By my side, the elderly American fiddled with a few switches. The image zoomed out a little, then flipped to a series of bodies and cars passing by in variegated red-and-orange tones.
“Thermal imaging,” he said. “I followed your every move, then switched to night vision when you were inside. It’s a good view from here, the house is nicely exposed.”
I stepped back. “I guess I was, too. Exposed, I mean.”
He nodded as I tried to decide his age – late sixties, early seventies? Small, compact, still reasonably fit. “You said you might have some work for me?” No point in beating about the bush.
Another nod as he moved a pile of papers so he could sit in a tattered old armchair, and they joined one of the many other piles on the floor. I guess that was what made the ’scope all the more impressive, a gleaming technical artefact in the obvious shambles of such a chaotic flat. Half-finished meals and abandoned coffee cups lay amongst the detritus. He offered me another chair, which even I refrained from sitting on. And as a bloke who’s shared a cell with three other lags for twenty-three hours a day, that was really saying something.
“People round here,” he began, “call me The Astronaut.”
I shrugged, unimpressed. “I heard it was Buzz.”
He smiled. “After Aldrin?”
“Lightyear,” I corrected him. “Some character from a kids’ film.”
The smile wavered as he caught my eye-line wandering back to the ’scope. “If you’re thinking of stealing it, I guess you should know it weighs close on a quarter of a ton. They winched it up the side of the building to get it in. And, in case you’re wondering, it’s worth well over a hundred thousand of your Brit pounds.”
My Brit pounds. The old guy was obviously still smarting from the Buzz Lightyear thing. Granted, he sounded a bit American, but only in that sort of clichéd way anyone would if they tried to put on an accent. I probably do a more convincing effort after watching a couple of old Star Trek reruns.
I looked round briefly, tried to get some sort of picture of the bloke. Too much contradictory information. An old guy living in a dump like some sort of tramp (no doubt he’d have said “hobo” to try and add extra authenticity to the Yank thing), yet clearly able to afford the sort of sky-gazing kit Greenwich Observatory would have been proud of.
Other signs. No trace of a woman’s touch, so presumably he lived alone. No evidence of any help from the Social Services – God, it’d have taken a crack team of their best cleaners even to begin to sort the place out. So – weird old recluse with access to expensive technology living in some sort of delusional fantasy world in which he once strolled about on the moon? Yeah, I know – it’s where the word “lunatic” derives from.
And yet, something else about Buzz that Rambling Ian had told me stuck in my mind – Lives at the very top with a telescope. Never lets anyone through the door. But here I was, forty minutes after illegally entering one locked premises, and I’d seemingly gained effortless entry into another.
“Another great feature of my ’scope,” he began, “is that it…”
“Takes photographs?” I finished for him, already ahead. Not much of a leap to make, he’d been so keen to show me the means of my “capture”, in all its technological excesses, it seemed logical Mr Spaceman would also have photographic evidence of my evening’s work with which to blackmail me.
He nodded, a little too smugly for my liking. “I love this block,” he went on. “Love living here – on top. I guess you could say that when you’ve been to the places I’ve been to, seen the things I have, it becomes very difficult for your feet ever to really touch the ground.”
I ignored this, didn’t want to be drawn into the fantasy. Point was, however odd, eccentric, or plain insane the man was, he had pictures that could stick me straight back inside. “You mentioned you may have some work for me?”
He smiled, and I knew that he knew he had me. Whatever was going to be played out, it would be at his pace, not mine. “I’ve lived here since ’eighty-three. Right here, on the top. ’Course, it was in better repair way back then. And I’ve loved it ever since. It gives me… anonymity. Leaves me free just to watch.”
“The moon, presumably,” I replied, trying to hurry him along.
“No,” he replied. “Seen enough of the moon in my time. Far too much.”
“Rumour round here is you walked on it.”
He smiled. “Lots of rumours round here. I use the ’scope to see the truth.” He fixed me with his eyes. “I see a lot of things with the ’scope. Like you, for instance. The day you arrived with the young mutt from the prison services. Yeah, I thought to myself, here comes another one. Then, of course, there’ve been all your – how should I put this – night-time jaunts? Those illegal little excursions into the surrounding backstreets. What else could you be but just another common thief?” He paused, steepled his fingers.
I tried to bow in a slightly patronizing manner, but I think it just came across as a bow. No point in denying it, the man did have an unsettling presence. Would have made a good judge. “You have me at a disadvantage.”
“I know,” he replied.
“You want me to steal something for you.”
He smiled, shook his head slowly. “Not for me. From me.”
He waited for my reaction. After the aborted bow, I gave it a miss.
“There were,” he continued, “several visits by the Apollo space programme to the moon. As is the way, the first is the most widely seared into public consciousness. By the time my mission went up, people were largely bored, and had begun counting the massive cost of the programme. They’d grown tired of watching men bounce on a dark, dusty surface a quarter of a million miles away. The so-called ‘scientific value’ of such missions was openly criticized. In consequence, I was one of the last human beings ever to walk on the surface of the moon.”
“I heard it was just a movie set somewhere out in the desert,” I tried.
“If only it was.” He looked away, lost for a moment. “My life soon disintegrated. My marriage broke down, and I took to the bottle.” He shrugged. “It’s a recognized phenomenon. When you’ve experienced the heavenly beauty of that cold black solace; when you’ve looked back and seen how perfect the Earth really is, how it silently spins – just so magisterially – all else, all human experience, pales. You become… nothing.”
I watched him, sitting there amidst all the rubbish, a lonely old man with nothing but dreams. Delusional – well, he had to be, didn’t he? And yet, something about the way he spoke about it all…
“You still meet up with all your moon buddies?” I knew it was wrong to encourage the fantasy, yet a small part of me wanted to know more… almost, perhaps, wanted to believe. The stardust thing, I guess.
He gave a short, contemptuous laugh. “Losers all,” he said. “Every darn one of them. Opening crummy supermarkets to turn a buck. Jeez, the last thing I did Stateside was a series of commercials.” He pulled a horribly insincere smile. “Say please for Moon Cheese.”
“Can’t say I ever heard of it,” I said.
“So I shipped up and away. Came here. To my tower in the sky. Spend what I can on the ’scope and live very happily.”
“Do you have any friends?” I asked, feeling a little sorry for him. “Relatives? Visitors?”
He turned to me. “What for? I keep my own company.” He pointed to the telescope. “I see all the people, all the things they do. I have no desire for their intrusion. It’s what makes you and me so similar. We both crave the solitude and the darkness. For you, it’s work. For me – personal.”
“What’s your name?”
He waved a hand. “Not necessary. Neither’s yours. But, you know, on reflection, I do quite like the Buzz thing.”