“When you did this, you rearranged your own genetic coding. You figured out a way to hold your data together and make a whole identity out of it. Imagine if a computer were alive.”
I am not liking that she is calling me computer, and she is seeing the changing look in my face.
“Of course, you’re more than a computer. It’s just that . . . you’re the cure. Somehow, you’re the cure.”
I am wanting to be telling her that all of my brother and sister is doing this thing. It is thing we are learning to do from each other, and I am wanting to show her Oluwale teaching me and I am wanting to show her Uzodinma doing it too and finding certain memory that is granting him peace and accessing it on purpose and not accident. I am wanting to tell her we are all doing this thing and she is not needing me. But then I am trying to send out signal to find my family. And I am sending and sending and sending and all that is coming back is silence. All I am hearing is the ringing in my own head.
“You are the only one left,” Ify is telling me like she is reading my mind. Like we are being plugged into each other. “You are the last synth.” She is looking at her hands and playing with them again. Then she is stopping, then she is gathering breath inside her and letting out a soft and slow sigh. When she is looking at me again, tears are shimmering in her eyes like wind brushing on the surface of the sea. “Will you come to space with me? I . . . I can’t guarantee that you will be safe or that you will even like it, but you can help many, many people who desperately need it. I don’t know what is waiting for you there, but I will care for you, and you will be loved. Yes. You will be loved. So will you do it? Will you come with me? To space?”
CHAPTER
49
Ify finds Grace and Ngozi sitting on the hunched shoulders of Ngozi’s mech, eating out of what look like military ready-to-eat packets. Ngozi munches absentmindedly while Grace’s face twists around the tastes. When Ify looks up at them, Grace swallows her mouthful loudly and says, “Burrito bowl.” Her face makes Ify chuckle.
“And?” Ngozi asks, nodding to the aircraft where Ify has left Uzo to rest. “What is the plan?”
“We need to give her a new identity. For her visa application.”
Light blossoms to life in Grace’s face so that, when the light from the setting sun hits, it looks like she’s made of gold.
“We can’t bring her to Alabast directly. We’ll have to go to Centrafrique. I’ve already notified my friend there.”
Ngozi puts down her half-eaten MRE. “And who is this friend that can swoop down and get you out of the country and into space?”
“She’s a Colonial administrator,” Ify says with a proud smirk. She’d kept the details sparse during their conversation, knowing that while they were still in Nigerian airspace, there was a chance the call might be monitored. All Céline knew was that Ify was safe and that she needed to arrange transport for a sick child who needed medical attention. She had left Céline wondering what could be wrong with the child that couldn’t be fixed in one of Earthland’s most advanced hospitals. Explaining Uzo’s significance might have jeopardized their plans and implicated Céline in knowingly breaking the law. But Céline had revealed the tightening of Alabast’s immigration controls, the dire state of the Jungle, and that Centrafrique was beginning to accept a greater influx of refugees now that they knew they could no longer find a home among the whites. Céline had also informed her that none of the patients had so far been deported, which calmed Ify’s heart. And all the while, they had been forced to talk like professional acquaintances and not like friends, one of whom had worried desperately about the other upon hearing rumors and vague reports of an outbreak of violence in Nigeria’s capital city. Ify had spoken in calm, measured tones, firmly enough to show that she was unharmed and not being held hostage, but evasive enough in her answers to coach her friend toward discretion. They knew each other well enough that Céline could read, in Ify’s pauses and word choice, the specifics of their dilemma. So all that remained was to fashion Uzo’s immigration materials and wait for transport.
Ngozi hops off her mech, landing smoothly from the dangerous height. Grace is slower to climb down. When they draw near, the fatigue on their faces becomes clear, even as night begins to descend and gray-black clouds roam across the sky.
“She’s healing just fine,” Ify tells them. “Thank you, Ngozi.” Then she turns to Grace. “Come with me.”
Grace follows her back to the aircraft, and on the way, Ify speaks in low tones. “She will need her biometrics to read as her new identity. Fingerprints and retina are the important bits. If they scan her, we’ll need to be ready. Our passage will be secure, but I can’t guarantee there won’t be at least one scan during the trip.”
“What do you need from me?”
Ify stops, and Grace stops with her. “You’ve performed surgeries before, yes?”
Grace nods. Then it dawns on her what Ify is asking. “Wait, but why don’t you do it? You’re far more experienced than—”
Ify holds up a hand to stop her. “The materials also need to read in Chinese. With my Augment, I can read it and I can decipher it, but I can’t write it.”
“But why Chinese?”
“Because this is going to be Uzo’s country of origin. And her documents need to read in all of its official languages. Otherwise, authorities will know that they’ve been forged. Ngozi will take point on preparing the documents, and you will perform the surgery to inscribe that identity onto Uzo’s body.”
“But—”
“I’m not asking you.”
The moon peeks through cloud cover, lighting the anger that shows through the tiredness on Grace’s face. How to tell her that Ify doesn’t trust her own hands? That she’s not refusing because she hasn’t performed a surgery in over a year but because memory of one done to her is still too vivid in her brain. Ify wonders what Grace would say if Ify told her the story, told her of how she and Onyii had been on the run, fleeing a Nigerian government and a rebel Biafran movement, both of which wanted them dead. Told her of how they’d found refuge in a submersible with Xifeng but that their pursuers were tracking them through a device implanted just below Ify’s heart. She wonders what Grace would say if she told Grace about how Onyii had had to cut her open without anesthetic and reach into her chest with her metal fingers to pull out the tracking device. She wonders what Grace would say if she were to show her the spot just beneath her left breast where Onyii’s bionic hand had entered.
Instead, she stiffens and says, “Ngozi can show you where to find the surgical tools.” Then she walks past Ngozi to her mech, climbs onto its lowered shoulders, and lies on her back, staring at the stars and wondering if this is what Onyii saw after she’d put Ify on the shuttle that spirited her into space.