‘She may have been schizo, but she was also, well… gifted.’
Keke shoots her a look of thinly veiled patience.
‘Seriously, she had what they called ‘advanced intelligence’.’
‘Who called it that?’
‘Her colleagues, at Propag8 – where we’re going. She ran the whole project. She was a bio-what? A biohorticulturist.’
Keke takes the straw out of her mouth, frowns. ‘Propag8 sounds familiar.’
‘It’s a seed sanctuary bank in an old sandstone quarry. Like Svalbard on Spitsbergen, but a local, more indigenous version. They nicknamed it The Doomsday Vault.’
‘Doomsday. Ha.’
‘Vavilov built the first one. A botanist-geneticist in the 1930s, he grew up poor and hungry, so became obsessed with ending famine. The seeds even survived the Siege of Leningrad. And Hitler. Although not all the guards did.’
‘Starved to death surrounded by edible seeds?’ says Keke.
‘Clearly better people than you or I.’
‘And Vavilov? Became a rich and famous hero?’
‘Nyet. He died in prison.’
‘Hitler?’
‘Stalin.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Are we just saying names out loud now?’
Keke cackles.
‘What about your coco-loco lady?’
‘According to her colleagues she was the best in her field, some kind of genetic genius. She was no garage genome-hacker; she invented all kinds of disease- and pest-resistant crops. Got a 99 million-rand grant for her work on revolutionising vertical farming. Contributed to amazing brainswarming sessions when she open-sourced her ideas for cheap, organic biofuel and designs for living buildings. And she was ambitious. I mean, Propag8 was her idea. She was guarding against Doomsday.’
They travel for a while in silence.
‘So her paranoia worked for her, to a certain degree.’
Kirsten shrugs. ‘Maybe it used to, anyway.’
They disembark ten kilometres south of Bela-Bela. A local cab drives them from their stop on the main road along the dusty way to the slick exterior of the Propag8 building.
The design of the sandstone façade looks sunken into the ground, giving the idea that half of its face is under the earth. It’s the same colour as the surrounding sand and rocks, which makes it blend into the landscape, despite it being the only building on the horizon.
Camouflaged, dry, half sunk, it reminds Kirsten of Shelley’s poem Ozymandias, and it makes her smile. Doomsday, and ‘Nothing beside remains.’ The architect obviously had a sense of humour.
Keke moves to ring the bell but the smoked glass doors slide open before she touches the button. The inside is huge, cavernous, bare. There is a figure 8 in the floor mosaic; Kirsten realises that it’s an infinity sign. The only colour is a row of what must be a hundred different succulents in African clay pots along the dark glass front.
The receptionist looks up, ready to help them, but Keke motions that they’ve got it, and subtly moves Kirsten towards the large stainless steel door at the opposite side of the expanse. As they get to within two meters of it, the light on the doorway switches from red to green with a beep (Cashmere Cherry to Spring Leaf) and they hear the mechanism on the other side unlocking. The heavy doors glide open, revealing a high-tech elevator with confusing buttons. Instead of a neat ladder of floors, one on top of the other, they are set out in a complicated 3D diagram in the shape of a lotus flower.
‘Lotus flower?’ says Keke. ‘Was she some kind of yogi?’
‘Lotus seeds are viable for a thousand years,’ says Kirsten. She had read it while researching the vault on The Net.
52 stops to choose from, and they are clueless. Keke pushes the stud closest to her. They start as the elevator moves sideways. When the doors open again, it’s into a dark corridor. They step out, and the light above them flickers on. Keke does a quick dance, Caipoera-style, and more lights come on. Kirsten thinks of the whole seed bank in utter darkness, apart from this little cell of light.
There is another door across the passage. Kirsten steps towards it and holds up her key. The light stays red, and the door locked. They step back into the elevator and study the plan etched into its wall.
‘Do you remember anything else from what you read about her work here?’
Kirsten racks her brain, tries to use Google on her watch, but there is no signal. She moves closer to the map and one of the buttons automatically lights up. Sub Rosa, it says, floor 36. She opens her hand to look at the key. The doors close and this time they move downwards, into the depths of the old mine.
When the door clicks open they enter a space that would look like a bank deposit box room if it weren’t for the floor-to-ceiling animated wallpaper. Huge rose buds and blooms (Rusted Carmine) caress the walls, as if alive. Kirsten tries to take a photo with her locket but it’s blocked. It feels like she is looking through pink mist. She should have doubled the caff in her coffee.
Keke takes the key from her and walks towards the wall of safety deposit boxes. It does its now familiar magic trick and a box on the right, just below eye-level, shows a blue light. Keke pushes it in, and it slides out like a drawer, the size of a shoebox. Inside is another box, with a keyhole, which Keke unlocks.
‘It’s like pass-the-parcel,’ whispers Keke.
‘Pass the what?’
‘Oh,’ says Keke, remembering that Kirsten didn’t have many early childhood memories. ‘Never mind.’ They both peer into the box, wary, as if something could jump out and bite their fingers.
‘It’s empty,’ says Kirsten.
As an act of desperation, she puts her whole hand into the box and rummages around, just so that she would have no doubt in her mind that the box was definitely, absolutely, 100% empty. But it wasn’t.
‘Hey,’ she says. The far side feels different. Not textured metal, but plastic. She gets her fingernails underneath the corner and rips it off, bringing it out of the box and into view. It’s a small plastic bag, like a sandwich bag, but four-ply and heat-sealed.
On the way home a white minivan comes into view, then disappears, then appears again. It looks like another communal taxi, but without the trappings: no dents or scratches, no eccentric bumper stickers, furry steering wheel or hula-girl hanging from the rear-view mirror. Instead: clean paintwork, tinted windows. Something about it bothers Kirsten.
‘I know I sound crackers but… is that van… following us?’ frowns Kirsten.
‘Please don’t start,’ says Keke.
‘Seriously,’ says Kirsten. ‘They’ve been behind us for the last ten minutes.’ Keke looks over at the vehicle, then turns back around and plays on her phone. The white minibus weaves aggressively and gets too close to the taxi. Kirsten starts to panic.
‘They know we have it. They’re trying to stop us.’
‘Stop it,’ growls Keke, but as her eyes go back to her screen their taxi is knocked sideways. The minivan swerves away and then back to hit them again, causing the passengers to scream and the driver to grab his hat, fling it down, concentrate on keeping the vehicle on the road.
Metal screeches as the van pushes hard against the taxi, trying to force it into the guardrails. The taxi driver keeps his head, accelerates, takes the road back. Keke pushes Kirsten down and covers her. They are smashed again, harder, and they veer off the road, onto the shoulder. Their driver steers hard to not go over the rails, then overcorrects and crashes into a bakkie, almost rolls the vehicle.
They sway on two wheels, then land safely back on the tarmac. The white minivan speeds off. Cars all around swerve and hoot, people shout. Inside the taxi: silence, the caustic smell of burning brakes. Broken glass glitters.