Watson, Ian - Black Current 02

by The Book Of The Stars (v1. 1)

  No windows, no sense of motion, no weight. I let my hand lift itself with hardly any impulse of the will. Where the hell was I?

  Ah: I spied Prof slumbering open-mouthed two seats away.

  I squirmed round, though the straps clung tight. Tessa slept in the seat just behind. Her clothes were bone dry; so time had passed by, but how much? All the other faces I could see so far were unfamiliar, and some looked quite exotic, for Venezia. Black, brown, yellow. Were we anywhere near Venezia at all?

  Then a door slid open. A Paxman stood . . . No he didn't. He floated. His feet were half a span off the floor.

  As soon as everyone was awake, the Paxman made an announcement. We were all criminals who had seriously violated Social Grace. Therefore we were being sent into exile.

  On the Moon.

  On the Moon: Tessa had a feeble fit of hysterics at this; but she calmed down quickly, and thereafter sniffed superciliously at everything the Paxman said.

  Concerning how to unfasten our seat-belts.

  And how to move around the "shuttle" without bashing ourselves.

  How to use the toilet in back. How to vomit without filling the air with a cloud of spew. (But anti-nausea medicine had been pumped into us while we were asleep, he assured me.) How to eat our food- blocks and drink our squeezy-juice. Concerning the pills we should take to avoid farting.

  Give me Ka-travel any time!

  Our journey would take three days. During this time we were sternly warned against brawling, riot, mutiny, vandalism, or spitting at the crew. Any of that, and we would all be gassed again; and this would cancel the effect of the anti-farting pills. So saying, the Paxman departed. He ignored all anxious queries about the Moon.

  Out of the twenty criminals on board, only four of us were former members of the Venezia Underground: me, Prof, Tessa, and Bernardino. I hadn't spotted Bernardino when I first woke up. He looked wretched. Prof, on the other hand, appeared chirpy and alert; he busied himself with little experiments in weightlessness.

  No sign of Luigi or Patrizia. Or any of the real stirrers of the riot. How damned unfair.

  Most of the other criminals weren't even from Italia, and no one knew where our ship had sailed up into the sky from; we'd all been asleep.

  In our group were two brown-skinned Indians from India, woman and man; a black African, an Arab, a Chinese . . . there were people from all over Earth. Amongst our crimes we numbered: murder, banditry, fanatic worship of "Allah", drug peddling, not to mention vandalism and arson. This all emerged courtesy of the Indian bandit-woman, Kalima, who floated about demanding answers and getting them. (A "bandit", by the way, is an armed robber who waylays wayfarers and attacks lonely farms; they're not unknown on the west bank of our own world.) But it was Tessa who averted what might have become a schism between the ordinary criminals and us members of the Underground. Since we were in the minority, such a schism wouldn't have been a good idea.

  Loosening her seat-belt, she rose up, holding on to the back of the seat with one hand, and declared penetratingly, "No matter why we are here, we must all now support each other in adversity. The Earth is gone from us forever. So are our former lives. The past is erased." She floated across the aisle and held out her hand to the Chinese "opium-man"; who clasped it. Kalima regarded Tessa sharply, then nodded and smiled faintly.

  The Bandit-woman drifted over to me. Her hair was a long black braided rope. "Why is a child here?"

  "I'm a starchild," said I. "The Godmind decided I wasn't its favourite cherub."

  "I kidnapped a starchild for ransom," announced Kalima. "I did so because a bandit is courageous! And because you cherubs are set above us like little rajahs and princesses."

  "Don't pick on her," said Tessa. "We must all support each other."

  "Don't presume too much, old lady!" our bandit warned.

  "Nor you," growled our black African. "We want no leaders."

  Kalima swung around, as a result of which she floated away from me. "You may not want," she told the African, "but you will get."

  On that score, alas, Kalima was to prove perfectly correct.

  By the time we landed, three days later, inevitably hierarchies and alliances had formed amongst us; whatever use, or otherwise, these might prove at journey's end. Kalima emerged as top card of the pack, with Tessa playing a grandmotherly role in the background.

  What had prompted Kalima to become a bandit, of all things, back on the peaceful orderly Earth? Despite Tessa's dismissal of the past, curiosity finally overcame her and she asked Kalima this. The answer snapped back:

  "My ancestress was a bandit, long ago. I am her, come round again on the Wheel of Years. Perhaps!"

  Later, Kalima added, "My family hoped I might become a pandit. That's our name for a wise person. I must have misheard them! Who needs pandits on the Godmind's Earth?"

  "I was a pandit," said Prof. "Not," he hastened to add, when Tessa frowned, "that I'm bragging about it."

  Kalima laughed. "Being a bandit was more fun! I earned my ride to the Moon."

  Other vignettes from the journey:

  Muhammed Ibrahim, the worshipper of Allah (which was an ancient name for a God) kneeling and bowing in weightlessness, facing the rear door that led to the toilet on the assumption that the Earth lay in that direction.

  Chu Po's mockery: "Where there's no religion, opium's what the people need!"

  Max the murderer looming over me: "I killed two starbrats. Two!" He dragged a finger across his throat. "Me! I killed. . . ." He sounded dim-witted. But was he scary! Kalima swam through the air: "Do you want both arms broken, or your back?" "Uh? Do I want . . . ?" Max's brain tussled with the choice. "Never mind!" snapped Kalima. "Get back in your seat. Strap in and stay there."

  On the whole, though, we all got on together and sorted ourselves out. Eventually the Paxman came to tell us to strap in for landing. Shortly after that our weight returned in surges, accompanied by a roaring which went on and on. I felt crushingly heavy. When the roaring died I was left feeling much lighter than I ought to be.

  We didn't see the surface of the Moon. Nor did we even see the outside of the ship. A long metal corridor led directly from the door through which we disembarked. The shipside end was linked to the shuttle by massive rubber seals; and the corridor, lit by glowing strips, terminated in a largish metal chamber some way away. We had to walk carefully in case we bounded off the floor.

  Once we were inside that chamber, a thick door sighed shut behind us. Bright violet light pulsed from glass tubes on the ceiling. Stinging misty vapour filled the air, then was quickly sucked away. At the same time I could feel the entire chamber starting to sink slowly. Down it travelled for several hundred heartbeats before the door slid open again, and a harsh but more natural light flooded in. Out we all filed gingerly, into the belly of the Moon.

  Imagine a vast pit roofed with rock. Up on the ceiling, fights too bright to look at burned like little suns. The pit was a coneshape, with the apex at the bottom.

  Imagine this; and now carve a road spiralling round and round, descending. Then hack out one grand staircase, for speedier descent. Quarry caves and galleries, grottos, cells and tunnel-mouths so that the rockface becomes a stony honeycomb, with people as the bees. Let there be terraces for green crops, and irrigation ditches, as well as a long cascade of water feeding these ditches, before emptying into a lake at the very bottom of the cone.

  "Why, here is Hell," exclaimed Prof, enthralled. "We've been sent to Hell." The metal door clanged shut behind us.

  We were on a broad platform up near the roof of the pit. Because we were close to the suns, it was very hot. Six or eight scruffy, burly fellows lounged about awaiting us. They were stripped to the waist, well-tanned and bearded. A bushel of beards! Black. Ginger. Shaggy. Bunchy.

  The neatest of the Beards produced a notebook.

  "Names?" he demanded.

  We told our names one by one. When Kalima gave hers, she added, "I'm the leader of this group. We rema
in together—except for him." She jerked a thumb at Max. "Him, we expel. The rest of us are to be housed together."

  The man laughed nastily for a while.

  "Ah yes, madame? In a suite of luxury apartments? Now you listen to me. All new arrivals are assigned billets where / choose, and wherever's convenient. Don't expect to sit around sunbathing and dabbling your toes in the streams, either. You'll work. At cultivating, tunnelling—"

  "Are you trying to escape?" broke in Muhammed Ibrahim eagerly. "In which direction? Which way is the Earth?"

  "Are we trying to escape? Did you hear that, boys? Shall we dig a tunnel through hard vacuum? And if the vacuum's hard enough, crawl through it? Brilliant idea!" He rounded on Kalima. "Every new intake needs to be taught a damn lesson, one way or another. Right! So you spoke of expelling that one, did you?" He indicated Max, who stood lumpishly. "Obviously he deserves it. So be it. You shall see someone expelled. It's a while since we've expelled anybody. High time we did! Couple of hundred metres along this way is the exit tube for rubbish, with an inspection screen showing pretty pictures so you can check it's clear. It's our vacuum cleaner, you might say. Bring him!" he told his men. "You lot follow me."

  Two Beards glided smoothly forward and pinioned Max with some sort of thumb-lock. They shifted him by the simple expedient of lifting him bodily off his feet. He didn't weigh much here. Max protested feebly, grunting and shaking his head.

  Tight-lipped, Kalima stepped in the way. "Wait! This is unnecessary."

  "You just expelled him from your group, remember? Any trouble, and you're next. I can call on forty men for assistance. Don't try to play the saint suddenly."

  Fury in her eyes, Kalima yielded.

  "Follow!"

  They went. We followed.

  A straggly line of scantily-clad, sweaty men and women was portering wicker baskets up the grand stairway, towards our destination, which was a cave mouth. Some baskets contained dead chopped vegetation. Others had broken stone in them. Porters carried their burdens into the cave. Others emerged with empty baskets and rubbed sweat from their eyes before descending the stairway.

  "But how inefficient!" complained Prof. "Where are the machines?"

  "Keeps people busy, don't it?" said one of the Beards. "Toughens 'em up."

  "For what? Toughens them for what?"

  There was no reply. We had reached the cave by now. Our host shouted for the work to cease. All the ascending porters unhitched their baskets and sat down. One woman, whose basket had already been emptied, sat down too. Our host promptly kicked her in the butt, knocking her down several stairs. The woman might have tumbled all the way if she hadn't fetched up against another porter sitting on a basket of rocks. The basket toppled over, tipping its contents a long, slow way down the stairs. Cursing, the man laid into the woman, who scrabbled to pick up his debris. Our host laughed.

  The cave was as big as the main hold of a schooner. Within we found the contrivance which got rid of rubbish. This was an enormous metal cauldron resting in a deep hole cut in the cave floor. The cauldron was attached to rails running up at a steep angle through an open hatch in the roof. It was about a quarter full.

  The two Beards threw Max unceremoniously over the side into this cauldron. Our host stepped smartly to a panel set in the wall and pressed a button. Immediately a see-through lid sprang up and closed the cauldron, imprisoning Max. Next to the panel there hung a large glass picture. This showed the cauldron in miniature, with us all standing about. It was a picture that moved and represented real life as it was happening.

  Max had gathered his wits by now, and decided that something was amiss. He scrambled up on the rubble and other refuse and thrust in vain at the lid. He hoisted a hunk of stone and began to batter. With no result; obviously the lid wasn't made of glass.

  Our host pressed another button and the cauldron began to rise smoothly up the rails. Max's efforts redoubled. The cauldron was above us now, but we could still see Max inside it on the picture- screen; its vantage point was changing to match the progress of the cauldron. Once the cauldron had cleared the roof, a metal door sighed shut above.

  Now, side by side, the picture-screen was showing two separate scenes. One was of cauldron and contents rising up the rails, as seen from above. The other was of the empty rails ahead of it. The rails seemed to lead to a blank metal wall, but then another door slid aside. We saw points of light, stars. None of them were winking.

  Then there was only one picture again: of a dead, harshly sunlit landscape—grey hummocks, craters, boulders casting jetblack shadows. A ramp towered up, supported by struts and pillars. A mobile machine with a scoop on the front was shifting debris away from underneath. Then the cauldron emerged from a hole in the ground and slid up the ramp.

  When the cauldron reached the top, the lid sprang back into the metal body. The whole container tipped, dumping its load—and Max.

  He fell. So did the stones and other scruff. But that wasn't what killed Max. He leapt when he hit the ground, missing most of the avalanche. He took two giant steps. Then he seemed to shrivel up. He hunched. At the same time he threw his arms out, fingers clawing. His mouth gaped so wide he could have dislocated his jaw. Blood bubbled. His eyes bulged. He fell over. He writhed a while, scratching the dust. Soon he was still.

  Above, the cauldron righted itself. It slid back down into the Moon.

  "Doesn't the Godmind care if you kill?" cried our other Indian. "Why don't the Paxmen stop you?"

  "Because," bellowed our host, "the Moon is not your soft and pampered Earth! That's lesson number one. The Godmind has other ambitions here. Lesson number two is that I've just done your excompanion a favour by freeing him from this hole."

  "In that case," murmured Tessa, "spare me your kind favours, sir."

  The ceiling hatch re-opened. The cauldron slid down the rails into its previous berth. We regarded its empty belly warily. It seemed to catch my breath away.

  "The third lesson is that we only have so much space, and so much air and food. We get some rations from Earth, but space we have to hack out for ourselves."

  "I'm surprised," said Bernardino lightly, "that you don't just kill everyone new who arrives." In the circumstances I thought he was taking an almighty risk. But he looked relaxed. He must have read something on our host's face that reassured him. Perhaps we had all passed over some emotional hump. Or maybe Bernardino was so sick at heart, he didn't care.

  "The Godmind wouldn't like that, friend! It makes use of us; and it likes a lot of variety. Your next lesson is: when the Paxmen call on you to serve, you go with them tame as a lamb."

  "Serve?" I asked. "How?"

  "By donating part of yourself for the seedships. The Godmind builds 'em in another cavern—it uses tissue samples from us. The scum of the Earth are here on the Moon, girl, and that scum is a powerful brew. Strong and ornery and bold. That's how new colonies got going on Earth in the old days, I'm told. Our Godmind's got a long memory. Now you tell me what a little girl's doing here."

  "That's simple," said I. "I'm a starchild, and I think the Godmind sucks. I said so in the biggest church in Venezia, then we burnt it to the ground." (Not quite true, but never mind.) "I'm fairly ornery too! But I don't need to toss people out with the trash to prove it! That isn't very bold. Real boldness would be messing up the Godmind's shipbuilding plan."

  "Oh, would it? You listen to me, tiny tot. We're stuck in a stinking hole on a dead world. No way can we upset the Paxmen or the Godmind. And why should we? This way at least a bit of us escapes and gets back to Earth eventually, transfigured. Here's where your stock came from originally: the bowels of the Moon. So don't be smug."

  "A bit of you gets back to Earth eventually: that's your consolation prize?"

  He swooped and open-handed me across the mouth. The blow knocked me right off my feet. I didn't crash too heavily, though. Through tears I saw Kalima square up to our host.

  "So you hit children too?" (Kalima was a fine one to talk. S
he kidnapped children.)

  "Lady, I was hitting an adult. That's what she is." (Still, he sounded . . . distressed.)

  "What you just hit is your so-called salvation: starchildren."

  "Shut up!"

  I thought he was going to hit Kalima too—which could have ended up with her in the cauldron. I struggled up. Wiped some blood from my lips.

  "Sod all starchildren!" I said. "Do you know what the colonies are all about? They're about the murder of the whole human race— everywhere."

  "What do you mean by that? Explain!"

  I explained as briefly as I could. Even so, he soon interrupted. "Rubbish. I don't believe a word of it."

  "He can't believe it," said Bernardino. "He daren’t. Therefore he won't."

  Surprisingly our host let this pass. "Okay," he said grimly, "if we've all quite got over our teething troubles, play time is ended. Unless you want me to vacuum someone else. My name's Jean-Paul, and I'm your boss—"

  And.

  And.

  One of the poets of Earth was once of the opinion that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." Chu Po, our drug peddler, told me that. I suppose the poet must have been Chinese.

  The Best were all on Earth. They were the sheep whose only conviction was a dumb faith in the glory of the Godmind and the wonder of its cherubs. Here in this hell below the surface of the Moon, the Worst had their abode. Here the offenders against Social Grace were simmering away in a nasty stew; this was being spooned out by the Godmind into its seedships.

  And the stew had to be stirred and kept on the boil. Hence the hardships. Hence the rock-hewing and toilsome agriculture. Hence the arbitrary punishments and random acts of violence. All these added savour and spice to the stew.

  Prof poured scorn on this idea that human tissue-samples could be tempered and toughened through the struggles and suffering of those who owned the flesh in question. But obviously the Godmind found life in this pit poetically appealing. The Moon-Hell was fulfilment of yet another precog myth, was it not? Heaven on Earth, Hell on the Moon. And here in Hell the Godmind used the wicked to bring about eventual Good: namely the winging homeward to Eeden of starchildren.