Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World

1

“Welcome, M Akwande,” the monocled man said with a bow. He stood atop an enormous ornately carved dais made from a single block of pure green jade.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Akwande said, nodding graciously. “It’s so good of you to come to my humble Home.” There was a momentary flash of light behind the darkened monocle lens. Kismet’s robe was deep green like his throne, its hem reaching his bare feet.

“Home is beautiful beyond compare, Doctor. But no place which serves as both residence and sovereign nation could be called humble.”

Kismet descended the six stairs from the dais down to Fayez Akwande’s level. Two naked young men rushed to assist but he dismissed them with an almost imperceptible gesture. Immediately the sexually enhanced Nordic teenagers genuflected and moved backward in the same fluid motion.

The monarch spoke.

“Less than fifteen miles in any direction, Home is smaller than many cities in size. Add that to the puny population and you have the smallest, weakest nation in the world.”

M Akwande noticed that Kismet did not claim poverty for the large island off the western coast of Mexico. It was rumored that the eccentric CEO of MacroCode International paid a trillion international credits for the island, created in the great earthquake of 2006, and its claim of nationhood.

“Between the saltwater crocodiles and the patrols by land and air I’d venture to say that Home is the most secure nation in the world today.” On his part Akwande was all in black — his loose cotton pants and shirt, his skin. The only flashes of white on the guest were his teeth, his eyes, and an uncarved bone pendant, about three inches long, that depended from a silver chain around his neck. The day before in New Jersey, his wife Aja had placed the pendant on him, a queen knighting her people’s savior.

“Are you hungry, sir?” Kismet asked, his visible eye losing interest in speculation about his domain. “Maybe a drink?”

“A drink would be nice.”

“Then, come.”

Akwande was a tall man, six foot five by the old measuring. But Kismet was a head above that, maybe more. He took Akwande by the elbow and led him toward a wide corridor enclosed by forty-foot crystal walls. The semitropical sun blazed around them but the air was cool and exhilarating. Two naked women followed noiselessly. To the left and right were magnificent elevated views of Kismet’s heaven on earth. Imported oak and eucalyptus forests, miles-long abstract mosaics achieved by flowers and multicolored leaves. The reproduction of an ancient Phoenician fishing fleet docked in the world renowned Harbor of Gold. There was even a small desert. To the right lay Atlantis, his capital, one of three cities on the island. The red and ochre construction of stone, iron, and glass was home to thirty thousand of his subjects. The buildings had underlying structures of Synthsteel and could withstand winds of three hundred fifty miles an hour. It was said that they could withstand a nuclear attack.

To the left was a clearing that contained drab green domes and long brown barracks. This, Akwande knew, was Sparta, the soldier city. Not far beyond was a circle of blue, a mile in diameter. There was nothing that Akwande could say for certain about the makeup of the Blue Zone, as it was called. Somehow Kismet had designed a camouflage for his research center that defied visual or electronic investigation. One could make out shapes and movement but it was like looking into a blue prism through mist. No one entered or exited the Blue Zone without permission from Kismet or the ranking head of operations, who held the sinister title of Dominar.

Wild birds and strange animals could be seen in the clearing directly below, through the transparent floor. Kismet and Akwande walked in silence for ten minutes before reaching an iron door. The young women ran ahead of them to push the doors open. They exerted strength that Akwande would not have attributed to ones so small and soft-looking.

His surprise must have shown because the doctor said, “Surprise is the joy of life and the secret to survival.”

“Is that one of your scriptures, Doctor?”

Kismet smiled and motioned with his head for Akwande to precede him onto a large outside landing. He was met with an almost aerial view of the Pacific Ocean.

“It’s beautiful.” The words escaped Akwande’s lips before he could stop himself.

“The view has that effect,” Kismet agreed. “High above the world, looking at the mother of all life, feeling her power and her indifference. Here we stand as near as possible to understanding the truth of our mortal predicament.”

As he spoke the women rolled in a table and chairs hewn from the sinewy, twining trunks of banyan trees.

“I’ve always believed that truth was a conviction tempered by humanity and the mind, Doctor,” Akwande said, regaining a sort of emotional balance. “Not a thing.”

Kismet smiled and the light flashed behind his monocle again.

“What is your pleasure, Professor?” the absolute ruler asked.

“Come again?”

“How shall I entertain you? There’s a wonderful tenor residing in Atlantis at the moment. Also a portrait artist who may be the greatest talent in the history of the art. A painting for Aja?”

Hearing his wife’s name issue from this monster’s lips disconcerted Akwande. But then he realized that this was Kismet’s intention.

“My wealth is all in my work, Doctor,” Akwande said. “And, anyway, if I found myself on an unemployment cycle I couldn’t bring a painting to Common Ground.”

Common Ground, a section of every city in the world; the place where unemployed workers have to go when there is no other refuge. Beans and rice to eat and a doorless sleep cubicle were the bare essentials of those consigned there.

“There is no Common Ground in Atlantis or anywhere else on Home, Doctor,” Kismet said. “Here is the home of leadership, art, and science.”

“The leader being you.”

The shadow that passed over Kismet’s face brought both exhilaration and fear into the heart of the co-leader of the Sixth Radical Congress.

“Iced tea?” Kismet asked.

“I could use it.”

Kismet turned toward his paradise. Akwande looked also, but his thoughts were not on Eden. Instead his mind’s eye conjured up another garden, a garden of dried dirt labored over by skeletal bodies, cried upon by millions of dying Malians. Behind the ocean’s roar he heard the hiss of a billion flies feasting on the open sores of human suffering. In his repose he thought of those he’d met who would never rise again.

The iced tea arrived carried on a silver platter by a nude and completely hairless black woman. Her breasts were full and firm.

Well fed, Akwande thought.

His eyes met hers but found nothing.

“Maybe sex,” Kismet suggested.

“Excuse me?”

“Maybe you would like to see a live sex show. We could set the stage right here. I can supply any number of performers. You could join in if you wanted. All of my performers are tested and guaranteed for perfect health.”

The woman still stood before the guest. Akwande realized that she was waiting for him to choose his glass. He did so.

“I haven’t come for fun, Doctor.”

“No? That’s really too bad. Because you know fun is all that makes life worthwhile. If you can’t enjoy life, why live it?”

“I prefer to leave that question unanswered, sir,” Akwande replied. The tea was the best he’d ever had. He tasted pomegranate, citrus, and mint amid a floral bouquet. He wanted another glass before the one he drank from was empty.

Kismet smiled. His one eye seemed to notice everything.

“Maybe you would like a different kind of sex show,” Kismet offered in response.

“I told you—”

“A white woman, maybe,” Kismet stuck out his lower lip and moved his hands in circles indicating that he was throwing out possibilities. “A hardworking secretary, plucked freshly from her secure everyday existence, brought here and raped — for you. Ravished and humiliated — for you.”

Akwande wouldn’t have been able to suppress the laugh even if he wanted to. It was a deep and musical laugh that sounded more like master than guest.

“You laugh?”

“No offense, Doctor. It’s just a sign of relief.”

“Relief?”

“You are the great Doctor Ivan Kismet. Your corporations control the greater portion of the planet. Your Infochurch rivals Catholicism in membership. It is said that you can master any intellectual system in days, at most.

“And yet I see that even you are capable of misreading the human heart, that even you can misjudge a man’s motives. As I said, I do not mean this as an insult. It’s just that I had been told that I would be in the presence of a god. It’s a relief to know that you are a man.”

Kismet’s monocled eye flashed twice. He studied Akwande, or maybe the images transmitted electronically to his brain. His body jerked from a small spasm and then he smiled.

“What do you want, Fayez?”

“Justice,” the co-chair of the Sixth Radical Congress said, beginning a long practiced speech. RadCon6 had made a great investment of time and money to bring him there. Two men had died while on investigating missions. Fayez himself spent six months in a bug-ridden hotel waiting to be allowed a one-hour interview with Ptolemy Bent at Randac Corporation’s maximum security research facility in Madagascar.

All of that and he had less than a whisper of a hope that he might be successful.

Fayez Akwande felt as if he had been working toward this moment his entire life. He’d always worked to free the minds and bodies of black people around the world. As an archaeologist he pressed to prove superior intellectual and scientific advances in ancient and prehistoric Africa. As the congressman from Newark he fought to increase awareness of the widening gap between rich and poor. And now, as the co-chair of RadCon6, he meant to engage the most powerful man in the world, to force him to bend his will for the good of Africa, Africans, and the African diaspora around the world. He felt that if he could turn Ivan Kismet toward his own goals, the rest of the world must surely follow.

“Justice,” he repeated, “and the offer of our friendship.”

Kismet nodded. A loud bird screeched somewhere nearby.

“You offer me friendship?” Kismet ridiculed.

“And the opportunity to use your power for history,” Fayez said. He had more to say, but his advisors had suggested a slower approach.

“I do what I want,” the absolute ruler said. “You would see that if you let me entertain you. The ancients struggled to make gold out of lead. I can make a dog out of a cat, a Hindu god with six arms, an advertisement for Flapjack computers lighting up on the dark moon. I don’t need friends.”

Akwande had seen the ad. Maybe the rest was also real.

“It’s not love we offer, Doctor, but respect for you. Millions are starving—”

“I command more of the love and support among the people that you profess to represent than you could ever imagine.” Kismet’s tone was derisive. “The black masses have taken to Infochurch like bears to honey. My message that God is a riddle and the world of science filled with His clues has captured more imaginations than any King or X or radical assassin.” He eyed Akwande maliciously at the last word.

“We do not assassinate,” Akwande said simply.

“Three of your slayers were stopped on this island.” Kismet clasped his hands together and squeezed.

“Not mine, Doctor. That was RadCon5. They believed in overthrow. I believe in change.”

“For change, my friend, you need power. I am power — but I am not yours.”

“Then why am I here, Ivan?”

“You’re the one who asked for the audience.”

“And you accepted. I find it hard to believe that you would waste time on someone you didn’t have an interest in.”

Again Kismet smiled. Again the flashes behind his monocle.

“He wears a monocle that’s electronic, it has a light that sometimes flashes,” Akwande said to the twenty-six-year-old convicted killer, Ptolemy Bent.

“When does it flash?” the lion-haired youth asked. Ptolemy’s intelligence was accepted as the greatest in recorded history.

“At odd times. But almost always when he is posed with a difficult problem.”

“And you say his weight changed after 2031?”

“Yes. He went from 195 to 202. I only mention it because he had maintained 195 for a dozen years.”

“And when did he start wearing the monocle?”

“A year before the weight change.”

RadCon5 had studied Kismet for years in order to plan his assassination. Later, RadCon6 continued the study, for more complex reasons.

Kismet also had a change in gait in 2031. RadCon’s doctors said that this was due to the weight gain, but Ptolemy was not sure. He told Akwande that he didn’t know which leg, but one of them held the computer that informed the eye.

“It’s the future of intelligence,” the young man explained. “Chromo-circuitry custom designed for the receiver, and a highly advanced computer built into his body. A computer this size, five or six pounds, could retain nearly all of the information in any particular field with a faster-than-thought delivery system.”

“So he’s virtually omniscient?”

“The monocle receives information from either the computer or a remote source. That way he can also be in constant communication with his network. No one could outthink him, all other things being equal.”

“What does that mean?”

“He might receive information that he doesn’t understand. He might receive false information. But considering advances in AI systems that isn’t very likely.”

“Which leg would the computer be in?”

“I don’t know. But you could tell by the way he lands on it in vigorous exercise. A little more of a jolt on the heavier side.”

“You want me to ask him to do jumping jacks?”

“I’m just telling you what I know, M,” the youth replied. “There’s only so much I can do locked up in a cage.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Keep strong, brother.”

“I am a collector, sir,” Dr. Kismet was saying.

“And what is it that you collect?”

“The fruit of human advancement, the best of the best of mankind.” Kismet’s use of the old term referring to humanity was a serious breach of good manners, further proof of his megalomania. “The finest art and relics of the pinnacles of history grace my lower halls. Atlantis is populated with the greatest scientists, artists, and artisans of our times.”

“You claim to own people?”

“Not own, collect. We are very civilized about it. We supply a domicile and a stipend, all stipulated in a mutually agreed upon contract. They are free to travel and seek profit through personal endeavors. All I ask is to be able to request their labor at various times.”

“And what does that have to do with me?”

“I want you in my collection, M Akwande.”

“Me?”

“Don’t be modest. You were a great coup for the Sixth Radical Congress. Without you they would have spiraled into anarchic disaster. It was you who redefined their political agenda. This after an impressive career in archaeology. And, if I am not wrong, you were ranked twelfth in the world as a Go master at the age of twenty-one.”

“You are well informed, Doctor. But why settle for twelfth when you could seek out the prime Go master?”

“Ton Li. He lives on the island, of course,” Kismet said, waving a spurious hand. “Boring fellow, really. He knows little beyond strategy. And precious little of that outside the confines of his illegal ivory board.”

Ton Li had defeated Akwande in just six hours of play.

“I am not for sale,” Akwande said.

“What if I told you that the scientists in the Blue Zone had discovered a certain combination of oils, rendered from three distinct legumes, which replicate, almost exactly from a combustion standpoint, the attributes of petroleum?”

“I would buy your stocks for RadCon and forget my quest for financial support.”

Kismet smiled again. “If only I were going public. But alas, dear M, MacroCode has evolved past the primitive whims of the stock market. Our roots are deeper than any econsystem.”

“Then,” Akwande postulated, “I have no interest in your magic beans.”

This response brought laughter to the would-be Tsar’s lips. Never in any vidclip, photograph, or written report had Akwande seen anything intimating that the madman was capable of laughter.

“You see?” Kismet said. “Your appreciation resonates with mine. You surprise me with your acuity and challenge me with your observations. And you understand people. Why spend all your time on the plight of those most of whom do not even know that you exist? Help me to organize off-planet colonization. Make a difference in history.”

The offer filtered past the radical leader’s resolve. Unbidden, the notion of power came to him. Rather than fight for ideals he could create millions of real jobs with the flash of an eyescan. Akwande never felt at home among the fanatics and madmen of the Radical Congress. He did not enjoy a research of conspiracies and the poverty pressed upon him. He wanted a comfortable life for his wife and children, good schools and a woody lane. But his desires could not eclipse the fact that the Malians died, and others too, by the thousands each day.

“I haven’t seen your famous tennis courts, Doctor.”

“What?”

“Your tennis courts. The DataTimes says that you still play from time to time, between national buyouts.”

“Do you understand what I’m offering you?” It was more a threat than a question. “I’m willing to run my faux-petrol project out of any nation you elect. I haven’t paid that much for even an American president.”

“I understand you, Doctor. The problem is that you don’t understand me.”

The monocle flashed on and stayed that way for ten seconds or more. M Akwande was pleased to think how many resources he was tying up. He imagined that somewhere in the mysterious Blue Zone, databases of language and slang were studying his question about tennis courts. Maybe specialists were being consulted. His own personal history was being scrutinized.

Finally, “Do you play tennis?” Kismet asked.

“As a young man I did. I was very impressed with the Williams sisters and how they stormed the tennis world.”

“As was I. But I was more interested in their father. There was a man of vision. He created champions. Creation comes before all else.”

“I wasn’t very good at it,” Akwande continued. “Tennis, that is.” He was thinking about the nine months of training that began a week after he left Ptolemy’s cell. Six hours a day of play, another three of special exercises, and endless hours of concentration meditations. Specialized strength-enhancing and flexibility-increasing injections, electronic acupuncture treatments — all paid for in cash or in kind. There were no electronic trails, no one knew who didn’t need to. Even Aja was unaware of his scheme. The only evidence was a trace of body-enhancing chemicals in his bloodstream. And to cover even that, all of the leaders of RadCon6 had entered a quasi-secret training program where body enhancing drugs were requisite. They were preparing for another period of violence, it was leaked, and the leaders were expected to fight side by side with the rank and file.

“Yes,” Kismet said. “You played when you went to Howard. Not a bad record, really. You could have gone pro.”

“I couldn’t sell you my freedom, Doctor. Such a betrayal by any RadCon leader would set us back a century or more.”

Kismet did not answer. Maybe this silence was meant as some kind of threat, Akwande wasn’t sure. But he decided to act as if it were.

“But maybe we could make a wager,” the radical leader offered.

The ruler’s one eye searched for the trick. “A wager?”

He’s a half-assed gambler, XX Y, co-chair of the Sixth Radical Congress, had said. He’s always entering into contests of skill and knowledge but never games of chance. He’ll bet a billion dollars against a blow job. One time he poisoned a dude and then bet him the antidote in a contest of memory.

Who won? Akwande asked. He was breathing hard after an hour of returning serves from a state-of-the-art servo-master.

Guy fell on his knees and begged Kismet to ask what he wanted. The MacroCode/Infotel merger was signed that day.

“A bet,” Akwande said.

“What kind of bet?”

“The bean farms set up in Mali against my servitude on this plantation.” Before he had come there Akwande was unaware of the petroleum substitute. But he had known that there would be some way that the CEO of MacroCode could save the starving millions of Mali.

“Go?” Kismet suggested.

“No. Ton Li defeated me once. Maybe he’s given you lessons.”

“How about a contest of knowledge about the topic of your choice?”

Akwande appeared to hesitate.

“African-American history, shall we say?” Kismet teased. “You did teach that subject for a while, I understand.”

A moment’s more hesitation, then, “No. I’d better not. My people tell me that you have the second highest IQ in the history of such things. Anything that has to do with the intellect might give you an unfair advantage.”

Kismet’s frown came at the claim of his second place standing.

“Intelligence is highly overrated,” the leader cooed. “How old are you, Doctor?”

“Forty-nine last Thursday.”

“I’m thirty-nine,” Akwande said. “That gives me a physical advantage, theoretically.”

“You want to fight for your freedom?” The humor in Kismet’s voice was chilling.

“In a way. I was thinking of tennis.”

2

There didn’t seem to be walls in the room they’d brought him to. It was called the Serengeti room. A woven grass mat was laid on real soil among plants that grew naturally. The sounds of wildlife, Akwande assumed, were recordings or computer generated. But the air — it was real savannah air. How could he create that? Akwande wondered if there was some kind of machine that excited past memories, brought them forward by the use of familiar surroundings.

They had separated after the terms of the wager had been settled. Tournament rules. The first to take three sets was the winner. If Kismet was victorious Akwande would move his family to Atlantis and agree to have at least twelve dinners and twelve lunches a year with the king, whom he would refer to as sire. Additionally, he would agree to work for the off-planet colonization project, which he had never heard of before that day. It would be his job to recruit colonists to sign away their lives on Earth in order to assure the future of the race.

“The human race,” Kismet said with heavy emphasis.

Akwande wondered for the ninth time whether he should simply take Kismet up on his original offer. Generations of political struggle hadn’t been enough to fully liberate his people. The weight of poverty, the failure of justice, came down on the heads of dark people around the globe. Capitalism along with technology had assured a perpetual white upper class. Maybe by infiltrating the MacroCode infrastructure he could bring about change. If he took the job he could ensure the safety and future of his children. Maybe he could create an off-planet black colony. Maybe he could build a support station in the Sahara.

For the ninth time Akwande rejected Kismet’s offer. XX Y, the radical co-chair of RadCon6, had spoken the truth when he declared that “the purpose of our war is victory, not peace, not compromise.”

For his part, if Kismet lost he would give complete rights to his faux-petro project to the sovereign nation of Mali. He would not attempt a hostile takeover and he would protect that nation against other corporate aggressors.

“And if I lose, Doctor—”

“You will.”

“—what if I refuse to uphold my part of the bargain?”

“Do you know of Bjornn Svengaard?” asked Kismet.

Akwande did know of the Swedish explorer. His daughter, it was said, had been taken to the land of Home after Kismet proved to have a greater knowledge of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs than her father.

Some months later, Svengaard had been found dead in a hotel room in Jakarta. The death seemed natural, except that the baby finger of his left hand had been surgically removed.

“No,” Akwande said. “Who is he?”

Kismet smiled. “If you don’t know of him my point would be lost.”

When a lion roared Akwande jumped up from his grass mat. His heart was thumping. He could feel his muscles straining across bone.

He’s trying to waste me before the game, Akwande thought. With this realization came a smile. He allowed himself to fall into the deep patterns of his concentration meditation. The image of a man thrown from a ship in the middle of the ocean came to mind. He was swimming minute by minute, year after year. Swimming toward an alien shore or home, he knew not which. He swam over a deep slumber — exhausted, relaxed, and reprieved all in one.

The next morning, the hairless and naked black woman from the day before came to his room and informed him that they would be driving to the Blue Zone. She waited for him to dress and then drove him in an electric cart down a paved road through a palm forest.

“What’s your name?”

“Eye.”

“The pronoun?”

“The organ.”

“Why do you humiliate yourself for this rich white man?” Akwande asked, certain that his question would disconcert and embarrass the woman.

“It is you who feel humiliation,” she said, eyes on the road, more calm, Akwande thought, than stone.

“It’s not me,” he said, “stripped naked, all my hair shaved off. What am I supposed to think when a woman sits next to me like that? Out here?”

“If you want there’s time before the game.”

“You offer me your body just like that and you say you haven’t debased yourself.”

Eye stopped the cart and turned her perfect body toward Akwande.

“In the beginning, there was nothing but cosmic dust,” she recited from Beginnings, the first book in the Infochurch bible. “This dust led unerringly to the multiplicity of God.”

“I know his party line, sister.”

“But do you know the sister?” she asked. “Did you know the Ugandan child whose parents survived the chemical baths rained down in the U.S. — Sudan wars? The child who was born eyeless and legless, with no hair and only stumps for hands? The child set out on a tiny wheeled wagon and made to beg from wealthy black American tourists? The child who prayed every night into the fiber line that goes to the great Idaho transmitter that sends our pleas to Infinity, God’s fifth child?”

This was Kismet’s genius. A direct link to God. A telephone to eternity. Actually, RadCon agents had learned, every prayer and confession was recorded and logged into what was called the Database of Hope.

“He did this for you?” Akwande asked, looking into her passionate and empty eyes.

“Yes.”

“Then drive on.”

“When do we get to the Blue Zone?” Akwande asked Eye after some minutes.

“We are there.”

“But the color—”

“Is an illusion,” she said, finishing his sentence.

They came to a stop at a stand of bamboo.

A man in a scarlet robe was waiting for them. He was short, white, and rather stocky. He had also been trans-capped. The top of his skull had been removed and replaced with a transparent Synthsteel dome. His brain was visible. Even small vessels pumping blood were discernible. Trans-caps contained electrodes and transistors that could deliver impulses to the nervous system. They could also read electronic emanations. Transcappers could actually send and receive messages in a manner that could only be called telepathy.

“I am Tristan the First,” the robed man said in a mild tone. “Dominar of the Blue Zone.”

“Don’t you think that title sounds kinda ridiculous? I mean, my nine-year-old would say something like that after reading a comic vid.”

“Follow me.”

Akwande followed Tristan and was followed by Eye down a slender path of crushed white stone through the thick bamboo forest. The radical leader regretted his bravado, but it was an unavoidable side effect of his mental preparations to play. A silent mantra of rage and restraint sang at the back of each thought.

A few minutes more and they came to a large clearing that contained two professional-size tennis courts, one grass and the other clay. Behind the courts stood a large wall that seemed to be made from solid gold. But this, too, Akwande realized, was an illusion. Mayan hieroglyphs appeared in dark brown relief at various places upon the screen. These hieroglyphs came to life and took on the characteristics of their totems. They traveled the screen fighting, fornicating, or simply passing through one another.

“Good morning, citizen,” Dr. Kismet said, rising from a chair at the foot of the giant screen. “Grass or clay?”

“It’s up to you, Doctor,” Akwande said, suppressing the urge to add, you motherfucking bastard.

“But you are my guest.”

“But you are my elder.”

Akwande did have a preference, but he wanted to give his opponent a sense of control.

You could never beat him under normal circumstances, John Robinson, his coach, told him. But if you play to his weakness...

“Clay, then,” Kismet said. “Last night I sent a representative to your home and asked your wife for this.”

Eye came up with Akwande’s college tennis racket.

“I had it restrung,” Kismet said. “Test it to see if it is to your liking.”

Eye proffered a basket of bright orange tennis balls.

Akwande hit a few balls and nodded his satisfaction.

“What did Aja say, Eye?” Kismet asked.

“Tell Fayez that I hope he wins,” Eye reported.

Akwande wondered if the hairless beauty had gone to his home.

“Are you ready to lose, citizen?” Kismet smiled.

“Never, Ivan.” The chemically enhanced glands of Akwande’s body were beginning their strength cycle. It was all he could do to restrain himself from attacking Kismet physically.

“Scores will appear on the board,” the Dominar announced loudly as if there were an audience. “Top and bottom of the screen will reflect the players’ positions. When the game is over the winner’s name will appear on top.”

After winning the toss of a coin Kismet took the first four games on the strength of his serve. Another man might have lost heart, but Fayez Akwande, in the depths of his walking meditation, was aware only of the ball and of Kismet’s legs. He managed to return a serve for the first time in the fifth game. A volley ensued and the radical leader fell into the hours of training he had gone through. He returned the ball to the opposite end and watched Kismet’s easy gait on the returns. The absolute monarch was playing with him, but he didn’t mind.

Akwande lost the first set in straight games. He lost the second set winning only one. But one game into the third set Kismet stumbled. He was moving for an easy return toward the front of the court when his right leg seemed to jam or stiffen.

Akwande put the next ball to Kismet’s right side. Again he had trouble with the leg. Like a boxer going for a cut eye, Akwande made Kismet work his right side. Through the third set he won his serve. Kismet came back strong, compensating for a slight limp. The doctor lost that set seven to nine.

Kismet took the first three games of the fourth set, but that was his last hurrah. Akwande kept the ball a step away on the dictator’s right side. The stiff leg turned into a slight limp; the limp soon became a stumble.

Akwande took every game of the fifth and final set. He tired badly in the last two, but by then Kismet was all but lame. Eye and the Dominar witnessed their master’s humiliation. Akwande wondered if there was some sharpshooter in the woods who might kill him before the last point could be registered.

Kismet was trembling when they shook hands.

“You’ve beaten me,” he said with equal parts of surprise and malice.

“Surprise,” Akwande said, “is the secret to survival.”

3

In less than thirty-six hours the electronic media around the world were reporting on FauxPetro, the new fuel oil developed by Blue Zone Enterprises, a division of Macro-Code International. The most surprising development was the fact that MacroCode allowed Mali exclusive rights to production of the new fuel oil without any conditions.

“He could have bought into the British Parliament with a cash cow like this,” Letter Philips said on that evening’s Last Words.

One morning, a week later, Fayez Akwande bought his daily carrot/apple/ginger juice at the Good Grocer chain store near RadCon’s Jersey City office. By noon he felt ill. Not sick, but utterly exhausted. It was only on the second day that he had returned to work at the headquarters of RadCon6.

“You look like hell,” Rhonda Joll, his executive aide, said.

“Is that a way to talk to the man who saved western Africa, M Joll?”

“We still got north, south, and east to go,” the unrepentant grandmother replied. “I’ll get Malik to drive you home.”

“Maybe you’d better. It must be the letdown from all that work getting ready.”

“Is Aja there?”

“No. She was called away on that new job for Ocean Farms.”

“Then maybe I should go—”

“No, Rhonda. No. I’d rather sleep alone.”

“I wasn’t saying...” the woman sputtered.

“Don’t you get my jokes yet?” Fayez said. He found it difficult to sit up straight in his chair.

By the time he was standing naked next to his bed, Fayez Akwande feared that he was dying.

“Vid on,” he said.

The small monitor next to the bed winked on and a man’s voice said, “Vid ready.”

But by that time Fayez was unconscious on the bed. A short while later the vid said, “Three minutes has elapsed. Vid off.”

When Fayez Akwande awoke it was nighttime. He was lying on his back, dressed in a full-length silk Ghanaian burial gown, his hands folded over his chest. The air smelled like the savannah. He stood up feeling both refreshed and afraid. There was a lit candle on his writing desk. Next to that was a handwritten letter.

There was an electric tingle when Fayez first picked up the note, but that faded.

Immediately that he finished the note, as if it could somehow detect that he was done reading, the paper crumbled into ash.

In his right-hand pocket Akwande found an ochre-colored envelope. Its contents were three small bones that once made up a human finger.

4

“But why, man?” XX Y, the burly madman from Alabama, said in an atypically high whine. “Why?”

“I thought you’d be happy to hear that I’m leaving. Now you can make the Seventh Congress the war council,” M Akwande replied.

“I’m the one they want out,” XX Y opined. “Everybody wants you, the man who saved Africa.”

The RadCon6 co-chair ran his powerful fingers through a full mane of coarse blue-gray hair, hair that was combed straight back and down to shoulder length. XX Y, chairman of the board, radical separatist, would rather have seen the world burn than give one inch to compromise. His eyes were holocausts of four hundred years of black suffering; their only promise was vengeance.

“Why?” he asked again.

“This world was set when they dragged the first African into a slave ship,” Akwande intoned. “Like the child who sees his mother and father slain by devils wearing white faces. Like the girl raped by her imbecile brother in the playhouse next to her dolls. The heart,” he said and paused, “the heart is rotten.”

“Is it the bones?” XX Y asked. He had never liked Akwande and his diplomacy. He never followed the Go master, he never would.

“No, I’m not afraid. That was a crash I walked away from. No, I’m not afraid. But after I woke up and found those bones I went to the Infochurch that they put up in Newark. You ever been there?”

“No,” the Lion sneered. “Never.”

“There’s five hundred workstations and service twenty-four hours a day. The hologram minister, Dominar of the Blue Zone, blesses and instructs the people on the usage of the terminals in deciphering God’s secrets.”

“That’s a bunch’a shit and you know it.”

Fayez ignored the quip. “Almost all of the parishioners are black,” he said. “Those who aren’t are Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and poor whites. A couple’a people recognized me but they didn’t speak. They just stared at their monitors. They spoke and the computer remembered them and started the lesson where it left off. Lessons in science.”

“What lessons?”

“The force of gravity. The bending of light. The path of the living cell through evolution. Infinity and black holes—”

“If it’s black then that must be the devil,” XX Y interrupted.

“Yes, yes. Black for them is evil or random or unknown. Black robs the mind of sight. It is the collapse of the whole universe.”

“And you don’t want to fight against that? You don’t get so mad that you wanna get a gun and let loose?”

“Oh absolutely I do, Brother X. I felt your arguments in there. I wanted to short out those lessons. I wanted to go back to Home and gut that Dominar. All of those black people kneeling in front of computer screens. Confessing their secrets, robbed of their greatest commodities, their minds.”

“Then why leave?”

“Because... because I can’t change it.” Akwande was thinking of Eye. Her genetically crafted body, her soulless orbs. Her life for his, Kismet’s. “And so I’m taking my family to Mars.”

“Says which?”

“I’ve been to the master’s home. I’ve been to the master’s church. I live on his plantation. I begged him to feed Mali, to give them freedom. They took his money but it didn’t buy their freedom. They just joined the International Economic Congress and put mercenaries at their borders.”

“But you ended the famine,” XX Y said. “You gave them the strength to make their own way.”

“They will refuse our embassy,” Akwande said.

“You don’t know that.”

“NGOs are banned by the IEC from any official capacity. You know that, brother.”

“But even if it’s true, even if they turn their backs on us, what the hell do you accomplish by flying off to Mars?”

“On Mars there will be fewer people. There will be a new world. Maybe we can have something there. Maybe.”

“You just runnin’ away.”

“But I’m leaving the guns with you, brother,” Akwande said, laying his hand on the revolutionary’s shoulder. “And I leave you my blessings, too.”