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luxurious feel of the thing did wonders. Too bad they won't let
you wear suits in the tube; with this on, I could have handled
anything.
Checking the pressure seals on the hamper, I walked into
the lock and out onto the surface.
#
"You been waiting long?" I asked.
"Couple hours," Brenda said.
She was leaning on the side of her rental rover, which
she'd driven all the way from a suburb of King City, the
nearest place you could rent one. I apologized for being so
late, told her of the nightmare in the train, how I wished I'd
come with her instead of "saving time" by tubing out.
"Don't worry about it," she said. "I like it out here."
I could already tell that, mostly by looking at her suit.
It was a good one, had no rental logo on it, and though in
perfect shape, showed signs of use it couldn't have acquired
unless she regularly spent time in it. Also by the easy way she
stood and moved in it, something most Lunarians never get
enough suit time to achieve.
The rover was a good one, too. It was a pickup model, two
seats side by side, a flat bed in back where I tossed my hamper
along with her much bigger pile of things. They have a wide
wheelbase to compensate for being so top-heavy with the big
solar panel above, which swings to constantly present itself to
the sun. The sun being almost at the horizon just then, the
vehicle was at its most awkward, with the panel hanging out to
the right side, perpendicular to the ground. I had to crawl
over Brenda's seat to get to mine because the panel blocked the
door.
"I forget," I said, as I settled myself in the open seat.
"Will we be going into the sun to get there?"
"Nope. South for a while, then we'll have the sun at our
backs."
"Good." I hated riding behind the panel. It's not that I
didn't trust the autopilot; I just liked to see where I was
going.
She told the rover to giddyup, and it did, right along the
broad, smooth highway. Which is why we'd chosen Dionysius
Station in the first place, because it's right on one of the
scarce surface roads on Luna, which is not a place where the
wheeled vehicle was ever a primary mode of transport. People
move on elevators, escalators, beltways, maglev/tube trains,
the occasional hoverbus. Goods go by the same ways, plus
pneumomail tubes, linac free-trajectory, and rocket. Recently
there'd been something of a fad in wheeled surface rovers, two-
and four-wheeled, but they were all-terrain and quite rugged,
no roads needed.
The road we were on was a relic from a mining operation
abandoned before I was born. From time to time we passed the
derelict hulks of ore carriers at the side of the road, mammoth
things, not looking much different from the day they'd been
stripped and left there. Some economic vagary of the time had
made it a better idea to actually smooth out a road surface for
them. Then the road had been used for another half century as
the conduit between King City and its primary dumping ground.
It was still glass-smooth, and quite a novel way to travel.
"This sucker moves right along, doesn't it?" I said.
"It'll reach three hundred kay on the straightaways,"
Brenda said. "But it's gotta slow way down for the curves,
especially ones to the left." That was because the rover's
center of gravity was at its worst at sunrise and sunset, with
the big panel canted on its side, she explained. Also, the
banking of the road was not great, and since we were going to
be staying out after dark, she'd had to carry ten batteries,
which added a lot to our inertia and could easily make us skid
off the road, since the tire traction wasn't as much as she'd
prefer. She told me all this with the air of someone who'd done
this many times before, someone who knew her machine. I
wondered if she could drive it.
I got my answer when we turned off the road, and she asked
if I minded. Actually, I did--we're not used to putting our
lives in other people's hands, only into the hands of
machines--but I said I didn't. And I needn't have worried. She
drove with a sure hand, never did anything stupid, never
overcontrolled. We took off across the plains toward the rising
rim of Delambre, just becoming visible over the horizon.
When we reached the bottom of the slope a Black Maria
landed in front of us, blue lights flashing. A cop got out and
came over to us. He must have been bored, since he could have
used his radio, or simply interrogated our computer.
"You're entering a restricted area, ma'am," he said.
Brenda showed him the pass Liz had given her and he
examined it, then her.
"Didn't I see you on the tube?" he asked, and she said he
might have, and he said sure, you were on the such-and-such
show, now how about that? He said he'd loved it and she said
aw, shucks, and by the time he finally let us go he'd been
flirting so outrageously I'm convinced we hadn't needed the
pass at all. He actually asked for her autograph, and she
actually gave it.
"I thought he was going to ask for your phone code," I
said, when he'd finally lifted off.
"I thought I was going to give it to him," she said, and
grinned at me. "I keep thinking I ought to give guys a try."
"You could do better than that."
"Not since you Changed." She jammed in the throttle and we
sprayed dust behind us as we charged up the rounded rim of the
crater.
#
Delambre isn't a huge crater like Clavius or Pythagoras or
any number of celestial bullet holes on the farside, but it's
big enough. When you're standing on the rim you can't see the
other side. That's plenty big for me.
Still, it would look just like a hundred others except for
one thing: the junkyard.
We re-cycle a lot of things on Luna. We have to; our own
natural resources are fairly meager. But we're still a
civilization driven by a market economy. Sometimes cheap and
plentiful power and the low cost of boosting bulk raw materials
in slow orbits combine to make it just too damn much trouble
and not cost-effective to sort through and re-process a lot of
things. Fortunes have been lost when a bulk carrier arrives
with X million tonnes of Whoosisite from the mines on Io,
having been in secret transit for thirty years disguised and
listed as an Oort comet. Suddenly the bottom falls out of the
market for Whoosisite, and before you know it you can't give
the stuff away and it's being carted out to Delambre by the
hundred-tonne bucketload. To that add the twenty-thousand-year
half-life radioactives in drums guaranteed to last five
centuries. Don't forget to throw in obsolete machines, some
cannibalized for this or that, others still in working order
but hopelessly slow and not worth taking apart. Abandon all
that stuff out there, and salt in that ceramic horror you
brought home to Mom from school when you were eight, that stack
of holos you kept for seventy years and can't even remember
who's in them, plus similar treasures from millions of other
people. Top it with all the things you can't find a use for
from every sewage outflow in Luna, mixed with just enough water
so it'll flow through a pipe. Bake on high for fourteen days,
freeze for fourteen more; continue doing that for two hundred
years, adding more ingredients to taste, and you've created the
vista that met us from the lip of Delambre.
The crater's not actually full, it just looks that way
from the west rim.
"Over there," Brenda said. "That's where I said I'd meet
Liz."
I saw a speck on the horizon, also sitting on the rim.
"How about letting me drive?" I asked.
"You can drive?" It wasn't an unreasonable question; most
Lunarians can't.
"In my wild youth, I drove the Equatorial Race. Eleven
thousand klicks, very little of it level." No point in adding
I'd blown the transmission a quarter of the way through.
"And I was lecturing you on how to handle a rover. Why
don't you ever shut me up, Hildy?"
"Then I'd lose half of my amusing stories."
I switched the controls over to the British side of the
car and took off. It had been many years since I'd driven. It
was lots of fun. The rover had a good suspension; I only left
the ground two or three times, and the gyros kept us from
turning over. When I saw her gripping the dash I throttled
back.
"You'd never make a race driver. This is smooth."
"I never wanted to be a race driver. Or a corpse."
#
"I feel like a Girl Scout," I told Brenda as I helped her
spread out the tent.
"What's wrong with that? I earned all the surface
pioneering merit badges."
"Nothing wrong. I was one, too, but that was ninety years
ago."
She wasn't nearly that far removed from scouting, and she
still took it seriously. Where I'd have just pulled the rip
cord and let it go at that, she was a fanatic about saving
energy, and ran a line from the rover's solar panel to the
tent's power supply, as if the reactor wouldn't last a
fortnight on its own. When the tent was arranged to her
satisfaction she pulled the cord and it shuddered and flopped
as it filled with air, and in ten seconds we had a five-meter
transparent hemisphere . . . which promptly frosted up inside.
She got on her knees and crawled into the iglootype lock
and I zipped it behind her to save her squirming around, and
she told me this model had automatic zippers, so there had been
progress since my childhood. She fiddled with the air controls
while I stacked blankets and pillows and thermoses and the rest
of our gear in the lock-got to get it well-packed, don't want
to waste air by cycling the lock too much--then I stood around
outside while she brought it all in and got the temperature and
pressure and humidity adjusted. When I got in and took off my
helmet it was still on the cool side. I wrote my name in the
frost like I remembered doing on long-ago camping trips; it
soon melted, and the dew was absorbed . . . and the dome seemed
to vanish.
"It's been too long," I said. "I'm glad you brought me
here."
For once she knew exactly what I meant. She stopped her
fussing around and stood with me and we just looked around
without saying anything.
Any beauty on Luna is going to be a harsh sort of beauty.
There's nothing benevolent or comforting to see anywhere--much
like West Texas. This was the best way to see it, in a tent
invisible to our eyes, as if we were standing on a black
circular pad of plastic with nothing between us and vacuum.
It was also the best time of day to see it; the Lunar Day,
I mean. The sun was very close to the horizon, the shadows were
almost infinitely long. Which helped, because half our vista
was of the biggest garbage dump on the planet. There's a funny
thing about shadows like that. If you've never seen snow, go to
Pennsylvania the next time they've scheduled it and watch how
snow can transform the most mundane--even ugly--scene into a
magical landscape. Sunlight on the surface is like that. It's
hard and bright as diamond, it blasts everything it touches and
yet it does no damage; nothing moves, the billion facets of
dark and light make every ordinary object into a hardedged
jewel.
We didn't look west; the light was too dazzling. To the
south we saw the rolling land falling away to our right, the
endless heaps of garbage to the left. East was looking right
out over Delambre, and north was the hulk of the Robert A.
Heinlein, almost a mile of derelict might-have-been starship.
"You think they'll have any trouble finding us?" Brenda
asked.
"Liz and Cricket? I wouldn't think so. Not with the old
Heinlein over there. How could you miss it?"
"That's what I thought, too."
We set about little domestic chores, inflating the
furniture, spreading a few rugs. She showed me how to set up
the curtain that turned the tent into two not-very-private
rooms, how to operate the little campstove. While we were doing
that, the show began. Not to worry; it was going to be a long
show.
I had to admit the artistic director had done well. This
was to be a commemoration of the billions dead on Earth, right?
And at the latitude of Armstrong Park, the Earth would be
directly overhead, right? And if you start the show at sundown,
you'll have a half-Earth in the sky. So why not make the Earth
the center and theme of your sky show?
By fudging just a little you can begin the show when the
old International Dateline is facing Luna. Now picture it: as
the Earth turns, one by one the vanished nations of Old Earth
emerge into the sunlight of a new day. And as each one appears
. . .
We were bathed in the red light of the flag of the
Siberian Republic, a rectangle one hundred kilometers long,
hanging above us at a height sufficient to blot out half the
sky.
"Wow," Brenda said. Her mouth was hanging open.
"Double wow," I said, and closed my own mouth. The flag
hung there almost a minute, burning brightly, then sputtered
out. We hurried to get Brenda's boombox turned on, hung the big
speakers on each side of the tent, and were in time to hear the
opening strains of "God Defend New Zealand" as the Kiwi flag
unfurled above us.
That's how it was to be for eighteen hours.
When Liz arrived she told us how it was done. The flag was
a mesh construction stuffed into a big container and blasted up
from one of the pyro bases, in Baylor-A, about forty klicks
south of us, and Hyapatia and Torricelli, to the east. When the
shell reached the right height it burst and rockets spread it
out and it was set afire by radio control. Neat.
How do fireworks burn in a vacuum? Don't ask me. But I
know rocket fuels carry an oxidizer, so I guess it was some
chemical magic like that. However they did it, it knocked our
socks off, me and Brenda, no more than fifty clicks from the
big firebase in Baylor, much closer than the poor hicks in
Armstrong, who probably thought they were getting one heck of a
show. And who cares if, from our vantage, the flags were
distorted into trapezoids? I sure didn't.
Brenda turned out to be a fountain of information about
the show.
"They didn't figure it made sense to give a country like
Vanuatu equal time with, say, Russia," she said (we were
looking at the ghastly flag of Vanuatu at the time, listening
to its improbable national anthem). "So the major countries,
ones with a lot of history, they'll get more of a pageant. Like
the Siberian Republic used to be part of some other country--"
"The U.S.S.R.," I supplied.
"Right. Says so right here." She had a massive souvenir
program spread out before us. "So they'll do more flags for
that--the Tsarist flag, historical stuff--"
"--and play the 'Internationale.'"
"--and folk themes, like what we heard from New Zealand."
They were telling us most of that on a separate radio
channel, giving a history of each country, pitched at an
illiterate level. I turned it off, preferring just the music,
and Brenda didn't object. I'd have turned off the television,
too-Brenda had pasted a big screen to the south side of the
tent--but she seemed to enjoy the scenes of revelry from
Armstrong and all the other celebrations in all the major Lunar
cities, so what the hell.
Get out an Earth globe and you'll quickly spot the major
flaw in the Earth-rotational program. For the first six hours
only a few dozen countries will swing into view. Even if you
give the entire history of China and Japan, there's going to be
some gaps to fill, and how much can you say about Nauru and the
Solomon Islands? On the other hand, when dawn broke over Africa
and Europe the pyrotechs were going to be busier than a
onelegged man in an ass-kicking contest.
Not to worry. When they ran out of flags, that's when they
trotted out the heavy artillery.
From the first appearance of that red ensign, the sky was
never dark.
There were the conventional shells, starbursts in all the
colors of the rainbow. Without air to impede their flight they
could be placed with pinpoint precision--one thing Lunarians
understand is ballistics. They were also perfectly symmetrical,
for the same reason.
You want more? In the vacuum, it was possible to produce
effects never seen on Earth. Huge gas canisters could produce a
thin atmosphere, locally, temporarily, upon which tricks of
ionization could be played. We were treated to auroral
curtains, washes of color in which the entire sky turned blue
or red or yellow, then flickered magically. Shrapnel shells
filled the sky with spinning discs no bigger than a coin, which
were then swept by searchlights to twinkle as no stars ever had
on Luna, then exploded by lasers.
Still not satisfied? How about a few nukes? Brenda's
program said there would be over one hundred special fission
shells, an average of one every ten minutes for the duration of
the show. These were detonated in orbit and used to propel
literally thousands of regular pyro shells into bursts over a
thousand klicks wide. The first one went off at the end of the
Vanuatu National Anthem, and it rattled our teeth, and then it
went on exploding, and exploding, and exploding. Glorious!
And don't think I didn't hear that! You're complaining
that sound doesn't travel in a vacuum. Of course it doesn't,
but radio waves do, and you obviously never listened to
Brenda's top-of-theline boombox cranked up to full volume.
Those poor folks who watch fireworks in an atmosphere have to
wait for the sound to arrive, too, and they get a chance to
brace for it; we got it instantaneously, no warning, a flash of
hurting light and a ka-BOOOOOOOM!
Sometimes wretched excess is the only thing that will do.
#
"They say this place is haunted."
We'd just been treated to the national anthem of Belau and
its flag had faded from the sky (a big yellow circle on a blue
field, if you're keeping score at home), and two things had
dawned on us. One, you need a breather from wretched excess
from time to time, or it gets . . . well, wretched. Between us
we'd emitted not even one "wow" at the last three nukes, and I
was thinking of suggesting we switch to Top 40 for an hour or
so. Somehow I thought I could survive missing the playing of
Negara Ku (My Country; Mayalsia) and Sanrasoen Phra Barami
("Hail to our King! Blessings on our King! Hearts and minds we
bow/ To Your Majesty now!" words by H.R.H. Prince
Narisaranuvadtivongs). And two, Liz and Cricket were three
hours late.
"Who's they?" I asked, munching on a drumstick of Hildy's
Finest WesTex Fried Chicken. Hunger had overcome the demands of
politeness; Brenda had miked a few pieces, and the hell with
Liz and Cricket. I was eyeing the beer cooler as well, but
neither of us wanted to get too much of a head start.
"You know," she said. "'They.' Your primary news source."
"Oh, that 'they.'"
"Seriously, though, I've heard from several people who've
come out to visit the old Heinlein. They say they've seen
ghosts."
"Walter put you up to this, didn't he," I said.
"I've talked to him about it. He thinks there may be a
story in it."
"Sure there is, but there's no need to come out here and
interview a spook. That kind of story, you just make it up.
Walter must have told you that."
"He did. But this isn't your ordinary filler story, Hildy,
I mean it. The people I interviewed, some of them were scared."
"Give me a break."
"I've been coming out here and bringing a good camera. I
thought I might get a picture."
"Come on. What do you think the Nipple's photo department
is for? Dummying up just that kind of pic, that's what."
She didn't say anything about it for a while, and we
watched several more ghost flags in the sky. I found myself
eyeing the Heinlein. And no, I'm not superstitious, just
godawful curious.
"Is that why you've been camping out so much?" I asked.
"The story's not worth it."
"Camping . . . oh, no," and she laughed. "I've camped out
a lot all my life. I find if very . . . peaceful out here."
Another long silence went by, or as silent as it could be
with nukes exploding outside and her boombox turned down to a
low rumble. At last she got up and walked to stand by the
invisible plastic wall of the tent. She leaned her head against
it. And by the rockets red glare, she told me something I'd
have been a lot happier not hearing.
"Ever since I met you," she began, "I've thought I could
tell you something I've never told anybody else. Not a soul."
She looked at me. "If you don't want to hear it, please say so
now, 'cause if I get started I don't think I'll be able to
stop."
If you could have told her to shut up, I don't want to
know you. I didn't need this, I didn't want it, but when a
friend asks something like that of you, you say yes, that's all
there is to it.
"Make it march," I said, and glanced at my watch. "I don't
want to miss the Laotian National Anthem."
She smiled, and looked back out over the landscape.
"When you first met me . . . well, later, that first time
I came out to Texas to see you, you probably noticed something
unusual about me."
"You're probably referring to your lack of genitalia. I'm
observant that way."
"Yes. Did you ever wonder about it."
Had I? Not much actually. "Ah . . . I guess I thought it
was something religious, or cultural, something your parents
believed. I remember thinking it wasn't a nice thing to do to a
child, but not my business."
"Yes. Not a nice thing to do. And it did have to do with
my parents. With my father."
"I don't know a lot about fathers," I said, still hoping
she'd change her mind. "I'm like most; mom never told me who he
was."
"I knew mine. He lived with me and my mother. He started
raping me when I was about six. I've never had the nerve to ask
my mother if she knew about it, I didn't even know there was
anything wrong with it, I thought it was what I was supposed to
do." Standing there, looking out at the surface, the words
spilling out of her but calm, calm, no hint of tears. "I don't
know how I learned it wasn't something my friends did, maybe I
started to talk about it and picked up something, some
attitude, some beginning of horror, something that made me shut
up about it to this day. But it went on for years and I thought
about turning him in, I know that's what you're wondering, why
didn't I do it, but he was my father and he loved me and I
thought I loved him. But I was ashamed of us, and when I turned
twelve I went and had . . . it . . . removed, closed up,
eradicated so he couldn't put it in me anymore, and I know now
the Minor's Referee who let me get it done in spite of dad's
objections had figured out what was going on because she kept
saying I should bring charges, but all I wanted was for him to
stop. And he did, he never touched me from that day on, hardly
spoke to me, for that matter. So I don't know why it is that
some females prefer the company of other females, but that's
why for me, it's because I can't deal with males, only when I
met you, well, not too long after I met you, I fell badly,
madly in love with you. Only you were a boy, which drove me
crazy. Please don't worry about it, Hildy, I've got it under
control, I know there's things that just can't happen, and you
and me are one of them. I've heard you talking about Cricket
and I ought to be jealous because she and I were making love,
but it was just for fun, and besides Cricket's a boy now, too,
and I wish you all the happiness. So my secret's out, and
another one is I arranged it so you and I would be alone for a
little while out here, the place I always come, always came
when I wanted to get away from him. This is rotten and I know
it, but I've thought about it a long time and I can live with
it. I won't cry and I won't beg, but I'd like to make love to
you just one time. I know you're hetero, everyone I've talked
to says that about you, but what I'm hoping is it's just a
preference, you're a Changer, you've made love to women before,
but maybe it's something you can't do when you're female. Or
maybe you don't want to or think it's a bad idea, and that's
fine, too. I just had to ask, that's all. I know I sound real
needy but I'm not, not that way; I'll live either way, and I
hope we'll still be friends, either way. There. I didn't know
if I'd have the guts to say it all, but I did, and I feel
better already."
I have a short list of things I never do, and right near
the top is surrendering to emotional blackmail. If there's a
worse kind of sex than the charity fuck, I haven't heard about
it. And her words could be read as the worst kind of
whipped-puppy appeal and dammit, okay, she did have a right to
act like a whipped puppy but I hate whipped puppies, I want to
kick them for letting themselves be whipped . . . only the
words didn't come out like that, not out of that
straight-backed, dry-eyed beanpole over there against the
blazing sky. She'd grown since I met her, and I thought this
was part of the growth. Why she'd picked me to unload on I
don't know, but the way she'd done it flattered me rather than
obligated me.
So I told her no. Or would have, in a perfect world where
I actually follow my short list of things I never do. What I
did instead was get up and put my arms around her from behind
and say:
"You handled that very well. If you'd cried, I'd have
kicked your butt all the way to King City."
"I won't cry. Not about that, not anymore. And not when
it's over."
And she didn't.
#
Brenda had arranged for our moment of privacy by not
telling me Cricket had been assigned to cover the festivities
at Armstrong Park. After our little romantic interlude--quite
pleasant, thanks for asking--she confessed her ruse, and also
that he was going to play hooky after the first few hours and
should be arriving any minute, so let's get dressed, okay?
I can't imagine why I worried about getting a head start
on Liz. She got a head start on all of us, drinking on her way
out to Armstrong and all the way back, as if Cricket needed any
more causes for alarm.
She came barreling across the dunes in a fourwheel Aston
Assbuster, model XJ, with a reaction engine and a bilious
tangerine-flake paint job. This was the baby with four-point
jets for boosting over those little potholes you sometimes find
on Luna--say, something about the size of Copernicus. It
couldn't actually reach orbit, but it was a near thing. She had
decorated it with her usual understated British good taste:
holographic flames belching from the wheel wells, a whip
antenna with a raccoon tail on the tip, a chrome-plated
oversize skull sitting out front whose red eyes blinked to
indicate turns.
This apparition came skidding around the Heinlein and
headed straight for us. Brenda stood and waved her arms
frantically and I had time to ponder how thin a soap bubble a
Girl Scout tent really was before Liz hit the brakes and threw
a spray of powdered green cheese against the tent wall.
She was out before the fuzzy dice stopped swinging, and
ran around to the left side to unbelt Cricket, who'd strapped
himself tight enough to risk gangrene of the pelvis. She picked
him up and stuffed him in the airlock, where he seemed to come
to his senses. He crawled inside the tent, but instead of
standing he just hunkered there and I began to be concerned. I
helped him off with his helmet.
"Cricket's a little under the weather," Liz said, over
Cricket's suit radio. "I thought I ought to get him inside
quick."
I realized he was saying something so I put my ear close
to his lips and he was muttering I think I'm gonna be okay,
over and over, like a mantra. Brenda and I got him seated,
where he soon regained some color and a passing interest in his
surroundings.
We were getting a little water into him when Liz came
through the lock, pushing a Press-UKennel in front of her. At
last Cricket came alive, springing to his feet and letting fly
with an almost incoherent string of curses. No need to quote;
Cricket wouldn't be proud of it, he feels curses should be
crafted rather than hurled, but he was too upset for that now.
"You maniac!" he shouted. "Why the hell wouldn't you slow
down?"
"'Cause you told me you were getting sick. I figured I
better get you here quick as I could."
"I was sick because you were going so fast!" But then the
fight drained out of him and he sat down, shaking his head.
"Fast? Did I say fast? We came all the way from Armstrong, and
I think she touched ground four times." He explored his head
with his fingers. "No, five times, I count five lumps. She'd
just look for a steep crater wall and say 'Let's see can we
jump over this sucker,' and the next thing I knew we'd be
flying."
"We were moving along," Liz agreed. "I figure our shadow
ought to be catching up with us about now."
"'Thank god for the gyros,' I said. You remember I said
that? And you said 'What gyros? Gyros are for old ladies.'"
"I took 'em off," Liz told us. "That way you get more
practice using the steering jets. Come on, Cricket, you--"
"I'm going back with you guys," Cricket said. "No way I'm
ever riding with that crazy person again."
"We only have two seats," Brenda said.
"Strap me to the fender, I don't care. It couldn't be
worse than what I just went through."
"I think that calls for a drink," Liz said.
"You think everything calls for a drink."
"Doesn't it?"
But before going out to bring in her portable bar she took
the time to release her--what else?-English bulldog, Winston,
from the kennel. He came lumbering out, revising all my
previous notions of the definition of ugly, and promptly fell
in love with me. More precisely, with my leg, which he started
humping with canine abandon.
It could have spoiled the beginning of a wonderful
relationship--I like a little more courtship, thank you--but
luckily and against all odds he was well-trained, and a swift
kick from Liz discouraged him short of consummation. After that
he just followed me around, snuffling, mooning at me with his
bloodshot, piggy eyes, going to sleep every time I sat down. I
must admit, I took a shine to him. To prove it, I fed him all
my leftover chicken bones.
#
Eighteen hours is a long time for a party, but there is a
certain type of person with a perverse urge not to be the first
to call it quits. All four of us were that type of person. We
were going to stick it out, by god, right through to the
playing of the Guatemalan National Anthem ("Guatemala, blest
land, home of happy race,/ May thine altars profaned be never;/
No yoke of slavery weigh on thee ever/ Nor may tyrants e'er
spit in thy face!").
(Yes, I looked at the globe, too, and if you think the
whole planet was going to stay up six hours for the national
hymn of Tonga, you're crazier than we were. Tonga got in her
licks just after Western Samoa.)
No one was going to catch up with Liz, but we were soon
matching her, and after a while Cricket even forgot he was mad
at her. Things got a bit hazy as the celebration wore on. I
can't actually remember much after the Union Jack blazed in all
its Britannic majesty. I remember that one mainly because Liz
had been nodding out, and Brenda got me and Cricket to stand
when "God Save the Queen" began to play, and we sang the second
verse, which goes something like this:
#
O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies,
And make them fall:
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix:
God save us all!
#
"God save us all, indeed," Cricket said.
"That's the most beautiful thing I ever heard," Liz
sobbed, with the easy tears of the veteran drunk. "And I think
Winston needs to go wee-wee."
The mutt did seem in some distress. Liz had given him a
bowl or two of Guinness and I, after the chicken bones had no
visible effect, had plied him with everything from whole
jalapen~os to the bottlecaps from Liz's home brew. I'd seen
Cricket slip him a few of the sausages we'd been roasting over
the holographic campfire. All in all, this was a dog in a
hurry. He was running in tight circles scratching at the
airlock zipper.
Turned out the monster was perhaps too well trained. He
flatly refused to do his business indoors, according to Liz, so
we all set about stuffing him into his pressure suit.
Before long we were all reduced to hysterical laughter,
the sort where you actually fall on the floor and roll around
and start worrying about your own bladder. Winston wanted to
cooperate, but as soon as we'd get his hind legs into the suit
he'd start bouncing around in his eagerness and end up with the
whole thing bunched around his neck. So Cricket scratched his
back, which made the dog hold still and arch himself and lick
his nose and we'd get his front legs in and maybe one of his
back legs, and then he'd start that reflexive back leg jerking
they do, and all was lost again. When we did get all four legs
into the right holes he thought it was time, and we had to
chase him and hold him down to get his air bottle strapped to
his back, and at the last moment he took a dislike to his
helmet and tried to eat it--this was a dog who made short work
of steel bottlecaps, remember--and we had to put on a spare
seal and test it before we finally screwed him in tight, shoved
him in the lock, and cycled it.
Whereupon we laughed even harder at the spectacle of
Winston running from rock to rock lifting a leg for a squirt
here and a dribble there, blissfully unaware that it was all
going into the waste pouch through the hose Liz had fastened to
his doggie dingus with a rubber band. Yes, folks, I said doggie
dingus: that's the level of humor we'd been reduced to.
#
Later, I remember that Brenda and Liz were napping. I
showed Cricket the wondrous curtain that turned the tent into
two rooms. But he didn't get it, and suggested we suit up and
take a walk outside. I was game, though it probably wasn't real
wise considering I spent almost a minute trying to get my right
foot into the left leg of my suit. But the things are
practically foolproof. If Winston could handle one, I reasoned,
how much trouble could I get into?
So who should come trotting up as soon as we emerged? I
might have been in one sort of trouble right there, since he
seemed to feel all bets were off now that Liz was sleeping, but
after pressing his helmet to my leg and trying to sniff it and
getting no results he sulked along behind us, probably
wondering why everything out here smelled of plexi and dog
slobber.
I really don't want to sound too gay here, switching from
that time with Brenda to the hijinx of the Queen and her
Consort. But that's the way it happened; you can't arrange your
life to provide a consistent dramatic line, like a film script.
It had rocked me, and I had no notion of how to deal with it
except to hold Brenda and hope that maybe she would cry. I
still don't.
My god. The horror that exists all around us, un-noticed.
I said something like that to her, with the half-formed
feeling that maybe it would be good for her to approach it as a
reporter.
"Did you ever wonder," I said, "why we spend all our time
looking into these trivial stories, when stories like that are
waiting to be told?"
"Like what?" she said, drowsily. To be frank, it hadn't
been all that great for me, it never is with homosex, but she
seemed to have enjoyed herself and that was the important part.
You can always tell. Something glowed.
"Like what happened to you, dammit. Wouldn't you think, in
this day and age, that we'd have put that sort of . . . of
thing behind us?"
"I hate it when people say 'in this day and age.' What's
so special about it? As opposed to, for instance, the day and
age of the Egyptians?"
"If you can name even one of the Pharaohs I'll eat this
tent."
"You're not going to make me mad, Hildy." She touched my
face, looked in my eyes, then nestled against my neck. "You
don't need to, don't you see that? this is the first and last
time we'll ever be intimate. I know intimacy frightens you, but
you don't need--"
"It does not fr--"
"Besides, give me another, oh, eighty-three years and I'll
recite every Pharaoh from Akhenaton to Ramses."
"Ouch."
"It was in the program book. But this day and age is the
only one I know right now, and I don't know why you should
think it's any different from the day and age you grew up in.
Were there child molesters back then?"
"You mean the early Neolithic? Yeah, there were."
"And you thought the steady march of progress would
eliminate them any day now."
"It was a foolish thought. But it is a good story."
"You've been away from the Nipple too long, jerk. It's a
terrible story. Who'd want to read a depressing story like
that? I mean, that there's still child molesters? Everybody
knows that. That's for sociologists, bless 'em. Now one story,
one really gruesome one, that's news. My story is just a stat
in the Sunday Supplement grinder; you can put it on file and
run it once a year, they'll all have forgotten it by then."
"You sound so much like me it's scary."
"You know it, babe. People read the Nipple to get a little
spice in their lives. They want to be titillated. Angered.
Horrified. They don't want to be depressed. Walter's always
talking about The End Of The World, how we'd cover it. Hell,
I'd put it on the back page. It's depressing."
"You amaze me."
"I'll tell you what. I know more movie stars than
everybody else in my school put together. They call me, the
minor ones, anyway. I love my work. So don't tell me about the
important stories we ought to be covering."
"That's why you got in the business? To meet celebrities?"
"Why did you get in the business?"
I didn't answer her then, but some vestigial concept of
truth in media forces me to say that hob-nobbing with the
glittering people may have had something to do with it.
But it really was amazing the changes a year had wrought
in my little Brenda. I didn't think I liked it. Not that it was
any of my business, but that's never stopped me in the past. At
first I blamed the news racket itself, but thinking about it a
bit more I wondered if maybe that injured little girl, that
oh-so-good little girl who'd had herself sewed up rather than
do what the nice lady suggested and turn daddy in to the bad
people . . . I wondered if she might actually teach cynical old
Hildy a thing or two about the bad old world and how to get by
in it.
"I'm sorry about not bringing Buster."
"Huh? What's that?"
"Luna to Hildy, come in Hildy, over."
"Sorry, my mind was wandering." It was Cricket, and we
were walking together on the surface. I even remembered going
through the lock.
"I know I said I'd bring her so you could meet her, but
she put up a big fuss because she wanted to go with some
friends to Armstrong, so I let her."
Something in his voice made me suspect he wasn't telling
the whole truth. I thought maybe he hadn't argued as hard as he
might have. The only thing I really knew about his daughter was
that he was very protective of her. I'd learned, through a
little snooping, that none of his coworkers at the Shit had
ever met her; he kept work and family strictly segregated.
Which is not unusual in Lunar society, we're very
protective of the little privacy we have. But we'd known each
other as man and woman for not even a week at that point, and
already there had been a series of these signs that he . . .
how should I put it? . . . was reluctant to let me deeper into
his life. To put it another way, I'd been tentatively plucking
at the daisy of devotion, and most of the petals were coming up
he loves me not.
To be fair, I was un-used to being in love. I was out of
practice at doing it, had never been adept at it, was wondering
if I'd forgotten how to go about it. The last time I had really
fallen, as they say, had been a teen-age crush, and I'd assumed
lo these eighty years that it was an affliction visited solely
on the young. So it could be that I wasn't communicating to him
the tragic, hopeless depth of my longing. Maybe I wasn't
sending out the right signals. He could be thinking, this is
just old Hildy. Lot's o' laffs. This is probably just the way
she is when she's female, all gooey and cow-eyed and anxious to
bring me a hot cup of coffee in the morning and cuddle.
And to be brutal . . . maybe I wasn't in love. It didn't
feel like that distant adolescent emotion, but hardly anything
did; I wasn't that person any more. This felt more solid, less
painful. Not so hopeless, even if he did come right out and say
he loved me not. Does this mean it wasn't love? No, it meant
I'd keep working at it. It meant I wouldn't want to run out and
kill myself . . . bite your tongue, you stupid bitch.
So was this the real turtle soup, or merely the mock? Or
was it, at long last, love? Provisional verdict: it would do
till something better came along.
"Hildy, I don't think we should see each other anymore."
That sound is all my fine rationalizations crashing down
around my ears. The other sound is of a knife being driven into
my heart. The scream hasn't arrived yet, but it will, it will.
"Why do you say that?" I thought I did a good job of
keeping the anguish out of my voice.
"Correct me if I'm wrong. I get the feeling that you have
. . . some deeper than usual feelings about me since . . .
since that night."
"Correct you? I love you, you asshole."
"Only you could have put it so well. I like you, Hildy;
always have. I even like the knives you keep leaving in my
back, I can't imagine why. I might grow to love you, but I have
some problems with that, a situation I'm a long ways from being
over yet--"
"Cricket, you don't have to worry--"
"--and we won't get into it. That's not the main reason I
want to break this off before it gets serious."
"It's already--"
"I know, and I'm sorry." He sighed, and we both watched
Winston go haring off after some vacuum-loving bunny rabbit of
his own imagination, somewhere in the vicinity of the Heinlein.
Only the top part of the immense ship was in sunlight now.
Sunset at Delambre came later than at Armstrong. There was
still enough light reflected from the upper hull for us to see
clearly, not the blazing brightness of full day, though.
"Cricket . . ."
"There's no sense hiding it, I guess," he said. "I lied to
you. Buster wanted to come, she'd like to meet you, she thinks
my stories about you are funny. But I don't want her to meet
you. I know I'm protective of her, but it's just my way; I
don't want her to have a childhood like mine, and we won't go
into that, either. The thing is, you're going through something
weird, you must be or you wouldn't be living in Texas. I don't
know what it is, don't want to know, at least not right now.
But I don't want it to rub off on Buster."
"Is that all? Hell, man, I'll move tomorrow. I may have to
keep teaching for a few weeks till they can get a new--"
"It wouldn't do any good, because that's not all."
"Oh, goody, let's hear more of the things wrong with me."
"No jokes, for once, Hildy. There's something else that's
bothering you. Maybe it's tied up with your quitting the pad
and moving to Texas, maybe it isn't. But I sense something, and
it's very ugly. I don't want to know what it is . . . I would,
I promise you, if not for my child. I'd hear you out, and I'd
try to help. But I want you to look me in the eye and tell me
I'm wrong."
When a full minute had gone by and no eye contact had been
made, no denials uttered, he sighed again, and put his hand on
my shoulder.
"Whatever it is, I don't want her to get mixed up in it."
you wear suits in the tube; with this on, I could have handled
anything.
Checking the pressure seals on the hamper, I walked into
the lock and out onto the surface.
#
"You been waiting long?" I asked.
"Couple hours," Brenda said.
She was leaning on the side of her rental rover, which
she'd driven all the way from a suburb of King City, the
nearest place you could rent one. I apologized for being so
late, told her of the nightmare in the train, how I wished I'd
come with her instead of "saving time" by tubing out.
"Don't worry about it," she said. "I like it out here."
I could already tell that, mostly by looking at her suit.
It was a good one, had no rental logo on it, and though in
perfect shape, showed signs of use it couldn't have acquired
unless she regularly spent time in it. Also by the easy way she
stood and moved in it, something most Lunarians never get
enough suit time to achieve.
The rover was a good one, too. It was a pickup model, two
seats side by side, a flat bed in back where I tossed my hamper
along with her much bigger pile of things. They have a wide
wheelbase to compensate for being so top-heavy with the big
solar panel above, which swings to constantly present itself to
the sun. The sun being almost at the horizon just then, the
vehicle was at its most awkward, with the panel hanging out to
the right side, perpendicular to the ground. I had to crawl
over Brenda's seat to get to mine because the panel blocked the
door.
"I forget," I said, as I settled myself in the open seat.
"Will we be going into the sun to get there?"
"Nope. South for a while, then we'll have the sun at our
backs."
"Good." I hated riding behind the panel. It's not that I
didn't trust the autopilot; I just liked to see where I was
going.
She told the rover to giddyup, and it did, right along the
broad, smooth highway. Which is why we'd chosen Dionysius
Station in the first place, because it's right on one of the
scarce surface roads on Luna, which is not a place where the
wheeled vehicle was ever a primary mode of transport. People
move on elevators, escalators, beltways, maglev/tube trains,
the occasional hoverbus. Goods go by the same ways, plus
pneumomail tubes, linac free-trajectory, and rocket. Recently
there'd been something of a fad in wheeled surface rovers, two-
and four-wheeled, but they were all-terrain and quite rugged,
no roads needed.
The road we were on was a relic from a mining operation
abandoned before I was born. From time to time we passed the
derelict hulks of ore carriers at the side of the road, mammoth
things, not looking much different from the day they'd been
stripped and left there. Some economic vagary of the time had
made it a better idea to actually smooth out a road surface for
them. Then the road had been used for another half century as
the conduit between King City and its primary dumping ground.
It was still glass-smooth, and quite a novel way to travel.
"This sucker moves right along, doesn't it?" I said.
"It'll reach three hundred kay on the straightaways,"
Brenda said. "But it's gotta slow way down for the curves,
especially ones to the left." That was because the rover's
center of gravity was at its worst at sunrise and sunset, with
the big panel canted on its side, she explained. Also, the
banking of the road was not great, and since we were going to
be staying out after dark, she'd had to carry ten batteries,
which added a lot to our inertia and could easily make us skid
off the road, since the tire traction wasn't as much as she'd
prefer. She told me all this with the air of someone who'd done
this many times before, someone who knew her machine. I
wondered if she could drive it.
I got my answer when we turned off the road, and she asked
if I minded. Actually, I did--we're not used to putting our
lives in other people's hands, only into the hands of
machines--but I said I didn't. And I needn't have worried. She
drove with a sure hand, never did anything stupid, never
overcontrolled. We took off across the plains toward the rising
rim of Delambre, just becoming visible over the horizon.
When we reached the bottom of the slope a Black Maria
landed in front of us, blue lights flashing. A cop got out and
came over to us. He must have been bored, since he could have
used his radio, or simply interrogated our computer.
"You're entering a restricted area, ma'am," he said.
Brenda showed him the pass Liz had given her and he
examined it, then her.
"Didn't I see you on the tube?" he asked, and she said he
might have, and he said sure, you were on the such-and-such
show, now how about that? He said he'd loved it and she said
aw, shucks, and by the time he finally let us go he'd been
flirting so outrageously I'm convinced we hadn't needed the
pass at all. He actually asked for her autograph, and she
actually gave it.
"I thought he was going to ask for your phone code," I
said, when he'd finally lifted off.
"I thought I was going to give it to him," she said, and
grinned at me. "I keep thinking I ought to give guys a try."
"You could do better than that."
"Not since you Changed." She jammed in the throttle and we
sprayed dust behind us as we charged up the rounded rim of the
crater.
#
Delambre isn't a huge crater like Clavius or Pythagoras or
any number of celestial bullet holes on the farside, but it's
big enough. When you're standing on the rim you can't see the
other side. That's plenty big for me.
Still, it would look just like a hundred others except for
one thing: the junkyard.
We re-cycle a lot of things on Luna. We have to; our own
natural resources are fairly meager. But we're still a
civilization driven by a market economy. Sometimes cheap and
plentiful power and the low cost of boosting bulk raw materials
in slow orbits combine to make it just too damn much trouble
and not cost-effective to sort through and re-process a lot of
things. Fortunes have been lost when a bulk carrier arrives
with X million tonnes of Whoosisite from the mines on Io,
having been in secret transit for thirty years disguised and
listed as an Oort comet. Suddenly the bottom falls out of the
market for Whoosisite, and before you know it you can't give
the stuff away and it's being carted out to Delambre by the
hundred-tonne bucketload. To that add the twenty-thousand-year
half-life radioactives in drums guaranteed to last five
centuries. Don't forget to throw in obsolete machines, some
cannibalized for this or that, others still in working order
but hopelessly slow and not worth taking apart. Abandon all
that stuff out there, and salt in that ceramic horror you
brought home to Mom from school when you were eight, that stack
of holos you kept for seventy years and can't even remember
who's in them, plus similar treasures from millions of other
people. Top it with all the things you can't find a use for
from every sewage outflow in Luna, mixed with just enough water
so it'll flow through a pipe. Bake on high for fourteen days,
freeze for fourteen more; continue doing that for two hundred
years, adding more ingredients to taste, and you've created the
vista that met us from the lip of Delambre.
The crater's not actually full, it just looks that way
from the west rim.
"Over there," Brenda said. "That's where I said I'd meet
Liz."
I saw a speck on the horizon, also sitting on the rim.
"How about letting me drive?" I asked.
"You can drive?" It wasn't an unreasonable question; most
Lunarians can't.
"In my wild youth, I drove the Equatorial Race. Eleven
thousand klicks, very little of it level." No point in adding
I'd blown the transmission a quarter of the way through.
"And I was lecturing you on how to handle a rover. Why
don't you ever shut me up, Hildy?"
"Then I'd lose half of my amusing stories."
I switched the controls over to the British side of the
car and took off. It had been many years since I'd driven. It
was lots of fun. The rover had a good suspension; I only left
the ground two or three times, and the gyros kept us from
turning over. When I saw her gripping the dash I throttled
back.
"You'd never make a race driver. This is smooth."
"I never wanted to be a race driver. Or a corpse."
#
"I feel like a Girl Scout," I told Brenda as I helped her
spread out the tent.
"What's wrong with that? I earned all the surface
pioneering merit badges."
"Nothing wrong. I was one, too, but that was ninety years
ago."
She wasn't nearly that far removed from scouting, and she
still took it seriously. Where I'd have just pulled the rip
cord and let it go at that, she was a fanatic about saving
energy, and ran a line from the rover's solar panel to the
tent's power supply, as if the reactor wouldn't last a
fortnight on its own. When the tent was arranged to her
satisfaction she pulled the cord and it shuddered and flopped
as it filled with air, and in ten seconds we had a five-meter
transparent hemisphere . . . which promptly frosted up inside.
She got on her knees and crawled into the iglootype lock
and I zipped it behind her to save her squirming around, and
she told me this model had automatic zippers, so there had been
progress since my childhood. She fiddled with the air controls
while I stacked blankets and pillows and thermoses and the rest
of our gear in the lock-got to get it well-packed, don't want
to waste air by cycling the lock too much--then I stood around
outside while she brought it all in and got the temperature and
pressure and humidity adjusted. When I got in and took off my
helmet it was still on the cool side. I wrote my name in the
frost like I remembered doing on long-ago camping trips; it
soon melted, and the dew was absorbed . . . and the dome seemed
to vanish.
"It's been too long," I said. "I'm glad you brought me
here."
For once she knew exactly what I meant. She stopped her
fussing around and stood with me and we just looked around
without saying anything.
Any beauty on Luna is going to be a harsh sort of beauty.
There's nothing benevolent or comforting to see anywhere--much
like West Texas. This was the best way to see it, in a tent
invisible to our eyes, as if we were standing on a black
circular pad of plastic with nothing between us and vacuum.
It was also the best time of day to see it; the Lunar Day,
I mean. The sun was very close to the horizon, the shadows were
almost infinitely long. Which helped, because half our vista
was of the biggest garbage dump on the planet. There's a funny
thing about shadows like that. If you've never seen snow, go to
Pennsylvania the next time they've scheduled it and watch how
snow can transform the most mundane--even ugly--scene into a
magical landscape. Sunlight on the surface is like that. It's
hard and bright as diamond, it blasts everything it touches and
yet it does no damage; nothing moves, the billion facets of
dark and light make every ordinary object into a hardedged
jewel.
We didn't look west; the light was too dazzling. To the
south we saw the rolling land falling away to our right, the
endless heaps of garbage to the left. East was looking right
out over Delambre, and north was the hulk of the Robert A.
Heinlein, almost a mile of derelict might-have-been starship.
"You think they'll have any trouble finding us?" Brenda
asked.
"Liz and Cricket? I wouldn't think so. Not with the old
Heinlein over there. How could you miss it?"
"That's what I thought, too."
We set about little domestic chores, inflating the
furniture, spreading a few rugs. She showed me how to set up
the curtain that turned the tent into two not-very-private
rooms, how to operate the little campstove. While we were doing
that, the show began. Not to worry; it was going to be a long
show.
I had to admit the artistic director had done well. This
was to be a commemoration of the billions dead on Earth, right?
And at the latitude of Armstrong Park, the Earth would be
directly overhead, right? And if you start the show at sundown,
you'll have a half-Earth in the sky. So why not make the Earth
the center and theme of your sky show?
By fudging just a little you can begin the show when the
old International Dateline is facing Luna. Now picture it: as
the Earth turns, one by one the vanished nations of Old Earth
emerge into the sunlight of a new day. And as each one appears
. . .
We were bathed in the red light of the flag of the
Siberian Republic, a rectangle one hundred kilometers long,
hanging above us at a height sufficient to blot out half the
sky.
"Wow," Brenda said. Her mouth was hanging open.
"Double wow," I said, and closed my own mouth. The flag
hung there almost a minute, burning brightly, then sputtered
out. We hurried to get Brenda's boombox turned on, hung the big
speakers on each side of the tent, and were in time to hear the
opening strains of "God Defend New Zealand" as the Kiwi flag
unfurled above us.
That's how it was to be for eighteen hours.
When Liz arrived she told us how it was done. The flag was
a mesh construction stuffed into a big container and blasted up
from one of the pyro bases, in Baylor-A, about forty klicks
south of us, and Hyapatia and Torricelli, to the east. When the
shell reached the right height it burst and rockets spread it
out and it was set afire by radio control. Neat.
How do fireworks burn in a vacuum? Don't ask me. But I
know rocket fuels carry an oxidizer, so I guess it was some
chemical magic like that. However they did it, it knocked our
socks off, me and Brenda, no more than fifty clicks from the
big firebase in Baylor, much closer than the poor hicks in
Armstrong, who probably thought they were getting one heck of a
show. And who cares if, from our vantage, the flags were
distorted into trapezoids? I sure didn't.
Brenda turned out to be a fountain of information about
the show.
"They didn't figure it made sense to give a country like
Vanuatu equal time with, say, Russia," she said (we were
looking at the ghastly flag of Vanuatu at the time, listening
to its improbable national anthem). "So the major countries,
ones with a lot of history, they'll get more of a pageant. Like
the Siberian Republic used to be part of some other country--"
"The U.S.S.R.," I supplied.
"Right. Says so right here." She had a massive souvenir
program spread out before us. "So they'll do more flags for
that--the Tsarist flag, historical stuff--"
"--and play the 'Internationale.'"
"--and folk themes, like what we heard from New Zealand."
They were telling us most of that on a separate radio
channel, giving a history of each country, pitched at an
illiterate level. I turned it off, preferring just the music,
and Brenda didn't object. I'd have turned off the television,
too-Brenda had pasted a big screen to the south side of the
tent--but she seemed to enjoy the scenes of revelry from
Armstrong and all the other celebrations in all the major Lunar
cities, so what the hell.
Get out an Earth globe and you'll quickly spot the major
flaw in the Earth-rotational program. For the first six hours
only a few dozen countries will swing into view. Even if you
give the entire history of China and Japan, there's going to be
some gaps to fill, and how much can you say about Nauru and the
Solomon Islands? On the other hand, when dawn broke over Africa
and Europe the pyrotechs were going to be busier than a
onelegged man in an ass-kicking contest.
Not to worry. When they ran out of flags, that's when they
trotted out the heavy artillery.
From the first appearance of that red ensign, the sky was
never dark.
There were the conventional shells, starbursts in all the
colors of the rainbow. Without air to impede their flight they
could be placed with pinpoint precision--one thing Lunarians
understand is ballistics. They were also perfectly symmetrical,
for the same reason.
You want more? In the vacuum, it was possible to produce
effects never seen on Earth. Huge gas canisters could produce a
thin atmosphere, locally, temporarily, upon which tricks of
ionization could be played. We were treated to auroral
curtains, washes of color in which the entire sky turned blue
or red or yellow, then flickered magically. Shrapnel shells
filled the sky with spinning discs no bigger than a coin, which
were then swept by searchlights to twinkle as no stars ever had
on Luna, then exploded by lasers.
Still not satisfied? How about a few nukes? Brenda's
program said there would be over one hundred special fission
shells, an average of one every ten minutes for the duration of
the show. These were detonated in orbit and used to propel
literally thousands of regular pyro shells into bursts over a
thousand klicks wide. The first one went off at the end of the
Vanuatu National Anthem, and it rattled our teeth, and then it
went on exploding, and exploding, and exploding. Glorious!
And don't think I didn't hear that! You're complaining
that sound doesn't travel in a vacuum. Of course it doesn't,
but radio waves do, and you obviously never listened to
Brenda's top-of-theline boombox cranked up to full volume.
Those poor folks who watch fireworks in an atmosphere have to
wait for the sound to arrive, too, and they get a chance to
brace for it; we got it instantaneously, no warning, a flash of
hurting light and a ka-BOOOOOOOM!
Sometimes wretched excess is the only thing that will do.
#
"They say this place is haunted."
We'd just been treated to the national anthem of Belau and
its flag had faded from the sky (a big yellow circle on a blue
field, if you're keeping score at home), and two things had
dawned on us. One, you need a breather from wretched excess
from time to time, or it gets . . . well, wretched. Between us
we'd emitted not even one "wow" at the last three nukes, and I
was thinking of suggesting we switch to Top 40 for an hour or
so. Somehow I thought I could survive missing the playing of
Negara Ku (My Country; Mayalsia) and Sanrasoen Phra Barami
("Hail to our King! Blessings on our King! Hearts and minds we
bow/ To Your Majesty now!" words by H.R.H. Prince
Narisaranuvadtivongs). And two, Liz and Cricket were three
hours late.
"Who's they?" I asked, munching on a drumstick of Hildy's
Finest WesTex Fried Chicken. Hunger had overcome the demands of
politeness; Brenda had miked a few pieces, and the hell with
Liz and Cricket. I was eyeing the beer cooler as well, but
neither of us wanted to get too much of a head start.
"You know," she said. "'They.' Your primary news source."
"Oh, that 'they.'"
"Seriously, though, I've heard from several people who've
come out to visit the old Heinlein. They say they've seen
ghosts."
"Walter put you up to this, didn't he," I said.
"I've talked to him about it. He thinks there may be a
story in it."
"Sure there is, but there's no need to come out here and
interview a spook. That kind of story, you just make it up.
Walter must have told you that."
"He did. But this isn't your ordinary filler story, Hildy,
I mean it. The people I interviewed, some of them were scared."
"Give me a break."
"I've been coming out here and bringing a good camera. I
thought I might get a picture."
"Come on. What do you think the Nipple's photo department
is for? Dummying up just that kind of pic, that's what."
She didn't say anything about it for a while, and we
watched several more ghost flags in the sky. I found myself
eyeing the Heinlein. And no, I'm not superstitious, just
godawful curious.
"Is that why you've been camping out so much?" I asked.
"The story's not worth it."
"Camping . . . oh, no," and she laughed. "I've camped out
a lot all my life. I find if very . . . peaceful out here."
Another long silence went by, or as silent as it could be
with nukes exploding outside and her boombox turned down to a
low rumble. At last she got up and walked to stand by the
invisible plastic wall of the tent. She leaned her head against
it. And by the rockets red glare, she told me something I'd
have been a lot happier not hearing.
"Ever since I met you," she began, "I've thought I could
tell you something I've never told anybody else. Not a soul."
She looked at me. "If you don't want to hear it, please say so
now, 'cause if I get started I don't think I'll be able to
stop."
If you could have told her to shut up, I don't want to
know you. I didn't need this, I didn't want it, but when a
friend asks something like that of you, you say yes, that's all
there is to it.
"Make it march," I said, and glanced at my watch. "I don't
want to miss the Laotian National Anthem."
She smiled, and looked back out over the landscape.
"When you first met me . . . well, later, that first time
I came out to Texas to see you, you probably noticed something
unusual about me."
"You're probably referring to your lack of genitalia. I'm
observant that way."
"Yes. Did you ever wonder about it."
Had I? Not much actually. "Ah . . . I guess I thought it
was something religious, or cultural, something your parents
believed. I remember thinking it wasn't a nice thing to do to a
child, but not my business."
"Yes. Not a nice thing to do. And it did have to do with
my parents. With my father."
"I don't know a lot about fathers," I said, still hoping
she'd change her mind. "I'm like most; mom never told me who he
was."
"I knew mine. He lived with me and my mother. He started
raping me when I was about six. I've never had the nerve to ask
my mother if she knew about it, I didn't even know there was
anything wrong with it, I thought it was what I was supposed to
do." Standing there, looking out at the surface, the words
spilling out of her but calm, calm, no hint of tears. "I don't
know how I learned it wasn't something my friends did, maybe I
started to talk about it and picked up something, some
attitude, some beginning of horror, something that made me shut
up about it to this day. But it went on for years and I thought
about turning him in, I know that's what you're wondering, why
didn't I do it, but he was my father and he loved me and I
thought I loved him. But I was ashamed of us, and when I turned
twelve I went and had . . . it . . . removed, closed up,
eradicated so he couldn't put it in me anymore, and I know now
the Minor's Referee who let me get it done in spite of dad's
objections had figured out what was going on because she kept
saying I should bring charges, but all I wanted was for him to
stop. And he did, he never touched me from that day on, hardly
spoke to me, for that matter. So I don't know why it is that
some females prefer the company of other females, but that's
why for me, it's because I can't deal with males, only when I
met you, well, not too long after I met you, I fell badly,
madly in love with you. Only you were a boy, which drove me
crazy. Please don't worry about it, Hildy, I've got it under
control, I know there's things that just can't happen, and you
and me are one of them. I've heard you talking about Cricket
and I ought to be jealous because she and I were making love,
but it was just for fun, and besides Cricket's a boy now, too,
and I wish you all the happiness. So my secret's out, and
another one is I arranged it so you and I would be alone for a
little while out here, the place I always come, always came
when I wanted to get away from him. This is rotten and I know
it, but I've thought about it a long time and I can live with
it. I won't cry and I won't beg, but I'd like to make love to
you just one time. I know you're hetero, everyone I've talked
to says that about you, but what I'm hoping is it's just a
preference, you're a Changer, you've made love to women before,
but maybe it's something you can't do when you're female. Or
maybe you don't want to or think it's a bad idea, and that's
fine, too. I just had to ask, that's all. I know I sound real
needy but I'm not, not that way; I'll live either way, and I
hope we'll still be friends, either way. There. I didn't know
if I'd have the guts to say it all, but I did, and I feel
better already."
I have a short list of things I never do, and right near
the top is surrendering to emotional blackmail. If there's a
worse kind of sex than the charity fuck, I haven't heard about
it. And her words could be read as the worst kind of
whipped-puppy appeal and dammit, okay, she did have a right to
act like a whipped puppy but I hate whipped puppies, I want to
kick them for letting themselves be whipped . . . only the
words didn't come out like that, not out of that
straight-backed, dry-eyed beanpole over there against the
blazing sky. She'd grown since I met her, and I thought this
was part of the growth. Why she'd picked me to unload on I
don't know, but the way she'd done it flattered me rather than
obligated me.
So I told her no. Or would have, in a perfect world where
I actually follow my short list of things I never do. What I
did instead was get up and put my arms around her from behind
and say:
"You handled that very well. If you'd cried, I'd have
kicked your butt all the way to King City."
"I won't cry. Not about that, not anymore. And not when
it's over."
And she didn't.
#
Brenda had arranged for our moment of privacy by not
telling me Cricket had been assigned to cover the festivities
at Armstrong Park. After our little romantic interlude--quite
pleasant, thanks for asking--she confessed her ruse, and also
that he was going to play hooky after the first few hours and
should be arriving any minute, so let's get dressed, okay?
I can't imagine why I worried about getting a head start
on Liz. She got a head start on all of us, drinking on her way
out to Armstrong and all the way back, as if Cricket needed any
more causes for alarm.
She came barreling across the dunes in a fourwheel Aston
Assbuster, model XJ, with a reaction engine and a bilious
tangerine-flake paint job. This was the baby with four-point
jets for boosting over those little potholes you sometimes find
on Luna--say, something about the size of Copernicus. It
couldn't actually reach orbit, but it was a near thing. She had
decorated it with her usual understated British good taste:
holographic flames belching from the wheel wells, a whip
antenna with a raccoon tail on the tip, a chrome-plated
oversize skull sitting out front whose red eyes blinked to
indicate turns.
This apparition came skidding around the Heinlein and
headed straight for us. Brenda stood and waved her arms
frantically and I had time to ponder how thin a soap bubble a
Girl Scout tent really was before Liz hit the brakes and threw
a spray of powdered green cheese against the tent wall.
She was out before the fuzzy dice stopped swinging, and
ran around to the left side to unbelt Cricket, who'd strapped
himself tight enough to risk gangrene of the pelvis. She picked
him up and stuffed him in the airlock, where he seemed to come
to his senses. He crawled inside the tent, but instead of
standing he just hunkered there and I began to be concerned. I
helped him off with his helmet.
"Cricket's a little under the weather," Liz said, over
Cricket's suit radio. "I thought I ought to get him inside
quick."
I realized he was saying something so I put my ear close
to his lips and he was muttering I think I'm gonna be okay,
over and over, like a mantra. Brenda and I got him seated,
where he soon regained some color and a passing interest in his
surroundings.
We were getting a little water into him when Liz came
through the lock, pushing a Press-UKennel in front of her. At
last Cricket came alive, springing to his feet and letting fly
with an almost incoherent string of curses. No need to quote;
Cricket wouldn't be proud of it, he feels curses should be
crafted rather than hurled, but he was too upset for that now.
"You maniac!" he shouted. "Why the hell wouldn't you slow
down?"
"'Cause you told me you were getting sick. I figured I
better get you here quick as I could."
"I was sick because you were going so fast!" But then the
fight drained out of him and he sat down, shaking his head.
"Fast? Did I say fast? We came all the way from Armstrong, and
I think she touched ground four times." He explored his head
with his fingers. "No, five times, I count five lumps. She'd
just look for a steep crater wall and say 'Let's see can we
jump over this sucker,' and the next thing I knew we'd be
flying."
"We were moving along," Liz agreed. "I figure our shadow
ought to be catching up with us about now."
"'Thank god for the gyros,' I said. You remember I said
that? And you said 'What gyros? Gyros are for old ladies.'"
"I took 'em off," Liz told us. "That way you get more
practice using the steering jets. Come on, Cricket, you--"
"I'm going back with you guys," Cricket said. "No way I'm
ever riding with that crazy person again."
"We only have two seats," Brenda said.
"Strap me to the fender, I don't care. It couldn't be
worse than what I just went through."
"I think that calls for a drink," Liz said.
"You think everything calls for a drink."
"Doesn't it?"
But before going out to bring in her portable bar she took
the time to release her--what else?-English bulldog, Winston,
from the kennel. He came lumbering out, revising all my
previous notions of the definition of ugly, and promptly fell
in love with me. More precisely, with my leg, which he started
humping with canine abandon.
It could have spoiled the beginning of a wonderful
relationship--I like a little more courtship, thank you--but
luckily and against all odds he was well-trained, and a swift
kick from Liz discouraged him short of consummation. After that
he just followed me around, snuffling, mooning at me with his
bloodshot, piggy eyes, going to sleep every time I sat down. I
must admit, I took a shine to him. To prove it, I fed him all
my leftover chicken bones.
#
Eighteen hours is a long time for a party, but there is a
certain type of person with a perverse urge not to be the first
to call it quits. All four of us were that type of person. We
were going to stick it out, by god, right through to the
playing of the Guatemalan National Anthem ("Guatemala, blest
land, home of happy race,/ May thine altars profaned be never;/
No yoke of slavery weigh on thee ever/ Nor may tyrants e'er
spit in thy face!").
(Yes, I looked at the globe, too, and if you think the
whole planet was going to stay up six hours for the national
hymn of Tonga, you're crazier than we were. Tonga got in her
licks just after Western Samoa.)
No one was going to catch up with Liz, but we were soon
matching her, and after a while Cricket even forgot he was mad
at her. Things got a bit hazy as the celebration wore on. I
can't actually remember much after the Union Jack blazed in all
its Britannic majesty. I remember that one mainly because Liz
had been nodding out, and Brenda got me and Cricket to stand
when "God Save the Queen" began to play, and we sang the second
verse, which goes something like this:
#
O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies,
And make them fall:
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix:
God save us all!
#
"God save us all, indeed," Cricket said.
"That's the most beautiful thing I ever heard," Liz
sobbed, with the easy tears of the veteran drunk. "And I think
Winston needs to go wee-wee."
The mutt did seem in some distress. Liz had given him a
bowl or two of Guinness and I, after the chicken bones had no
visible effect, had plied him with everything from whole
jalapen~os to the bottlecaps from Liz's home brew. I'd seen
Cricket slip him a few of the sausages we'd been roasting over
the holographic campfire. All in all, this was a dog in a
hurry. He was running in tight circles scratching at the
airlock zipper.
Turned out the monster was perhaps too well trained. He
flatly refused to do his business indoors, according to Liz, so
we all set about stuffing him into his pressure suit.
Before long we were all reduced to hysterical laughter,
the sort where you actually fall on the floor and roll around
and start worrying about your own bladder. Winston wanted to
cooperate, but as soon as we'd get his hind legs into the suit
he'd start bouncing around in his eagerness and end up with the
whole thing bunched around his neck. So Cricket scratched his
back, which made the dog hold still and arch himself and lick
his nose and we'd get his front legs in and maybe one of his
back legs, and then he'd start that reflexive back leg jerking
they do, and all was lost again. When we did get all four legs
into the right holes he thought it was time, and we had to
chase him and hold him down to get his air bottle strapped to
his back, and at the last moment he took a dislike to his
helmet and tried to eat it--this was a dog who made short work
of steel bottlecaps, remember--and we had to put on a spare
seal and test it before we finally screwed him in tight, shoved
him in the lock, and cycled it.
Whereupon we laughed even harder at the spectacle of
Winston running from rock to rock lifting a leg for a squirt
here and a dribble there, blissfully unaware that it was all
going into the waste pouch through the hose Liz had fastened to
his doggie dingus with a rubber band. Yes, folks, I said doggie
dingus: that's the level of humor we'd been reduced to.
#
Later, I remember that Brenda and Liz were napping. I
showed Cricket the wondrous curtain that turned the tent into
two rooms. But he didn't get it, and suggested we suit up and
take a walk outside. I was game, though it probably wasn't real
wise considering I spent almost a minute trying to get my right
foot into the left leg of my suit. But the things are
practically foolproof. If Winston could handle one, I reasoned,
how much trouble could I get into?
So who should come trotting up as soon as we emerged? I
might have been in one sort of trouble right there, since he
seemed to feel all bets were off now that Liz was sleeping, but
after pressing his helmet to my leg and trying to sniff it and
getting no results he sulked along behind us, probably
wondering why everything out here smelled of plexi and dog
slobber.
I really don't want to sound too gay here, switching from
that time with Brenda to the hijinx of the Queen and her
Consort. But that's the way it happened; you can't arrange your
life to provide a consistent dramatic line, like a film script.
It had rocked me, and I had no notion of how to deal with it
except to hold Brenda and hope that maybe she would cry. I
still don't.
My god. The horror that exists all around us, un-noticed.
I said something like that to her, with the half-formed
feeling that maybe it would be good for her to approach it as a
reporter.
"Did you ever wonder," I said, "why we spend all our time
looking into these trivial stories, when stories like that are
waiting to be told?"
"Like what?" she said, drowsily. To be frank, it hadn't
been all that great for me, it never is with homosex, but she
seemed to have enjoyed herself and that was the important part.
You can always tell. Something glowed.
"Like what happened to you, dammit. Wouldn't you think, in
this day and age, that we'd have put that sort of . . . of
thing behind us?"
"I hate it when people say 'in this day and age.' What's
so special about it? As opposed to, for instance, the day and
age of the Egyptians?"
"If you can name even one of the Pharaohs I'll eat this
tent."
"You're not going to make me mad, Hildy." She touched my
face, looked in my eyes, then nestled against my neck. "You
don't need to, don't you see that? this is the first and last
time we'll ever be intimate. I know intimacy frightens you, but
you don't need--"
"It does not fr--"
"Besides, give me another, oh, eighty-three years and I'll
recite every Pharaoh from Akhenaton to Ramses."
"Ouch."
"It was in the program book. But this day and age is the
only one I know right now, and I don't know why you should
think it's any different from the day and age you grew up in.
Were there child molesters back then?"
"You mean the early Neolithic? Yeah, there were."
"And you thought the steady march of progress would
eliminate them any day now."
"It was a foolish thought. But it is a good story."
"You've been away from the Nipple too long, jerk. It's a
terrible story. Who'd want to read a depressing story like
that? I mean, that there's still child molesters? Everybody
knows that. That's for sociologists, bless 'em. Now one story,
one really gruesome one, that's news. My story is just a stat
in the Sunday Supplement grinder; you can put it on file and
run it once a year, they'll all have forgotten it by then."
"You sound so much like me it's scary."
"You know it, babe. People read the Nipple to get a little
spice in their lives. They want to be titillated. Angered.
Horrified. They don't want to be depressed. Walter's always
talking about The End Of The World, how we'd cover it. Hell,
I'd put it on the back page. It's depressing."
"You amaze me."
"I'll tell you what. I know more movie stars than
everybody else in my school put together. They call me, the
minor ones, anyway. I love my work. So don't tell me about the
important stories we ought to be covering."
"That's why you got in the business? To meet celebrities?"
"Why did you get in the business?"
I didn't answer her then, but some vestigial concept of
truth in media forces me to say that hob-nobbing with the
glittering people may have had something to do with it.
But it really was amazing the changes a year had wrought
in my little Brenda. I didn't think I liked it. Not that it was
any of my business, but that's never stopped me in the past. At
first I blamed the news racket itself, but thinking about it a
bit more I wondered if maybe that injured little girl, that
oh-so-good little girl who'd had herself sewed up rather than
do what the nice lady suggested and turn daddy in to the bad
people . . . I wondered if she might actually teach cynical old
Hildy a thing or two about the bad old world and how to get by
in it.
"I'm sorry about not bringing Buster."
"Huh? What's that?"
"Luna to Hildy, come in Hildy, over."
"Sorry, my mind was wandering." It was Cricket, and we
were walking together on the surface. I even remembered going
through the lock.
"I know I said I'd bring her so you could meet her, but
she put up a big fuss because she wanted to go with some
friends to Armstrong, so I let her."
Something in his voice made me suspect he wasn't telling
the whole truth. I thought maybe he hadn't argued as hard as he
might have. The only thing I really knew about his daughter was
that he was very protective of her. I'd learned, through a
little snooping, that none of his coworkers at the Shit had
ever met her; he kept work and family strictly segregated.
Which is not unusual in Lunar society, we're very
protective of the little privacy we have. But we'd known each
other as man and woman for not even a week at that point, and
already there had been a series of these signs that he . . .
how should I put it? . . . was reluctant to let me deeper into
his life. To put it another way, I'd been tentatively plucking
at the daisy of devotion, and most of the petals were coming up
he loves me not.
To be fair, I was un-used to being in love. I was out of
practice at doing it, had never been adept at it, was wondering
if I'd forgotten how to go about it. The last time I had really
fallen, as they say, had been a teen-age crush, and I'd assumed
lo these eighty years that it was an affliction visited solely
on the young. So it could be that I wasn't communicating to him
the tragic, hopeless depth of my longing. Maybe I wasn't
sending out the right signals. He could be thinking, this is
just old Hildy. Lot's o' laffs. This is probably just the way
she is when she's female, all gooey and cow-eyed and anxious to
bring me a hot cup of coffee in the morning and cuddle.
And to be brutal . . . maybe I wasn't in love. It didn't
feel like that distant adolescent emotion, but hardly anything
did; I wasn't that person any more. This felt more solid, less
painful. Not so hopeless, even if he did come right out and say
he loved me not. Does this mean it wasn't love? No, it meant
I'd keep working at it. It meant I wouldn't want to run out and
kill myself . . . bite your tongue, you stupid bitch.
So was this the real turtle soup, or merely the mock? Or
was it, at long last, love? Provisional verdict: it would do
till something better came along.
"Hildy, I don't think we should see each other anymore."
That sound is all my fine rationalizations crashing down
around my ears. The other sound is of a knife being driven into
my heart. The scream hasn't arrived yet, but it will, it will.
"Why do you say that?" I thought I did a good job of
keeping the anguish out of my voice.
"Correct me if I'm wrong. I get the feeling that you have
. . . some deeper than usual feelings about me since . . .
since that night."
"Correct you? I love you, you asshole."
"Only you could have put it so well. I like you, Hildy;
always have. I even like the knives you keep leaving in my
back, I can't imagine why. I might grow to love you, but I have
some problems with that, a situation I'm a long ways from being
over yet--"
"Cricket, you don't have to worry--"
"--and we won't get into it. That's not the main reason I
want to break this off before it gets serious."
"It's already--"
"I know, and I'm sorry." He sighed, and we both watched
Winston go haring off after some vacuum-loving bunny rabbit of
his own imagination, somewhere in the vicinity of the Heinlein.
Only the top part of the immense ship was in sunlight now.
Sunset at Delambre came later than at Armstrong. There was
still enough light reflected from the upper hull for us to see
clearly, not the blazing brightness of full day, though.
"Cricket . . ."
"There's no sense hiding it, I guess," he said. "I lied to
you. Buster wanted to come, she'd like to meet you, she thinks
my stories about you are funny. But I don't want her to meet
you. I know I'm protective of her, but it's just my way; I
don't want her to have a childhood like mine, and we won't go
into that, either. The thing is, you're going through something
weird, you must be or you wouldn't be living in Texas. I don't
know what it is, don't want to know, at least not right now.
But I don't want it to rub off on Buster."
"Is that all? Hell, man, I'll move tomorrow. I may have to
keep teaching for a few weeks till they can get a new--"
"It wouldn't do any good, because that's not all."
"Oh, goody, let's hear more of the things wrong with me."
"No jokes, for once, Hildy. There's something else that's
bothering you. Maybe it's tied up with your quitting the pad
and moving to Texas, maybe it isn't. But I sense something, and
it's very ugly. I don't want to know what it is . . . I would,
I promise you, if not for my child. I'd hear you out, and I'd
try to help. But I want you to look me in the eye and tell me
I'm wrong."
When a full minute had gone by and no eye contact had been
made, no denials uttered, he sighed again, and put his hand on
my shoulder.
"Whatever it is, I don't want her to get mixed up in it."