Nigerians in Space Read online

  The tram driver told him to turn left along Oxenstiersgaten and Wale did so, pushing past bakeries, a butcher, and a few electronics shops with astronomical prices. The bakers were up. The bouncers were up. And there, strolling past him in fishnets and white paint, a pair of—punks, was it? Or goths? Wale had never followed the trends but the kids seemed to be returning from a party.

  He turned left onto Vallhallavagen. The red bricked buildings of the Royal Technology Institute lined both rows of the street, the laboratories softly aglow with safety lights. Soon, rosy-cheeked graduate students would fill the halls with the promise of fellowships and grant monies in pursuit of a bright future of innovation.

  If only they knew, Wale thought, the life of a dead-end lab. Bureaucrats peering down at you through the glass ceiling like you were an exotic fish.

  Bello had never arrived at the airport. Wale had stood holding the snow globe with its swirling contraband for some twenty minutes until his shoulders screamed from the pain, and then clutched it close to his chest like a baby. This alone had drawn the attention of airport security, but more out of curiosity, and he’d dragged his family through terminal after terminal until he could decide on a plan. He couldn’t go to Nigeria without Bello’s escort and he couldn’t get to Cape Town, the fallback point, without a visa. He was angry with Bello and more than that afraid of what would happen if he were caught for stealing the moon dust. What would happen to his family? His career, his American life of fifteen grueling years? Learning the names of baseball stars and, worse, their stats, batting averages, slugging percentages, stolen bases, ERAs, all to fit in, all just to make it through the slog?

  Hoping that Bello had made a mistake, Wale had pestered the numerous airline counters for secret messages or dropped codes, anything that indicated what Bello wanted him to do or where he should go. Instead, he learned the names of countries that he’d never heard of, Tonga, Slovenia, Kyrgyzstan.

  The problem was that Bello had kept his secrets when assembling his team for its triumphant return to Nigeria. He hadn’t once revealed the names of Wale’s fellow scientists in Operation Brain Gain, although he’d spoken glowingly of them.

  “We’ve got people from America, Canada, the UK, Holland, Switzerland and France. The absolute best, the absolute brightest all returning home to feed the river.” By river he meant Nigeria. “It will pay well,” he’d added. “Winsomely.”

  Wale had never been interested in the money, feeling that a bigger home or a faster car wouldn’t move him any closer to where he’d wanted to go, which was Up. Not in the air but in the silky atmosphere of Earth’s great satellite, the Moon. Even with that vision, Wale was pragmatic.

  “I don’t care about those things, Bello. I want to know that this will work. I don’t want to get to Taro and find out that we don’t have any power. We can’t have our computers reset in the middle of a data set. You can’t have blackouts in the middle of a launch.” The last time that Wale had visited Nigeria he’d left with the smell of agusi and diesel gasoline burning in his nostrils from the power generators. The country was plagued by rolling blackouts; he’d been at a wedding once, and the bride and groom had stopped their first dance as the power supply winked out. When the music changes, the best man had laughed, so does the dance.

  “We’ll have it ready,” Bello insisted. “We’ve identified a launch site and we have people who know how to clear it. We’ve got a construction engineer who worked on the platforms in French Guiane for the Ariane rockets. Half the world’s payloads launch from French Guiane, Wale. Our team knows how to clear a jungle and pave it into a world class hub of technology. We have twice the funds and three times the land area. It might take a while, but the palm wine tapper will climb down from the palm tree. Be patient.”

  “I don’t want any palm wine. I want electricity.”

  Bello had then disappeared for a few weeks. At the time, Wale had felt some relief and resumed his duties at the Lunar Lab, even resurrecting a belief that he might be promoted or that his boss, Tom Rilker, would increase his acquisition budget. He felt like he’d avoided a catastrophe but the thought nagged him that he had missed something grand, something wonderful, a dream that would be scratched apart under the lunar microscopes.

  Eventually, Bello had called him again. “I’ve found someone for your electricity,” he declared happily.

  “Who?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why is that? Wouldn’t it be better if we knew who we were working with?”

  “Look, Wale. This is a revolutionary program. We’re returning the best minds to Nigeria. Connecting the marsh to the river. The country has been ruled by the fist for years, not by the mind. Evil knows where evil sleeps. We don’t want Brain Gain to get mired in corruption, hand-outs, or nepotism. We want transparency that’s free of the extended family. We want Brain Gain to be functioning before the politicians can slap their grubby slogans all over it. Nothing scares autocrats like sunlight. We have to fly above them—straight to the moon.”

  By now Wale had learned to sift through Bello’s public relations hyperbole. “That’s all well and good, Bello, but it’s not enough for me to uproot my family. How do I know you found the right person? You can’t just pull electricity out of thin air.”

  At this Bello had laughed. “This one can. You’ll see soon enough. All I can tell you that he’s a mechanical engineer in Scandinavia. Tenured.”

  It had been Bello’s first, and perhaps only, slip. Until that conversation, he’d only hinted that Wale would be working with top-class expatriates, all scientists who had established themselves abroad in the hinterland: computer scientists, civil engineers, geologists, and microbiologists. Bello himself had a science background—he was Special Adjunct to the Minister of the Environment after all—and could speak their technical languages fluently, or at least well enough to be understood. Except Bello didn’t know how few Nigerian mechanical engineers had become tenured professors in Scandinavia. There was only one, and his name was Dr. Obafemi Ferguson.

  With his baby boy crying in Dulles Airport and his wife Tinuke questioning him—how could you do this to us?—Wale bought tickets to Stockholm on that knowledge alone. He checked the family into a small airport hotel and took a shuttle to the city’s downtown.

  He hadn’t seen Dr. Obafemi Ferguson since graduate school at Birmingham. He’d corresponded with him once, inquiring about his family—good health—and his publication record—four peer reviewed articles at the time—more as a measuring stick than out of friendship. Ferguson was a mechanical engineer who disliked idle conversation and disdained basketball and soccer. They’d tolerated each other in Birmingham in England as two Nigerians in a class of Indians, Irish, Egyptians, and even a few English, as reminders of life at home rather than friends. Ferguson had laid out his career in deliberate, carefully ordered steps, with articles, fellowships, and lectures patiently guided into place like a suspension bridge. Everything in Ferguson’s career hedged against surprises, Acts of God. Wale was shocked that Bello had successfully recruited him.

  Wale peered through bleary eyes as the sun illuminated the endless rows of brick buildings: industrial engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, computer engineering, some sort of nuclear lab, and then, finally, at the end, mechanical engineering. He found a bench outside and sat down. By now it was four forty-five in the morning. The professors wouldn’t arrive until eight. He would wait.

  Ferguson never came to his lab, so Wale tracked him down in his office in an administrative building. He no longer wore the geeky spectacles that he’d sported as a graduate student and he’d whipped his hair into a gray-brown afro. Although he had a Yoruba name, Ferguson was raised Muslim and he had extended family that was Hausa in the north. The room smelled of a fruity potpourri, the kind that Tinuke liked to place over the toilet seat. Ferguson was anxiously flipping through a scholarly book.

  “Dr. Ferguson,” Wale said politely.

/>   “I’m not holding office hours today,” he said, not bothering to look up.

  “Good,” Wale said. “Because then you couldn’t speak with me, Femi, could you?”

  Ferguson placed a finger to mark his page and then his head snapped up. Wale, feeling impatient and reckless, circled around the desk. He seized the book from Ferguson’s hand. It was entitled Photovoltaics Under Carter: A Promise of Policy. “When did you get into photovoltaics?”

  “Ten years ago. It’s my specialty. I’m assistant director of the PV lab here at the Institute.” He leaned back in his chair, extending his hand. Wale clasped his palm and they snapped their fingers together and touched their hearts. Neither had used the greeting in Nigeria but the two had shared it while at Birmingham. “Wale,” Ferguson smiled, “I haven’t seen you in years! Please, please, have a seat.”

  Wale shut the door to the office.

  “We have an open door policy—”

  “—you’ll have to excuse me, Femi, but this is a pressing matter. I’m sorry but I don’t have time for chit-chat.”

  Ferguson nodded, evidently glad to be able to avoid it.

  Wale went on: “Is there anyone who might be listening?”

  “No. We should be fine here. The old nuclear lab is bugged but we don’t have anything worth monitoring.”

  “Good. I’m going to say one word and I want you to tell me what it means to you.”

  “Ah, an old Yoruba riddle. I haven’t heard one of those in a while,” he smiled. “Go ahead.”

  “Bello.”

  Ferguson instantly sat up straight. He looked more closely at Wale now. It was enough to know that Bello had spoken the truth. Bello had spoken to Ferguson, maybe even met him.

  “Have you heard from him?” Ferguson asked.

  “Not since yesterday.”

  “He told you to come here?”

  “No, Femi. Look at my eyes. I haven’t slept. I was supposed to be in Abuja right now. For a few days. And then off to Taro.”

  Wale told him briefly what had happened. How Bello had arranged the flights and left him and his family at Dulles begging for visas like table scraps. How he’d flown to Sweden on a hunch. He left out the snow globe.

  “Better a beggar than a thief,” Ferguson intoned. Wale tried not to react to the proverb, and anyway he didn’t know the proper retort. It was a Hausa expression. “But how did you know about me? Did he tell you? He wouldn’t tell me about the other scientists.”

  “I recruited you,” Wale said, “in a way. I told him that we needed electricity and he said he’d found an expert. Now that I see you’re into photovoltaics, I understood what he meant. You can pull electricity from the sun, right? He must want solar power in Taro.”

  Wale took the time now to look around the room. It was surprisingly spacious and decorated with streamlined modern furniture, a mixture of wood and leather. Dolls from Ife and Oyo state were sprinkled about the office along with a hanging scroll decorated with Arabic characters in flowing Diwani script. Papers were amassed on Ferguson’s desk and an Ascot hat hung on a coat rack. Another day at the office.

  “You don’t look like you were traveling anytime soon,” he observed.

  Ferguson grabbed his hat and placed it neatly over his afro. “I think it’s best we take a walk, Wale.”

  They left the building and headed towards the canal. The sun pressed into Wale’s eyes and coated everything in a patina of primary colors. “I don’t understand how you do it,” Wale squinted. “It’s bright as the devil.”

  “Ah, the midnight sun? We use blackout shades. The problem isn’t sleeping, but waking up again when the room is dark. I’m working on something like that, on the side. An alarm clock that wakes you by light instead of sound.”

  Same old Femi, Wale thought. He’d always admired Ferguson’s inventiveness, as if a solution to every problem was around the corner. Bello had chosen well. It would be invigorating to work with an optimist for a change. Ferguson had heard of Bello, he’d known something about the program and, in Ferguson’s quite manner, he seemed excited about it. Wale started to feel better. He found himself drawn to the scent of fresh pastries, also the smell of coffee.

  “Come,” Ferguson said, “I’ll buy you a kanelbulle.”

  They ate the doughy cinnamon pastries in silence over a bar height table.

  “He asked you to steal something, didn’t he?” Ferguson asked, sipping on his coffee. He said it so casually that Wale found himself nodding before he meant it, then quickly shook his head vigorously like a madman. “It’s alright. He wanted me to take something too. He called it my commitment.”

  “It’s collateral so we don’t back out. Did you take it?”

  Ferguson smiled, tipping his Ascot. “I’m wearing it right now.”

  “A hat!” Wale’s coffee spilled down his shirt. He quickly wiped it up. “That’s it?”

  “Quiet down, Wale. Quiet down. It’s not the hat. It’s what is in the hat. My latest PV cell. It works like a roof tile. You can hammer through it and still link it to a simple base unit. We’ll line all the roofs of Taro with these when Bello’s project money arrives and channel it right back to the grid.”

  “You developed this?”

  Ferguson adjusted the hat, but didn’t take it off. He explained that he’d developed the PV cells with university funds, so he’d been forced to assign all the patents back to the university. The government was subsidizing wind energy and not solar, and SIDA, the Swedish development agency, was pushing an experimental water filtration system so didn’t consider PV a priority. His Nigerian birth prevented him from becoming director of the lab under the Institute’s bylaws so he had no power to appropriate the needed funds. He also wasn’t a citizen because he hadn’t married a Swede, but a Malian.

  “I refuse to let my work rot,” he said, “when cities like Jos have two hundred fifty days of bright sun a year.”

  The story felt eerily familiar, Wale thought. The dead-end lab. Bello had chosen his team wisely. “What about Bello? I haven’t heard from him. I’m afraid he backed out.”

  “The money’s in my account, Wale. Quite a lot of it. Have you checked yours?”

  Wale hadn’t checked. He’d been too busy fleeing the country as quickly as possible. You couldn’t just check a numbered Swiss bank account at a Western Union. Bello had promised double. If he’d truly backed out, Ferguson said, he would have taken the money too.

  “There’s a branch in Basel. It’s a two hour flight from here. Why don’t you stop there on the way to Abuja? I’m sure something pressing came up, Wale. Besides, if there was any trouble Bello would have at least warned us. Why don’t we give him a call when we return to my office? I’m sure everything is arranged as planned.”

  “You have his phone number?” Wale couldn’t believe it. Bello would always contact him or leave beeper numbers. He’d never enjoyed direct access.

  “Of course! How do you think I speak with him? He left the number with the tickets along with the address in Cape Town. It’s not his direct line, though. Bello uses a go-between. He’s the one that’s been organizing everything, the tickets and so forth. I dial up the go-between and he puts me through to Bello.”

  The tickets, Wale thought, the tickets! He’d forgotten them in the Corolla in Houston and had been forced to buy his own tickets to DC. From there, Bello’s go-between was supposed to send him on to Nigeria. There might have been instructions along with the tickets, and anyway Ferguson had his number and they could simply call him. If Wale could swallow his pride, then Bello’s slip was forgivable, even understandable.

  They finished their coffee and walked along Strandvagen by the port. Now that he’d had a cup of coffee, the primary colors had begun to develop nuance, intensities coming into focus. The boats bobbed in the waves in a measured harmony. He couldn’t call the waterfront buildings charming, but they had a ship-shape, mercantile appeal to them with the occasional balustrade.

  I made the right choice c
oming here, Wale thought.

  “Wale, you still haven’t told me,” Ferguson said.

  “What’s that, now?”

  “What you took.”

  They paused to let a tram thunder past. On the tram, Wale caught a glimpse of a few Africans watching them curiously, almost as if he was intruding on their space. He’d had that feeling before, arriving at a party in Houston and thinking he was the only Nigerian in the room, feeling unique, when another walked in wearing a flowing agbada. He’d have to revisit his image of Sweden, he thought. He’d thought they were all buxom and leggy blondes who either sang opera or wore swimsuits.

  “It’s the Contingency Sample,” Wale said, “from the first Apollo moon landing.”

  “What do you mean by ‘contingency’?”

  Wale was so accustomed to working with lunar geologists that he assumed that all scientists thought in the code language of the lunar lab. “During each Apollo moon mission, there was the risk that the astronauts would not be able to complete their experiments. They might be low on air, say, or the landing craft may have been damaged during the flight and need to be repaired. There was any number of possibilities that would prevent a full moon walk. NASA wanted the astronauts to leave with something no matter what in order to justify the expense. This was called the Contingency Sample.”

  Another tram passed by. No Africans on this one, just Swedes packed in like rosy-cheeked sardines.

  “Go on,” Ferguson said.

  “During the first mission, the task fell to Neil Armstrong. Right after he took his first steps on the moon and said his words, he used a rake to scoop a sample into a bag and return it to the landing craft. Of course, nothing else did go wrong in the next few hours. Armstrong had sealed the bag improperly and the contents mixed with dust in the landing craft, so it didn’t have any scientific value. I was one of the only people who knew where the sample was located. Bello asked me to take it. He said it didn’t belong to America but all humanity. He said we would return it to the moon when we landed our first mission as a symbol of ‘the colonized returning the cultural patrimony of all mankind.’ He wants us to plant a Nigerian flag.”