Collected short fiction, p.799
Collected Short Fiction, page 799
“Mona!” he whispered. “Or Mona’s clone!”
2.
SHE STOPPED JUST BELOW OUR PLATFORM, STEPPED off her bicycle, and looked up at us. Pepe shook his head and gave the glasses back to me.
“No, she isn’t Mona.” His voice fell in disappointment. “She has the same blue eyes, but not Mona’s chin.”
She leaned the cycle against the side of the stairs, started up toward us, and paused to stare. In slacks and a neat green jacket, head bare and honey-colored hair cut short, she looked as enchanting as I thought the young Mona must have been when she came out of the east American hills to sing and dance for the ill-fated Earth. Nothing was wrong with her chin.
“May I climb up?”
Pepe grinned at her. “You’re halfway already.”
I stepped back into the doorway to make more room. She came up with us, flushed and a little breathless from her ride. She stood a moment staring at us, blue eyes wide with excitement.
“You are immortals?” Her voice was hushed with awe. “Truly immortals from the Moon.”
I left the answer to Pepe. He simply grinned at her, looking more breathless than she was.
“I know your picture from the history books.” She studied his face.
“You are Space Pilot Pedro Navarro.”
“Just call me Pepe.”
She looked at me. “You—you must be Dr. Yare? I know your writing of the immortals. The great epic of the impact and the restoration. Although many call it fiction I never understood how you became immortal.”
“We aren’t,” Pepe said. “Only clones. But Dunk and I are from Tycho Station, on the Moon.”
“If you really are!” She was flushed with emotion. “We’ve been waiting four hundred years, but I never really expected you now.” She stopped to catch her breath and her gaze grew sharper. “If I may ask you to talk—”
“OK,” Pepe said. “We’re talking.”
“OK?” She frowned. “Your words seem odd.”
“So do yours.” He grinned. “But let’s talk.”
She reached into a brown leather puree slung over her shoulder and turned to hand him a small white card. “I’m a watchbird,” she said, “for New World Reporter. I have questions.”
He examined the card and handed it to me. “What’s a watchbird?”
“A writer of events.” Her name on the card was Laura Grail. “Your coming is a historic event. Here is my great question.” She looked searchingly at me and back at Pepe. “Do you bring a warning for our world?”
“Warning?” Pepe shook his head, with a puzzled shrug. “No warning at all. We came just to survey the colony and report to the computer at the station. Your history. Your progress. Your problems, if you have problems. And most important to us, to find out what became of the survey party we sent last year.”
“No warning? You are certain?” She looked closely at me and back at him. “Don’t you search the sky for danger?”
“The computer does.”
“You see no threat of another impact? No great object coming out of space to strike the Earth?”
“Nothing at all.” She seemed to relax, and Pepe went on, “Here is our own big question. About our lost expedition. Two of our people left the Moon not a year ago in a craft like this one.”
She gave him a blank glance and shook her head, stepping back to look up in wonder at the shining silver tower of our hull.
“They planned to land here in this valley.” He gestured at the ice-crowned mountains that walled us in. “Do you know if they arrived?”
“I never heard—or maybe—” She blinked in a startled way. “There was a story nobody believed. An escaped slave who told tire ridiculous tales such men invent. He claimed to be an immortal from the Moon.”
“Only one?”
“A man and a female fugitive. Bounty hunters found them hiding on the ice.”
“What happened to them?”
“Nothing unusual. Slaves escape. If no owners are found, they go to public auction.”
“The woman?”
The girl turned from him to listen to the sound of distant music from somewhere beyond the open.
“I shouldn’t be here.” She frowned at the watchers on the rooftops and glanced uneasily around the empty field. “I must go.”
“Not yet!” Pepe begged her. “We just arrived. We’re desperate for answers. Everything is strange to us. Even the weather.” He grinned at Laura Grail, trying to detain her, and gestured beyond her at the shining peaks, the indigo sky, the towering cloud. “On the Moon we have a hot Sun and bitter nights, but no weather.”
“It’s spring.” She stared at our distorted images reflected in the ship’s ceramic skin and reached curiously to feel it. “Summer will be wanner, but we often have snow in the winters.” Her voice quickened. “For the Reporter, may I ask about your plans here?”
“First,” Pepe said, “we need help to locate our people. If they were that fugitive slave and tire woman with him.”
Her face grew grave.
“Slaves lie. The man spoke of a Moon ship that crashed on the glaciers, but no report of such a ship ever got past the censors. I advise you to forget the story.”
“Is there a reason to forget?”
“The Scienteers.” Gravely, she nodded. The watchers on the roofs were far away, but she still hushed her voice. “I should not have come here. If you are ever asked, you must not speak of me. Or speak of anything I say. Talk of Agents of the Moon could put my life in danger.”
“Not a word,” he promised. “Cross my heart.”
She looked puzzled.
He crossed his heart and asked, “What are Scienteers?”
“Enemies of the Regency.” Almost whispering, she stepped closer. “They call it a fraud and claim to be the only true Agents of the Moon. Bounty hunters are employed to hunt them down. They are killed or fed to the riders.”
“You say the slave and the convict were taken for Scienteers?”
“Perhaps.” She looked uncomfortable. “Such events are never published. And please understand. I don’t malign the Regent. He has greater problems than the Scienteers.”
“Yes?” Pepe asked. “Problems?”
“Everywhere. Rebels in America. Failure on the African front. Treason here at home. And he’s no longer young.”
“Are we another problem?”
Again I heard music from somewhere off the field, perhaps a military march. I saw her hands twist together as if in anxiety, but she smiled uneasily at Pepe.
“You should be safe,” she told him, “unless you are taken to be Scienteers.”
“We are not,” he assured her. “But we need to know all you can tell us about what not to say. What not to do. We are waiting for a reception. What does that mean?”
“A great honor, if you are really from the Moon.”
“What can we expect?”
“Questions, I’m sure.” She frowned, considering. “You should speak with care. The Regent sometimes has strange ideas. And strange advisers.”
“Can you tell us more about him? About the history of the colony? About the situation now?”
“In the time I have.” The military music rose again, and she glanced uneasily toward the gate. “If you wall not. speak of me.”
“We’ll say nothing.” Pepe offered his hand. I wondered if a handshake still had meaning here, but she smiled and gripped his hand. “We need your help and we are grateful for it. If there are questions, what would they be?”
Listening to the voices from the rooftops, she stepped closer to him.
“The Regent may want proof that you are actual Agents of the Moon.”
Thinking, she paused to brush the fair hair off her face. “He may ask if you have a message from the immortals. He may ask if you bring help from them. And—” She frowned. “I never said so, if anybody asks, but he may fear that you threaten his authority.”
“We didn’t come to meddle.”
“Our readers—” She paused again to listen. “They’ll be asking for any kind of message, if they believe you’re really from the Moon.”
“I suppose you can tell them that Tycho Station still exists to continue its original mission. That is, to repair the damage of the great impact and restore the civilization of Earth.”
“If that’s true—if the Regent believes it—he should welcome you. The Scienteers have never been certain of Tycho Station. They have suspected that it is only a myth, invented by the Regents to support their authority.”
“Don’t you have records?”
“None from the first century, accepted as authentic. The facts are all in question. Wars have been fought over tales nobody can prove. Scienteers have been burned for what they believe.”
“You yourself, what do you believe?”
She flushed and bit her lip.
“You should not ask such questions.”
“Forgive me,” he begged her. “What does anybody believe?”
She stood silent a moment, thoughtfully frowning, listening to the music from beyond the gate.
“OK,” she spoke at last, testing the new word. “Ask the Regents. Ask the Scienteers, if you can find one. The Regents like to call this field a holy spot. They believe that old spacecraft still stands where it landed. They have kept this space clear for a new craft to land here. Officially they are eager to welcome new Agents from the Moon.” She hesitated and dropped her voice again. “Privately, I imagine they might prefer for things to stay as they are.”
“The Scienteers?”
“They doubt the official story. As that goes, the immortals quarreled after the landing, and fought for command. Arne Linder killed his male companions and had a natural son by the Immortal Dian. The son became Arne the First, legitimate founder of the dynasty.”
“The Scienteers have another story?”
“The truth is hard to know, because old books and manuscripts are rare, perhaps destroyed by the early Regents. The Scienteers have claimed that the colonists made a safe landing, but too high in the valley. Avalanches caught all three men off the ship. The women survived to build the first maternity lab and clone new children. The Scienteers have denied that the Regents carry any natural immortal blood. That is the heart of their treason.”
“That’s our Arne.” Pepe grinned at me. “He always had to be the top dog.”
“Take care!” she warned him. “Care with what you say.”
“Give us more history,” he told her. “If our ignorance could kill us.”
“It really could.” Soberly she glanced back toward that high-arched gateway. “The first century was difficult. Even after it, Arne the Third was almost overthrown by the Chino wars. Yet a few of the later Regents were able rulers. Our civilization has spread east to the Pacific. A hundred years ago, Arne the Eighth began shipping convicts to North America. A long voyage to a strange land, where trees are said to sing and strange creatures fly. The colony became profitable in spite of the distance and all the hazards, shipping exotic exports, but it’s in rebellion now.”
“You spoke of war with Africa?”
“War with the black riders and the red jungle where they live.” She frowned. “It goes on forever. They’re slow, but they never stop pushing out. We’ve studied them, traded with them, tried to make peace, but nobody understands them. The Regent ought to hope that you have brought some better weapon.”
The music was louder, and she moved to the stairs. “Please forget me. I must go.”
“We can’t forget.” Pepe reached to take her hand. “Will we see you again?”
“I hope.” She caught his hand for a moment and ran back down the stairs.
“Laura Grail.” I heard him murmur her name as she jumped on the cycle and pedaled fast the way she had come. “A remarkable woman, and beautiful as Mona. Her eyes and her hair must come from Mona’s genes.”
We had both loved Mona, back at the station, though she had always chosen Casey. She had learned her mother’s dances, watched El Chino’s holo and had the robots teach her the act of defense, but she remained a free and charming spirit, ready for nearly anything.
“Great luck that Laura came.” Pepe watched her vanish through that narrow doorway. “She told us a lot we need to know.”
“And left us to wonder about all she had no time to say.”
The music boomed suddenly louder. A big man in blue and gleaming gold came strutting out of the open gate behind them, pounding an enormous drum. A flag bearer followed, then a dozen men with instruments blazing music that had a familiar beat.
“ ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever,’ ” Pepe murmured. “Arne used to play a record of it. But that’s a different flag.”
When the wind caught the flag, I saw that it was blue, with a white crescent at the center. The band marched straight toward us and stopped 20 yards away. The players separated and spread out to form a single rank.
“What now?” Pepe looked uncertainly at me. “Shouldn’t we go down and meet—”
He stopped when they turned away from us to face the gate and struck up another tune. Coming out of the gate was a huge sedan chair, gleaming with polished silver. It had seats for four. Eight men carried it. Black-skinned and bright with sweat, they were harnessed with straps to the poles, four men in front and four in the rear. They stopped at the foot of our stair.
Pepe snatched for the binoculars. The single passenger was Thomas Drake, the little man who had come in the rickshaw to meet us. He shouted a sharp command. The bearers bent to set the chair on the ground. He stepped out, knelt formally before us, rose again to face us.
“Your Worships—” His high voice paused. “Forgive me, I am ignorant of your proper titles.”
Pepe stood silent, staring through the glasses.
“No matter,” I called. “We are ready.”
“Thank you, sire.” Drake wiped a shaking hand across his forehead. “If you will descend, Deputy Regent Frye is waiting to receive you.”
When Pepe didn’t move, I caught his and to urge him toward the steps and found him stiffly rigid. I heard the sharp catch of his breath. Without a word, he thrust the glasses abruptly at me.
3.
PEPE KEPT THE GLASSES ON THE MEN AT THE CARriage poles. They looked identical. Naked except for blue loincloths, they were black as the man who had pulled the rickshaw. Whiting, they stood rigid, eyes fixed straight ahead, faces expressionless as our robots at the station.
“Look!” lie was hoarse and breathless. “Look at their faces.” His hand shaking, he gave the glasses to me. “They’re Casey!”
I got the faces in focus. Masks rather than anything alive, they were frozen copies of his black Asian features, empty eyes blindly staring.
“The beads!” he whispered, “on their foreheads.”
The men were bending in unison to set the chair down. I focused on the black foreheads and the blacker beads centered on them, each small bead with a thin red stain of blood below it. Not mere ornaments, they were hard-shelled bugs, skull-shaped, slick and bright. More alive than the men they clung to, they were watching us with tiny white-rimmed eyes.
The sight recalled a thousand aching recollections of Casey as I grew up with him on the Moon. I remembered how he used to let Arne beat him at chess again and again, just to keep Arne at the game board. I remembered how he used to tease Mona about a little heart-shaped freckle on the side of her nose. I remembered how he used to coax us to read Shakespeare’s plays aloud because he loved the language and the drama, always wanting the roles of the villains, Shylock and the Moor and Macbeth, for himself.
Remembering, I felt sick.
“I know those bugs,” Pepe was whispering, “from those reports of the survey expedition before we sent the colonists down. When you and Casey and Calvin landed in Africa.”
We had all read the transcripts and listened to the audios again and again, till in our minds we were the clone selves who had spent their last days here on Earth five hundred years ago. I remembered the rust-red hue of the continent when we saw it from space, remembered the landing in the thorn jungle north of Kilimanjaro, remembered the tangle of saw-edged blades taller than we were.
Calvin DeFort had left the plane to look for whatever built the roads and cities we had seen from space. He never came back. Casey went out to look for him and met the tiling that mauled and nearly killed him. A slick black creature the size of a human skull, it had clung with saber-like limbs to the larger alien creature it rode. It sprang free when Casey killed the creature under it, sprang at him, sliced his arms with its talons, chased him back into the jungle, left an infection in his wounds that nearly killed him.
These beads were tiny copies of it.
“You called them vampires!” Pepe whispered again. “Monsters from somewhere off the Earth. Now. . . .” He gripped my arm hard and stood a long time staling down at the big chair and the eight identical black men standing robot-like at the poles. “Now riding us. Ruling our bodies and sucking our blood.” His face had gone hard and cold. A bitter grin twisted it. “I think the colonists have created their own hot little corner of hell.”
Drake had come to the foot of the stairs.
“Your Worships?” He seemed impatient and uneasy. “Are you ready?”
Teeth gritted, Pepe led the way down. Drake gave us a sweaty handshake and gestured us into the chair. At a sharp word from Drake, the bearers picked it up and ran with us back through the gate and down a wide avenue.
“Moon Boulevard.” Drake gestured. “It runs from the Moon Pad through the government district. The directorates are located along it.”
Men in blue-black uniforms guarded street intersections, and brighter-clad people lined the sidewalks. Most fell silent as we came by. Now and then I heard a patter of awed applause, or a child’s voice, quickly hushed.
Looking ahead, wondering about the city and the state of the Regency, I saw no Hashing signs, no rail tracks, no high towers. Because there was no electricity? Yet the colonists learned to do without. Everything looked well constructed, most of the buildings laid up with some white stone, roofed with red tile, set back from a line of trees at the edge of the empty pavement. The city had an air of solid prosperity.
