by Ben Bova
"Glad to have been of help to you."
Douglas's laugh faded to a cocky grin. "I've never turned down help from any quarter. I'm not too proud to accept your help."
"As long as you can have things your way."
"Of course."
Still standing at the doorway to the radio room, Alec asked, "And what do you plan to do with my pitiful little gang now?"
"Will's going to speak to them in the morning. Offer them a chance to join us. Most of them will, I expect. The rest will be escorted out of my territory, politely but firmly. Maybe they can work their way south again and link up with Kobol."
Douglas scratched at his iron-gray beard. "We, ah . . . overheard your radio conversation on the monitor in my jeep."
"We," Alec echoed, looking at Angela. She refused to meet his gaze. For the first time, anger began to seep in and replace the shock that had numbed him.
"Get yourself some sleep," Douglas said, hauling himself to his feet. "We travel at sunup."
He went to the stairs and started up. Angela followed him. She glanced over her shoulder at Alec for a fleeting instant, but said nothing.
Bitch! he snarled at her, silently.
Strangely enough, Alec slept deeply through the remainder of the night. Dreamlessly. He awoke with a slight sense of guilt at feeling so rested.
Douglas's jeep was parked just outside the pallisade.
Alec was marched to it by an armed man as soon as he got up. No breakfast, no formalities; none of the firebase crew said a word to him. The morning was raw and chill. Thick gray clouds covered the sky from horizon to horizon, making the rolling hills seem somber and grim, muting even the wild colors of the autumn trees.
Douglas was already at the wheel of the jeep, a dark blue windbreaker over his nondescript clothes. Angela was talking with him, very seriously.
A blanket was wrapped over her shoulders.
The guard sat Alec in the back seat of the jeep.
Angela started to go around to sit beside him. The guard looked questioningly at Douglas.
"It's all right," Douglas said, his big hands gripping the jeep's steering wheel. "Let her sit back there with him. You ride shotgun up front. He won't try to run away. He's been waiting all summer to see our base. Right, son?"
Alec said nothing.
With a shrug, Douglas added, "Maybe, if you be- have yourself, I'll even let you see where the fissionables are stored."
Angela climbed in beside him, the guard swung into the right front seat beside Douglas and laid his heavy black pistol on his lap: Douglas glanced at the threatening sky, then started the engine.
The electric motor purred to life and the jeep started slowly, gathering speed as it jounced down the hillside, down the narrow trail.
The wind was raw and it sliced right through Alec's thin shirt.
"Here," Angela said. She pulled a thermos bottle from under the seat and took the top off.
Steam wafted from its innards. Alec accepted it wordlessly and took a small sip of hot broth. Then a gulping mouthful. He handed it back to her.
"Thanks."
She nodded and pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders. For several kilometers they rode that way, side by side, silent and angry.
Finally, Angela shook her head as if she had been arguing with herself, then unwrapped the blanket and offered part of it to Alec.
"Before you freeze," was all she said.
He hesitated a moment, then pulled the warm fabric across his shoulders. Automatically they slid closer together, huddling together under the blanket.
"You told Douglas where he could get me," Alec said to her.
Her face set into a stubborn frown. "You used me, didn't you? You had no intention of going back to the Moon without the fissionables. Did you think I fell for your lies?"
I fell for yours, he answered silently. Then he shook his head and said to her, "I guess I've been outsmarted all along."
"You've outsmarted yourself."
"We'll see."
"Why did you lie to me?" she asked, her tone more hurt than angry. "Was it just to screw me or to get the radio? Which one?"
"I wasn't lying" he said. Before she could reply, he added, "I didn't tell you the whole truth . . . but I wasn't lying when I said I want you to come back to the Moon with me."
Angela's frown softened, but her eyes were still wary, searching. "You mean, after you've taken the uranium."
He nodded.
"You knew that wasn't what I meant when I offered to get you to the power supply."
"Yes, I knew."
"Then you were lying to me."
"And so were you," he countered, "when you offered to help me. You knew you were going to call Douglas and trap me."
"I know you'll have to kill him before you can get your hands on the fissionables."
"And you're protecting him,"
"I'm trying to protect both of you," she said earnestly, urgently.
"And that's why you lied to me."
She almost smiled. "All right, I lied too. Feel better?"
"Yes." It was almost funny. They had both been sneaking around each other.
"But he needs you, Alec. What he's trying to do . . ."
He stiffened. "Douglas? He doesn't need anybody. He's got enough ego to cover the world all by himself."
"And you're blind!" she snapped.
Douglas' base was a shock. They drove up to a well-maintained wire mesh fence that seemed to wind clear across the landscape, over the rolling hills and as far as the eye could see. Where the road penetrated the fence stood a sentry tower, wooden beams weathered by sun and rain. Two men lounging at the base of the tower straightened the guns on their shoulders and opened the gate wide enough for one of them to step through.
Douglas brought the jeep to a full halt and exchanged a few words with him.
They swung the gate wide. Alec saw that there were at least two more men up at the top of the tower. The grim snout of a heavy machine gun poked out over the railing up there.
After another chilly fifteen minutes of driving, with nothing to be seen but open countryside, they came to the first buildings.
"This used to be a base for the United States Air Force" Douglas called back from the driver's seat.
"Makes an ideal headquarters for us—ready made. They used to call this area Rome. Appropriate name, don't you think?" He laughed; Alec did not.
They drove past row after row of neat wooden buildings, most of them looking as if they had been freshly painted. Barracks, machine shops, warehouses, mess halls, even a building marked BASE THEATER in barely readable faded lettering.
The airfield itself was immense, huge swaths of concrete runways and ramps, hangars and maintenance buildings and office towers built of brick and stone. All in excellent condition. But not an aircraft in sight.
"The missile assigned to this base must've missed its target or been shot down," Douglas said. "It went untouched."
We could land the shuttles right here, Alec was thinking.
People were everywhere. Throngs of people, more than Alec had ever seen in his life. Walking, working, laughing; many of them waved to Douglas as he drove past. Hardly any of them carried weapons. Like the history tapes of the old cities, Alec saw.
They drove past the airfield, out to a more deserted sector of little knolls topped by small clumps of vividly colored trees. No buildings in sight out here, except one solitary concrete blockhouse standing on a bare grassy hill. Douglas drove straight to the blockhouse.
"This is where the fissionables are," he said, turning in the too-small bucket seat to face Alec.
"Want to see 'em?"
Alec supressed an impulse to lick his lips. "Yes."
Douglas hauled himself out of the jeep and headed for the blockhouse door. The guard stepped out of his seat and turned toward Alec. He slid the pistol back into its holster, but kept his hand on its butt. Alec climbed out and turned to help Angela, but she had already jumped out
on the other side.
Douglas had the heavy metal door open already, and Alec frowned inwardly at the realization that he hadn't seen if it had been locked or not. Doesn't matter, he told himself. We can blow it open if we have to.
Inside, the blockhouse was musty and damp. It was a small room, completely empty and dark except for the light sneaking in through the gun slits in each wall.
"Eh, would you mind?" Douglas gestured toward a metal trapdoor set into the cement floor.
"I can't bend as easily as you can."
Alec reached down and grabbed at the metal catch at one end of the steel door. He tugged, then heaved. Nothing.
"It slides," Douglas said.
"Thanks for telling me before I ruptured myself." The door slid back smoothly. It's been oiled recently, Alec realized.
They clattered down a long metal stairway into utter darkness, groping along the wall and railing until Douglas said, "Wait a minute . . . the generator switch should be . . . here . . ."
A click, and then from somewhere in the darkness below them a rumble and whine from a diesel generator set. Alec smelled a whiff of machine oil.
Then lights glowed into life.
He could see that the stairs went down another twenty meters and ended in a huge storehouse room. Spread across the floor were heavy, dull gray metal cylinders, each bearing the blood-red three-sided emblem of danger and the printed words RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL. There were dozens of the cylinders, Alec saw, scores of them.
A hundred, maybe more.
Enough to power the processing plants for a century, at least.
As if reading his thoughts, Alec said, "There's enough fissionable material here to blow up everything between the Great Lakes and Cape Cod"
Alec turned to his father, standing two steps above him. "We need this . . . some of it, at least. We need it to live."
But Douglas shook his head. "No. If I let you take even some of this back to the Moon, we'd be killing them. You can kill people with kindness, you know. The wrong sort of kindness."
Alec could feel himself going tense, the skin on his face stretching taut. "In another year we won't have the energy to process the water and medicines we need. You can't . . ."
"Don't tell me what I can't do!" Douglas's voice boomed off the cement walls and metal stairs.
"Those people can't survive up there by themselves no matter how much fissionable fuel they have. They can't live cooped up in their underground rats' nest. They've got to re-establish contact with Earth. Not just a raid every few years, but real contact—genetically meaningful contact!"
"So you can rule them!" Alec lashed back at his father.
Douglas's mouth opened, but no words came out. He broke out into a roar of laughter, instead.
They quartered Alec in a room of his own, in what had once been the Air Base's bachelor officers' quarters. The two-story brick building was an efficient but drab set of dormitory rooms. They were spacious, compared to what Alec had grown up with. His room was on the second floor, in a corner, so that he had two windows. There was a real bed, a desk, and a chest of drawers. Alec smiled at the furniture. He had nothing to put in the drawers, nothing to hang in the closet.
But there was a shower, and it worked! For a slothful long hour Alec luxuriated in the unbelievable pleasure of having actual water, steaming hot, sluicing over his naked body. Two large pieces of fuzzy cloth hung on a rack next to the shower; Alec used them to rub himself dry.
Someone tapped at his door. Wrapping one of the cloths around his waist, he yelled, "Come in," as he stepped from the bathroom in time to see Angela open the hall door, carrying an armful of clothes.
"Oh ..." They said it together.
She simply stood there gaping at him. Alec clutched at the towel, holding it tightly around his middle, feeling foolish about it but embarrassed to let it slip.
"I was cleaning myself . . ." he said lamely.
She grinned at him, making his face redden. "So I see." She wore a pale blue dress that complemented her eyes and golden hair. The skirt was short enough to show that her legs were fine and graceful.
"You look very pretty," he said.
"So do you," she replied, with a giggle.
Flustered, he stood tongue-tied.
"I brought some fresh clothes for you from the supply shop," Angela said. "I hope they fit okay. If they don't, I can fix them for you."
"Thanks."
She dropped the clothes on the bed. Looking around the room she asked, "Is everything okay? Do you need shaving things?"
"No," he answered. "I won't need another depilatory treatment for six months or so."
"Oh. Okay."
"Is there someplace to eat around here? Have you had dinner?"
"The mess hall will be open in an hour. If you're really hungry I can fix you something at my place. It's not far from here."
"Uh, no, that's all right. Guess I'd better get dressed."
"Okay." She started for the door.
"No, wait." For Christ's sake, this is idiotic.
We've made love together! "Don't go . . . Let's have dinner together."
She nodded and smiled at him.
Feeling utterly silly, Alec took the clothes into the bathroom and tried them on. Turtleneck shirt, dark blue and thickly ribbed. Gray slacks that were too large in the waist and so long that he had to turn the cuffs up twice. A pair of solid boots, good size. A belt to pull the pants tight. And they all smelled clean, felt soft.
"How do I look?" he asked as he came out of the bathroom.
She smiled and frowned at the same time. "I wasn't too good about the sizes, was I?"
"Only the pants. The rest fits fine."
They had dinner in the noisy, crowded, clattering mess hall, sitting on benches at long wooden tables surrounded by steam and pungent odors and other people who chattered their conversations, oblivious of Alec and Angela. They sat side by side, saying almost nothing to each other. The food was hot and solid, nothing fancy, but more of it than Alec had been able to get since leaving the Moon.
Outside afterward, it was dark and their frosty breaths hung in the air before them. The buildings were all alight. Why not? Alec thought. He's probably got nuclear generators buried underground somewhere, using the fuel we need.
They walked under the chilled stars to Angela's home, a separate little house at the head of a curved row of white wooden houses.
"I have some wine" she said. 'The villagers make it."
Inside, the house was a combination of warmth and utilitarianism. Furniture was sparse. The front room was completely empty except for a single old wooden chair with a high straight back and a rug made from some sort of animal fur, rolled up in a corner. The fireplace looked cold and empty. Angela led Alec back to the kitchen, which had a table and three mismatched chairs, as well as a small refrigerator, stove and sink, all lined against one wall. Through another doorway Alec could see the bedroom. There was nothing in it except a mattress on the floor with a sleeping bag half unrolled atop it.
"You have this place all to yourself?"
"Yes," she said, reaching down to a cabinet under the sink and pulling out a dusty green bottle. "I just moved in a few weeks ago. Da . . . uh, Douglas said it was time for me to have a place of my own. He lives in the house down at the other end of the row. Will and most of the other leaders live here ... or really, their families do. Most of the time the men are out in the countryside somewhere."
"Will has a family?"
She set the bottle on the table next to Alec and took two glasses from a cabinet. "He was going to marry a girl from one of the villages west of here. But she was taken by one of the raider gangs. No-one's been able to find her since."
Somehow that hit Alec like a physical blow.
Angela brought the glasses to the table. Sitting next to Alec, she said softly. "It happened years ago ... he got over it."
"Did he?"
She shrugged. "He functions. He lives. He even sings, someti
mes."
Alec let his breath out in a pent-up sigh. "It's a lousy world."
"It's the only one we've got."
No, it isn't, he answered silently.
Eyeing the wine bottle, Angela asked, "Will you pour, or shall I?"
He took the bottle and pulled the stopper out of it. Funny, spongy thing. Cork? he wondered.
Somewhere he had heard about the substance.
Very carefully, conscious for the first time in months of Earth's six-fold gravity pull, he half filled the two glasses with bright red wine.
It tasted marvelous. Smooth and warm and warming.
He put the glass down firmly on the table. "It's not the only world we've got, Angela. There's an entirely different world, where all this insanity of raiders and killing doesn't exist."
"The lunar settlement," she said.
"Right. Civilization. Where you don't have to carry weapons all the time and worry if you'll make it through the night."
"But we have that here!" Angela said. "That's what Douglas has built for us here."
"Yes ... by force, by war, by betraying the people who trusted him."
Her eyes flashed, but she caught herself and changed the subject. "Tell me more about the lunar colony. What's it like up there?"
With an effort, Alec pushed his own smoldering anger aside. "It's peaceful. Polite. People can be ! human beings instead of jungle animals. You don't have this heavy gravity pulling on you all the time. You can sail in the aerogymn and dance all the ballets ever written."
"Ballets?" Angela looked puzzled.
Never heard of them, he realized. "Up on the surface," Alec went on, "you can see real beauty. I mean, it's beautiful here on Earth, of course, wild and unpredictable and all . . . but on the Moon, watching the sunrise takes a whole day. And the stars . . . and Earth itself, hanging there blue and beautiful. You can go for a thousand klicks in any direction and never see another person, alone, just by yourself, with the whole universe hanging up there and watching you . . . ."