by Larry Niven
Inconstant Moon
Larry Niven
What would you do if this were your last night on earth?
The story won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1972.
Inconstant Moon
by Larry Niven
I
I was watching the news when the change came, like a flicker of motion at the corner of my eye. I turned toward the balcony window. Whatever it was, I was too late to catch it.
The moon was very bright tonight.
I saw that, and smiled, and turned back. Johnny Carson was just starting his monologue.
When the first commercials came on I got up to reheat some coffee. Commercials came in strings of three and four, going on midnight. I’d have time.
The moonlight caught me coming back. If it had been bright before, it was brighter now. Hypnotic. I opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony.
The balcony wasn’t much more than a railed ledge, with standing room for a man and a woman and a portable barbecue set. These past months the view had been lovely, especially around sunset. The Power and Light Company had been putting up a glass-slab style office building. So far it was only a steel framework of open girders. Shadow-blackened against a red sunset sky, it tended to look stark and surrealistic and hellishly impressive.
Tonight…
I had never seen the moon so bright, not even in the desert. Bright enough to read by, I thought, and immediately, but that’s an illusion. The moon was never bigger (I had read somewhere) than a quarter held nine feet away. It couldn’t possibly be bright enough to read by.
It was only three-quarters full!
But, glowing high over the San Diego Freeway to the west, the moon seemed to dim even the streaming automobile headlights. I blinked against its light, and thought of men walking on the moon, leaving corrugated footprints. Once, for the sake of an article I was writing, I had been allowed to pick up a bone-dry moon rock and hold it in my hand…
I heard the show starting again, and I stepped inside. But, glancing once behind me, I caught the moon growing even brighter—as if it had come from behind a wisp of scudding cloud.
Now its light was brain-searing, lunatic.
* * *
The phone rang five times before she answered.
“Hi,” I said. “Listen—”
“Hi,” Leslie said sleepily, complainingly. Damn. I’d hoped she was watching television, like me.
I said, “Don’t scream and shout, because I had a reason for calling. You’re in bed, right? Get up and… can you get up?”
“What time is it?”
“Quarter of twelve.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“Go out on your balcony and look around.”
“Okay.”
The phone clunked. I waited. Leslie’s balcony faced north and west, like mine, but it was ten stories higher, with a correspondingly better view. Through my own window, the moon burned like a textured spotlight.
“Stan? You there?”
“Yah. What do you think of it?”
“It’s gorgeous. I’ve never seen anything like it. What could make the moon light up like that?”
“I don’t know, but isn’t it gorgeous”?
“You’re supposed to be the native.” Leslie had only moved out here a year ago. “Listen, I’ve never seen it like this. But there’s an old legend,” I said. “Once every hundred years the Los Angeles smog rolls away for a single night, leaving the air as clear as interstellar space. That way the gods can see if Los Angeles is still there. If it is, they roll the smog back so they won’t have to look at it.”
“I used to know all that stuff. Well, listen, I’m glad you woke me up to see it, but I’ve got to get to work tomorrow.”
“Poor baby.”
“That’s life. ’Night.”
“’Night.”
Afterward I sat in the dark, trying to think of someone else to call. Call a girl at midnight, invite her to step outside and look at the moonlight… and she may think it’s romantic or she may be furious, but she won’t assume you called six others.
So I thought of some names. But the girls who belonged to them had all dropped away over the past year or so, after I started spending all my time with Leslie. One could hardly blame them. And now Joan was in Texas and Hildy was getting married, and if I called Louise I’d probably get Gordie too. The English girl? But I couldn’t remember her number. Or her last name.
Besides, everyone I knew punched a time clock of one kind or another. Me, I worked for a living, but as a freelance writer I picked my hours. Anyone I woke up tonight, I’d be ruining her morning. Ah, well…
The Johnny Carson Show was a swirl of gray and a roar of static when I got back to the living room. I turned the set off and went back out on the balcony.
The moon was brighter than the flow of headlights on the freeway, brighter than Westwood Village off to the right. The Santa Monica Mountains had a magical pearly glow. There were no stars near the moon. Stars could not survive that glare.
I wrote science and how-to articles for a living. I ought to be able to figure out what was making the moon do that. Could the moon be suddenly larger?
…Inflating like a balloon? No. Closer, maybe. The moon, falling?
Tides! Waves fifty feet high… and earthquakes! San Andreas Fault splitting apart like the Grand Canyon ! Jump in my car, head for the hills… no, too late already…
Nonsense. The moon was brighter, not bigger. I could see that. And what could possibly drop the moon on our heads like that?
I blinked, and the moon left an afterimage on my retinae. It was that bright.
A million people must be watching the moon right now, and wondering, like me. An article on the subject would sell big… if I wrote it before anyone else did…
There must be some simple, obvious explanation.
Well, how could the moon grow brighter? Moonlight reflected sunlight. Could the sun have gotten brighter? It must have happened after sunset, then, or it would have been noticed…
I didn’t like that idea.
Besides, half the Earth was in direct sunlight. A thousand correspondents for Life and Time and Newsweek and Associated Press would all be calling in from Europe, Asia, Africa… unless they were all hiding in cellars. Or dead. Or voiceless, because the sun was blanketing everything with static, radio and phone systems and television… television: Oh my God.
I was just barely beginning to be afraid.
All right, start over. The moon had become very much brighter. Moonlight, well, moonlight was reflected sunlight; any idiot knew that. Then… something had happened to the sun.
II
“Hello?”
“Hi. Me,” I said, and then my throat froze solid. Panic! What was I going to tell her?
“I’ve been watching the moon,” she said dreamily. “It’s wonderful. I even tried to use my telescope, but I couldn’t see a thing; it was too bright. It lights up the whole city. The hills are all silver.”
That’s right, she kept a telescope on her balcony. I’d forgotten.
“I haven’t tried to go back to sleep,” she said, “too much light.”
I got my throat working again. “Listen, Leslie love, I started thinking about how I woke you up and how you probably couldn’t get back to sleep, what with all this light. So let’s go out for a midnight snack.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“No, I’m serious. I mean it. Tonight isn’t a night for sleeping. We may never have a night like this again. To hell with your diet. Let’s celebrate. Hot fudge sundaes, Irish coffee—”
“That’s different. I’ll get dressed.”
“I’ll be right over.”
* * *
; Leslie lived on the fourteenth floor of Building C of the Barrington Plaza. I rapped for admission, and waited.
And waiting, I wondered without any sense of urgency: Why Leslie?
There must be other ways to spend my last night on Earth, than with one particular girl. I could have picked a different particular girl, or even several not too particular girls, except that that didn’t really apply to me, did it? Or I could have called my brother, or either set of parents—
Well, but brother Mike would have wanted a good reason for being hauled out of bed at midnight. “But, Mike, the moon is so beautiful-” Hardly. Any of my parents would have reacted similarly. Well, I had a good reason, but would they believe me?
And if they did, what then? I would have arranged a kind of wake. Let ’em sleep through it. What I wanted was someone who would join my… farewell party without asking the wrong questions.
What I wanted was Leslie. I knocked again.
She opened the door just a crack for me. She was in her underwear. A stiff, misshapen girdle in one hand brushed my back as she came into my arms. “I was about to put this on.”
“I came just in time, then.” I took the girdle away from her and dropped it. I stooped to get my arms under her ribs, straightened up with effort, and walked us to the bedroom with her feet dangling against my ankles.
Her skin was cold. She must have been outside.
“So” she demanded. “You think you can compete with a hot fudge sundae, do you?”
“Certainly. My pride demands it.” We were both somewhat out of breath. Once in our lives I had tried to lift her cradled in my arms, in conventional movie style. I’d damn near broken my back. Leslie was a big girl, my height, and almost too heavy around the hips.
I dropped us on the bed, side by side. I reached around her from both sides to scratch her back, knowing it would leave her helpless to resist me, ah ha hahahaha. She made sounds of pleasure to tell me where to scratch. She pulled my shirt up around my shoulders and began scratching my back.
We pulled pieces of clothing from ourselves and each other, at random, dropping them over the edges of the bed. Leslie’s skin was warm now, almost hot…
All right, now that’s why I couldn’t have picked another girl. I’d have to teach her how to scratch. And there just wasn’t time.
Some nights I had a nervous tendency to hurry our lovemaking. Tonight we were performing a ritual, a rite of passage. I tried to slow it down, to make it last. I tried to make Leslie like it more. It paid off incredibly. I forgot the moon and the future when Leslie put her heels against the backs of my knees and we moved into the ancient rhythm.
But the image that came to me at the climax was vivid and frightening. We were in a ring of blue-hot fire that closed like a noose. If I moaned in terror and ecstasy, then she must have thought it was ecstasy alone.
We lay side by side, drowsy, torpid, clinging together. I was minded to go back to sleep then, renege on my promise. Sleep and let Leslie sleep… but instead I whispered into her ear: “Hot Fudge Sundae.” She smiled and stirred and presently rolled off the bed.
I wouldn’t let her wear the girdle. “It’s past midnight. Nobody’s going to pick you up. Because I’d thrash the blackguard, right? So why not be comfortable?” She laughed and gave in. We hugged each other, once, hard, in the elevator. It felt much better without the girdle.
III
The gray-haired counter waitress was cheerful and excited. Her eyes glowed. She spoke as if confiding a secret. “Have you noticed the moonlight?”
Ship’s was fairly crowded, this time of night and this close to UCLA. Half the customers were university students. Tonight they talked in hushed voices, turning to look out through the glass walls of the twenty-four-hour restaurant. The moon was low in the west, low enough to compete with the street globes.
“We noticed,” I said. “We’re celebrating. Get us two hot fudge sundaes, will you?” When she turned her back I slid a ten-dollar bill under the paper place mat. Not that she’d ever spend it, but at least she’d have the pleasure of finding it. I’d never spend it either.
I felt loose, casual. A lot of problems seemed suddenly to have solved themselves.
Who would have believed that peace would come to Vietnam and Cambodia in a single night?
This thing had started around eleven-thirty, here in California. That would have put the noon sun just over the Arabian Sea, with all but few fringes of Africa, and Australia in direct sunlight.
Already Germany was reunited, the Wall melted or smashed by shock waves. Israelis and Arabs had laid down their arms. Apartheid was dead in Africa.
And I was free. For me there were no more consequences. Tonight I could satisfy all my dark urges, rob, kill, cheat on my income tax, throw bricks at plate glass windows, burn my credit cards. I could forget the article on explosive metal forming, due Thursday. Tonight I could substitute cinnamon candy for Leslie’s Pills. Tonight—
“Think I’ll have a cigarette.”
Leslie looked at me oddly. “I thought you’d given that up.”
“You remember. I told myself if I got any overpowering urges, I’d have a cigarette. I did that because I couldn’t stand the thought of never smoking again.”
“But it’s been months!” she laughed.
“But they keep putting cigarette ads in my magazines!”
“It’s a plot. All right, go have a cigarette.”
I put coins in the machine, hesitated over the choice, finally picked a mild filter. It wasn’t that I wanted a cigarette. But certain events call for champagne, and others for cigarettes. There is the traditional last cigarette before a firing squad…
I lit up. Here’s to lung cancer.
It tasted just as good as I remembered; though there was a faint stale undertaste, like a mouthful of old cigarette butts. The third lungful hit me oddly. My eyes unfocused and everything went very calm. My heart pulsed loudly in my throat.
“How does it taste?”
“Strange. I’m buzzed,” I said.
Buzzed! I hadn’t even heard the word in fifteen years. In high school we’d smoked to get that buzz, that quasi-drunkenness produced by capillaries constricting in the brain. The buzz had stopped coming after the first few times, but we’d kept smoking, most of us…
I put it out. The waitress was picking up our sundaes.
Hot and cold, sweet and bitter: there is no taste quite like that of a hot fudge sundae. To die without tasting it again would have been a crying shame. But with Leslie it was a thing, a symbol of all rich living. Watching her eat was more fun than eating myself.
Besides… I’d killed the cigarette to taste the ice cream. Now, instead of savoring the ice cream, I was anticipating Irish coffee.
Too little time.
Leslie’s dish was empty. She stage-whispered, “Aahh!” and patted herself over the navel.
A customer at one of the small tables began to go mad.
I’d noticed him coming in. A lean scholarly type wearing sideburns and steel-rimmed glasses, he had been continually twisting around to look out at the moon. Like others at other tables, he seemed high on a rare and lovely natural phenomenon.
Then he got it. I saw his face changing, showing suspicion, then disbelief, then horror, horror and helplessness.
“Let’s go,” I told Leslie. I dropped quarters on the counter and stood up.
“Don’t you want to finish yours?”
“Nope. We’ve got things to do. How about some Irish coffee?”
“And a Pink Lady for me? Oh, look!” She turned full around.
The scholar was climbing up on a table. He balanced, spread wide his arms and bellowed, “Look out your windows!”
“You get down from there!” a waitress demanded, jerking emphatically at his pants leg.
“The world is coming to an end! Far away on the other side of the sea, death and hellfire—”
But we were out the door, laughing as we ran. Leslie panted, “We may have
—escaped a religious—riot in there!”
I thought of the ten I’d left under my plate. Now it would please nobody. Inside, a prophet was shouting his message of doom to all who would hear. The gray-haired woman with the glowing eyes would find the money and think: They knew it too.
* * *
Buildings blocked the moon from the Red Barn’s parking lot. The street lights and the indirect moonglare were pretty much the same color. The night only seemed a bit brighter than usual.
I didn’t understand why Leslie stopped suddenly in the driveway. But I followed her gaze, straight up to where a star burned very brightly just south of the zenith.
“Pretty,” I said.
She gave me a very odd look.
There were no windows in the Red Barn. Dim artificial lighting, far dimmer than the queer cold light outside, showed on dark wood and quietly cheerful customers. Nobody seemed aware that tonight was different from other nights.
The sparse Tuesday night crowd was gathered mostly around the piano bar. A customer had the mike. He was singing some half-familiar song in a wavering weak voice, while the black pianist grinned and played a schmaltzy background.
I ordered two Irish coffees and a Pink Lady. At Leslie’s questioning look I only smiled mysteriously.
How ordinary the Red Barn felt. How relaxed; how happy. We held hands across the table, and I smiled and was afraid to speak. If I broke the spell, if I said the wrong thing…
The drinks arrived. I raised an Irish coffee glass by the stem. Sugar, Irish whiskey, and strong black coffee, with thick whipped cream floating on top. It coursed through me like a magical potion of strength, dark and hot and powerful.
The waitress waved back my money. “See that man in the turtleneck, there at the end of the piano bar? He’s buying, “she said with relish. “He came in two hours ago and handed the bartender a hundred-dollar bill.”
