she said and tried to stand, then collapsed back into her chair.
‘You need to see a doctor.’
‘Had enough of doctors, thank you,’ she tittered, then broke into a cough.
‘A real doctor,’ he said. He looked at her. ‘Not that charlatan.’
‘Who? Lee?’ she smiled. ‘Shame. No, but he tried.’
‘This medicine he gave you – it did not even work. He was testing you. Like an animal.’
‘Maybe it could have worked. I stopped using it.’
‘That family,’ he fumed. ‘They take everything away from us.’
‘Not everything.’
‘Your house,’ he raised his fingers one by one as he listed, ‘your body, your job—’
‘My job?’ A laugh rippled through her and she winced.
‘Did he give you any money from his Virus vaccine? Did you get any proceeds?’
‘No,’ she shrugged and scratched a dark patch on her cheek.
He shook his head. ‘You were just another lab rat.’
‘No,’ she frowned. ‘I was the only one with both mutations. I was The Lusaka—’
The door opened. It was Gogo, dripping tears, carrying bags of vegetables.
Jacob stayed for supper. It was the first meal these three Mwambas had ever shared together. It was very quiet. His mother barely touched the food. Gogo furiously snatched hers into her mouth. But they somehow coordinated their movements – his mother reaching wordlessly and Gogo handing her what she wanted; Jacob pouring more water in Gogo’s cup the moment it was empty; his mother adding just the right touch of salt to Jacob’s meat. The air between them was tender when darkness fell. Gogo insisted that he stay the night.
Jacob had just achieved a restless sleep on the floor when a spasm in his hand woke him up. He switched his Bead to torch mode, cupping his hand to shield its brightness. It took him a while to see it because was it was nearly inside the light coming from his middle finger – a red bump next to his Bead. A mosquito bite. It must have interfered with the circuit. He clicked his Bead on and off, trying to still the zinging feeling, but it lingered, pulsing from the centre of his palm. He lay back down and closed his eyes and there it was. The key.
The Challenges Facing Future Micro-Air-Vehicle Development had to be considered all together. Jacob ran through them in his head. Flight: drone propellers were too stiff to account for the strange ways that air flows at such a small scale. Power: the balance of weight and energy had to be just right – the energy source for a microdrone could not be too heavy. Navigation: weight was also a problem here – the camera or lasers that would allow the microdrone to ‘see’ couldn’t be too bulky. Could there be one solution for all of these problems?
The article had called this multifunctionality, but he hadn’t understood what that meant until now. He had thought of it like a Bead, which you pressed in different ways for various functions – one tap for on and off, two to make it a torch, and so on. But this was more like the splayed network of nerves in his hand or the meal the three Mwambas had shared tonight, separate yet connected, synchronised.
He clicked his Bead on, crooked his left middle finger, and opened the Diagram app. With his right index finger, he drew over his palm, making a sketch on the virtual sheet. When he was finished, its lines were shaking because his hand was. It was the blueprint of a wing. Now he just needed money to make a new prototype.
* * *
They made the exchange in the ‘lab’ behind the clinic. Jacob had thought he would resent it but it felt good to watch Lionel Banda’s son hand over a thick wad of kwacha, cool and smooth as skin. Jacob counted out the bills twice. He barely paid attention to the contract or to Joseph’s contorted words about the difference between experimenting on animals and people. Jacob felt that everything was coming to him now, everything that was owed.
He took a taxi to the New Kasama house a few days later. He hadn’t been there in months, dodging the General. But now that he had good news to report, the General was out of town. Like teenagers without a chaperone, the guards were clustered around an mbaula, getting wasted and watching YouTube on their Beads, rifles in a casual heap like a woodpile. Solo sat alone in a corner, his eyes locked on something a centimetre away from his