Small-Minded Giants

by Oisin McGann

  Mercier had said there was nothing to be scared of. Why had he said that? Sol wasn’t being accused of anything; why would he be scared? His swollen nose itched, and he scratched the bridge of it, trying not to touch it where it was broken.

  ‘I’m asking you for names, Solomon.’

  When he didn’t look up, Ponderosa grabbed his chin and forced his head up.

  ‘Listen to me when I’m talking to you!’ the inspector snapped.

  There was the sound of angry voices outside, and the door swung open. There was Ana Kiroa, with outrage written across her face. Mercier stood behind her, looking sheepish.

  ‘What the hell is going on here?’ she snarled. ‘This boy is sixteen years old! Who do you think you are, interrogating him without a guardian present? I’m going to have you all up on charges, you goddamned fascists! I want the name of your superior – I’ll have the mayor herself down on you for this! Come on, Sol. You’re getting out of here. These goddamned bullies can’t question you without an adult here to represent you and they know it. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to give them the chance after this.’

  Sol was already standing up. Ana looked young and small, standing among all these men, her outrage fierce but brittle. Her voice was shaking as she spoke. She could only be a few years older than him and yet she had put them all on the defensive.

  At first he couldn’t understand how she had got there, but then he realized Mercier must have led her through.

  ‘A clerical error, miss,’ Ponderosa said, unabashed. He threw a hostile glare at Mercier. ‘We’re sorry if there’s been any misunderstanding. The boy was just—’

  ‘The boy was just leaving!’ she barked. ‘Come on, Sol.’

  He let her lead him out, looking back just once at the three policemen.

  ‘Keep walking,’ Ana muttered under her breath.

  ‘We’ll be in touch, Mr Wheat,’ Ponderosa called after him. ‘Once all this has been cleared up.’

  ‘Keep walking,’ she repeated.

  She had her hand on his elbow and was striding towards the entrance. They passed the desk, drawing a few curious looks, and then came out onto the street.

  ‘Mr Wheat!’ Mercier shouted, and Sol turned round.

  The inspector was holding his school bag.

  ‘Your bag, young sir. You mustn’t forget your bag.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sol mumbled, taking it from him.

  The gun was still in the bottom of it – he could tell by the weight. They hadn’t searched it.

  ‘Apologies about the, eh . . . the mix-up,’ Mercier said humbly. ‘Should’ve ensured a proper procedure. I was assured that the ISS had permission from the school and it was all above board. Regrettable mistake. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘You’ve got that right!’ Ana snorted.

  They walked away, looking for a tram stop.

  ‘Thanks,’ Sol breathed. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do. I mean, they were police . . . and I . . .’ He was shaking, and his voice was catching in his throat. ‘They said Dad killed somebody.’

  ‘Jesus. Those gutters really did a number on you.’ She shook her head. ‘They can’t question you about a library fine without a guardian present, let alone a goddamned murder! Goddamned fascists!’

  He suddenly noticed that she was breathing hard too, and she was sweating. She was frightened. He realized it must have taken some nerve for her to barge right in there and confront those cops in their own station.

  ‘How did you know where I was?’ he asked her.

  ‘A man called the school – said you’d been picked up. He said you’d been taken here.’

  ‘Who? A cop?’

  Ana frowned.

  ‘I don’t know; at the time I assumed he was, but now I’m not sure. He didn’t sound like somebody who thought much of the police.’

  Sol thought about the gun in his bag. And the note from his father. They came to a tram stop and looked down the road. Sol slipped his hand into his school bag and found the hard shape of the gun wrapped in the scarf. Its weight was reassuring, for all the good it would have done him in the police station.

  ‘Where is your father?’ Ana enquired. ‘I presume they haven’t got him?’

  ‘No. And I haven’t seen him since Wednesday. That’s when they said . . . they said he did it. He killed a guy.’

  ‘We’ll go back to school until going-home time,’ she told him. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own. Do you have any family you can stay with?’

  Sol shook his head.

  ‘Well, you’d better stay with me then. Those thugs might try to pick you up again. They’re not above tossing your rights aside if they think they can get away with it. You can sleep on the couch.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks.’ Her back was turned to him as she looked down the road for the tram, so Sol allowed himself the barest hint of a wry smile as he spoke. He was finally getting to spend the night at Ana Kiroa’s, and all it took was his father to be accused of murder. It was turning out to be an insane week.

  Section 5/24: Rumours

  WITH MS KIROA gone, her students had a free class. The principal had told them to study, and as soon as he left, they had proceeded to have a lively discussion about why Sol Wheat might be helping the police with their inquiries (or busted, as the boys put it).

  ‘This is a symptom of the authoritarian system,’ Ube Lamont declared.

  ‘My ass,’ said Faisal. ‘I bet he’s been done for dealing.’

  ‘I’ve never even seen him smoking, let alone dealing,’ Cleo responded.

  ‘Not stem, I mean gulp. I bet he’s running a still. Or his dad is. His dad’s into all sorts of stuff.’

  ‘You don’t even know his dad,’ one of the other students put in.

  ‘My uncle knows one of the guys his dad works with,’ Faisal replied. ‘And he says Gregor Wheat’s always down in the lower levels. They all are, those daylighters. They work hard and they play hard. I say more power to ’em.’

  ‘Who’d believe what your uncle says?’ Ube grunted. ‘I’ve seen him out on the dome platforms on Sundays. He’s a Dark-Day Fatalist.’

  ‘So what if he is?’ Faisal snapped defensively. ‘Doesn’t mean he isn’t right!’

  Cleo listened to the discussion bounce back and forth across the class as Solomon’s reputation was remoulded to suit his new place in the criminal fraternity. There was an unmasked respect for his new status as a wanted suspect, but also a malicious glee at the trouble he was facing.

  She and Sol had been proper friends once, back when they both did gymnastics. Not childhood sweethearts or anything like that, just two kids who had a good laugh together. But he’d changed after his mother and sister died. These days he was . . . well, he was all right. He just didn’t really click with anyone, didn’t trust anyone. Which made him all the more mysterious now that he had been busted.

  She couldn’t help herself, she was dying to know the full story. That didn’t mean that she had to take part in this gossiping, though.

  ‘Listen to you, all of you!’ she cried out, standing up to get their attention. ‘You’re like a bunch of old women, the way you’re going on! Sol’s probably just broken one of the thousands of faggin’ rules they stick us with, and they’ve dragged him off to make an example of him as a warning to the rest of us. It could have been any one of us. They just want everyone to be scared, so we’ll behave the way they want us to. It’s not about him, it’s about controlling the way we live.’

  Some of the others nodded. Many of them felt that their lives were being manipulated by the people in authority. It was a common subject of Cleo’s music, and she knew it always touched a nerve. She loved the way they looked at her when she talked like this; with passion and respect in their eyes.

  ‘Look at the way we were cut out of the end-of-year gig,’ she continued. ‘Why? Because they don’t like our music. And why don’t they like it? Because when we’re singing our songs, we can say what we damn well please. Sol’s just the late
st victim.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not the police at all.’ Faisal spoke up. ‘Maybe he’s been “disappeared” by the Clockworkers.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Fai. God, you’re worse than Ube sometimes.’

  There was a lull into silence as the class tried to come up with a new subject for conversation.

  ‘Hey, you said Sol’s dad was a daylighter?’ somebody piped up.

  ‘Yeah.’ Ube sighed.

  ‘Wasn’t there a daylighter murdered the other day? Somebody threw him into a piston well. He got all mashed up!’

  Suddenly the subject had been reopened, and a new flurry of theories ricocheted around the room. By the time Ms Kiroa had returned with Sol, the image of his father had already been re-formed: a player in the twilight underworld who had crossed the city mafia and earned himself a swim with the pistons. And now his son was carrying his debt, his card marked, his days numbered, his life lived by the ticking of a clock.

  When he walked in with Ms Kiroa, the class looked at him with a new-found respect and a profound sympathy.

  Solomon circled his father in a clear space on the roof of their building. Barely twelve years old, he was already up to his dad’s shoulder, and strong for his age. He had his guard up, chin down, elbows tucked, as he darted back and forth, trying to find an opening in Gregor’s guard. Once, this would have been a one-sided game, but his father was having to work now. It was just touch-sparring, and Sol was getting quicker. They weren’t wearing gloves, and Gregor’s big meaty hands were open and loose. Sol tried a jab, and then an uppercut, but Gregor knocked them away.

  ‘You’re too tense,’ he told his son. ‘It’s slowing you down. Loosen up.’

  Sol feinted a left hook, and nearly got a right hook to Gregor’s temple.

  ‘Better!’ said his father, smiling.

  They moved around each other, both light on their feet, both relishing the game. Solomon pulled his fist in close to his head, and Gregor’s left hand whipped out and slapped his son’s right. Sol’s hand caught his own temple, and he winced.

  ‘Don’t hold your hands too close to your head, especially when you’re not using gloves,’ Gregor told him. ‘They can hurt you as much as your opponent’s can. It’s all very well if you’re both wearing nice big soft gloves, but with bare knuckles, give yourself space. Got it?’

  Sol nodded. He loved this; it was only when they were training that he got to spend time alone with his dad. The flat was so small, he and Nattie were still sharing a room, even though she was fourteen now, and showing far too much interest in boys. Gregor would come home after work and they would have dinner, and he would sit down and browse the web for a while. He might talk to Sol, but it wasn’t the same. It was family talk: ‘How was school?’ or ‘What did you get up to today?’ And he never talked about his day at work. They didn’t ask, either; nobody was very interested in what a crane driver did all day. Sol moved his hands out from his head a little, and they circled for another minute. Then he aimed a touch at Gregor’s exposed forehead.

  Gregor’s head came forward at the same moment, and Sol’s knuckles cracked painfully against the bone of his father’s brow.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Oh, sorry, son. Show me your hand . . .’ Gregor examined his knuckles. ‘You’ll be all right. You have to be careful hitting the forehead – it’s the hardest part of the head. You can break your hand on it. In the prize-fights, some of the guys actually head-butt fists to do just that. Maddest thing you ever saw. Come on, let’s call it a day. Your mother’d have my guts for garters if you came down with a broke-up hand.’

  Putting an arm around his son’s shoulders, Gregor steered him towards the stairs.

  ‘Have you ever been in a prize-fight, Dad?’ Sol asked.

  ‘Naw, fighting for money’s a mug’s game, son. You’ll always lose more than you gain. Always use your head first; I don’t want to hear about you using this stuff in school, you hear me? You only fight when you have to, but you need to know how, and that’s why I teach you.’

  Sol nodded. He’d already been in a few fights in school, and he’d won them all, but now he thought it would be better if Gregor didn’t know about them.

  ‘You have to learn to look after yourself, because nobody’s going to do you any favours in this life,’ Gregor went on. ‘You’ve got your family, but apart from that, you’re on your own. You can’t rely on anybody. You should never give your trust freely, Sol. You’ve got to make people earn it. You hear me?’

  ‘Sure, Dad.’

  ‘That’s another thing. Don’t let me see you fighting with your sister, either. You nearly gave her a black eye that time in the kitchen.’

  Four years later, in Anastacia Kiroa’s flat, Solomon lay awake, smiling at the memory. His sister had kicked his backside while he was feeding Tyson, their pet rat. He’d retaliated in an apoplectic rage, hurling punches at her. Natasha – an early student of their father’s boxing techniques – had lost her temper in reply, and they’d gone at it in the kitchen, tearing chunks out of each other. Sometimes they just needed to let off some steam. He lay in the bed that folded out of Ana’s couch, his mind racing. Mixed in with older recollections were tumbling images of the events of the last few days: the crane accident; the attack in his flat; the interrogation at the police station; and, most of all, his father’s crime. Or ‘alleged’ crime.

  Part of him believed it. Gregor got into fights sometimes, he knew that. He took arguments seriously, and he hung around with men who got physical when things didn’t go their way. Maybe this one had gone too far; Gregor wouldn’t murder somebody, but if that guy, Hyung, had pulled a knife or something, then Gregor might have had no choice. Sol could imagine his father killing under those circumstances, and despite himself he felt a little thrill of excitement at the thought. His father could be a killer. Part of Sol had always wanted that kind of reputation: the reluctant killer. ‘I didn’t want to kill that man, but it was him or me.’ That was what it meant to be hard. And he had always known Gregor was a hard man.

  Sol was always a little uneasy sleeping in somebody else’s place. It wasn’t insecurity; it was the idea of being indebted to somebody. Accepting hospitality meant you weren’t going it alone. And going it alone was important to Solomon. He thought of Ana, asleep in her room, and tried not to let his imagination run away with him. It had been awkward earlier in the evening, with her flatmates here. An evening with three teachers. One of them, Candice, was quite cute. Dark, and with a mass of black hair around a lively face. But not as beautiful as Ana. He had hoped he’d be alone with her, but he should have known better.

  They were funny, the three women. At first they’d tried to act like teachers, all strict and proper. But being at home was obviously too much for them, and they’d relaxed and changed completely; chatting and making each other giggle. Maybe living with Gregor meant he was only used to a man’s world, but really, they were so . . . girlie.

  He thought back to the time when he’d first seen Ana like that. He’d been out running late one night, and as he passed a nightclub, he’d seen her coming out of the door. She was dressed in a tight short skirt and a white blouse that showed her full figure. She was laughing with friends, all of them sweating from dancing in the hot atmosphere of the club. He had watched them walk away as he hid in the shadows with his hood up. That was the moment when he’d fallen for her.

  Memories continued to weave through his mind as he slowly drifted off to sleep. It was Sunday tomorrow. He would go up to the West Dome Depot and talk to some of the people his father worked with. Maybe they would be able to tell him what had happened to Gregor – perhaps one of them was a witness to the fight. Sleep came in an unsettled churning of wrecked machinery and claustrophobic, grey walls. Dark figures silhouetted against his living-room window faded to nothing, but the sense of their presence continued to hang there, long after they were gone.

  Section 6/24: Music

  SITTING ON THE edge of her bed in her nightgow
n, cradling her guitar, Cleo was plucking out a tune that had come to her in her sleep. She struggled to remember it, trying different notes as she sought out the melody. She still had not learned musical notation, so she used a digicorder to record the tune once she had worked it out on the guitar. The lyrics would get written down later, with the chords scrawled above the words. Her sister, Victoria, who shared the room with her, eventually woke at the sound of the experimental notes, turned to look over at her and scowled. She put her face in her arms, covering her ears.

  ‘It’s Sunday morning!’ she protested. ‘Do that somewhere else!’

  ‘Go dangle,’ Cleo retorted.

  ‘Stick it up your bum!’ Vicky snapped back, with a grin on her face.

  ‘When I’m famous, you’re going to have to show me some respect.’

  ‘When you’re famous, I’m going to have to wake you up and show you you’re dreamin’.’

  ‘I’m going to make some breakfast,’ Cleo announced, prodding her sister’s huddled figure. ‘You want some?’

  ‘No, thanks. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m trying to sleep!’

  Cleo giggled and took her guitar with her, through to the kitchen. Her mother was reading some old book, while her father watched the sports on the web.

  ‘Cleopatra, darling, put on something warm – you’ll catch your death,’ her mother told her.

  ‘I’m fine, Mum. Is there any water?’

  ‘Yes, it came back on this morning . . . eventually.’

  After a breakfast of papery waffles and egg sauce, Cleo sat down on the couch beside her father, humming to herself and searching for the elusive tune on her guitar. Ever since losing the end-of-year gig, she had been playing with some new lyrics. She sang them haltingly as she put the riffs together.

  ‘You can stitch my mouth,

  Nail my tongue to the table,