Here it is, a grave in the earth, ready and waiting for me. There’s no turning back, not now. I am in no-man’s-land. No land anybody would fricking want to be in, that’s for sure.
I kiss Gramps.
I don’t expect him to say a word.
He says, “Standish, I’m proud of you.”
I know I’m dead. The only question is how I die.
I am seeing what Hector saw when he broke through. The hatch is completely hidden among all the brambles and stinging nettles. I managed to rip my shorts and scratch my legs when I scrabbled out from under all that tangle of nature.
I dust as much of the dirt off me as I can, the rest I rub into my skin. I look pretty filthy and there is blood dripping down my legs. I climb up to where the meadow was. Now it’s a battlefield of lorry tracks and wounded earth. In the distance is that ugly old palace, its huge glass window still staring.
I know which way to go. I have the moon man’s map engraved in my mind, though the latrines are farther away than I imagined. The light is so bright you might convince yourself it was the middle of the day rather than the oncoming night.
It’s funny how in one’s head everything seems so simple. I had it all worked out. I would break in, find Hector, throw my stone, and together we would escape. It’s the fricking reality that destroys plans. I make my way towards the latrines, which aren’t far from that atrocity of a building. I could find them blindfolded — the smell is shit awful. I see the searchlight, an eye in the sky to winkle me out. Here goes, Standish, here goes.
“Stop!” one of the guards shouts as its beam pins me to the spot.
There is the sound of running feet. Two Greenflies grab me and drag me before a man whose face I can’t see — the light behind him is too bright.
Please, I am thinking, don’t let this be all over before it’s begun. Don’t let this be the leather-coat man. I cover my eyes.
“Turn the light away,” the man shouts.
He is outlined in electric yellow. I am relieved to see an officer who isn’t the leather-coat man.
He is yelling, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
And I say, in my best Motherland tongue, “Taking a shit, sir.”
“Why down there?”
“Have you seen the latrines? Even the rats are killed off by the smell.”
I am expecting a slap for my cheek.
Instead he says, “A good shit? It must have been by the look of your legs.” He laughs. “So you don’t like the facilities?”
I think it’s best not to answer that one. He doesn’t look that stable, this hand-grenade of an officer.
“Are you on the day shift?”
I nod.
The officer marches me towards a hut, where an enormous woman is sitting in a chair. Behind her, a sacking curtain masks what lies inside. She stands up. So does the chair, stuck out at an angle from her bottom.
She is wearing a matron’s uniform but I don’t think she has much to do with nursing.
The officer is happily yelling at the fat woman. It’s not worth translating — anyone can get the general gist of what he is saying — but it gives me time to see more clearly what is beyond the open doors of the palace. It looks to me like the moon has collided with Zone Seven.
The moon man told me there were thousands of starving people working here. I can see a lot of figures standing on the dark side of the moon. I am now looking properly at a film set which is the most important film set ever to be built, one that will shape all our lives, change history. The world is about to swallow one huge, inedible lie. And I, Standish Treadwell, am the only one with a plan.
The fat woman returns to her post, cursing the officer under her breath as he walks away. I notice she has a whip which has fallen to the floor and I feel a great temptation to kick it away from her. But I don’t.
“Number?” she shouts at me.
“Um . . . not good with remembering numbers,” I say. Stupid will work well for me here.
She pulls back the curtain. And I’m thinking, roll up, roll up, welcome to Hell’s waiting room.
Bunks upon bunks, nothing more than two boards to each bed, no covers, nothing. They are all sleeping in their clothes, even in their shoes. They look like shrunken corpses, the clothes the only solid reminder that they once filled them out with purpose.
There isn’t a spare bed.
I’m thinking about crawling under one of the bunks when a women says, “Here, love, you’d better share with me.”
She is painfully thin, her eyes hollow.
“Where are you from?” she asks.
“I’m lost,” I say.
“Aren’t we all.”
Such a cruel nation is the monstrous Motherland. I’m amazed no one has risen up to throttle the bitch.
I don’t remember much until the lights come on. A bell rings, and one by one each of the bunk beds is emptied. Everyone stands robot-still. The Greenflies have furious-looking Alsatians pulling at their leashes. We line up to wash at a pump.
The woman who let me stay on the bare boards with her says, “Drink the water. Wipe your face but drink as much water as you can.”
That’s not as simple as it sounds. The guards don’t want any water-drinking going on. We line up again. Each of us is given one slice of bread balanced on a mug of black tea. We are marched into the palace as the figures I saw last night march past us in the opposite direction, too tired to lift their feet. They are going to sleep on the hard wooden bunks we’ve just left.
Frick-fracking hell. Once you’re inside that atrocity of a building and you see that moon for yourself, that’s when you realize it fills the whole of this huge, ugly beast. There are men in white coats walking about taking exact measurements of everything.
Our orders for today are to get the sky backcloths in place and position the stars where they should be. Details are things the Motherland likes a lot. Paperwork and details. Everyone lines up. I tell you this, it looks so unreal. A city of moon workers. At least I won’t be noticed in this huge crowd. According to the moon man, the only way to get near the set is to volunteer, which no ever one does. The reason being that if you fail or one of the officers takes against you, that adds up to a bullet in the head. And you can’t argue with a bullet that final.
I might have to think that one through again. The one about volunteering, on account of my courage doesn’t seem to have woken up with me. I hope Gramps, Miss Phillips, and the moon man got away, for I don’t think I will.
“You there,” comes a voice.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
I am pulled out of the crowd. I stand on the edge of the moon, feeling its silvery dust through the hole in my shoe.
“Did you hear what I said?”
This officer has a revolver in his hand and it looks like it might need a bit of shooting practice. I can see why Mr. Gunnell was so keen to join this load of maggot-makers.
“Yes,” I say.
Because although I was definitely thinking about other things I also was listening. They are wanting volunteers. The only bit I missed — which was a pity — was what they wanted volunteers for.
I put my hand up. The officer with a gun and the need for a head to fire it into looks almost disappointed. One of the Greenflies pulls me away.
There are two other boys of about my age who didn’t volunteer. Still they are dragged out of the crowd. I hear a woman yell out a boy’s name. The boy, older than me, flinches as he hears her. We are marched away from the moon set. Frick-fracking hell, I should have paid a bit more attention. Maybe I volunteered to clean out those stinking latrines. We are now in bright sunlight, and looking into a car park full of the silver lozenges of lorries that the moon man told me and Miss Phillips about. Yes, see, once all these thousands of moon workers have done their jobs they will be given a nice bar of soap and a nice gas bath.
The more I see of all this, the less optimistic I feel that I, Standish Treadwell, can do anythi
ng other than become like everyone else here. Maggot meat. The two other boys with me are so thin that they make me stand out. This worries me. Still they are not yet as skeletal as others I’ve seen. Somehow this doesn’t comfort me. What if it’s a trick? What if the leather-coat man found the tunnel last night, has arrested Gramps, Miss Phillips, and the moon man, and knows what I’m doing here? The place is swarming with Greenflies and officers. Never have I seen as many as I have today. I think I have entered an insect nest.
We march past the latrines, past the waiting lorries. That’s a relief. At least, I hope it’s a relief.
Hunger makes you see things leanly. This is no way to live, and those silver lozenges are no way to die.
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 sm
all 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.