

“Seen. Same way so.” Maka read in his notes again, took the beaker off the burner.

“So is what I hear allyou runners doing? When you turn off Nanny?”

“Not turn we turning she off. Not possible. We just know more nannysong than the rest of oonuh, we more fluent, seen? If you sing the right songs, so long as Nanny don’t see no harm to life nor limb, she will lock out all but she overruling protocols for a little space.”

“Rasscloth,” Antonio breathed in amazement.

Maka laughed. “Nice thing to know, eh? And we learning little more nannysong every day. We could ask she to do things nobody else could even think of.”

“And how come allyou runners know all this?”

“Is who you think we descend from? We was programmer clan.” Maka pulled the filter off his face, used a dropper to suck up some of the paste from the beaker.

“What, it ready?” asked Antonio. His heart started a pan jam beat. He stepped closer to the worktable. Took his own filter off.

“Me think so. If me understand the old knowledge right. If me follow the instructions right. Making casareep juice for pepperpot stew is one thing, but me ain’t know about this woorari. Me tell you straight, Compère, this herb science I teaching myself is a ancient skill for true.” He stuck a hand into the terrarium, pulled out a kicking mouse. He dropped it into the deep pan of a nearby scale, weighed it. Consulted his notes. Picked the mouse up again. Forced its muzzle open. Squeezed a measured drop of the woorari onto its tongue. The mouse struggled and worked its mouth, foam forming on its snout. Maka put it down on the table. It ran a short distance, then flopped to the ground and lay still. Maka inspected it. “Good. Still breathing.” He looked at Antonio and smiled.

Come Jour Ouvert morning, Tan-Tan was afraid to even self get out of bed. She had asked her mother the rules of the fight over and over till Ione got fed up and refused to repeat them any more. Tan-Tan knew the rules in her own head by now. As she opened her eyes she started to recite them like a mantra. Daddy would be all right.