through the roadblock and on to the main coastal road that led back to Xanadu. The dawn was scorching the horizon and the traffic on the main thoroughfare towards Tokyo was thickening. The aspirin moon was dissolving in the lukewarm morning. Drivers and passengers stared at me. Nobody walks out there, there was no pavement, just a sort of bulldozed-up ridge of ground – they assumed I had escaped from a mental hospital. I thought about hitch-hiking, but figured this could attract attention to me. How would I explain what I was doing there? I heard a fleet of police sirens approach. Luckily I was passing a family restaurant, so I could hide in the entrance and pretend to make a phone call. I was wrong – no police cars, only two ambulances. What should I do? My fever was taiko-drumming my brain. I had no plan of action beyond calling Buntaro and begging for help, but he wouldn’t be at Shooting Star until eleven and I didn’t have his home number, and I was afraid he would dump my stuff on the pavement when he found out what sort of company I kept. ‘Are you okay, lovie?’ asked a waitress behind the till. ‘Do you need anything for that eye?’ She looked at me so kindly that the only way I could stop myself blubbing was leaving rudely without answering. I envy her son. The route passed an industrial estate – at least I had a pavement to walk on. Every streetlight switched itself off simultaneously. The factory units went on for ever. They all made things for other factory units: stacking shelves, packing products, fork-lift gearboxes. The drumming was subsiding, but the fever was now steaming the contents of my skull. I had used everything up. I should try to get back to the family restaurant, I thought, and collapse in the lap of the angel of mercy. Collapse? Hospitals, doctors, questions? Twenty-year-olds don’t collapse. The restaurant was too far behind me. There was a bench in front of a tiling sealant factory. I don’t know why anyone put a bench there, but I sat down gratefully, in the shade of a giant Nike trainer. I hate this world. NIKE. THERE IS NO FINISHING LINE. Across a weed-strewn wasteland I could see Xanadu and Valhalla. One great circle. A firing pistol went off somewhere, and the sun sprang up, running. A bird was singing – a long, human whistling note, then a starburst of bird code at the end. Over and over. Same bird lives on Yakushima, I swear. I willed myself to get up, and make it as far as Xanadu, where I could find some air-conditioning and a place to sleep until I could phone Shooting Star. I willed myself, but my body wouldn’t move. A white car slowed down. Beep, beep. Beepy white car. Go away. The door opened from the inside, and the driver leaned over the passenger seat. ‘Look, lad, I’m not Zizzi Hikaru but unless you know of a better offer coming along, I suggest you climb in.’ An uncoupled moment as I realized the driver was actually Buntaro. A haggard, stressed Buntaro. I was too drained to even wonder how, who, when, why. I was asleep in thirty seconds.
The market town was a razed maze of clubbed rubble and treeless scree. The mosque on the hill had taken a direct hit, its innards lobotomized and its windows blasted out. The building gazed blankly over the town. Trams lay toppled and stripped. Abandoned children lay by the roadside, skin shrink-wrapped around protruding bones. Flies drank from their tear ducts. Vultures circled near enough to hear the wind in their feathers, and hyenas skulked in the gutters. A white Jeep from a peacekeeping organization drove past, nearly running Mrs Comb over, taking lots of photographs and news footage. Mrs Comb came to an enormous statue reigning over the ruin. The Beloved Commander, read the plaque. In his shadow, a gaunt man sizzled worms over a fire for his family. The ballasted, bombastic, brassy, beetle-browed, bulging dictator on the plinth was the very opposite of the gaunt man beneath, whose skeleton seemed to have been twisted out of coat hangers. ‘Excuse me,’ said Mrs Comb, ‘I’m looking for the marketplace.’
He glowered at her. ‘You’re standing in it.’
Mrs Comb realized he was quite serious. ‘This wasteland?’
‘There is a war on, lady, in case you haven’t noticed!’