The Moon and the Other

by John Kessel

  He listened for sounds, heard nothing. The place was deserted. He started working his way through the suite. Empty offices, workrooms. The layout was similar to the administrative law floor that he was familiar with. He opened the door to a conference room.

  A mural covered the left wall: Shiva watching Vishnu transform himself into the enchantress Mohini. The right was a pixwall. The window wall stood directly opposite Carey. And in the center of the room, on the long conference table, sat Sirius, front legs outstretched, head lowered onto them as he stared out the window. Hearing Carey, he lifted his head and turned.

  His face split in a doggy grin. “Carey!” he growled. “What a pleasure to see you.”

  Carey stepped closer to the table. A tight gray suit covered every centimeter of the dog’s body. Beside him on the table was a hood of the same material.

  “What are you doing here?” Carey asked.

  “Enjoying the view,” Sirius said. “This will make spectacular video, if any of the cameras survive.”

  “People are dead.”

  “Oh, I trust that most of the people who were in the amphitheater have taken refuge in the tower. I saw them streaming toward us. Are there a lot of them down there?”

  “Not so many.”

  “And I suppose they’ve closed the doors by now, to preserve the air pressure. To help those suffering the unfortunate effects of decompression.”

  “No. They want to keep the doors open as long as possible. So that any last-minute stragglers aren’t caught outside. It would take a lot of time for the pressure to drop to dangerous levels in here. Especially as the tram tunnels would bring air from the underground levels.”

  “So the tram station is still open? People are leaving?”

  “Yes,” Carey said. “By now the building is almost empty.”

  “You know, I find that rather unlikely. Why should they leave this pressurized refuge if they don’t need to? Would you lie to me?”

  Carey moved toward the window wall. He scanned its base. No sign of explosives.

  “No,” Carey said. “There’s no point in lying to you. You’re too smart.”

  “You wouldn’t want to reconsider that offer, would you? The fact that you’re a copy of the original Carey Evasson, though it might be a liability in some political careers, with proper handling can be turned to your advantage.”

  “I don’t want a career in politics.”

  “Pity. So why don’t you take a seat and we’ll watch this spectacle together?”

  Carey opened the cabinets along one wall. No sign of anything that might be a bomb. He needed to check the other rooms. The dog watched him.

  Carey was about to leave when he noticed a discolored patch on the window. It looked like some sort of adhesive had been spread there. He stepped over to examine it.

  When he reached out to touch it, his fingers stopped short. Something came between them and the glass. He pressed his palm flat against the object, then felt around it. Warm to the touch, it was roughly rectangular, maybe fifty by forty centimeters, fifteen thick. Carey slid his fingers under the edge of it, trying to pry it loose.

  “So clever! Use those fingers, Carey! Those large, useful, ape fingers! Aren’t they strong enough?”

  Carey got a little purchase, and the thing slowly started to come away from the glass. If he could get to the elevator and ride up to the flight stage, he could throw it from the tower.

  He heard the scuffle of nails against the tabletop a second before he felt Sirius’s teeth in his shoulder. Claws raked his cheek, going for his eyes. Carey seized Sirius by his neck and tore him away, ripping his own shoulder open, and hurled the dog across the room.

  Sirius twisted in the air, landed, bounced, and found his feet. The short fur on the back of his neck stood up. Fiercely grinning, he launched himself at Carey again.

  Carey twisted backward toward the floor. As Sirius flew over him he swung his leg up and caught the dog on the side of his head. Carey bounced off his hands and back up again.

  Sirius hit the edge of the table, recoiled, fell to the floor, and rolled. Before the dog could regain himself, Carey took a step and shot his foot into the dog’s neck, crosswise. Sirius recoiled, bounced, and lay still. His sides rose and fell. His eyes were open, and his tongue twitched within his slightly opened mouth.

  Returning to the window, Carey used all his strength trying to tear the bomb away. His shoulder hurt, and blood ran down his cheek. He pulled harder. The bomb began to come loose, then came away completely. It was quite dense. Carey tucked it under one arm and stepped toward the door.

  Sirius lay, face turned toward Carey, some light still in his eyes. Faintly he growled, “Too late.”

  • • • • •

  From the Executive Summary, Commission on the Society of Cousins Dome Disaster (aka “The Fowler Report”)

  The second explosion, blowing a hole in the side of the Diana Tower, occurred fifty-three minutes after the first had punctured the dome. By that time approximately eighteen hundred people who had been caught by surprise at the Reform Party rally had taken shelter in the tower. Out under the dome a handful of rescue workers, wearing respirators and in some cases surface suits, were trying to save some last survivors. At least six hundred lay dead beneath the wreckage that had fallen from the dome, and approximately two hundred more pinned among the debris would die when the atmosphere was exhausted. Eventually their bodies would freeze, but they would be long dead before the temperature dropped to that level.

  The emergency doors of the tunnels to the underground concourses throughout the colony had closed automatically when the pressure dropped to 0.6 atmospheres, approximately thirty minutes after the dome was punctured. Those people trapped in the tower, even if they had been able to make their way across the floor of the crater to one of these tunnels, would find themselves closed out.

  The metro tunnels would have allowed them to move from the pressurized tower to the pressurized colony sublevels, but the tramway was equipped with its own automated pressure doors, and when, after the second explosion, the pressure in the tower dropped, these activated, sealing the tunnels off from the rest of the colony.

  Outside the lobby window, the dead bird lay dusted with snow. Nothing moved out there now except a couple of emergency workers in surface suits.

  Erno argued with the constable, a tall woman with broad shoulders and tattoos across the backs of both hands. He gestured toward the lobby windows. “Nobody can survive outside. If the tower loses its air, we’ll have no escape.”

  “Calm down. The tower is built to hold pressure even if the dome fails.”

  “Someone could blow a hole in it even easier than blowing one in the dome.” As Erno’s voice rose people took notice of him. “There must be a couple of thousand refugees in here. We don’t want to be trapped. We should move to the underground.”

  “The underground is closed off at the next stations,” she said with some exasperation. She pointed her baton toward the women gathered near the information desk. “We’re trying to get the system up and running again. But until then no one can get out of here. Now tell me what your friend went up there to do.”

  Erno tried to keep his temper in check. “He’s trying to save our lives. We can still go down into the station, and if the building is compromised, seal it off. We can survive there until we can be rescued.” Erno leaned on his lacerated leg and lost his balance, catching himself on the woman’s shoulder.

  The constable pulled back. “Control yourself.”

  “I’m sorry,” Erno said. “I know this must—”

  “Listen, I worked with your mother. I have no idea what you’re up to, but I’m not going to take advice from the man who got her killed.”

  Erno ground his teeth. “Yes, I got her killed,” he said. “That’s no reason to let anyone else die.”

  “You need to sit down and shut up. You’re upsetting people.” Some others had come over to listen.

  “Erno?�
� A woman’s voice from behind him.

  He turned. It was Mira. Her face was smeared with dust.

  “Maybe you can explain to her,” Erno said. “I think somebody’s going to blow a hole in the tower. We’ll be trapped. We need to get everyone down into the station.”

  Another constable came over with a woman dressed in civilian clothes. It was Krista Kayasdaughter. “What’s the problem?”

  Erno explained, urgent, keeping his voice low.

  “Many of these people are injured,” Kayasdaughter began. “Moving them—”

  Then came the thud of an explosion, distant, and the building shuddered. The lobby’s glass panels rattled in their frames. Outside, a rescue worker in a bright orange surface suit jerked his head upward. Another did the same, and then they both turned and leapt away from the building.

  “What is it?” someone shouted. Others got to their feet. People put their hands to their ears, listening for news from their dead Aides.

  Seconds later, falling glass and masonry began to hit the ground outside. A long metal strut landed end down, then slowly pitched toward the tower. The top gained speed, and people, screaming, backed away from the windows. The beam hit the reinforced glass and cracked it, but did not break through. A whistle of escaping air began.

  Those on the floor near the windows scrambled back. A woman tried to pick up a boy whose video shirt showed the image of Carey in martial arts competition, above the words “Accept No Substitutes.”

  At the core of the building the doors to the stairwell slammed open and people surged out. An elevator car crashed; its doors burst open releasing clouds of acrid smoke. Seconds after the smoke billowed out, it was sucked back in and up the shaft. A breeze, developing into a gale, pulled the air in the room toward the elevators and the stairwell.

  “Close those stairwell doors!” a constable shouted.

  “There are people up there!” another said.

  “The metro!” Kayasdaughter shouted. “Get everyone down into the station!”

  In panic those people on the ground floor who could move rushed toward the broad archway and switchbacked ramp that led down to the station. Against the crowd, Erno forced himself toward the stairwell. He was knocked down, stepped on, and then Mira was by his side, helping him stand. She shouted in his ear, “Where are you going?”

  “Up. I need to get up there.” He lurched toward the stairs. He should have gone with Carey. He knew Sirius; Carey didn’t.

  The constable, her gray eyes determined, put her hand on his chest. “Get back! Get down to the station.”

  Mira tugged Erno’s sleeve. “Let’s go down. Help me look for Val Rozsson. I saw him at the amphitheater. He could be here.”

  Erno said, “Carey’s on the forty-second floor.”

  Mira looked as if Erno had hit her. “No.”

  “Get back down, or get out of the way!” the constable said, pushing them with her baton. The whistling of the escaping air grew louder. “People are going to die. Let me save at least a few.”

  “What was he doing—” Mira said.

  “Trying to stop this.”

  The constable turned to help an old woman cowering against the wall by the elevator banks. People still boiled out of the stairwell.

  A klaxon sounded and above the archway to the metro station a yellow light began to flash.

  “We have to go,” Erno said.

  Mira looked at the stairwell like a starving woman, then relented. “All right,” she said.

  She helped him walk. People were still coming down from upstairs. Mira and Erno made it through the archway beneath the deafening klaxon and down the ramp toward the platform. The automatic doors began to close before they had hit the bottom. Screams and pushing came from behind them, and Erno pitched down the ramp.

  Mira clung to him and eventually the press of bodies lessened. They found a place to sit near the bottom, and leaned against each other. The klaxon continued for a few minutes, and then suddenly stopped in mid-alarm. In the echoing stillness it left, Erno heard the voices and crying of the people in the station.

  He looked out over the platform. The Diana Tower station was the largest in the system. A gleaming wall mosaic depicted the dome on a sunny day, flyers soaring overhead, green fields, trees in the park, the blue of the pond, crater slopes covered with wildflowers. The dazed and wounded crowded the platforms and the stairs over the tracks.

  Mira sat and stared hollowly at her shoes. Erno never should have allowed Carey to go up alone. They should have gotten help. But no, there was no time: Erno’s failed efforts to get anyone to listen confirmed that they’d had no alternative. He wondered how many people were still in the tower, and whether there was any chance they could survive.

  “We should look for Val,” Erno told Mira. He put his hand on her shoulder and tried not to recoil from the despair and grief that flooded into him from her.

  “Come on, Mira,” he said, “let’s look for Val.”

  Mira turned her face to him as if he were speaking some unknown language.

  “Carey told me he was looking for Val,” Erno said. “He asked me to help him, too.”

  “You know what Val looks like?” Mira said, dazed.

  “I’ve seen him on video,” Erno replied.

  She got to her feet and they worked their way awkwardly through the people crowded on the platform. The pain in Erno’s leg was great. The faces of the people they passed showed shock and fear. They sat, patient as wounded animals. What talk Erno heard was low. Some weeping, some quiet sobs. Occasional voices raised in anger.

  They looked up as Mira and Erno passed among them. A fog still veiled Mira’s eyes. After ten minutes she pulled up and said, with more direction to her voice, “Let’s split up. I’ll try the other side.”

  She crossed over the stairs; Erno continued along the platform. A blond girl with her knees drawn up under her chin. A handsome man cradling his broken arm against his chest. Aid workers bandaging and giving painkillers to the injured. A group of schoolboys in the One, or the Other? shirts. A constable, eyes bleary, coughing repeatedly, a woman beside her giving her a sip from a bulb of water. Some of them recognized Erno, with surprise, with wonder, with distaste.

  People had climbed down the maintenance steps from the overcrowded platform to the tunnel and found places to sit. Others struck off toward the next station, though they’d be stopped before they reached it by the emergency doors that had sealed.

  Erno imagined what might have happened to Carey. He had taken on the task of saving the tower without hesitation or question. Erno didn’t know for sure that Sirius—or Cyrus—was involved, but he still cursed himself for not acting. The time to have done something about this was before it happened. The fact that Sirius had brought camouflage wear with him should have tipped Erno off that something was seriously wrong.

  In the middle of the platform, Kayasdaughter stood up and called at the top of her voice for their attention.

  “We’re going to be here awhile, until we can get in touch with someone outside and make clear the situation,” she said. “Avoid unnecessary exertion, so that the air in here can last until we can be rescued. Help each other.”

  Erno made his way over the crowded pedestrian bridge to the other platform, only to meet Mira coming up the opposite stairs. “No luck,” she said.

  “Me either,” Erno said. “But he could still be here.”

  There was no room to sit on the bridge. They descended to the platform, then down into the tunnel itself. It was relatively clean, lit by bioluminescents. Twenty meters or so along they found a place to sit. Erno’s leg throbbed. His eyebrow itched, and when he touched it he felt dried blood. He was thirsty beyond words. Mira rested her arms across her flexed knees and lowered her forehead against them, her thatch of black hair flowing over her wrists. The tunnel smelled of sweat and regolith.

  Erno sneezed. Mira lifted her head. “You look awful,” she said.

  “No doubt.”

&n
bsp; “How’s your leg?”

  “It’ll be okay.”

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “I can’t believe he’s dead,” Mira said.

  “He may not be. There could be some airtight rooms on the higher floors.”

  Another silence.

  “What was he doing up there?”

  “I sent him up to the SCOCOM offices. That was the likely place to set a second bomb. I think this was a false flag attack. The people who want to intervene will claim that SCOCOM was a target.”

  “They’re coming,” Mira said, not a question but a statement. “They offered him the chance to be the OLS governor, but they’ll be just as happy he won’t be around. He would have been a thorn in the side of whoever they get to do the filthy job.”

  “They’ll find somebody.”

  “Whoever agrees will be the most hated person in Fowler.”

  Erno couldn’t argue with that.

  Mira laid her head back on her arms. Erno felt helpless to comfort her in the face of all this death.

  For the first time all day he thought of Amestris. She would imagine him dead. He wished he could save her that anxiety. He wished they were at home together, in their bed. When he got back they had a lot of things to take care of. The genomes would save Sam’s project—astonishing how trivial that seemed now, when it had been his sole reason for coming back to the Society.

  But no, that wasn’t true. He’d had a dozen other reasons to come back, some he’d felt, others he’d kept secret even from himself. Not much had gone right. He tried to anticipate what would happen next. Someone had to speak openly about the machinations within SCOCOM’s investigation, about Cyrus and the IQSA, about Sirius’s rage. About Carey’s futile trip to the forty-second floor. About the little boy Erno had seen marching down the soccer pitch in the grip of some fantasy. What someone was there, other than he?

  As Erno sat there, it came to him that he was not going to leave. He had never really left the Society, emotionally—the years of anger he’d carried with him from colony to colony had kept it alive in him—and he could not abandon it even now. He’d thought he would come back, get what he needed, maybe do a little good for the Cousins with SCOCOM, accept magnanimously their gratitude, and leave without looking back. Use the Society and get away. But he needed, for his own sense of self, to be here.