by Ben Bova
As he walked slowly to the teak podium, carefully hiding his limp as much as possible, Faure realized that it was the rebels at Moonbase who had inflicted this indignity on him. If not for them, he would be comfortably ensconced in his air-conditioned office in New York instead of attending the funeral services of an obscure Peacekeeper captain who was so inept that he killed himself with his own grenade.
He focused his mind on the hateful Moonbase renegades even as his eyes looked out on a sea of dark, solemn-eyed faces. The Sri Lankan government had made a media extravaganza of Captain Munasinghe’s funeral. After decades of civil war, they desperately needed a hero, a martyr, whom every citizen could admire. Jagath Munasinghe, at best a mediocre officer in life, was being built into a international hero in death.
Thousands of solemn faces stared up at Faure. He kept his own face blank, suppressing the smile that wanted to break out at the thought of having the world’s media focused on him. By his express order, this funeral service was being beamed to Moonbase, too.
Leaning on the teak podium, he began, “The cause of peace has seen many heroes, many men and women who have given their lives. Captain Jagath Munasinghe has joined their illustrious ranks…”
Before long, Faure was virtually snarling, “And why has this brilliant young officer met such an untimely death? Because a handful of renegades at Moonbase refuse to accept international law. Scientists and corporation billionaires want to live beyond the law in their secret base on the Moon. Captain Munasinghe was killed trying to enforce the law which they resist. They killed him,”
Doug watched Faure’s performance from the bunk in his quarters, where his digital clock read 6:28 a.m. Even before Faure had completed his diatribe, Doug pressed the keypad at his bedside that activated the phone.
He started to ask for Jinny Anson, but heard himself say instead, “Edith Elgin, please.”
He muted Faure’s image on the smart wall. Edith’s voice came through, but no picture.
“This is Edith Elgin,” she said, as clearly as if she were signing off on a news report. At least I didn’t wake her up, Doug thought.
“Doug Stavenger,” said Doug. “Are you watching the funeral services?”
“Sure am. Faure’s working himself to a stroke, looks like.”
“He’s blaming us for that Peacekeeper’s death.”
“What’d you expect? Munasinghe’s handed him a great public relations club and Faure’s going to beat you with it as hard as he can.”
Feeling frustrated that he couldn’t see her, Doug asked, “Well, what can we do about it?”
Edith immediately replied, “I’ve got the whole thing on a pair of chips.”
“What?”
“I’ve checked both my cameras. They show what really happened.”
Doug’s surge of hope dampened quickly. “But the media have been ignoring us. Would they play your chips?”
Edith laughed. “Does a chimp eat bananas?”
“No, really,” he said,’the media all seem to be on Faure’s side.”
Her voice grew more serious. “I’ll take care of that.”
“Can you?”
“If I can’t, nobody can.”
Despite himself, Doug had to smile at her self-confidence. Or was it just plain ego?
“Are you really a billionaire?” Edith asked.
“Me?”
“Faure said you’re a billionaire. Is that true?”
With a puzzled blink, Doug replied, “I don’t know. Maybe. I guess my mother is, certainly.”
“Say, have you heard anything from her? Your mother, I mean?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t that worry you?”
Doug leaned back against his pillows. Suddenly he felt very tired of it all. “You know,” he said to Edith, “I haven’t even had the time to worry about her. But now that you mention it, yeah, I had thought she would’ve called by now.”
For several heartbeats Edith did not reply. Then she said, her voice low, “I’m sorry I brought it up, Doug. You’ve got enough on your shoulders without me adding to it.”
He felt himself smiling at her. “That’s okay. I guess if you hang out with reporters you’ve got to expect troubles.”
She laughed. “That’s it. Blame the media.”
DAY SIX
Edith was surprised at how difficult it was to make contact with her boss at Global News in Atlanta. She had beamed the contents of her camera chips to headquarters, then spent the whole day trying to get through to the programming department to make certain they had received it okay.
Now it was past midnight, and still the smart wall display read: YOUR CALL HAS NOT BEEN ACCEPTED.
“Shee-it,” she muttered in her childhood Texas accent, sitting tensely in the spindly desk chair of the one-room apartment the Moonbase people had given her.
Doug had told her that the commsats were blacked out, but Global should be able to take a message directed straight at their rooftop antennas. Yet her call did not go through.
“Did they take my broadcast chip?” she asked herself, wondering for the first time if Global would accept anything she sent from Moonbase.
She sank back in her chair, thinking hard. It was well past midnight at Moonbase. A few stabs at the keyboard on her desk brought up the information that it was 7:23 p.m. in Atlanta.
Manny’ll be home, knocking back his first cocktail of the evening, she thought. Good!
But how to get him, if neither the commsats nor Global’s private antennas were taking calls from the Moon?
She hated to call Doug and admit she couldn’t get through on her own, especially since the guy was probably asleep at this time of night. Yet she couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Doug’s face popped up on her smart wall immediately. He was wide awake, still dressed, at his desk.
He listened to her problem, then showed her how to route calls through Kiribati. Edith thanked him, keeping her face serious, strictly business. Yet she found herself feeling glad that he wasn’t in bed with someone else.
It took a few minutes more, but the wait was worth it once she saw Manny’s look of shock when he recognized who was calling him.
“Edie! You’re in Kiribati?”
“No, I’m still at Moonbase. How come y’all aren’t taking calls from here?”
In the three seconds it took for his reply to reach her, Manny’s surprised expression knitted into a frown. “That’s not my doing, kiddo. If it were up to me I’d keep a special link open to you twenty-four hours a day.”
“Well, put your drink down and get on it, then,” Edith said sternly.
“We’re getting everything you send,” he said, looking worried, guilty. “We’re just not allowed to acknowledge receiving your transmissions.”
“Not allowed? By who?”
For three seconds she waited, and got, “Whom.”
“Don’t smart-ass me, Manny. Who’s not allowing what?”
Manny took a long pull from the old-fashioned glass he was holding before replying. “Orders from the very top,” he said.
“McGrath himself?”
“That’s right. He wants us to cooperate in every way we can with the U.N.”
“You mean he won’t run the stuff I sent? Eyewitness report of the Peacekeeper’s death?”
Manny shrugged. “I’m trying to get it past the suits upstairs, Edith. Honest I am.”
“Honestly,” she muttered.
“Honestly,” he said, three seconds later.
“This is a weird situation,” Edith said.
“Tell me about it.”
For more than twenty-four tense hours, Joanna feared that the Peacekeepers were going to keep her and Lev in Corsica. When their Clippership landed at the Peacekeeper base, the two of them were shuffled through several layers of bureaucracy, including the most thorough medical examinations they had undergone in years.
“You will need a few days to adjust to terrestrial gravity,” the chie
f doctor told her and her husband, from behind his metal desk.
In truth, Joanna did feel the sullen weight of Earth more than she had expected. She had spent more time on the Moon than on Earth for a quarter-century now, but she always exercised every day while in Moonbase and never considered her returns to Earth as health-threatening.
“I’ll be fully adjusted in another few hours,” Joanna said. She glanced at Lev, who seemed blithely unaffected by the six-fold increase in gravity.
The doctor shook his head good-naturedly. “No, I am afraid it will take several days, at least.”
He was a smiling, plump, golden-skinned Chinese with many chins and rolls of fat showing at the open-necked collar of his short-sleeved Peacekeeper tunic. Joanna thought he might have been the model for statues of the happy Buddha that she had seen in gift shops. He spoke with a cultivated British accent, which sounded very strange coming from his round, almond-eyed Chinese face.
Joanna smiled back at him, coldly. “Doctor, have you found anything in the examinations your people have given us to indicate a health problem?”
“No,” he said, drawing the word out. “But still the effects of increased gravity must be taken into account.”
Sweetening her smile, Joanna asked, “You’re waiting for the results of our blood tests, aren’t you? You’re stalling for time until you learn whether or not there are nanomachines in our blood streams.”
The doctor’s fat-enfolded eyes widened for just a heartbeat. Then he folded his hands across his ample belly and admitted, “Just so. We must be extremely careful about allowing nanomachines into the terrestrial environment.”
Satisfied, Joanna replied, “We’re not harboring nanomachines.”
“We are not Trojan horses,” Brudnoy chipped in.
“But you have both undergone nanotherapy on the Moon, haven’t you?” the doctor asked.
“No,” Brudnoy replied simply. “I’ve never had to, although I admit as I get older the temptation grows stronger.”
“It does?”
Scratching at his beard, the Russian explained, “Each morning brings a new ache. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be. My prostate is growing.”
“That is natural,” said the doctor.
“Yes, but my nanotech friends tell me that they could bring my eyesight back to twenty-twenty and shrink my prostate back to normal and strengthen my poor old muscles, with nanomachines.”
Joanna looked at her husband with new eyes. Lev had never complained, she had never had an inkling that he felt his years. In bed he was as vigorous as men half his age. But if he feels old and creaky on the Moon, he must be in agony now, here. Yet he won’t show it, not even to me.
She reached out and grasped his hand. He looked surprised, then grinned sheepishly at her.
The doctor was oblivious to their byplay. He said to Joanna, “But you, Mrs Brudnoy, you have used nanomachines, haven’t you?”
Joanna nodded easily. “Many times. For cosmetic reasons, mainly, although I’ve had them scrub plaque from my arteries more than once.”
“You see?” the doctor said, as if she had just confessed to a crime. “We cannot take the risk of having nanomachines infect our terrestrial environment.”
“Doctor, I’m surprised to hear such nonsense from an educated man,” Joanna said.
“Nonsense?”
“Of course it’s nonsense. To begin with, there are no nanomachines in me. I underwent therapy and then the machines were flushed out, quite naturally.”
“How can you be sure—”
“They know the number of machines they put in,” Brudnoy explained, “and they count the number that come out. It’s quite simple.”
“But they could multiply inside the body, couldn’t they?”
“Only if they’re programmed to do so,” said Brudnoy.
Before the doctor could reply, Joanna went on, “Second, and more important, is that nanomachines are machines. They are not alive. They cannot mutate and change. What if there were a few nanomachines left in my bloodstream? What harm could they do, even if they got loose into your environment?”
“That depends on what they were designed to do, I should think.”
“Yes.” Joanna’s smile returned. “If a few got into you, for example, they might remove some of the fat you’ve accumulated.”
For an instant she did not know how the doctor would respond. He stared at her as he digested her words. Then his round pudgy face opened into a hearty laughter.
“Nanomachines could make me slim!” he gasped. “I could eat whatever I like and still become thin!”
Joanna leaned back in the stiff metal chair, thinking that she had won the man over.
But his laughter died away. “All this may be very true, but suppose you are carrying nanomachines that are harmful?”
“Harmful?”
Leaning his heavy forearms on his desk, the doctor said, “You are assuming that the specialists who treated you with nanomachines are benign people. Suppose they are not? Suppose they put into you nanomachines that can…” he fished for an appropriate subject.
“Gobble up plastics?” Brudnoy suggested.
Joanna scowled at her husband.
“Destroy plastics,” the doctor agreed. “Or invade computers and eat up their memory drives. Or destroy red blood cells in humans. Or attack the human immune system. Or—”
“Aren’t you being melodramatic?” Joanna said, almost sneering at the man.
“This is what we fear,” said the doctor. “You may think it is not important, but we cannot take such a risk.”
“I told you before,” Brudnoy said, “we are not Trojan horses. Nor Frankenstein monsters.”
“How do you know?” the doctor shot back. “You may have been infected without your knowledge.”
“Nonsense!” Joanna spat.
“That is a risk we will not take,” the doctor repeated firmly.
“Do you honestly believe that anyone at Moonbase would inject us with nanobugs that would be dangerous to Earth? Why would they do something like that? What possible reason could there be?”
The doctor folded his hands over his middle again. “Mrs Brudnoy, the chances of such an event are minuscule, I admit. But the consequences of such an event—no matter how unlikely it may be—would be catastrophic.”
Joanna looked at Brudnoy, who shrugged helplessly.
“Those are my orders,” the doctor said. “You are to be held here until the results of your blood tests come in.”
“Where are the tests being done?” Joanna asked.
“There are very few facilities with the necessary equipment and personnel who are capable of performing such tests.”
“Of course,” said Brudnoy. “You’ve closed all the nano-technology facilities.”
“Where are the tests being done?” Joanna insisted.
“It is very difficult to analyze blood samples for nano-machines.”
“Where?”
The doctor hesitated, then said, “At the University of Tokyo.”
“At a lab funded by Yamagata Corporation, I imagine,” Brudnoy said.
Joanna was too furious to speak.
DAY SEVEN
“This is Edie Elgin, speaking to you from Moonbase.”
Edith smiled into the minicam being held by one of the technicians from the defunct Lunar University. Doug Stavenger stood beside the camera woman, smiling encouragement to Edith.
She looked bright and beautiful in a close-fitting sheath of cardinal red. Doug had appropriated his mother’s wardrobe, the most extensive in Moonbase, hoping that she would understand and not be too angry when she found out. Edith had to do some fast alterations, and now she prayed that the dress would hold together without popping one of her hastily-sewn seams.
“Behind me you can see Moonbase’s extensive farm,” she went on, thinking that maybe a popped seam would improve her ratings. If the shitfaced suits back in Atlanta put her report on the network at all.
“Here, deep underground, the agricultural specialists of Moonbase grow the food that feeds the two thousand, four hundred and seventy-six men and women who live at Moonbase. This corner of the farm,” she started walking toward a row of dwarf trees, “is the citrus arbor, where fresh oranges, grapefruit, lemon and limes are growing…”
Edith described the hydroponics trays, bending down to show how the plant roots reached down not into soil, but into liquid nutrients that were carefully matched to each plant’s needs. She walked down one of the long rows, pointing out soybeans, legumes, grains and leafy vegetables.
“Over in that enclosed area,” she pointed, “biologists are experimenting with growing plants in an atmosphere that is higher in carbon dioxide than normal. The scientists need to wear breathing masks to work in there.”
Edith explained the full-spectrum lighting strips that ran along the farm’s high ceiling. “This artificial sunlight is on twenty-four hours a day. Moonbase’s farm never knows night, and its crop yield is more than five times the yield from a similar acreage on Earth.”
She showed the flower bed that Lev Brudnoy had started years ago in lunar soil. And the pens of rabbits and chickens that provided Moonbase’s meat. She did not mention the need for nitrogen, which had been imported from Earth but now would have to be mined from asteroids orbiting near the Earth-Moon system, just as the carbon for building the diamond Clipperships was mined.
“Before the current crisis erupted,” Edith went on, walking smoothly to an area where two large titanium tanks stood empty, with holes where piping should be attached,’this area was going to be used for an experimental aquaculture section. The idea was to use some of Moonbase’s precious water to grow fish, frogs and alga. Aquaculture can yield more protein per input of energy than even Moonbase’s advanced hydroponic farming can, and the water can be recycled almost completely.”