The Moon and the Other

by John Kessel

  He remembered Mira’s kiss and tried to figure out what, if anything, it meant. Having sex in the cab of the truck would have been the Cousins thing to do. He found Mira as attractive as he had when they were fourteen, and Mira had initiated the kiss. But he was married to Amestris—true, in a marriage of convenience, if you included great sex as a convenience. So why not? Was he falling into patriarchal notions of marriage? But a true patriarch would have enjoyed sex with Mira and gone home to his wife.

  “A report now would be premature,” Göttsch announced.

  “You’re the sociologist,” Erno said to Beason. “You should be interested in this upcoming rally, the circumstances that led to it, the people behind it, the potential it shows or doesn’t show for change. You’ve drawn your conclusions before you’ve even investigated.”

  Beason waved his hand at Erno. “The rally is a Potemkin protest. I’ve seen the statistics, and we have a growing mass of interviews, every one of which shows the prejudice against men in the Society.”

  “There hasn’t been anything like this rally in Cousins history,” Erno said. “Twenty percent of the populace may be at it. Camillesdaughter has drawn together a coalition behind extending the franchise that could transform the Society.”

  “The Board of Matrons may not allow the rally,” Göttsch said. “We should wait to see what happens.”

  “We’re here to investigate and file a report,” Erno said. “We’re not supposed to advocate action.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Beason said. “Of course we’re here to advocate action.”

  “We’re not filing any report yet,” Göttsch said. “I have not spoken with Dr. Maggiesdaughter. Her paper modifying indeterminacy theory is one of the most brilliant of the last thirty years.”

  “What has that got to do with our charge?” insisted Beason. “You just want to satisfy your own curiosity.”

  “You’d be well served to be more curious yourself, Martin,” Göttsch said.

  Li spoke up. “The GROSS viruses were an inelegant plan and, if it had been tried, unlikely to have worked. This public furor is wrongheaded. Erno should be reinstated. There are real biotech threats we should be investigating.”

  Göttsch shook her head. “That’s as may be, but the publicity puts us in a delicate situation. Whether we can put Erno’s name on the final report will depend on how this plays out.”

  Erno got up from the table. “You’ll need my input to give the report credibility. And I’m not going to stay confined to the hotel forever.”

  When Göttsch, Beason, and Li left for the SCOCOM offices, Erno texted Sirius: I need to speak with you.

  Not now.

  The more Erno had gotten to know the dog, the less he understood him. Sirius had an encyclopedic knowledge of human cultures. He held a PhD in history, but he had forsaken academic work to pursue his career in the media. He claimed that species prejudice put a lid on any advances he might make in the academy, and besides, he was already sixteen years old. But this was so superficial a motive that Erno suspected it reflected little of his real self.

  Erno knocked on the door of Sirius’s suite. No answer. He knocked again.

  From behind the door the dog growled, “If you must, come in.”

  Erno entered. The room was appointed with a round gel mattress, a communications center, a pixwall, a special desk, and a dog chair Sirius had brought with him. A pad and stylus lay on the desk. The pixwall showed an Alpine meadow surrounded by dark green trees, beneath a stunning blue sky.

  Sirius was seated on the mattress, unclothed, being groomed by Gracie. He had his eyes closed, ears relaxed, as Gracie pulled a small brush the length of his back. The room smelled of forest.

  Sirius opened his eyes and looked at Erno.

  “That’s enough, Gracie,” he said.

  The monkey, still holding the brush, whispered in Sirius’s ear.

  “Not now,” Sirius said. “Mr. Pamson demands my time, and how might I, a mere dog, deny Mr. Pamson?”

  Sirius, the champion of animal rights, did not seem to mind owning Gracie, whose intelligence did not pass the threshold granting her the right to self-possession. Gracie returned the brush to a grooming kit, folded it up, put the case on a side table, and left. Beside the kit lay a drug caddy with multiple compartments full of pills.

  Ignoring Erno, Sirius hopped onto his chair and picked up the stylus in his right handpaw, dropped it, then picked it up again. With agonizing care he tapped it against the pad. Erno studied a window within the wall pix, a chart listing the major lunar colonies and the voting status of men, women, and animals in each.

  Erno waited for Sirius to finish what he was doing. Sirius had a video on the pad, his sleek head hovering over it. He began to whimper. Erno stepped closer to look over his shoulder. On the screen a Doberman puppy romped with a couple of dark-haired children in a brightly colored playroom. The children teased him with a rope toy. Plump, floppy-eared, with bright brown spots above its eyes, the puppy bounced and growled and nipped at its human playmates. The delighted children squealed. They fell together in a heap. The little boy put his arms around the puppy’s neck and it licked his face.

  Sirius hung his head just above the pad, breathing irregularly.

  The puppy had the high domed forehead of the genetically augmented canine, but was otherwise unlifted.

  “Is that you?” Erno asked.

  Sirius sighed, a very odd sound. “Archive,” he told the pad, and the screen went blank. He shoved the tablet away with force and swiveled his chair around. His fathomless black eyes rested on Erno for some seconds.

  “All right. What do you want?”

  The SCOCOM team treated Erno like an interloper, and Sirius made him wait for no reason. “I want access to the tree genomes. I’m not needed here.”

  “You’re needed to acquire the information that Cyrus Eskander asked you to get.”

  Erno took the only human chair in the room. “I told you already: The machine exists.”

  “I promised you would get those genomes—if you got the IQSA. You haven’t done that yet. If the first effort yields only partial results, you close the deal with the second.”

  “If you want more from me, you’ll have to spike this talk about me as a terrorist.”

  “A report will hit later today. The OLS has examined the virus plan and determined that it was first, a plot against Cousins women, second, never created, and third, brought to the attention of the Matrons by you.”

  “That won’t mollify the fanatics in the other colonies.”

  “Nothing will ever mollify them.”

  “Exactly. So how can I get the genomes? I can’t show my face anywhere near a biotech facility.”

  “You don’t need to show your face,” Sirius said. The dog trotted to his closet and dragged out a backpack. Using both of his handpaws he unseamed the pack and pulled out a jumpsuit.

  “This is a camouflage suit,” Sirius said. “Use it to get your precious genomes. If you’re caught, I will deny any involvement. It’s a better chance than you’ve earned.”

  Sirius held the suit out, fumbled, and dropped it.

  “Damn it!” he muttered.

  Sirius seized the suit in his jaws and tossed his head, flinging it across the room at Erno. The sleeves flopped and tumbled in slow motion, and Erno snatched it out of the air.

  This seemed to enrage Sirius even more. He shook his head and whined.

  “What’s the matter?” Erno asked.

  “I depend on monkeys to accomplish anything. And half the time you botch it, as you have the simple task of getting this information.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yet you’ll live another hundred years, while I’ll be dead in ten. I’m an abomination. A monstrous violation of nature.”

  Erno had never seen Sirius in this mood. “It must be hard to be an animal.”

  “I’m an animal? And what are you? Your theories, your art, your music, your science, all just a ve
neer! The best of you—you on your very best day—are bemused. The worst—your prime ministers, generals, popes, CEOs, bankers—are nothing more nor less than demons. You rape, exploit, destroy, and call it principle.”

  “Bad cultures, bad behavior,” Erno said.

  “CULL-ture,” the dog’s whine dripped with sarcasm. “If it’s just culture, point to some time in human history that was different.”

  “Here. Violence in the Society is controlled.”

  “With the world of men ready to take over at the point of a gun. These women would be better served to make those bioweapons that half the moon, projecting their own homicidal impulses, believes they have.”

  The fur along the ridge of Sirius’s back stood erect. He retreated to the closet and took down shorts and a brilliant blue shirt. He struggled to put on the shorts.

  “I’ll call Gracie,” Erno said.

  “You will not call Gracie.”

  Sirius managed to don the shorts, but he fumbled with the shirt cuffs. He looked up at Erno in silent accusation.

  “Help me,” Sirius said.

  Erno got down on his knees and sealed the cuffs. Sirius trembled.

  “I go quietly and see things. Not one of you knows what I see,” Sirius said slowly, in a whisper. His limpid black eyes, irises invisible, watched Erno’s hands. “Yet you call me your creation.”

  “Cyrus’s creation.”

  “Yes, Cyrus made me.” Sirius pulled away from Erno. “ ‘I am His Highness’s dog at Kew,’ he recited mockingly, ‘Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?’ ”

  Erno was stung. “I’m Cyrus’s dog, too.”

  “Well, you make a poor dog. I send you out to fetch an answer, and you come back with guesswork.”

  “The IQSA is there. I’d bet on it.”

  “You have nothing to bet, you purblind twit! Take the suit and steal your genomes. Go back to Persepolis and tell yourself you’ve proven your manhood—as you will have most gloriously, in time-honored tradition, over the bodies of your fellows, done.”

  “Fuck you,” Erno said, “and your nihilistic bullshit.”

  “Oh, dear—nihilism!” The dog sounded like he was choking, but he was laughing. “Don’t take me so seriously, Fido—I believe in lots of things. Scent. I believe in scent. You, for instance, reek of cowardice. I can smell your egotism, your rage, your fear, your sentimentality, your self-delusion. You should all be put down before you do more damage to a pristine universe and the poor creatures who must share it with you.”

  Erno took the camo suit and left.

  • • • • •

  Two days after the constables found her in the lab, the Board of Matrons ordered that Mira be suspended from Materials. She didn’t know whether Eva had any say in the matter, or what Eva might have said if she did.

  She was cleaning out her desk, putting the few items that were hers into a box, when Roz came over to speak with her. Since the hearing, Mira’s feelings about Roz had become complicated.

  “I’m sorry they’re doing this,” Roz said.

  “Right,” Mira said. “You’re broken up.”

  Roz sighed. She sat down on the corner of the desk. “You tell yourself that we’re completely different, Mira, but we’re not. Neither of us fits into the world of forced sisterhood. We both lost the most important person from our childhood—your brother, my father.” She paused, looked down at the desktop. “Your sarcasm is a defensive posture that I know all too well. It took me a long time to let it go.”

  At another time Roz’s presumption might have sparked Mira’s hostility. But she was tired, and she was in trouble, and maybe Roz had a point. She tried to think of something to say. The best she could do was “I liked working here.”

  “Don’t assume you won’t be back. I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you how grateful I am for what you said in the hearing. I know you love Val—and Carey. That must not have been easy.”

  Mira put the picture of herself and Marco into the box.

  “When I worked at this desk,” Roz said, “I felt I’d always be an immigrant. They called me ‘High-G’ because I was from Earth. It took me years to realize that I didn’t need to be alone.”

  Mira really didn’t want to hear this. “How’s Val?”

  “He’s fine,” Roz said, but her brow was furrowed.

  “Look,” Mira said, “you do know that while he was with Carey he was hanging around with the most radical of Hypatia’s crew, right?”

  “You were part of Hypatia’s crew.”

  “Not really.” Mira closed the box. “Even if she’s right about some things.”

  “Being right isn’t everything.” Roz eased off of the desk. “Did you ever by any chance find a ring lying around this workstation?”

  Mira had it in her pocket. Whenever she was nervous she worried it with her fingers.

  “No,” she said. She picked up her box. “Look, I know you are trying to help me, and it’s pretty clear I need help sometimes. Just keep an eye on Val, okay?”

  Roz looked as tired as Mira felt. “I will.”

  “Good-bye, then.” Mira carried her box out of the lab.

  Others besides Roz had felt free to confront Mira lately. In the wake of the hearing, more than one person had accosted her. Somebody plastered one of Mira’s own videos over her apartment door. She got hundreds of personal messages with every extreme of reaction. But then at the refectory a neighborhood woman who had never once paid her any attention came to sit and reassure her that her troubles would pass.

  She ran into Cleo on the tram one night. Cleo came to stand facing Mira where she sat.

  “I don’t understand you,” Cleo told her. She towered over Mira. Her voice was husky with emotion.

  “I don’t understand myself, Cleo.”

  “Self-flagellation doesn’t make you a good person.”

  “Then you’ll just have to flagellate me instead.”

  “Oh, yes, your conscience is so much better tuned than mine.”

  Cleo got off at the next stop. Mira remembered the look of her departing back, shoulders squared, and the long strides she took.

  Mira followed the preparations for the rally from a distance. They said this would be the largest protest in Cousins history. The administration had given permission, had even sent a staffer to work with the Reform Party on the logistics. The Board made a show of reaffirming the Society’s commitment to openness and democracy.

  Hypatia had a wonderful time being interviewed on patriarchal public affairs shows. She was at her absolute best, deploying the buzzwords of the Founders while undercutting everything they stood for. Searing wit, academic theory, double entendres, playing up the Society’s reputation for sexual license with every gesture, every well chosen outfit. Masculine by the terms of the patriarchal world but hot hot hot, with just enough queer markers to broaden her appeal.

  It looked like a third or more of the colony support staff, overwhelmingly male, would forsake their jobs for the day. Bureaucrats scrambled to arrange for backups in essential services. The constabulary signed on a score of trained volunteers.

  Meanwhile, Erno had disappeared from public view. There was talk that he was being sent back to Persepolis, but no confirmation. He’d made no attempt to get in touch with Mira since their meeting. She didn’t know whether she should follow through on her promise to keep quiet or tell somebody about his spying for Cyrus.

  Their kiss lingered in her mind.

  The more she thought about it, the more Mira realized that she needed to speak with Eva. Among women of influence, Eva was the only one whose opinion Mira might find valuable. Plus, if there was a room behind the wall of the stacked-pinch reactor lab, Eva would know all about it.

  A week into her enforced idleness Mira messaged Eva asking to meet. Eva’s reply gave Mira no hint of her attitude: She simply set a time for Mira to come to her home.

  Mira arrived at twilight. Above, evening flyers were black silhouettes against the lamben
t sky, red and green running lights at the tips of their wings.

  Eva greeted Mira at the door. “Come in.” A brief embrace.

  What they said about the Greens and privilege was right: Mira had never seen a home of such size and luxury. For a moment she had second thoughts. She and Eva were too different: Eva cool and rational and steeped in the status quo, Mira scattered and wary and sometimes purple with rage against the moon itself, let alone other people. Whatever her failings, Hypatia understood that. What could Eva know about being Mira?

  The living room opened onto a terrace that looked over the interior of the colony. The flyers were coming in now. Mira watched one of them glide down to the aerofield in Sobieski Park. The semen smell of a blooming callery pear wafted in from outside.

  “Some tea?” Eva asked. “Nothing special, just caffeine.”

  “That would be good.”

  Eva went to the sideboard and adjusted the settings of a brewer.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me,” Mira said as she walked around the room. She slipped her hand into her pocket and played with her ring.

  On the wall hung a painting that must have come from Earth. It showed a woman in an elaborate yellow gown drying off a naked boy after bathing him. The boy was placid and inexpressive, as if half asleep. The mother had her hand on a towel that covered the boy’s groin.

  What struck Mira was not the subject, but the physical reality of the painting. Canvas—fabric made from plant fibers—stretched over a wooden frame, the image created by layers of oil-based pigments laid on with a brush made from animal hairs. The painting even smelled organic. So primitive an artifact as to be a window into another time. Literally irreplaceable. Its value could not be measured in economic terms, yet it hung on the wall as if there were nothing unusual about such a thing ending up in an apartment in the Society of Cousins on the far side of the moon.

  Mira sat on a chair by a low table. A black-and-white cat trotted out, paused, and stared at her. She extended her arm at floor level, the back of her hand toward him. He came over and sniffed her knuckles, then bumped his head against her hand. She scratched him behind the ears. “Isn’t there anyone else here?”