The Year's Best SF 11 # 1993

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Sally: I heard you were topside yesterday. Betty saw you—

  Todd: Your friend the maid? The social climber?

  Sally: Betty saw you speaking English. Up there. How many times have I told you to speak Russian? We didn’t spend all that boodle to get you tutored in Russian for nothing.

  Todd: I was talking—if you must know—to a fellow American.

  Sally: Never speak to them. Who was it?

  Todd: I don’t see why you’re interested, but it was Greg Peterson.

  Sally: The servo mechanic?

  (Silence. Presumably Todd makes an affirmative gesture.)

  Sally: Well, what were you talking about?

  Todd: There’s a rumor that the base is going to be closed down. “Desirable” Americans will be divided among the four remaining Soviet bases. “Undesirables” will be deported by auto-rocket to Denver.

  Sally: When?

  Todd: You know these rumors. Soon. Always soon.

  Sally: You need to stop seeing that girl.

  Todd: I figure I’m an “undesirable” anyway, so why should I stop anything? My ticker will be bursting soon enough.

  Sally: You’re perfectly desirable. Smart. Not a tapehead.

  Todd: They would rather have tapeheads. Addicts are easier to control. Besides, the Great Russians have never been too keen on mulattoes.

  Sally: There’s an Official Policy—

  Todd: Yeah, there’s an Official Policy—

  (This goes on in the course of a regular son-mother argument for quite some time.)

  Sally slipped a new cassette in. Her ebony features relaxed. She has become a Cleopatra whom all powerful men love.

  * * *

  The basalt tunnel was lit by the plant tanks and the humans’ afterglow. All concepts of time and responsibility have been dissolved by the feeling of joy. Sasha decides this is a real state, by its ability to replace all other states no matter how long they have been part of her routine.

  “Todd, tell me a story.”

  The relationship between sex and storytelling is a very old one, going all the way back to Scheherazade and the Sultan. And what better place for a story than a tunnel beneath the surface of the Moon?

  “This is something that really happened a long time ago. When they were salvaging Farside Station. This Russian girl”—he hugged Sasha—“and this American guy went with their folks to salvage. Well, the salvage teams were real busy so these two went off in a crawler. They were, you know, in love. So they went into a small crater beyond the sight line from Farside. They were just about to get to it, when they got a message from the circumlunar satellite that a cargo ’bot—you know, one of the big four-armed types—had gone berserk and that everyone should leave Farside. Well, the girl wanted to leave right then, but the guy argued that they were safe where they were. Well, they argued for a while, and the guy saw that he wasn’t getting anywhere—so he kicked the crawler into Emergency Full and shot out of the crater toward the base. The girl said she thought she heard the crawler hit something, but the guy was so ticked off he didn’t say anything. When they got to base and beyond the airlock and everything, they got out of the crawler. And there, hooked on the girl’s door, was the torn-off arm of a cargo ’bot.”

  Sasha immediately disbelieved the story—not because of the improbable behavior of the robot—but because she wanted theirs to be the first love of an American and a Soviet.

  “That can’t be so.”

  “It is too so. I heard it from my dad.”

  “If it was so, everybody would know about it.”

  “The kids probably didn’t tell anyone because they didn’t want to get in trouble.”

  “Then how come your dad knew about it?”

  “Because he was in charge of Farside salvage. He knew where all the vehicles went. At least the American vehicles.”

  “Well,” said Sasha triumphantly, “there aren’t any more American vehicles, so we can’t go check for severed robotic arms.”

  “There are too American vehicles.”

  Oops! He wasn’t supposed to say that. That he was telling what he shouldn’t was all over his face. Sasha saw that there were secrets beyond this—a whole maze of American secrets darker than space.

  Todd decided to continue; he would tell all, he would tell her the biggest Secret. No, he would show it. It was time for his escape. So he continued talking, trying hard to sound as though he had never stopped to think. “There are American vehicles. We can go see the very crawler.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “No. But I know where it’s at.”

  “Take me.”

  She thought she was returning the testing challenge of love.

  Todd touched the light around his neck, bringing it to full intensity. They walked down the tunnel slowly. Todd looked for something.

  There was a fissure in the basalt—a lighter finger of breccia had intruded. Todd ran his beam along the length of the breccia. He passed the light from top to bottom three times. Almost silently a section of the tunnel wall slid away revealing a descending staircase.

  All Sasha could think of was Dante: Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

  All Todd could think of was Romeo and Juliet, except he would rewrite it. He would let the star-crossed lovers escape to a world free from their families.

  Todd went first. Sasha followed. Then the doorway closed. The air was very stale here. Except for Todd’s medallion, no light shone. They descended at least twelve meters when the darkness of an artificial grotto opened before them. Todd’s light revealed three vehicles: two American crawlers and an out-of-date Soviet mining rig.

  He said, “See?”

  “So they’re crawlers. That doesn’t mean there are severed robotic arms. Let’s go look.”

  “It’s the further one, I think.”

  “Korosho.”

  Sasha led the way. There wasn’t any arm. There were scratches, but anything might cause scratches. Sasha slowly shook her head; she decided that once again Todd was suffering from the American disease of irrationality.

  Todd said, “Well, that was thirty years ago. They probably removed the arm. It was in the way or something.”

  “Todd, your dad was just having you on.”

  “Dad wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “Oh it’s just folklore. Everyone knows Americans—”

  She’d said it. He finished it.

  “Everyone knows Americans are liars.”

  “It’s not a big deal, Todd.”

  “Sure it’s a big deal. You’re thinking of marrying me and you think I’m a liar. You think that basically I can’t be trusted, nor can my people be trusted. Look around you. Do you see how much I trust you? I brought you here. Here! I could be killed for bringing you here, and all you have to offer is tired Soviet platitudes.”

  “I’m sorry, Todd, I really am. It’s just a saying, it’s not what I feel here.”

  She put his hand over her heart.

  Todd’s voice became very intimate. “I could show you something. Something really big. Something that would change your mind about Americans.”

  “Show me.”

  “We’ll have to take a crawler out.”

  “Where?”

  “To Farside Base.”

  Todd opened the doors of the crawler. The lithium batteries still held their charge. He powered it up, disconnecting the navigational to the circumlunar satellite, which would have told the planetary computer their location. Orange indicator lights revealed that the crawler didn’t have a good atmosphere seal. They would have to wear suits.

  Sasha hated the old-style American suits. Damp and clinging yellow latex, they simply made you feel nasty. Todd toggled a switch, and a section of the grotto wall swung open. They rolled forward into an airlock. The air didn’t leave the crawler right away, but continued to hiss for several seconds beyond the lock. Wasteful American extravagance. They drove through a long, dark, basalt tunnel, finally emerging into a small cave in
a crater floor. The Russian base lay two klicks behind them in the lunar highlands.

  Todd activated a scoop on the front of the crawler which picked regolite—crater dust—and deposited it behind them, obscuring tracks which otherwise would last as long as the Moon itself. The Earth was behind them, to the east. It would sink slowly behind the horizon as the crawler rolled forward at a somewhat less than thrilling thirty-five kilometers an hour. It would take two hours to reach Farside station, but Sasha didn’t care. This was an adventure. She had to be realistic with herself—Todd would be on a rocket back to Earth, and she couldn’t sustain her girlish dreams much longer. She wondered how long it would take her father to find her.

  Through their suits they could hear the dull gravel roar of the scoop; their radios were on, albeit at minimum power, but neither spoke until the crawler had left the crater rim.

  Sasha asked, “Why do Americans need secret vehicles?”

  “We like to keep an ace in the hole. Congress may open up Farside again. The program could start up anytime.”

  “You wouldn’t need secret vehicles for that. Besides what can you do with two crawlers and a miner?”

  “So folks could get away if your dad ever went crazy.”

  “There’s nowhere to go.”

  “There’s a place to go. Not all the Americans know about it. My mom doesn’t even know about it. But Farside had a very special project going—the Sarfatti Project. Sarfatti began looking for what determines Planck’s constant. He wanted to find the root of all reality. He found it in an old SETI transcription.”

  “The U.S. program that listened for extraterrestrial communication?”

  “Yeah, for years they hid this long code from the Andromeda Galaxy. Eventually they released it to Sarfatti. It’s called the Yellow Text of Thanos Kon. Really it was called by a long and boring code sequence, but someone cooked up a fanciful name for it.”

  Sasha knew then that Todd was a hopeless romantic, that he would waste his life on irrational quests. In short, that her tall, bronze love was typically American. But as the Earth dropped out of sight, it was a time for love and fancy, so she played along.

  “What was revealed in the Yellow Text of Thanos Kon?”

  “Hey, I’m being serious.”

  “Korosho. What was Sarfatti working on?”

  “Sarfatti found out that will and intent came before the forming of Planck’s constant. That there was a way for an individual consciousness to play in an endlessly creative fashion without ever settling on a universe line to move through.”

  They were in a smooth, hilly area now. Occasionally a bump would send the cruiser flying for a few meters. When they reached the tracks the salvage vehicles had left thirty years ago, Tom shut off the scoop to conserve batteries. He went on with his fairy tale.

  “Of course, that would be a meaningless existence. If you thought of something, you’d be it. There would cease to be a self and just an all. But Sarfatti went further. He found that you could create—through will alone—a different universe line to live in.”

  “In other words, you could click your ruby slippers three times and say, ‘There’s no place like home!’ and you’d go there.”

  “Not necessarily. You couldn’t control all the factors. It was more like, ‘Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.’”

  “You really think that all this you’re telling me is real, don’t you?”

  In the harsh light of the lunar day, they could see one of the wings of Farside. Farside had been partially sublunar. Americans had always dug in. Originally it had been planned as a half-buried pentagon, but it had expanded in all directions as the radically pro-space Congress of the thirties had poured money into the Moon like there was no tomorrow. These strangely angled wings shot in all directions, suggesting an alien architecture fitted to this hostile world. Several holes appeared in the gleaming surface of the base—opened by micrometeors over the decades. Todd pulled the crawler up to a jagged hole, probably made by the salvage crews to pull out some valuable piece of equipment.

  They turned on their suit lights as they stepped inside. Todd led the way down the long corridor toward the original pentagon. Sasha was impressed by the size and the waste. In its day, Farside had been the largest of the bases in operation on the Moon. With typical American expansiveness, it was just beyond view of the Earth. By claiming this view of the fabulous formless darkness, Americans had felt closer to the unknown which is space. It was a long walk to the central pentagon. Todd examined some controls, touched a switch, and the lights flickered on.

  “The salvage crews left a small reactor going, so that if they ever needed to visit the base again they would have ample power.”

  Just as they reached the central pentagon, they felt a vibration. In the corridor to the left, something big was moving. Sasha didn’t believe it. It was a cargo ’bot. A big, three-armed cargo ’bot. Todd began to laugh.

  She grabbed him.

  He hugged her and said, “It’s all a joke. Look.”

  He touched three wall controls quickly and the ’bot stopped. He continued, “It scares off people from the real secret—that’s what folklore was invented to do in the first place.”

  Todd led them through the pentagon. Every cubicle had either been cleaned out by the salvage teams, or had everything smashed by the ’bot. They crunched through piles of crushed boards, spaghetti wires, destroyed bits of wooden furniture brought from Earth as status symbols, lunar mineral displays, silicon data storage crystals, robotic parts. Everywhere were the heavy wheel tracks of the three-armed ’bot. Todd went into one room, seemingly no different from the rest. He stood in front of a closet door, and said, “Here is the Farside Secret.”

  He opened the door, which somewhat anticlimactically revealed only a closet. Then he pulled Sasha toward him and slammed the door behind him. It’s not a big thing to descend in an elevator in the Moon’s reduced gravity, but Sasha found the brief descent shocking enough.

  The closet did not then open onto the magician’s cave that she had been half suspecting. It was a small, densely packed lab, with some more or less familiar-looking high-energy physics equipment. She was waiting for Todd to uncover this hoax as he had the ’bot above. Already she was thinking of this experience as a story to tell her grandchildren, whom as she pictured them were clearly not Todd’s descendants after all. She would play on a little while longer. She wanted to be able to tell the story of how she was young and foolish and brave.

  “This is it,” Todd said. “Sarfatti’s dream machine buried in an abandoned base that looks away from Earth. This is the escape route for the desperate. It’s our escape route.”

  “What?”

  “You know as well as I do that I’ll be jailed for this, if I go back. So you’ve got to choose whether to follow me into another world and we live—perhaps—happily ever after, or stay here and be trapped into a lifetime of endless five-year plans.”

  “You can’t make me decide this. You have no right.”

  “You decided it when you followed me into the tunnels under Little America. We’ve been gone—what is it?—four hours now. The Central Computer no doubt told your dad that you had entered the American ghetto at least three hours ago. Even now agents are swarming through Little America. If we stay I’ll be a dead Romeo, with a literally broken heart in the gravity of Denver. You’ll be a good career space agent living an emotional life as barren as the rocks you’ll see every day through your viewports. Choose romance.”

  At that moment the battle between romance and reason was decided. She would go with Todd, or at least let him try his technomagic. She had to swallow hard before she could speak.

  “I’ll go,” she said.

  Todd activated a terminal and typed in a password, which she noticed was “Rotwang.” A few indicator lights came on. Nothing dramatic.

  “We have to stand here.” He indicated a roughly circular area, which perhaps looked a little scorched or discolored.


  Sasha wondered if she was going to die. She held onto his arm very tightly. She had expected a long, mathematical description of the worlds they were going to bring into being. Todd said very simply, “I want a universe line similar to this where Soviet space doesn’t beat out the American program.”

  As he spoke, the words appeared on the terminal. For a couple of minutes nothing happened, and Sasha was mad at the solemnity of this gag he was trying to pull. How could he offer something so important and it just be a joke? She was about to break free and slap him when the dizziness hit.

  It seemed as though they were moving in every possible direction at once, including turning inside out. It was neither a long nor a short time, because they were in a place where time was not. Something there—something native to that timeless void—was both perplexed by their choice and amused by it. There was something like laughter—if Sasha believed in devils, she would have characterized it as a devil’s laugh. Except that whatever it was, in whatever place they were, had neither sound nor substance.

  It was hard to tell how long they had been staring at the lunar landscape in front of them. There was no clear moment of transition from eternity into time. It took several seconds for their minds to start again, and for them to realize what had happened.

  They were the same—same dirty suits and stale air—but Farside Base was gone. Farside was gone. The crawler was gone. The footprints and tracks were gone. They were in the base of a very deep crater, corresponding to the depths of the Farside lab. Todd turned his radio up to maximum gain, but there was only the meaningless hiss of cosmic rays.

  No Americans. No Russians. No machine to try for another wish.

  After a long silence, he would suggest that maybe they should walk back to Patrice Lumumba base. After a longer silence, she would agree.

  They had come to another world, but not one they would have understood. They came to a world where Communism had fallen, and America had turned its back on space. No competition for the fabled ores of the asteroids, no pride in setting up bases to stare from the far side of the Moon. Even if they had had enough air to walk all the klicks back to see the Moon, no one knew how to build a rocket to get to the Moon. Their signals would have been wasted on a disbelieving drug manufacturing plant at an L-5 point.