DNA lifted my chin to his face. “If it’ll kill you, or even hurt you, I don’t—”
“I’ll do it,” I said. I could do it. I knew that now. Up to this point, I’d used it in small ways. This was different, but I could do it.
DNA’s arms tightened on my shoulders. “AO, you don’t—”
“But I will,” I said. “Look, this happened. That happened. We’re happening. For what other reason?”
With his eyes, he pled with me, and I just shook my head and pulled away from him. “Let it be for a reason,” I said, stepping around DNA to Idris. “Get me a tablet.” I blew my nose hard into the handkerchief, and I felt a gout of blood fill it. I looked apologetically at Tasiri. He held up his hands and said, “You keep.” I laughed.
We returned to Force’s home because none of us had any devices, except DNA who had a cell phone. But this wasn’t a job for a small device. “I need something that can carry power.” It also gave me a chance to change out of my bloody clothes, take a nap, eat a large meal. DNA followed me around, looking worried. The shower was a small raised area. It sat above a container that collected the dirty water, strained, recycled, and piped it off to irrigate the fields. You weren’t allowed to use anything but raw black soap. I loved this soap, and the shower left me feeling fresh and clean. When I stepped out of the shower, DNA was standing right there holding a towel.
I stood naked before him. Let him see every demarcation, scar, nonhuman part of me. We had already made love and when we did, he’d insisted on touching every part of me, caressing and kissing every part of me that could feel. Let him see me now when he wasn’t drunk with need for me. He stood there, holding the towel out as if to catch me. He was staring. After over a minute, I said, “DNA, give me the towel.”
Slowly, he stepped forward and wrapped it around me. Then he hugged me close to him. He smelled of palm wine. He’d been drinking. I hadn’t known him long, but I knew this was very unusual for him. “Please,” he said into my ear. “We can find another way. We’re in the Hour Glass. There are people here who can hack into anything. People love us here. You and I, they’ll help if we ask.”
“They won’t be able to do it quickly,” I said. “Every minute matters now. They’re killing people.”
He hugged me tighter. “You’re going to go too far,” he said. “You’re going to do something. I can see it in your eyes.”
I pressed my cheek to his shoulder. How the hell does he know? I wondered. He was right. Oh, I planned to do something, all right. I was furious. With my parents. With Ultimate Corp. With DNA’s stupid people. With the world. And I had this enormous power that was going to kill me if I truly used it. No, I had this power that was going to kill me. Full stop. Every time I closed my eyes, I connected to them, they were looking back at me, the pomegranate. How could I not DO something with it? And how could my brain and heart endure the power that would flow through me when I did?
“I’m going to convince them to let your sister go and stop killing herdsmen,” I said.
“How?”
“I’ve already found them,” I said. “We connect to them, and you all explain. They’ll have to listen. You just make sure you speak true.”
“Why would they listen to four herdsmen?” he asked.
I said nothing. Instead, I turned my head up, found his lips, and kissed them as I pressed myself to him. “Could you live out here,” he asked in my ear, “with me?”
“Just you?” I asked, my lips close to his left ear. I pulled the towel from between us so I could press closer to him. With my left arm, I turned it down and backwards and held the towel behind me, while wrapping my flesh arm around him. My left arm could not lift the towel and, instead, dropped it to the sandy ground.
“Well, maybe with GPS and Carpe Diem and some others,” he said. “And an automated vehicle to carry all the mechanical parts you like to tinker with. You could repair people’s anti-aejejs, cell phones, tablets.”
“Out in the open desert? No roof over my head? Sand storms every few days? A capture station keeping us from dying of thirst?” We’d moved back into the shower, and he was pressing me against the ceramic wall. I turned around and within moments he was inside me, his hand reaching down my waist. I slightly lengthened my legs, so that he could meet me with perfect sweetness. Everything became silver red blue. “Yes,” I gasped. “I could.” His finger pressed in just the right place, and when I shut my eyes, I didn’t care who saw me.
A dream. For the both of us.
* * *
—
We returned to the Mosquito Hut. It was Force’s idea. “The computer and software here can handle whatever you’re going to do.”
I felt foolish. Using my ability to connect to the Bukkaru on an iPad would have been silly. Yes, I could communicate and control the software, but the hardware still had its limits. I didn’t blame myself, though. I had a lot on my mind. With the three herdsmen, DNA, me, Force, and Dolapo, it was a tight fit in the small upstairs room. However, with the room-surrounding screens, it didn’t feel so bad. According to the wind up clock Dolapo brought, it was seven AM, not long after the sun had come up. The time in the Hour Glass was 10:55.
“I’ll do it right after the reset. At 12:11,” I said. “I don’t want anything to interfere with the connection.”
“Where are the cameras?” DNA asked.
“All over,” Force said. “There, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there and there.” He pointed all around us, at the ceiling, and twice at the floor.
“You all should stand there,” I said, pointing to the area that faced the virtual street in front of the building. “There are three cameras in the screen and above. They’ll be able to see you as if you were standing right in front of them. I’m turning the other cameras off. Better we control the perspective. I’ll only let them see you from the waist up, like on the news.”
The four of them wore blue kaftans, tan pants, the traditional conical fiber hats the Fulani were known to wear in the old days. Where Force got them, I didn’t know, but judging from how new they looked, they were probably just fashion accessories as opposed to the real thing. Still, they added a nice effect.