The oxygen barons, p.21
The Oxygen Barons, page 21
As they walked down the hall, Galvanix noticed that one door bore the stenciled outline of what looked like a small animal. Prokashch followed Galvanix’s glance and smiled. “Would you like to see our meat crops?”
“No, thank you.” Galvanix had seen steakpups before, and took no comfort in hearing how the glistening creatures endured filleting without protest before waddling off to grow flesh anew.
Prokashch shook Galvanix’s hand at the pip entrance, all hearty congeniality. An indoor man, Galvanix thought, as he punched in the room number for the dorm where the lunar citizens lived.
He guessed where the pip was taking him as soon as it started moving. His weight falling steadily from him, the capsule rose toward the still center of the world. Galvanix knew with a jubilant surge that it would stop just as he reached his own level of gravity.
The doors slid open, and Galvanix stepped forward with familiar lightness. The room before him was large and bare, streaming with light from a long row of windows.
“Come in,” said a voice. “Enjoy the expanse. We lunar types never got used to your close walls, so we took them down.”
A young man was standing up in a recessed floor space, a pair of video goggles pushed up over his head. Galvanix saw his eyes widen as he studied Galvanix’s features. “Do I see a fellow exile?”
“Galvanix, of Tycho.” Galvanix inclined his head.
The young man leaped lightly from the pit and came forward with his hand extended. “Andrei Chen, shuttle pilot from Tsiolkovsky. When did they get you?”
Get? Galvanix thought. “I left Nearside thirteen days ago, but I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“Really?” Chen looked at him in amazement. “I assumed you had just been transferred. We’ve all been here for years. You broke the Embargo?”
Galvanix raised his hands self-deprecatingly. “Evidently one may still leave the Moon, Citizen. I have already been told I may not return, so the Embargo still holds.”
“Just call me Andrei,” said Chen as he led Galvanix toward the center of the room. “I’ve adopted orbital customs by now.”
Galvanix suspected that the man had long indulged the pilots’ characteristic weakness for orbital culture. He watched as Chen pulled the goggles off his head, shaking a spray of long hair back from his Eurasian features, and tossed them toward the floor pit. The goggles sailed in a slow lunar arc, so beautiful that Galvanix felt his throat catch.
“We keep militant lunar time,” Chen remarked, “so it’s around three A.M. here. Everyone else is asleep; I’m working night shift.” He laughed.
Galvanix saw that the floor was cratered with half a dozen sunken spaces. He could glimpse the bottom of the nearest one, where a still figure lay curled beneath a blanket. Galvanix raised a hand involuntarily to his mouth.
“They can’t hear us,” Chen said in a normal tone. “We lined the pits with acoustical tiles.”
Light threw elongated rectangles across the floor, falling neatly between the pits as though mindful of their contents. Looking more closely, Galvanix noticed that strips of cropped grass lay precisely within each sunlit area, like tiny lawns separating dwellings.
“Your grass seems to be nourished by a fixed light source,” Galvanix observed, amused.
“The windows? Oh, they’re quite real. We could program a nicely moving sun if we wanted fakes.”
Surprised, Galvanix approached the windows and looked out. Beyond lay a great open space, a canyon. Its opposite face, smooth as a cliff, glinted with windows.
Chen touched the edge of one pane and it swung open like a door. Galvanix jumped. “I can see you grew up near vacuum,” said Chen with a smile. A warm breeze touched their faces.
Galvanix leaned cautiously over the sill. Twenty meters below him a landscaped park spread along the canyon floor, like gardens between Earthly tenements. People strolled among the lawns and flower beds, oblivious of observing eyes. Galvanix ran his gaze up the far wall a dozen meters above. The facing walls seemed to lean toward each other, and Galvanix looked up to see them almost meet beneath a row of brilliant lights.
“Eldorado isn’t built like most geodes,” Chen remarked behind him. “Instead of the hollow center, they have splinters of open space, like flaws in a crystal.”
Galvanix gestured toward the far wall. “That looks like, what do they call it, a skyscraper?”
“I think so. Someone told me once the park reminded her of her backyard in Brasilia.” Chen opened a wall panel next to the window and removed a length of line, which he shook out to reveal a rope ladder. He tossed one end out the window and grinned. “They hate it when we do this.”
Galvanix watched Chen climb backward out the window, then swung his own legs over. The ladder consisted of a single strand of braided monofilament, with polymorph rungs that snapped rigid when the line was pulled straight. Galvanix descended without fear, though he remembered that the gravity would be higher at the bottom.
Chen was scurrying downward with practiced ease, his feet swinging over squares of greenery dotted with upturned faces. Despite his weight, the line pulled visibly to one side, as though hanging in a steady wind. Galvanix reminded himself that he too would fall along a diagonal, like a child flung from a merry-go-round.
Gravity was already pulling at his heels, its slight tug increasing at every step. Galvanix looked down and tried to estimate the g-force of ground level, thinking it could not increase too much over that distance. He was reassured to see the nearest passers-by gliding with springy steps.
Chen let go and dropped the last few yards, landing with an easy bounce. Galvanix descended a few rungs further and did likewise. He tried to remember leaping off bunks while living in the circumlunars, where a fall of even two meters would bring the deck rushing at you like a planet.
Galvanix steeled himself for impact, remembering to keep his knees bent. He hit the grass less hard than he had feared, springing upright with, he realized, a child’s foolish grin on his face.
Chen, looking equally pleased with himself, had caught the eye of two elderly women beyond a rose hedge. “Hello, ladies!” he called, raising an arm. The women waved back uncertainly.
“Everything in our room is bugged, or so we assume,” said Chen, taking Galvanix by the arm and setting off at a rapid stride. “Listening devices,” he added, seeing Galvanix’s blank expression.
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Not at all. We enjoy problematic legal status, and the war footing complicates matters further, all of which is set out at great length if you wish to check. Read your rights.” Chen bore down facetiously on those last words.
“War footing?”
“They don’t call it that, of course. Everyone’s terrified that this could become a shooting war, with people hurling missiles at each other. On Earth, of course, they’ve moved beyond that, with fusion pellets and things that congeal your proteins like egg whites, but old-fashioned kinetic weapons will work quite well in space.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Well, it hasn’t happened yet, but people talk.” Chen noticed Galvanix’s white face. “You mean you don’t know? Did the Embargo really close you off?”
“There had been talk …” Galvanix felt distress sweep over him. “Scholars assigned to project trends from the last date we had; astronomers watching Earthorbital space for changes in launch activity …”
“Then you’ve got no reason to be surprised. The Moon and the atmosphere of Venus are prizes worth fighting over. It’s the biggest allocation of resources since the European countries discovered the New World.”
Galvanix shook his head and bounded several steps ahead. “I know nothing of the last four years,” he said.
“Most of this is recent. Eldorado’s home corporation is one of the pioneers in Soliton technology, and will benefit hugely from the current terms of the Consortium. But if it entered these agreements knowing how the Tunnels would change the rules, it’s virtually a crime. Eldorado and the Encantadas just lost a decision in the World Court, and the radicals could move to attach their assets if something isn’t negotiated.”
“Madness,” Galvanix muttered. “How long have you been here?”
“Since the beginning,” said Chen, with a touch of pride. “I was on a layover, waiting to take the Siliy Golub back to Tsiolkovsky. A military delegation appeared and told me that the Moon had been sealed off — like a contaminated lab — and I would have to stay.” Chen shrugged. “I’ve been here ever since.”
“What were you doing when I came in?” Galvanix asked.
“Piecework. One buys things with money here, and you didn’t think they let me ply my trade.” Chen scuffed at a clod angrily with one foot. Galvanix had forgotten the pilots’ wild resentment at their inferior status. The elaborate safeguards that prevented intelligent machines from being misused also kept them too expensive for the Lunar Republic, which suspected that prices were further inflated by unacknowledged tariffs. The Republic consequently used human pilots for cargo runs, and was greeted with ridicule by those habitats that did not simply forbid dockings.
“I was offered work today,” Galvanix observed.
“Take it. You look like you could stand full gravity — they could ship you to a geode, or even Earth.” Chen raised his hand and began walking slower, his chest heaving. He caught Galvanix’s look of concern and grinned, a fine sheen on his high brow. “Remember, this is twice my gravity.”
So Chen had wanted to join the Expanding Frontier, yearning not to join the Earthorbitals but to sail out past Mars, where pioneers lived in the microgravity of the asteroids or the labs orbiting Jupiter. Galvanix felt a pang for the man’s balked ambitions.
“Are you trying to work up to full gravity?” he asked.
“What, and get sent out? Actually yes, but I’m in no hurry. Kind of a hobby.”
They had reached the edge of the park, which inclined upward to a small terrace surmounted by a wall of vine behind which metal gleamed. Chen turned and they started back, when Galvanix pointed suddenly at a black man strolling beyond a grassy knoll.
“Look, isn’t that a Namerican?” he asked.
“Who, the one with the black skin? Why would you say that?” Chen gave him a strange look. “You don’t think Namericans are all descended from Western blacks, do you? Anyway, skin color means nothing, lots of people go dark for cosmetic reasons or easy sun protection.”
“Oh.” Galvanix thought a moment, feeling his face grow red. “The one thing we felt sure about was that Namerica was hostile to the Lunar Republic.”
“That’s true enough, though we’ve got plenty of other enemies. The factions who don’t want squatters in their food factory are as nothing beside those seeking to scrap the Consortium.” Chen halted and sat, a brief look of surprise passing over his face as he hit the grass.
“The real radicals would undo everything,” he added. “Parcel out the atmosphere, send down their mining factories as though our Moon were a convenient asteroid. After a thousand years it will presumably have dispersed into a cloud of little geodes. They simply have no use for a world that unsuits its inhabitants for living elsewhere.”
Galvanix sat beside him, mindful of the higher gravity. “I thought Earth was developing medical techniques that would rehabilitate human tissues to full gravity.”
Chen laughed. “If that technology was perfected I’d be directing traffic in Zambia now. Don’t forget these people are ready to play rough. That’s why people talk about the emergence of oxygen barons.”
“Oxygen barons?”
“If me Consortium falls apart, the splinter groups will end up with those resources they already control or can grab. Periods of expansionary instability can lead to new divisions of wealth.” Galvanix wondered if Chen was quoting someone. “Even those left holding more than they can keep may negotiate to their advantage.”
“Like Yasuhiro,” Galvanix ventured.
“A pawn,” said Chen. “He’ll be rolled up like a carpet when the time comes.”
A wisp of vapor drifted across the array of lights overhead. Galvanix lifted his gaze in surprise as the light wavered, wondering if these wedges of space managed to experience weather.
Chen stood with an effort. “I should return to my work,” he said. “Fall behind schedule and they will tell me how reliable their machines are.”
Galvanix sprang up after him. “I should not have interrupted you,” he said. “Your kindness has cost you working time.”
Chen flicked his wrist, a very Earthorbital gesture. “Forget it.” He looked across the park to the rope ladder, which rippled slightly in the mild downdrafts. “Once they changed my thumb code while I was out here, denying me all access. A joke, but telling should you think we’re not surveilled. I had to climb the ladder to get back; nearly killed me.”
They crossed the lawn toward the park entrance, a large archway set like the entrance gate of a city wall. “You should stay here awhile,” Chen was saying. “People come only to relax, so they will talk to you.”
Galvanix watched the strolling orbitalists. “They don’t look as though the combine that owns their world is facing reversals.” He thought a moment. “What do bankrupt habitats do?”
Chen smiled. “They raise the rates for breathing, of course. What else?”
That evening Galvanix decided to face his dead. He shut the door, then ordered his system to defer calls. “You have a letter for me from Hiroko Nagashima, sent seven years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Can you print it for me?”
“It’s in full video.”
Galvanix had expected this. He dimmed the lights, then sat back in his chair, heart pounding.
“Run the message.”
The screen went from slate to a prefatory black. A second later it flicked alight, and Hiroko was on the wall before him. Galvanix almost cried aloud.
The figure, full scale, was Hiroko at the end of her life, when she had refused to let herself be seen. Galvanix had guessed that she would not look good, but had not prepared himself for this. Dark lids like sagging bruises rimmed her sunken eyes, which flicked to and from the camera. Her skin was blanched as a European’s. Shaved circles dotted her close-cropped skull like buttons.
“Yuri, I … don’t know when you will hear this. Maybe not for years.” She paused and drew a breath, which sounded wrong. “I’ll destroy it if I survive, which I won’t. So I have been dead for over a year. I hope you have buried your grief.”
“Stop,” ordered Galvanix. The image froze.
At once he regretted it, for the stilled face of his sister, caught on the wall like some agonized church-painting, became immediately intolerable. “Resume,” he said.
Hiroko dropped her eyes and took a breath. “I have written you all a letter. I didn’t say this, but the doctors think they know what is wrong with me. It has been identified only once before, in a lunar settler forty years ago. They now think that what’s attacking my glial cells is sustained by low gravity, and if I am sent to a geode or Earth its progress might be arrested. They cannot reverse it, though, and say it will resume as soon as I return to the Moon.
“The doctors have given the syndrome a name — not ours — and think it can affect about one person in ten thousand, if he spends his life in free fall or on the Moon. My own physician tells me that they will now be able to test for the condition, so others can be warned in advance and won’t have to suffer like this.”
Her image suddenly blurred with tears, which Galvanix fiercely blinked away.
“Anyway, I am not going to take their treatment. We tried it last week — they sent me on a trolley to the equator of this inside-out world, and I was flattened against my cot as though a giant was crushing me. The doctors told me that I would grow stronger in time: in a month I might be no worse than any other Moonie dropped on Earth, which is still pretty bad. I asked if I could ride this trolley every day — spend even one hour at lunar gravity — and they said no, the constant fluctuations would be worse than nothing at all.
“So I’m not going to do it. My doctor still wants to argue, but I know I’m right. She told me they might repair the damage to my brain someday, by tiny machines that rebuild brain cells molecule by molecule, but that’s no kind of life.”
Hiroko’s fretfully restless gaze settled at last on the camera. “But facing death brings some odd compensations in this world. Some people came to see me yesterday. They want me to consent to a special procedure, something they cannot ask of a citizen, a citizen of anywhere I guess. But we’re not citizens.” She laughed. “I’m going to agree, though it’s kind of awful, something they couldn’t ask even of a Moonie unless she were going to be dead soon anyway.”
