Many Moons

by Scott Azmus

  My cell discloses nothing of the kind. Searching, I find a familiar television scientist revealing, “…as part of the Perseid meteor shower. The chunks of metallic rock and glass likely to be discovered by early-morning joggers are merely tektites and meteorites. If I recall correctly, comet Swift–Tuttle is this shower’s relevant ‘parent body.’ No worries, however! The twenty-six-kilometer wide comet is not anywhere near Earth. The meteoroids making up the Perseid shower are usually too fragile to survive our atmosphere, and I believe that most fragments may have vaporized.”

  Two artifacts remain.

  One, a ram’s horn curl of golden crystal, seems utterly inert. We offer it all manner of materials. I pour twigs and moss through it. I try to magnify and read its notched arcs and minute graduations. Will the ring accelerate or throw an object placed through it? Will it funnel light? Might it chisel stone? Nothing. Internal mechanisms, where detectable, are remarkable for the level of complexity and small-scale engineering. Too big to wear as a ring, it seems natural to use it as a wristband or bangle.

  “Give it here,” says Ahlen. “I’ll have the better fit.”

  That’s when I think: “Not yet.” And: “Back off.”

  Ahlen twists left and away as though slapped. Face reddening, he pushes toward me.

  “Just one minute!”

  Somehow, the ring holds him in check. That is, right up until I slide it off my wrist, fingers numb and tingling.

  “What the hell did you just do?”

  “Nothing. Sorry! I guess I just didn’t feel like being rushed.”

  “Hand it over.”

  “Not yet. Maybe yours does something even more interesting.”

  “Doubtful.”

  As for this last strange tool, picture a one-piece ice-cream scoop but with fine, radial gradations like a protractor. Cushy, tubular handle. Tapered scoop. Chrome abrasions at the base of the handle make it look like the tool requires a secure grip and sustained leverage. At the same time, the handle is not in any way ergonomic...leastwise not for me.

  Sliding his hand along the handle, thumb grazing the incised markings, Ahlen grins as the scoop’s business end produces a bubble. Maybe that’s not the best description. It’s more like a glossy bead or globule reminiscent of the drifting water spheres astronauts form during every space-station crew-change broadcast.

  Ahlen strums the inset scale. Another bubble forms. It swells. Fades. Pops.

  Tiny red mites patrol a nearby crust of lichen. A fresh bubble encloses the mites in a very special way. The mites outside the bubble zip about undisturbed. Within the orb, however: a total lack of motion.

  Seconds pass.

  A minute.

  Ahlen relaxes his grip and the confined mites go their merry way. “What is this thing? A souped-up butterfly net?”

  He devises a means of bracing the scoop and enclosing greater volumes. The scale lets him build and relax stasis bubbles at will. A flick of the wrist reduces all such capture volumes to semi-permanent spheres the size of marbles. Steely, unyielding marbles the user can eject, retain and reanimate at will.

  "Odd little widget, huh?” says Ahlen. “But what’s the practical use, I wonder?” After restraining a multitude of insects, he rolls a pair of freshly-minted beads in the palm of his hand a la Captain Philip Francis Queeg. “This damned widget—”

  “Or scoop.”

  “Sure. Scoop. Whatever. The point is that it’s warming as I use it. There’s no place for batteries. Where’s it drawing its power from?”

  Ahlen places a saved bubble atop a rocky outcrop and thumbs the scoop’s release tab. The metallic, jade-on-lapis beetle has survived ten minutes of stasis without obvious harm. Sadly, the newly freed beetle swivels velvet antennae up and around but can in no way check Ahlen’s incoming shoe tread.

  A woodpecker or some ally—I don’t know birds—zips through the forest’s understory. Warm golden light filters through interlaced branches of redwood and Douglas fir and a chill wind pushes from the lake, carrying the scent of sulfur and pulverized soil. Snowflakes speckle Ahlen’s hair and I feel the zing of several more melting upon my cheeks. A hawk screams a hoarse kee-eeeee-arr and spirals for elevation as its shadow cuts away before sweeping across icy cobbles.

  Scraping his shoes, indicating the golden ring, Ahlen says, “Ready to trade?”

  I hesitate, without quite knowing why.

  “Come on. This scoop thingamabob’s sorta cool. We can trade right back.”

  I know he’s ripping me off, that there will be no future transaction, but who wants to foster a sense of resentment between friends? I mean, the guy just lost his car and boat. Who am I to disappoint?

  Conquering a hogback of sandstone and fault breccia, I glance back along our track. Half expecting to find one of the black helicopters sweeping up on us, I trip over an octagonal box the size of a truck tire on its side. At my touch, the thing radiates an ache of deep emptiness as well as a lack of…what? Fulfillment?

  The contact is...difficult. Wearying. And laden with the sense that I just am not getting it. Odd sensations tickle the back of my mind in the same smooth, cozy way a lingering dream might elicit a soft press of the snooze button. Like a kaleidoscope out of the darkness, colored crystalline tendrils paint the edges of each incoming thought like newly written code struggling to understand and penetrate a rack of obsolete computing hardware.

  My guts shiver and threaten to turn against me.

  Why can’t I gather this is? I keep feeling that I’m on the verge of understanding...not fully, not for certain, just...almost as if someone is flashing lights or waving colored pennants in some naval semaphore that I should have learned but never took the time to study.

  As though peering into some extra-spatial dimension beyond normal perception, I detect orange...worms or caterpillars, I suppose, as they rally to recycle and resurrect portions of the lost vessel.

  My fingertips sense a mix of acoustic textures. The blood approaching the gates of my heart share a stuttered pulsation. Headache coming on fast, randomly overlaid thoughts come at me:

  …near future...restoration...possibility of hope

  …death...process...not event

  …a single, eye-watering, high altitude image of vineyards, orchards and fields

  …an in-depth sense of the word “cocoon”

  …transfer...substance...rebuild

  Ignoring the push and pull, draw and ebb of Ahlen’s tinkering with the ring amulet, I toy with the scoop until I develop a reasonable grasp of its function. The spheres are resilient, perhaps even unbreakable. As for the subjective passage of time within: my cell phone’s stopwatch renders zero time progression. The scoop can envelop objects small to large and—trusting Ahlen to do who knows what by way of rescue—I set the dial to a brief self-internment of five minutes and automatic release.

  Returning to a big grin and too-hard fist bump, I report no sense of claustrophobia or passing time. Except that, I don’t know. I may have noticed a change in the light while I was in there. And is the air temperature still dropping?

  Cliché black government SUVs spill over the ridge. Six of them. Two sport folding ground braces and white-domed Gatling guns. The kind, Ahlen reports, that hurl 20mm caliber rounds of depleted uranium. Grit churning, the lead car spirals in before grinding an extra loop and forcing us into the weeds. Getting out, the special agent or whatever is one of the largest men I’ve ever seen.

  “Are you guys with Uber?” I ask, without solid hope. “Because we could sure use a lift.”

  “You’ve entered a restricted area. Just hand over everything you’ve found. Please. This doesn’t have to get ugly. All you have to do is walk over here and place whatever you’re holding in my open palm. Or, if you like, set it atop any one of these boulders and back well away. We’ll then escort you to a place of safety.”

  “Entered a restricted area?” says Ahlen. “Get serious! I mean, we were here when it got that way! And that’s gotta count for
something, right? Something, it seems to me, like granting first salvage rights?”

  “That does it.”

  A sidearm appears as if out of nowhere. Sharpshooters take braced stances over the hoods of their SUVs.

  “Get down on the ground, you two! Hands, knees, faces kissing the deck! Now!”

  I clench my jaw and, sweating profusely, barely breathing, kneel and press my brow to the stony turf.

  Although he has only been wearing the golden circlet for an hour at most, a pale ring of narrowed circumference decorates Ahlen’s left arm in much the way a wedding ring eventually awards its circular indentation. Now holding the circlet as one might a compass when seeking direction, Ahlen grins as the steely onshore wind reddens his face.

  “Drop it! Whatever that is, just toss it aside!”

  Lifting his ring along their mutual line of sight, focusing some intuitive propensity for dominance, Ahlen thrusts out his will.

  Even at ground level, the pressure is enormous.

  The agent gasps. His skin flushes and roils as with heat.

  But then a sniper takes action by way of a single shot. There is no splatter and Ahlen doesn’t even soar backward like in the movies. A blush swells behind one shoulder. He barely twists before folding to the ground.

  Somehow instantly adept with the scoop, I roll on my back and, dialing one month (or so I hope!) sling and focus a snaring field. The air shimmers and a milky, moonstone translucence obscures a rapid movement of shadows all around. If Ahlen is actually there beside me, I can’t move to evaluate.

  Dark shapes shift. Shadowy bracing booms pivot and anchor. White domes glint. As though from very far away, a buzz cuts in and, for a passing instant, vibrates our bubble. This happens six, maybe seven times before the dark shapes give ground.

  Several brutally sharp cracks rock the bubble. Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Darkness encloses us.

  A subjective instant later, as the bubble shivers and swells, fades and pops open, I find Ahlen there beside me—no change—and the dark green fabric of a large tent gathered all around us. Tripods and cameras surround. Snuggled deep in a parka, a single military officer of some rank sleeps sideways in an uncomfortable looking chair. The air is bitterly cold.

  Barely tugging the tent flap aside, I catch a thick brush of driving snow.

  Then, from the direction of the lake, I next find a sense of confined presence. Beneath the lake’s broadening ice sheet, tremors pulse. The fluid body churns, with only the least ripple caressing each shore.

  …rebirth...transition...restoration

  …geometry...ancient stars...spin...pulse

  …four-space!...invert...defend...concentricity

  Pale light carries up from the lake’s seismically contoured depths. My tongue, dry and drier, seems practically immobile.

  I have to—

  I must—

  Indeed...should—

  Within the interstices of my mind, a multilayered onion diagram takes center stage. Surfaces blur and curl back on themselves to impose some raw, unique way of conceptualizing range and reach. This generates a mental tickle that I associate with being on the verge of discovery or epiphany. And yet, as with viewing a distant object out of the corner of my eye, I know that something even more important lurks just beyond the edge of perception.

  “Are you just going to stand there all day?” asks Ahlen. “Daydreaming? Hey, I think some jerk just shot me!”

  Thin ice pops and crackles under someone’s military boot tread. The soft wumph of snow dropping from a nearby tree limb betrays someone else’s stealthy advance. When I recognize the metal-on-metal ratchet of gun bolts or of safeties thumbed aside, I trace the scoop’s worn settings and once again jump us into protective hibernation.

  For a moment there comes peace and perfect calm.

  But the darkness leaps aside. Blinding white fire swells across my transfixed view and I imagine everything from overlapping grenades and mortar rounds to shoulder-launched rockets and tank rounds. But when the really big concussions ring and cascade through our little pocket of solace, I remember the war movies Ahlen likes and consider tactical rail guns, orbital kinetic penetrators, and relativistic kill vehicles.

  Ultimately, several shockwaves penetrate as soft bursts of heat and glimmers of muted amethyst. Then, as the withering fire erodes my calm—imagine dwelling inside a crystalline orb perched atop an anvil of unforgiving steel!—our refuge becomes less and less opaque. The lake glows effulgent amber. Compacted snow shifts white to translucent aquamarine.

  Outside, five years pass or, perhaps, ten to twenty. Who knows? I’m not actually sure how far along I’d advanced our stasis. Yet, even with time creeping along at a pace well less than a thousandth that of the throbbing adagio of my pulse, I know that I’m still in some sort of contact with something within the lake. Something that…intends itself to be…instructive and supportive.

  After a while, the outside world eases quiet.

  Government cover-up?

  Worldwide indifference?

  When the bubble fades, I find the woods altered but still flourishing despite “past events.” It even seems more tranquil than it had so many years prior; hard edges and angular tree limbs have now softened beneath blankets of snow and sheaths of glassy ice. I take in the piney air, the varied shades of green and muted auburn and the steely-gray of frozen surf. And yet, as much as I try to shy away from it, my gaze catches and lingers upon old scars in the landscape and gaps within the redwood-trimmed skyline.

  After finally attending to Ahlen’s wound, I slick a glaze of ice from a low-hanging branch. The wind off the lake’s jumbled ice lances through my clothes and I have to fight the piercing chill with every step.

  Still robbing heat and energy from its surroundings and especially from the lake’s deep, seismic recesses, the watery depths have scaled the spectrum toward white and blue-white. At lake center: a seam of nascent meltwater now sets the reflected sky wanly ashimmer. Something (Thing?) has made itself (Self?) ready to emerge.

  A soft mental prompt foreshadows movement. Animals give strange voice. The lake smells of methane and old, decaying algae. The earth trembles and the full mass of lake’s ice sheet bows upward. A cascade of sharp reports cut the air as great, glistening sheets fracture and fall aside in an uproar much like the fall (I imagine) of several square miles of shattering glass.

  I now expertly snare Ahlen in a brief capture field.

  Fade. Pop!

  Inverting a new sphere’s gravimetric polarity, I form a second, somewhat weaker field around us and grin as our instant buoyancy carries us downwind.

  Golden light streams from the structure now towering over the nearby ridge. The lift to orbit comes as though at the touch of a feather. There, a multitude of compact mechanisms gather on all sides. Each the size and scattered glimmer of lightning bugs (or drifting meteor fragments), they work to knit strands of golden silk. Spars form. Sails develop. Quick to blossom, four gossamer quadrants unfurl and, with a push from the Sun, luff and shimmer with light.

  Quickly ensconced in a stylized control room and effervescently joyful at being underway, I watch the icy sheen of reflected constellations run like beads of clear water along gently bowing spars.

  Heat radiates through my chest.

  A feeling of breathlessness hovers.

  I giggle and happy tears streak aft. Our solar sails ripple and a vibrating stanchion conveys an audible thrum as our ancillary...spinnaker, I suppose, fills with sunlight and snaps taught.

  When Ahlen is up and around, I will teach him how to sail the stars. For now, let us run before the wind!

  “Run! Run! Speed is our friend!”

  Preface: Raise All Your Happy Voices

  This next story is also new to this anthology. Living in Wisconsin, I sometime seem to write these short pieces in rhythm with the seasons. Thus, I must have drawn this one out of the very heart of winter. Oh, and I remember looking at Jupiter and its moons one chill night
with our enormous 18” Obsession telescope and wondering what it would be like to live and work on Callisto or Ganymede.

  Most of what I write about the “Vah” in this story comes from working and playing with our to big Alaskan Malamutes, Zeke and Zooey. They show up in several of my stories, mostly because they are almost always sitting right by my side as I write.

  They are here now, in fact.

  I even call our daily, all-weather morning walks “my daily commute.” I am also quite sure that they would love to meet some of the “Vah” you’re about to encounter.

  They’re already quite fond of my “Iselle.”

  Raise All Your Happy Voices

  I was gazing across the great crevasse when my wrist’s subdermal tingled a frisson at odds with the harmony of my pulse. I checked my incoming. Sender: Sark, D.; Superintendent.

  Ignoring the call, I continued scrubbing Vah scrawls from a snow crawler’s engine cowl. Vah have dark nib creases on each palm pad and they are forever embossing groups of regularly ordered, raised dots. Once the dots congeal, they become semipermanent. While Sark hated all such Vah graffiti, I never knew if he hated the sweaty blots in general or if my failure to eradicate them simply provided yet another avenue for hassle.

  Category three winds raked ice grit across the jagged, ice breccia landscape while, here and there, a Vah or two went about the ordinary business of their lives. Visible overhead, our moon’s parent world dominated. A tapestry of color, storm belts raged while soft pastels and festoons vied for attention. Synchronous rotation held the planet at constant elevation even as a blotch of shadow marked another moon’s silent passage. In accordance with the Chastain Treaty, no human would ever venture deeper into the star system.

  And yet that seemed about to change.

  Our landing beacons strobed brilliant emerald. As the dropship touched down, Sark’s repeated call pulsed urgent. Dan Sark hated overseeing the Chastain Treaty’s circumstellar limit almost as much as we hated having him oversee it. He was a big man, about as tall as I am but heavier by as much as twenty kilos. When angry, he tended to abbreviate his diction and spit his fricatives. At some point in our face-to-face conversations, I often found my cheeks wet and my spine knuckling the frame of his office door.