'I resent that insinuation so much that the price of my silence is doubled.'

My father nearly shouts. 'Remember who I am, Ms Kato!'

'I do remember who you are, Minister. A man with a kingdom to lose.'

The time has come. I stand up two rows behind my father and the snakewoman who manipulates his life. 'Excuse me.' They turn around guilty, surprised, alert. 'What?' hisses Akiko Kato. I look from her, to my father, to her, to my father. Neither of them recognizes me. 'Well? What the hell do you want?' I swallow. 'It is a simple matter. I know your name, and you knew mine, once upon a time: Eiji Miyake. Yes, that that Eiji Miyake. True. It has been many years...' Eiji Miyake. True. It has been many years...'

Icicles fang the window of Voorman's cell. Voorman's eyelids open very, very slowly. Bombers drone across nearby airspace. 'Good morning, Doctor. Will Belgium figure in your session notes today?' The guard with the cattle prod slams the door shut. Polonski pretends to ignore this. His eyes are dark and baggy.

'Sleep badly last night, Doctor?'

Polonski opens his bag with practised calm.

'Wicked thoughts!' Voorman licks his lips. 'Is that your medical opinion, Doctor? I am not a lunatic, not a malingerer, but a demon? Am I to be exorcised?'

Polonski looks at the prisoner sharply. 'Do you believe you should be?'

Voorman shrugs. 'Demons are merely humans with demonic enough imaginations.'

The doctor sits down. The chair scrapes. 'Just supposing you do possess... powers-'

Voorman smiles. 'Say it, Doctor, say it.'

'What is God doing straitjacketed in this prison?'

Voorman yawns in a well-fed way. 'What would you do if you were God? Spend your days playing golf on Hawaii? I think not. Golf is so tedious when holes-in-one are dead certs. Existence drags so... non-existently.'

Polonski is not taking notes now. 'So what do you do with your time?'

'I seek amusement in you. Take this war. Slapstick comedy.'

'I am not a religious man, Mr Voorman-'

'That is why I chose you.'

'-but what kind of a god finds wars amusing?'

'A bored one. Yes. Humans are equipped with imaginations so you can dream up new ways to entertain me.'

'Which you choose to observe from the luxury of your cell?'

Gunfire crackles in a neighbouring precinct. 'Luxury, poverty, who cares when you are immortal? I am rather fond of prisons. I see them as open-cast irony mines. And the prisoners are more fun than well-fed congregations. You also amuse me, good doctor. Your remit is to prove me either a faker or a lunatic, and yet you end up proving my omnipotent divinity.'

'Nothing of the sort has been proven.'

'True, Dr Diehard, true. But fear not, I bear glad tidings. We're going to change places. You You can juggle time, gravity, waves and particles. can juggle time, gravity, waves and particles. You You can sift through the dreckbin of human endeavour for tiny specks of originality. can sift through the dreckbin of human endeavour for tiny specks of originality. You You can watch the sparrows fall and continents pillaged in your name. Now. I'm going to make your wife smile in a most involuntary way and partake of the chief warden's brandy.' can watch the sparrows fall and continents pillaged in your name. Now. I'm going to make your wife smile in a most involuntary way and partake of the chief warden's brandy.'

'You are a sick man, Mr Voorman. The Belgian trick stymies me, but-'

Dr Polonski freezes.

Voorman whistles the national anthem of France.

The frame jumps.

'Time has flown,' says the doctor. 'I must be leaving.'

The prisoner chokes. 'What-'

The doctor flexes his new muscles.

The prisoner screams. 'What have you done to me ?' ?'

'If you can't discuss things like a rational adult I'll terminate this interview.'

'Put me back, you monster!'

'You'll soon learn the ropes.' The doctor clips his bag shut. 'Watch the Balkans. Hot spot.'

The prisoner bellows. 'Guards! Guards!' The door scrapes open and the doctor shakes his head sadly. Cattle prods buzzing, the guards approach the hysterical prisoner. 'Arrest that impostor! I'm I'm the real Dr Polonski! He's an infernal agent who made Belgium disappear overnight!' The prisoner shrieks and twists as the guards wham 5,000 volts through his body. ' the real Dr Polonski! He's an infernal agent who made Belgium disappear overnight!' The prisoner shrieks and twists as the guards wham 5,000 volts through his body. 'Stop that abomination! He's going to molest my wife!' His shackled feet bang the floor. Knock, knock, knock.

I should have left my blackheads alone I have the complexion of a winged crab attack victim. Somebody on the outside knocks and turns the toilet door handle. I ruffle back my gelled hair, and fumble the door open. It is Lao Tzu. 'Took your time in there, Captain.' I apologize, and decide that the PanOpticon assault hour is nigh. Right after one last Carlton. I watch workmen erect a giant TV screen against the side of PanOpticon's neighbour. The waitress with the perfect neck has finished her shift the clock says six minutes to three and changed out of her uniform. She is wearing a purple sweater and white jeans. She looks drop-dead cool. Dowager is giving her a talking-to over by the cigarette machine when Donkey rings the help-me bell Dowager drops my waitress in mid-sentence and goes over to bestow order upon the sudden throng of customers. The girl with the perfect neck glances at the clock anxiously. She feels her mobile phone vibrate and turns in my direction to talk, cupping her mouth so nobody can hear. Her face lights up, and I am piqued by jealousy. Before I know it I am choosing another brand of cigarettes from the cigarette machine next to her. Eavesdropping is wrong, but who can blame me if I innocently overhear? 'Yeah, yeah. Put Nao on, would you?' Naoki a boy or Naoko a girl? 'I'll be a little late, so start without me.' Start what? 'Amazing rain, wasn't it?' She practises piano movements with her free hand. 'Yes, I remember how to get there.' Where? 'Room 162. I know know we only have two weeks left.' Until what? Then she looks at me and sees me looking at her. I remember I am supposed to be choosing cigarettes and study the range on offer. On an advert a lawyer-type woman smokes Salem. 'You let your imagination run away with you again. See you in twenty minutes. 'Bye.' She pockets her phone and clears her throat. 'Did you catch all of that, or would you like me to go over any bits you missed?' To my horror I realize she is talking to me. My blush is so hot I smell smoke. I look up at her I am still crouching to take my Salems from the dispenser. The girl is not angry as such, but she is as tough as a drill-bit. I search for words to defuse her contempt while keeping my dignity intact. I come up with 'Uh'. Her stare is merciless. ' we only have two weeks left.' Until what? Then she looks at me and sees me looking at her. I remember I am supposed to be choosing cigarettes and study the range on offer. On an advert a lawyer-type woman smokes Salem. 'You let your imagination run away with you again. See you in twenty minutes. 'Bye.' She pockets her phone and clears her throat. 'Did you catch all of that, or would you like me to go over any bits you missed?' To my horror I realize she is talking to me. My blush is so hot I smell smoke. I look up at her I am still crouching to take my Salems from the dispenser. The girl is not angry as such, but she is as tough as a drill-bit. I search for words to defuse her contempt while keeping my dignity intact. I come up with 'Uh'. Her stare is merciless. 'Uh,' she repeats. I swallow hard, and touch the leaves of the rubber plant. 'I was wondering,' I flounder, 'if these plants were, uh, artificial. Are. I mean.' Her stare is a death ray. 'Some are real. Some are fake. Some are full of shit.' The Dowager returns to finish her sentence. I cockroach back to my coffee. I want to run out under a heavy truck, but I also want to smoke a Salem to calm down before I go and ask my father's lawyer for her client's name and address. Lao Tzu returns, posturing his behind. 'Eat big, shit big, live big, dream small. Say, Captain, you wouldn't have a spare ciggie there?' I light two sticks with one match. The girl with the perfect neck has finally escaped from Jupiter Cafe. She gazelles across the puddles over Omekaido Avenue. I should have been honest. One lie and your credibility is bankrupt. Forget her. She is way out of my class. She is a musician at a Tokyo university with a conductor boyfriend called Naoki. I am unemployed and only graduated from high school because the teachers gave me a sympathy vote due to my background. She is from a good family and sleeps in a bedroom with real oil paintings and CD-ROM encyclopaedias. Her film director father allows Naoki to sleep over, on account of his money, talent and immaculate teeth. I am from a non-family, I sleep in a capsule the size of a packing case in Kita Senju with my guitar, and my teeth are not wonky but not straight. 'What a beautiful young creature,' sighs Lao Tzu. 'If only I were your age, Captain...'

I surprise myself by not chickening out and heading straight back to Shinjuku station, although I do nearly get killed by an ambulance crossing Kita Street. The handful of traffic lights on Yakushima are just there for effect here they are life and death. When I got off the coach yesterday I noticed that Tokyo air smells of the insides of pockets. I haven't noticed today. I guess I smell of the insides of pockets too. I walk up the steps of the PanOpticon. It props up the sky. Over the last seven years I have imagined this moment so often I cannot believe it is actually here. But it is here. The revolving door creeps around slowly. The refrigerated air makes the hairs on my arm stand up when it gets this cold in winter they put on the heating. The marble floor is the white of bleached bone. Palm trees sit in bronze urns. A one-legged man crutches across the polished floor. Rubber squeaks, metal clinks. Trombone-flowers loom, big enough to eat babies. My left baseball boot makes a stupid eeky sound. A row of nine interviewees wait in identical leather armchairs. They are my age, and may very well be clones. Drone clones. 'What a stupid eeky sound,' they are all thinking. I reach the elevators and look up and down the signboard for Osugi and Bosugi, Legal. Concentrate on the prize. I could be ringing the doorbell at my father's house by suppertime today. 'Where do you think you're going, kiddo?'

I turn around.

The guard at the reception desk glowers. The drone clones' eighteen eyes swivel this way. 'Didn't they teach you to read?' He raps his knuckles on a sign. VISITORS VISITORS MUST MUST REPORT TO RECEPTION REPORT TO RECEPTION. I backtrack and bow apologetically. He folds his arms. 'So?'

'I have business with Osugi and Bosugi. The lawyers.'

PANOPTICON SECURITY is embroidered into his cap. 'How swanky for you. And your appointment is with is embroidered into his cap. 'How swanky for you. And your appointment is with whom whom exactly?' exactly?'

'Appointment?'

'Appointment. As in "appointment".'

Eighteen drone clone noses scent humiliation upwind.

'I was, uh, hoping to see Ms Akiko Kato.'

'And is Ms Kato aware of this honour?'

'Not exactly, because-'

'So you have no appointment.'

'Look-'

'No, you look. This is not a supermarket. This is a private building where business of a sensitive nature is regularly transacted. You cannot just breeze in. Nobody enters those elevators unless they are employees of the companies housed in here or unless they have an appointment, or a valid reason for being here. See?'

Eighteen drone clone ears tune into my boondock accent.

'Could I make an appointment through you, then?'

Way wrong. The guard gears up and one clone pours fuel on the fire by snickering. 'You didn't hear me. I am a security guard. I am not a receptionist. I am employed to keep time-wasters, salesmen and assorted scum out out. Not to usher them in in.'

Damage control. 'I didn't want to offend you, I just-'

Too late for damage control. 'Listen, kiddo.' The guard removes his glasses, and polishes the lenses. 'Your accent tells me you aren't from round here, so listen while I explain to you how we work in Tokyo. You scuttle away before I get really irritated. You get your appointment with Ms Kato. You come back on the right day five minutes before your time. You report to me and tell me your name. I confirm your appointment with the Osugi and Bosugi receptionist. Then, and only then, do I let you step into one of those elevators. Am I understood?'

I take a deep breath.

The guard opens his newspaper with a snap.

Post-rain sweat and grime regunge Tokyo. The puddles are steaming dry in the magnified heat. A busker sings so off key that passers-by have a moral responsibility to steal his change and smash his guitar on his head. I head back towards Shinjuku submarine station. The crowds march out of step, beaten senseless by the heat. My father's doorbell is lost at an unknown grid reference in my Tokyo street guide. A tiny nugget of earwax deep inside my ear where I can't dig it out is driving me crazy. I hate this city. I pass a kendo hall bone-splintering bamboo-sword screams escape through the window grille. On the pavement is a pair of shoes as if their owner suddenly turned to vapour and blew away. I feel a boiling frustration and a sort of tired guilt. I have broken some kind of unseen contract. Who with? Buses and trucks clog the arteries, pedestrians squeeze through the gaps. When I was going through my dinosaur phase I read a theory claiming that the great extinction occurred because the dinosaurs gagged to death on mountains of their own dung. Trying to get from A to Z in Tokyo, the theory no longer seems so ridiculous. I hate its wallpaper adverts, its capsules, tunnels, tap water, submarines, air, its NO RIGHT OF WAY NO RIGHT OF WAY on every corner and on every corner and MEMBERS ONLY MEMBERS ONLY above every door. I swear. I want to turn into a nuclear warhead and incinerate this dung-heap city from the surface of the world. above every door. I swear. I want to turn into a nuclear warhead and incinerate this dung-heap city from the surface of the world.

Two.

LOST PROPERTY.

Sawing the head off a thunder god with a rusty hacksaw is not easy when you are eleven years old. The hacksaw keeps jamming. I rejiggle, and nearly slip from the thunder god's shoulders. If I fall backwards from this height I snap my spine. Outside the shrine a blackbird sings in dark purples. I wrap my legs around the god's muscled torso, the same as when Uncle Tarmac gives me a piggyback. I drag the blade across his throat. Again, again, again. The wood is stone hard, but the nick deepens to a slit, the slit becomes a groove. My eyes sting with sweat. The quicker the better. This must be done, but there is no point getting caught. They put you in prison for this, surely. The blade slips and cuts my thumb. I wipe my eyes on my T-shirt and wait. Here comes the pain, in pulses. The flap of skin pinkens, reddens, and blood wells up. I lick it and taste ten-yen coins. Fair payment. Just as I am paying the thunder god back, for what he has done to Anju. I carry on sawing. I cannot see his face from where I am, but when I cut through his windpipe both our bodies judder.

Saturday, 2nd September is already one hour old. One week since my Jupiter Cafe stake-out. On the main thoroughfare through Kita Senju the traffic is at low tide. I can see the Tokyo moon down a crack between the opposite apartment buildings. Zinc, industrial, skid-marked. My capsule is as stifling as the inside of a boxing glove. The fan stirs the heat. I am not going to contact her. No way. Who does she think she is, after all this time? Across the road is a photo developer's with two Fujifilm clocks the left clock shows the actual time, the right shows when the photos will be ready, forty-five minutes into the future. In the sodium glow my skimpy half-curtain is dungish. Girders crank, cables buzz. I wonder if this building gives me insomnia. Sick building syndrome, Uncle Bank calls it. Below me, Shooting Star is shuttered up and waiting for the night to pass. In the last week I have learned the routine: ten to midnight, Buntaro drags in the sandwich board and takes out the trash; five to midnight, the TV goes off, and he washes up his mug and plate; around now a customer may come sprinting down the street to return a video; at midnight on the nail, Buntaro pings open the till and cashes up. Three minutes later the shutters roll down, he kicks his scooter into life, and off he goes. A cockroach tries to flap free of the glue trap. My muscles ache from my new job. I should chuck out Cat's bowl, I suppose. Keeping it is morbid, now I know the truth. And the extra milk, and the two tins of quality cat food. Is it edible, if I mix it into a soup or something? Did Cat die instantly, or did she lie on the roadside thinking about it? Did a passer-by whack her on the head with a shovel to put her out of her misery? Cats seem too transdimensional to get hit by traffic, but it happens all the time. All the time. Thinking I could keep her was crazy in the first place. My grandmother hates cats. Yakushima islanders keep chained-up dogs as guards. Cats take their own chances. I know nothing about litter trays, when you bring cats in, when you take them out, what injections they need. And look what happened to it when it dossed down with me: the Miyake curse strikes again. Anju climbed trees like a cat. A summer puma.

'You are so, so, slow!'

I shout back up through the early mist and floppy leaves. 'I'm snagged!'

'You're scared!'

'I am not!'

Anju laughs her wild zither when she knows she is right. The forest floor is a long way down. I worry about rotted-through branches snapping. Anju never worries because I always do her worrying for her. She skip-reads her way up trees. She finds fingerholds in coarse bark and toeholds in smooth bark. Last week was our eleventh birthday, but already Anju can climb the gym ropes faster than any of the boys in our class, and, when she is in the mood, multiply fractions, read second-year texts and recite most Zax Omega adventures word for word. Wheatie says this is because she grabbed most of the brain cells when we were growing inside our mother. I finally unpick my T-shirt and climb after my sister, swift as a three-toed sloth with vertigo. Minutes later I find her on the top branch. Copper-skinned, willow-limbed, moss-stained, thorn-scored, dungareed, ponytail knotted back. Waves of spring sea wind break on the woods. 'Welcome to my tree,' she says. 'Not bad,' I admit, but it is better than 'not bad'. I have never climbed so high before. We have already trekked up the razor escarpment to get here, so the view is awesome. The fortress-grey mountain-faces, the green river snaking out of the gorge, the hanging bridge, mishmash of roofs and power lines, port, timber yards, school soccer ground, gravel pit, Uncle Orange's tea-fields, our secret beach, its foot rock, waves breaking on the shoals around the whalestone, the long island of Tanegashima where they launch satellites, glockenspiel clouds, the envelope where the sea seals the sky. Having bombed as tree-climber-in-chief, I appoint myself head cartographer. 'Kagoshima is over there...' I am afraid to let go and point, so I nod. Anju is squinting inland. 'I think I can see Wheatie airing the futons.' I can't see our grandmother but I know Anju wants me to ask 'Where?' so I don't. The mountains rise towards the interior. Miyanoura Peak props up the sky. Hill tribes live in the rainshadow they decapitate the lost tourists and make the skulls into drinking bowls. And there is a pool where a real webby, scaly kappa lives it catches swimmers, rams its fist up through their bum-holes and pulls out their hearts to eat. Yakushima islanders never go up into the mountains, except for the tourist guides. I feel a lump in my pocket and remember. 'Want a champagne bomb?'

'Sure.'

Anju suddenly monkey-shrieks, swings, and dangles down in front of me, giggling at my panic. Scared birds beat away near by. Her legs grip the branch above.

'Don't!' is all I can blurt.

Anju bares her front teeth and chicken-wings her arms. 'Anju the bat.'

'Anju! Don't!'

She swings to and fro. 'I vant to suckkk your bluddd!' Her hair clasp falls away and her ponytail streams earthward. 'Bother. That was my last one.'

'Don't dangle like that! Stop it!'

'Eiji's a jellyfish, Eiji's a jellyfish!'

I imagine her falling, ricocheting from branch to branch. 'Stop it!'

'You're even uglier upside down. I can see your bogies. Hold the tube steady.'

'Swing back up first!'

'No. I was born first so you have to do what I say. Hold the pack steady.' She extracts a sweet, unpeels the wrapper and watches it flutter away into the sea-greens. Watching me, she puts the sweet in her mouth, and lazily swings herself back upright. 'You really are such a wuss!'

'If you fell Wheatie would murder me.'

'Wuss.'

My heartbeat gradually calms down.

'What happens to you when you die?' So Anju.

I don't care as long as she stays upright. 'How should I know?'

'Nobody says the same thing. Wheatie says you go to the pure land and walk in gardens with your ancestors. Boooring. Mr Endo at school says you turn into soil. Father Kakimoto says it depends what you were like in this life I'd get changed into an angel or a unicorn, but you'd come back as a maggot or toadstool.'

'So what do you think?'

'When you die they burn you, right?'

'Right.'

'So you turn into smoke, right?'

'I guess.'

'So you go there.' Anju lets go of the tree and shoots the sun with both hands. 'Up, up and away. I want to fly.'

A careworn buzzard rises on a thermal.

'In an airplane?'

'Who wants to fly in a pongy airplane?'