The Moon and the Other

by John Kessel

  “If I help you?” Lemmy said. “The fact that it’s the truth isn’t enough?”

  A SCOCOM staff member came out of the office and approached them. “Mr. Pamelasson?”

  “I need to go back,” Erno told Lemmy. “Please think about it.”

  When he returned to the rest of the team, they were still in discussion. Sirius was no longer there.

  “Odillesson is useless,” Beason said. “They could be producing disease vectors in the next room and he wouldn’t care. The Matrons must be very happy with the likes of him.”

  Erno took a seat. “This is not the way for us to begin. Browbeating is not going to help us. Our job should be to listen more than talk. Otherwise we’ll just reinforce the Matrons’ assertion that our presence here is the prelude to an attack.”

  “I don’t think Dr. Odillesson is as ignorant as you say, Martin,” Göttsch said. “He knows more than he’s letting on.”

  Erno could not let that go. “I worked with him for two years. I was his apprentice, and I saw every sort of gene hack that was being pursued and had access to everything that had been done in the previous fifteen years. Food stocks, environmental cleansers, symbiotic microbes. Unless there’s been some change, Odillesson is telling the truth. There is no bioweapons research, and never has been.”

  Beason looked at Erno with a trace of a smile. “Now we know he’s lying—because you’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Is that right? So tell us about GROSS.”

  “What is this about?” Göttsch said.

  They were all looking at Erno now. “How do you know about that?” Erno said.

  “So you admit it existed,” Beason said.

  “No. It never existed.”

  “Yet you seem to know what I’m talking about.”

  Erno squirmed. “Yes.”

  “Martin,” Göttsch said, “please explain what you are talking about.”

  Beason, as if he had been waiting for this moment, was calmer than he had been at any time in the session. “I’ve received information from a source friendly to SCOCOM about a deadly virus, acronym GROSS, that Erno was directly involved in producing when he worked in Odillesson’s lab.”

  “Look,” Erno said, “you can’t trust anything that Thomas Marysson says. He’s the person who put me onto it in the first place! Yes, someone, I don’t know who, had designed it, at least in theory.”

  “What is GROSS?” Li asked.

  Erno sighed. “It was two things, really. A pair of engineered viruses that, in combination, would induce an X-linked disease that would express itself only in female embryos. It was a genetic time bomb against female children.”

  “That certainly sounds like a weapon,” Göttsch said.

  “It worked only on children?” Li said. “That’s monstrous.”

  “It would have no effect on adults, only embryos. But it was never made,” Erno insisted. “It produces female babies with genetic diseases. The sick idea of some disgruntled male who came up with a plan to hurt the women of the Society without hurting the men. I don’t even know that it was a Cousin who thought it up. Does that sound like something the Matrons would sponsor? It harms only women. It was a misogynist’s fantasy.”

  “Not a fantasy,” Beason said. “You were prepared to produce the virus.”

  “No, I was not. I refused. That’s what led to the break between me and Marysson. He asked me to produce it, and instead I turned it over to the Matrons.”

  “Who kept this a secret when you were tried and exiled.”

  “I imagine they did not want even the concept to be made public, for fear somebody else would use it. They had enough evidence to exile me without it.”

  “Still,” Beason said, “you can’t maintain that no bioweapons were being researched here.”

  “Look, this doesn’t make any sense. More likely it came from one of the other colonies.”

  Li interrupted, “That’s pure slander.”

  Erno gripped the edge of the table. “Why would a female-dominated society engineer a weapon that would hurt women and leave men completely unaffected?”

  “You left the room with Odillesson,” Göttsch said. “You wanted to talk with him alone, where you weren’t being recorded. What did you talk about?”

  “I used to work for him. I wanted to reassure him after that third degree you subjected him to.”

  “You don’t work for him anymore,” Beason said. “You work for the OLS.”

  The session descended into argument. After twenty minutes Erno had persuaded Li that this did not indicate some secret Cousins weapons program, and he thought Göttsch was leaning his way. But Beason did not relent.

  When the room had settled into an uneasy silence, and Erno sat there trying to master his anger, Beason got up and found himself a bulb of juice in the suite’s refrigerator. He came back and sat at the table. “So, who’s next?”

  • • • • •

  Erno studied the OLS soldier who accompanied them in the van back to their hotel, a big man in matte black flex armor, helmet, sidearm. After the station incident the OLS had sent a half dozen of these menacing pros to protect the investigators. The man turned his head toward Erno, then turned away. His eyes were invisible behind the visor.

  As they pulled away from the tower, Li claimed the seat next to Erno. “Don’t take what Martin says so seriously,” he said.

  “How should I take it? He accused me of terrorism.”

  “You shouldn’t have lied to us.”

  “The GROSS virus has nothing to do with weapons. If this is the level of reasoning we’re bringing to this investigation, our report will be nothing more than propaganda.”

  “Martin could have gone public with this story. He didn’t. That should count for something.”

  Erno was in no mood to salve Li’s conscience. “Please go away.”

  Li jerked himself out of his seat and moved up to sit with Beason. Erno watched the eyes of the van driver in the rearview mirror. His name was Ravi Meerasson—they must have attended school at the same time, yet Erno had never known him. Li said something to Göttsch; for a second Ravi’s eyes flicked up and made contact with Erno’s.

  At the hotel Erno paced his room. He should have realized that GROSS would not remain hidden in his past, yet its resurfacing infuriated him. Restless, he visited the colony public affairs streams and the heated debate about Looker and what they were now calling the Bang You’re Dead Incident, BYD for short. He ran across some reports on the upcoming hearing to decide custody of Valentin Rozsson. On one of the Huygens newsnets a sociologist discussed the likely strategies the two sides would take.

  He thought of calling Amestris. He would like her opinion on what to do; she was astute about political infighting. He would not mind seeing her dark eyes and the cast of her lips, feeling the warmth of her breath on his cheek. If only she were here! He was in the Society of Cousins, where sex was common coin and frustration the easiest thing in the world to avoid. No complications, that was the theory. What a joke. He didn’t belong here anymore. He lived in Persepolis, in a Persepolis marriage, not one where you could walk in and out so effortlessly.

  Nothing was effortless anywhere. His attempts to renew some connections had not borne fruit. When he’d received no answer to his first day’s message to Alicia, he’d tried his sister Celeste again. She did not return his calls. Celeste would have long since become an adult; she was probably on her own with her own family. She would not be living at the apartment where they had grown up.

  He changed to a blue shirt of the type typically worn by Cousins working the mita, took the lift down to the basement, and left the hotel through its kitchen. He followed the concourse to the nearest station, climbed up to the platform, and took the first tram.

  Through the windows Erno watched people come and go, leaned his head against the window, and let the home he had not seen in ten years pass by. He tapped the fingers of his artificial hand against t
he glass and cracked the window open so he could feel the breeze on his face.

  In the last days a dozen things Erno had been oblivious to when he lived here had come back to surprise him. The birds, for one thing. Birds had trouble adapting to lunar gravity, and had to be genetically altered to suit underground environments. A few of the other lunar colonies had birds, but did a poor job integrating them into a balanced ecology. In the Society, birds were everywhere. Because there were not enough insects to maintain a population, feeders were located all around the colony, usually among trees. Beneath every feeder was a collector for droppings, invaluable sources of phosphates. Citizens working the mita came every third day to scoop the guano into bins and drive it to the fertilizer plant. This might have been done by machines, but doing the work by hand taught people how everything was connected. Erno had done this himself. It was a very Matronly solution. Every job important, all work dignified—and besides, it gave men who sought the franchise something to do. So nine times out of ten, the person you saw scooping up birdshit from below a tree was a man.

  When he was seventeen he’d considered this grounds for revolution. Now that Erno had spent ten years doing such work and worse in the patriarchies—not because he was male, but simply because he was poor—he was not so sure. What surprised him the most was that he had forgotten all about it. The fact that what had been invisible to him as a Cousin was so visible to him now told him what “home” was: Home was the place you were estranged from.

  The tram emerged from the tunnel into the dome and for a moment—maybe ten seconds or so—passed a school playground with a football field. Fading afternoon sun cast golden light over the natural grass playing fields. A crowd of noisy children gathered at the far end, but at this end, all alone, a five- or six-year-old boy marched down the center of the field. He had a tight cap of curly black hair, brown cheeks. The boy swung his arms, his hands gripped into little fists, chest puffed out, lifting his knees high, oblivious to the world as he sang some song to himself.

  In seconds Erno was past him. The tram twisted slowly through Yousafzai district, where his family lived. He watched people, some he perhaps had passed on his way to school every day, Cousins old and young on their own way to work, or home, or to meet men or women friends, lovers, spouses, children, co-workers, counselors, mothers. A man in blue drove a cart full of produce toward the refectory. A gardener at the end of her day stood in one of the flower beds that climbed up the terraces of flats and massaged the small of her back. Beside her rose a retaining wall draped with pelts of ivy. Tile mosaics decorated the sides of buildings. Everywhere balance and proportion. Mutual support. The perfect, renewable biosphere. All things in their place. Tended, all tended, nothing left to grow wild, to fall into a feedback loop, to run off a cliff.

  The tram stopped at the Yousafzai station. He walked around the square facing the apartment complex where he had grown up. Somatic evening descended; the sky turned down to deep twilight, stars came out on the dome. The words up there had already been effaced. He sat on the wall looking at the twisted stairs that ran up the slope between apartments. Everything looked the same, down to the composting bins on the terrace where he had played with the other kids.

  Warm lights were coming on inside the apartments. A few meters in front of him stood the door to the one where he had lived with his mother, his aunt, his sisters. As he watched, it opened and Erno’s mother, dead for a decade, stepped out, followed by her partner, Nick Farahsson. Erno was so startled he felt dizzy.

  Then he saw it wasn’t his mother, it was his Aunt Sophie. They walked over to him.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello, Erno,” Aunt Sophie said.

  “I’m surprised you’re still here,” Erno said to Nick. “Is he with you now?” he asked Sophie.

  “Nick’s a member of this family,” Sophie said. “You aren’t anymore. We’d really rather not see you here.”

  Erno had never realized how much Sophie’s face was like his mother’s. How could he have missed that?

  “Where’s Celeste?” he asked.

  “Celeste married into the Indigos,” Nick said. “Leave her alone.”

  They exchanged a few words, and Sophie’s voice, also terribly reminiscent of his mother’s, gained an edge. Erno got angrier. When some neighbors started to gather—there was Thersasdaughter and her niece Carmen—he got off the wall and left.

  Instead of going back to the tram station, he decided to climb up to the top of the crater wall, to the rim that supported the dome. It was a long climb, all winding stairs through neighborhoods and gardens. Nightjars murmured in the branches of dryland trees. Juniper scented the dry air. The night sky grew distorted the closer he came to its edge. He and Tyler had climbed up there, behind the dome’s surface, to set the smartpaint charge that created their original “Bang! You’re Dead!” message. Who had created the twice-false repeat: a phony copy of a phony explosion? First that, and then GROSS—it was as if somebody, resurrecting his past, was determined to poison any chance Erno had to make a difference.

  The people still out were mostly young. He ignored them and they ignored him. He thought once that he heard light steps behind him, but when he turned around he saw no one. By the time he reached the rim road, out of breath, his anger had blown itself out. He looked down over the colony: the Diana Tower like some old Earth skyscraper, the dark fields of the crater floor, the distant oaks of the park underlit by fountain lights.

  Something nudged his hand. He flinched. Nothing showed there but some slight shimmering in the darkness.

  A muttered voice—Sirius—said, “It’s not your home anymore.”

  Erno stepped back. The thing beside him was still invisible, but when it moved he could detect a slight warping of the pavement, as if he were viewing it through almost still water.

  “Turn off the cloak,” Erno said.

  The distorted air became opaque, and there was Sirius sitting on his haunches, looking up. He wore a gray camouflage suit. The mask entirely covered his face, but Erno could make out his intelligent, inhuman eyes through deflecting gauze.

  “You followed me?” Erno asked.

  “We need to talk.”

  “What do we need to talk about?”

  “I’ve made some inquiries about Miranda Hannasdaughter. She’s uniquely well placed for our purposes. Besides working for Eva Maggiesdaughter, she associates with Hypatia Camillesdaughter. Carey Evasson is her lover. Tomorrow she’s going to testify on his behalf in the custody hearing regarding Maggiesdaughter’s grandson. Set up a meeting with her. Don’t let Beason, Göttsch, or Li know.”

  “After what happened today? Beason is out to get me.”

  “Beason is pathetic. Classic Earth arrogance. It was a crude misstep, and we will turn it to our advantage.”

  “I snuck out of the hotel. He’ll wonder where I was tonight.”

  “Tell them exactly where you were. You tried to contact your family. Beason won’t believe it, but it will humanize you with Li and even Göttsch.”

  “And you—sneaking around invisible. What’s this about?”

  “Being a celebrity makes it hard to pursue quiet inquiries; being a dog makes it impossible. So I resort to subterfuge.” If emotions were detectable in a canine voice, there was bitterness in Sirius’s. “Remember, at the very least we need schematics for the scanner. Test results, anything that will help us build a prototype.”

  “If it exists.”

  “We can be sure it exists.”

  “I want something in return.”

  “I know what you want.”

  “If I can’t get Odillesson’s genome samples through SCOCOM, you need to find me a way in.”

  Sirius nodded, and within seconds he was invisible again. His guttural voice remained. “I will ponder that. You should return to the hotel.”

  “Are you coming with me?” Erno asked.

  There was no answer. When Erno reached out, all his hand met was air.


  CHAPTER

  TEN

  YOU’RE KIDDING, CAREY HAD TOLD her. I don’t think so, he’d said. And then he’d broken off the conversation.

  Mira stood the tiny glass horse Val had made on her fingertips. No more than two centimeters tall, smooth as liquid. The white blaze on the black horse’s face had a trace of gold in it.

  “We need to get going,” Cleo called from the other room. “It’s almost oh-nine-thirty.”

  Mira slipped the horse into the breast pocket of the formal tunic she’d chosen for the hearing. High collar, subdued green. “You go on ahead. I’ll be there.”

  Cleo came into the room. “I want to make sure we’re on time.”

  Mira stared at her. “I want to make sure you get out of my face.”

  Cleo’s expression was bruised. “I’ll wait outside.”

  Mira yanked on her black slippers and tugged a brush through her hair. Cleo’s obsession with Reform Party politics wore Mira out. By undergoing genetic reassignment from male to female, Cleo had gained every right men were seeking through the movement, but that had made her only more committed to gaining those rights for everyone. “I’ll never forget where I came from,” she said. “I was a woman long before I got that second X.”

  Her earnestness was tedious. Still, what Mira had said was cruel. She was about to go out to apologize when her Aide spoke: You have a call. Address blocked.

  She threw it onto the wall. It was Erno. “Mira?”

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Do you have a moment?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’d consider it a great favor if I could meet with you sometime soon. Alone. We’d need to keep it secret.”

  Since the OLS had sent their own security to the hotel, Mira’s desire to talk to him did not warrant facing the scrutiny of armed strangers. “What about?”

  He brushed the hair out of his pale blue eyes. “I guess you could call it personal. I need a favor.”

  “That’s as may be. I need to know what I’m getting myself into.”