After a moment, he said, “Let’s wait a few minutes.”
I pulled DNA with me. “Come on. That’s why we came here and you know it.”
Reluctantly, he yielded to my pulling. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
I felt a tingle in my left arm and I let go of DNA to rub it. It seemed every body part that I had chosen was achy and warm. My legs, my arm, my bowels, there was even an ache at the top of my head where the implants were. It didn’t make sense. I was alive because of logical science. I’d only been able to support myself back in Abuja and Owerri as a mechanic because of logical science. Up to this point, everything, wild as it was, made sense because it was all really just logical science. But now here I was in the middle of a sand storm looking at a tent with a warm fire burning in its bowels. None of what was happening right now in this moment was logical or scientific.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go meet this wizard and see what he has to tell us.”
CHAPTER 11
Baba Sola
When we reached the tent, DNA stopped so abruptly that I ran into his back. “What are you doing?” I snapped.
“Never met him,” he said. “But I’ve heard . . . stories. You’re a southerner. You don’t know.”
True. But I wanted to. If there had ever been a time in my life where I wanted to meet someone like this, it was now. “DNA, you should be dead.”
His eyes widened at me; my words had slapped him.
“You were there the day before yesterday, with all your best herdsman friends. You were in range. They shot and . . .” I licked my lips and had to push myself to be blunt. I felt dizzy before the words even came out of my mouth. “They shot and h-h-hacked your people dead. Except you. They didn’t even seem to see you. You said it yourself.”
“I’ve heard this man moves backwards in time or something,” DNA said.
“Then we don’t have to worry that much about him, do we?”
“Also heard that he’s a white man who lives outside of whiteness.”
I laughed. “Impossible.”
“I don’t know why they’d send me here.”
“Because you’re wanted, and maybe he can help.”
“They also say he’s the worst kind of sorcerer,” he whispered.
“Okay, I need to meet this guy,” I said, smiling. I lifted the brown tent flap and bent forward to enter. The flap was heavy and stiff like a tarp and it made a dull crackling sound as I pushed it aside. The moment I was inside, two things hit me: Stark stillness and silence. As if the chaos outside didn’t exist. As if we’d stepped into outer space. The quiet was so dense that I instinctively opened my jaw wide, trying to unpop my ears. No change. It smelled of a mixture of incense, smoke, and sweat and it was comfortably cool.
The interior of the tent looked vastly larger than its exterior, plenty of space to stand up straight and walk in before arriving at the large fire. It burned logs of wood stacked in a two-foot-high tower, and though it burned brightly, its flames didn’t scorch or even blacken the cloth above. And then there were the walls of the tent, they shuddered from the wind outside, yet somehow made not a sound and none of the air current entered this strange space.
He sat across from the fire watching us. He wore heavy black robes that covered every part of his body except his face and feet. I frowned. His feet were too close to the fire. “Ah, finally grew some balls, I see,” he said. He spoke English with an accent I could recognize. Maybe it was some form of American.
“I don’t have balls,” I said, before I could stop myself. I hated that phrase.
“Not you,” he said. He pointed at DNA. “Him. I don’t know what you have.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. There are times to bite back and times to hold your tongue. He nodded, resting an elbow on his bent knee. He motioned toward us. “Okay, o,” he said. “Good. Sit. Remove your masks. We will talk unhindered.”
I took my gel mask off with a snap, and it immediately shrunk to a palm-sized blob. I touched my face; the skin was soft and damp. We sat across from him, the fire between us. He was indeed a white man, Caucasian. His nose long and narrow, his lips thin, pink and smirking, his smooth head bald, his eyes some color that was not brown, the fire made it hard to tell exactly what color. His pale yet slightly sun-touched skin made him seem to glow in his black robes.
He could have been sixty or three hundred years old. However, it wasn’t his physical features that made me wonder if I should have left the tent flap shut. It was how close he sat to that fire. Even from where we sat, several feet back, it was hot. He was inches from it, his foot maybe two inches.
I could hear DNA whispering to himself beside me in Pulaar. Most likely praying. I chuckled to myself. There was no room or reason for prayer here. Whatever was going to happen to us now would happen, and probably with the permission of the gods.
“D-N-A the herdsman from nowhere,” he said grandly, looking at him. “And A-O the auto mechanic from Abuja.”
“You knew we were coming?” I asked.
He held up something that might have been a very ancient mobile phone. It was small and black, but thick. It looked like a piece of soap. He flipped it open, and its screen was barely a two inch square. “I get messages just like anyone else.” He giggled as he flipped it shut with a loud thock! “They’re coming for both of you, you know?” he said. He sat back, straightening his robes over his bent leg. He wiggled his toes with delight at the fire. He was a tall man, so his feet were large and spatulated. I noticed that they were dusty and his toenails were nicely manicured. So strange. “Ah, yes, I just figured I’d catch up with you two before the rest of Nigeria does.”
“Catch up with us? We came to you,” I said.
“AO,” DNA hissed. “Don’t . . .”
Baba Sola raised a hand. “Let her talk, let her talk, women need to talk. They are most useful when they talk. If we don’t hear them, the universe suffers.” He chuckled, and in that chuckle I knew, despite his words, he looked down his nose at women. He looked down his nose at everyone. “Yes, let this one talk. Yes, you found me. That’s exactly how it went. And the world will find both of you. But not until I am done taking a look and marking this moment. Marking this story.” He raised a hand and suddenly there was a small cigarette in it. No not a cigarette, a joint. He leaned forward and touched it to the fire and then he took a deep pull. He slowly exhaled and the smell filled the tent.
I glanced at DNA and his face was pinched. He clearly wanted to complain and knew he should not. “Are you going to share that?” I asked. DNA stared at me and I shrugged at him. “Bad luck to break the cypher, or so my grandmother said.”
“Your grandmother smoked this stuff?” DNA asked.