I took a sip of beer and looked up at a sky bustling with stars. It had been a long, long time since I'd had a beer and it was going to my head.

"So you're the leader of this expedition?" I asked, breaking the silence.

"That's right."

"And you're looking for a lost city?"

"The lost city of Utran."

"And you've got all this" - the row of huge all-wheel drive trucks were too new, too shiny to be out under these stars, in this ancient landscape - "all this to help you find it?"

"Impressive, isn't it?"

"I live in an expedition. You may have noticed."

"I wondered about that." He glanced at the line of ancient Jeeps and Land Rovers sagging on perished tyres, their radiator grilles choked with sand. Be it ever so humble, it's what I call home.

I took another sip of beer. "What I can't understand," I continued, "is how anyone could lose a city. On the Plain With A Double Horizon, you can stand under the shade of a tree, walk ten yards, turn round and the damn thing will have vanished into the heat-haze. But even there you couldn't lose a whole city. Cities don't move around. Unless it was a city on wheels, the way I live in a home on wheels."

He shook his head. "The city didn't move. It lost its people. They went away for some reason, disease or maybe the water dried up. And the survivors, when they thought of their city, couldn't remember where they left it."

"They shouldn't call it a lost city if nobody lost it."

"Let's agree to refer to it as the golden city of Utran."

That got my attention. "Golden?" I asked.

"Sort of."

"Is that what all the other expeditions are looking for?"

"That's the problem. We're a properly-funded academic expedition, sponsored by big international companies. Even these beers were given to us by a major brewery. But times are hard, and a lot of people are trying to solve their problems by looking for gold. It's a gold rush. An imaginary gold rush."

"Imaginary?"

"We don't think there's going to be much gold. Perhaps none at all. We think Utran may have been built from some kind of yellow stone. We'll be looking for skeletons and signs of civilisation – tools, pottery, that sort of thing – before one of these amateurs destroys it all looking for gold which probably isn't there."

"Well I don't mind telling you all these expeditions are a damned nuisance, roaring through my patch of ground."

"Not offering you beer."

"Hah! Most of them aren't even carrying the water they'll need to survive."

"Tell me about those two horizons."

"Not much to tell. North of here, about fifty or sixty miles. A big, flat plain. With two horizons."

"Side-by-side, or one on top of the other?"

"That's ridiculous. How could there be two horizons side-by-side?"

"Search me. How can you have two horizons one on top of the other?"

"Search me." That put a stop to the conversation for a bit, and I was glad of that. When you don't talk to anyone from one year to the next, chewing the fat can make a man tired.

The expedition leader was looking at a map, poking it with his thumb. "There is a way you could have two horizons."

"Yeah?"

"If that big plain of yours had once been a sea, with waves breaking against a cliff, and then the land had risen up and all the water had drained away, then a huge cliff, seen from a distance through heat-haze, might look like a second horizon."

"That's a big 'if'."

"Perhaps."

"Land doesn't rise up," I told him. "Land just lies there and grows things for you to eat."

"Speaking of things to eat, did you enjoy the supper?"

I didn't rightly know how to answer his question. The food tasted wonderful, but it sent a chill through me. Food like that is a trap. It kills you. It's chopped and ground and pickled and sugared and canned, and it does you no good. The stuff I eat is almost alive - hell, some of it actually is alive - and it's what nature intended us to eat. That's why I've lived so long. Longer than the men of the expedition that provided me with my home. Even this youngster and his team of workers would most probably die before I did.

Actually the men in the expedition I live in died of thirst, that's how I found them. Thirst is a terrible death, and in their case it was so unnecessary. Not only are there tubers you can split open and drink the sap from, as easy as sipping from a beer can, but their radiators were full. A man who can die of thirst without thinking to drain his radiator doesn't deserve to live, by my reckoning.

I buried all the bodies in a patch of sand where nothing would grow. I thought of telling this expedition leader about it. He might like to dig them up and look for signs of civilisation. Maybe I'd tell him about it tomorrow.

I crushed the beer can in my fist, and paused, not knowing what to do with it. All the left-overs from the things I eat and drink can be thrown on the ground, where insects and moulds would see to them. A beer can out here would likely last forever.

He held out his hand, and I passed it to him.

"Where do you sleep?" he asked.

I pointed out the Toyota Land Cruiser. All my vehicles have functions, like the different rooms in a house or flat, but mostly I spend my time outside. That's how to live in an area where it never rains.

"So, have you ever seen a lost city on your travels?"

I grinned. "If I'd seen it, it wouldn't be lost, would it?"

"A golden city, then?"

"Well," I hesitated, and he leaned forward in his canvas chair. "I have seen something I couldn't explain." The truth is I've seen a lot of things out here I can't explain, but most of them wouldn't interest a man like this. "There are some yellow rocks. I'm not saying they look like a city, but they don't look natural. Not completely."

"Columns and arches?"

"Maybe. Could be just a trick of sand blowing against rock over hundreds of years."

"Perhaps I should take a look at it."

"Maybe. Give you a chance to see those two horizons."

"From that plain you were talking about?"

"Right. Give you a chance to check out that theory about the ancient sea. Let you see for yourself how wrong you are."

"Care to come with us? Show us where it is?" I hesitated. On the one hand, I liked my life just the way it was. On the other, well, he was pleasant company. "We'll pay you," he said.

"How much?"

He mentioned a figure. A jaw-dropping figure. With that much money, I could go back to the city I came from, the city I escaped from. With that much money it would be a different city altogether. A golden city.

And I could always come back. My home would still be there. None of those expeditions riding through would pay any attention to a row of ancient Land Rovers, ankle-deep in sand. I opened another can of beer.

"I'll think about it," I said.