The Menace from Farside

by Ian McDonald

  ‘Cari?’

  I’m already falling, falling in my head, falling forever.

  ‘I can’t.’ Those words: the hardest I have ever said. The ones that follow are the easiest. They just fall from my lips. ‘I can’t climb, right? I can’t go up there.’ This is the bridge in Meridian again, except that was just walking, this is climbing, holding, trusting my hands and feet. ‘I’m scared of heights!’

  It’s said. It’s out. And no one questions it, no one says anything about how come the big leader can’t have heights, no one says anything about me. Jair drops to my side. He makes little cat-paw to me. Three jumps and Sidibe is at my other side. She rests her hand in the small of my back, just under my suitpack.

  We’re down on the catwalk and the air is up there. The air, and Kobe, clinging to the rigging like an all-avenging battle-mecha.

  ‘I think I can get this!’

  ‘Kobe, it’s too heavy!’ I shout.

  ‘I got powers in this suit,’ Kobe says and pulls himself onto the upper walkway. He pushes the airplant towards the edge. He makes it look easy. He has true powers in that suit. Now is the tricky bit; he has to get the airplant off the walkway with one hand and lower himself down the rig with the other. He crouches, creeps. Keep the centre of gravity low. He reaches for a handhold, misses. Wobbles. I see it happen. We all see it happen and none of us can do a thing about it. The centre of gravity shifts, the airplant tumbles. Falls. Kobe falls with it. His fingers are locked to the frame.

  I shout. We all shout. The common channel is cries and yells. The airplant hits our catwalk, tumbles forwards. Kobe whiplashes through the air. He arcs, he flies, he hits the ground far, far below. He is very small, he is very far away.

  ‘Fuck,’ Jair says.

  His monitor: I can’t even begin to take in all the things that are broken. The big one, the immediate one, is that his suit is cracked. That’s serious, but the suit can deal with it the same way it dealt with the vom: seal him from the neck up. Human skin is pretty pressure-tight—sasuits are designed to work with that. The big one, the one that will kill him, is his helmet. He’s leaking air through a dozen cracks. The bars on my monitor are pink edging white. My suit HUD offers to show me a minute countdown. No fucking thank you, suit.

  ‘Kobe,’ I say on the common channel, then on every channel. ‘Kobe . . . Talk to me.’

  I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.

  Sidibe leaps from the catwalk. She drops down the face of scaffold, straight down. She can’t land like that; even in our gravity she’ll shatter both ankles. She flexes, some incredible, limber flyer thing, and launches herself off the trusses. Her timing is incredible. Impossible. She flies out, away from the steel, somersaults, reorients herself to hit the ground safely. Lands braced, sprung, poised a spit and hop from Kobe.

  ‘Fuck,’ Jair says again.

  Before you learn to fly, you learn to fall.

  She snaps open a pocket on her utility belt. I make out a tube of sealant spray in her dust-smudged golden glove.

  ‘Sidibe, I love you!’ I shriek.

  ‘First rule of moonwalking,’ Sidibe says. She works the spray over Kobe’s visor. ‘Sealant first, sealant last, sealant always.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’ I ask.

  ‘Took it from Redrover when we left it,’ Sidibe says. ‘One at each seat, remember?’ She lifts Kobe’s head to run the spray around the back of his helmet. Every first aid guide says don’t do that, never do that, never move a potential spine injury. Neck and spine they can fix. Death by anoxia is more problematic. ‘How’s his pressure?’

  The bars are rising out of red to green. His reserve: that’s scary. And Kobe’s not moving, not speaking.

  ‘Jair, can you check if there’s anything working on that airplant?’

  He’s more careful than Sidibe, but I still can’t watch him go down the grid, paw over paw. He works around the airplant. Even I can see that one corner is smashed in.

  ‘Not good, Cari.’

  Kobe still isn’t moving. His pressure may be good, but he’s lost a lot of breathables. A lot. I make a decision.

  ‘Sidibe, is it possible to run air from one suit to another?’

  ‘It’s a standard feature,’ Sidibe says.

  ‘Right, so: Sidibe, Jair, I want you to give him some of your air.’ I am aware, oh very aware, that they are down there with Kobe and I am up on the catwalk where I can’t run a line to his suit. That I am asking something I can’t do myself. ‘I’ll tell you when it’s enough.’

  ‘Right,’ Sidibe says. Without an order from me, she finds the airline in Kobe’s suit and hooks it to her suitpack. I watch the bars rise, the bars drop.

  ‘Right, so: that’s enough. Jair?’

  He hesitates.

  ‘Jair, Kobe needs you.’

  ‘What about you, Cari?’

  ‘I’ll donate some when he gets back up here.’

  ‘If he gets back up there,’ Jair says. For a moment I think he might break the team and show himself to be so not the Jair I always knew and loved. As an iz: you need to know that. As an iz. And that is more heartbreaking even than the thought of us dying here together and the construction workers coming back after the sun-storm and finding our huddled bodies—not because that can’t happen—it can happen too too easily; happens to people every day when they get careless or clever or show-offy—but because there is something romantic in it all ending like that and everyone being sorry that we were dead but we were together, friends to the end, and there is nothing romantic about someone you’ve grown up with, you’ve shared ceegee and home and colloquium with, being so mean they’d cling onto a few puffs of air for a few minutes more breathing.

  Not so cute, neko.

  ‘Kobe will be back up there,’ I say from my high place, and Jair slides in to unhook the line from Sidibe’s suitpack and into his own. I monitor the levels with care and complete justice. Not a breath more than Sidibe gave, not a breath less.

  Long time. Long long long time. At last Kobe moves. Arm twitches, head lifts. Sidibe helps him sit up.

  ‘How do you feel, Kobe?’ I ask on the common channel.

  ‘I hurt,’ he says.

  ‘Can you climb, Kobe?’ I ask.

  He hauls himself upright. It is like rocks coming to life. Even from the catwalk I can see what his answer will be. And it is.

  Thirty minutes, the suit monitor tells me.

  ‘Jair, you get up there,’ Sidibe says. ‘Kobe, can I like, ride on your back?’

  Shell-suits shrug pretty good. Sidibe slides around behind Kobe, wraps legs around his waist, one arm around his neck. The other arm, I can’t see what it’s doing but it’s busy busy. Jair flips onto the catwalk beside me. And Kobe staggers to his feet, takes one step two step three step four, big gallumphing mecha steps. Sidibe clings to his back.

  ‘Like Kobe said, there’s always an override,’ she says.

  ‘How are you doing that?’ I ask.

  ‘I jacked into his suit comms line,’ Sidibe says.

  Kobe climbs the rig now, one hand reaching slowly up, grasping firm and sure, one heavy boot lifting, finding safe footing. Slow and relentless as death, Sidibe like a tiny bright child in a kiddie-sling.

  This is not a thing I will unsee any time soon.

  Kobe clambers up onto the catwalk. Sidibe moves to sit on his shoulders, legs around his neck.

  ‘You still driving him?’ I ask on her private channel.

  ‘I need to,’ Sidibe says.

  I make sure Jair sees me run air into Kobe’s suit.

  Twenty-four minutes’ air remaining.

  Captain Cariad got to captain.

  ‘We need to get out of here. Jair, did the construction folk leave any transport at all?’

  More neko-magic.

  ‘There’s a Taiyang 224 in the west lock,’ Jair says. ‘It’s about a kay and a half and all the way up.’

  ‘Could it get us to Twé?’

  The
name still makes me burn with humiliation, but fuck it; it’s the closest major city. I will find you, King’s Gun, some year, and Cariad Corcoran will remind you of what you took, and we will have a settling of accounts.

  ‘It’s got four hours’ air, so it could, Cari.’ Everyone hears the unspoken but.

  Someone has to say it. Might as well be Captain Cariad.

  ‘The but?’

  ‘Twé’s a hundred and seventy-five kays west. Kobe?’

  ‘The top speed of the Taiyang 224 is one hundred and twenty kph,’ my Department of Transport says. His serious, dull voice is like dance music to me. ‘If we run it at full speed, our best time to Twé is an hour twenty or so. That’s with full battery charge. If I knew the charge level, I could calculate it against air reserves more precisely . . .’

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’ Jair cuts across Kobe on the common channel. ‘Full or empty, it doesn’t fucking matter! There’s a storm coming? Remember? A full-on fucking solar storm hits the moon in forty-four minutes. This is not if, perhaps, maybe. This is sure as fucking death. If we are out when it hits, we burn. And here’s our options. We go up there, we’re nuked. We stay down here, we suffocate. Time to get fucking serious. We need to stop playing games. We need to stop being stupid. We need to call for help. We need to get on the comms array and tell someone to fucking rescue us. The adventure is over.’

  ‘Um,’ Kobe says, and him using Jair’s um is the worst thing. That um is the glass spike through the heart. Because what Cariad Corcoran does is run the numbers, run the numbers, run the numbers, and before Kobe gets to um, she knows that help won’t reach us in time. From Twé? The numbers run both ways. We can’t get to them so they can’t get to us. From Meridian? Forget it. VTO is building a fleet of rescue ships: when it’s complete they will be able to reach anywhere on the moon in fifteen minutes. Right now, they’ve got three. Even if the nearest one launches now, it’ll be making final descent and landing through a slew of solar protons. (I researched this too. Got to do something on your long lonely moonwalk.)

  I tell them this. I tell them what the numbers say, and what they say is that rescue will not come out of the sky on burning blue fire. After I tell them this they are very solemn and quiet.

  I turn off the monitors. They’re just showing what your body will tell you all too soon soon soon.

  Ideas: where do they come from? I don’t know, I think they must always have been there, in bits and pieces, and then something shakes your world and the bits and pieces fall together. And stick. And bob to the surface. I see it. An idea. No, a plan. All there, all at once, and it’s brilliant. I can get us out of this. I can get us home all safe and breathing and in time for the wedding. How perfect is that?

  ‘Jair! Call Dolores. Tell her exactly where we are, what’s happened.’

  ‘Why me?’ Jair protests.

  Because you said that. Because I knew you would say that. Because the kitty isn’t so cute anymore. But I say, ‘Because I need her to use her account for something. Right, so? Kobe: can you get that Taiyang rover going?’

  Kobe nods. He almost throws Sidibe. Her arms tighten around his helmet.

  ‘Sidibe, you hold on tight,’ I say. ‘Because we need to get to that rover superfast.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Run!’

  * * *

  One thing, Kobe: between all the specs and storage and battery life and air supply, you forgot to tell us an important detail about the Taiyang 224.

  It’s a two-person model.

  Which means me and Jair in the seats, Kobe latched onto the rear, and Sidibe riding the LSU and comms on the roof. Bouncing and bounding and leaping over every stone and crater. This rover doesn’t have a name—not enough time for that—but it’s really hammering it. Flat out. Batteries at burn-out, motors red hot. The clock is ticking. The death clock.

  Actually, I don’t understand that. Ticking? Making a tick tick tick noise? Why? What’s that? Clocks are silent. Even the death clock. Especially, I think, the death clock.

  We hit a ridge flat out and all four wheels leave the regolith. In mid-leap, I private-channel Jair.

  ‘Is she pissed off?’

  ‘You know that beyond-pissed-off?’

  Too too well, neko.

  ‘Beyond that beyond.’

  ‘Has she done it?’

  ‘Of course she’s done it.’

  We land hard to a creak and crack of suspension and Sidibe yelping from the roof.

  ‘Can you take it a little easier?’

  No, we cannot. Use your superskills, fly-girl.

  It’s been on the map HUD forever, the sensors for the past five minutes; now I see the launch platform over the rim of Soleares crater: the South West Tranquillitatis Moonloop tower.

  I’m taking us home the long way, right around Mother-moon.

  * * *

  The Mackenzies mine the metal, the Asamoahs farm; the Suns run the IT, the Vorontsovs move the moon. So, that’s a slight overstatement, but VTO operates everything that moves or crawls or flies Nearside and Farside, from the old rover-bus lines to the maglevs to those sexy new moonships that won’t be coming to rescue us, but most of all, they run the Moonloop, and without it nothing on the moon makes any sense. Those Mackenzie rare earths: how do they ship them back to Earth? The Moonloop. Those Jo Moonbeams taking waaaay too big steps and flying through the air with their hands and legs milling, how do they get here, how do they get back, if they decide to go back? The Moonloop. Those university researchers out there on Farside listening to the universe, throwing probes out to all those other worlds: even they need the Moonloop to get there. That new outfit; those Brasilians who have this super-sexy business shipping fuel to Earth’s fusion plants: those helium-3 containers all get there via Moonloop.

  The Vorontsovs built and maintain the Moonloop. It’s a two-hundred-kilometre-long spinning cable of super-strong construction carbon that wheels around the moon in a fast low orbit in one hundred and eighteen minutes. It’s like a slingshot. Pick something up from the surface then sling it off to another world: Earth or somewhere more exciting. A momentum transfer tether. I don’t understand the fine details, like using a moving mass to change the centre of gravity to compensate for lunar mascons, or to drop down to snatch a cargo pod from a Moonloop tower. All I know, it’s up there, and it’s rolling towards us.

  One hundred and eighteen minutes? You say? You don’t have one hundred and eighteen minutes, Cariad Corcoran.

  All true. Except, because of the new Corta helium traffic, three lunes ago VTO launched a second tether, and twenty days ago, a third tether.

  A tether comes wheeling up over the horizon in fifteen minutes. All we need is to be waiting on the platform.

  * * *

  Not literally standing on the platform. That would be buck-madness, as Laine would say. We leave the rover at the hatch. The cargo bay is unpressurised, a big shed with just enough sheeting to keep dust out of the machinery. Footprints, abandoned construction worker kack, porny graffiti on the girders: a lot of Hypatia has come in this way.

  ‘We’re getting into that?’ Jair asks. I admit, it’s a creepy prospect. The cargo pods are cylinders, shackle gear at the top, magnetic clasps at the bottom. A crane’s going to lift us, move us to the elevator, and send us two kilometres to the launch platform. It’s going to be cosy, four of us in one of those things. Cosy: that’s a slight understatement. Claustrophobic. That. And Kobe in that hulking great shell-suit. And all our twitches and phobias.

  No time. We got to do this.

  ‘Kobe, you first,’ I say, and in he climbs, ducking through the low hatch. Even pressed against the wall of the cylinder, he takes up most of the space. ‘Jair.’

  ‘There’s no—’

  ‘I don’t have time!’ I shout.

  ‘It helps to opaque your visor,’ Sidibe says. ‘Like on the maglev.’ I remember the story she told on Redrover. Now I understand what was scary: not the rover port that could have blown at any time; the truly scary wa
s the cosmic ray that went through glass, her bio-mom, her. That white flash that killed Geetanjali, that could be waiting for years in her DNA to turn rogue and eat from the inside. Ikh. ‘You too, Kobe.’ Neko-kitties are slender and lithe: Jair seems to take up no space at all.

  ‘Sidibe, in,’ I say. I’m last. The captain should always be last. Last out of the airless habitat, last off the rover, last into the space-lifeboat. ‘Jair, close the door.’ My suit-lights let me see how tight-packed I am with my team. I can feel Sidibe and Jair breathing. Visor to visor to visor. Poor Kobe is hunched over, his visor almost touching the top of my helmet. Maybe it would be better to turn vision off. No. The captain has to be there, whatever.

  ‘Start her up, Jair,’ I order.

  ‘Machines got it now,’ Jair says. I almost reply, What if something goes wrong? I catch myself. What’s the point? This either works or it doesn’t, and the doesn’t can’t be thought about. So much that can’t be thought about. This can, that spinning cable, the sun-spew billowing towards us, what waits for us when we step out of the capsule in Meridian, the cost, the trouble, the questions, the explanation, the fact that two minutes after Jair told Dolores half the moon, Nearside and Farside, was following our escape, frantic for any news, any rumours.

  I order everyone to shut off their social networks. That sort of thing is not good to hear. I lurch against Jair, rebound into Sidibe: the crane has us. We’re swinging, a slow, soft pendulum. This can’t be stopped now. Another jolt, clicks and clanks I feel through my boots. Upward travel. We’re in the elevator.

  Time to storm-front eight minutes.

  How long does it take to go up two kilometres? I try to imagine the Moonloop wheeling over the highlands east of Sinus Medii, covering in seconds all those dusty, jolting kilometres that took us so long in Redrover. Lovely old Redrover. We betrayed you. We ran you into the dust and abandoned you.

  It’s a fucking rover, Cariad. A machine. AI or no AI. And I wish I hadn’t thought that. Because AIs are almost people. They talk. They think. I’m pretty sure they can feel, be hurt. And thinking this, I also think, this is me, thinking of anything but what is happening to me right now: locked in a metal can, waiting to be flicked off the top of a high tower and slung around the moon, a Hail Mary ahead of a massive solar storm.