“We can care for her in Alabast,” Grace says, insistent. “We can give her the best medical treatment. We can help her build a life for herself.” She stops, but Ify knows what she was about to say. Just like you were able to, Ify. “She’s a child.”
“No,” Ify says, almost too soft for anyone to hear but her. “She’s not. She’s a synth. Every one of her kind is here.”
“Every one of her kind is dead, Ify.” This from Ngozi. “All of them.” She reaches behind her and bangs the palm of her hand against the hull of their ship. “No more signals. None. She’s the last one.”
No more. The others. Ify imagines a bevy of young children the same age as the unconscious girl nearby, all of them strangers to themselves, a jumble of memories and information and command inputs, all of them struggling to find a place in peacetime. Ify imagines what they might have been like together. Brothers and sisters. Siblings. Family. All gone. Uzo is the only one left. “So we should just take her to space, then?” Rage builds within Ify. “Just rip her from the only home she has ever known? Drop her onto an island floating in space where she’ll be surrounded by oyinbo? Who will look at her like she is a turd that just dropped from the sky? They will not welcome her. They will challenge her and despise her and try to keep her from getting what they have simply because she does not look or speak like them. Is that what you want for her?”
“If she stays here,” Ngozi roars, “she will die!”
“She’ll have a choice!”
“If I am choosing between gari and starvation, I should choose starvation, then?”
“She’s a synth! They’ll send her back as soon as she gets there. So she’ll have gone through this whole journey for what? To wind up at a refugee camp in the Jungle? A floating rubbish bin in space where people are practically swimming in their own offal? Is that what you want for her?”
“So because Onyii saved your life without asking your permission, you think that was a mistake?”
And that stops Ify cold.
“She saved your life,” Ngozi hisses. “And all you have ever been is ungrateful. The comfortable life you have in the Colonies? That is because of her. Your precious job as a doctor? That is because of her.” She leans in toward Ify. “The very fact that you are breathing. That is because of her.” Those last words turn into a snarl. After a beat, Ngozi settles against the wall. “And you are upset because she did not ask your permission.” She sucks her teeth. “You are mad.” With her finger, she jabs her temple. “Mad.”
Fury bends Ify’s fingers into fists, but there’s nothing she can say. It is foolishness to resent Onyii for what she did, but Ify can’t bring herself to let it go. Then she realizes that a part of her had wanted to stay. Even if it meant being chased by the government for the rest of the war. Even if it meant never knowing another moment of peace. Even if it meant watching Onyii die before her very eyes, she would have been with her. She could have held her hand in her last moments, and Onyii denied her that. Took that choice away from her.
Ify looks to the ceiling. “What do we do?”
“Um . . .” But Grace doesn’t finish.
Ify turns her way, then sees her looking at Uzo, who is looking straight back at Ify.
“She’s awake,” Grace says at last.
CHAPTER
48
Ify is playing with her hands.
“Are you being nervous?” I am asking her, but it is scratching my throat, so I am forcing myself not to be asking more question.
Then she is stopping playing with her hands, then she is looking at the floor, then she is looking at me. “In ancient Inca society,” she begins saying, “there was a thing called a khipu.”
As she is saying this, I am accessing network and downloading image of khipu and all information about it and I am seeing row of knotted string that is being tied to single braided rope and the knotted string is having different color. And I am knowing that this is ancient devices that is being used to record thing like people name and people hair color and people status in society, whether they are big man or whether they are small small. The knot in the string and the number of string and the number of knot and the color of all of these thing are telling whoever is looking the name and location and detail of people who is living in a village. I am knowing all of this before Ify is finishing her sentence.
“We think there is something like that in your braincase.”
She is saying we and I am knowing that she is meaning her and Grace. Not Ngozi.
“We think that is what is tying your memories together, those you have accumulated over the course of your life and those you were . . . given upon your creation. Your brain has immense computing power. Indeed, the brain of a synth may be the most powerful computer ever created. And there is an incredible amount of heterogenous data in there. It shouldn’t be able to hold itself together. The incomplete nature of the memories would suggest natural deterioration, but there is something in your coding that is fighting that process.”
She pauses. I am wondering why she is telling me about khipu and what it is having to do with saving me from Enyemaka and burning forest and the arguing that I am hearing earlier about going to space.
Then, after a long silence, Ify is saying, “Right now, there are hundreds of children in the hospital where I work, maybe a thousand, who, I believe, are suffering from identical illnesses. They have each fallen into comas.” She is getting up from where she is sitting and walking back and forth and I am wanting to tell her not to be nervous, but words is not coming from my mouth so all I am doing is following her with my eyes. “In one building, refugees are being kept and taken care of. There is a ward for them. I was supposed to be helping them. But they became sick. And their condition has been worsening. Since the epidemic began, not a single one of these children has emerged from their coma.” Another pause. “This is why I came back to Nigeria.”
“What is my brain having to do with this?”
“The children . . . they’re losing their memories. We think that you have developed an antibody to the virus that is making them sick.” There is light shining in her eyes, and I am thinking that she is looking at me like I am something special. Not because I am carrying Onyii inside me, but because of something else. Xifeng is sometimes looking at me like this. “You . . . you somehow found a way to organize your data.”
“My rememberings?”
“Yes. Your rememberings.” She is moving closer to me, close enough to touch, but she is not reaching out to touch me.
At first, I am thinking it is because she is looking at my woundings and finding me disgusting. But then I am seeing the look in her eyes and I am seeing that she is scared that if she is touching me, she is wounding me further. I am wanting to reach out and touch her or tell her it is okay, but my body is still not moving. I am feeling nanobots inside me, repairing me, but I am still too weak for my arms and legs and fingers to listen to what my brain is telling them.