“Loud and clear. How long do I have?”
“We open the box in less than a minute. The site is still in shadow, but you’ll only have another thirty seconds or so before it starts.”
“Roger that. Just hope we can keep in touch after I launch.”
“Thirty seconds. They tell us you’ll be able to. I’m sure they’re right.”
He grunted. “Hope so.”
“Get ready. Box is opening now. Water’s running.”
Another voice came on. “Check. Pressure acceptable.”
“Clear the pad,” said the Mission Specialist. “Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Confirmation. Target has acquired light.”
He gritted his teeth, waiting for the first jolt, hoping it would only be that and not he and his vessel being crushed. But nothing came. He was about to ask what was happening when the second voice came on again.
“We have contact on all three stalks.”
“Roger,” came a third voice. “Automated systems working fine. The mirrors are steering them, directing the light correctly, no faults found.”
“Ready the latches.”
A row of gauges and blinking lights sat above his head. He reached up and cleared the board, readied three switches. “Tell me when.”
“Get ready,” said the Mission Specialist. “Number Two now.”
He flipped up the second switch. There was a scraping sound and the vehicle slid up and to the left a bit.
“Number One now.”
He threw the first switch. More scraping, and this time the nose tilted up and to the right.
“Number Three now.”
He threw the final switch, listened to the grinding as it bumped against the hull and then was caught by the latch. “All green inside,” he said.
“Roger that,” came the reply. “Looks like three good contacts from down here. Liftoff is going fine, and velocity is increasing.”
He could feel more motion now. At first the most he was getting was the sensation of being jostled and bumped back and forth. But now he was beginning to feel the acceleration, enough that he was even being pressed back into his couch.
“Five hundred meters,” said the Mission Specialist.
“Roger.” Checking his chronometer, he blinked in surprise. Test launches had never gone this quickly. Of course, limited resources had kept them from using more than one in each of the two previous tests, rather than the three for this voyage. He hoped he wouldn’t overshoot.
“Thousand meters,” came the voice again. It was sounding more distant and tinny. They were going to try and hook repeaters along the length of it, but if they weren’t successful, he could count on losing contact very soon now.
Nothing to concern himself about now. He busied himself by checking instrumentation, making sure everything was working all right. Every once in a while he looked out the small window in the hatch, watching the Moon as it grew ever larger.
“Fifteen hundred meters.” The voice sounded even farther away now. “Damn it. Sorry, we weren’t able to get the repeaters on. The whole load got crushed when one of the stalks coiled over.” He closed his eyes, listened to his breathing and to the steady rumble as he ascended higher and higher.
“Roger. Watch for me at the appointed hour, no matter.”
“Affirmative.” The voice scratched, broke up for a few seconds, then for a moment was overridden by voices from the Firmament, mysterious message crackling and hissing in the background: “Welcher Engel ist dies? Von welcher Höhe sprichts du?” Then one last whisper from Earth. “Do us proud.”
He knew he was going to be on his own this trip anyhow, with or without communication with home. More Firmamental interference was starting to slip through, so he shut off the choralis and turned to watch the Moon grow larger.
Soon he would be there, and no matter what happened after, he would always be known as Jack Armstrong, First Man on the Moon.
Provided the beanstalk was able to get him there.
The face of the Moon now covered the entire sky. He could now see the gardens the astrologers had divined, long rows of green marching alongside the blue of a finger-shaped lake. And at the end of the lake there hovered the clouds that were there each and every day, hiding what no one knew.
But the astrologers and the high foreheads said they knew it must be important, and that was why Jack was on this mission. Even if it was only contact with whoever tended the gardens.
It seemed now like he was upside-down, land rushing to greet him as he plummeted towards a crushing impact. But at the last minute Jack activated the forward parasol, and in the ensuing shadow the stalks twisted and twirled in their desperate search for moonlight. The vehicle did a stomach-wrenching spin and then settled down on the surface of the Moon as light as a feather.
Jack switched on the choralis. “The Aquila has landed,” he said, sure they wouldn’t be able to hear him, but still wanting to follow the established procedures.
The speakers responded with more Firmamental interference, a high, soft voice saying, “Ningún angel está a salvo en este lugar. ¡Ten cuidado! ¡Ten cuidado!”
A twist of the handle and the latch popped open. It was daytime here, as opposed to night back on Earth. Jack supposed this made sense, with the face of the Moon being lit so bright with every pass it made overhead.
He unbuckled himself and sat straight up, leaning over to get as good a look as he could through his helmet. He had landed on soil, dark gray dirt that looked to have the consistency of the fine chalk one of his old schoolmasters had used when summoning a demon for lessons. In the distance he could see a band of green, and beyond that what looked to be fog. Overhead sat the Earth, a broad blue and brown disk, and beyond it sat the Sun, harsh yellow peeking out from behind its (Earth-related) nighttime hiding spot along the Universal Plane.
Hefting his dephlogisticator, he swung his legs over the edge and gingerly set foot on the surface of the Moon. He felt lighter here, enough to possibly make a significant difference in his step. Choralis still on and still whispering scratchy nonsense, he announced, “That’s a small footstep for one man; a giant reach for much of mankind.” He smiled. Suitably overdone, just what the guys back on Earth would like.
The high foreheads and all of the astrologers had predicted that the Lunar day would be longer than an Earth day, and today the full moon was due to sit visible in the sky for several hours after the Sun poked its nose over the Plane again. All this meant that Jack had extra time to explore, but not enough to waste. He had to take care of his assignment and get back down the beanstalk before it wilted away when the moonlight disappeared.
Resting his dephlogisticator on the ground beside him, Jack reached back into the Aquila and began pulling out supplies. A small backpack with food and medical and foraging supplies came first, followed by a small bag that held his camera distincta and camera activus. He pulled both of these from their bag and took both still and moving images of the surrounding landscape, as well as of the Earth overhead.
Checking the wristband on the outside of his suit, he found that his compass didn’t work; it seemed that the high foreheads and astrologers were right and that the Moon did not have a population of tiny lode-mites to tell the hand which way to point. Jack knew that whatever was behind the fog was most likely his destination, but he would need a method to find his way back to the beanstalk when it was time to descend.
He rummaged through his supply pack for a moment, first pulling out a loaf of bread. That idea was swiftly ruled out by a memory of something that had happened to two of his mother’s cousins when they were children, many years before; he wasn’t sure if there were birds and rodents on the Moon, but he didn’t want to chance it. He finally settled on a bag of brightly-colored clarifying beads, carried with him as trade goods in case there were primitive natives in charge of the gardens. He dropped the first bead to make sure that it would work, watched as a mirror image of himself and his surroundings rose
up out of the dust, then from the corner of his eye watched it slowly slink back into the bead as he turned away.
There was only one thing left to do before he started on his way. Reaching back into the Aquila, he pulled from it a small glass tubule, stoppered with a cork. Inside sat a compost of moldy leaves and bits of rancid fat, collected with great care by one of the high foreheads from an abiogenesis facility in a town near the launch site.
Jack carefully slid the tubule into a special slot in his dephlogisticator and sealed it in. Removing the cork took some delicate handiwork after all this, but with the help of some tweezers sewn into the inside of the leather cover, he managed to do so. A turn of a dial increased the flow of air into the tubule, and another dial released a special mixture of alchemical components apparently guaranteed to speed the process of spontaneous generation.
With the chronometer embedded beside the useless compass in Jack’s suit wrist, he counted out the minutes required. When time was up, he slid back the cover and pulled the tubule out of its pocket.
Sure enough, maggots swarmed through the mulch, wriggling madly as they ate their way through the disgusting mixture. Jack knelt down and poured the contents out onto the Lunar dust, watching carefully for adverse reactions from any of the pasty white grubs.
Nothing untoward happened. Indeed, some of the maggots were already covering themselves with a hard white shell, sure sign that they were preparing to give up their spot in the ladder of life to small flies.
Jack turned a third dial, listened as the hiss of incoming air slowly died away. When he could hear nothing but his own breathing, he inhaled deeply and detached his helmet from its locking mechanism. The air was cool, but temperate. A slow breath out, and then he breathed in, cautiously.
Everything was fine. The air tasted and smelled a touch rancid, but certainly no worse than his own body odors.
There was a spare microphone and earpiece in one of his pockets, so he put them on and plugged them in to the slot in the suit just under his left ear. Background noise and chatter still seemed to dominate the choralis, but he thought he could hear the Mission Specialist speaking, something about clouds, he thought. If so, a response was certainly in order.
“I am leaving now for the clouds. The air here is fine to breathe, and I expect to have answers shortly.”
A squeal of more Firmamental interference followed this pronouncement, high-pitched whine and harp music somewhat ludicrously combined, and then a distant voice, yet again, speaking vaguely familiar nonsense: “Ange! N’y va pas! Tu ne pourrais pas survivre là-bas! Je t’en prie, reviens tout de suite à la Strate Omniprésente.”
Turning the receiver volume down to a less-irritating background hiss, Jack unhooked his dephlogisticator and set it inside the Aquila, then strapped his pack over his suit and lifted the camera bag to his shoulder. He peeled off his gloves so that he would be able to handle the clarifying beads with greater dexterity, and then set off in search of what lay behind the clouds.
The Lunar desert he and his vessel had occupied soon gave way to a plain, fields of golden grasses waving in the soft, cool breeze. The grasses were taller than Jack, but fortunately they parted often enough for him to keep an eye on the bank of white clouds that served as cover for his mysterious destination. Jack stopped and took a picture here, making sure he got it from an angle that included the Earth in the sky.
The plain was soon followed by the gardens whose existence the astrologers had predicted. He stood on the crest of a small hill and looked down on row after row after row of vegetation, all recognizable as fruits and vegetables he would know, but all enormous, salads to feed an army; no, a nation. Perhaps they grew such for the same reason he felt less weight. Or perhaps whoever grew and ate them . . . And then the clouds parted for the briefest of instances, and Jack had a glimpse of the secret that stood at the edge of the lake. It was a castle, a giant stone edifice larger than any mighty wizard or high forehead on Earth could ever hope to possess. Jack saw brief details of high, steep stairs leading to a massive, dark keep, of crenellations, turrets, and uncovered parapets, all watched over by a motley collection of weathered, disturbed and angry-looking gargoyles. But then like a curtain being drawn back into place, Jack was no longer looking at the solid, ominous gray of old stone, but rather the unformed wispy slate of fog and cloud.
Dropping another bead, Jack continued on his way, the castle his confirmed destination.
At first he thought perhaps it was a trick of perspective, but as Jack neared the castle and the clouds slowly gave way, he could see what looked to be an old woman standing on one of the many steps and sweeping away great nimbuses of dust. The problem was not the woman, nor was it her fairly mundane task; rather, it was the fact that she seemed so much taller than she possibly could be.
As Jack had neared the castle he thought he had managed to get a grip on perspective by judging the height of the stairs and size of the castle’s large central door by comparing them with plants from the garden, which led all the way to almost the foot of the high stone walls. The stairs appeared to be tall and broad, enough so that he might have to pull himself up like a child new to walking, and if this was accurate, then the door was tall enough for him to walk in with a man on his shoulders, and a man on that man’s shoulders.
Even with this evidence, though, it was hard to credit the size of the old woman. Crookedly stooped over the broom, she still seemed to be nearly twice Jack’s height.
He would need to be careful, and so decided to stop and eat and think about his advance.
Sitting on the ground behind a bush, Jack opened his bag and pulled out his lunch. Bread, cheese, small flask of wine, and some fruit. He ate fairly quickly, but still enjoyed every bite and swallow. When he was done, he set the empty flask on the ground beside him, wrapped the leftover cheese and placed it back in the bag, then stood up, plan in place and ready to go. The direct approach seemed most sensible right now.
The old woman was still on the steps, a little closer to ground level by the time he approached the bottom stair. She noticed him when he was about fifty paces off, and stopped her sweeping to watch his advance. She was, he noticed, perhaps even taller than his first estimate.
Stopping at the bottom stair, Jack tilted his head way back and smiled up at her. “Good morning, Ma’am.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him, nodded her head. “’Morning.” The look on her face told him nothing, aside from that she was likely not enthused about his presence.
“My name is Jack, Ma’am, Jack Armstrong. I have traveled some distance to come and see what lay behind these clouds.” He gestured overhead. From here, nothing above could be seen through the billowing mist.
The old woman leaned forward and spit through a gap in her front teeth, warm saliva splattering onto the steps near Jack like stale dirty water from a wash bucket. “Came far, eh?”
Jack nodded.
“Better come in for some tea, then, I reckon.” She turned and started up the steps, leaving the broom lying where she’d been standing. Jack followed after her, scrambling up the stairs on all fours. But then she stopped suddenly, and he almost bounced off her heel. The old woman turned and glared down at him, shook a long, crooked finger and said, “But mind you stay no longer than a cuppa. My man is out hunting for the day, and you don’t want to be here when he gets back.”
“Why is that, Ma’am?” asked Jack, panting a bit as he raced to keep up with her renewed ascension.
The old woman had reached the landing, and swung open the huge wooden door, its hinges creaking and scraping in protest. She waved him in and then shut the door with a teeth-jarring slam behind them, answering, “Because my man is an ogre who eats boys and men for breakfast, usually broiled and on buttered toast.” She leaned down until she was almost looking Jack in the eye, and hissed, “And he has a ferocious appetite!”
There was a squeal of feedback from Jack’s earpiece just then, and a babble of voices all shouting at once. “
Sad je prekasno! Andjeo, ti moraš naci nacin da pobjegneš, ili ceš patiti tamo za cjelu vjecnost.”
He turned the volume right off, blinking at the shock of the onslaught of noise as well as the thought of having entered the castle of an ogre; a carnivorous ogre, at that. He nodded, because the old woman seemed to be expecting some response, and when she grunted with some apparent satisfaction and continued walking, he hurried after her.
His chronometer told him he had just under five hours to go until he had to be back on Aquila and ready for descent. The walk was not a terribly long one, but he preferred to be sure he had an extra-large window. Even without the incentive of being cannibalized, he knew he couldn’t stay long.
Their passage eventually brought them to a large, warm, homey kitchen. The table was tall, enough so that he had to stand on his toes to look over the edge. The old woman pulled a chair from a corner and tapped it with a gnarled finger. “Sit here,” she said. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
He pulled himself up onto the enormous wooden chair and watched as she muttered some words over the great wood stove. A blue flame jumped to life, and she placed a kettle full of water on top of it. Reaching into a cupboard to the right of the stove, she pulled out one cup and was about to get a second, hopefully smaller one, when they both heard the door slam, if possible even louder now than it had sounded when Jack had stood right next to it.
The floor began to shake, the chair Jack sitting in shimmying in horrible syncopation to the thumping that was increasing in volume with every second. On the table, Jack watched with horrified fascination as a vast porcelain sugar bowl jumped and fidgeted across the surface, spoon inside clinking against the edge and little white granules of sugar jumping from the bowl in a manner that reminded Jack of rats leaping from a sinking ship.
“It’s my man!” hissed the old woman. “Quick! You must hide, or you’re meat on the table for certain!” Jack jumped from the chair and watched her with increasing panic as she cast about for a suitable hiding place. After a few seconds of turning this way and that, she finally opened the door to the oven and gestured at it. “Inside here, you.”
Over the Darkened Landscape Page 5
