Maggot Moon (18 page)

The old Hector would never have let me get away with that. I have never kept anything from Hector before, only this, and I feel ashamed. But what if he knew, and they were going to chop off another finger? I know what I would do. I would spew it all out. Best to keep it to myself.

I think Hector is asleep when he says, “I don’t believe you.”

Nothing matters except Hector. He is the moment, this moment. He is the only moment.

“Kiss me,” he says softly.

I always imagined that the first person I would kiss would be a girl. Now it doesn’t matter. I kiss him. The kiss is returned with longing. A longing for a life we will never have.

“I love you,” he whispers. “The crazy, brave muddle that is you.”

I say, “Hector, just stay with me. I can’t do this without you.”

“I will be with you,” he says. “I won’t leave you. I promise. I never break a promise.”

We fall asleep, wrapped up in each other.

I wake up, terrified. Someone is untangling us. Two men in white coats. They pull me up off the mattress. I stand back, dazed. They are bending over Hector, listening to his chest.

“What’s wrong?”

“Move away,” says a white-coated man.

I take no notice. One of the men is speaking in the Mother Tongue to his colleague. I don’t want to hear what they are saying. I know it isn’t good. I can see it isn’t good. Just one look at Hector tells me that. His face is gray.

“Hector . . .” I say.

“Standish . . .”

His breathing is all wrong.

A guard comes to take me out. A white coat stops him. I kneel down beside Hector. He whispers in my ear.

“I am going to find that ice-cream-colored Cadillac.”

I don’t get time to reply. The guards have the patience of gnats. I’m pulled to my feet, I’m fighting them, I don’t fricking care what they do to me.

“Hector,” I shout. “Wait — don’t go without me . . .”

Mr. Lush is running down the corridor. I don’t think he sees me. He has aged about a hundred years. His hair has gone from gray to white. He is with Hector even before he arrives in the cell.

I know what Hector is doing. He’s escaping from here as fast as he can. If I’m honest with myself, I’ve known it all along. I don’t blame him, I just wish he had waited for me. If this is the way the world spins, I don’t want to stay either.

All our lives have one day circled when we will be rubbed out. It’s a good thing not to know the date. But probably no one would think it would happen like this.

Above me hangs a large red-and-silver flying saucer. I know what it is. You would have to be blind, deaf, and daft not to know. It has been featured in every paper in the world. It’s the landing craft. It will break away from the orbiting rocket and land on the lunar surface of Zone Seven.

It looks impressively useless.

I’m taken to the same trench as yesterday, in the same crease in the moon’s surface. The cameras are in place — big, clumsy-looking things.

I’m clipped into the harness by the man from yesterday, the one in the brown overalls, while sandbags are attached to me to make me the right weight. I just hope I am strong enough to unclip myself when the time comes. I can feel the belt snuggled round my waist, waiting. I haven’t worked out how I’m going to take it out. That, at the moment, is my biggest problem.

From the arm of a crane floating above us the director barks out his orders. In less than an hour, maybe sooner, these pictures will be beamed to the world. Today, unlike yesterday, there are small televisions in the trench for brown overalls to see what is happening. That’s a relief.

The red flying saucer whirls down to the earthbound moon, jets of air dispersing the sand as it makes a flawless landing. If this was really happening the astronaut inside would be fried. You might hope the free world would have worked that out for itself, but I think it prefers the spine-chiller theory that all is within man’s grasp.

With a jerk I feel the weight at the other end of the wire, and my feet leave the ground as the astronaut takes a small jump onto the moon surface.

“Cut,” shouts the man in the crane. “Where is the footprint?”

A panic-stricken man brings the cast of a boot. It’s quite a rigor mortis to place it exactly at the right spot. People with cloths covering their shoes take careful measurements, then lay the footprint just where the astronaut should first place his space boot. Brown overalls tells me exactly where I need to be in the trench when the astronaut comes out of the landing craft. We practice this again and again. Then there is more fuss about the right place to put the flag. That flag is the sticking point, I can tell you.

As a warm-up, I am pulled up and down by the man in the overalls until I get the hang of it. All the markers are in to tell me where to land and when to jump. The astronaut in his huge helmet still can’t see the hole that’s been specially made for the flag. They use a rock to mark where Y meets X. The flag flops. I mean, it could be any old red-and-black flag.

“Cut,” says the director.

Finally, it is time. I’m more nervous than I have ever been. If I blow this, then everything will have been for naught. The astronaut is helped back into the landing craft, and the whole thing is hoisted up again into the blacked-out roof. Better, I think, that the real moon doesn’t see this — it might fall out the sky with laughter. Only it isn’t funny. And I am still worrying how I’m going to get my belt off from under my clothes. Still haven’t thought what I will do after I have shown the world my sign.

My heart sinks to the hole in the sole of my shoe. In a glass-paneled observation room I see a figure that I recognize. It is the leather-coat man. I know he is looking for me. This could mean one of two things: either Gramps, Miss Phillips, and the moon man didn’t escape, or they did escape and the leather-coat man has found the tunnel.

I keep low in my trench. The man in the brown overalls who has been with me all the time climbs out. I see it doesn’t take him long to scramble over the top. He starts arguing about the use of a wind machine as there is no atmosphere on the moon and the flag wouldn’t blow about. Desperately, I scrabble to release Gramps’s belt, to find the ribbon so that I can just whisk it out when the time comes. I breathe again when the knot comes loose. He has designed it well. The ribbon is within my grasp. I can see the feet of a guard. He isn’t concentrating on me, though I am sure that’s what he is supposed to be doing. No, too interested in watching the landing craft being winched into place. The guard’s feet are joined by a pair of well-polished boots. I look up again at the observation room but the leather-coat man isn’t there. He is standing right here with his back to me. He is asking the guard if he has seen a young boy, about fifteen, with different-colored eyes.

Frick-fracking hell. I’m so close and now I’m going to be caught.

“What are you doing?” shouts the man in the brown overalls at the leather-coat man. “Get off the surface of the moon.”

“It is possible that a boy called Standish Treadwell is hiding in here? We found the remains of a tunnel.”

One of the pigwigs in charge has come over.

“Leave,” he says. “Now.”

“Two suspects are missing and we believe . . .” carries on the leather-coat man, “we believe they have the missing astronaut with them.”

The pigwig says, “Then what are you doing here?”

My heart soars. They got away.

“Ten minutes to countdown,” booms the director from the crane.

“I suggest you go and find him,” says the pigwig.

I think he must have clicked his fingers. Whatever he has done, the leather boots that belong to the leather-coat man have vanished.

Still, I don’t trust that he has gone altogether. I am as jumpy as a bedbug.

“The president, sir,” says a Greenfly, who has come over to where the pigwig stands. He hands him a telephone that is connected to a long wire.

The pigwig takes the phone, stands to attention, and gives the salute of the Motherland. He doesn’t say a word. Just the salute and then he hands the phone back to the guard.

“It’s an order from the president,” he announces. “The flag must wave in the breeze.”

The wind machine is pulled into position, everyone is on standby. The countdown begins.

For the first time I am aware that Hector is near me.

“Don’t worry, Standish,” he says softly. “We will do this together like we always did.”

“But what if they catch you here?” I say.

He smiles. “They won’t.”

I know that.