He avoided her gaze. He was showing off, and he knew it. Educated student returns to his home village. But he couldn’t help it. Keeping his eyes low, he scored a line from the centre of his circle to the edge.
‘Volcanoes carried the diamonds upwards, punching lava through the crust.’ He pointed, teacher-like, at the line he’d drawn. ‘These volcanic pipes, they hardened into kimberlite.’
He glanced at Asha’s face. She was watching him with her serene, almond-shaped eyes.
‘I know,’ she said.
He tightened his grip on the stick. How could she know? How could she know anything, living in this shantytown of metal huts, with its goat-kraals and chicken coops and rusty hubcaps salvaged from wrecked cars? He glared at her. He could tell her things, things she couldn’t learn in this godforsaken place. He stabbed at the centre of his circle.
‘Yes, but where did the grains of carbon come from?’ he said. ‘How did they find their way into the Earth’s mantle?’
Her shoulders lifted in a gentle shrug. ‘They grew there.’
He shook his head, smiling. She didn’t know. ‘That’s what we used to think. That they came from plants or animals. A bit of plankton, maybe, or an insect, dragged around by the continental plates.’ He sneaked a glance at her. ‘But now we scientists know better.’
Her eyes were on the swatch of grasses in her hand. She made no comment on his claims to be a scientist. He turned away, his cheeks burning in the sun.
‘Go on,’ Asha said.
He shook his head, tossing the stick aside. ‘I’m talking too much.’
She retrieved the stick, and held it out to him. ‘But I want to know.’
Her gaze was steady, the smile gone. He cleared his throat, took the stick, then carved a second circle into the dirt.
‘They found a meteor in Antarctica. It broke up a sawblade when they tried to cut through it.’ He filled his circle with dots. ‘That’s because it was seeded with diamonds.’
Asha plucked at her grasses. Mani roughed out a five-pointed star above his circles.
‘Then astronomers discovered diamonds in a super-nova,’ he said.
‘A super-nova?’ She stumbled on the English word. He looked at his feet. Suddenly, his urge to impress her seemed unkind.
‘It’s an explosion of dying stars,’ he said gently. ‘They viewed it through a powerful telescope and saw diamonds. Now they say the grains of carbon were planted in the Earth by meteorites and stardust.’
Her hands went still, and her eyes drifted away from him. Mani kicked at his crude drawing, obliterating it in the dust.
‘It’s only a theory,’ he said.
Asha was silent. He followed her gaze to the settlement clearing where the children always played, even in the dust storms. Beyond it, the metal huts looked like water tanks with roofs. Van Wycks provided them. In winter they were ice-cold; in summer, sizzling hot. Mostly, families gathered outdoors, unprotected from the kimberlite dust that blew in from the Van Wycks mines.
His eyes came to rest on the grassland beyond the shantytown, where his mother had died the year before. Ezra had got word to him that migrating Congolese rebels, high on cocaine, had stumbled across her and slit her throat open.
He swallowed and looked back at Asha. She had wrapped her arms around her waist, one hand stroking her side. Mani knew she had scars there, and more on her back, from where they’d operated to remove part of her lungs.
‘All this because of stardust,’ she whispered, shaking her head.
Mani dropped his gaze. Then he leaned closer to her, his fists clenched on the stick.
‘You should have come with me when I asked. To Cape Town.’ He was whispering now, too. ‘You still can. I won’t go to the mine, we can leave today. Ezra got himself into this mess, he can get himself out of it.’
Asha shot a hand out and gripped his wrist. Her eyes bored into his.
‘You must help your brother – you must.’ Her breath was hot on his face. ‘If you don’t, they will kill us.’
A uniformed guard jabbed the butt of his submachine gun hard into Mani’s shoulder. He winced, quickening his pace. Sweat oozed from him as the lump in his gullet tore at his insides, the pain now worse than anything in his arm. He knew he’d feel no relief until the diamond settled deep inside his belly.
The queue wound its way through the barbed-wire corridor. Mani’s eyes swept the horizon, taking in the watchtower with its armed guards, and the double electric fence surrounding the compound. The fences were spaced far apart to stop diamonds being thrown out to confederates. Some of the men used catapults to shoot the stones out. Their accomplices were usually savaged by the Alsatians that patrolled the other side.
Takata dug an elbow into his ribs, nodding towards the man in front. It was Alfredo, Mani’s bunk-mate. He was Mani’s age, twenty-four, but already had five children to feed. He twisted towards them, his shoulders hunched and his face screwed up in pain.
Mani’s gut clenched. Instantly, he knew Alfredo was carrying.
He shot a look at the guards. The nearest one was only a few yards away. Mani whispered in Portuguese. Like him, Alfredo was Angolan.
‘Cuidado!’ Be careful!
Alfredo opened his eyes, tried to nod. He cradled his abdomen, shuffled a few steps. Mani’s heart raced. Another fifty yards and they’d be inside the x-ray unit.
What was Alfredo doing? No one escaped the x-rays at the end of every shift. Especially if you were black. He glanced at his friend’s sweating face, and suddenly understood. Alfredo was gambling the x-rays weren’t switched on.
Mani swallowed, the diamond punching through him like a fist. Alfredo was a fool.
Regulations limited the mine to three x-rays per week on any employee; the rest of the time, the machine was meant to shoot blanks. But what did Van Wycks care about regulations? Radiation overdose was like asbestosis or silicosis: just another black disease.
Mani knew from Ezra that there were no blanks. The machines shot full-power x-rays every day.
His gaze slid back over his shoulder. A tank-shaped figure had moved into view: Okker.
Mani spun round, his chest banging. He felt Okker’s eyes drilling the back of his neck. Like most of the guards, Okker was a mercenary. The worst kind of soldier. Thugs and criminals, dishonourable discharges shipped in from foreign armies. But even the other mercenaries were afraid of Okker.
Suddenly, Alfredo yelled, clutching his belly. Then he doubled over and thudded to the ground. Weapons snapped, guards sprinted. In seconds, three submachine guns pointed at Alfredo’s head. Mani froze.
Okker lumbered over. ‘Take him straight to x-ray. Today he can jump the queue.’
The guards hauled Alfredo up by the arms, ignoring his screams. Mani jerked forward, but Takata’s bony fingers were like a vice on his arm. He stopped, but not before Okker had seen him.
‘Well, well, kaffir boy.’ He slapped his club into the palm of his hand. ‘Friend of yours?’
Mani’s intestines knotted around the stone. He gritted his teeth, trying to keep the pain from his face. Okker jabbed the club into Mani’s chest, clicked his fingers at the guards.
‘This one, too,’ he said. ‘Do both of them now.’
Two more guards appeared at Mani’s side and dragged him to the head of the queue. They shoved him through the entrance to the x-ray