Nigerians in Space

Nigerians in Space

A novel by

 Deji Bryce Olukotun

Unnamed Press

Los Angeles, CA

Praise for Nigerians in Space

Nigerians in Space is two really good books in one. On one level, it's an action-packed crime story, full of color and detail and sharply drawn, memorable characters. At the same time, it's a moving and emotional story about families and orphans, about leaving home and going home, about wanting more for yourself, your family, and your country. Fast-paced, well-written and packed with insight and humor. Olukotun is a very talented storyteller.

—Charles Yu, National Book Award 5-Under-35 winner and author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Deji Olukotun's first novel Nigerians in Space roves across the diaspora, moving easily among the US, Nigeria and South Africa...a deft mingling of satirical humor, Noirish twists…and a keen-eyed yet accessible take on cultural displacement in contemporary times.

—Olufemi Terry, winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing

You can taste Cape Town, you can hear it in the dialogue, see its beauty in the descriptions. Deji Olukotun has my city's number: especially its nasty underbelly, the dangerous dealing of abalone poachers. And there's humour too, an off-beat humour that is typical of people living by their wits. Here's a wonderfully strange tale of the city beneath the mountain.

—Mike Nicol, author of the Revenge Trilogy (Old Street UK)

The irresistible desire to return home against all odds sets in motion a series of events that impact the families and friends of Nigerian American Dayo Olufunmi and South African Thursday Malaysius in unexpected and life-altering ways. Moonlight, the oratorical power of a traditional praise singer, and vibrant characterization combine to pull the reader into the story. Told with just the right blend of humor, fact, and deliciously wild imagination, Nigerians in Space is an absorbing and thoroughly enjoyable read.

—Marla Johnson, World Literature Today

Unnamed Press

Los Angeles

www.unnamedpress.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress catalog-in-publication data available upon request.

Copyright © Deji Bryce Olukotun

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Cover art © Paul Wadell

Cover design by Ben Lutz

Unnamed Press logo by Eric Gardner

ISBN 978-1-939419-00-2

for Laate and Bayo

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Book I

The Moon Rock Thief

Bathing with Perlemoen

Evil Knows Where Evil Sleeps

Laundering

Georgie

Tea with Bello

The Fallback

Book II

The Abalone of Obz

Mrs. Niyangabo

Pollsmoor Prison

I Heard Nothing

Wale’s Son

Adrian

In the Dark

Home Affairs

Book III

Melle

Constable Viljoen

In the McClean

Load-shedding

A Hundred and Seventy

Abuja

Transplant

Notes on the Story

Acknowledgments

About Deji Olukotun

Do you know where home is?

Do you want to go there?

Book I

The Moon Rock Thief

1993

Houston, Texas

Wale was in the locker room, dripping, after he'd just missed the final shot as point guard for his team in the West Houston, 30 and over, co-ed spring basketball C-league. And he was opening his locker, hearing the clang, seeing the ball spinning out of bounds, over and over, with his head between his knees.

Shake it off, Wale, Bill Dalton said. You win some, you lose some.

Wale agreed with his teammate. But he didn’t move.

I was right under it, Wale, boxing out Perez just like we practiced. Another second on the clock and I would have had the rebound. Did you see me get him with my cross? I owned him.

Dalton began stripping down. He was a melonfaced ex-linebacker whose cheeks flushed crimson at the end of the first quarter, and held the color for a full two hours after a game. He ran a TGI Friday's restaurant franchise and a used car lot. Wale was stoutly muscular and could jump higher than anyone his size.

We’ve got to peak, Wale. We want to take ’em in the playoffs. This was a size-up game to see what they’re made of. Linda had six points, three blocks, four steals. That’s half-way to a triple double. He patted Wale on the back. Come on, pick your head up. We’re going for a drink.

Wale managed to grab at the towel in his locker, and a tiny slip of paper spilled out from its folds. It looked like a receipt.

I can’t make it, Bill. I’m on the night shift.

Tonight? It’s Friday. You can’t go to work sulking over a shot like that. It’s bad luck. Just one beer.

Dalton believed in buying rounds, so it was never just a beer. He bought a drink for everyone present and then you had to buy the next round, so it made it worth your while to stick around until the rounds evened out. Then you were drunk.

No, Bill, I’m almost late. I should be there already. Wale showered and dressed, spraying on liberal amounts of Old Spice. He shouted good-bye into the shower room, where Dalton was now jiggling his pot belly while singing the Beach Boys.

You’re the nightmare, Wale! The Nigerian Nightmare.

It was while Wale was fishing for his car keys that he felt the slip of paper again. Under the weak yellow halo of the cabin light of his Corolla, he read it:

Call. N.B. 512-212-3235.

The shower had done nothing to clean him up and he was already sweating again under a low-hanging sky, the clouds brown and withering like late-autumn leaves. He stopped at a 7-Eleven and picked up a payphone. There was a clutch of Latino teens chattering in Spanish and they eyed him suspiciously. He dialed the telephone number, which forwarded the call to another number that he wasn’t permitted to know. A voice picked up on the first ring.

Wale Olufunmi?

Yes.

This is Nurudeen Bello, Special Adjunct to the Minister of the Environment.

I know who you are. I told your man to stop following me and there was a note in my locker.

I’ve arranged everything, Bello said, ignoring him. Get on the red-eye to Washington. The drop is at 11:26 tomorrow.

There isn’t a storm. Why do it now?

The situation has changed. Go to the Contingency Plan.

Listen, Bello, I don’t like any of this.

Any of what?

I don’t like this pressure. Let’s let things settle down a bit, then I’ll come.

I told you we will deposit double, Dr. Olufunmi.

It’s not about the money. I’m not in this for the money.

Bello could be heard sighing on the other end of the line, exasperated. We need you, he began, because it’s time to end the brain drain and move to brain gain. It’s time for a great mind of Nigeria to return home. You’re the mind we need, Doctor. The marsh can’t pretend that it isn’t fed by the river. You’re a part of Nigeria, too.

A low-rider Honda pulled up in front of the 7-Eleven and the Latino teens began passing around a bottle in a paper bag. Bello continued on, quoting Winston Churchill and people getting the governments they deserved, complimenting Wale on his professional success. How Wale had rocketed to the top of the academic world as a lunar geologist, only to slam into a glass ceiling while Americans soared through to upper level positions and he rotted away in a lab. Wale wanted to keep up his guard, but Bello had a way of buttering things; Wale was a scientist and Bello a public relations man. In a battle of words Bello would win every time.

Alright, Bello, tell me the details again. I want it clear.

Everything is arranged, Bello said, infusing optimism into his voice. I’ll meet you in Washington. If anything goes wrong go to the fallback position in Cape Town. Until then, stick to the Contingency Plan.

You mean the Contingency Sample. Why don’t you just call it that?

Stick to the protocol, Doctor. This is for your own safety. The tickets are under your floor mat.

Wale looked back at his Corolla. Its mustard yellow coat took on a violated look under the arc lamps. Bello’s insistence on code language had at first charmed him but now it was an annoyance, a blurring of meaning. He did not like the fact that someone had been in his locker or his car, and tried to convey this to Bello. They discussed the nitty-gritty of the drop.

You’ll be in Nigeria in forty-eight hours, Doctor, Bello said. Take heart—you’re going home!

Wale dialed his wife Tinuke and told her to pack some essentials and retrieve a suitcase he’d stashed in the garage. In the background he heard his boy crying—tired, sick, or hungry.

Our tickets aren’t for two weeks, she protested.

There’s been a change of plans, Tinuke.

I’ll have to call Uncle Sheyi to let him know.

No need. They’re picking us up at the airport.

You weren’t fired, were you?

No, it’s a good thing. A promotion. I’ll explain everything later.

Tinuke told him the boy missed his Daddy, and this meant she missed him. Nowadays all their emotions were mediated through the child. He sulked back to the car. He knew that the basketball game had boded poorly; his feet had felt sluggish the whole first quarter and the rim shrank down to a thimble when he spotted it from the three-point line. He should have known: the operation would be tonight.

The highway was still smeared with mud from the flood, from the hurricane that had pulverized Galveston, from the tussling fronts of the Gulf. The sycamores reflected on the pavement’s sheen with their sharp-fingered leaves. Somehow there was, at nine in the evening, still traffic. But driving by the stadium, he realized it was because there was a baseball game. Either the Astros were winning big or losing big, as it was too early for the game to be over and for so many people to be leaving. He tuned into the radio to prepare some office talk for the evening. Baseball had a wonderful way of whiling away the time, even after the game ended. Good stuff for a night shift.

The guard waved down his car at the second boom gate. He was a pimply guy fresh out of training college who chatted it up with the enthusiasm of a man who thought that guarding a boom gate at NASA’s Johnson Space Laboratory was the first in a serendipitous series of steps to becoming Congressman. If he had known that what Wale was about to do would get him fired, he would have wiped the smug expression from his face. They exchanged some words about the baseball game and Wale followed the black mamba of a road to Building 31-A. He went to park in the unnumbered employee lot, and then decided it was his last day, so he parked in his boss’ spot. A final thumb-on-the-nose.

The chickweed and nightshade and dewberries and all the love-making plants had sent out their pollen in droves and he sneezed, cursing the spring. He’d never had allergies in Nigeria, his nose had been stuffed by America and so was his thinking. Maybe Bello was right that he should return to the clear-minded motherland.

He swiped in his security card and made his way through the cubicles to his small, windowless office. His colleague Onur Unkwu wasn’t in yet. But Onur was usually prompt, and would arrive within the next few minutes with a pastry in hand. Wale decided to beat it to the lab to avoid chatting with him. He was beginning to feel nervous, and thought he’d give himself away.

Remember, Bello had said on the phone, Brain gain.

Can’t we forget the contingency sample? Isn’t it me you want?

Commitment. We believe in commitment. We are offering you a lot of money—more than you’ll ever see in that play pen. We need a sign that you are on our side, Doctor, and haven’t become one of those baseball-tossing coconuts. Brown on the outside and white on the inside, if you catch my meaning.

I hate baseball, Wale said quickly. Basketball is my game.

That is what I’m afraid of. Our sport is soccer. You’ve been away too long, Doctor. Get me that sample and I’ll see you in Nigeria. It’s high time you came home!

Wale hated the Contingency Plan and had fought Bello on it since they first started talking. The only plan that would leave him with any chance of backing out involved a hurricane. Then regular procedure demanded that all rocks would have to be moved above the water line and transferred to the double-wall vault. Taking a specimen in those conditions would be difficult, but possible. There was even a chance that he could get away with it and remain on the staff. But not the Contingency Plan. The Contingency Plan meant the end. He couldn’t say good-bye to his colleagues or his basketball team or anyone.

The lunar lab was a sterile jumble of stainless steel, blinking LED lights, hard-backed aluminum chairs, magnetically shielded electronics, analog scopes, and full-spectrum overhead indirect lighting. It was—although few people had ever heard of it—America’s repository for the hundreds of pounds of rocks that had been painstakingly transported back from the moon missions, and the largest and most sophisticated such repository in the world. Every rock that had been collected by the astronauts on the Apollo missions; every speck of dust that had swirled onto their spacesuits; every mite that had gathered in the lunar module; these had been rigorously preserved for decades.

Two doors opened at either end of the lab, one leading to a scanning electron microscope and the other to the double airlock, which in turn led to the Lunar Sample Collection. There was no lead in the paint or sheetrock and no organic matter. The plastic Christmas tree perched in the corner had never been removed because it was the closest thing to life that snuck in. But Wale was a scientist, hard-trained, and like the rest of the lab geeks all the life he needed was contained in the Lunar Sample Collection. Under the microscopes, the moonrocks teemed with the cosmos.

When he could get to them. Even as a senior staffer he could not access the collection himself. There had to be a Second during the day, and a guard to monitor the gas levels in the chambers. At night one person could access the collection while the other monitored. Usually it was Onur that went into the collection and Wale kept his eye on the dials. If you were alone, you had to occupy yourself with studying a low-priority specimen in the glass glovebox, a sealed aquarium with two rubber gloves welded into the glass. This Wale did, sticking his hands into the glovebox and nervously scratching off a layer of plagioclase feldspar from a fifty gram specimen that had been gathered by Apollo 16. The specimen had already been photodocumented on the moon, with the down-sun ratio, color chart, and stratigraphy inputted into the LSDB long ago.

There were three hours before Wale had to get on the plane. Panic flashed through him as he began to consider that he would never see the lab again. With panic came tachycardia; with palpitations, the memory that his father had died from an unidentified heart condition; with his father, a photo of his sister leaning precariously over the coffin, as if about to dive in; then his sister’s family of step-this and half-that and her current invalid husband. And there was the matter that he hadn’t sent anyone money in six years. And what of his mother? In the face of this Texan largesse, this first-world life?

Patience, Wale, patience. Where you begin your climb, the proverb went, there you will descend. He would deal with those problems when they came. He was returning his mind to Nigeria, he was going home. Wale would have his chance, finally, to go up in space. This was not a sacrifice. This was a dream being realized.

Patience becoming him, briefly, he honed away at the glassy black agglutinate of the specimen in the glovebox until Onur arrived.

Say, Wale.

Hey, Onur.

Onur was a barrel-chested man, a historical bulk descended from olive oil wrestlers and the legion of warriors called the Slappers, sent out by the Ottomans to absorb bullets and thump in the crania of the enemy. He also had, despite this, delicate fingers with plated rings on four of them and a stud in his lobeless ear. Onur was perhaps the most considerate man Wale had ever met, except when it came to the Kurds. The Kurds could never do anything right. The wounded look on Onur’s face meant that something had happened between him and his beautiful Armenian wife.

I am there until the seventh inning stretch, Onur whimpered. It is a blowout. The Astros are losing by eight. I try to leave it early. But so does everyone else. And Lousine says she is hungry so we are eating. Then I am late.

Despite his numerous degrees Onur had managed to avoid learning to speak in anything other than the present tense. He was already taking off his rings and putting on the mask to go into the vault, but Wale stopped him.

There’s a specimen I’d like to check out, Onur.

Oh? Onur looked mildly interested.

A four-three. There’s some correlation with this agglute.

You are running it under the SET?

No. The new directive said we can only access the microscope on Tuesdays. It’s in the latest memo.

Onur shook his head. Memos, schmemos.

The H2O is set at four. There’s some K.R.E.E.P. that I want to move in the seven-eights.

We are moving it last year.

No, Tugwell was tasked with moving them. He never finished. Please sustain the levels for seven minutes.

Thank God for Tugwell, Wale thought, thank God for bureaucracy. Tugwell had provided any number of excuses since he’d been fired for corrupting a core sample of K.R.E.E.P.—a kind of sawdust from the surface of the moon—with a glob of milk chocolate. If anyone cared, a whole comic strip could have been written about Tugwell’s antics in the moonrock business. Watery coffee, milky tea, dusty files and magnetic tapes, the old granules of cigarettes, must, egg-sandwiches melted into the cafeteria walls, the dull-aching bones of the people who swept up after him—thank god for bureaucracy. How much easier to steal from it.

And then Wale was in the hiss of the air shower and disappearing behind the mist into the vault with his mask. He had four minutes. Anything longer and Onur would become suspicious. Inside, the filtration system sputtered as it sucked up his terrestrial emissions. A row of stainless vaults squatted above a white linoleum floor, with blue LED lights on the front. All blue, all uncompromised. Any change in weight or chemical composition and the alarm would blow. He paced straight to the seven-eight vault and opened the thick-walled cabinet. With the H2O levels up the cabinet emitted a fine cloud of vapor. He reached into his lab coat and removed three glassine bags with coin-sized valves in them. 78-5329-23 was a small sample encased in a glass Petri dish, looking no more important than the rest. The 23 meant that it had already been contaminated, but that was the Contingency Sample, that was what Bello was paying him for. The 23: his commitment.

Wale emptied the contents of 23 into a glassine bag and removed a false Petri dish from his other pocket. After switching the Petri dish, he took the bag and walked quickly to the nitrogen tank. Attaching the hose to the valve, he vacuumed the air out of the bag and flushed in some nitrogen. He did the same for two more bags so that the specimen was protected, and kept these in his pocket. Next, he opened the 46 vault and removed a dimpled, ashen breccia rock that looked like a mangled barbecue briquette. He stepped back through the airlock trying to look innocent with the breccia extended before him, and set it in the glass glovebox.

I am not seeing you on the monitor, Onur said. You alright, Wale?

It was the H2O levels. You can take them down now.

Onur had produced a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts from somewhere. A donut was gone but for a dollop of cream on his chin. Wale pointed at the dollop and tossed Onur a napkin.

Thanks. No, I mean, you are tense. Is your wife okay?

By the grace of God, she is in good health.

Oh, I am thinking you look tense. People are talking about you and the boss. You forget about him. He is a wonk. When he is going you will be promoted.

I don’t want a promotion.

You are too modest, Wale. You deserve one—you are the best in the lab. Next to me, he laughed.

But Wale was speaking sincerely. He had long ago resigned himself to bureaucratic routine, joined a Rotary club and churned out journal articles to cut onto the academic circuit one day, an honorable change of career. But after Bello found him with Brain Gain that was all over. A dream had been reborn. He was going home.

Obliviously Onur wanted to talk about his wife. He swallowed a can of Mr. PiBB in one go, and suddenly burst into tears. She is crushing me! and he went on about her spending, the way she flirted with other men, the way she wouldn’t give him a child, the way she threatened to move to Florida to live with her sister, where at least they are having a beach with the heat. Lousine is too beautiful for any man to leave. As lovely as—as an agglutinated highland roid. She must leave me first, oh my brother.

Wale consoled him, pretending to cut away at the breccia rock he had extracted from the vault. And they went on comparing notes, Onur telling him how envious he was about Wale’s little son Dayo, Wale peppering the conversation with astute observations about the clasts and melt of the breccia rock. Everything was going off fine.

Then the small B-tone of the alarm went off. Onur snapped to attention and rapidly toggled through some screens on the computer.

It is the seven-eight. Are you closing up in there?

Wale glanced at the screen. Yes, I sealed it fine.

Onur typed away on his computer. What’s the number of the sample you moved?

Thirty-seven.

It is twenty-three.

Must have been the H2O.

No, it is the weight. Off by a microgram.

They watched as the indicator light moved between blue and red. Onur tapped the screen.

It appears to be vacillating, Wale observed. Could be the scale.

Yeah.

The indicator went back to blue for about thirty seconds, then dipped into red again.

Hell, we are going to be worrying all night. I am taking a look.

I’ll do it.

No, Daddy Wale, I am sitting on my ass all evening with donuts. You are staying here.

I’ll raise the H2O levels.

No, I am a lightning flash.

Onur pulled off his rings and his chain and the stud in his nose and threw on his lab coat. No one could have guessed that he’d been crying a moment before, or that he’d likely do it again. Wale tried to protest but Onur was adamant and outranked him.

Nervously, Wale switched on the closed circuit camera to see Onur come onscreen in the airshower. Maybe Onur wouldn’t notice, he thought. Maybe he would think it was just a hitch. Even if Onur did notice, though, he had no understanding of the sample or its true value.

No one besides Wale understood the significance of the twenty-three—but that didn’t mean Onur couldn’t suspect something. Suspicion could ruin him. Tampering with lunar samples could get you fired. Stealing— well, stealing was much, much more.

Onur strode to the seven-eight vault and keyed it open. He bent over and examined the sample on the shelf without budging it. He picked it up briefly and shook it around, then put it back on its shelf and watched. The scale LED held steady blue for a second, before dropping into red.

Dammit, Wale thought.

Onur picked the sample back up and took out a small flashlight, illuminating the sample. His actions began speeding up. He quickly turned and held the sample at the camera with an inquisitive look, and his lips were moving. Wale activated the sound monitor.

Wale, what is this? It looks like it is from the mare.

Wale turned on his microphone. You must be mistaken, Onur. Compare it with the— and then suddenly he remembered that all microphone conversations were recorded. The tape room was in a different building entirely. He tried to sound reasonable. Please repeat.

But Onur was starting to look suspicious. Wale, what did you do here? Where is the twenty-three? Why are you—

Wale flicked off the sound monitor. It wouldn’t make a difference—the tape would still go through. He just couldn’t bring himself to hear it anymore as Onur went through the inductions through his head, piecing it together.

I stole, Wale whispered.

And his hands were moving fast. He manually bolted the airlock. He went to the dials. He pushed up the H2O and lowered the O2, pumped in N2. The gas could be seen hissing into the collection onscreen, and Onur immediately clutched at the mask, pressing it closer onto his face. He wouldn’t be hurt but he would fall asleep.

Seal up the damn vault, he thought, seal it, Onur. Otherwise all the specimens in the seven-eight would be compromised. But Onur was already ahead of him and had pushed it shut. He was waving his arms in front of the camera lens and pointing at the gas hissing into the chamber.

Wale flicked on the sound monitor for a second: There appears to be a malfunction, Onur. Stay calm.

No, Wale! What is going on here? Get the levels! The levels are off!

Stay calm, Onur. Keep your mask on.

Onur couldn’t pull the emergency lever because all oxygen would be sucked from the collection room to put out any fire. The air would in theory be immediately filtered back in and he would be able to breathe normally, but that required total faith in the system to reset. They both knew that the lever had not been pulled in eight years. So it was a last resort.

Realizing this, Wale decided to do something that was very clever and cruel. He soothed Onur on the audio monitor and adjusted the levels back. Then he made up an excuse about the airlock being broken. He told him to hang tight and he would call security for help. He left Onur standing there, cursing, his dark Anatolian eyes wide and questioning, with his lips fluttering in the magnetic wobble of the closed-circuit screen.

Keep your mask on, Onur.

Wale did not call security. Instead, he swiped out and made his way to his office, clearing a few personal items: photos of his family (immediate, not extended), the ticket stub from a Rockets playoff game, after which he had had drinks with Hakeem Olajuwon, trying to fathom the man making love to his wife three feet shorter than him, a signed form letter of congratulations from former Vice-President Dan Quayle on his only promotion. He fingered two half-empty Tupperware containers of ogbono stew and changed his mind and left them on the desk. Finally, he reached into a drawer and took out a snowglobe that he had drained and replaced with distilled water. A figurine of a black cat rested in the middle. He unscrewed the base and there was a valve. Pulling out the glassine bags with