of this year,’ he had solemnly promised at the first press conference. ‘The technical details must remain secret. Some of our ideas are way ahead of the Americans’ and the Russians’. Imagine the prestige value this would earn for our new nation of Zambia. Most Westerners don’t even know whereabouts in Africa we are.’
But they did now, Nkoloso smiled to himself. He had put his country on the world map by joining the race to leave it altogether. He looked around at the reporters who had flown all the way to Zambia for the test launch. These bazungu in shirtsleeves and spectacles looked like yams roasting on an mbaula – red and wet and bursting from the skin. Strangely reluctant to talk to people unless the cameras were rolling, the reporters were busying themselves with things instead, setting up tripods and scratching notes on paper and snapping photographs of Cyclops I.
Nkoloso admired his rocket from a distance. The ten-foot copper cylinder was propped on its end in the grass, listing peaceably, its bottom quarter singed black from pre-launch testing. The take-off had been disappointing from the point of view of spectacle – Cyclops I had only risen six feet before it crashed to the ground. The mukwa wood catapult he had been considering would not be powerful enough; the mulolo system, while ideal for training cadets to withstand weightlessness, would never swing far enough. Turbulent propulsion was the only way forward!
He walked over to confer with a Canadian cameraman, who was panting like a dog in the heat. Nkoloso asked if he could look through the viewfinder. The Canadian stepped aside and Nkoloso took his place behind it.
‘How do you zoom?’ he asked.
The cameraman wiped his brow and fiddled with some knobs. As the square bloomed fuzzily before his eyes, Nkoloso almost lost his balance. He started back from the camera.
‘Does it turn things upside down too?’
No, the cameraman laughed and pointed. Godfrey Mwango, the star astronaut of the Space Programme, was upside down in real life. He was practising handstands to impress Matha Mwamba, the other star astronaut, a star that much brighter for being the only woman on the team. Nkoloso examined them through the lens. Matha was seated with her back against a tree, her legs stretched in front of her. Godfrey stood at her feet, facing her. He placed his palms on either side of her legs and tilted up again into a handstand, his arms forming a bridge over her shins. He settled into his balance with a stagger. Matha was giggling and stroking the cat curled up against her thigh. Another cat began making figures of eight around Godfrey’s wrists and Matha’s ankles, binding them to each other with a slinky invisible chain.
Nkoloso frowned. This was not the kind of weightlessness and stargazing of which he approved. This was not the kind of revolutionary vision that his Academy demanded.
* * *
Her fingers deep in Judas’s purr, Matha was laughing and wincing. Bartholomew’s paws tickled and scratched the skin of her ankles as he tumbled over them in mesmeric wander. Upside-down Godfrey canted back onto his feet and grinned at her, the round black moons of his shoulders curving against the noon-blue sky. Bartholomew ceased looping Matha’s ankles, gave her a look of disgust and sauntered off. Judas scampered after him. Always a follower, that one.
‘Come, Sister of the Heavens. We are starting just-now,’ said Godfrey, pointing at the SPACE banner. He reached down and pulled Matha to her feet. She tugged down on her leather bomber jacket, a gift from Ba Nkoloso. She was wearing it despite the heat because it set her apart from the other girls here, the hangers-on and would-bes. Some of them had babies on their backs – as if one could properly space-train with such a burden! Those girls teased Matha – they said she wasn’t serious, that she laughed too much. But while they were busy wiping poo and snot and spit and piss from their babies’ wet holes, Ba Nkoloso had taught Matha how to drive a car, fix an engine, and put together a circuit board with a handful of wires and an old battery.
Matha gave the girls a pitying look now as she and Godfrey jogged over to where Ba Nkoloso and the other cadets were lining up in front of the SPACE sign. There was a camera facing them: a square black box with a tightcurled horn, balanced on three long thin legs. Behind