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  The voice came through on the studio speakers and chilled Tope to his core. He could actually feel pain in his chest where he had received the hardest hit in the desert.

  “Pan-African, is there something you think you’re qualified to say about me?” asked Black-Power.

  2

  2015

  Cape Town, South Africa

  Pain, there was always the pain.

  Detective Sipho Cele grunted as he stood up from his desk, holding his arm tightly over the right side of his body. Such an action muted the sharp reminder of shattered ribs from decades ago, the pain at least dulling with the spread of his stomach and the slow creep of age.

  He stepped around his broad desk with its bronze name plate, littered with photos and files of low lives, murderers, rapists, and tsotsis. The scum of the Earth, so many of them, a never ending wave that he had spent his life fighting against. But, like the hydra, you take one down and two more step into their place.

  Making his way to the window, he smiled at his clever classical allusion; he was no wet-eared plaasjapie, as the Boere used to say, no, he was urban smart—and old, much older than he looked, even though his hair was starting to pepper with grey.

  As he stared down seven stories onto the milling street below, he felt yet older still. Offices stretched high into the sky, glass-fronted, left and right, inscrutable—but the street itself below was teeming with people; trade and spill-off from the nearby tourist trap of Greenmarket Square. Of Table Mountain itself, there was no sign, hidden behind tiers of stone and glass.

  He watched the people move and bustle, a dance troupe setting up in the paved boulevard, Adderley street flower sellers spilling across for more business as an impromptu crowd gathered.

  And, with vision an eagle would have been proud of, he noticed a thin young man spiralling around the crowd’s edge, deftly picking back-pockets and coats.

  Tcchhaaa, small fry!

  There was a time when he would have shown no mercy, when his tolerance was ever set at zero.

  Those were old times, gone times.

  Sipho turned away with a growl of fury, making his way back to his desk, accidentally brushing past a lurid black, green and yellow cape hanging on the coat stand. He felt a faint frisson of excitement.

  No.

  Gone times.

  Now, at least the pain was dull, hovering in the background, in places he could ignore.

  The smaller desk in the corner of the room, with its tiny black swivel chair, was empty.

  Where the hell was she? Thembeka took off too much time to go shopping; he would chide her when she got back. He could see the lights on her phone console glowing hot with waiting calls or people depositing urgent messages.

  The door opened just as he reached his desk and was about to sit down. He hesitated, flexing his biceps involuntarily as she stepped into the room.

  Sure, she was short and on the plain side, but old habits die hard. Still, he’d had to be careful; this new generation of women seemed increasingly less impressed with his towering physique and charm—it could even cause trouble.

  And, of course, she was a Xhosa, so not a real Zulu woman.

  “Where have you been?” He growled, suddenly and irrationally bored with this dull city.

  “Getting information off the street,” she hovered in the door, watching him with hooded eyes.

  “So,” he sat, feeling the chair creak underneath his solid bulk, “What information do you have?”

  “There’s a new Super-Tik factory being set up just two streets down,” Thembeka said. She looked down, as if hoping for praise, but afraid to look him in the eyes.

  “Just do your job and answer the phone,” he said, turning to his desktop, which was scrolling in news from all across Africa.

  She sat for a moment in what felt like crushed silence and then with an angry sigh, she picked up the phone and started speaking.

  But Sipho wasn’t listening. A staccato burst of noise had sprung up from the street below and he knew the sound of that noise.

  Trouble.

  Big trouble.

  In a bound he was at the window again, gaze raking the street, missing nothing. The crowd was disintegrating rapidly, people screaming. No cops of course, a few security guards, but they were running too.

  There, the central drama piece, six men standing with automatic weapons, two holding the pickpocket as one large man pistol whipped him, snarling.

  The boy had not been careful enough in choosing his victims.

  Too bad—Detective Cele was about to turn his back too, when he noticed an old woman sidling up the street with her guide dog.

  Dumb fucking dog, he was leading her into Trouble Central.

  Without thinking, Sipho reached for the cape.

  One of the armed men turned and shoved the woman, who fell, crying. The dumb dog sat down.

  Sipho reached for the crumpled mask in his pocket, an old relic he’d never quite managed to let go, a talisman to touch, but not to wear.

  The man was lifting his right boot; readying himself to kick the old woman.

  Mask and cape on, Sipho Cele threw himself through the window and fell face first in a shower of glass.

  Shit, I can’t fly.

  He panicked as the ground screamed in close to his head.

  So it was that his powers finally kicked in again.

  Time...

  ...slowed.

  Or, rather, he sped up; spinning his body deftly to land feet first, legs braced.

  Fuck, those shoes had been Italian leather. They blew apart on impact, his toes splaying on buckling concrete.

  One, two, three steps, and he was there, catching a swinging boot before it landed against the old woman’s head. He reversed the force, feeling the man’s hip shatter as he was flung over backwards.

  Sipho had been gentle. The man landed only ten metres away, but unfortunately on his head—and on bricked pavement.

  He did not get up again, nor did he make a sound, lying there like a discarded heap of expensive clothes waiting for a wash that would never come.

  Sipho straightened and turned to the other men, who stood stunned, guns dangling at various angles of shock.

  No... Black-Power straightened and eyed the miscreants with a stony-faced lack of both mercy and fear.

  “Run,” he growled.

  So they did.

  Well, four of them ran, one screaming.

  The fifth man stood, a large man tattooed with prison-gang numbers, his one giant hand still holding onto the pickpocket’s collar. The young man hung limply, spirit leaking with the blood from his broken nose. Then, abruptly, the tattooed man flung him away like a crumpled piece of paper.

  He slowly levelled his machine gun, a reworked AK-47 by the look of it.

  His eyes were glowing red, with maddened power. Not just tik, must be the new Super-Tik, thought Black-Power.

  “Die, motherfucker...” the man opened fire.

  Black-Power covered his eyes with his left hand, bracing his body. Owwwwww, he kept the groans inside his head—he was going to end up with a hell of a bruising on his body.

  Abruptly, the firing stopped.

  Black-Power removed his hand and grinned at the man’s furrowed frown, his gaping mouth.

  He gently turned around and picked up the old woman, a little so-called coloured woman, folded in fear.

  “You’ve been a bad boy,” he said, “Say sorry to mamma—it’s time we all learned to respect our elders again.”

  The man snarled in frightened rage and rushed forward to launch a punch with his right hand.

  Black-Power covered the woman softly with his arms and thrust his face forward to meet the blow, feeling knuckles crumble against his right cheekbone.

  The man screamed and stepped backwards, nursing his right hand under his armpit; his shaved head bobbing as he bounced up and down in pain.

  Black-Power straightened even more. “Run.”

  Within seconds, the
man had disappeared.

  Black-Power put the woman down, and slipped the dog’s lead into her hand.

  “You’re safe now, mamma!” he said.

  The woman smiled and nodded gratefully. Black-Power gave the dog a nudge with his toe and they wandered off quietly down the street again.

  Sirens started to screech in the distance. Time to go; there was no need to compromise his identity, hidden for so long now.

  But a small crowd had already gathered around him.

  “Who are you, mister?” an awed youngster asked.

  Black-Power noticed the young pickpocket crawling away out of the corner of his eye. He’d more than learned his lesson, by the look of him.

  Someone was standing behind him, looking at his cape, which had been relatively undamaged.

  “BP,” read the man aloud. “British Petroleum probably, with those colours? All done as an advertisement maybe?”

  The crowd glanced around, looking for cameras.

  “Black-Power!” he snarled, bending his legs, readying himself, scanning for his broken office window above.

  Then, with a massive launch of his calves and thighs he was airborne, rocketing upward with explosive power.

  Shit, he thought again, crashing through the remnants of his office window, rolling to a halt against the far wall.

  Slowly, he untangled himself from his cape and stood up, glass crunching underneath his shredded socks.

  Thembeka was standing on her desk, palms across her mouth, looking frightened.

  “Who are you?” she whispered, “Who are you really?”

  He offered her his hand.

  “Power,” he said, “Black-Power.”

  He took her shaking hand, his slightly sweaty palm brushing her skin, and gently lowered her to the floor. “And I think you and I have some Super-Tik factories to visit.”

  She smiled softly, gaze dropping shyly.

  He saw her startle.

  He looked down. Sure, his skin was just about invulnerable, but his clothes obviously weren’t. There’d been no time to dig his durable bodysuit out. There was very little left of his shirt and trousers.

  “Oops,” he said, turning around to her embarrassed giggle.

  It was then that he heard...him.

  He’d know that smooth, honey-tongued voice anywhere. His PC had locked onto a broadcast, somewhere further up the African continent.

  He stepped across to his desk, it was an interview from the sound of it, and a sweet feminine voice was chiming in.

  Old and very bad pains started to leach back into his body at the sound of the man’s voice. His ribs shrieked and his head ached, so much so it was hard to focus on the picture of the man and woman, seated across from each other, in what looked like intimate conversation.

  Thembeka stood unnoticed at his shoulder, watching too.

  That woman, the interviewer, he thought, she’s, she’s... Beautiful... He struggled to focus on the words being exchanged between them.

  Then he heard his name mentioned.

  Without thinking, he reached across for the phone, dialling the number scrolling across the screen.

  “....you’re live on Flashback,” he heard the interviewer’s soft words, “go ahead.”

  “Pan-African,” he breathed.

  Pain, there’s always pain—this time, though, he would rise to greet it.

  3

  2015

  Lagos, Nigeria

  Breathe. Breathe. In, out, in. Not difficult, you’ve been doing it all your life.

  Tope hated this, the nerves. Others might call it fear, but he had already proved himself against Black-Power. Besides, this was verbal conflict, not physical.

  Elizabeth Kokoro snorted, a brief, feminine gesture, almost missed but certainly dismissive. She had always favoured Black-Power over the Pan-African and indeed there were rumours. Black-Power had been a pussy hound back then.

  “Hello, brother,” said Tope, voice calm.

  “I am not your brother,” said Black-Power, voice vibrating through the studio. Did he sound out of breath? Like he’d been running? “I am Zulu, you are Yoruba.”

  “And yet I still call you ‘brother’,” said Tope.

  You know why, he thought.

  50,000 B.P.

  What would later become Southern Africa

  “They are barely conscious,” said the elder. “I can hear their left and right cerebral hemispheres arguing with each other. They think it’s a god, or what they will come to think of as such when they have that concept.”

  “I don’t know if it qualifies as consciousness,” said the younger. “At least they have tools.”

  The primates had taken a warthog and were gutting it. One male primate held its side where the beast had gored him with its tusks. The elder knew he would be dead within a week from infection. They did not have an idea of religion or even the afterlife yet.

  “I think we can help them,” said the elder. “I want you to-”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “I do not wish to take instructions from you anymore. I’ve done that long enough. This settlement is yours,” said the younger. “I’m going further north.”

  “You do not wish to stay together?” asked the elder. He sounded surprised and perhaps hurt.

  “We’ll be on the same continent. I will not leave the landmass or planet without letting you know, brother.”

  “Do not let them begin to worship you,” said the elder. “We are not gods.”

  “I won’t,” said the younger.

  But he did.

  2003

  Edo City

  “Uncle Tope, why is your arm twisted?” asked the boy.

  “I broke it one time. It didn’t heal well,” said Tope. He hammered a nail while he spoke. On a whim he switched the hammer to the right and continued. “Works fine, though, right?”

  “Right.”

  ”Pass me the box of nails.”

  He stepped back and gauged the horizontality of the cross bar. He looked at the boy who nodded.

  “Why do you help people?” asked the boy.

  “Why do you ask so many questions?”

  “My mother says I’m a question bank.”

  “Indeed you are,” said Tope. “I shall call you ‘Bank’ from now on.”

  “My mother has tribal marks,” he said.

  Tope looked across the way where Bank’s mother tried to dredge the sluggish stream for something of value. She was twenty-four going on forty and had three horizontal scarification marks and three vertical on each cheek. It was unusual. Nobody had those any more.

  “Do you want to hear a secret?” Tope asked.

  Bank nodded. He was seven and had already realised that the world of adults was full of secrets. Secrets were the portal between being a child and growing up.

  “You see the bar codes on the goods you buy? The black lines?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know how the creation story of Yoruba people is Olodumare lowered Oduduwa down to the Earth with sand and a chicken. The sand became the landmass and the chicken rooted around in it, scattering it all over the Earth.”

  “I’ve heard this story in school, Uncle Tope.”

  “Well...it was a space ship. Oduduwa had something that looked like a barcode on his cheeks. There were already humans here. They saw the code and tried to copy it with their crude instruments. The barcode became the tribal marks.”

  Bank looked sceptical. “How do you know this?”

  “I was in the space ship. I was crew.”

  Bank squinted, not at all filled with credulity, but still child enough to wonder.

  “I’m kidding!” said Tope, though he was not.

  He heard someone call his name. It was a verbal call, not a thought, and he looked up. A man was running towards the house he was repairing.

  “Tope! There are tractors and police!”

  “Calm down,” said Tope. “Show me.”

  There w
ere indeed tractors and police, but in addition there were armed Area Boys who were local toughs usually employed by politicians to beat up the opposition. At the head of the procession was a guy in a black suit sweating in the sun, waving a sheet of paper and speaking through a megaphone. The feedback was such that Tope could not make out what he was saying.

  “What the fuck is he saying?” Tope asked the man.

  “He says we should all pack up and leave within the hour otherwise the people behind him will forcibly eject us and destroy our dwellings.”

  “Hmm...” Tope pondered a moment, then said, “Don’t worry about it. Tell everyone to return to their homes and go about their daily business.”

  “We have nowhere to go,” said the man.

  “You do not need anywhere to go,” said Tope. “This is your home.”

  He walked to the side of the road, under the shade of a palm tree, and he sat down, staring at the column invading the settlement. He began to breathe regularly, timing each inspiration and expiration. He allowed his mind to reach out.

  All gods are telepathic. This is how prayer works.

  Sadia brought him a tall gourd of ogogoro without knowing why. He drank it in one long swallow, enjoying the burn, feeling the relaxation and disinhibition. Better than Johnnie Walker and Southern Comfort combined.

  Now then.

  The official.

  Father of three, professional bureaucrat, one mistress currently pregnant, mortally afraid of his boss. A great love for his job, although he did not enjoy inflicting suffering on the less fortunate. Use that. The official stopped shouting into the public address system and shouted Marxist slogans, ordering the police to arrest the Area Boys.

  Tope spread his mind further.

  The Area Boys became confused. They could all see a swarm of flying ants in the air, and they scattered.

  Tope nudged the police, and they ran after the Area Boys.

  The machine operators screamed as the tippers and tractors became dinosaurs of the carnivorous variety.

  The alcohol warmed Tope’s belly. He called Bank to him and returned to his carpentry.

  2015

  Lagos, Nigeria

  “I am Zulu,” repeated Black-Power. “I am not kin to you.”

  “You’re a fucking idiot is what you are,” said Tope. “You weren’t helpful in the seventies and you’re not helpful now.”