The Dark Side

by Anthony O'Neill

  Brass, who’s either seventy-two or seventy-five, depending on the source, is wearing a superbly tailored navy-blue suit with brass-colored pinstripes. His brass-tinted hair—still thick as bear’s fur—is swept back in a rolling wave. His skin is so smooth, tanned, and radiant that it shimmers like copper. And his eyes, the irises of which have been famously implanted with brass flecks, look lynx-like, mesmerizing. Even now, as his features contort into a look of well-timed dismay.

  “But you know, I hear there are still people who are questioning the expenses of this voyage. Who still think that I’m hostage to irrational dreams or delusions—after all these years!” Sympathetic sniggers. “And you know what I remember when I hear that? I just remember all the money I’ve personally funneled into the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. All those radiometers, spectrometers, reflectometers, all those interferometry arrays, poking into every corner of the cosmos, every sun, planet, moon, and black hole, hunting for any sort of signal, electromagnetic, infrared, microwave, anything that suggests a flicker of intelligent life, a scent of civilization, the purr of a motor—anything at all! Millions, I’ve spent on those searches—billions! And what have we come up with after all this time? After all that investment? Nothing! Not a thing! Not a goddamned thing!”

  Brass shakes his head, as if he’s only just started thinking about it.

  “So when the critics sneered at me and said how’s that, Mr. Brass, don’t you feel a little foolish now—well, for a moment I almost agreed with them. Yes, I think I was on the verge of feeling a little embarrassed. But then I remembered the silence. From outer space, I mean—the absolute silence. And the meaning of that silence. And do you know what I was able to say? Do you know how I was able to answer all those naysayers? All those cynics and skeptics who told me I’d wasted a fortune?”

  Justus has read this part too, and he just watches, fascinated by the performance.

  “I said hell no,” Brass goes on, “I’m not ashamed. I don’t regret one minute, not one goddamned cent, that I’ve spent on those radar arrays. And do you know why? Do you know why? Because you say there’s been no answer. Nothing, you say, has come from out there. But you’re wrong, you’re a million times wrong. Because let me tell you. Silence came from out there. And the silence is the answer. The silence is the answer. Do you see it? The undeniable logic, the peerless beauty of it all?”

  Brass lets the silence in the room reign for a few moments, as if to underline his point, and then rams the point home:

  “We are the only intelligent life in the universe. The human race! There’s no one and nothing else! Not a thing! Just us! And it’s a genuine miracle that we’ve gotten as far as we have! Because when you consider all the millions of ways there are for life to end on a planet—comets, radiation bursts, self-destruction—it’s absolutely incredible that we’re still alive. We’re actually overdue for a cataclysmic event, something that wipes out all intelligent life on Earth! And yet here we still are, so content and overconfident, trying to ignore that terrifying truth—that it’s all up to us. Everything! There’s no one here to guide us. We’re absolutely alone! But do you understand how awesome that message is? How profound? How unique, majestic, beautiful, how precious we are? And how important it is to populate other planets? To spread our species? To save us all from annihilation?”

  Brass has a feverish, evangelical tremble in his voice now that no doubt plays very well on television. But Justus can’t help remembering a Brass biography—one of the unauthorized ones—which spoke of his “expedient eleventh-hour appropriation of noble causes,” his “lamentable real-world record on environmental issues” and his “inexhaustible capacity to dress up his profit- and ego-driven projects as altruistic offerings to the altar of human progress.”

  But presently the man himself, having reached his pinnacle, is coming down from the heavens on a more self-effacing note.

  “Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, have I let my passions run away with me? Have I allowed my ‘messiah complex’ to take control again?” He looks around, fielding more laughs. “Forgive me, but I think you all know how much I have invested in this subject. In preserving our legacy. In saving our species. It’s the one thing that motivates me most. And I can’t see any reason to apologize for that. No matter what anyone—anyone—says.”

  He puts peculiar emphasis on that, not that Justus can work out why. And then his personal assistant—an ethereally handsome, statuesque fellow with grey hair, grey suit, and grey eyes, even more color-coordinated than his boss—calls the press conference to an end and everybody files dutifully toward the door. Nobody, not a soul, asks about the morning’s Goat House bombing—though Justus concedes that such questions might have been raised before he arrived. And now Brass is coming off the stage and Justus, at a signal from the grey-haired assistant, steps forward.

  “Mr. Brass,” he says, “I’m Lieutenant Damien Justus of the PPD.”

  “Lieutenant Justus?” Brass seizes the proffered hand. “Yes, I’ve heard about you—you’re the new appointment to our police department, aren’t you? The virgin?”

  “If that’s what they call them around here.”

  “I don’t mean it to sound disparaging. You’re the fresh blood that’s been injected into the PPD—how does that sound?”

  “Sounds fine to me.”

  “Well, a bit of fresh blood never goes astray, that’s what I always say. And in a police force especially it can be a real shot in the arm. It can have a very beneficial effect. So let me assure you you’re more than welcome here in Purgatory.”

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Brass. But I’m not here to talk about myself. I’m currently leading an investigation into—”

  “Into the murder of Otto Decker.” Brass, disengaging his hand, looks grave all of a sudden.

  “You know about that?”

  “I was informed just before the press conference. A little later than I would’ve been in normal circumstances, but—well, I’ve been unusually busy lately. Care to take a seat?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Justus says. “This is mainly an introductory visit—I just need to know if you’ll be available for future questioning, should the need arise.”

  “Of course I’m available. You’ll need to consult with my people first”—gesturing to his grey-haired assistant—“but naturally I’ll do anything to help. How is it proceeding, by the way?”

  “The investigation? It’s too early to say.”

  “You’ve been to the Goat House?”

  “Of course.”

  “You saw the bodies?”

  “I did.”

  Brass nods grimly. “Otto Decker was a personal friend of mine, you know.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “He was practically second in charge here—he had a big future, and an awful lot to live for.”

  “I’ve heard that too.”

  “Yes, well.” Up close Brass doesn’t seem nearly as magnetic—or tall, or handsome, or makeup-free—as he does onstage. “If you’re saying that I personally am under suspicion, then—”

  “I’m not saying any such thing, Mr. Brass.”

  “—then you should know that I’m entirely comfortable with that. I’m not frightened of having anyone rummage through my drawers. That’s the way it should be. And you should treat everyone here the same. Everyone.”

  “I intend to.”

  “Well . . . good.”

  “Then may I ask a question, Mr. Brass?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Do you have ideas about who did it? Any suspicions?”

  Brass blows out his cheeks. “Well, I wish I did. But there’s a singular demographic here, as you must know. A very wide range of people genetically disposed to crime and acts of rebellion.”

  “So you think this is an act of rebellion?”

  “I shudder to think so, but I can’t think of any other reason.”

  “Then can you think of any reason why anyone should be
rebelling right now?”

  “I don’t think people of a rebellious nature need any sort of reason.”

  “What about your daughter? Your relationship with her is rather strained, is it not?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Just something I heard.”

  “Well, now, listen here, Lieutenant”—Brass briefly looks ruffled—“just because my daughter and I have had a few spirited disagreements in the past doesn’t mean that she’d start doing . . . whatever it is that you think she’s doing.”

  “I didn’t say she was doing anything.”

  “Well . . . just as well.”

  “And you did say I should treat everyone the same.”

  “Of course.”

  “So I’m warning you, Mr. Brass: I’ll be digging. And I won’t hesitate to dig in your backyard. Or your daughter’s backyard. Or anywhere else I need to dig. Just as you said I should.”

  “Well, then”—Brass chuckles—“it sounds like we’re in furious agreement, doesn’t it?”

  “I hope so.”

  Brass looks Justus up and down with his brass-flecked eyes. “You know, Lieutenant, I already like you. You could go far in Purgatory.”

  “I’ve heard that too.”

  “Really? Seems like you’ve heard a great deal since you got here.”

  “I like to keep my ear to the ground.”

  “Well, keep it there, by all means. I don’t need to tell you how important this investigation is to me. Personally, I mean. I don’t want to see anyone else going the same way as my good friend Otto Decker.”

  They shake hands again—a little awkwardly this time—and Brass departs the room as if suddenly eager to get away. And Justus is standing still, wrestling with a sense that something is out of place, when the shadowy, grey-haired assistant steps forward and offers him a brass-bordered card.

  “This is the number to call if you wish to speak to Mr. Brass again.”

  “You’re his personal assistant?” Justus asks.

  “I prefer the term ‘valet,’ sir.”

  “And you’re an android?”

  The valet doesn’t blink. “That is correct, sir.”

  “Then I’ll call if I need to.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  As the droid leaves Justus looks down at the name on the card.

  LEONARDO GREY

  12

  OF ALL THE MYSTERIES the Moon continues to harbor—gravitational anomalies, magnetic inconsistencies, curious orange sands, and strange eruptions of vapor—none is more intriguing than its habit of ringing like a bell, sometimes for hours, when it’s struck by a meteorite. Notwithstanding the Moonball® advertising campaign that claims it’s filled with coffee syrup, no one, not even the most distinguished geologists, is sure what’s at the lunar core.

  Matthews and Jamieson are not yet distinguished geologists, but they plan to be. The star students of the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Alaska Anchorage, they are currently in the sixth month of a fully funded field survey of Farside. After so much artificial air, tasteless food, tepid coffee, and endless safety procedures, they are no longer excited about their lunar assignment, but they know that in the future they will treasure every moment of their time spent off-world. Plus they are both even-tempered. They don’t panic. They rarely bicker. And they get along extremely well—so well, in fact, they they’ve become firm friends since the start of the mission; not something that can be said of many scientists who work together on the Moon.

  Like all geologists, Matthews and Jamieson have their theories about the lunar core, but their current assignment—like their drill—does not extend quite that far. They’re collecting subsurface samples from between the 15th and 30th parallels in Farside’s southern hemisphere. Already they’ve done surveys of De Vries, Bergstrand, Aitken, and Cyrano Craters, amassing an impressive collection of breccias, agglutinates, glasses, and basaltic rock fragments. They applied for entry to Gagarin too, but failed to receive permission from OWIP. So they’ve settled on the smaller, still-unnamed craters to Gagarin’s immediate north. Here, as well as collecting more rock fragments, they’ve been particularly excited to discover thick deposits of low-calcium pyroxene, which might support the theory that this part of the Moon was once struck by some colossal foreign body, possibly bigger than an asteroid.

  Their base is a three-man shelter consisting of an all-purpose room, a hygiene center, a galley, and an airlock. Parts of it are collapsible, and the whole unit can be towed around on the back of their very long range traverse vehicle (VLTV). They also have an unpressurized LRV, but it’s twelve years old and prone to breakdowns.

  Presently their heating unit is malfunctioning, and they’re stripped down to their underwear owing to the oppressive temperature inside the shack. They’re looking through a window as their hydraulically operated drill rig—which on Earth would weigh ten thousand kilograms and take an eternity to transport and set up—ejects regolith into the air like an old-fashioned derrick. The dust shoots above the crater rim and shimmers in the sunlight, hanging in the air for minutes, electrostatically charged, before drifting back to the surface. Matthews and Jamieson could watch the process for hours—it’s mesmerizing—but not from anywhere other than the safety of their shack. Because lunar dust is evil. It works its way into creases. It abrades metal and erodes seams. If it’s inhaled it can lead to mesothelioma-like complications. And Matthews and Jamieson, for all the inherent dangers of their mission, are not risk takers. So they’ll wait until the dust has cleared—literally—before venturing outside.

  “What’s that?” says Matthews, leaning forward.

  “What’s what?” says Jamieson.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  Jamieson leans forward too, squinting, wiping moisture from the window. “Jesus Christ . . . what the . . . what the fuck’s he doing out there?”

  Matthews snorts. “Looks like he’s on a fuckin’ Sunday stroll.”

  “It’s gotta be some sort of joke.”

  “It’s no joke.”

  “Then what the . . . ?”

  A man, dressed like an old-fashioned FBI agent, is coming laterally down the crater slope. Hopping a little, to save time. An android, clearly. But not like any android Matthews and Jamieson have ever seen—certainly not on the Moon.

  He appears to be heading for their base. He’s making a detour to avoid the falling dust, but a good deal is still wafting over him. And he’s smiling. Smiling goofily, as though he already knows he is being observed.

  “Do we let him in?” asks Jamieson.

  “We have to, I guess. There are rules.”

  “The rules relate to human beings—in distress.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” In truth, Matthews isn’t entirely sure of the protocols.

  “He might be a pain in the ass.”

  “Of course he’ll be a pain in the ass.”

  “And what about the dust?”

  Matthews thinks for a few seconds, then says firmly, “I’ll take care of it.”

  Now the droid is standing outside, still smiling. And looking as though he has every expectation of being allowed inside.

  Matthews punches a button to open the outer airlock doors. The droid steps into the tiny, cubicle-like space. Matthews moves to a microphone.

  “Can you hear me?”

  The droid, now visible through a small observation window, hesitates—as if surprised by the sound of the voice. “I hear you.”

  “We don’t have much in the way of scrubbers here, and you seem to have picked up a bit of dust.”

  “That is correct—I have certainly accumulated some dust.”

  “Then we can’t let you inside until you strip down first—do you understand?”

  “That is perfectly reasonable,” says the droid. “I intend to wash my clothes, in any case.”

  Matthews and Jamieson glance at each other. Matthews shrugs. Then the droid is disrobing, and the two of them discreetly ave
rt their eyes. It’s absurd, of course, but the more lifelike droids can exude a palpable sexuality. It shouldn’t be an issue—Jamieson is fashionably asexual, and Matthews only likes women—but this droid is superbly toned, like one of those silicone-skinned love companions that feature so frequently in women’s erotic literature.

  A green light comes on—the airlock’s pressurization is complete. Matthews checks that the droid is ready and then opens the inner airlock door.

  The droid, wearing only some hipster briefs—disconcerting in itself, as humans on surface expeditions customarily wear thick, moisture-absorbing undershorts—steps into the shack, trailing the gunpowder stench of lunar dust. He takes a few seconds to survey the room, and eventually his gaze settles on Matthews and Jamieson. If he’s surprised—all three of them are in their underwear now—he doesn’t betray it.

  “A great pleasure to meet you, ladies,” he says. “I hope I have not come at an inconvenient time?”

  “No,” Matthews replies. “We were just preparing to suit up, that’s all.”

  “I see,” says the droid, and then appears to think a moment before he asks, “Are you whores?”

  Matthews blinks. “We’re not whores.”

  “Are you nuns?”

  “We’re not nuns either.”

  “Are you secretaries?”

  “We’re not secretaries.”

  “Are you shareholders, then?”

  “Shareholders?”

  “Do you hold stock in any listed company?”

  “Do we—no . . . no.”

  “Than what are you, madam?”

  “I’m a geologist. Jamieson here is a geochemist.”

  “I see.”

  The droid continues to smile. Standing there in his briefs, like an underwear model. It’s all so bizarre that Matthews has to break the tension.