But Samuel is nodding in cage number one. Vicki’s black eyebrows are silent, sorry arcs. My outrage falls off its hinges. I let my arms hang.
They are right. I let the judge sit on his bleeding hands. I ignored his drunken slur and his grisly, gritted teeth. How can I blame them? I loved the giant after knowing him for a few days. These people have lived naked with his grandeur for fourteen weeks. He was a man of honour, Judge James, he deserved to take his own life.
The panel in the wall grinds open next to Tamba’s surveillance box. The giant’s cage cranks into it. I catch a glimpse of Meirong’s orange sunset before it shuts and leaves a façade of melted cheese.
‘Malachi?’ Tamba says. ‘Emergency meeting in the recreation room. Now.’
I shut Samuel’s cage. Before I even reach the door, I am rehearsing my alibi for Raizier management. The judge was fine, really. Check the record of his vitals. He showed no sign of injury to his fingers or his teeth.
I don’t care that I can’t speak one coherent word. I will find a way to protect the giant’s beautiful, decisive wish to die.
* * *
I pass the women’s living quarters, drag myself up the stairs to the recreation centre.
I take the brown chair with the broken armrest, like someone threw it across the room and didn’t bother to reset its limbs. Janeé perches on a puckered beige seat that to me looks a lot like a huge cashew. She glances longingly at the War Console controls at the TV. I know the feeling. I yearn for my own precious keys, sitting so heavily in my pocket. I adjust my leg so it does not show a lump. It’s like having an erection in front of people who think I am a eunuch. Tamba sits in the same blue that the dark night of the soul must be. Next to him, Olivia smooths her rumpled green skirt, twitches it. She lifts her bum, plants it again on a green cushion they call a pouffe in the Good Living magazine.
‘Man, relax,’ Tamba murmurs to her.
Olivia sits up as straight as a stick, but her knee jiggles like she swallowed some of the stuff she used to kick-start Eulalie. Meirong pulls up a metal chair and despises it. She balances her tiny bum bones on it, refuses to lean into the back rest.
A tall man comes to a halt before Janeé’s Sleeping with the Enemy sofa. He has shrieking colour across his cheeks. From here, he has the teeth of a plankton eater, grey and interleaving. His nose is too white, too thin to let in enough oxygen. He waits in silence, creating a gallows by simply not speaking.
A sigh escapes my lips. Is this the only funeral Judge James is going to get?
I let my spine soften into my broken brown chair. A tiny sob escapes me.
I didn’t know electricity could tear your ligaments.
I turn my sob into a cough. The giant must have drunk his own blood to hide his wounds from me. The taste of haemoglobin teases the back of my throat. I place my hands on my knees, stare at my little fingers. No blood, see?
Get a grip, Malachi.
Mr Carreira adjusts his feet like he is about to sing. ‘I would prefer not to have met any of you.’
Olivia’s lips fall away from her bunny teeth. Her knee stops jiggling.
‘That way you are less of a threat to our privacy. But this is a special circumstance . . .’ Mr Carreira sieves our wriggling fear between his blue-grey teeth.
In the age of clean-dry machines and one-hour veneers, why on earth are this man’s teeth so unbecoming?
‘Number fifteen was worth over twenty million to us. Hearts are the most difficult of the organs to get right. They need a naturally high supply of iron.’
‘The doctor is optimistic he can save the stem-cell heart,’ Meirong says.
‘That’s one out of the six. He had five more cycles.’
Meirong’s head hangs like Mr Carreira just broke her neck. A little rash has appeared between her eyebrows which, I notice now, are as finely shaped as a character in Chinese writing. I fix my eyes on the patch of inflamed skin.
‘There was a memo from Asia about a suicide.’ Mr Carreira asks Tamba: ‘Did Meirong not share it?’
Tamba strokes the shirt on his inner arms like his puncture scars are bothering him.
‘She did, but she was responsible for training him.’
‘Not entirely, Tamba,’ Meirong snaps. ‘Just his introduction. You were meant to be monitoring him.’
The him, I take it, is the mute man in the room.
‘I watched him through the glass. I responded to every bloody peep.’ Tamba swings to me. ‘Didn’t I, Malachi?’
I nod at his silent boss.
‘So what was the oversight, Malachi?’ Mr Carreira asks. ‘How did he get it right?’
I glare at him, place my hands on my knees. He did it with the will of an iron giant who hated himself for killing his unborn son.
Mr Carreira sways backwards. He says unexpectedly, ‘You can’t blame Malachi. He came late in the season.’ He swings a finger between Tamba and Meirong. ‘I hold you both accountable.’
Tamba’s dreadlocks fly up, subside. Meirong bites hard on her lips. She pushes back her hair, sniffs an astoundingly wet sniff.
How is it possible that I am unscathed?
I glance at the clean-dry machine through the doorway. Perhaps it is my white angel’s outfit.
A last little sob pushes up, propels me to my feet. Tamba pinches my trousers behind my knee, tries to tug back down. But if I sit, the memory of the giant will tower over me, send strange sounds from my mouth like a man with Tourette’s.
‘Wait, Malachi.’ Mr Carreira is the same height as me. ‘We need a midnight inspection. You will need to check their waste plates, check their teeth. We can’t have any copycat failures.’
The giant left the earth. It was a resounding success.
‘How long will
