They sealed Dostoinsuvo behind them and went back to the Elephant Bar; the Siberians were singing songs from the shows: ‘Thumbelina’, in astonishingly close harmony. They were not drunk yet. They all had little pumps whirring away in their right arms.
13
The rain woke Gaby ten seconds before the PDU on the bedside table paged her, which was ten seconds before Mrs Kivebulaya knocked and entered with a pot of exceptionally strong coffee.
‘You have ten minutes to drink this and get dressed before Jake Aarons gets here,’ she said. ‘I think after last night you might need it.’
Gaby screwed her eyes against the white agony of the bedside light. She felt vertiginous, dehydrated, feverish.
‘What time is it?’
‘Quarter past four.’
Quarter past four? Jake Aarons? Ten minutes?
‘All the news agencies are mobilizing,’ Mrs Kivebulaya said. ‘There is something happening, I do not know what. You have just enough time to drink this, put on a face and get out, my dear.’
The rain was so heavy, Gaby was soaked through in the few yards between hotel porch and SkyNet Landcruiser. It was only when she had fastened her seatbelt and Jake Aarons had driven off that she wondered how Mrs Kivebulaya knew something big was happening before the news companies.
‘You smell like the Tusker brewery,’ Jake Aarons said. He had ad no more warning than Gaby but he was smart, shaved, groomed, professional. Gaby suspected the mental cameras never stopped rolling on his life.
Only the news agencies and the military were abroad in the city this morning. Gaby had never seen so many soldiers. Entire divisions were on the move, rolling in slow, heavy convoys forty, fifty vehicles long through the deserted streets. Military policemen in streaming UN white raincapes held the civilians up at intersections to let the trucks through. They looked oddly insubstantial, like watery white ghosts, seen from the warmth and instrument glow of the Landcruiser. Uhuru Highway was gridlocked with armoured personnel carriers. Something had broken down up by the railway bridge. Jake Aarons smiled at the saturated blue-helmets waving him to standstill with red flashlights and took the 4x4 on to the central reservation. Big all-terrain tyres chewed municipal flowerbeds and lawns to red mud.
‘We’ve got a live one. A biological package. Came down about four hours ago in the Nyandarua National Park.’
‘Jesus, Jake…’
‘They’ve been tracking it for days, seems. Knew exactly where it was coming down, but the bastards back there,’ he nodded in the direction of the Kenyatta Centre, ‘didn’t want the press in on it until they’d secured the area. Of course, nothing moves in this burg but we don’t hear about it, so the moment the wagons started to roll, we got suspicious and they had to come out with it. If they’d told us before the event, that would been the biggest story since the Resurrection, but they’re flying us up there for nothing, so it’s churlish to complain.’
Gaby recalled Oksana’s premonitions and the heady smell of aviation fuel. Jake took the keepie-leftie outside the National Sports Stadium at fifty. Gaby felt the back end begin to aquaplane and grabbed a handhold.
‘It missed Mount Kenya by a hair and came down just west of Treetops. Nyeri’s fucked. That’s why you can’t move for troops. The UN’s mobilizing everything it’s got for a mass evacuation. They’ll never do it, this isn’t rounding up a few thousand Wa-Chagga banana growers into resettlement camps. It’s one of the most densely populated parts of Kenya up there. In the end, why bother? What it comes down to is the big veto power members don’t like the idea of First Contact with aliens being in the hands of what they consider a bunch of bloody savages. When John Alien comes walking out of the Chaga, they want the first human he meets to be a big beautiful blond Aryan US or Russian Marine with a very big gun. Kenyan politicians are getting fed up with being Uncle Tommed and want UNECTA research resources directed toward human interaction with the Chaga. Your Werther piece gave them ammunition – it isn’t an automatic death sentence in there.’
They had left the military machine behind now. The only vehicles on the road were news company 4 x4s, hurtling along the avenue in waves of spray. On either side the townships huddled in the dark beneath the spring rain.
‘Nairobi’s dead,’ Gaby said, sobering up rapidly.
‘It’s only forty miles north of here. How long’s that, three, four years? The Nyandarua Event and the Kilimanjaro Chaga have the city in a pincer.’
Cars were tailed twenty back at the airport entrance while blue-helmets checked accreditations. A white soldier with his head shaved within a millimetre of the bone waved the SkyNet Landcruiser through. Rain fell in strict diagonals through the sodium floods. Staff in UN white with clipboards ran around trying to find the owners of the vehicles that had been abandoned at the edge of the taxiways. CBS. STAR. Tass. UPI. Those were the names on the 4x4s. Jake drove along the perimeter road until he saw SkyNet logos. A blue beret tried to move him on.
‘Fuck off,’ he said under the thunder of a taxiing jet, smiling sweetly.
All of SkyNet East Africa were gathered around the open tailgate of T.P.’s Landcruiser from where he tried to direct strategy. Gaby nodded to Tembo, fastening the velcro seal of his waterproof camera cover. Faraway, who could see over any crowd, waved back. Abigail Santini caught Gaby’s eye and smiled politically. Antonovs passed slowly, throwing up swathes of sound and spray from their Coanda Effect engines. Gaby had never heard anything so loud.
‘Right, we’re all here,’ T.P. bellowed. ‘Jake, with me and the camera crew. Everyone else, you know what you’re doing. When we get down, there’ll be transport to meet us. For Christ’s sake don’t get split up. What’ll you do?’
The ritual reply was lost in the scream of a big Tupolev lifting off into the rain. Women in wet combats and blue berets were already shepherding the non-Anglophone correspondents and their camera teams to a waiting Antonov. Turbofans powered up. Gaby scraped wet hair out of her eyes.
‘T.P.! What about me?’
He could not have looked more confused had his car spoken to him.
‘Jesus. Gaby. Yes. Important job for you to do. As well as the Tolkien fly-by, there’s a press conference been called down in Kajiado regional H.Q. Jake was scheduled to cover it, but with this blowing up, well, it’ll have to be an on-liner. You and Ute take a car and cover it for me, will you? The office will patch me through to Nyeri if it’s anything cosmos-shaking. I’m relying on you, Gaby. What am I doing?’
Abigail Santini was beckoning from the passenger door of the airplane. Both engines were up to speed, the pilot was checking flaps and ailerons.
‘You’re not taking me.’
‘Someone has to mind the shop. It’s a big thing I’m trusting you with, Gaby. What is it?’
‘Fuck you, T.P. Costello!’ she shouted but the words were obliterated by a passing aircraft. ‘This is not fair.’
He turned half-way to the plane to wave bye-bye.
‘This is not fucking fair!’
The door closed behind him. The Antonov moved off its stand. There were Cyrillic letters stencilled under the cockpit window. Dignity. Slip-stream blew Gaby’s hair into her face, plastered her wet clothes to her body.
‘You owe me for this, Costello.’
She watched Oksana turn the Antonov on to the main runway. The aircraft went up very quickly, very suddenly, like a high jumper. She watched it climb until its lights were lost in the rain clouds, then went back to the 4x4 and realized she did not have a clue how to get home again.