Moonwar

by Ben Bova

  Plenty of places for an accident to happen, he reasoned. Might have to take out a whole lot of people, though. Knock out the air pumps or rig an explosion in one of the labs.

  He hasn’t gone out on the surface since this thing started. It’d be easy to get him when he’s in a spacesuit. Or maybe in the airlock. Christ, I’m starting to grasp at straws! Why’s it so fucking tough, knocking off one guy?

  Because you don’t want to do it, he answered himself. Because you really admire the kid. He’s everything you could’ve been if you’d been born different.

  Yeah, sure. And I could fly if I had wings. The facts of the matter are that you’ve been assigned to decapitate the leadership here and this Stavenger kid is the leadership. Sooner or later the Peacekeepers are going to come back in force and either take this base or flatten it. If you haven’t done your job by then you’re dead. Either you get killed in the battle or they drag you back to headquarters, a failure. And you know what that means. Better to get yourself killed trying to do your job.

  He tried to calm himself and think his problem through. The only time Stavenger’s alone inside the base here is when he sleeps. And he hasn’t been doing much sleeping, the past ten days. Conferences all the time. He’s always got a gaggle of people around him.

  Maybe tonight, though. He’s got to sleep sometime. Maybe I’ll walk him to his quarters and do him there and get it the hell over with.

  “All right,” Doug said, standing on a table in the Cave. “This is your meeting. Let’s hear what you have to say.”

  Almost the entire population of Moonbase was jammed into the Cave. Only a skeleton crew was left on duty at the monitoring center, and they were piped into this meeting through the base intercom. The dinner shifts were finished. The other tables and chairs had been pushed against the far wall so everyone could gather into the space. From his vantage atop the table, Doug saw their faces focused squarely on him. They were standing shoulder to shoulder; the only empty spots on the floor of the big cafeteria were the little squares of grass.

  Edith Elgin, now in a Moonbase-issue white coverall, stood off to one side, where she had set up both her minicams on tripods to record the meeting.

  Jinny Anson was standing in the front row at Doug’s feet. She asked, “Well, are we independent or not?”

  The acoustics in the Cave were good enough so that she didn’t need amplification.

  Doug answered, “There’s been no confirmation of our declaration of independence from the U.N., or any recognition by any country on Earth.”

  “Great,” someone sneered.

  “Physically, though,” Doug went on, “we’re showing that we can exist independently of supplies from Earth. The U.N. hasn’t allowed a flight here since the Peacekeeper mission took off. We’re under siege.”

  “Big deal.”

  “Wait a minute,” one of the women asked. “You mean we can’t go back Earthside if we want to?”

  “I don’t know,” Doug said. “I’m sure we could arrange with Faure for transport to take people back Earthside, if there’re enough who want to leave to make a flight necessary.”

  “What about us?” asked the manager of the Canadian dance troupe.

  Doug lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Until we can negotiate your return Earthside, you’ll have to remain here as our guests, I’m afraid.”

  “But we have contractual obligations! Dates in a dozen cities!”

  “I can let you call Faure yourself, or your government in Ottawa,” Doug suggested. “Unfortunately, no one is returning our calls.”

  “I don’t want to be stuck here forever!” another voice called out.

  “It won’t be forever,” Doug said with a grin. “It’ll just seem that long.”

  “My son’s birthday is next week.”

  Doug made a can’t be helped shrug.

  “How soon can I launch my survey satellite to the Farside?” asked Zoltan Kadar. He had pushed his way to the front row, Doug noticed.

  “That’s a good question,” Doug replied, stalling for time to think. “We’ll have to work it out with the logistics program, to see if your launch will use any supplies that we might want to hold onto, in case this siege goes on for a while.”

  “All I need is rocket propellant and some electricity,” Kadar shot back.

  His rocket would be propelled by powdered aluminum and liquid oxygen, both extracted from the regolith and both in plentiful supply, Doug knew.

  “We’ll see,” he said to Kadar.

  “What’re Lev and Joanna doing?” a man’s voice asked from the crowd.

  “They went Earthside to negotiate face-to-face with Faure and the rest of the U.N. leadership,” Doug said.

  “Have they met with Faure yet?”

  “Not yet. They were detained at the Peacekeeper base in Corsica for a couple of days, but they’re back in Savannah now. She should be meeting with Faure in a few days, at most, I guess.”

  “How is this thing going to be settled? Are we going to be an independent nation, or will the U.N. take us over?”

  “It won’t be the U.N.,” Doug said. “It’s starting to look as if Yamagata is really behind this whole business. If we lose, then it’ll be Yamagata Corporation that takes over Moonbase.”

  “You mean this whole thing is a fight between corporations?”

  “No,” Doug snapped. “That is not what I mean. This crisis is a fight between our right to live and work the way we want to, and a power grab by the U.N. and/or Yamagata Corporation. The question is: Do you want to keep on living and working the way you have been, or do you want to be shipped back Earthside without a job?”

  Someone said, “But if Yamagata’s going to take over the base—”

  “They’ll staff it with their own people,” another voice countered. “Yamagata’s not going to keep us, that’s for sure.”

  “What the hell can we do?”

  Jinny Anson turned her back to Doug, to face the crowd. “I’ll tell you what we can do. Fuck ’em! We don’t have to ask the U.N. for independence. We are independent! We can live here indefinitely. And if we have to expand the farm, or build more solar cells outside, we can do that! We don’t need those fuckers! We’re free!”

  The crowd roared, but from Doug’s vantage atop the table it seemed that almost half the people in the Cave were roaring in protest against Anson’s outburst.

  “Okay, okay,” Doug said, waving his hands to quiet them down. “I’ve got to admit it, Jinny, I agree with you about ninety-five percent.”

  “Only ninety-five?” She planted her fists on her hips defiantly.

  “Hey, I wanna get back home!” a man hollered. “I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life here.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Listen,” Doug said. “For the time being, nobody’s leaving. We’re in a state of siege, looks like.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until this thing gets settled, one way or the other,” Doug answered.

  “Or until the Peacekeepers come back with more troops,” came a voice from the rear.

  Doug conceded the point with a nod, thinking that if he were pushed far enough, Faure might destroy Moonbase rather than admit defeat.

  “Okay,” Doug said, loud enough to bounce his voice off the Cave’s back wall. “We’re going to have to act as if we really are independent. Jinny’s right about that. As long as we’re under siege, nobody can leave, so we might as well go about our work and show Faure and the rest of those flatlanders that we can get along without them.”

  “Then I can launch my rocket?” Kadar asked.

  “We’ll look into it.”

  “But I still wanna get home!” a voice wailed.

  “Once this matter is settled,” Doug told them, “anyone who wants to leave Moonbase will be free to do so. And anyone who wants to stay here permanently and become a real Lunatic, you’ll be free to do that, too.”

  They asked questions and gave opinions an
d griped and argued among themselves for more than another hour. As Doug watched and listened, he realized that very few of these men and women had ever thought about remaining at Moonbase indefinitely. They were all contract workers, even Jinny Anson, accustomed to working on the Moon for a fixed period of time, then returning to Earth, to home.

  Of all the people here, he realized, only Zimmerman and Kris Cardenas and her husband have consciously decided to live in Moonbase permanently. Maybe Jinny, he conceded. Her marriage had broken up because she spent so much time at Moonbase while her husband stayed Earthside.

  And me. If I have to go back Earthside with these nanobugs in me, some crackpot nanoluddite will kill me, sooner or later. That’s the sweet part of religion, Doug thought, you can be as fanatical as you want in the name of God.

  The mercenary hung at the rear of the crowd, wondering how long these people could go around the same mulberry bush. Then Kadar climbed up on the table beside Doug and began telling them all, in elaborate detail, how wonderful the Farside astronomical observatory was going to be and how important it was to the future of the human race.

  People started to drift out of the Cave, most of them still talking among themselves as Kadar droned on, unperturbed. As if talk’s going to do any good, the mercenary thought. They’ve been talking for damned near four hours with nothing to show for it but a bunch of sore throats.

  He watched Doug climb down stiffly from his perch on the table. Okay, he told himself, Doug’s going to go back to his quarters now. Christ, it’s after midnight. Okay, just tail along behind him and when he gets to his quarters, invite yourself in and get the job done.

  DAY ELEVEN

  “It’s past midnight,” Claire Rossi said tiredly as she trudged along the corridor that led from the Cave to her quarters. Nick O’Malley, at her side, towered over her like a redheaded bodyguard.

  He nodded. “I’ve got the early shift tomorrow. Gotta be up and moving by six AM.”

  She smiled up at him. “You can sleep in my place. It’s closer.”

  He smiled back. “How could I refuse?”

  But once they were snuggled in her bunk together, Claire whispered in the darkness, “Maybe I should get an abortion.”

  She felt the shock that went through him. “Abortion? Why? You can’t! I don’t want you to.”

  Feeling more miserable with each word, Claire said, “With all this going on, all this uncertainty … and if there should be any complications …”

  He touched her bare shoulder tenderly. “You feel okay, don’t you? There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  “No,” she said, “I feel fine.”

  “Then what’s this talk about abortion? I don’t like it.”

  “It’s just …” She couldn’t put the words together.

  “Just what? This siege thing? Don’t let that frighten you. Even if we have to go back Earthside we still have employment contracts. Masterson Corporation’ll have to honor our contracts. We’ll have our jobs.”

  “Suppose there’s fighting?”

  “How could there be?” he said. “We don’t have anything to fight with.”

  “But Doug said Yamagata wants to take over the base.”

  He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at her. “And what’s that got to do with it? We’d have to go back Earthside anyway, now that you’re pregnant.”

  “I’d have to go back,” Claire said. “I’m the one who’s pregnant.”

  “Well, I’d have to go back with you, wouldn’t I?”

  “Why? We’re not married. You’re not under any obligation.”

  For a moment he was silent, then Nick chuckled softly in the darkness. “So that’s it, then. You’re worried that I won’t make an honest woman of you.”

  “I never tried to—”

  He smothered her lips with a kiss. “Listen to me, Claire darling. I love you. I love our baby, too. I’m going to marry you … if you’ll have me.”

  She wrapped her bare arms around his neck and pulled him down to her. “I love you, Nick. I’m mad about you.”

  After a few moments he caught his breath and said, “So there’ll be no more talk of abortion, right?”

  “Right.”

  He fell silent for several heartbeats. Then he murmured, “I wonder if there’s anybody here in Moonbase who can perform a wedding?”

  Doug sat on the table’s edge up at the front of the cafeteria until even Kadar ran out of steam. Only a handful of people were still in the Cave. Most had left long ago.

  Edith was still by her minicams, recording every word of Kadar’s monologue. Doug walked slowly over to her as the astronomer at last climbed down from the table and headed for the double doors to the corridor.

  “You’re a glutton for punishment,” Doug said as she clicked off the two cameras.

  Edith grinned. “He seemed to enjoy being recorded. He played to the camera for the last half hour or so.”

  “Is any of that stuff useful to you?”

  She started to dismount the minicams. “Maybe,” she answered over her shoulder. “A couple sound bites, add a few clips of the artist’s renderings of what the farside base will look like.”

  “Artist’s renderings?”

  “You do have drawings of the facility, don’t you? Architect’s sketches?”

  “Computer graphics.”

  “Fine,” said Edith. “Perfect.”

  Doug helped her to collapse the tripods, then hefted them both in one hand.

  “I borrowed those from your photo lab,” Edith said.

  “Oh. I thought you smuggled them into the base beneath your Peacekeeper’s uniform.”

  She gave him a searching look. “For a guy who’s staring disaster in the face, you’re pretty chipper.”

  “Must be the company,” Doug said.

  He walked with her, still gripping the folded tripods, toward the double doors. The Cave was empty now, except for them and Bam Gordette lingering by the doors.

  “Now which way is the photo lab?” Edith asked. “I still get a little lost in these tunnels.”

  “Corridors,” Doug corrected. “We call them corridors. And I’ll take these back to the photo lab. No need for you to walk all the way there; it’s way past your own quarters.”

  “You mean that teeny little monk’s cell you gave me?”

  “It’s as spacious and luxurious as any compartment in Moonbase, almost.”

  “I’ll bet your quarters are bigger.”

  Doug felt his cheeks coloring. “Well, yeah, but I’m a permanent resident—”

  “And the big cheese.”

  “Your quarters are just as good as any part-timer’s. Better than most, in fact.”

  “Really?”

  She’s teasing me, Doug realized. And I’m enjoying it.

  Gordette held one of the doors open for them and they passed out into the corridor.

  “Thanks, Bam,” Doug said.

  Gordette nodded without saying a word. Doug walked along the corridor with Edith, toward her room, and forgot about him and everyone else.

  “Tell me about the nanobugs,” Edith said. The corridor lights were turned down to their overnight level. It made the bare stone walls seem somehow softer, less austere.

  “The ones we used to scare off the Peacekeepers?”

  “No. The ones in your body.”

  Doug looked into her bright green eyes. She’s a news reporter, he reminded himself. Her interest is in a story, not in you as a person.

  “I took a really bad radiation dose, about eight years ago. Got caught out in the open during a solar flare. My mother brought Professor Zimmerman up here, and Kris Cardenas, too. But Zimmerman was the one who pumped me full of nanobugs.”

  “They saved your life.”

  “More than once,” Doug said.

  “And they’re still in your body?”

  He nodded. “Zimmerman turned me into a walking experiment. The bugs he put in me are programmed to protect my cells against
infection or any other kind of damage.”

  “And they just stay inside you? Do they reproduce?”

  “According to Zimmerman, they rebuild one another when they wear down or become damaged themselves.”

  “Can you feel them inside you?” Edith asked, grimacing at the thought.

  Doug laughed. “No more than you can feel your white blood corpuscles or your alveoli.”

  “My what?”

  “The air sacs in your lungs,” Doug said. “Here’s your door.”

  “The Moonbase Hilton,” Edith said.

  “Is it really that bad?”

  She tapped out her combination on the electronic lock. “See for yourself,” she said, sliding the door back and motioning him into the room with a sweeping gesture.

  Doug propped the tripods on the wall outside the door and stepped into Edith’s quarters. It was a standard compartment, roughly ten square meters, maybe a little more. A bunk with built-in dresser drawers, a desk and chair, a slingchair made of lunar plastic, a table that folded into the wall with two stools beneath it, an empty built-in bookcase.

  “You’ve got your own bathroom,” Doug said, pointing to the half-open door. “You’ve got nothing to complain about.”

  “The shower turns off just when I’m getting relaxed,” Edith said.

  He shrugged slightly. “That’s automatic. Water’s not scarce, exactly, but we don’t play around with it.”

  “And then those air blowers come on.”

  “Electricity’s cheap. And the heat is recycled.”

  “It ain’t the Ritz.”

  “You’d feel better if you had some of your personal things with you.”

  She agreed with a rueful nod. “I did come kind of light, didn’t I?”

  Doug went to the wall panel at the head of the bunk and turned on the display. The far wall showed a camera view of the crater floor.

  Edith gaped. “Hot spit!”

  “Didn’t anybody tell you about the smart walls?”

  “Well, sure, but I didn’t know you could see outside. It’s kinda like a window, isn’t it?”

  Doug pulled one of the stools over to the bunk and began to show Edith how to work the electronic display.

  She sat on the edge of the bunk and watched views of the bleak, harsh lunar landscape. Then he started showing videos from Moonbase’s library: educational stuff, mostly, although he rippled through a menu of entertainment vids.