Gerhard’s Reviews > Nigerians in Space > Status Update

“They used the pools of mercury,” he said quickly, “as giant lenses for stargazing. Quicksilver is a metal that has been utilized through the ages to take the pulse of the Earth. Bridging the states of liquid and solid, such a strange element must be seen as a gift from the cosmos. In my opinion.”

There was a following of X-men fans that celebrated her, like the comic book superheroes, as an evolutionary advance. These fans suspected the military industrial-complex of conspiring to kidnap her for field camouflage. Still others suspected the military industrial-complex of having created her.

He stepped closer, soaking it in. The real thing of the crescent, Thursday thought, a star below it, the real thing rocking across the sky, the tidal thing, the new thing, the full thing, the werewolf thing: “The moon.”

“I’m not taking our child to South Africa,” Tinuke said. “There is a war coming there. There is apartheid.”
“I’ll make an inquiry, that’s all. Cape Town’s a very European city.”

“Wear the agbada,” she said.
“Out of the question. I’ll stand out like a sore thumb.”
“We already do,” she said. “Act the part. Don’t try to look local, Wale, or someone will tell you to shine their shoes.”

He was returning his mind to Nigeria, he was going home. Wale would have his chance, finally, to go up in space.

“We need you,” he began, “because it’s time to end the brain drain and move to brain gain. It’s time for a great mind of Nigeria to return home. You’re the mind we need, Doctor. The marsh can’t pretend that it isn’t fed by the river. You’re a part of Nigeria, too.”