Clockworld, by RJ Astruc, part 4

4. What happened to Xiaoping Hathaway

The shuttle lands on the banks of the lake, no more than a hundred metres from the place Ping and Maud had been sitting moments before.

It’s on fire.

Ping, hiding behind a rock, feels the blast of impact, an intense white heat that seems to rip right out from the earth. He screams; Maud does too. He can feel his hair burning. Reality floods in around the edges of his Clockworld-buzz.

When the heat begins to dissipate, he and Maud venture out from their shelter. The wreck of the ship is half-in, half-out of the water. It is a small craft — one of the posh, private rich-kid shuttles, and is shaped like the head of a squid. Smoke billows from its engines and what remains of the cockpit, which has been all but obliterated.

There isn’t much debris, save for broken branches; the shuttle hasn’t exploded in its re-entry but instead has compacted. Its exterior shell is buckled inward, deflated in places, in others completely crushed. Dark liquid spills a scar into the clear waters of the lake. Ping thinks, again: Lord of the Flies.

“Do you think anyone could have survived?” Maud asks, behind him.

“Yes,” says Ping.

There are gaps in his memory. It’s the drugs, or the shock, or maybe the explosion itself has rocked something loose inside his head. So what happens is that Ping is looking at the shuttle, and next he’s on top of it, prying up the compartment hatch with his fingernails. Which are bleeding, but don’t seem to hurt at all.

The hatch falls away with a clatter. A puff of smoke comes out of the opening, rising in the breeze. Ping looks in, but sees nothing but darkness — all the lights, even the emergency lights, have failed. There is complete silence: everything, even the world around him, seems stunned.

He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts: Hello, hello, hello.

The silence breaks and he hears people shouting back in the darkness.

“Hello? Sir?”

“Help! I can’t find my way out.”

“Where’s my sister? My sister!”

All young voices. Children. It might be a shuttle full of junior kids, Ping thinks — and of course it is, because it’s still the middle of term, which is when juniors always show up: they get a quick, one week introduction to interplanetary life before they start first year the following semester. Ping leans out, across the hatch, balancing his body with his knees.

“You need to get to the hatch,” he calls. “Follow the sound of my voice.”

There’s mumbling below. Sounds of confusion. Ping opens his mouth to talk, to say anything to lead the kids out of the shuttle like a Pied Piper, but his brain goes dead: he has no words to say. So instead he sings. It’s a school song, one they sing in assembly. Ping doesn’t know all the words to the real song but he sure knows all the words to the dirty version, as sung by Aubrey (and by Josie, if Aubrey is listening).

“You have a lovely voice,” says Maud.

Ping sings on. Soon the sounds of the kids come closer, and he can just make out their heads below him. The shuttle is tipped on its side, so the far wall of the compartment has become the floor — it’s maybe ten feet below.

“Sir?” a kid calls up. Ping catches a glimpse of a tear-stained face and wild hair. “Sir, are you there?”

Maud bites her nails.

“I’m here,” says Ping. “But I’m going to go away for a minute or two. I want you all to stay here and keep singing. So other people will know and come. Sing something simple, like Mary had a little lamb, but sing it loudly.”

“Sir.”

Ping climbs down the shuttle, hand over hand, finding footholds in dents and the bent ramp of a wing.

He comes back with vines and a sharp rock. The rock he uses to batter at the lower-placed windows, trying to smash them so some kids can escape that way, but the windows have been made to withstand re-entry, they aren’t going to be smashed by a skinny drug-freak like Ping. He gives up and returns to the hatch. The kids are still singing, some sounding tearful. Ping ties up the vine and drops into the compartment.

“Climb up,” he says. “I’ll grab your hand.”

The first kid to get up is a sandy haired girl with her hair in pig-tails. Ping is holding her hand; then she is hugging him, tightly, her face pressed against his shoulder. Trying to bury herself. Gently he peels her away and sits her down on the shuttle.

The next kid is missing a lot of his hair and his trousers are ripped on one side from waist to ankle, only his belt keeping them up. He doesn’t hug Ping; instead he crawls off to sit cross-legged by the girl. Waiting for the next instruction.

On the banks of the river, away from the shuttle, Ping does a headcount. Twenty six kids. None of them know how many of them there were to begin with, but all agree it was more than this.

Most of the kids are ten or under; the youngest is eight. Some of them are hysterical, or getting there. One little boy hasn’t stopped crying since Ping pulled him out into the sunshine. He’s clutching the remains of a backpack against his chest. An older kid, maybe a big sister or cousin, keeps patting him to cheer him up, but her eyes have a blankness to them. Like her heart’s not really in it. Like her mind’s not really in it, either.

Ping leaves the kids with the order to watch each other and walks off into the trees. In the calm and quiet of the jungle he picks plants, some flowers, some fruits, some leaves, stuffing his pockets full of them.

“You’re going to drug them?” Maud asks.

“I need them to forget this,” says Ping. “None of this is real, anyway. They need to know that.”

Maud puts on that you’re nuts expression that Ping knows too well from his teachers and his fellow students. “Ping…”

“It’s not real. You’re not real. If it — ” He gestures toward the river, the shuttle. “ --- is real it shouldn’t be.”

“I suppose this is the kindest thing to do,” says Maud.

“I think Clockworld likes people,” says Ping, as they walk back. “I think the whole planet likes us. That’s why it grows this stuff, these things that make us happy or calm or excited or… or euphoric…”

Maud rolls her eyes. “You’ve been talking to Aubrey too much.”

The kids eat.

Then they relax, and lie down, and giggle to each other.

If Ping has one skill it is this, the manipulation of reality.

He leaves them all and returns to the shuttle. It’s getting dark, not that it’ll matter much when he goes inside. Which he does now, climbing hand-over-hand down the vine to the passenger compartment.

Most of the smoke has dissipated now, passing out through one of the holes around the shuttle’s great engines, but the smell still lingers, black and chemical. Ping — who can see nothing the moment he steps out of the light of the hatch — ties another vine to the others and unwinds it as he walks blindly through the room. He is Theseus exploring the labyrinth, he is Hansel dropping pebbles.

Maud says, in the darkness: “I’m scared,” and Ping wishes he could hold her hand.

He finds a door that leads him into a corridor. Everything is blackness. He stumbles, jarring his knee. When he runs out of vine he ties on another.

He explores the shuttle, room by room.

There are bodies, and there are moaning things that are almost bodies.

Maud says: “We’re miles away from Blackhall, from any help. You either save them or you — or you… you know. You can’t leave them here to starve and rot. You can’t leave them in pain.”

“Remind me how many other people died in that pile-up?” Ping asks.

Maud won’t be led. “You can’t rescue these kids. And you’re the only person here. What are you going to do? Somehow prise them all out and carry them back to Blackhall? We don’t even know where Blackhall is.” She sighs. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking that anyone else is coming. If they were, they’d have been here hours ago.”

“Oh god,” says Ping, distraught. “If only it wasn’t so dark. If only I could see.”

But he can only feel. Flesh and breath and wetness.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he says. Digging into his pockets. Finding Clockworld fruits. “Until then.”

He crushes the fruits in his palm. He feeds invisible mouths in the darkness. He tells them what he’s giving them is medicine — and it is, of a sort.

Some of them beg him to stay, or beg him to leave. Ping wishes he could do both.

The next morning he feeds the twenty-six survivors berries. When they become complacent, he ties them together, wrist-to-wrist-to-wrist, a long chain of children. He leaves enough slack on the vines so that they can have some privacy if they need to take a piss — but not much more than that. He doesn’t want to lose any of them, and kids have a tendency to wander off, to get lost.

“You’re already lost,” says Maud.

“You know what I mean,” says Ping.

The kid whose arm he’s tying up squints at him. “Why do you keep talking to yourself?” she asks.

“It helps me think,” says Ping.

In the shuttle, some of the moaning things have stopped moaning, stopped breathing. Three remain alive. Ping manages to heave something large and heavy off the body of one of them (some sort of cupboard? He can’t tell) and pulls the child to its feet. One, saved, if a little unsteady. The other two he’s not sure about. Their bodies feel beaten, broken. But alive.

“Shit,” says Ping. He kicks out in darkness and hits something metal. “Shit, shit, shit.”

He thinks: What would Josie do? The answer is: Rescue them, of course. Carry them back to civilisation, one on each shoulder. Which is fine, sure, okay. Except Josie is six foot something-impossible and strong. He’s built for heroism.

So. His other option. What would Aubrey do? Well, Aubrey would probably lose it, Ping thinks. Aubrey would probably walk away. Or kill them, put them out of their misery. Or maybe stay and talk to them, and feed them, and become some crazy jungle hermit. It would depend on Aubrey’s mood at the time.

“Ping,” says Maud.

“Shush. I’m thinking.”

“Ping, please.”

She’s the only thing he can see in the darkness. Her silhouette shines silver.

“What?” he says.

“You need to stop acting like you’re an extra in the background of other people’s lives,” says Maud, touching his shoulders, her expression earnest. “You’re my grandson and I love you, my own flesh and blood, but you’re killing me. You deserve more than what you want. You are bigger than Aubrey and Josie. You are better than them and you can exist and think and live without them.”

Ping blushes, glad that she can’t see him. He’s starting to suspect she’s right.

In the end he carries them out of the shuttle. It takes hours, because Ping is small and really fucked up on Clockworld fruit. Outside it turns out that both the kids are girls. He thinks one girl has broken ribs and a broken leg; the other one he’s not sure, she just looks a bit bent and she can’t move her legs at all. Broken spine? Pelvis? Josie knows doctoring stuff, he’s got a certificate in First Aid or some shit like that, but Ping really hasn’t a clue.

Last time he was home he watched one of those ghastly celebrities survive in the wild shows. He remembers they made a football goal on one episode, weaving vines around sticks. It was a sturdy looking construction in the end, strong enough to stop a football kicked by a professional sportsman. Maybe if Ping concentrated on the weaving he could make something similar, something that could bear a child’s weight…

He’s always taken shit subjects, the ones that are practically impossible to fail; he’s the first to enroll for crap like pottery and basket weaving and home economics and flower arrangement.

Aubrey’s always made fun of him for that.

Ping works long into the night.

It’s dawn.

Ping wakes the kids and tells them: We’re going home. They rub their eyes with their small, bound fists and sit up, blinking, in the trickling half-light of the twin suns. Slowly, they scramble off to the waterside, to wash their faces, hands and feet. Ping stays behind with his two invalids and puts the finishing touches to his stretchers. His slim fingers move quickly across the taut vines like a lutenist’s over strings.

“Going home?” asks Maud, crouching on the sandy soil at his side. Her round face is pink-cheeked, her mouth twitchy with frustration. “What the hell do you mean, going home? You’re giving those poor children false hope.”

“No I’m not.”

“Please! You don’t remember where you are. You’ve been stoned for — I don’t even know how long it’s been, weeks? Weeks of blacking out and running after pretty flowers and invisible monsters and falling down ditches and crying over your two awful Blackhall boyfriends. There’s no possible way you could navigate back.”

“But you could,” says Ping.

Maud says nothing.

“I know you’re from inside my head,” says Ping. “I don’t believe in ghosts — and anyway, you know too much about Aubrey and Josie to be my real grandmother. I’m pretty sure I made you up because I’m lonely and sad and it was either create an imaginary friend or throw a Betts Darling.”

She’s affronted. “If I’m you, then how am I going to lead you home?”

“Maud, no matter how completely skunked I get, you’re always sober. God knows how you managed it, but you’ve come from part of my brain that isn’t high. Probably because I needed you to be straight, needed you to talk to. Needed your logic.” He reaches for her hands; and reaches through them. “Of course you can lead us back, granny. You’re my guardian angel, like you said.”

The kids are coming back now, their shoes and socks in their hands. Laughing, kidding each other. Already they’ve forgotten the horrors of the crash, the bodies they’d scrambled over as they followed the sound of Ping’s song. Most of it is Ping’s doing — he knows his leaves, his berries, his roots — but some of it, Ping suspects, is just human nature.

Everyone avoids things, even kids. You’d go mad if you didn’t.

“We’ll do this together, Maud,” says Ping. “You and me.”

Three weeks after Xiaoping Hathaway vanishes into the jungles of planet Clockworld, Aubrey Partington-Hale sits bolt upright in his bed, turns to the bunk of his ex-best-friend Jocelyn Cooper, and says the first words the pair have exchanged since Aubrey broke Josie’s nose:

“I’m fucking jonesing.”

It’s five fifteen in the morning. A thin thread of dawn has crept in under the blinds, but the world outside the dorm room is still utterly silent. Josie raises his head an inch from the pillow, squints at Aubrey’s puffy, sleep-squished face, and instantly regrets several major life decisions. He grunts, and pulls his covers over his head to blot out Aubrey’s existence.

This works for approximately fourteen seconds, which is how long it takes for Aubrey to get out of bed, cross the room, and sit on Josie’s stomach.

“Get off, you bastard,” Josie puffs out, smacking Aubrey about the face with his pillow.

Aubrey snatches the pillow, throws it out of reach. “We need to find Hathaway,” he says, matter-of-factly.

“There’s police for that.”

“No there’s not. Perhaps you’re thinking about the search team filled with volunteers from Blackhall’s security staff. Fucking volunteers, Josie.” Aubrey pulls a face. He’s never liked the idea of people doing anything for nothing; the concept is both anathema and alien to his sensibilities. “No. We’re going to have to bring him back ourselves. You, me. War.”

“War,” Josie echoes.

Aubrey looks away, distracted, scratching at his wrists. “Don’t be petty. I need a goddam smoke and no bastard in this whole school will sell me anything. Not a single one.”

“That’s because you don’t have any friends, Aubrey.” Josie manages to get some leverage and pushes Aubrey onto his legs, far enough down that he can sit up. “I’m not going out to scour the countryside just because you need a fix. Fuck that. Fuck you, too. We aren’t even talking.”

“So what are we doing now?”

Josie pauses, one hand on his nose, which is still feeling sensitive. Aubrey makes big-eyes at him. It’s been three weeks since they’ve spoken to each other — they haven’t even had Hathaway around as a convenient domestic go-between — but it’s like no time has passed at all. Josie is still dumb, still a follower, still hopelessly and hopefully in love. Aubrey is still a bastard, still a manipulator, still has his fingers tightly entwined in Josie’s strings.

“He’s probably dead,” says Josie weakly. “You know that. I heard they’re planning to give up the search. Waste of time. They’ll hold a memorial service and be done with it.”

“No,” says Aubrey.

“No?”

“No. No, he’s not dead. Can’t be dead.”

Josie has already shed tears for Hathaway. Has sobbed his way through his counselling sessions. Has cried silently into his pillow at night. Has hidden away in the loo, the door locked, and bawled discreetly into a handkerchief. Josie is already making solid progress through the stages of grief. It bothers him, suddenly, to realise that Aubrey hasn’t even begun to mourn poor, naïve, drug-fucked little Hathaway.

“Dammit, Aubrey, why not?”

“Because he’s my friend.”

Josie bites his lip.

Aubrey blinks at him.

“Fine,” says Josie. “But we can’t go far. And you can’t bring…” No, he won’t say War Vladistov’s name. “You can’t bring him with you.”

But of course Aubrey does. While Josie is pulling on a pair of jeans, Aubrey is out, knocking on the Slovak’s door. Hello, says Aubrey, fancy a bit of adventure, and the Slovak says, Sure; and after Aubrey explains that adventure doesn’t mean sex (at least not this time) the Slovak shrugs and agrees that finding Hathaway will be a fairly interesting way to spend the morning, too.

The Slovak and Aubrey meet up with Josie at the west wall, at the bend in the chickenwire that marks the place Hathaway escaped. Josie looks at War; War leers at Josie; Josie throws up his hands and turns to go, but Aubrey catches him by the sleeve.

“I said, not with him!” Josie blurts out.

“War’s great in jungles. Well, forests. Or whatever they call lots of trees together in Eastern Europe. He’s a Boy Scout. Was one, anyway.” Aubrey looks over his shoulder to War, who’s watching them with his arms folded, laconically amused by the drama. “He’ll probably be able to track Hathaway down by listening to the ground and stuff like that.”

“I won’t bite,” calls War, smirking. “Again.”

“I won’t go,” Josie threatens.

“I’ll leave you,” Aubrey threatens.

Josie backs down. War helps Aubrey over the fence.

Two hours into the jungle, Aubrey is suddenly aware that he is getting high. The air has a palpable thickness to it — you can almost taste it — and every time Aubrey inhales he gets a tiny head-spin, like the first drag of an after-class cigarette.

They’re walking in single file, Josie skulking at the rear, War up ahead, swaggering through the trees like a tank, fairly steamrolling any branches and vines in his way. Aubrey puffs along in War’s footsteps, his brain feeling looser and looser, like the edges of it are peeling away from the inside of his skull. Mud squelches into his sneakers; sharp grasses slice at his smart uniform trousers, which are looking less and less smart by the minute. This all is hideously exciting, Aubrey thinks: running away to rescue Hathaway, blazing a trail through the jungle, getting fucked up just by breathing Clockworld’s bloody air.

He wishes Betts Darling was here. But instead he has Josie, who seems to have gained courage while War’s back is turned.

“Pssst,” Josie whispers. Stage-whispers. Like he thinks War, only a few metres away, can’t possibly hear. “Aubrey.”

“Yes, dear?”

“I’m sorry about what happened with Whatsit,” says Josie. “I hate this. I want to be friends again.”

It hasn’t occurred to Aubrey that the two of them had stopped being friends. Admittedly, Aubrey’s never been particularly good at picking up the subtext of social situations. “I care that you lied,” he says. “Not that you fucked him.”

“I didn’t fuck him. He just nuzzled my neck. Kissed me a bit.”

“Hathaway said — ”

“Hathaway told you? God, I hope we find the prick. I’ll…” But even the idea of violence horrifies wholesome, All-American Josie. “I’ll be very cross with him,” he concludes.

“Forget Hathaway. You shouldn’t lie to me. There are only a few people in the world that don’t lie to me, and you were one of them.”

“I was ashamed. I’m — I’m sorry.”

“Okay.”

“So we’re… we’re good? Friends?”

“Josie, you’re so fucking boring.”

Aubrey checks his watch. They must be several miles into the jungle now, and already the landscape is changing. The trees seem closer, the canopy thicker, and here and there he’s noticed big, spotted flowers with fat pillow-like centres and drooping petals like slabs of ham. Aubrey giggles, realises he’s giggling, and covers his mouth.

He has a sudden urge to move. To not be here.

Also his hair feels like it’s crawling off his head right now, every strand on end and tugging, tugging, tugging…

War says, from somewhere miles away: “Are either of you getting high?”

“Think it’s the air,” says Josie. “Or these flowers. They look poisonous.”

“I’m definitely high,” says War. “I can feel it in my balls.”

“Lovely.” Josie makes a vomiting noise. “What about you, Aubrey?”

Aubrey doesn’t respond. He’s too busy listening. Not to Josie and War’s prattle but to the noises of the jungle. In the distance he can hear the sound of singing. Soft singing, sweet singing. Wordless but true. Which makes no sense because Clockworld (as far as anyone knows) has no native fauna. Never mind any native people.

Aubrey gnaws his nails. He’s insane, sure, okay, in the clinical definition of the word, but this is the first time he’s ever heard voices.

“Fat boy looks a bit peaky,” War observes, prodding Aubrey’s upper arm. “Too much exercise, I suspect. Or rather: not enough. Come on, you shit, you’re slowing us down. You’ll get a rest stop in another half hour. Or whenever you accept your nutty little buddy is gone.”

“He can’t quit now,” Josie says. “It was his idea to come out here in the first place.”

“His fault Hathaway buggered off in the first place, too, if I understand the situation correctly.”

Are they ganging up on him? Aubrey clutches his head. He suddenly wants to run. He needs to run. (Is this how Hathaway felt, as he bolted blindly into the jungle?) Run, run, run. His heart’s up in his ears, rumbling like an engine. Paranoia tickles the hairs on the back of his neck.

Josie tries to pat his shoulder, but Aubrey shakes him off, spitting and hissing.

“Fuck off,” he shrieks. “Both of you just fuck off!”

Aubrey runs.

He doesn’t get far. He’s not really built for mad, impromptu dashes into alien territory. Also, Aubrey isn’t a runner. Aubrey relishes confrontation. Five hundred metres later, his brain (or what’s left of it) catches up with his legs and he comes to a halt, puffing, against the trunk of a giant, spiral-branched bush.

“What the hell,” he says aloud. His ears are still ringing and his stomach churns but Aubrey is back in the driver’s seat of his own mind. He wipes sweat from his forehead and tries to remember what the hell he was thinking about before shit in his head got all mental.

Of all his conspiracy theories, Aubrey’s favourite has always been that Clockworld is a scientific experiment. What kind of experiment, he’s never sure, but it’s got to be something trippy, real Aldous Huxley shit. Brain-fuckery and LSD. Right now it doesn’t seem so far fetched. It’s no secret that Clockworld gets you high and with all the weirdshit that goes on Aubrey wouldn’t be surprised if there was method to its madness. He’s got the distinct feeling that he’s being pulled somewhere…

“No,” he tells himself, gritting his teeth. Remembering Betts Darling in her room of confetti. “Stop thinking like that. Everything is fine. You’re just high. You’re very high. Snap out of it.”

He’s congratulating himself on keeping his shit together when the singing starts again.

It’s closer this time. Lots of voices. Children’s voices. Out there in the trees he can hear them moving. They’re heading for him.

Branches creak.

Aubrey loses his shit completely.

“Josie!” he shrieks.

A second later Josie and War are at his side. Josie (bless his heart) automatically steps in front of Aubrey, ready for a fight. War picks up a stick and smacks it against an open palm.

But instead of alien child-monsters, what staggers out of the bushes is a skinny, brown teenager with matted hair and virtually no clothes on. Behind him is a gang of filthy little mud-people, all tied together with lengths of greenery. It’s like the Pied Piper except feral, primitive, and fucked up.

Aubrey screams, Josie hollers, and even stoic War lets out a grunt of shock; and in the ensuing confusion it takes quite a while for anyone to recognise that the teenager is Hathaway.

“The fuck,” says War.

Hathaway takes a few steps forward and then collapses bonelessly into Josie’s arms, sagging forward from the knees. His head hits Josie’s chest and leaves a muddy imprint. The mud-children hang back, pressing close together.

“H-Hathaway?” Josie’s voice is pitchy. “What happened to you?”

It’s weird to hear Hathaway’s small, nervous voice coming out of the mask of filth. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.”

“Asshole,” says Aubrey, “you went into the jungle in a hysterical fit and you’ve come out of it dragging a bunch of kids drugged to the eyeballs and tied together with vines. I think you’d better remember something plausible pretty fucking fast or this might wind up getting messy for you.”

“Maud?” says Hathaway vaguely, and raises his hand over his face. His fingers, always thin, look like toothpicks now.

Aubrey squints. “Maud? Who the fuck is Maud?”

“I doubt he knows.” War shrugs. “Look at him. Heck, look at yourself, Aubrey. You’re already scatty and we’ve been in the jungle for half an hour. He’s been out here for weeks. I’m surprised he can remember his own name. And where the fuck did these kids come from?”

Aubrey looks at Josie, who looks at War, who looks back at Josie, who looks at Hathaway.

Who’s fainted.

“This is the best thing ever,” says Aubrey, forgetting his temporary madness, almost gurgling now with amusement and the promise of hilarious badshit happening to other people. “I can’t wait to get back.”

“ — and the journalists kept asking us, how do you feel, being heroes, and I never know what to say, because obviously we did a good thing, but in all fairness it was mainly Hathaway and also an accident, and I bet if there’d been any Real Heroes around they would have managed to rescue all the kids without blowing their minds with hallucinogens or walking around in circles in the jungle for, like, years…”

Josie pauses. On the other end of the line he can hear his father, a million-billion miles away, draw breath.

“Sorry,” he says automatically. “I’m probably boring you, and I expect you’ve already seen all the stuff about the Hathaway thing in the news anyway.”

“I prefer to hear it from you,” says his father.

Josie gulps. “Really?”

“Of course.”

“I wasn’t around for most of it,” Josie admits, flustered. He’s not used to this sort of… what is it? Approval? The concept feels foreign. “At least not the real adventure part. No one really knows what happened to Hathaway — not even Hathaway. Anyway, I only came in at the end when Hathaway and the kids were on their way back. They’d probably have made it just fine without us.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Lots of search parties went out, and the only one that was successful was yours.”

“I suppose. I mean, yes.”

“I’ve been recording you on the news,” says his father. “All your interviews. You do most of the talking, I noticed. The spokesman. Seems like the other three look up to you as a leader. Even your Hathaway friend.”

Josie chews his lip. It’s true that in most interviews the journalists tend to focus on Josie, asking him the questions while his friends sit and thumb-twiddle in silence. But Josie suspects correctly that this is because Aubrey is fat and swears a lot, Hathaway is invariably stoned, and War is foreign and, worse, foreign-with-an-accent. Unlike them, Jocelyn Cooper makes for good cinema: this tall, handsome American teenager with a humble smile that’s already endeared him to the viewing public back home.

It’s simple: Josie looks and acts like a hero in a way that Aubrey, Hathaway and War don’t.

“I’ve been getting a lot of calls from media people,” his father continues. “They want to make your story into a movie. Well, maybe. I told them it was up to you. You should think about it, though. The money could help you out when you go to college next year. Give you a little independence. I know that’s what you’ve always wanted.”

“It is?” Josie swallows. He’s never really thought about independence. Or what will happen to him after he finishes his uni-prep. Maybe, though, independence will be a good thing for him. Give his father another reason to respect him. “It is,” he agrees, firmly.

“Well then. I’ll help you manage things when you come home. I’m looking forward to — ”

He’s interrupted by a beep on the line: the operator is signalling that they’re close to using up their monthly hour of interstellar-comms time.

“Oops,” says Josie. “I didn’t realise. I don’t think we’ve ever talked for this long before. I guess I should say goodbye. Um.”

“Goodbye, son,” says his father. “And well done.”

The line goes dead. Josie stares at the receiver for a long time and thinks about his life and how suddenly amazing and perfect it is.

On his way out of the communications tower, Josie sees the Slovak, who casually salutes him in passing. After a second’s hesitation, Josie salutes back. Josie and War still aren’t friends and never will be — Josie’s still smarting with regret and jealousy -- but Josie appreciates (in retrospect) the almighty spanner that War threw into the workings of his existence.

And is thankful for it.

Aubrey and Hathaway, having escaped the trappings of their celebrity, are getting stoned on the roof of Kruger-Wei, Aubrey sprawled out starfish-style on his back, Hathaway curled up with his head resting on Aubrey’s feet. Josie finds them halfway through their third joint, which is the point at which Hathaway usually starts waxing loquacious.

“I had a guardian angel that came from my brain,” Hathaway is saying. “She’s my granny. Or something. But also me because she knows about you.” He points at Aubrey, at Josie. “I still see her, sometimes, since I got back. Mainly when I’m upset. But I see her less and less, now. I think I’m like, what do you call it, I think I’m being protected from myself by myself but because it’s really me, it’s actually pretty cool.”

“You’re a fucking headcase,” is Aubrey’s diagnosis, “and you need fucking professional help. Or a lobotomy, if that’s the thing where they cut out your brain.”

“Not your whole brain,” says Josie, sitting down beside them, “but you’re close.”

“Ooh look,” Aubrey falsettos, rolling his eyes, “it’s the goddam American hero.”

“Shut up,” says Josie.

“Yeah, shut up,” says Hathaway.

Aubrey gets to his feet, looking hurt. “You’re a pair of miserable cunts,” he says, and stamps off (rather unsteadily) to the edge of the roof and the tilted metal bookshelf they use for roof-access in lieu of an actual ladder.

Josie and Hathaway watch him go. Josie remembers that once upon a time he’d have chased Aubrey — in fact, chasing Aubrey from one drama to the next was virtually all he ever did — but today he feels no desire to. Hasn’t, really, since the Hathaway incident. Why, he’s not sure. Aubrey’s breed of selfish, self-centred cruelty has just lost its appeal. Also, Aubrey’s clearly not capable of reciprocating affection for anyone who isn’t as batshit as he is.

“I didn’t know he sulked,” Hathaway says, breaking the post-Aubrey silence.

“If he would just stop calling people cunts,” says Josie, “maybe he’d get more airtime.”

“I doubt it,” says Hathaway, passing him the joint. “You’re better at that stuff. People. Generally.”

Josie squirms. While he doesn’t care that he’s stolen Aubrey’s hero-thunder, and War clearly doesn’t give a shit one way or another, he does wish that Hathaway got some credit for what he did. Hathaway is the real hero, the one who saved the kids, who led them out of the jungle like a strung-out Pied Piper. It’s also technically Josie’s fault that Hathaway ran, in that he foolishly started all that business with War in the first place. “You don’t mind that I… er, you know?” he asks. “I mean all that stuff. And the media. Like, I’m talking for you. For all of us.”

“Better you than me. I’ve got nothing to say. All I remember is the green and the angel and sound of the explosion — not the explosion itself, just the noise.”

He raises his hands to his ears, as if there’s still an echo caught in them. Josie draws on the joint and sends a thread of smoke spiralling toward the twin suns.

“I can’t wait to get off this planet,” says Josie.

“Odd,” says Hathaway. “I don’t think I ever want to leave.”

“You serious?”

“A bit.” Hathaway shrugs, disarmingly, strangely charmingly, and stretches out across the tiles. “I want to go out there again. Before we leave. Properly, this time. With camping things and provisions and a compass. If compasses even work on this planet.”

Josie’s about to remind Hathaway of the state he was in when he was found, when it occurs to Josie that he’s just spent a full hour talking to his father about Hathaway: Hathaway’s heroism (albeit forgotten heroism) and Hathaway’s bravery (albeit forgotten bravery) and a whole lot of stuff about Hathaway generally. So much stuff, in fact, that neither he nor his father had brought up any of their usual topics of conversation: his grades, his shrink, or his unrequited obsession with Aubrey Partington-Hale…

“Hm,” says Josie.

“What?” says Hathaway.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” says Josie.

Thinking, secretly: Maybe it’s something.

That night marks the two-week anniversary of Ping’s return from the jungle, and he celebrates it on the grass outside the Mithandry, both alone and not-alone, the spectral presence of Maud hovering in the darkness.

“And everyone was saved and they all lived happily ever after,” she says, misreading his faint smile for smugness. “I’ve been watching the news, too. Pity you aren’t American, you might have been the star of the show. Instead of the guy who fainted and got carried back by Josie.”

“Wasn’t in it for the fame. Don’t know what I was in it for, of course, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t to get my name in lights.” He flutters his hands in the air, simulating the sparkling of a strobe — and because he’s high, he actually sees the stars mimicking his fingers, their light stretching and contracting. “Do you know what I was in it for?” he asks. “I don’t remember much.”

“Naturally. I remember everything. Always sober, that’s me. One day I’ll tell you what happened. Not today, though.” Maud peers at him closely. “How are you, Xiaoping?” she asks. “I mean, how do you feel?”

“I think I’m okay,” says Ping. “Really. You’re right about everything, but now everything is okay.”

Maud frowns.

Then nods.

“Right,” she says.

She vanishes, slowly, blending into the grass and the trees and the thick silhouette of Kruger-Wei in the distance. Ping stubs out his joint into the ceramic dust beside him and stands up. The stars seem to sparkle for a second — his head’s still buzzy with a Clockworld high. He puts his hands in his pockets, rocks back on his heels, and blinks up at the universe.

He walks back to his dorm, and he sings all the way.

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