Moon Flower

by James P. Hogan

  Within E Section, the rigid social hierarchy of Earth’s wealth-based elite was reflected in the ordering of the accommodation levels from upper, near the ship’s center line immediately below the command and control decks, to lower, at the bottom of the core. The upper ones boasted progressively more square footage, richer decor, and bigger beds, turning into two-room suites at the top. The cabin assigned to Myles Callen was below those occupied by the independently rich and influential, CEOs, and company presidents, but above upper managers, senior government officials, and top professionals.

  He sat in a bathrobe and slippers at the desk and electronic office unit fitted into one corner of the room, watching a transmission from Emner, the Director of the Terran base near the city of Revo, on Cyrene. It had come in some hours previously, in response to Callen’s latest questions, sent earlier. Emner’s words were as perplexing as ever, and the message not reassuring.

  “You don’t understand. I’ve tried to tell you people, but you still don’t understand. Cyrene does things to your mind. The things you think are normal from living on Earth don’t apply here. How can I explain it?...” Emner’s hand flashed briefly as a blur in the foreground on the screen. He looked haggard beneath his head of straight, gray hair, as if he had been carrying a burden of worry for weeks. “It’s as if you’ve lived your whole life in a fog, and emerged into daylight for the first time. You see things clearly that you never even knew existed before — yet they were there all along. You look back, and you can see the shapes of people still blundering around in the fog. But you can’t communicate with them. There is no common language. They don’t have the words.”

  Callen smacked the edge of the desk with his hand in frustration. He wanted to shout, What things? The messages always rambled round and around the point. They were never specific.

  Emner leaned back. There was a distant, half-focused look about his eyes. Callen couldn’t decide if it signified a fanatic losing touch with reality, or the effects of something local in the environment, as Krieg had said. Emner looked away for a moment, as if consulting something.

  “Why do we stay?” That had been another of Callen’s questions. If whatever the influence was had caused a majority from two missions to disappear from the base at Revo, what was different about Emner and the others who still remained? “To stop you and what you represent. This world has to be protected. You’ll destroy it, just as you have begun the destruction of every other world you’ve touched. You can’t see it and you don’t understand, because you’re still inside the fog. Maybe Cyrene will make you understand. But if not, somebody has to.”

  Callen paused the recording there, and sat frowning for several minutes. Then he got up and paced slowly over to the bar, where he poured a shot from the decanter of whiskey. He added one cube of ice from the dispenser, swirled it around with a stirrer while he stood thinking, then tasted it and moved back to the desk. “Cabin manager,” he said aloud.

  “Answering,” a synthetic voice replied from the speakers.

  “Connect me to Krieg, audio only.”

  Krieg came on the line ten seconds or so later.

  “Can you get along here when you have a moment?” Callen said. “There could be a problem of running into some resistance at Cyrene. We might be talking about having to mount a forced takeover there, possibly armed. I’d like to hear your thoughts.”

  “I’m on my way,” Krieg replied neutrally.

  Callen cut off the screen. If he ended up effectively having to run the base, it would cut too much into the other duties that he was supposed to be taking care of. The other thing he should do, he reflected, would be to have a relief commander and staff sent out from Earth on a fast military clipper as quickly as could be organized. He would get a preliminary message off to Borland as soon as he had finished talking with Krieg.

  “So how did you get out of Texas?” Jerri asked. “Wasn’t there a lot of trouble around then, with everybody trying to get into Occidena because that was where the money and the military were, and the top-paying work?” She was sitting on a plastic-wrapped pack marked “Coveralls, Medium — Qty. 4,” set atop a solvent cannister to make a seat in the storage bay on the lower deck of the Outer Ring, just inboard from the power and engines. Nim’s box had been left open to the aisles between the stacks of crates and shelved bays lining the walls to let him move around. The crew joked that it made them feel the place was properly guarded. Nim lay gnawing at a bone between his paws that Shearer had acquired from one of the cooks.

  “That’s right, there was,” Shearer agreed, ruffling Nim’s ears. “But with the new space industries mushrooming overnight, you just walked right in if you had the kind of talent they needed. Physics was high on the list. And I was lucky, too, in knowing someone who’d pointed me to the right names there.”

  “The professor who never showed up on the boat out of Tampa?”

  “Uh-huh.” Shearer nodded heavily.

  Jerri produced a beef-flavored munchy and showed it to Nim. The dog watched her alertly, ears pricked. She flipped it with a thumb; Nim caught it and devoured it in a couple of gulps. “But you weren’t with any of the space corporations there,” she said. “You told us you work in this little lab at the back of Berkeley somewhere.”

  Shearer sighed. “I guess I’ll never be a millionaire, will I? I don’t know.... It just seems to me that there’s more to life than buying and selling. Everything you do from one end of the week to the other shouldn’t have to be justified by a profit-and-loss account.” He cocked an inquiring eye at her. “So does that make me a hopelessly incorrect write-off? You know, all the dreaded words: noncompetitive; underachiever....” He shook his head. “But no. From the little I’ve seen of you, I’d say it wouldn’t matter.”

  Jerri was looking at him in an odd, thoughtful kind of way. He sensed a guard that she normally maintained being gradually relaxed. She was warming to him. It was an elating feeling. “You see, there’s something about you that I like already,” she said. “You watch people, and you see what they are. Ninety percent of the people in that class were too busy wanting everyone else to watch them all the time.” Nim was making pointing motions toward her pocket with his snout. Jerri took out the other beef munchy that he’d known was in there and flipped it. “So what kind of work do you do at Berkeley that isn’t going to make you millions? It has to be something interesting.”

  “An obscure part of quantum physics that has no redeeming social, commercial, ethical, or moral features whatsoever.”

  “I love it already.”

  “In fact, until recently it was dismissed as a mathematical fiction with no physical meaning. But there are waves that travel backward in time.”

  Jerri’s brow narrowed. Clearly, she saw the implication at once. “You are serious?” she checked.

  “Oh, yes. We think we might have confirmed them experimentally — it’s right on the edge of being able to tell for sure. Although most of the others who’ve seen it don’t buy it. They say it has to be a result of sloppy experimental design, wishful thinking, or something like that. A few have come out and said it’s a deliberate fraud.”

  “But you think it’s genuine.”

  “I did at one time.... Now I sometimes wonder.”

  “But it was a big thing with you.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “So why leave it?” Jerri asked.

  “The guy that I worked with, who pioneered the whole thing, went to Cyrene withthe first mission. We kind of planned that I’d follow him out there.”

  “So is he doing the same kind of thing out at Cyrene?”

  Shearer made a who-knows face. “I haven’t heard a lot back from him lately. It’s early days yet. I did arrange for some of the equipment that we used to be shipped.”

  “Why would he want to go there? Wouldn’t work like that be easier to do back home?”

  “Well, I guess making life easy isn’t everything.... Evan’s about as crazy over a lot of what goes on as
I am.” There had been some convoluted politics in the circumstances attending Wade’s departure, which Shearer didn’t go into because he didn’t fully understand them himself. Jerri seemed to sense his reservation and didn’t pursue the subject. She traced a circle in the air around Nim’s nose with her hand, and grasped his jaw playfully when he opened his mouth trying to follow.

  “Do you think those waves you mentioned could have something to do with the way animals sometimes know when things are going to happen?” she asked lightly. “You know the kind of thing: when their owner is on the way home, or someone’s about to have an accident. I read that people who’ve done experiments say the only explanation that makes sense has to be something like that.”

  Shearer forced down an impulse to be skeptical but couldn’t contain a smile. “Well, I think I’d like to know a lot more about the experiments before I could comment,” he replied.

  “Now who’s being the stuffy one?” Jerri chided. Shearer got the feeling she had expected it. He hoped they weren’t about to get into a debate over it. Repeatable experimental physics was one thing; this was something else. But Jerri carried on playing in silence for a while, making feints as if to take Nim’s bone, while Nim parried to protect it. Then she said distantly, “Nim can pick up on things like that. I leave him with friends up at Pinecrest when I go on visits sometimes. They say he always knows when I’m coming back.... I don’t mean turning in to the driveway, or a few hundred yards upwind along the road. I mean hours before — when I’m getting into the car, not even out of the airport.” She looked up at him defiantly — whether challenging him to explain it or daring him to question it, he couldn’t be sure. He grunted noncommittally. There probably wasn’t a pet owner anywhere who hadn’t been convinced of the same thing at some time, but this sounded like politics that Shearer felt it would be as wise to stay out of.

  “How much do you know about Jeff?” Jerri asked curiously.

  The question caught Shearer by surprise. “Jeff?... Well, about as much as anyone. Why?”

  “There’s something about him.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Nim doesn’t take to him. I don’t know what it is. But something’s not right. I’ve seen the signs before.”

  This time Shearer was unable to prevent a hint of irritation showing. Respecting the beliefs and feelings of others was one thing, but letting somebody’s dog superstitions affect a personal friendship was too much. “Oh... I know he can be a bit inquisitive and crowd personal space a bit at times. But Jeff’s okay. Anyway, I can handle it.” Shearer heard a sharper edge to his voice than he had intended.

  But again, Jerri seemed to have expected it and showed no offense. Instead, she turned Nim’s head from side to side, and then let go of his jaw and gripped his paw as he raised it. “Are you being silly, Nim?” she asked. “Is it just because Jeff doesn’t bring you treats the way Marc does? Or is there something else you’re trying to tell us? We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  At breakfast the next morning, Shearer found himself sharing a table in the cafeteria across from Arnold and Karen, with Roy and one of the cronies who had latched onto him farther along, and another couple at far the end. Since Arnold and Karen were into a conversation that sounded private, and Roy was giving forth on the importance of “winning” while he demolished an immense plate of food, Shearer turned his attention to browsing the schedule for the day ahead while he ate. Roy’s attitude toward him lately tended to vary between cool and hostile. Roy had never figured out the rationale behind the nuts game, and when somebody explained it, he apparently concluded that Shearer’s aim had been expressly to make him look foolish. Jerri’s private comment had been that Roy was capable of managing that well enough on his own without need of any help.

  The morning session would be about Cyrenean social divisions and languages. After lunch they would be introduced to “sambots” and see some demonstrations. The term derived from Self-Assembling Modular Robot. They were used widely in planetary environments that didn’t possess the familiar Terran infrastructure, and since people in most ordinary walks of life were unlikely to have come across them, some familiarization was being provided in advance. It sounded interesting, and Shearer turned to the notes accompanying the schedule.

  Early realizations of robots, such as in automated manufacturing plants or space construction and underwater applications, had taken the form of various weird and elaborate contraptions, each specialized for its particular task. A more recent approach that had superseded specialized machines in many areas used the principle of “modular robots.” The idea was to create specialized functions on demand from simpler modules. A basic modular unit on its own could accomplish very little; but a sufficient number of them — which could be quite large — when combined together in the right manner, formed a system able to carry out a complex task. By rearranging themselves the same modules could assume other configurations suitable for performing other tasks. In a way, the concept mimicked biology, in which variants of the same basic cellular theme grouped together in different ways to form all the tissues, organs, and organisms making up the living world.

  Modules were generally based on some simple geometric form such as a cube, tetrahedron, triangle, hexagon, or some other fractal that preserved its characteristic shape at increasing scales of magnitude. With enough microelectronic intelligence built in, they could be self-assembling according to the needs of a situation and a set of blueprint programs carried internally. Illustrations contained in the notes showed a formation of peculiar stick-and-ball-like modules attached together to form a moving lattice with spiderlike legs crossing a precipitous terrain of rocks and craters, and then reconfigured into a communications antenna after reaching its destination. Sambot work crews were usually landed by the initial survey probes to prepare bases for habitation at newly discovered worlds where manned follow-ups were decided on. Besides preparing the way and making life more comfortable, they proved highly effective, also, at instilling an appropriate level of awe and wonder among native inhabitants before the humans showed up.

  “Anyone sitting here?” Greg appeared, bearing a tray, and indicated the empty chair next to Shearer.

  “Go ahead.”

  Greg was a land and civil engineering surveyor, bound for Cyrene to help assess some construction projects that were being contemplated. With a shaggy head of black hair starting to show gray, short, matching beard, horn-rimmed spectacles magnifying naturally intense eyes, and a strong set of teeth that bared ferally when he smiled, he looked more the stereotypical leftist ideologue and anarchist than Shearer, whom Roy had accused of such. He had a robust, forthright manner that he managed to keep congenial, and Shearer rated him among his preferred company.

  “No Jerri?” Greg inquired as he set down his tray.

  “It’s dog-walking time,” Shearer said.

  “I thought Zoe had taken that over.”

  “They split it. It’s Jerri’s turn.” Zoe and Nim had taken to each other. A couple of times a day, either she or Jerri, or sometimes both of them, took Nim to the “long gallery,” a general utility communications thoroughfare that ran all the way around the ship at the Outer Ring.

  Greg pulled out the chair and sat down. “These eggs look great. How are yours?”

  “Good.”

  “That’s one thing about spaceships. You get to eat real food.” Greg began arranging his cutlery and dishes. “You know, I never really understood what all the fuss was about them. Why couldn’t they just post whatever the information was and let people choose for themselves what they want to do?”

  Shearer shrugged. “‘Choose’ isn’t a word that’s in the bureaucrat vocabulary.”

  “Did you check the news on the beam before you came down?” Greg asked as he settled down to eating. He meant the Heim-wave link from Earth.

  “I don’t bother with it much, to be honest,” Shearer said. “I agree with Mark
Twain. The only thing you can believe in it is the advertising.”

  “Who’s Mark Twain?”

  “Oh, a writer from way back. Why? What’s happened?”

  “That OBP that’s been up for a while now.” Greg shifted his eyes sideways. Shearer looked uncertain. “Orbital Bombardment Platform,” Greg supplied. “It’s run by Milicorp.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “It’s seen action. That place where the trouble’s been out across the Pacific somewhere. What’s it called?...”

  “Tiwa Jaku,” Roy said from the far end.

  “Yeah, that’s it. The whole terrorist stronghold got taken out from orbit — one pass with a saturated e-beam. Apparently it’s all over there. Pretty neat stuff, huh?” He seemed excited.

  “Haven’t there been protests too?” Karen said. “Something about all the prisoners and families being shot?”

  “Supposedly,” Arnold put in.

  “That’s a load of bullshit!” Roy fumed. “Some people will believe anything if it runs us down.” He motioned with his knife. “And even if it was true, it’s the only way to deal with terrorists. Once you’ve got ’em, the worst thing you can do is leave ’em in one piece and with a grudge to come back at you. See, giving people like that breaks doesn’t work. They’ll just see it as a sign of weakness.” The others exchanged ominous glances. Roy’s tone was at its most belligerent, and no one, it seemed, wanted to start their day by getting into this.