Maggot Moon

by Sally Gardner

  “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.”

  The lights go on so suddenly that it feels as if someone has punched me. Hector opens his eyes. I think maybe they’ve been listening. Did I say too much? Did Hector? It’s so bright that for a moment I am blinded all over again. Hector pulls away. When he comes into focus he is looking at me as if I am some sort of apparition.

  “I hoped you were just a dream,” he says. “A good dream, come to comfort me.”

  I see Hector clearly now. He looks transparent. His bandages are grubby, new blood seeps through. He’s going to be all right, though. I know he is going to be all right. I pull him close and carry on holding him. If I don’t let go of him he will get better.

  “Did they arrest Gramps as well as you?” he asks.

  “No,” I whisper.

  “Why just you?”

  “I came by myself to take you home.”

  “You came here — what — through the tunnel?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Are you bonkers?”

  “Maybe.”

  He laughs. A wheezy laugh. At least I made him see the funny side.

  “Standish, what crazy, brave idea were you thinking of?”

  “A good one,” I said.

  Though I have to admit the guard was right when he said I was lucky. Finding Hector was the best bit of luck so far. Maybe it’s a sign that this might all work out. All I need is the belief it can.

  Hector says softly, “I’ve thought a lot about you.”

  “I’m taking you to the land of Croca-Colas,” I say. “Remember? We are going to drive one of those big Cadillacs.”

  “What color is it?” he asks, and this worries me. Hector should remember. We talked about it often enough.

  “Sky blue,” I say.

  He coughs. Not a good sound. Too deep, too full of coffins.

  Why is mankind so fucking cruel?

  Why?

  The lights go off.

  “They do this all the time — on, off, on, off. It’s supposed to drive you mad. I feel it might be working,” says Hector.

  I don’t want him thinking gloomy thoughts. But nothing sounds that cheerful in the dark of this tin can.

  “Does it hurt?” I ask. “Your hand?”

  “Yes. No,” he says.

  He rests his head against me. He is burning up. I was going to tell him about my stone but now all I can think of is us escaping from here. We need to find Mr. Lush. Hector needs medicine.

  I wish I could see his face. All I can hear is that snake rattle in his chest.

  Words mask the noise.

  I say, “When you left, there was this huge hole. I couldn’t walk around with a hole that size in the heart of me.”

  He says nothing but I know he is listening. Words are the only medicine I have.

  “You make sense of a world that is senseless. You gave me space boots so that I could walk on other planets. Without you, I’m lost. There’s no left, no right. No tomorrow, only miles of yesterdays. It doesn’t matter what happens now because I’ve found you. That’s why I’m here. Because of you. You who I love. My best friend. My brother.”

  Hector says sleepily, “I should never have gone searching for the football.”

  There is nothing I can say to that. All I can see is the emptiness between his words.

  His voice trails off. He is asleep. The only sound is the sand grater of his rasping breath.

  I wake with a start. For a moment I have no idea where I am. The lights are on again. The door is thrown open, and the guard who looks like Mr. Gunnell enters with a tray of food. He puts it down before me. This is real food — the smell is mouthwatering.

  “Eat!”

  I take the tray over to Hector.

  “No. Just you.”

  “I won’t,” I say. “Not unless he can eat as well.”

  The guard slaps me round the head.

  “I order you to eat.”

  I think I am in for one mighty beating. Hector moves deeper into the corner, imprinting himself on the wall. I can tell that the guard is itching to break my head. I can see his thoughts running round his flabby brain. But I’m gambling that he hasn’t been given those instructions yet. That will come after the astronaut has landed on the moon and the world has eaten the tea tray. My heart only starts to beat again when the guard leaves, taking the tray of food with him. I seem to be right about the beating. The door slams shut behind him. The enticing smell of food lingers.

  “What the fricking hell are you doing?” asks Hector.

  “We both eat or we both don’t.”

  “Standish, no one in here gets food. This is no frick-fracking holiday camp.”

  “I think I might have some power.”

  “Oh, Standish, what is going on in that daydreaming head of yours?”

  So I tell Hector about the rope and how I make the astronaut look as if he is walking without gravity. And I tell him about the giant and the stone.

  Hector stares at me.

  “We made a space rocket, remember?” I say. “We were going to planet Juniper. We nearly did. If they hadn’t taken you we would be there now.”

  Hector looks as if he is about to say I’m crazy, but doesn’t. He tilts his head back against the wall. I see there are tears running down his face.

  “You are right,” he says. “We could have escaped in that rocket. It was my fault we didn’t. I couldn’t believe like you. I couldn’t see beyond the cardboard. This time,” Hector says, “this time, Standish, I believe you. All of me believes you. If anyone can throw the stone, you will. If anyone can free me from this hellhole, you can.”

  We hear footsteps. The key turns in the lock. What the fuck’s going to happen now? Perhaps they gave the guard permission to beat my brains in after all.

  Guard One has another guard with him, and behind them both is a man with a small body and a head that appears to be stuck on a pole. This man is wearing a white coat. They make Hector stand. His legs fold under him. He is thrown over the shoulder of the guard who wants to break all my bones.

  “Where are you taking him?” I shout. “Leave him alone, don’t touch him.”

  The man in the white coat just raises his hand.

  “Put him down,” I yell. “Leave him be, just fucking well leave him be. If you hurt him I won’t do anything for you.”

  I am just an insect. The second guard brushes me away so hard I land in a heap where Hector has been. The floor is wet. He’s pissed himself. They all leave, slamming the door shut. I get up, throw myself at it again and again. The lights go out.

  I’m in the dark. Time has forgotten me. I’ve no idea how long I’ve been sitting here, me and my musical pit of an empty stomach. I think about Gramps, Miss Phillips, and the moon man. I wonder if they made it out. I think about Hector and stop worrying about the tears. It’s dark, who can see them anyway? My head spins with all the many possibilities of the what-if game. I’m trying not to cry. I’m really trying. I have this lump in my throat, this fury choking me.

  I must calm down. I must not go over the moon, not yet. Stay calm. Don’t go getting moon mad. Moon sad.

  Moon morons.

  Who do I want to be right now, right this moment? I want to be a Juniparian. I would then with my radiant vision save Hector and all the thousands of people in here. The trouble is,
I have a feeling that this might be a bit too much even for Juniparians. It might be too much for me. No, I can’t think like that.

  But what if I have it all wrong and I don’t have the power to throw my stone? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve got things backwards. Tomorrow they’ll just find a more cooperative, terrified little squirt to hang in the harness.

  I am not worried about that, not much. What worries me sick is the thought of Hector having another finger chopped off.

  I nearly jump out of my shoes. The light is turned on, and Guard One comes in. I’m close to insanely blurting out why I’m here. It’s terror that’s making me long to do it. The words are rising, a fart in my throat. I close my eyes. If he is going to kill me, best not to watch.

  There is the sound of something being dragged into the cell. It makes me look. The guards are putting down two thin mattresses. Then they bring Hector back. His hand is newly bandaged, he’s had a change of clothes.

  He lies on the mattress, shivering.

  The guard brings in two trays of food as well as a blanket. I put the blanket over Hector. He says he’s freezing. But I feel his skin. He is a frying pan.

  “Eat,” the guard commands.

  It’s fish and chips. Fish and chips with a huge wedge of lemon. This is a Zone One meal. I’ve never in my life seen a real lemon. I sniff the lemon. It smells of sunlight. It is the only color in this gray cell. I eat and lick my plate. Hector hasn’t touched his food.

  “You’ve got to have something,” I say. “It will make you better.”

  I cut up his food and he takes the smallest of bits.

  “You eat it for me, Standish,” he says.

  I am so hungry that I do. I don’t want to think about Hector being this ill. I just can’t think about it, that’s all. He turns his head away and closes his eyes. I eat it. I could’ve eaten the plate.

  The guard takes away the trays. The door is locked, the light turned off.

  Only the moon shines in.

  “I am very cold,” says Hector. I put my arms round him, hoping he will stop shivering, hoping he will stop burning up.

  “I saw my father,” Hector whispers into my ear.

  “Good.”

  “He knew you were here. He asked if the moon man had reached you.”

  “No,” I say.

  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.