by Ben Bova
The phone chimed again. And again.
Banging its keypad, Faure snarled, “I told you that I am unavailable!”
His aide’s awed voice said, “But it’s the president of the United States, sir.”
Faure’s shoulders sagged. Perhaps the war is lost after all, he thought.
THE INFIRMARY
Edith swam up out of the black depths and tried to open her eyes. They were gummy, as if she’d been asleep a long, long time. A figure was standing over her, its face a blur. Blinking, she brought it into focus.
“Doug,” she croaked. Her voice sounded strange to her, as if she hadn’t really spoken at all but merely mouthed the word.
He smiled down at her, and she noticed that he had a jagged red line running across one side of his forehead. He leaned down and kissed her lightly on the lips. His mouth moved, but no sound came out of it.
Still smiling, he reached toward her. She felt him pushing something into her ear.
“Can you hear me now?” he asked. His voice sounded tinny, as if it were coming through a bad radio. And there was an annoying ringing sound in the background.
She nodded.
“The explosion deafened both of us,” he said, as if his voice were coming through a tunnel from Mars. “My nanomachines fixed me up in a couple of hours, but you’ll have to wear an earplug for a few days.”
Edith realized that her vision was partially blocked by a large white lump, a bandage. She put her hands to her face; they were both heavily bandaged.
“You got pretty badly banged up, saving my life,” Doug said. “You got me out into the corridor, but when the doors blew they knocked you into the opposite wall.”
“My face?” she asked.
“The best plastic surgeon in the States is on his way here. You’ll be good as new in a few weeks. Faster, if you’ll accept nanotherapy.”
“Nano—” Suddenly what he was saying clicked in her mind. “A surgeon from the States? The blockade’s over?”
“The war’s over,” Doug said. “We’ve won. Sort of.”
Edith tried to push herself up to a sitting position, but a jagged bolt of pain made her sink back onto the pillows. Doug reached for her.
“Take it easy,” he said. “You’re not ready to go dancing yet.”
“You are.”
“I get a little help from my friends,” Doug said.
“You can put nanos in me? Help me recover?”
“Yes,” he said. “Kris Cardenas will talk to you in a little while about it.”
“What about the war? We won?”
“The Peacekeepers have gone back to Nippon One, with the bodies of three of the suicide bombers. Japan and the United States have both demanded a Security Council review of Faure’s actions against Moonbase. The World Court has agreed to hear our petition for independence in November. They’ve ordered Faure to leave us alone until they make their decision.”
“We’ve won,” Edith said. It seemed to take what little strength she had. “You’ve won, Doug.”
“It’s cost us a lot. Zimmerman, the water factory, Bam Gordette.”
She remembered those last moments in the studio. “When he hit you, I thought he’d turned traitor again. I thought he was on their side.”
“He saved the two of us,” Doug said. “He gave his life for us.”
“He wanted to die,” Edith remembered. “He said so. Just like the suicide bomber.”
Doug shook his head sorrowfully. “Bam. Zimmerman. My stepfather, Lev, too. And Tamara.”
“You’ve lost a lot.”
“We can rebuild the water factory,” he said, his voice low, mournful. “But the people can’t be replaced.”
“All because of Faure.”
“No, it’s not just him. He couldn’t have gotten anywhere if he didn’t have the backing of so many people. You’re the real hero of this war, Edith. You turned public opinion onto our side and against Faure.”
“All I did was blabber.”
A faint smile tweaked his lips. “Damned good blabber.”
She pretended shock. “Profanity? Out of you?”
Doug’s smile widened a bit. “It’s been a long, hard day. And then some.”
“That’s all right,” Edith said. “It’s been worth it. Despite everything, it’s been worth it.”
He nodded. “Maybe you’re right. I hope so.”
CHRISTMAS EVE
Doug checked his wristwatch against the digital wall clock as he paced the empty lounge of the rocket port.
It’s going to be close, he said to himself. Razor close.
As he waited impatiently, he thought back to the days when he’d sneak out to the old rocket port just to watch the lunar transfer vehicles land or take off. It was not even eight years ago, but it seemed lost back in the hazy mists of ancient history.
Now he watched a wall-sized screen in the underground lounge of the rocket port as the LTV carrying his mother gracefully descended on invisible jets of rocket exhaust, kicking up a small storm of dust and pebbles around the concrete landing pad. The big ungainly spacecraft settled slowly on its strut-thin legs. With its bulbous glassteel pods for the crew and passengers, it looked to Doug like a giant metallic insect squatting on the lunar surface.
Okay, they’re down. Now get the access tube connected. We don’t have a minute to spare.
The newly decorated lounge was empty, except for him. His mother and the medical team were the only passengers on this LTV, except for the body of Lev Brudnoy.
Doug had expected his life to simplify once the war was over, but it had become more hectic. While Joanna and Seigo Yamagata personally negotiated a merger between Masterson Aerospace Corporation and Yamagata Industries, Ltd., Doug was drawn into the whirl of establishing a government for the independent Moonbase and handling the delicate personnel problems of men and women who wanted to remain on the Moon without giving up their Earthside citizenships.
Tomorrow Toshiro Takai was scheduled to arrive from Nippon One, his first visit to Moonbase in the flesh after years of virtual reality contacts. Doug was going to broach the extremely sensitive subject of inviting Nippon One to join Moonbase and declare its independence from Japan. He doubted that Takai would be able to carry that off, but he knew his VR friend would feel slighted if he didn’t at least ask.
And there was so much to do before Takai arrived. Again Doug looked at the wall clock. Its digital numbers seemed to be leaping ahead.
At last one of the port technicians entered the lounge, ambling too slowly to please Doug, and tapped at the wall pad by the access tunnel hatch. The gleaming metal door popped open a few centimeters, with a sigh of air blowing in from the slightly overpressurized tunnel.
Feeling nervous, anxious, Doug watched as the LTV’s two pilots pushed the hatch fully open from the other side. The medical team was right behind them, four doctors, two men and two women. They looked self-assured, competent in their Earthside business clothes as the port technician led them to the tractor that was waiting to whisk them to the infirmary.
At last Joanna stepped through, looking years older than the last time Doug had seen her, but still regally splendid in a Yuletide green dress that glittered in the light from the ceiling panels.
“Welcome to Moonbase,” Doug said ritually, then embraced his mother.
She was tired, he could see, dark rings circled her eyes. But he urged her, “Come on, we don’t have a minute to lose.”
“My things …”
“The ground crew will take care of them. I briefed them myself. They know what to do.”
She nodded, just a trifle hesitant, but let Doug take her by the wrist and lead her out to the tunnel that ran back to the main section of the base. He helped her up into the old standby tractor, then climbed into the driver’s seat and started its electric motors.
“I hope we’re not too late,” Joanna said.
“We’re shaving it close.”
As they drove through the long,
straight, featureless tunnel, the wide-spaced overhead lights casting shadows across their faces like the phases of the Moon, Joanna told her son about the negotiations with Yamagata.
“We’ve got to be able to continue manufacturing Clipperships,” Doug said. “That’s the important thing. That’s Moonbase’s economic lifeblood.”
“Seigo’s agreed to that,” Joanna said. “He’s all in favor of it, now that Faure’s stepping down from the U.N. We’re even talking about manufacturing automobiles.”
“With nanomachines?”
“In Japan.”
“Wow! Things really have changed!”
“In fact,” Joanna continued, “It turns out that one of the major reasons why he wanted control of Moonbase was your nanotechnology capability.”
Doug shot her a puzzled frown. “But I thought—”
Joanna silenced him with an upraised hand. “Seigo has a genetic predisposition to cancer. He wants to be able to come up here and have nanotherapy to remove any tumors he may develop.”
“That’s why he wanted Moonbase?”
She nodded. “That’s his real reason. He was willing to go along with Faure to gain control of Moonbase, as long as he could have nanotherapy in secret.”
“And he killed Zimmerman in the process.”
“Kris Cardenas is still here.”
Anger simmering in his guts, Doug grumbled, “Why should we let Kris help him? He killed Zimmerman! He might even have been involved in Lev’s murder.”
Joanna seemed strangely unperturbed. “Don’t leap to conclusions, Doug. Seigo’s not the devil incarnate. Have some Christmas charity.”
He stared at her as the lights flashed by. “What’s going on between you two?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Except—I think we’ve learned to respect each other. And he had nothing to do with Lev’s death. That was strictly the New Morality’s doing.”
“You’re sure?”
“My security people found that the corporation is honeycombed with New Morality zealots. That’s why I’ve decided to live up here permanently.”
“Can’t you do anything about them? Back Earthside, I mean.”
Joanna said matter-of-factly, “There are too many of them, Doug. As long as we can operate here on the Moon and use nanotechnology, let them stew in their own juices for a generation or two. They’ll get what they deserve.”
“You sound like Jinny Anson,” he said. “If she had her way, we wouldn’t have any contact with Earth at all.”
“That wouldn’t be so bad, at that.”
Doug suddenly saw the full Earth in his mind’s eye, hanging in the dark lunar sky, shining bright and beautiful.
“We can’t let them strangle themselves,” he murmured.
“Doug, there’s more than ten billion people on Earth,” Joanna said. “We can’t save them.”
“Yes we can,” he insisted. “We can try, at least.”
She shook her head. “I thought you wanted to look outward and push the frontier.”
“That’s the best way to help them. Create new knowledge, new wealth. Keep the safety valve open for anyone who wants to use it.”
Joanna took a deep breath. “You almost sound religious.”
He broke into grin. “Well, it is Christmas—almost.”
She had no reply and they rode to the end of the tunnel in silence. As they got down from the tractor, Doug said, “I hope the medical team got there in time.”
He had to slow his pace to accommodate his mother, a little wobbly in the low gravity despite the weighted boots she wore. As they approached the infirmary Doug saw that a small crowd had gathered outside: Anson, Falcone, even Janos Kadar was out there, waiting.
Doug pushed through them and into the infirmary’s observation room, Joanna right behind him.
Nick O’Malley was just stepping through the door from inside the infirmary, stripping off a surgical mask. His face was sweaty, pale.
“I hope I never have to go through that again,” he said, his voice shaking.
Kris Cardenas and her husband Pete, the neurosurgeon, came out right behind O’Malley.
“Your Earthside team was too late,” Kris said, smiling broadly.
As O’Malley sank into one of the chairs along the far wall, Pete Cardenas announced, “It’s a six-pound, fiveounce baby girl.”
“Mother and daughter are both fine,” Kris added. “Natural childbirth without the obstetrics team you brought in from Earthside.”
“The first baby born on the Moon,” Joanna said, sitting in the chair next to O’Malley.
“Congratulations, Daddy,” Kris said to him.
Doug held out his hand and O’Malley took it in a limp, weary grip. “Never again,” he muttered.
“Look!”
Turning to the observation window, Doug saw Edith holding a conglomeration of blankets in her arms with a tiny, red, squirming bald baby in the middle of it.
“I got the whole thing on camera,” Edith said through the window. “She’ll be on Global News in a few hours.”
O’Malley brightened a bit and pushed himself to his feet. “She’s kinda beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Even in the midst of life, we are in the midst of death,” intoned Robert Wicksen. Doug had been surprised when Wix had volunteered to preside at Lev Brudnoy’s burial service. The physicist was also a lay minister, he had revealed.
Now they put Lev’s remains into the soil of the farm he had lovingly tended over the years.
“Ashes to ashes,” Wicksen murmured. “Dust to dust.”
Doug stood at his mother’s side. Joanna sobbed quietly as Lev was lowered into the ground where he had planted the Moon’s first flowers.
Hours later, after dinner, Edith and Doug joined practically everyone else in Moonbase in decorating the three-meter-tall aluminum tree that had been erected in the middle of the Cave. There was plenty of rocket juice going around, and god knows what else. The party went from festive to raucous as the hours wore on.
Long after midnight, Doug walked beside Edith as they headed for their quarters. The alcohol he had consumed was quickly and efficiently broken down by the nanomachines inside him. Doug regretted that he couldn’t get drunk even when he wanted to.
Edith seemed quite sober, as well. The gashes on her face were completely healed, not even the slightest trace of a scar, thanks to the nanotherapy Kris Cardenas had supervised.
“You’re pretty quiet,” Edith said.
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Postpartum blues?” she kidded.
He looked at her: smiling blond Texas cheerleader. “Prepartum blues,” he replied.
“Pre … I don’t get it.”
“Claire’s had her baby. You’ve got your Christmas story. The nanomachines have been cleaned out of you. There’s not much reason for you to stay here now, is there?”
Edith’s face went serious. “You know about the offer Global made me.”
“Jinny told me about it. Managing editor of the entire news department and your own prime-time show every week.”
“I don’t want to be managing editor,” Edith said. “That’s more headache than anything else.”
“But prime time …”
“Yep. That’s the real plum.”
Doug knew that the LTV sitting at the rocket port would have space for her to return Earthside.
“I’ve talked it over with Jinny and Kris,” Edith went on. “We’ll have to haul in some new equipment from Earthside, but the studio oughtta be able to handle it.”
He stopped in the middle of the corridor. “You mean you’ll do your show from here? From Moonbase?”
“Sure,” Edith answered. “You didn’t think you’re going to get rid of me, did you?”
He grabbed her and kissed her mightily. Two Lunatics passing by muttered something about mistletoe.
As they lay in bed in the darkness, warm and pleasantly tired, Doug whispered to Edith, “By the way, Merry Christmas.”
“And to you, sweetheart.”
“We’ve got a new year coming in a week. A new era, really.”
“Hey, now that you’re an independent nation, what’re y’all gonna call yourselves? You can’t call a whole nation Moonbase.”
“No,” Doug said. “We’re going to call ourselves Selene.”
“Selene?”
“A Greek moon goddess, from ancient times.”
“Selene,” Edith repeated. “Sounds neat. Where’d you find it?”
“I read it in a book, when I was a kid.”
“I like it.”
“Good. Now get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”
“Lots of big days coming up,” said Edith.
“Yes,” Doug agreed. “Lots of really big days.”
