Year's Best SF 17

The creature moved a filament across the green virtual grid above it and the shuttle shook hard enough to make me stumble.

“Go!” Arinze said. “Hurry!”

I made for the door and then turned back. I ran to Arinze and shook his hand. “I hope you come back,” I said.

Before I ran off, quickly like a striking snake, the creature reached out and touched my forehead with a moist appendage. It was neither warm nor cold, hard nor soft, absolutely foreign. Only one image came to me from its touch: An empire of red dust in a place that looked like the Sahara desert. Here strange things grew and withered spontaneously. As they did now on Earth. The communities of these creatures were more like the Earth of now, especially in the Sahara. I breathed a sigh of surprise. Then I could feel it more than I heard it. A vibration that tickled my ears. My people do not understand Mars Earthlings, but they will understand when I tell about you, Fisayo. You are not wahala. You are the information I needed.

Arinze was pushing me. “Go!” he shouted.

I went.

I barely made it off the shuttle before it started rumbling. Plantain was there, waiting. I jumped on her and she took off. We joined the others two miles from the shuttle as it launched into the sky with impossible power and speed. I’d seen what the alien did to the shuttle when I read it, but I didn’t have the capacity to understand its science. The Igbo woman who’d wanted to come to the cockpit with me cried and cried when she didn’t see Arinze with me. Ahmed stood close to his grandfather. His grandfather had his arm over his shoulder.

Ahmed and I did not say good-bye. As they were all deciding if they should wait for officials to arrive or try to make it to the next town, Plantain and I left. There was too much to say and no space to say it. Plantain and I headed south, back home, to Jos. Crossing the Sahara to Agadez was a silly idea. I needed to have long talk with my parents.

There was other life on Mars. Even after all that had happened here on Earth, I had to work to wrap my mind around that. Allah protect Arinze and the one he’s befriended; provide them with success. There’s been more than enough wahala.

Laika’s Ghost KARL SCHROEDER