for Joseph, for Daddiji – Where is he? Where? – and felt a queer tickle on her tongue and a webby film on her teeth. She hooked her fingers inside her mouth and pulled out a dozen tiny drones. She spat, then shut her mouth tight.
Everything went silent – everyone had stopped shouting once they realised the drones would fly into their open mouths. The swarm was so thick, the air so feverish with it, that Naila couldn’t see. She cupped a hand into a visor, and still she felt the scrape of thin legs and wings on her corneas. Finally she wiped her eyes with her fingers and shut them too.
If the drones had been sent to subdue the crowd, they had served their purpose. Everyone was still, eyes closed, mouths closed, shoulders raised, arms wrapped around their bodies. Such a quiet conquest, a dark blanket cast over the people, gently chewing into them, bites stippling across the expanse of their skin. Minutes passed. Then the muffle began to loosen.
The swarm rose and swung again into its measured spirals, moving slightly faster now, as if lighter. Naila realised what this meant: the drones had not come to extract something from their bodies but to deliver something – Joseph’s Virus vaccine, she was sure of it, the one he had made with Musadabwe – administered via the tiniest plentiest injections. Mission accomplished, the drones skittered up into the cone of light. The brightness gulped them steadily and then cut to black, as if the throat of light had choked.
The crowd stirred uneasily in the dark. People touched their skin instinctively, anticipating itch or ache, hunting for bumps, seeking a bodily script to read. All they found were painless welts, which would subside by the next morning. The effects of the mass vaccination would come later. Virus immunity for all. Black patches for many, nothing a little Ambi won’t fix. But, for the next generation – the descendants of the vaccinated – there would be another illness entirely.
Just as the crowd began to gather in clumps of wonder and worry, everyone’s Beads flashed on again. There was a collective chorus of relief. It was over. Was it over? Not quite. Again the shuddering blast – a redoubled earthquake or the distant pounding of Mosi-o-Tunya – and the people covered their ears, some with their forearms this time, crouched on the ground. No more, please. Nakana. Then a tremendous earthly flinch – more than one, a succession of five or six, some far, some near – as the macrodrone lifted off its feet.
In the light of the Beads, which seemed a dull glow after that harsh spotlight, Naila saw the thing’s legs this time: massive curved arcs cutting through the night – two to the north and four in the distance. They lifted up and away from Kalingalinga, which was somehow still standing. The vibration dissipated as the great beast – the shape of a giant mosquito – rose up and flew away, restoring the constellation to the sky. The scroll of the night unrolled, flat as it ever was, its uneven Braille twinkling down. The black sack scattered its loot of light back across the universe again. And the vast night tree under which we all stand bloomed with stars once more.
Oldest friends, ancient enemies, neighbourhood frenemy foes. We’re perfectly matched, Mankind and Moz. We’re both useless, ubiquitous species. But while you rule the earth and destroy it for kicks, we loaf about, unsung heroes. We’ve been around here as long as you have – for eons before, say the fossils.
When man took up tools, we were right there beside you. When you left Broken Hill, we tracked you. Reckon the great men littered in our wake, or the wake of the fevers we carry: Dante. Vespucci. The King of Siam. De Gama. Three of the Medicis. Oliver Cromwell. The twelve-day pope. Lord Byron. Livingstone, of course. Behold the might of the mite!
There’s naught like a nemesis for truth, they say, and this story does have a lesson. Your choice as a human may seem stark: to stay or to go, to stick or strike out, to fix or to try and break free. You limit yourselves to two dumb inertias: a state of rest or perpetual motion.
But there is a third way, a moral you stumbled on, thinking it fatal, a flaw. To err is human, you say with great sadness. But we thinful singers give praise! To the drift,