Rich Man's Sky

by Wil McCarthy

  There are further steps to the growing process, or precursors, rather, for we have to grind the soil to make it safe to bring indoors. Imagine, if you will, that it has lain unweathered in the sunlight for more years than there are humans alive, and each teaspoon is basically a trillion-strong pile of microscopic stone arrowheads that would tear us up inside if we let them. And tear the plants up, too, most likely, unless they have cellular repair mechanisms we ourselves do not. But if we grind the regolith too fine, it becomes airborne too easily in the low gravity, and if too coarse then any water we pour into it slides right through, as through a column of gravel. For posterity, please know that a hundred-micron average particle size does the trick of being soil.

  And so, with ground, hydrated, nitrogenated moondust in our greenhouse pots, we have seed-to-seeded another subfraction of nature’s bounty. What grows, you ask? Spices, for one. We have, for example, field mustard, whose seeds become the yellow stuff you spread on hot dogs, and whose leaves are as edible as kale, with a slightly peppery kick. Also blue stonecrop, which is astringent and makes a good salad dressing, and French marigold, a relative of cloves and cinnamon whose petals resemble saffron in both color and flavor. Also marsh thistle, which gives up a sweet syrup, and given the appetite for sulfur within the genus Allium, I remain hopeful that either onions, shallots, leeks, chives, or garlic can be coaxed to grow as well. So please, yes, send these seeds above all others. As for food crops, there are several that grow but refuse to flower, but we can reliably get seeds back from tomatoes, rye, wild carrot, and garden cress.

  Can you see, dearest, the beginning suggestions of a Lunar native cuisine? Already we’ve served a tangy rye pasta with a sort of red-orange lupini sauce like nothing you’ve ever tasted, along with a salad of greens and shredded carrots, topped by a citrusy drizzle of pulverized plant matter. Delish! And all of it won, atom-by-atom, from the rocks of an unliving universe, feeding into our bodies matter that has never touched the Earth. And so, bit by bit, morsel by morsel, we become Lunar and asteroidal, leaving Eden behind to the meek, who shall indeed inherit. And if food tastes better when the diner is camping, rest assured it tastes better still when seducing a dead planet to join forces with the living. If there be a greater calling for any human life, I confess I know it not and seek it never.

  My darling I am, very yours and very truly,

  Brother Michael Jablonski de la Lune

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  Dear Mike,

  Your pomposity, while hilarious, does indeed teeter dangerously on the brink of vanity. I will consider your letter a private confession of this sin and will ask you, in your morning prayers, to add a daily plea for forgiveness. Please resume ordering water from Shackleton Lunar Industrial Station. You can cut the order in half if you like, but the goodwill of Harvest Moon Industries in general and Sir Lawrence Edgar Killian in particular is at stake. The Vatican relies on goodwill more than you seem to realize, and at the moment the Church appears to be serving as an important bridge between corporate and government interests on the Moon. You do not exist in a vacuum, my friend, and yes, that’s a joke.

  As for being the abbot of something that hangs above me in the sky, it may interest you to know I not only smile warmly at the Man in the Moon when I see him winking down at me, and think of you guys standing there on his chin, but I’ve added an app to my glasses that shows me the position of the Moon at all times, including when it’s located behind the ground underneath my feet. So my thoughts are with you and your brothers constantly. Frankly, so are everyone else’s; this is one of the highest-profile projects the Church has ever undertaken.

  Thanks to generous donations, your seeds are on their way, and should arrive by the end of the week.

  With love and kindness,

  Fr. Bertram Meagher, Mdiv

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  My Dearest Father Bertram,

  Harvest Moon’s public relations gaggle needs to learn how to read a map; Shackleton was the name of their proposed base at Shackleton crater, fully four hundred kilometers from here. Since the U.N. denied their mineral claim for that site, deeming it of greater scientific than commercial interest, the base has instead been constructed along the promontory between craters Shoemaker and Faustini. The new claim is quite a bit larger than the original request, covering both craters lip to lip, with a kilometer-wide strip of land in between, along which they have bulldozed a road. They don’t need a road, you understand; they simply want to mark the place up so the brochure photos look impressive. For the same reason, I have asked them to bulldoze a driveway to St. Joseph’s, which sits a little over a kilometer past the boundary of their claim.

  The Chinese, meanwhile, have bribed their way to ownership of nearly the entire North Polar Mineral Territory. One hopes they’ll bring a balance of men and women there, for it does seem odd, that here at Saint Joe we have a pile of men, while ESL1 has a floating swarm of women with, somehow still, a man in command of them. Of course, of the billions of women who exist, Renz Ventures selects only those dozens who don’t find this too problematic, and yet, strange are the tides that segregate the children of Adam and Eve in this way, and strange is the future ahead, if others should follow suit. Danny Beseman and Sir Lawrence both have a better track record of gender-blending, and one hopes that Mars and Luna, respectively, will benefit therefrom, and yet they still are the fingers of a man’s man’s world, reaching upward into heaven in a way the Creator does not command nor, presumably, endorse. From the confines of our crater there is little we can do about the patriarchal plight of women, but I can at least write you, Bertie my love, of my concerns on the matter.

  In any case, the Mandarins can keep the north pole as far as I’m concerned, for while the overall water content is greater there than here, at the opposite end, the concentrations are lower, whereas each of Sir Larry’s craters holds a cubic kilometer of ice so clean that an intrepid astronaut could very nearly strap on skates and a tutu and start tracing out figure eights. I can hear the sprightly dance music already!

  You should know, if only for the sake of intellectual rigor and emotional rectitude, that if you blow kisses to us upon the chin of the Man in the Moon, you’re more than two thousand kilometers off the mark, for we stand in truth upon his left cheek, like hairs upon a mole.

  Oh, and by the bye, could you check on something urgent for me? Since we do not own the mineral rights to the land on which we sit, by my reading of the Reformed Moon Treaty, we’re in violation if we invite the boys from Moonbase Larry over to dine on native cuisine, but not if we feed them earthstuff grown from our own shit. Is this accurate? It seems rather rude.

  Very yours and very truly,

  Brother Michael Jablonski de la Lune

  4.1

  22 March

  ✧

  Clementine Cislunar Fuel Depot

  Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1

  Cislunar Space

  “Sir,” an anonymous functionary was saying, “we had very little warning you were coming.”

  His accent was Moldovan. He was blocking the hatchway that led from the pressurized hangar to the station interior, forcing Grigory to hold a grab rail to keep from floating away. The wisdom of including a pressurized hangar in this station was debatable, but Grigory had wanted his men to be able to load, unload, and service gatherbots in a shirtsleeve environment, and that had seemed the easiest way. But the problem with a big open space like this was that if you weren’t extremely careful, you could get stranded in midair and have to wait for air currents to drift you toward a surface. Not even microgravity to help you here at L1.

  Impatiently, Grigory asked the functionary, “For what do you require warning, crewman? To cover up your failings? This facility should be prepared for all things at all times. May I enter?”

  “Of course, sir. Apologies, sir.”

  The functionary (whose name tag said Epureanu) was blocking the hatchway, but presently he attempted to bow and fold his hands submissively,
and also to step out of the way, but since there was no gravity here both instincts failed him, and he simply flopped and rotated in the air. Grigory felt momentary embarrassment for the man, and also the countervailing urge to simply brush him aside like a curtain and swing into the station—his station: the Clementine Cislunar Fuel Depot.

  But he reminded himself why this young man was afraid: not of being pushed aside, not of looking a fool. Of losing his job, perhaps, but at the very back of it all he was fearful of being stuffed out an airlock and declared an industrial accident. Such fears were useful, and Grigory knew better than to squander them with petty schoolyard behavior. Instead, he waited silently, which he could see on Epureanu’s face was far more effective.

  The man got fumblingly out of Grigory’s way, and then Grigory did enter. And now that his point was made, he let the sympathy rise to the surface, and he said, “I don’t know you. They sent you down here alone, to face whatever mood brought the boss here ahead of schedule, in an otherwise empty shuttle. I spent a hundred million dollars to arrive here early, and this makes them afraid. So they sent you.”

  “Sir,” the functionary agreed, apparently unsure what else to say.

  “Rest assured, if I’m indeed angry it is not with you, nor will they succeed in deflecting it onto you by such tactics.”

  “Sir,” the man said again. “Thank you, sir.”

  “What is your job here?”

  “Maintenance supervisor, sir. My crew checks the gatherbots every time they come in.”

  “Ah. Real work, then.”

  “I don’t hold a wrench,” Epureanu admitted, “but I put in longer hours than the men and women who do.”

  Grigory considered this. For the man to speak so—like a human being talking to another human being—implied some courage back there behind the nervousness. Grigory decided to respond as a fellow human, and so he said, “Men of small imagination expect me to behave like a cartoon gangster, and I find it is easier to oblige them than to explain why I don’t need to. Thus, I have brought real vodka with me, and real caviar, and two cigars. Only two, Epureanu, to show who has earned my favor. In two hours’ time, you will join me in the mess hall for a public celebration, to show these men they fear the wrong things. What is it with spacemen, ah? So smart, such strong chins, and yet so many of them are fools.”

  “Yes, sir,” Epureanu agreed. Back now to playing recorded phrases from the Obsequious Spaceman Handbook.

  Grigory sighed. Perhaps the vodka would loosen this man’s tongue, and once the cigars were lit and the caviar and eggs and chopped onion consumed, Grigory would also invite Morozov and Voronin, the station’s commander and subcommander, to join the party, lest their offended dignity get the better of them and swing back against Epureanu somehow. And when they’d all had a few drinks, then and only then could they truly speak. He’d often thought this was the real reason for Russian alcoholism; not the grim winters, not the wild gyrations of the economy, but a simple inability to connect, person to person, in any other way, alas. Or perhaps an unwillingness, but it amounted to the same thing; Russian culture admitted few other bonding mechanisms.

  In zero gravity, one did not sling one’s flight bag over one’s shoulder. Rather, one tucked it under one’s arm and kicked off with the feet. Grigory brushed past Epureanu and made his way into the station proper.

  “Why are you here?” Epureanu asked.

  “The Coalition has put a naval blockade on Suriname. Surface ships are prevented from entering or leaving the country until further notice.”

  “Oh. Shit. Really?”

  “Yes, really. The bastards fear what they can’t beat.”

  “Well, uh, your quarters have been prepared,” Epureanu said, trailing along behind him. “By me, I mean. Personally.”

  “Good,” Grigory said. “I’ll take a large shit and then head down to Operations.”

  “May I ask, sir? Why don’t you have any windows in there?”

  Because I fear assassins looking in there through telescopes and knowing for sure that’s where I am, Grigory was tempted to say. Instead, he answered, “The Sun revolves very slowly around the station, once per month, and when it’s on this side I find no window shade ever fully blocks it out. You live here, this should be obvious. But this is not the time for small talk, Epureanu. You’re dismissed. No need to hang at my elbow while I shit, ah? You’ll meet me in two hours, and I’ll tell you all about it at that time.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Epureanu looked grateful to have the opportunity to retreat.

  Grigory sighed. Alone among the Horsemen, he had not built his empire from scratch, but inherited the foundations of it from his father, Magnus Orlov, the Great and Terrible. It was hardly Grigory’s own fault that he’d inherited a very Russian legacy of violence and corruption, with all the attendant risks. He had standards to uphold, and quite frankly Orlov Petrochemical had always run on fear and jealousy and greed, in that order, and such a legacy was not lightly overturned if one valued one’s life. Indeed, it was by paying close attention to this legacy that Grigory had expanded his father’s business into nuclear fusion, and then into asteroid mining.

  And so, in order to maintain a reputation as the sort of person who could have you killed, Grigory had in fact had people killed. He had, yes, but only twice! And only because there truly hadn’t seemed to be any way around it. But twice went a long way, and the people who worked for him sometimes also had people killed, and all of that stuck to him, as he supposed it must. The Eastern Bloc energy sector was not for the squeamish or faint of heart. Which of course made it all the more annoying that Morozov and Voronin had sent a junior manager—a foreign junior manager—to receive him. After all this time, they should certainly know better than that.

  In Operations, Morozov looked up at Grigory’s arrival.

  “Mr. Orlov,” he said, with utmost respect and just a tinge of resignation. “You made it.”

  “I did.”

  “Welcome,” said Voronin. “I see you dodged the blockade.”

  There were three other people in here—two men and a woman—but none dared look up from their tasks.

  “I did,” Grigory said again. In truth, he’d taken what he feared might be the last commercial flight into Paramaribo—a commercial flight!—and then ordered a shuttle slapped on top of the next available OP rocket, and he had flown it here himself, not trusting any automated systems because the shuttles were built by Lockheed Martin and not his own people. But he made it here, yes, because he feared what violence might happen to his reputation if the Godfather of Space and scariest of Horsemen should find himself trapped Earthside. Space assets created a small fraction of his total revenue, but close to one hundred percent of his growth potential and perceived importance, and he wasn’t about to compromise that.

  “What is our status?” he demanded, leaving the question deliberately open-ended just to see what they would say.

  It was Morozov who spoke first: “Still operating, for the moment. Enough of our LV fuel production has shifted into Suriname that we’ll keep flying for another ten days. But then, if the blockade doesn’t open up, we’ll be out of launch vehicles. And that’s the most optimistic scenario; if the Coalition declares a no-fly zone, we’re grounded immediately and for the duration.”

  “Duration of what?” Voronin asked.

  “Of whatever these cocksuckers are doing,” Morozov answered.

  Men of little imagination, yes. Grigory told them, “Our facility is not the target of this interference. Although we could bomb them from orbit, the governments of the world know we’re within reach of their immediate reprisal. What do they fear? Rogue actors.”

  “Renz Ventures?” Voronin asked.

  “Of course,” Grigory said. “Who else? But Esley is a long way off. To attack there would be costly, and slow, whereas a naval blockade of Suriname requires only a reallocation of existing military assets.”

  “Making us collateral damage,�
�� Voronin said, getting it.

  “Indeed. Along with all space commerce that doesn’t go through Coalition governments directly. This is fear, gentlemen. Fear of the unknown, and of the future generally. These governments pine for days gone by, when men like us were under their thumbs, or at their service. And how do we respond to fear?”

  He waited a few seconds, for an answer he knew they wouldn’t attempt, because they themselves were afraid. Of the unknown, of what he might do to them if the Clementine Cislunar Fuel Depot were idled for even just a few days. Then he answered the question himself: “We feed it, while appearing to cooperate. We can still land things on Earth, yes?”

  “In Kazakhstan and North Africa,” Morozov agreed. “Or on the ocean.”

  “Fine. That’s fine. Order twenty landing bodies from Renz, one every week until further notice, rush delivery. We’ll repay their fuel costs in kind, with fuel. What do we make here, Morozov?”

  “Fuel.”

  Orlov snorted. “You’re a small man, you know that?”

  Morozov looked offended. “You tell me, then. What do we make?”

  “Customers, Andrei. We make customers. Tell Harvest Moon we’ll buy their entire output of Helium-three for the next four years.”

  It was the oldest play from Magnus Orlov’s rulebook: find what people need, and position yourself between them and it, and charge as much as the market would bear, and ignore the weeping of widows and orphans. It had worked for Magnus in oil and gas and the refineries to process them, and for Grigory in deuterium—heavy hydrogen—and the fusion reactors to ignite it, hot as the Sun.