The Moon and the Other

by John Kessel

  Erno slid his left hand toward his glass and touched Sid lightly on the wrist, and it was as if a window opened into Sid’s mind. The hand’s sensitivity must be boosted by the effects of the tea. Sid was as invested in being the alpha of his group of friends as he had been when they were seventeen. Nothing had altered his condescension toward Erno. Underneath Sid’s arrogance was a pit of self-loathing. This torrent of understanding staggered Erno; he jerked back his hand as if it had been scalded.

  Sid raised an eyebrow. “Nothing to say?”

  Erno fought to control his reaction. “I can’t do anything. They’ve used the GROSS story to neutralize me.”

  Tommo said, “The way they’ve flipped it around is classic. You refused to be a terrorist. It must drive you crazy to hear that stuff.”

  Erno could tell, from the way Tommo sat and moved, how emotionally needy he was. “From the outside it looks that way, maybe,” Erno said. “It’s not that simple.”

  “We have to work together,” Tommo said. “That’s why, no matter what you think about Camillesdaughter, the rally is central. If we divide into little factions, the whole movement collapses.”

  Pierre watched Erno with half-lidded eyes. “We need you to keep the OLS off our backs.”

  “I’ve done what I can,” Erno said.

  “If the OLS brings reforms,” Tommo said, “it can’t be any worse than what we’ve got.”

  Sid drained the last of his tea. “The SCOCOM staff came to the fusion plant and interviewed anybody who wanted to be interviewed. They didn’t seem to have a position on any of this.”

  “You’re a fool,” Erno said. He turned on Tommo. “The first reform our friends from SCOCOM will bring is to build a freezer.” His voice rose. “Pierre—forget your videos, unless you want to starve. Sid, you’ll be mining helium-3 until you’re a hundred and forty years old. Who knows what Doris and Doreen Soniasdaughter—and your daughters—will do. Nothing very ennobling, I’ll tell you that.”

  “So why are you here?” Pierre said quietly.

  “You’ll just let SCOCOM call for a war?” Tommo said.

  “You’re on an OLS committee,” Sid said. “Your father-in-law is the wealthiest man on the moon. And you’re just helpless?”

  They looked at Erno, waiting. He glanced away and saw, across the room, Carey Evasson leaning against the bar, watching them. Carey’s eyes met Erno’s, and he lifted his glass slightly.

  Erno turned to Sid. “Find somebody else to feel superior to. I’m off that duty. And have another tea, because like you say, you are fucked and there’s not a thing anyone can do about it.”

  Feeling their eyes on his back, he left the Men’s House.

  His thoughts chased themselves in a circle. Their talk resembled nothing so much as his futile political posturing with Fabrizio and Zdeno. How certain he’d been back then that he knew the way things should be. Yet Sid was right: Erno wasn’t a penniless ice miner anymore. He had some influence.

  He stood alone at the tram stop, waiting. Few people were out this late. No reply so far to the poem he’d sent to Amestris. She should have been overjoyed at his getting the genomes. In the distance he saw lights in Sobieski Park where a crew was working late to prepare the stage for tomorrow’s rally.

  The tram arrived, and he got on. He was careful not to let his left hand brush up against anyone in the car. Two women sat side by side across from him, voices low. They looked at him and smiled. Did they recognize him? Were they talking about him? Sid and his condescension. Mira. Amestris.

  He told his Aide. “Arrange a conversation as soon as possible with Hypatia Camillesdaughter. I need to speak with her tonight.”

  As he was getting off the tram at the hotel, he got a call. It was Camillesdaughter.

  “Can we talk?” he asked her.

  • • • • •

  Carey’s Aide kept reminding him that he had a message from Roz, until finally he told it to shut up. He didn’t need more Roz right now. The Men’s House was crowded when he came in, but nobody ventured to talk to him. Maybe they hadn’t seen the press conference. Maybe they just wanted to let him be. If so, he was grateful.

  “What will it be?” Paolo asked.

  “Has my son been in here at any time today?”

  “No, he hasn’t. I would have noticed. So, no tea for you?”

  “You tell me, Paolo. What should I be drinking tonight?”

  “You look like a man who needs some cognitive enhancers. Maybe something to calm you down.”

  “I think I’m pretty calm, given the circumstances,” Carey said.

  “You look calm. Still, I expect you have some thinking to do.”

  “Set it up, then.”

  While Paolo was busy with the synthesis, Carey eavesdropped on some conversations. Most of the talk seemed to be about tomorrow’s rally. A lot of men were going to skip work to be there.

  Once he’d left the press conference, the anger he’d felt at Sirius drained away. It was out at last, and he no longer had to worry about it. People’s eyes watching him: That might be difficult for a while, but the relief was worth it. If he was famous—the athlete, the wronged father, the privileged son of a powerful woman, the prince of Cousins—it mattered not one bit.

  Paolo came back with the tea. As he sipped, Carey heard some voices raised behind him. He looked over to see Erno Pamelasson arguing with a table of other men. Carey smiled, and Erno locked eyes with him. There was his only rival for the title of most famous male Cousin. They had that, if nothing else, in common. Carey lifted his glass to Erno. Erno turned back to the others at the table, said something, stood, and left the Men’s House.

  “Good riddance,” said a man next to Carey at the bar, to no one in particular. “He should take the rest of those pussies with him.”

  “I guess he’s not worked out the way a lot of people hoped,” Carey said.

  “You think? He’s no better than Camillesdaughter’s ball-less pet boys. I can’t believe Tyler ever trusted him.”

  Carey examined the man. Deep-set eyes, very short hair. “It does seem that somebody has neutralized him with the virus story,” Carey said.

  “He was neutralized before he got off the cable train,” the man said. “If he hadn’t shoved the knife into Tyler’s back ten years ago this fight would’ve been over long ago. He’s just what the Matrons want men to waste their time on—rallies, reports, petitions—a joke. Accomodationist eunuchs diverting rage into useless half-measures. Non-measures.” He stared at Carey. “Just like you.”

  “Do you really want to do this?” Carey said. “Let’s not.”

  The Spartan puffed up like a rooster. “Afraid of me? Aren’t you the big Ruăn tā master?”

  “Come to the gym sometime, we’ll see how it goes.”

  The man was about to reply when there was some commotion near the door and Mira walked into the room. She came toward Carey. The Spartan followed Carey’s eyes to her and blocked her way. “This is the Men’s House.”

  “I know where I am,” Mira said. She pointed at Carey. “I need to speak with him.”

  The rest of the men in the room had stopped talking.

  “He doesn’t have to speak with you if he doesn’t want to,” the Spartan said.

  “I know that, too.”

  Paolo said, “Cousins, you need to calm down.” He looked at Carey, appeal in his eyes.

  “We’ll go outside,” Carey said. “Work on your rhetoric,” he told the Spartan.

  He followed Mira out of the building.

  Outside it was full night. Across the path they found a bench under the trees. It was where they had planned to meet for one of Mira’s Looker exploits. That was the night Val had gone with her to post videos instead of Carey—the beginning of all this trouble.

  Mira looked tired. “Before you say anything,” Carey started, “maybe you can tell me why you lied at the hearing. If it was because I turned down your marriage proposal, you should know how condescending that was.
It might seem to you that I’ve had the upper hand in this relationship, but that’s not the way it’s felt to me. I’ve been played by women my whole life, and I won’t be played anymore. If you’re going to tell me about my failures as a father or a friend or a lover, please keep them to yourself.”

  As he spoke, Carey felt the heat rising in him, and he heard the bitterness in his own voice. He waited for her comeback. He was sure it would be good.

  Instead, Mira reached out and touched his chest, her fingers testing him as if he might be a mirage. It stopped him cold. He stepped back, away from her.

  “I’m real,” he said. “I’ve been real all along.”

  “You’re a bunch of atoms thrown together.”

  “So are you. So is everybody.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The smell of the junipers around them reminded Carey of what Roz said had become of his body. He was already on his second life. The fact that he was here with this woman he had loved, about to tell him off for something he probably deserved to be told off for, was a gift. Every second was a gift.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “We’re going to talk about Marco.”

  Mira seemed to swell with anger. “He could have been saved! You knew all along!”

  “When all this happened to me, I didn’t even know him, or you. He would have been, what—four years old?”

  “That’s the point! If you hadn’t kept it a secret, then the IQSA would have been out there for years before he got killed. He could have been scanned. When he died, he could have been brought back, just like you.”

  “I was fifteen, Mira. I could hardly grasp what they were telling me, that I was a copy.”

  “Instead you let people think it was all a prank. You got famous for a lie.”

  “A lie I’ve been carrying around for most of my life.” He ran his hands through his hair. “My mother should have destroyed that machine the day after she brought me back.”

  “Not the day before?”

  He looked her in the eyes. “Marco’s been dead eight years. Are you going to spend the next hundred replaying that?

  Mira sniffed. “Yes.” She sank to the bench.

  “Bad idea.”

  He stood watching her for a moment, then sat down beside her.

  “Look,” he said, “I haven’t always done the right thing. Every time I saw those toy horses of yours, all I could think about was how he was dead and I was alive. I know my feeling bad doesn’t matter. And I have no right to tell you how you should feel.”

  “He’s dead, and you’re alive. It’s not fair.”

  “Nobody said it was fair.”

  She looked at her feet.

  “That ring you found was like throwing a bomb into the Green family,” he said.

  Carey told her the story of Jack Baldwin killing him, and Roz’s part in the cover-up. “Apparently my remains are fertilizing the junipers below my mother’s apartment.” He sighed. “An awful lot of melodrama in our family, huh?”

  Mira sat silent. Finally she said, “I guess, between me and Roz, you’ve picked some lousy girlfriends.”

  “You don’t understand Roz. She seems rigid, but she’s trying desperately to keep everything together. You—you have your good points, too.”

  She looked up. “I’m sorry I lied about you.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  She touched his forearm. “I’ve missed you.”

  And then they were in each other’s arms. He had forgotten just how small she was in his embrace. Her breath was warm on his neck. He swallowed. He had not felt this way in a long time, perhaps ever. Something rose in his chest, something quite extraordinary. They did not talk for a while.

  “What a mess we’ve made of things,” Mira said into his shoulder.

  He let her go, looked into her face. Intelligence, a strong heart. “It’s a group effort.”

  Carey didn’t know what to say about the two of them. “Listen, there is something you can do for me, if you’re willing—before you get banished or I get dissected or the OLS turns this place into a theme park. We need to help find Val.”

  “Find him?”

  “While Roz was at the press conference he disappeared. He’s probably just acting out. He didn’t like being forced to go back to her, and he’s charged up about the rally. I don’t think he’d do anything foolish, but for a while there he was hanging around with some Spartans.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “I have an idea. He’s likely to be at the rally. If I go to Hypatia, she might help us find him.”

  “She’s going to want you on the stage with her.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Mira looked at him. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “What?”

  “Over the last three hours, you’ve probably drawn more media hits than any other person on the moon.”

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  !!!NEWSMELT NOW!!!

  Your inside source for thinktropic datablasts

  Super Science Shocker!

  . . . that scientists at the Society of Cousins, in secret, have developed, in the so-called Integrated Quantum Scanner Array, a means of duplicating people. Not the cloning we are familiar with, but a radical new technology that presents frightening possibilities.

  The Matrons pride themselves on having no standing army. It turns out they don’t need one. All they need is one lethally trained soldier, and the weapons to equip him, and they can instantly create an army of copies, all of them identically committed to the radical state and with identical ability to inflict their ideology on . . .

  Copy That, Carey!

  . . . OLS Olympic champion martial artist, feverthrob symbol of shackled manhood in the Society of Cousins, recently the center of a dispute over the custody of his son, turns out to have died at the age of fifteen! Brought back to life by his brilliant scientist mother, what must it be like to know that you are not an original, but a copy? How has this affected his psyche? How real a human being is he?

  And if you like this Carey, maybe you can buy one for yourself?

  Fuse Lit on Cousins Powder Keg!

  . . . attempt to force the Board of Matrons to use its executive power to extend the franchise to all men in the colony. That proposition was voted down in the last, disputed, election. Camillesdaughter, leader of the Reform Party, is going ahead with the planned strike and protest rally.

  Meanwhile, this Friday, OLS investigators from the Special Committee on the Condition of Men are due to present their report on the renegade colony to the OLS Secretariat. Sources close to SCOCOM . . .

  • • • • •

  A third of colony support workers were on strike, but somebody had to keep everything running. The sad history of the last centuries showed that even planetary environments needed to be tended; how much more vital on the moon, where the biosphere was not a natural phenomenon.

  Edouard complained to his mother and to Ellen about the way other men chased the latest delusion. He put on his mocking voice: “I demand the right to vote,” and, “Oh, yes, I am a father! Look, I have six children by four different women.” Ellen would laugh, and Edouard would kiss the nape of her neck and dance her around the room.

  At dome maintenance, where the desire to join the demonstration was almost universal, Supervisor Roxannesdaughter did not see how they could function for a shift without any inspectors, despite the sensors located throughout the structure.

  Edouard volunteered to put in an extra shift. So here he was, the skeleton in the skeleton crew, inspecting the interdome alone while his Aide played the speeches for him, a thumbnail of the Sobieski Park stage in the corner of his visual field. Edouard: the man who scorned co-workers abandoning their jobs but volunteered to serve in their place so they could, the man who thought the masculinist movement absurd but who still had to know what was going on.

  Dome maintenance occupied the top floor of the Diana Tower, a level below the airloc
k at its summit. In the inspectors’ locker room Edouard put on a white jumpsuit and hard hat, strapped microscope/X-ray goggles to his forehead, and took up a multi-spectrum lamp that could be set from infrared through ultraviolet.

  He unsealed the code-locked doors, entered the interdome, and turned on the lights. Ahead of him a forest of struts ran between the inner dome, his floor, and the upper, his ceiling. In the course of his shift he would work his way from the center to the outer edge of the dome, crossing left to right and back again between the supporting ribs in the wedge that was his day’s responsibility, clocking in at stations along the way.

  The Fowler dome was eighty years old, and though over the decades its monitoring and safety systems had been upgraded, it was nonetheless a piece of mid-twenty-first-century lunar architecture, remarkable for the time it had been constructed and the resources of the Cousins who had constructed it. It was fundamentally two domes, one inside the other, with an air space between containing support and safety systems. Eight umbrella-like ribs rose from the rim of the crater to join at the central spire. The titanium outer skin was covered with four meters of regolith. The regolith layer, inelegant as it was, ensured that Cousins received no more than four millisieverts of radiation per year, a load no higher than an average sea level inhabitant of Earth. The inside dome was faced with the screen that produced the artificial sky. Over the course of the last eighty years, forty percent of the structural members had been replaced, but still the supports between the inside and outside were under continuous inspection.

  The dome breathed. Within a single month the exterior temperature of the surface varied from one hundred twenty degrees Celsius at noon of the two-week day to minus one hundred fifty degrees Celsius at lunar midnight. The regolith, besides protecting the interior from ionizing radiation, moderated these temperature changes, but the dome still expanded and contracted over the course of the lunar day, stressing the joints between the metal layers and the girders, beams, and stanchions where they were bolted to the skin. Where the supports met the great cermet ribs Edouard inspected the bearings for wear and deformation. He scanned the layer of composite that covered the inside of the exterior dome looking for cracks or spalling.