The school did not smell like knowledge. It smelled of red dust, pit latrines, and fear.
I stood in the assembly ground, a vast dirt field packed with six hundred children. The sun was already hot, baking the backs of our necks. We were arranged in precise lines, a grid of blue and white uniforms trembling under the gaze of the Discipline Master.
My new backpack felt heavy. My new uniform was stiff with starch. But underneath the crisp cotton of my right sleeve, my arm was burning.
The acid burn had scabbed over, but the infection the "fever" Tashi feared was knocking at the door. My skin felt tight and hot, as if the ants I had felt yesterday had been replaced by wasps. Every pulse of my heart sent a throb of pain shooting up to my neck.
"Attention!" the Discipline Master roared, slapping a bamboo cane against his thigh. Thwack.
Six hundred bodies snapped straight.
"National Anthem!"
We sang.
O Cameroon, Thou Cradle of our Fathers...
I sang, but my voice felt distant. The world was tilting slightly to the left. The heat from the sun seemed to be concentrating entirely on my right arm.
I looked to my left.
Junior stood three rows away. His uniform was brighter than mine. His socks were whiter. He wasn't singing; he was mouthing the words, looking bored. He caught my eye and offered a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
I see you, Solar Boy.
I looked away. I wasn't the Solar Boy here. I was Number 42 on the Class Six register.
The classroom was a concrete bunker with a corrugated zinc roof. It was designed to hold forty students. It held sixty-five.
We were packed three to a bench. The air was thick with the smell of unwashed bodies, cheap laundry soap, and chalk dust.
I sat in the middle row, squeezed between a large boy who smelled of woodsmoke and a quiet girl who kept her head down.
The teacher entered.
He was a tall man with a face carved from mahogany. He wore a suit that had gone shiny with age, the elbows worn smooth. He carried two things: a piece of white chalk and a long, flexible branch from a guava tree.
The class scrambled to stand.
"Good morning, Sir!" sixty-five voices shouted in unison.
Mr. Ngu didn't smile. He walked to the desk, placed the cane carefully in the center, and turned to face us.
"Sit."
We crashed back onto the benches.
"I am Mr. Ngu," he announced. His voice was precise, clipped, and devoid of warmth. "This is Class Six. This is the year of the Common Entrance. This is the year we separate the wheat from the chaff."
He picked up the chalk.
"Some of you will go to College," he said, writing the word DISCIPLINE on the board. "Most of you will go to the farm. My job is to find out which is which."
He turned his cold eyes on the room.
"In my class, there are three rules. One: You do not speak unless spoken to. Two: You do not question the method. Three: You do not think. You listen."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the fever.
Tashi had told me to steal the knowledge.
But Mr. Ngu wasn't selling knowledge. He was enforcing conformity.
"Mathematics," Mr. Ngu announced. "Long Division."
He wrote a problem on the board.
45,678 ÷ 12
"Who can solve this? Show the working."
He pointed the cane at a boy in the front row. The boy stood up, trembling. He went to the board. He started to write, his hand shaking so hard the chalk squeaked.
He got stuck halfway. He missed a carry-over.
SWISH-THWACK.
The cane struck the boy's calves.
"Sit down!" Mr. Ngu barked. "Foolishness! Next!"
He pointed at the girl next to me. She went up. She got further, but she forgot to bring down the zero.
SWISH-THWACK.
"Zero is a number!" Mr. Ngu shouted. "Sit!"
The fever in my arm was spiking. The room was swimming.
< Fever Alert: > Gemini whispered. < Body temperature: 38.5°C. System stress high. Suggest hydration. >
I didn't have water. I had terror.
"You," Mr. Ngu said.
He was pointing at me.
"The new boy. The one with the shiny bag. Come."
I stood up. My legs felt like rubber. I walked to the front of the class. The floor seemed to ripple like water.
I picked up the chalk.
45,678 ÷ 12
I looked at the numbers.
I didn't need to do long division. I saw the answer. It was a pattern.
12 goes into 45 three times (36), remainder 9...
I wrote the answer: 3,806.5
I put the chalk down.
Mr. Ngu stared at the board. He stared at the answer. It was correct.
But there was no working. No step-by-step ladder of subtraction. Just the question and the answer.
"Where is the working?" Mr. Ngu asked softly.
"I did it in my head, Sir," I said. My voice sounded loud in the silent room.
"In your head?"
"Yes, Sir. It is a ratio. If you divide by..."
SWISH.
The cane didn't hit me. It struck the blackboard, inches from my face. Dust exploded.
"You are a magician?" Mr. Ngu hissed. "You guess?"
"No, Sir. It is math. 12 is 10 plus 2..."
"Silence!" Mr. Ngu roared. "In this class, we show the working! We follow the steps! If you do not show the steps, you are cheating!"
He pointed the cane at my chest.
"You think you are smart because your father bought you a new uniform? You think you are better than the method?"
"No, Sir," I whispered, clutching my throbbing arm. "I just..."
"Put out your hand."
The room stopped breathing.
Junior, in the back row, watched with wide eyes.
"Sir, please," I said. "My arm..."
"Put. Out. Your. Hand."
I couldn't give him my right hand. It was in the sling under my shirt. It was raw meat.
So I put out my left hand.
Mr. Ngu raised the guava switch. He wound up like a baseball pitcher.
CRACK.
The switch hit my palm. It stung.
But the shock the sudden, violent jolt traveled up my spine and slammed into my feverish brain.
The world turned white.
Then grey.
Then black.
I didn't fall dramatically. I just crumpled. My knees gave way, and I slid down the blackboard, leaving a trail of chalk dust on my crisp new uniform.
I woke up on a wooden bench in the Headmaster's office.
It smelled of stale tea and old paper.
Tashi was there.
He was standing by the door, twisting his hat in his hands. He looked terrified.
The Headmaster, Mr. Abang, was sitting behind his desk. He was a fat man who looked tired.
"He fainted, Mr. Tashi," Abang said. "In the middle of math."
"Is he... is he sick?" Tashi asked, rushing over to me.
"Papa," I croaked.
Tashi touched my forehead. "You are burning, Nkem. You are on fire."
Mr. Ngu was standing in the corner, holding his cane. He didn't look sorry. He looked annoyed.
" The boy is arrogant," Ngu said. "He refuses to show his working. And he is weak. One stroke and he sleeps."
Tashi stood up straight. He looked at Mr. Ngu.
He looked at the cane.
"He has a burn," Tashi said quietly. "On his arm. A chemical burn."
"He did not say," Ngu shrugged. "He put out his hand."
Tashi turned to the Headmaster.
"I paid the fees, Abang," Tashi said. His voice was shaking, not with fear, but with a suppressed rage I hadn't heard since the Eclipse. "I sold my truck to pay the fees. I sent you a scholar. And you beat him until he falls?"
"Discipline is part of the curriculum, Tashi," Abang sighed. "Take the boy home. Let him heal. But tell him... in this school, he must follow the rules. No shortcuts."
Tashi helped me sit up. My head was pounding. My arm felt like it was encased in lead.
"Come, Engineer," Tashi whispered.
He put his arm around me my good side and walked me out.
We walked past Class Six. Sixty-five faces watched us go through the window.
I saw Junior. He wasn't smiling anymore. He looked afraid.
We walked down the hill in silence.
We had to walk.
The sun was merciless.
Tashi stopped at a roadside tap. He soaked his handkerchief and wiped my face.
"I failed, Papa," I whispered.
"You didn't fail," Tashi said.
"I passed out. I didn't show the working."
Tashi squeezed the water over my head. It felt like a blessing.
"Nkem," Tashi said, looking me in the eye. "School is not about being smart. I forgot that. School is about learning how to stand in line."
He looked back up the hill at the school buildings.
"Mr. Ngu is a small man. He has a small kingdom a blackboard and a stick. When you showed him the answer without the work, you insulted his kingdom. You showed him he was slow."
Tashi picked up my backpack. He carried it for me.
"You go back tomorrow," Tashi said.
"What?"
"You go back. But you do not show them the magic. You do the long division. You write the steps. You act like the donkey, even if you are the racehorse."
"Why?"
"Because we need the paper," Tashi said. "We need the certificate. The Bookman has the paper. Junior has the paper. If you don't have the paper, they will always treat you like a rat."
He took my hand—my left hand, the one with the red welt across the palm.
"Be a spy, Nkem. Like I told you. Spies don't show off. Spies blend in."
That night, the fever took me.
I lay on the mattress in the Lab. Liyen sat beside me, changing the dressing. The wound was weeping yellow pus mixed with the Shea butter.
"It is infected," she whispered to Tashi. "We need antibiotics. Penicillin."
"How much?"
"1,500 for the injection."
I heard Tashi open the petty cash tin. It rattled. Empty.
He opened the safe. The "Capital" the truck money was there. But he had sworn not to touch it. It was the rent. It was the future.
I heard the safe creak open.
I heard the rustle of bills.
"Go," Tashi said. "Buy the medicine. Buy the good one."
I closed my eyes.
In my fever dream, I saw Mr. Ngu writing on the blackboard.
But he wasn't writing numbers. He was writing names.
Razor. Cletus. Big John. Ngu.
They were all the same man. They were the Gatekeepers.
The men who stood in the doorway and said "No."
I saw the Unimog driving away, carrying my father's legs.
I saw the battery exploding, carrying my skin.
< System Alert: > Gemini's voice was distorted, echoing in the dream. < Asset depletion. Health critical. Recommendation: Survive. >
"I will show the working," I mumbled into the pillow. "I will show them all the working."
When the needle pricked my hip an hour later, I didn't flinch.
Pain was just information.
And I was learning to process a lot of data.