SUNDAY
I roll in the carbon-dark sand. Susan Bellavista’s ankle boots crush me carelessly. A cool toothpaste breeze blows across my face.
‘Malachi. Geez!’
My eyelids are sealed shut by heat. Susan nicks them open with a razor-thin blade. The eyes above me are bloody. Suspicious.
‘Did you have a sleeping pill stashed in your bag? Get up. It’s ten to seven.’
It is Tamba, waking me too late.
‘Okay, look. You coming?’
I nod, vaguely surprised by the weight of my teeth. ‘See you in the canteen.’
I lift my head like a patient recovering from a spinal tap. Arrange myself into a sitting position. I hear the soft hiss of electricity coursing through the wall next to me, but there is no sign of thunder or lightning. Last night’s injury chafes against my sleeping shorts as I drag my suitcase from beneath my bed, open it. My fingers singe my radio. All I can face today is grey. Grey trousers, matte. A soft grey shirt with a floppy collar. As I slip on clean socks, my panic penetrates.
Get moving, Malachi. Do you want to lose your tongue?
I leave seven drops on the toilet seat. Too many.
* * *
I am a wasted, grey creature, but I am in time to meet Meirong at the door to the canteen. I step back, let her pass through. Today, Meirong is a one-woman dynasty in an emerald dress so silky it must have been spun at a silkworm factory. It ends just above the knees.
‘Beautiful green,’ Tamba says.
Meirong glares at him.
‘Lovely colour,’ Tamba says weakly. He must be trying to apologise for last night.
I take a seat next to my roommate.
‘Thank you, Tamba, for saving my skin,’ he coaches me softly.
What does he want me to do, repeat after him?
My tiny smile gives Tamba the courage to lie outright. ‘I slept like a log. Whew, it’s like I died. And you, Meirong?’
Meirong’s eyes narrow. ‘Why the red eyes?’
‘Too much sleep.’
‘Oh, yes?’
Tamba nods, lies again. ‘Delicious oats, Janeé.’
Janeé tilts the rig as she takes her seat, uses her spoon like an earth-moving machine.
Across from me, Meirong pours too much milk on her oats. She scoops up an oat island and tips it into her tiny mouth.
‘Romano, we need you to stay awake to watch a merchant tanker convoy until they are safely past. Five hours is our guess.’ She turns to Olivia. ‘Olivia, can you give Romano a stimulant?’
Romano shakes his head, ‘Not for me.’ He grates his spoon across his plate, hunts for the food he has already eaten. Janeé heaves to her feet, produces a pot of oats as if from her bodice.
Romano sighs. ‘Thank you, sister.’
We are like a badly matched family, clinging to the ordinary, eating oats as if we are not trespassing on the ocean. Today every member of this crew seems familiar and sweet. A warning tries to swirl up from the depths of me. Last night’s electricity has stripped me of my fighting spirit. I suspect it might have killed some of my intelligence. How will I protect myself against the monsters I am about to walk among?
I must use this murky trepidation, stay in the grey. Let the subjects feel for me with their bony fingers and find only smoke, perhaps the light stink of electrocuted flesh. I have nothing to fear. Just as Romano can stay awake for another day, I can take a hundred and twenty volts of electricity, get dressed in five minutes and eat my oats as casually as the green Ming vase across from me.
Romano springs up on wiry thighs, stalks out as if leading reconnaissance into enemy territory.
Me, I leave three oats on my bowl for old time’s sake. Drop it on the trolley.
‘Wait for me, Malachi.’ Tamba lifts his bowl to his face. ‘Sorry guys, but –’ He sucks his milk from his oats.
Meirong frowns as if silkworms are hatching in her dress.
‘What?’ Tamba smiles with a bitter, milky mouth. ‘Isn’t this how the Chinese drink their tea?’
Olivia giggles. I don’t wait to see if Meirong cuts off his head.
* * *
I listen for the click, sidle inside with my smoke-damaged brain matter.
Samuel, the journalist, is even more loquacious than yesterday. As I fasten the falconer’s glove to his cage he says urgently, ‘There is no way we go back to jail. Did they tell you three cycles?’ He shakes his head. ‘We will never leave this rig.’
The smoke thins. I peer at Samuel’s fingers, press my blades together.
‘Not even our corpses. Look at these scars, Malachi. Can you imagine if they returned our bodies to our families?’
My eyes flick across the needle marks from sewing up Samuel’s carcass.
‘There would be an inquiry.’
His words shove through my deadened nerves.
‘What I’m saying is, they’re going to use us up. Then kill us.’
I squint through the smoke into his lion eyes.
‘You’ve got to get hold of the Free Press. This is murder, Malachi. Not medicine.’
I buckle at the stricture in my chest. I hang over my bucket, wring out Samuel’s towel. I struggle up again, clean his feet clumsily.
I check the pipes that bring Eulalie sustenance and take her waste away. I clip her milky nails, the only sign that her hands belong to an ancient hag. I feel her grey eyes stroking me, trying to peel my skin and spy beneath it. I smoke her out silently, a poisonous beehive. Move on to Vicki.
The mermaid’s toes are unaccountably pink. There is something transparent, newborn about them. Ten little beads of flesh facing in, searching for their mother to suckle.
‘It makes sense what Samuel says. It looks like they choose prisoners that no one would miss.’ She
