Maggot Moon (16 page)

The laboratory is a thing of efficient ugliness with a huge flag of the Motherland flying above it. I know this is where they do their experiments. The moon man told me.

The three of us are marched up the stairs and down a long corridor. We are weighed and measured. No surprise — I weigh the most. I just hope it doesn’t give me away. Each of us has a number pinned to him and we are ushered into a thin, long room with what must be a two-way mirror at one end. We are told to face one way, then sideways. The faceless one watching from behind the glass calls out the numbers until I am the only one left.

Either this means I have won a prize, or Number Five, your time is up. I am trying to look on the sunny side of this sinking boat. But I am shit scared.

A guard walks me down more corridors. Two swinging doors with portholes open into a large, high room. Up near the ceiling is a metal beam with a rope dangling from it. There are sandbags on the floor. In the wall opposite is a window — I am being watched without being able to see who is doing the watching. For a moment I think,
hell, I am about to be hanged and I have never drunk Croca-Cola, never driven a Cadillac, and never, ever kissed a girl.
All these nevers are what I’m going to take away with me.

I am clipped into a harness which is fastened by another clip to the end of the rope. Then the sandbags are attached to the harness so I am weighted down. A man in an astronaut suit and gravity boots like our moon man wears, but a lot cleaner, enters the room. His face is lost behind the shimmer of a golden glass visor. He, too, is being attached to something. What, I can’t see.

A man in a white coat tells me, “You must pull up and down on the rope when we say so.”

I do and I see why they wanted me. My feet leave the ground. The astronaut at the other end is suspended from the rope by nearly invisible wires. I’m not sure how, but by pushing my weight up and down the man rises from the floor just enough to make it look like there’s no gravity. The rope glides this way and that along the beam.

After a bit I feel too thirsty to go on. It’s hot in this harness, I can tell you. I stop. I am not jumping up and down anymore. A guard comes over to me. He might be Mr. Gunnell’s twin brother. That’s if Mr. Gunnell had a twin brother, one that doesn’t wear a toupee. They both have the same “I will kill you” look about them. They both have flat backs of heads.

“Move.” He pokes at me. Meat hung up to be screwered.

The astronaut stands waiting. I don’t care. I want a glass of water.

What am I doing?
I ask myself. For the guard looks ready to make mincemeat of me. I have ruined my only chance of carrying out my plan, my one and only chance of showing Gramps’s words to the world. Fool. For what? A glass of water.

This is what I’m thinking as the astronaut leaves the room. A white-coated man appears. He calls the guard over. The guard too leaves the room so here I am, just the white-coated man and me. He stands there staring straight — no, more crooked, I would say — at me as if I was an alien species. I feel like telling him I am from planet Juniper. I don’t. Instead I stare down at the cement floor.

I look up when he says, “You are the first one who can do this. Unlike the others, you are healthy.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“You have stamina.”

“I’m one of the new intake, sir.”

He doesn’t answer. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.

It was a relief, I can tell you, to see the guard come back with a glass of water and a hunk of brown bread.

Brown bread.

You’re dead.

I drink. I eat.

I am doing my best to think the bread and the water are good signs. That they mean I’ll be clipped back into the harness. Except I’m not. The guard — the one that looks like Mr. Gunnell’s brother — takes me away. Away to where? That’s what’s giving me the heebie-jeebies. My head hurts just thinking about it. Now I’m sure the leather-coat man has found the tunnel, put two and two together, made five. Maybe the white-coated man reported me. At least we are still walking. I think that’s a good sign. We are walking back towards the moon set. Only then does it hit me. Frick-fracking hell! Perhaps I was no good at being the weight at the end of gravity and I am being sent to join the thousands of workers who are brushing the moon surface smooth. I comfort myself that it might be better from that angle to rush out with my sign than be stuck in a harness.

Well, that thought just went out the window.

I am shown a trench in a crease of the moon’s surface. It’s long and thin and curves round a bend. It’s deep enough for me to run back and forth without being seen.

Down there is a man in brown overalls. I am dropped into the trench, and a harness like that of a rucksack is clipped on me at the front. I watch how he does it. Then he attaches invisible wires to my harness.

I can’t see a frick-fracking thing from down here. Then suddenly my feet lift off the ground and the brown overall moves me about as if I’m a puppet.

Which, when you think about it, I am. I am the dead weight that makes the astronaut look weightless. I bob back and forth in the trench until I can bob no more.

It must be late. I am now too light-headed to be much use. Finally, I am unclipped. I make mental notes. The clip with the invisible wire — that’s not going to be too hard to undo. What is worrying me is how the frick-fracking hell am I going to climb out of this trench fast enough? If I can’t do that I will never be able to hold up my sign and the world will never know.

I’m beginning to think this volunteering idea might not have been my brightest. Then to my humongous relief the brown-overall man shows me steps that I hadn’t seen, fixed to the side of the trench. I note where they are and try to work out how long it will take me to climb up them — after I’ve managed to free myself from the invisible wire. All I have to do then is make it to the moon surface as fast as I can take my belt off.

Still I have no plans for the “then what?” Just to get that far would be something to shout home about.

I emerge from the trench to find Mr. Gunnell’s double-gangster waiting.

“You’re lucky,” says the guard. “The last boy died.”

He walks me down a metal spiral staircase which seems to go round and round and on forever. At the bottom there is an endless white corridor, the lights running along the middle in small shades that throw triangles of blinding brightness. On each side are rows of metal doors with thick submarine glass at the top. Still we keep walking. I’m not sure where the lucky comes into this. The guard’s steel-capped boots echo the sound of a marching army. Apart from our footsteps, there is an eerie silence down here. It seems to be deserted. I feel as if I’m being buried alive. The place smells of metal and earth.

And still we keep walking.

I wonder what the guard meant. Am I dead or is there a tomorrow? I don’t ask him. I can see it would give him too much pleasure not to tell me. He stops at a door that looks the same as all the others, unlocks it, then pushes it open. I can see nothing but blackness. Maybe I’m right — I will be left to perish here, and no one will give a damn.

The guard shoves me inside, and the door shuts behind me with the sound of forever in its locks.

I’m trying my best to see when I can’t see a thing. I have no idea how big or small the cell is, just feel its dank darkness. It takes me a while to work out I’m not alone. Someone else is here. The someone else speaks.

“So have they got your parents too?” this someone says. “How loved are you?” I don’t answer. Even broken, I know that voice. “The last boy wasn’t loved that much. You see, they killed him.”

I edge nearer, my hands out before me.

“Stay away from me,” he says. I keep going. “I said stay away!”

I don’t stop until I think I am near him and he’ll be able to hear me whisper.

“Hector,” I say, “it’s Standish.”

I can’t see Hector. I can only hear his voice. He is a huddle, a shadow in the corner. I sit down next to him.

He moves closer.

I know he is hurt.

I know him better than I know my own face.

I know what he is thinking.

He is thinking,
what the frick-fracking hell is Standish doing here?

“What have they done to you?” I ask.

“Nothing too bad,” he says. “I still have eight fingers left.”

“You should have ten.”

“My little finger went to my papa after they shot Mama.”

His voice is weak. I can hardly hear him.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why?”

“Because they wanted to show Papa they meant business this time. That if he refused to cooperate with the bigwigs again then they would kill me too. But slower.”

He is having trouble breathing.

“What did your papa do?” I ask.

He takes his time. It’s a secret not to be spoken of. Though I know the answer. I will only believe it if Hector tells me.

“He was a government scientist,” he whispers. “Papa dreamed he would send a man to the moon. The president liked that dream. But then Papa refused to work for the president because of the way the Motherland treats its workers.” Hector’s voice is faint and he tries to catch his breath. “They call people like my father a sleeper. We knew that one day Papa would have to be woken. They needed him.”

I suppose getting a fake moon to look like the real thing with a spaceship that could land on it and an astronaut to walk on it might take a scientist or two.

Hector speaks very softly. “If Papa does what they ask him I’ll get fed, my bandage will be changed. If he doesn’t, then I will lose another finger.”