Sorry, Frances. I am so, so sorry.
The same sea that drank the solo sailor’s blood will hold us up to the vicious sun, let it peel our skin then fill our lungs, forty of us, with the tiniest of gestures.
But Vicki says kindly, ‘Come on, Sophie, after what we’ve been through, the sea is nothing.’ She grins. ‘The only thing is, you’re going to have to mess up your hair.’
‘Man, Vicki!’
Their sweet laughter bruises my intestines.
Am I making the same mistake? Am I murdering my classmates?
Their laughter trails into silence as I hurry past them, crash my tools on the trolley. I feel a feather of consternation floating from Vicki but I let it fall to the floor, almost run from the hall.
* * *
I stare up the spiral stairs, try to make out the cover of the power switch Tamba spoke of. The handle of the surveillance door twists. I scurry on, my heart stampeding. And I have not done one single heroic thing.
* * *
I take a leak, as they say, in the privacy of the concertina bathroom. Listen to my musical pee.
I’ve got to do something drastic to hold on to the deck key.
I try to visualise the locking system, a mixture of digital and old-fashioned penetration. Piston into cylinder. My brain tries to push through nerve ends that never did grow dendrites. I was not born with my mother’s good reason. I am a hopeless dreamer, I realise now, like Hamri.
Hopeless.
But my eyes in the mirror are a strange golden hue, cleansed by the tears and the trauma of the last week. I smile tentatively. I like the look of me.
I wash my armpits in the basin. Wipe at the oil stain from the sewage pump, rub green soap into it. I scratch the black mark with my nails, which seem to have grown quicker than usual in this place. I go to lunch with a big wet patch on my chest.
* * *
Tamba’s knife and fork are suspended in the air as he stares into his plate, fascinated. ‘What is it?’
‘At home, we call it tomato bredie.’ Janeé slaps down a pastry. ‘And steak and kidney pie.’ She must have pulled the pie from the Ice Age, then abused it with her microwaves.
Meirong arrives and takes her place next to Olivia. We all watch her with an air of tight expectancy. She spoons in tomato stew so fast, it’s like she has a secret proboscis. Meirong’s hair has become slightly stringy since this morning. She is sweating a bit. Did she hold a scalpel in the doctor’s rooms? No. Her white dress is quite unblemished.
She knocks back a tall glass of colourant, smiles suddenly. ‘It’s looking good. No losses so far. We’ve got five organs safely in the incubators.’
Olivia and Janeé burst into delighted laughter. I pick at my pastry while the three women across from me guzzle their tomato bredie like vampire bats. I expect them to tip over any minute and hang by their tails.
Tamba scoops out the insides of his kidney pie. ‘Freaky, wasn’t it, that prisoner hanging from the roof?’
If I survive, I will use the word ‘freaky’.
‘I thought it was you, jamming the system,’ Meirong says.
Tamba nods self-righteously. ‘You know what thought did.’
Planted a kidney and thought a prisoner would grow.
The three women stare at their pastry. Janeé says, ‘I know what we need.’ She teeters backwards, stretches for the trolley. Olivia and Meirong lean forward instinctively. Janeé snatches a huge bottle of tomato sauce and pops off the lid. She shakes it too hard. Plop. Plop. It lands like a hippo’s shit hitting the earth. I pull flakes off my incinerated pastry, suck on them.
‘Malachi?’ Olivia says worriedly.
I stab a kidney, blow on it.
‘Is there another pie for me?’ Tamba asks.
Janeé stares at the shattered pastry on his plate.
‘I like the insides,’ Tamba says defensively.
I push my pie across to Tamba. He pushes it back to me. I shove it his way. Take it. The three vampire bats pause in their feeding.
‘You haven’t eaten!’ Tamba snaps.
What he is saying is, Fuck you, Malachi, for making me feel guilty.
A short, harsh grunt issues from my throat. Not a single soul has mentioned the solo sailor. Not once.
I impale a kidney, thrust my fork at Tamba. He surrenders, takes it between his teeth like he knows he’s going to need the haemoglobin.
Meirong has made tomato-sauce patterns on her plate, somewhat curved and chaotic for a meticulous woman. In a few seconds she will ask me for her key to the deck. It is time to put myself at risk.
I pour myself a glass of the juice. Slug it down. The stump of my tongue prickles, then stings. The membranes of my mouth catch alight. The fire spreads beneath my cheekbones, even my eyes itch. My scalp tries to lift up and fly towards the portholes above us. A hundred bees bite into it. I scratch it with my hands, scratch, scratch, scratch, but my hands are afflicted too. Tiny eruptions appear on them, red blisters that make my fingers go stiff. I stare at my hands, watch them popping up like tiny volcanoes.
Olivia’s eyes go as wide as a bush baby’s.
‘Oh, no. Allergy. Quick!’
She grasps my wrist with shocking strength, drags me to my feet. I collide with Meirong’s elbow so red juice spills on the table, drips to the floor. Olivia pulls like a steam train as I scratch at my eyes, add a tight little cough to my symptom picture.
* * *
She drags me through the door of her laboratory, rips a drawer open. The little plastic sacs are still draped on the counter, waiting. Antibiotics, must be, to stop infection in the cells of my evil friends once the doctors have hacked their treasures from them. Olivia drops a clutch of tiny bottles on the counter, flicks through them with a finger, muttering, ‘Anti– Anti– Anti–’ She falls on a
