got on her feet, tugged her jacket down and nodded her thanks. Then she turned to the crowd, pushed past the dead microphone and punched her fist into the air. The crowd erupted. When had Matha Mwamba been freed from prison?
‘Kwacha?!’ she called in a deep, guttural voice.
‘Ngweeee!’ came the response from the older members of the crowd, the ones who remembered.
‘Kwacha?!’ she called again, cupping her hand to her ear.
‘Ngweeee!’ came the response, sighing across the crowd to the ones who were learning.
Matha laughed with joy and her congregation of Weepers below the stage began to sing and ululate.
‘Revolution now!’ Jacob shouted. He grabbed his gogo’s hand and punched it high again, so their fists were raised together. The bolus of their hands glowed – the press of their fingers had turned on his Bead. Those closest to the stage took the cue, pinpricks of light flickering on one by one. It was nearly dark out and Naila now saw the speed of light, the scatter of Beads flashing on over the crowd, coursing into a galaxy. The crowd cooed softly at the nimbus it had made, like a big baby fascinated by its own hand.
Matha Mwamba stalked the stage, calling out, a natural-born preacher.
‘One Zambia?!’
‘One Nation!’
‘A luta?!’
‘Continua!’
The bits of light waved and trembled. Jacob switched his Bead to a megaphone app. Matha took his wrist and began speaking into it.
‘And the first beast was like a lion,’ she said. ‘And the second beast like a calf.’ She raised her voice. ‘And the third beast had a face as a man and the fourth beast was a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him and they were full of eyes within. What. Are. These. Mysteries?!’ She cocked her head. ‘Is. This. Not. Prophecy?!’
The crowd cheered wildly.
‘End of days is here!’ Matha preached. ‘Have you not seen the winds of change rushing over our lands? Have you not seen the burning winds of Lucifer and Mammon? Bending heads and breaking backs across the world? In USA! In UK! In USSR! In China! And now even here in Zambia! Can you not see that the lion is war? That the calf is for fattening, because it is for slaughter? The third beast – it is the dictator in every land from Russia to Kenya, Zimbabwe to India. It is the face of man! On the body of a demon!’
Naila ran to Joseph and hugged him – forgive me, that hug said – and kissed him on the lips. ‘We did it!’ she shouted into his ear over the booming of Matha’s speech.
‘Did what?’ He gestured at the crowd. ‘Started a new church?’
She looked up into his eyes, eerie emerald in the crowd’s Bead light. ‘We got them here.’
‘Ya.’ He gestured at the billboard behind them, its half-message, its giant SO. ‘And for what?’
‘For that!’ She gripped his face with both hands and turned it towards the glimmering lake of Bead lights. He shook his head within the vice of her palms.
‘What do you want to say to them, Joseph?’
He looked at her. He swallowed. ‘I want to tell them that our minds are free, even if our hands are tied by poverty,’ he said, gaining confidence. ‘That we can innovate! We can—’
‘—horse is conqueror!’ Matha was hollering. ‘The red horse is murderer! The black horse is scales, the moneyed banker! And the pale horse, oh, the pale horse of death—’
A cry rang out: ‘Police!’ Matha broke off. Night had fallen and it was hard to see. Jacob pointed across the crowd at a flurry in the swimming constellation. There was a staccato echo: ‘Police, police, police,’ called the people. Uniformed men and women were blundering in from the sides, holding their weapons aloft. The crowd wriggled like a mess of worms as people tried to turn, to run, to stay – all at the same time.
Naila looked around. Joseph was frozen, staring at his unspoken speech. Jacob was squatting at the front edge of the stage with his gogo, who was conferring with her congregants below. The Weepers were a dark clot in the midst of the lights – they wore all black and many of them had missed the government roll-out of free Beads while they were in prison.
Matha cast her hand forward and they dispersed, spreading like inky tentacles from the stage, each sinuous line moving towards those who had infiltrated the rally. The officers were yelling and swinging. The Weepers were