“What are you called, girl?” Okwu asked in Khoush. It was hovering directly behind me. Then it exhaled a great puff of gas. I knew to hold my breath, but the others immediately began coughing.
“Zerlin,” the girl replied in a high-pitched voice when her fit of coughing subsided.
“Zerlin, Abd, Eyad, walk away from the Binti right now,” Okwu said.
The two boys turned and shakily walked off. They didn’t run, they walked because Okwu had said to walk. Zerlin stayed. Tears now in her eyes, she said, “You shouldn’t be at this university! You killed my sister’s best friend on that ship.” She hugged herself, stumbling back. She pointed a finger at Okwu that shook so badly, it was almost comical. “Monster!”
Okwu blew out a puff of gas and said, “It wasn’t me specifically. But we are a hive mind. If need be, we are monstrous.”
She backed away from Okwu as Okwu floated toward her. Then she turned and ran off. When she was gone, I sat down right there on the concrete, bringing my knees to my chest. It didn’t matter if my long skirt got dirty, the hem was already burned.
“What did you do to your hand?” Okwu asked.
“I tried to smash my edan against a stone table,” I said, resting my head on my knees. “I was really angry and it’s more solid than it looks.”
“I will go with you to the medic building,” Okwu said.
Nothing was broken, none of my fingers at least. Just bruised and swollen with one large bleeding cut that required a small flesh knit. The medic building student nurse, who looked like a large flower floating on a cloud of red mist, said I was lucky. I would have been fine with all five fingers broken if I could have smashed my edan, I thought, but I didn’t really feel this way. What happened on Third Fish wasn’t caused by the edan and the edan was why I was alive.
The first sun was setting by the time I got out of the hospital. “Thanks for waiting, Okwu,” I said as we walked to the shuttle.
“There were airborne links in the lobby, so I finished my homework while I waited,” Okwu said.
I had my satchel with my tablet, a capture station, some mini apples, lip oil, a palm-size container of my otjize. I needed my satchel wherever I went. But Okwu and those like it moved about not needing anything, having everything. I envied this. Okwu liked to say, “People like me are always complete.”
I pinched my nose as we approached the shuttle. I was still getting used to these things. The shuttle tracks were made slick with a green oil called “narrow escape” that was secreted from huge black pitcher plants growing near the tracks. The plants stank of fresh blood and that smell triggered my flashbacks. I’d avoided Oomza shuttles for weeks, but swift transport busses weren’t made for 500-mile journeys that needed to be made in minutes, so I had to get over myself.
Once on the shuttle, I was glad to easily find a seat made for someone near my size. Okwu hovered beside me with a group of other Meduse-like People. I gazed out the window as the busy sandstone towers and hive-like edifices of Central City began to retreat within moments. Then, we were zipping past the arid lands of purple grasses that surrounded Central City. I glimpsed the Oomza Station where professors met for professor-only meetings and debates, then it was gone.
I sat back and relaxed. Beside me Okwu was chatting with another Meduse-like creature. Okwu and those who hovered and had jelly-fish like domes, filling up the open areas of the shuttle with their gasses and barely substantial bodies, always became talkative when the shuttle was moving at its fastest. I wondered if this had to do with the fact that such People were most comfortable in space and when the shuttle was zipping forth at over 500 miles per hour, this was the closest they got to that while on Oomza.
I looked at my grimy burned skirt and wished I had a way to feel at home that didn’t require squatting in the dirt beside my dorm. I thought about when my mother would take me to the lake at night to look at the clusterwink snails when they spawned. These were my oldest memories. My mother and I had both stood there looking at the snails, and even back, at the age of four, I agreed with my mother that they looked like a galaxy. We counted the snails until the counting became something else for the both of us, from the water to outer space.
“Wish visiting home didn’t have to include interstellar travel,” I mumbled to myself. Even as I got older everyone pulled back from me, I thought. Even my best friend Dele. I don’t think even he realized he was doing it. We were all falling into our roles, our destiny in the community. We were no longer free… and that was when my musings crossed that toxic boundary I’d crossed in Professor Okpala’s office earlier in the day. It was like treeing, but it was carrying me instead of me carrying it. I couldn’t get off the ship. I’d never been in space before and everyone around me was dead and I was only alive because of an intricate old dead device from a mystery metal.
I gasped and pressed my left hand to the shuttle’s large round window, my bandaged hand to my chest. My heart was punching at my ribcage.
“Why are you so tense?”
I was still not used to the sound and feel of the Meduse language and, thankfully, its vibration cut right through to me.
“Tense?” I asked. “D-d-do I look tense?”
“Yes” Okwu said. “You’ve been tense since we left Math City. That’s how I knew to come find you near your professor’s office.”
“I… was tense… I’m tense… I…” I giggled nervously, but even as the sound escaped me, I was seeing Heru’s chest exploding, yet again. I turned squarely to Okwu and I saw all those Meduse around me only held from killing me because something about my edan was poison to them. I resisted the urge to grab my edan from my pocket and thrust it at Okwu.
“Binti! Hey!”
I looked around, glad for a reason to pull my eyes from Okwu.
“Back here! Behind you!” It was Haifa. She was sitting several seats back with her roommate, a Person who I only knew as the Bear.
I waved, pushing a smile on my face. “No, no,” I said, when I saw her get up to come over to us. “It’s too packed.”
But Haifa was never one to avoid motion just because it was difficult. I think she actually liked the challenge. The Bear got up, too, though I didn’t know why. Over the weeks, I’d run into the Bear several times in the bathroom, in the study room, eating lunch on the steps and not once had she spoken to me. When Haifa got to us, she boldly shoved the two Meduse-like people out of the way to get to my seat. The two People simply floated back to make space for them. I’ll never get over the way Oomza Uni people do that on the shuttle. It’s considered polite behavior. I dreaded the day someone shoved me aside to pass and I went sprawling to the floor.
“Okwu,” Haifa said.
“Haifa,” Okwu said.
“You know each other?” I asked.
“We’re in all the same classes,” Haifa said.
“I find Haifa annoying” Okwu said. “But I suspect she will make great weapons.”
Haifa laughed loudly. “Even a Meduse is threatened by me because I’m just that genius. Everything is right in our universe.”
Okwu blasted out a large cloud of gas and Haifa and I coughed. The adult human-sized giant bail of rough brown hair that was the Bear merely shuddered. “No Meduse would fear you, Haifa,” Okwu said, its dome vibrated with laughter.