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‘I need to speak to her.’

‘You can’t.’

‘I know Yoyo has disappeared,’ Jericho added. ‘That’s why I’m here. Her father’s looking for her, and he’s very worried. So if you know anything about where she is—’

Grand Cherokee stared at him. Something about the boy, or rather about his attitude, irritated Jericho.

‘As I said,’ he repeated, ‘if you—’

‘Just a moment.’ Grand Cherokee raised his hand. For a few seconds he paused like that, then his features seemed to smooth out.

‘Yoyo.’ He smiled jovially. ‘But of course. Don’t you want to come in?’

Still confused, Jericho entered the narrow hallway, which branched off into a number of other rooms. Grand Cherokee hurried ahead of him, opened the last door and nodded inside with his head.

‘I can show you her room.’

Suddenly, Jericho understood. This much cooperation was bordering on calculation. Slowly, he walked into the room and looked around. It didn’t say much. There was hardly anything to suggest who lived here except for a few posters of popular figures from the Mando-prog scene. One of the pictures was of Yoyo herself, posing on a stage. A note fluttered around on a pinboard above a cheap desk. Jericho walked over to it and studied the few symbols.

‘Dark sesame oil,’ he read. ‘300 grams of chicken breast—’

Grand Cherokee cleared his throat discreetly.

‘Yes?’ Jericho turned round to him.

‘I could give you some clues about where Yoyo is.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Well.’ Grand Cherokee spread his fingers meaningfully. ‘She told me a lot, you know? I mean, the little one likes me. She got quite friendly in the last few days she was here.’

‘Were you friendly too?’

‘Let’s just say I had the opportunity to be.’

‘And?’

‘Well, come on, that’s confidential, man!’ Grand Cherokee was clearly making a great effort to look outraged. ‘I mean, of course we can discuss everything, but—’

‘No, it’s fine. If it’s confidential.’ Jericho turned away and left him standing there. A wise guy, just as he’d feared. One after another, he pulled open the drawers of the desk. Then he went over to the narrow wall cabinet next to the door and opened it. Jeans, a pullover, and a pair of trainers which had seen better days. Two cans of disposable clothing spray. Jericho shook it. Half full. Clearly Yoyo had packed the majority of her things in a great hurry and left the flat in a rush.

‘When was the last time you saw your flatmate?’

‘The last time?’ echoed Grand Cherokee.

‘The last time.’ Jericho looked at him. ‘That’s the time after which you didn’t see Yoyo any more, so when was that?’

‘Ah, yes, er—’ Grand Cherokee seemed as though he was just emerging from deep water. ‘On the evening of 23 May. We had a little party. Li went off to bed at some point, and Yoyo hung around with me for a while. We chatted and had some drinks, and then she went off to her room. A little later I heard her crashing around and opening drawers. Shortly after that the house door slammed in the lock.’

‘When exactly?’

‘Between two and three, I guess.’

‘You guess?’

‘It was before three for sure.’

Given that Grand Cherokee seemed to be making no effort to stop him from doing so, Jericho carried on searching through Yoyo’s room. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the student skulking around hesitantly. Jericho’s lack of interest in him seemed to be confusing him.

‘I could tell you more,’ he said after a while. ‘If you’re interested.’

‘Out with it.’

‘Tomorrow maybe.’

‘Why not now?’

‘Because I need to make a few calls to— I mean, I already know where Yoyo hangs out, but before that—’ He stretched out his arms and turned his palms to face upwards. ‘Let’s just say, everything has its price.’

That was clear enough.

Jericho finished his search and walked back into the hall.

‘As long as it’s worth its price,’ he said. ‘By the way, where’s your flatmate?’

‘Li? No idea. He doesn’t know anything anyway.’

‘Is it just my imagination, or do you not know anything either?’

‘Me? Yes, I do.’

‘But?’

‘No but. I just thought perhaps you might think of how someone might be able to release trapped knowledge?’ Grand Cherokee grinned up at him.

‘I see.’ Jericho smiled back. ‘You’d like to negotiate an advance.’

‘Let’s call it a contribution towards expenses.’

‘And for what, Grand Cherokee, or whatever you’re called? So that you can mess me about with your garbled imagination? You don’t know shit!’

He turned round to go. Grand Cherokee seemed filled with consternation. Obviously he had seen the conversation as going a little differently. He held Jericho back by the shoulder and shook his head.

‘I’m not trying to rip anyone off, man!’

‘Then don’t.’

‘Come on! The kind of course I’m on doesn’t pay for itself! I’ll find out whatever you want to know.’

‘Wrong! You have nothing to sell me.’

‘I—’ The student searched for words. ‘Okay, fine. If I tell you something, right here and now, that helps you to make some progress, will you trust me then? That would be my advance, you see?’

‘I’m listening.’

‘So, there’s a biker gang that she hangs out with a lot. She rides a motorcycle too. The City Demons – that’s what it says on their jackets at any rate.’

‘And where can I find them?’

‘That
was
my advance.’

‘Now you listen to me,’ said Jericho, jabbing a finger at his adversary. ‘Here and now I’m paying you nothing. Because you have nothing. Nothing at all. If you should happen to get hold of some real information, driven by the goodness of your heart – and I mean real information! – then we may be able to do business. Is that clear?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘So when shall I expect your call?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon.’ Grand Cherokee plucked at the tip of his chin. ‘No, earlier. Perhaps.’ He gave Jericho a penetrating look. ‘But then it’s payday, man!’

‘Then it’s payday.’ Jericho smacked him on the shoulder. ‘An appropriate amount. Did you want to say anything else?’

Grand Cherokee shook his head silently.

‘Then I’ll see you tomorrow.’

* * *

Then I’ll see you tomorrow—

He stood in the hallway as if he were rooted to the spot, even once the detective was already on his way downstairs. As he heard the lift door rattle lightly in the shaft, his thoughts came thick and fast.

Well, this was incredible!

Deep in thought, he went into the kitchen, fetched a beer from the fridge and raised the bottle to his lips. What was going on here? What had Yoyo done to make everyone so interested in her disappearance? First that smart guy and now the detective. And, even more importantly:

How could he profit from it?

It wouldn’t be easy, that’s for sure. Grand Cherokee was under no illusions: his knowledge of her whereabouts was nonexistent, and the next few hours would do little to change that. On the other hand it would be a real stroke of bad luck if he couldn’t come up with a few juicy lies by the next morning. The kind of lies that no one could prove, along the lines of: my information is first-hand, I don’t know either, clearly Yoyo got wind of something, it was right under our nose, and so on and so forth.

He would have to push the price right up. Play them off against one another! It was a good thing he hadn’t told the detective about Xin’s visit. People could say what they wanted about him, but certainly not that he was dumb.

I’m too on the ball for the two of you
, he thought.

He was already counting the notes in his mind.

26 May 2025

As if there hadn’t been dozens of pairs of boots marking the surface of the Moon with the imprint of mankind’s heroism since 2018, Eugene Cernan – the commander of Apollo 17 – was still regarded as the last man to have walked on its surface. The years between ’69 and ’72 were monumental in the landscape of American history: a short but magical epoch of manned missions which were strangely counteracted by Nixon bringing the space programme back down to earth with a bump. As a result, Cernan became the last one up there to turn off the light. He was, and remained, the last of his century. The eleventh Apollo astronaut on the Moon, he walked around the Mare Serenitatis and made hundreds of those small steps that Neil Armstrong had declared to be such a giant leap for mankind. His team collected the biggest sample of lunar rocks and completed more moon surface trips than any other before them. The commander himself even managed to cause the first ever automobile accident on a celestial body, smashing up the rear left wing of his Lunar Rover, before – with a talent for improvisation reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe – patching it back together again. Yet none of this was enough to re-enliven the public’s interest. It was the end of an era. Cernan, presented with the opportunity to immortalise himself in encyclopaedias and textbooks with a thunderous obituary, instead offered words of remarkable helplessness:

‘We spent most of the trip home,’ he said, ‘debating the colour of the Moon.’

Incredible. So that was the grand summary of six expensive landings on a rock hundreds of thousands of kilometres away from Earth? That no one even knew what colour it was?

‘It looks kind of yellow to me,’ said Rebecca Hsu, after gazing silently out of the small porthole for a long while. Hardly any of them were venturing over to the row of windows any more. From there, throughout the two days since their launch, they had watched their home planet get smaller and smaller, a ghostly dwindling of familiarity. It was as if they were dividing their loyalty equally at the midway point between the Earth and Moon before fully succumbing to the fascination of the satellite. From 10,000 kilometres away it could still be seen in its entirety, starkly silhouetted against the blackness of outer space around it. And yet this object of romantic contemplation had billowed to become a sphere with menacing presence, a battlefield, scarred by billions of years of celestial bombardment. In complete
silence, unbroken by the soundtrack of civilisation, they raced towards this strange, alien world. Only the tinnitus-like hiss of the life-support systems indicated that there was any technological activity on board at all. Beyond that, the silence made their heartbeats thunder like bush drums and the blood swirl in their veins. It roused lively chatter within the body about the state of its chemical processes and pushed their imaginations to the very limit.

Olympiada Rogacheva paddled up, in awe of her weightlessness. They had advanced another thousand kilometres towards the satellite, and could now see only three-quarters of it.

‘It doesn’t look yellow,’ she murmured. ‘To me it seems more mouse-grey.’

‘Metallic grey,’ Rogachev corrected her coldly.

‘I’m not so sure,’ Evelyn Chambers looked over from the next window. ‘Metallic? Really?’

‘Yes, really. Look. Up there to the right, the big, round patch. Dark, like molten iron.’

‘You’ve been in the steel industry for too long, Oleg. You could find something metallic in a chocolate pudding.’

‘Of course he could – the spoon! Woohoo!’ Miranda Winter did a somersault, cheering gleefully. Most of the others had tired of doing zero-gravity acrobatics. But Miranda couldn’t get enough of them and was rapidly getting on the others’ nerves. She was incapable of holding a conversation without rolling through the air, squealing and cackling, thumping people in the ribs or whacking them on the chin as she did. Evelyn, on the receiving end of a kick in the small of her back, snapped: ‘You’re not a merry-go-round, Miranda. Give it a rest, will you!’

‘But I feel like one!’

‘Then close yourself down for repairs or something. It’s too cramped in here for all that.’

‘Hey, Miranda.’ O’Keefe looked up from reading his book: ‘Why don’t you try imagining you’re a blue whale instead?’

‘What? Why?’

‘Blue whales wouldn’t act like that. They’re content to just hang around, more or less motionless, and eat plankton.’

‘They blow water too,’ Heidrun commented. ‘Do you want to see Miranda blow water?’

‘Sure, why not?’

‘You’re all being silly,’ Miranda concluded. ‘By the way, I think it’s kind of blue. The moon, I mean. It’s almost eerie.’

‘Uhhh,’ O’Keefe shuddered.

‘So what colour is it?’ Olympiada wanted to know.

‘It’s every colour, and yet none.’ Julian Orley came through the connecting hatch that separated the living quarters of the Charon from the landing module. ‘No one knows.’

‘How come?’ Rogachev wrinkled his forehead. ‘I mean, surely we’ve had enough time to figure that out?’

‘Of course. The problem is that no one has seen it through anything other than toned or filtered windows and visors yet. And on top of that, the Moon doesn’t have a particularly high albedo—’

‘A what?’ asked Miranda, rotating like a pig on a spit.

‘Reflectivity. The fraction of solar energy which is reflected back to space. The reflection rate of lunar rock is not especially high, particularly not in the maria—’

‘I’m not following a word you say.’

‘The dry plains on the surface of the Moon,’ explained Julian patiently. ‘Collectively, they’re called maria. The plural of mare. They appear to be even darker than the mountain rings in the craters.’

‘So why does the Moon look white when we look at it from Earth?’

‘Because it has no atmosphere. Sunlight hits its surface unfiltered, in just the same way it would an astronaut’s unprotected retina. The UV rays outside are far more dangerous to our eyes than they would be on Earth, that’s why the spaceship’s windows are tinted.’

‘But loads of lunar samples have been brought back to Earth,’ said Rogachev. ‘What colour are they?’

‘Dark grey. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the whole moon is dark grey. Perhaps some parts of it are brown, or even yellow.’

‘Exactly,’ said O’Keefe from behind his book.

‘Everyone sees it slightly differently. Everyone has their own moon, one might say.’ Julian went over to join Evelyn. They were passing over a lone gigantic crater which lay far below them. Molten light seemed to stream from its slopes down to the surface surrounding it. ‘That’s Copernicus by the way. According to popular opinion it’s the most spectacular of all the lunar craters and over eight hundred million years old. It’s a good ninety kilometres wide, with slopes that would present a challenge to any mountaineer, but the most impressive thing about it is how deep it is. Do you see that massive shadow inside it? It’s almost four kilometres down to the very bottom.’