‘What the fuck.’ Tamba switches on his lamp, peers at me through swollen eyelids. ‘I thought you couldn’t write.’
‘I lied, like you. Your father is Doctor Mujuru.’
Tamba sounds like he is having an asthma attack. ‘Who told you?’
‘You did, you idiot.’
‘Huh?’
‘Your microphone.’
‘Jesus.’ He presses his fingers into his eye sockets.
‘I heard they killed Frances,’ I type.
‘Fuck. Where did you hear this stuff?’
‘One of the prisoners is psychic.’
Tamba stares at me like I am severely mentally handicapped. ‘They’re lying.’
‘What did they do with the giant?’
‘What?’
‘Number fifteen. His body.’
Tamba sighs, falls back on his bed. He watches water churning somewhere on the ceiling. ‘They took out his stem-cell heart. They took out his teeth. They threw him in the shark pit.’
I recoil with horror, force my fingers to ask, ‘His teeth for ID?’
Tamba nods. ‘In case someone wants proof.’
The giant guessed it! The judge was right.
Tamba jerks up, watches my phone like it is a lethal weapon. His green streak pulses madly in the soft lamplight. ‘You’ve been talking to the subjects?’
I nod my head defiantly.
Tamba springs to his feet. ‘You’re not supposed to communicate! I’m going to report you.’ He snatches for his Samsung.
I swipe it out of reach, swing my back to him. I type quickly, ‘You gave me the phone, you showed me the settings.’
I don’t get the chance to type the rest. Tamba is backing away, pleading, ‘Don’t tell Meirong. Please. You don’t know anything.’
I jab my keys. ‘Tell me.’
Tamba sits down on his bed. ‘Six months ago I was in California State Prison for doing coke.’ He begs me, ‘I had no money to buy safety, no toothpaste . . .’
I stare, incredulous. Does he expect me to care about his teeth?
‘I was dead meat. My father pulled me out just in time. They would have raped me.’
I glance involuntarily at his penis. He covers his genitals as if I might bite them.
‘I’m going straight back there if I fuck up.’ He slumps down on his bed, hangs his dreadlocks. ‘My father’s sick of me.’ He pleads shamelessly, ‘Give me the phone, please. I’ll shut up about it.’
‘I won’t use it again,’ I type. Toss his phone into his side of the cabinet.
Tamba dives after it, ‘Give it!’
I launch at the cabinet, grab my yellow Pep Stores phone I stowed there on Monday. I wave it in the air. Tamba jumps, tries to wrench it from me, but I hang on to it with all my strength. Tamba has the powerful fingers of a computer geek. He tears the phone free and leaps onto his mattress. I flail wildly for it but Tamba bounds to the floor and beats the phone against the metal wall. It shatters easily. He stamps on the pieces with his bare feet, again and again, splintering them.
I shrink away from him. What if he bleeds?
No. The yellow shards of plastic are just a tiny accident at his feet. I see no blood.
I kneel down, pick up the pieces before he can see that he has just wrecked a cheap yellow Nokia, not a ten-thousand-rand Samsung.
Tamba watches me, fascinated. ‘You’ll never fix it.’
I drop the plastic pieces in the toilet, flush them into the sea.
Tamba sinks onto his bed, rubs his sensitive feet. ‘Stupid to do that without shoes,’ he says wryly.
I shake out my white duvet, as if this might restore order to the brutal world. Throw myself under it. Tamba is too sorry for himself to notice I’m still wearing my shoes. He switches off the bedside light.
‘Aaagh,’ he groans in the stainless-steel silence. In the pitch dark, I hear the soft slam of his head against the pillow. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if –’ A slow wave of grief breaks over him. He sobs almost silently – for himself or for Frances I can’t be certain. I lie against the metal wall, wait for Doctor Mujuru’s only child to cry himself to sleep.
* * *
When Tamba’s tonsils start to ululate gently against his tongue, I sit up in tiny increments, slide my hand slowly into the cabinet. My fingers close on Tamba’s unblemished Samsung. I slide it out, press my thumb over the tiny glass circle at its snout. Find the torch button on the right. I stifle the light with my thumb, use the skin-coloured glow to find the pink lanyard on the cabinet. I pinch it with my thumb and forefinger, lift it like a sleeping snake. Meirong’s key card to the deck.
I stand up in slow motion, my heart banging like a midnight thief’s. Tamba whimpers like a puppy chasing dream rabbits. I tiptoe from the room in crumpled white, the Valentino lover of Vicki, the husband killer.
* * *
I drop down the three unnecessary steps, slink past the canteen, past the atmosphere of two women sleeping. My rubber soles exhale, deliver me with subtle squeaks to the exit of the maintenance wing. The door to the rig’s thoroughfare cries like a house cat. I ease it slowly closed. It meows spitefully. I listen for footsteps. Nothing.
This passage is also shrouded in misty white light. I take off on my toes, run up the first flight, spin on the landing. I climb up, up the metal tree. My sense of conviction powers my legs, swells my lung capacity. I race up the stairs, draw oxygen easily. Within minutes I reach the final door to the sea. I lift the pink lanyard, listen for the click.
I step into the gigantic night, broken wide open by a multitude of stars and planets.
* * *
The deck lights are all off, as Meirong has ordered. The moon is almost full, only slightly misshapen. It kisses the wings of the sleeping Dragonfly, lights each blade tenderly. It drips golden effulgence down its white walls, strokes the tail of the beast as a cloud moves aside. The moon gazes into the empty windscreen, besotted, watching the creature sleep. Miles above me, the figure of a man stands sentry in the round surveillance
