Joker Moon

by George R. R. Martin

  “Nothing so elegant as your little orange notebooks from Voekler Papeterie Exclusive back in La Rochelle, eh?” replied Malachi. “I think he’s using some sort of outsized felt markers his mother ordered in from an art supply store. As for his stationery, I’m fairly sure that’s one of the plastic place mats from the cafeteria in my office building.”

  She could read it plainly enough.

  I am sorry I was rude. I shouldn’t have sent you away. My parents say that Doctor Tachyon himself is coming to consult on my case and I hope you can come meet him.—T

  Doctor Tachyon! The psychic alien prince! Theodorus must have been beside himself with excitement. Or at least, the old Theodorus would have been.

  “When is this happening?” she asked, sure that Malachi had read the note before he gave it to her.

  He looked over his newspaper, not pretending he hadn’t. “Tachyon? In a few weeks. That’s taken some doing. That’s taken some money. That’s taken some phone calls to some of the Witherspoons’ most powerful friends.”

  Since she had come to America, Mathilde had lived in a strange world of adults who had more money and power than she’d ever imagined in France. A few tangents of thought came together—her mother taking her to see the submarine pens by the water in La Rochelle, a snatch of conversation at one particular boring party at the Witherspoon estate, money and power.

  “Wasn’t Mr. Witherspoon on a submarine in the Navy with the man who is president of the United States?” she asked.

  Malachi looked back down at his paper. “That would be a powerful friend, now, wouldn’t it?”

  “Ils me disent que vous êtes français,” said the man from the pamphlet. He really did look like an illustration from an old adventure novel. His broad-brimmed hat, which he had swept off in the same dance-like set of motions that saw him bow to her and take one of her hands up to his lips, was light purple. It clashed violently with his yellow frock coat and green pants. His boots, at least, were black leather, polished to such a high sheen that Mathilde could see herself in their pointy toes.

  “Oui,” she said shyly. “But I am also American.”

  “A woman of the world,” Tachyon replied. “Destined for great things, I am sure. My dear, your skin is simply lovely.” Her skin was very close to the same shade of red as his long curly hair.

  They were in the kitchen, waiting for Theodorus’s parents to return from talking to their son back in his new rooms. Malachi had gone into the library to make phone calls, saying something about how the Witherspoon fortunes wouldn’t maintain themselves even during family crises.

  Mathilde had already been told that Theodorus had not responded to any of Dr. Tachyon’s treatments, at least not physically. He would remain as he was for as long as he lived. She didn’t really know why the alien was still there at all, if it had taken so much to coax him down from New York.

  In an effort at polite, adult-style conversation, she said, “Did you take the train here, or did you fly?”

  A completely unexpected expression transformed the man’s face at that. He looked delighted. He looked joyous. “Oh, child, I flew.” He laughed, and said again, “I flew!”

  Just then Theodorus thrust his glistening gray head and torso into the kitchen. The door was too narrow and too short for him to move his great shell through, though he must have been trying, because the wooden frame creaked and swelled. From behind, Mathilde vaguely heard his parents telling him to calm down.

  “Mathilde!” he said, and for all its rumbling depth and its strange liquid vowels, Mathilde could hear joy in his voice, too. What was going on?

  “Mathilde!” Theodorus shouted. “He’s brought his spaceship! We’re going for a ride in a spaceship!”

  The architect, Mr. Taylor, had been busy at the back of the house. A ramp extended from a wide new door in the wing where Theodorus now spent his days and nights down into Mr. Witherspoon’s beloved gardens. Theodorus was gliding down this as Mathilde and Doctor Tachyon rounded from the front, so they were all together when they saw … what they saw.

  “Is it … a rock?” asked Mathilde, genuinely confused.

  Sitting squarely in the middle of the formal English rose garden that occupied this part of the grounds was an enormous something that seemed to be made of stone, or perhaps coral. Except that it was all swirls and swooping lines, and colorful lights danced across its surface, highlighting its strangeness.

  “Far from it!” said Doctor Tachyon, seeming somewhat offended. “This, children, is my personal spacecraft, and my oldest friend.”

  Malachi had just stepped into the doorway where Theodorus had exited. If he was concerned about what the trail Theodorus left behind him was doing to his expensive shoes, he didn’t show it. The only thing he showed was a narrowing of the eyes when the alien spoke.

  “It’s alive?” asked Theodorus. “My father told me that was one of the theories about … it? Should we call it it?”

  “The ship’s name is Baby,” said Tachyon. “And now let us aboard!”

  A glowing rectangle of lines appeared on the side of the ship, and this folded down into a much stranger ramp than the one the Witherspoons’ architect had built for Theodorus. Mathilde walked over and peered inside.

  “It doesn’t look like the inside of a spaceship,” she said.

  Tachyon urged her up the ramp. “But my dear, when have you ever been aboard a craft capable of interstellar flight?”

  It had been at least a couple of months, if lying on Theodorus’s floor with her legs propped up against the wall counted.

  Theodorus made his way inside, and the three of them found themselves in an ornate chamber. The ship was as unexpected on the inside as it had been on the outside.

  “It looks like a bedroom,” said Theodorus, and Mathilde was learning enough about his new intonations to recognize disappointment. “Where is the command chair? Where are the navigation and piloting controls and the science station? Where is the viewport?”

  Almost, almost, thought Mathilde, Doctor Tachyon almost said something dismissive. But he was still in that joyous mood that had come upon him in the kitchen. He nodded.

  “Do you know, Theodorus, that this will be only the second flight I’ve taken since Baby was returned to me by your government? From where she was held to your home, and now this … this demonstration. So I am, of course, out of practice at piloting.”

  As he spoke the various furnishings and wall decorations that had made it look so like a bedroom began to shrink, as if they were melting into the walls and floor.

  “But it sounds like you, young man, know a great deal about the subject,” Tachyon said, and now things were growing out of the floor and walls and ceiling. A large screen manifested on one side and on it they could see the Witherspoons and Malachi looking up at the ship. A number of smaller screens showing planets and the sun were at either side. Toward the front, a panel crowded with a great number of buttons and levers and dials grew up to just about the height of Mathilde’s waist.

  “That’s your station,” Tachyon whispered.

  Mathilde studied the controls. They were mystifying.

  “And you, of course, will be here in the center.” Tachyon beckoned Theodorus to a circular platform that had risen from the floor. On the edge nearest the large view screen, another panel grew, this one featuring a pair of pistol-like grips and a large red dial that was labeled VELOCITY.

  Theodorus took the grips into his hands. He said, “Are we secure for takeoff, Doctor?”

  Tachyon had retired to a comfortable-looking couch near Mathilde. “Aye, Captain, secure for takeoff.”

  “Lieutenant Maréchal,” Theodorus said, “initiate main engine sequence, if you will.”

  Mathilde looked at her friend. She looked at the senseless jumble of controls before her.

  Then, inside her head, she heard Doctor Tachyon speak quite clearly, though she knew that he had not said anything aloud at all. Just push a button.

  So she did
.

  There was barely any sense of movement, but the screen showed the Witherspoon house shrinking below them. They were flying.

  “We’re flying,” said Mathilde.

  In a spaceship.

  “In a spaceship,” said Mathilde.

  “How long do we have?” asked Theodorus. He sounded pensive, suddenly.

  Tachyon shrugged. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I want to go to the Moon,” Theodorus said firmly.

  “Ah, well, that would be quite a trip. And take too long, alas. Perhaps you will be satisfied with an orbit or two around the Earth. The planet is quite lovely, and we’ll see spectacular views of the Moon as well.”

  Theodorus bobbed his head slowly up and down. He was nodding, Mathilde thought. She could not yet read his expressions, and she wondered if he was disappointed.

  “Perhaps you’ll get there someday,” said Doctor Tachyon, trying to sound cheerful.

  “Perhaps,” said Theodorus.

  They had risen so high that the curvature of the earth became apparent. It glowed blue and green. In the distance, the Moon hung like an ornament. It was all so beautiful.

  “Not perhaps,” Mathilde said softly, looking around at her friend, watching him watch the worlds. “Not perhaps,” she said louder, and the two of them looked at her. “Definitely.”

  Ghost of a Chance

  by Steve Perrin

  ALMAZ

  1980

  THE LIVING HOLOGRAM THAT is Captain Yuri Serkov has been alone on the station for six months. It isn’t the same as the sensory deprivation tank. There are sensors and equipment that still work even flooded with radiation. After all, they had been built to withstand the normal radiation environment of orbital space; the extra radiation will probably degrade them faster than spec, but the gear is still good for a few years.

  The telemetry is still feeding back to Star City. This includes some television cameras. Yuri stays in the infrared spectrum when passing in front of the pickups, except once he moved slightly into the visual spectrum. Someone who didn’t shield his mic yelled and someone else said something about ghosts. He’s tempted to appear again, but so far has resisted the impulse.

  He does keep the station’s radar in operation. Already two American Hornet spaceplanes have made close approaches, but both turned away when they got close-range readings on the radiation emanations.

  Now the approach radar shows that a Soyuz capsule is definitely on an interception course with the radioactive Almaz station. It is reaching visual range. Yuri shrugs and moves his body toward the Almaz 4 section, with the spacewalking air lock. If someone is coming to inspect, they will probably be sent over on a line, rather than bring the Soyuz into the center of the spilling radiation.

  The station rocks slightly and he realizes the Soyuz is actually docking at Almaz 4. Surprising. The radiation should have screwed up the automatic docking program by now. Obviously the shielding is more efficient or the programming more robust than he has assumed.

  Not at all sure of his reception in his current form, Yuri tries a trick he came up with after a few weeks of experimentation. Looking at himself in the lounge’s mirror, he sees himself fade from sight. Finally all he can see is the infrared signature rebounding from the mirror surface. As far as he knows, he now only exists as an infrared hologram. Of course, all he can detect now is infrared, so he can be sitting out in plain sight in all his naked glory but only be able to see in infrared.

  The port cycles open and a woman in a space suit enters. Yuri hears her radio statement: “The station is in vacuum.” She flips a switch near the port and some objects floating free in the station section start moving away from the air vents. Yuri keeps still and listens. The radio reception is full of radiation static, but the voice seems familiar.

  “There is still atmosphere in the system,” she reports and moves farther into the section, obviously not seeing Yuri. As she passes him, enough heat emanates from her suit to give him some idea of her identity, but Yuri can’t quite place the memory.

  The next entry through the port is a figure in a bulked-up space suit with reinforcement in the joints and boots. The figure manages to float ponderously. His voice is as heavy as his form. “I, Major Constantin Radianskyev, take command of the Almaz Space Defense Station.”

  Major Constantin Radianskyev, code name Lead Man (Vedushchiy). Yuri recalls him, a Star Gifted who is theoretically not affected by radiation because his bones and other organs are like lead. Radianskyev is a common soldier picked for the cosmonaut program purely because he survived handily when an entire regiment died of various kinds of radiation poisoning when they volunteered to be subjects of a bomb test.

  Volunteers? Right, thinks Yuri as he remembers Radianskyev. The man is large and sullen. His current rank was brevetted onto him when he joined the cosmonaut corps. Before the revelation of his Star Gift he had been an Army corporal. As an Army officer, he resents all the Air Force officers and even the civilians in the program. As a newly minted major he tends to push his weight around, and since he is made of lead, he has a lot of weight to push.

  Rumor in Star City has it that the psychers portrayed Constantin as a reluctant cosmonaut and not terribly bright. However, he proved a natural at maneuvering spacecraft.

  As the station fills with air, the female cosmonaut removes her helmet. Yuri sees that she has two noses and two toes on her face and head. Now Yuri knows who she is.

  Major Anya Vetsenyenk, code name Many Toes (Mnogo pal’tsev nogi), has the Star Gift of a body that resists mutation by turning cancer cells into new internal and external organs that function. She was already a cosmonaut trainee when she got her code name; the first manifestation was toes that grew all over her body when she was exposed to radiation while working on a ground-side satellite. Yuri smiles at the memory. Many Toes was an active bedmate before he was assigned to the satellite project. The extra parts are often sensitive in exotic ways and Anya readily explores all the ramifications.

  Since then other organs grew on inappropriate parts of her anatomy, turning a reasonably pretty girl into the start of a monstrous freak—though still enthusiastic, as Yuri knows. Yet nothing grows where it can cause ill effects to her body’s functioning, and working weightless probably takes away many of the possible difficulties her situation can provide.

  Yuri watches as the two move into the body of the station. Obviously, Star City had decided that the station is still needed, so these radiation-resistant cosmonauts have been sent. Yuri decides he doesn’t want to expose his existence just yet.

  Yuri left his space suit in the last section of Almaz 5, where he stepped out of it. He thought about moving it to some other part of the station, but to move it he would have to get back inside and become solid, and he is not ready to risk the effects of radiation on his material form.

  Anya finds the suit as she explores Almaz 5 and dogs shut the inner door of the port, which Yuri had never bothered to close. Yuri follows her and picks up her radio message to Constantin. “I have found Yuri’s space suit. There is nothing inside!”

  “He probably got out of it and jumped off into space when he realized he was as good as dead. His body is probably pacing the station somewhere out there.” Constantin sounds just as happy not to have to deal with a body.

  “But it is still intact! It hasn’t been opened.” Anya is starting to sound a bit hysterical.

  “Are you sure it is Serkov’s suit?”

  “How can it be anyone else’s? And it has his name on it.”

  Yuri wonders, Am I actually a ghost, then? No, then my body would be in the suit. It’s the Star Gift—I just never knew the extent of it.

  As Anya and Constantin continue to shout at each other over the radio, Yuri drifts away. He has already figured out that he isn’t actually moving as a material person does. He is essentially projecting his image, and he has already mastered the very slow-drifting projection that looks like a cosmonaut in a weightless environme
nt, assuming anyone can see him.

  The two Star Gifted cosmonauts settle into a routine. Yuri is amused and gratified that Constantin seems to have no interest in Anya sexually, or for that matter in any other way. The lead in his bones seems to make him even more surly and solitary than Yuri remembers him back in Star City. He spends most of his time initially making the adjustments to the reactor that Star City mandated to lower the level of radiation, though it cannot be reduced to a livable level for normal people, what the Americans call “nats.”

  After that is done to their masters’ satisfaction, he spends his time studying the maneuver controls and creating targets to send out a port and shoot at with the 20 mm cannons. The station periodically shakes with the recoil of the guns. After a month of this, the cannon on Almaz 3 breaks some of its brackets, giving Constantin the job of spacewalking to reweld them. After that cosmonaut control tells him to restrict his practice to once a week. They can’t forbid it, since that is one of the reasons the station exists, after all.

  On the other hand, Anya apparently likes her assignment despite the hostility of her station mate. They do not fight. She maintains life support and communications, having discovered several tricks to deal with the ongoing radiation’s effects on the station’s delicate electronics.

  For three weeks, Yuri ghosts around the station, maintaining his body in infrared status so he is not noticed. He is slowly getting weaker. He does not feel hungry in this state, but maintaining the condition wearies him. How can he restore his energy? The only way he can think of is to return to corporeality and eat something, but the crew has no real eating schedule. The only established pattern is to not be in the same place at the same time. He needs one of the crewmen to realize he is sharing the station with them. The crew person best suited is obvious.

  Yuri finds Anya floating in front of the proximity radar monitor. She spends a lot of time there, looking for threatening space junk. Checking that Constantin is wrapped up in his sleeping cocoon, Yuri moves to a spot behind Anya and assumes visibility. Still immaterial, he makes no immediate impression, until Anya notices his faint reflection in the monitor screen.