MoonFall

by A. G. Wyatt

  “That night my mother packs bags, my father telephones friend in government. We get papers, get tickets, fly to America to start again. No plan, nowhere to go, just start again. We are in America three weeks when moon breaks apart and society with it.

  “Where I grew up, a man who murdered became rich, became powerful, maybe became politician, while people he hurt stayed in shitty concrete flat and drank vodka and kept quiet. In Apollo, man who murders is killed and everyone sees it. There is law. There is order. There is safety. This place is not messed up, the rest of world is.”

  He knocked back the rest of his drink and looked out the window again. Then his face cracked into a smile.

  “Noah my friend,” he said, “I think is time for you to sing.”

  A moment later the door swung open and Molly walked in. She looked around at the three of them. And shook her head.

  “Are any of you even halfway sober?” she asked.

  They looked at each other, trying and failing not to laugh.

  “We ain’t that bad,” Noah said. “Except maybe Dimitri. Ain’t that right, buddy?”

  “Fuck you, Yankee,” Dimitri bellowed. “I open my heart to you and get this!”

  He staggered to his chair, tried to sit down and fell ass first on the concrete floor. They all laughed again.

  “How’d you know we’d be here?” Noah asked.

  “Mason confiscated a bottle of booze off Red Coogan on Tuesday,” she said. “This is the first day off he’s had since, and this is where he always goes when he thinks it’s empty. Which it won’t be for much longer – Poulson’s got a meeting here with his sergeants in ten minutes, and he won’t be impressed with any of this.”

  “Shit.” Mason slammed the stopper back into the near-empty bottle and collected the cups.

  “Come on Dimitri,” he said, struggling to help the huge Russian up off the floor. “Time to get you home.”

  The two of them staggered out the door, Dimitri resting an arm on the top of Mason’s head.

  “Guess we should get going, too,” Noah said.

  Molly hesitated, standing just inside the doorway, looking down at the floor.

  “I wanted to ask you something first,” she said, quiet and hesitant.

  “Rasmus ain’t got a meeting here, does he?” Noah asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “Yes, but we’ve got a little time,” she said, closing the door and sitting down next to him. The old chair creaked beneath even her weight. Finally, she raised her eyes, looking straight into his. “Noah, do you think maybe you could stay? I know you’ve nearly finished healing, and you always said you were going to move on, but, well, maybe you could stay.”

  She smiled nervously, reached out to touch his hand. He looked down at those fingers, almost as care-worn as his own, but still beautiful.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “This place, it’s not me. All the people, all the noise, all that working together shit.”

  “The people?” she said, her smile growing. “That’s your excuse? You just spent the afternoon getting drunk with those people, remember?”

  “Hey, I ain’t drunk!” Now it was his turn to hesitate. “OK, maybe a little. But not proper drunk.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “I know.” He let out a deep sigh. “And you’re right. There’s people here I like. Dimitri, Mason, Sophie, even you on your better days. But there’s folks like Poulson, too, and the Elders. And all this shit with the sacrifices and mystery of the Oracle. That really ain’t my thing. I like to know where I stand, and for that place not to include hacking folks up for gods.”

  “But that’s part of what keeps Apollo safe,” Molly said, urgency rising in her voice. “What keeps it special. What makes us a place of order amidst this chaos.”

  “I get that, really I do.”

  He patted her hand and then rose to his feet, pacing slowly around the room with one hand on Bourne.

  “Thing is, order ain’t for me.” He knew he meant it, but he could feel something else going on in the back of his mind. Some itch he couldn’t quite scratch. Some rebellious part that didn’t believe a word of it, that would accept all of this for her. It was a small part though. “At least not this much order. Not rations and work assignments and Sunday services. Not blood and death for the sake of safety. Not sacrificing a maybe innocent woman to keep the mob safe from others.”

  “Please, Noah.” She rose and moved over to him, stood just an inch away looking up at him. “There’s so much more going on here. This place is hope, hope for the future, hope for humankind. There’s more going on than you’ve seen, more even than I’ve seen, and I’d explain it if I could, if I could even begin to do it justice. You can do so much good here. Please, stay for Apollo.”

  “For Apollo?” he asked.

  “And for me,” she whispered.

  “If I stay,” he said, “and that’s a big if, but if I stay, then it’s on my terms. I need to understand what I’m getting into, what I’m working towards. I need to–”

  The door handle rattled. Molly stepped swiftly back away from him as the door swung open and Poulson stepped inside.

  “What are you doing here, Burns?” he asked. “And what’s he doing here?”

  “Discussing the Dionites,” she said. “But we’re leaving now.”

  Poulson sniffed the air as Noah passed and pulled a disapproving face.

  “Discussing Dionites, huh,” he said.

  Noah ignored him and kept on walking. He had bigger concerns than being caught drunk. He had to work out where his future lay.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE ELDERS

  “HEY BRENNAN!”

  Noah looked from the scaffolding to see Miguel looking up at him, hands on hips, wearing the disgruntled expression he put on whenever something interrupted his carefully ordered routine of wall repairs. That expression was very seldom turned on Noah, whose skill with bricks and stone had quickly made him one of the foreman’s favorites. But today, it seemed, it was finally his fault.

  “Get down here Brennan,” Miguel said. “Someone wants a word with you.”

  He hung the cement bucket over the end of a scaffolding pole, wiped the remnants off his trowel and stowed it away in his tool belt. Miguel had given him the belt on the day they finished repairing the breach, when Noah agreed to come and join Miguel’s regular crew in their repair duties. It was less dramatic work than filling a great big hole in Apollo’s wall, but it was still satisfying. They were working their way slowly around the whole circle of the town’s defenses, looking for areas that were damaged or weak and repairing them. There was a degree of precision demanded by the work that Noah had lost over the years, or perhaps never had when he was a young laborer, and he enjoyed sharpening his skills.

  He’d made it clear at the start that this was a temporary thing, that he’d be moving on when the time came and then Miguel would need to find somebody else. The foreman had made good-natured jokes about chaining him up if he tried to leave and it was good to feel that level of appreciation, but it brought a sense of pressure as well, of responsibility towards others that he hadn’t been burdened with in years.

  He clambered down the scaffolding and to the street. The buildings around the area had been occupied pretty much since the Fall and been well maintained as a result. They’d also survived the Dionite attack unscathed, making this possibly the best kept part of the whole town. It made him wonder who lived here, whether people of privilege got to have the best homes or whether it was all down to opportunity and necessity. There was so much about Apollo still to work out, so much he hadn’t seen.

  He wasn’t surprised to see that the person looking for him wore armor with the white bow and arrow symbol of Apollo. The Apollonian Guard seemed to do all of the town’s official work – hunting for supplies, keeping order in the town, providing messengers between the various groups that got the work done. But as he brushed cement and brick dust from his hands he was surprise
d to realize who was wearing the uniform.

  “Mr. Brennan.” A nod of the head was as close as Captain McCloud got to saying hello. “You’re to come with me to the Council Chamber. The Elders have invited you for an audience.”

  “Hope they’re alright with meeting me dirty then,” Noah said, “cause the way we’re working here I don’t reckon I’m gonna be clean any time soon.”

  Miguel shook his head but refrained from responding in front of the guard captain. Noah was sure they’d be sparring over that one later.

  “That will be fine.” Captain McCloud nodded up the street into town. “We don’t have much formal wear in Apollo.”

  Falling into step beside the captain, Noah made his way up the street and toward the town square. People watched as they walked past, but Noah didn’t reckon that was all about him anymore. People were starting to get over the tales of his exploits, the heroism having worn itself out when every singer in town started making up terrible tunes about his battle with the Dionite alpha. And Captain McCloud was a figure of note in her own right, powerful and respected, a leader even among the five guard captains. She answered only to the Elders, and everyone wanted to answer to them.

  Everyone except Noah, at any rate.

  “Did you ever serve in the armed forces, Mr. Brennan?” she asked as they walked.

  “No ma’am,” Noah replied. “I knew a few who went that way when they finished high school, and my pal Jimmy’s pa had served in one of those fights out in the Gulf. Said it was the best and the worst decision he’d ever made. But me, I was never one for regulations and uniforms and all that saluting.”

  “The best and the worst.” McCloud pressed her lips together, tightening the skin around some of her scars. “That sounds about right.”

  “What about you?” Noah asked. “Reckon you’ve got that air about you, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “I don’t mind. And you’re quite right. I did my time in the infantry, including a couple of tours overseas. After that, I was a private military contractor, or a mercenary as we would have been called in any honest age. I thought it was a way to carry on with the lifestyle, but it turned out I had to respect an authority to obey it, and we worked for some people it was hard to respect. People who didn’t earn it.”

  She touched the scars on her cheek, a faraway look in her eyes.

  “Were you doing that when it all went to hell?” Noah asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I was back home, trying to work out what to do with my life. Thirty and washed up – that’s no way to be. All this chaos, all this horror, all the struggles to get by, in a perverse way it’s given me back a sense of purpose.”

  She saluted a passing patrol as they emerged from the street and into the town square. There was a market of sorts going on, people bartering goods they’d made or scavenged. With food rationed and clothes in short supply there wasn’t much of an economy in Apollo, but folks seemed to enjoy what little there was and the place was bustling.

  “I asked whether you served for a reason,” McCloud said. “More than one, actually. You gave a good showing in the battle and I was curious where that had come from. I’m always hoping that more people with military experience will join us, even after all these years. The Guard is important, and any injection of skills and experience is valuable. But the other reason is that you’re going to have to make a choice soon, about what you are, what you want, what you’re willing to fight for. And I wanted to know what sort of man was making that decision.”

  “Honestly, ma’am?” Noah said. “I ain’t even the kid who listened in horror to Jimmy’s pa’s war stories. I been on my own a long time, and that ain’t left me with much but selfishness and cowardice. I sure as hell ain’t the guarding type.”

  “I think you’ve proved that’s not true, Mr. Brennan.” McCloud stopped on the steps of the Council Chamber, an old town hall with stone pillars out front and a clock at its peak that never told the time. “The question is whether you want to believe it.”

  She held out her hand and he shook it.

  “Good luck,” she said. “Whatever you choose.”

  He kept hold of her hand for a moment, looking her in the eye.

  “What do they want from me?” he asked, suddenly suspicious of why he’d been summoned. He remembered the Elder wielding that knife on the night Jen was killed, the whole crowd chanting along with the red robed figure. An air of seriousness hanging over proceedings that set his nerves on edge.

  “I imagine that they want to congratulate you,” Captain McCloud said. “And to thank you. Your courage and keen observation helped to turn the tide of battle, to save civilization from the Dionites. I’m just surprised it’s taken them this long to acknowledge your achievements.”

  She pointed toward the doors of the Chamber, a guard stood on each side.

  “Just keep going straight ahead,” she said. “You’ll know where you’re going.”

  With that she left.

  His mind heavy with uncertainty, Noah walked up the stone steps and toward the doors.

  “I’ve got a meeting with the Elders,” he said to one of the guards.

  “We know,” the guard replied and pushed the door open.

  Noah walked through the doorway and it slammed shut behind him. The sound echoed around a hallway tiled from floor to ceiling. It smelled old in a way almost nothing did anymore, the scent of untouched dust and stale air. People must come and go through this hallway every day and yet it somehow managed to feel like a place untouched by human footsteps, perfectly preserved while the rest of the world evolved around it, adrift in history.

  He strode down the hallway, passing paneled doors to right and left. McCloud was right, he knew where he was going. It was the only place that so exalted a group as Apollo’s town Elders could possibly have locked themselves away. A play of deliberate and ostentatious tradition.

  At the end of the hall a pair of double doors awaited, not just paneled like those along the sides, but ornately carved with repeated abstract patterns and polished so that they shone like the mythical heartwood of some ancient forest. Framed by pillars, or at least the image of pillars, emerging from the wall and topped with a crossbeam of stone so thick and ancient looking it must have been placed there by Stone Age men. Noah was almost impressed.

  A huge brass knocker hung from each door, but he ignored those. Instead, he turned the handle and pushed, the door creaking inward before him, and stepped through those doors without further summons or invitation. If the Elders wanted their guests to stand on display waiting for them, then they’d summoned the wrong guy.

  They stood, a dozen men and women, mostly in ordinary clothes apart from the blue sashes around their waists, anticipating his arrival. No chains of office here, no long red robes, no grand magnificence.

  There was one exception. In the middle of the group stood a short woman, her skin Indian brown. Her black haired flowed all the way to the floor, as did her long blue robes. Jewels and fragments of mirror glittered from folds of the cloth, catching the sunlight that spilled down through a round ceiling window. She held her hands wide.

  “Noah, we’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

  Yet for all of her splendor Noah found his eyes drawn to something else -- a low platform in front of the Elders, a squat gray body about three feet high. Its surface was gray plastic, dotted with gaps, inlets and holes, most no larger than his finger. There were letters down one edge and a hazard sign on one corner. It sat cold and dead and gray as any other piece of machinery in the modern world.

  Amongst all this grandeur, the sheer absurdity of it overwhelmed him and he burst out laughing.

  “Is that a computer?” he asked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  NOAH’S CHOICE

  THE ELDERS IGNORED the question and just kept staring at Noah. The one in the long robes stepped forward around the high tech altar and stood before Noah looking up into his eyes. Her own were wid
e, dark pits that gleamed with a hint of madness.

  “I am Sanni, Noah,” she said. “I represent the Elders. The Oracle has spoken. The time has come for you to choose. The Fall has come, the ending from which the world will be reborn. You need to decide whether you stand with civilization or with the wild. Whether you will be saved with us or perish.”

  She spoke with deep solemnity, as if lives depended on every word. It was everything Noah had expected to find in here, yet faced with it he felt a chill run down his spine. This whole thing – Apollo, the Elders, this building – it was the beating heart of a civilization being reborn, and that sure seemed worthwhile. But there was an intensity to their gazes, a trembling in Sanni’s voice that went beyond serious purpose or passion for rebuilding humanity. He shifted uncomfortably, filled with a desire to get the hell out of there.

  “Ma’am, I make choices all the time,” he said. “Maybe you could cut to the chase and tell me what my options are here.”

  “The universe does not cut to the chase, Noah,” Sanni said. “It unravels slowly before us, revealing itself to us in all its wonder, unfolding the enacted will of the divine. It is a process of dawning realization, of emerging intricacy, not a race straight toward a finishing line. Patience, above so much else, is a virtue.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Noah said. “But I ain’t mighty virtuous, and I ain’t inclined to standin’ around waitin’ on mysteries. So if you want me to think about something, maybe you could tell me what.”

  “You have been with us for nearly two months now,” Sanni said. “Among us but not one of us. Not embracing the truth that we have seen, the light granted to us when the gods themselves sacrificed the moon so that we might be saved. Much as you are loved by the people of Apollo, this cannot continue any longer.

  “The people of this town are committed to its cause. They embrace what it stands for and where it leads. Apollo is not merely a place, it is a gift from the gods, a vessel which will carry us into their bright, shining light. You must choose to be a part of that, fully part of that, taking on the role that the Oracle assigns to you, or you must leave before you taint the righteous.”