Selena arched one eyebrow. "So you're saying the expats should be free to leave - as long as they come naked and without equipment?"
Selena was making Allyson look stupid. Obviously he had to defend her...but how?
Before Hugh could figure out what to say, a tall forties-ish man walked up, leaned in and put his hands on the table. Hugh looked at him in surprise. Dark skin, but not as dark as a Nigerian. Broad face, broad chest, big hands.
"I heard you talking. Are you guys journalists?" He had a deep and confident voice, and an American accent.
Who was this guy? "Um, well, we're not licensed yet, but -"
Louisa cut him off. "Yes, we're journalists."
The man grinned. "Good. I don't know your beat, but if you're looking to -" he reached for the phrase "- document injustices, then I've got a story for you."
The stranger looked around. "I don't want to talk about this in a public area. The guys running the show here have eyes and ears everywhere, you know what I mean?"
Louisa nodded.
"- but if you want a great story we should talk someplace more secure."
Hugh stole a glance at Louisa and saw that she looked downright hungry.
Hugh stood. "I'm ready." Louisa sprang to her feet as well.
The stranger - the name tag on his jumpsuit read "Jamie" - shook his head. "No, not now. There's an underground - look, I can't tell you too much. But there's a protest I need to be at."
Louisa blurted out, "Where? We can cover it and -"
Jamie looked at her appraisingly for a moment and then shook his head. "Not yet."
Louisa started to protest but Jamie cut her off. "All in good time. Give me your contact info. We'll talk soon."
Chapter 66
2064: 25km south of Konstantinov Crater, Lunar Farside
John walked the dirt path under the tall oaks and maples. Each step took him a step further from Gamma's secret facility and his shoulders felt a little lighter because of it. He still didn't know what to think of Gamma's capabilities. Gamma said he wasn't ramping up, but there was no way to know for sure.
Rex and Duncan were invisible somewhere up ahead, hidden by the foliage and the twists of the trail. The map overlay showed that they were almost a klick ahead. Damn it - those two were always getting distracted and failing to keep the line tight. John turned off the VR overlay and still couldn't see them.
"Blue, Max - keep up with me." John leaned forward and hurried to catch up. The two first-generation Dogs quickened their pace, and soon they were closing the gap. There - the two younger Dogs were visible ahead. And then the two of them broke into a sprint.
Damn it.
John keyed his mike. "Guys! Slow down!"
Duncan didn't slow at all, but Rex paused for a second and looked over his shoulder.
"We see the lander!" he said; then he resumed his sprint, taking long leaps with his rear legs, landing on all four paws, and leaping again. The two disappeared over a low rill. John growled and chased them.
A moment later he crested the rise and saw the two younger Dogs stopped just a few meters ahead of him.
And there, in front of them - there it was.
In the lunar night the lander was only illuminated by their suit headlamps. Light bounced off of the jade green top shell, and twinkled on the artistically curved landing struts of silver. Dazzling highlights of ruby red and amethyst winked back at them as their lights moved slightly.
It was beautiful.
The lander - the last of the Xiniu series - was the crowning achievement of the space flight agency under Chin Zhou before the First Heavenly Campaign.
John had skimmed two books on the probe last night and had been listening to an audio book about it all morning, so he had some idea of what he was looking at. For two decades the old man had ruled the Chinese space agency with an iron fist and imposed his classical, yet poetic, sense of design on everything it did. The smooth sweeps, the artistic flourishes - it all put the various American and Soviet hardware they'd seen on their hike to shame.
The lander was named after a mythological Chinese rhinoceros and the industrial design of the probe echoed that down to the smallest detail. The mythical beast had used its horn to communicate with the sky, and - just as the cultured British voice had told him on the audio book - the lander's shape suggested that: a large four-legged beast, with a head-shaped instrument cluster and a microwave horn mounted at the tip, pointed to where the Earth relay satellite had orbited briefly decades ago.
John looked at the lander and tilted his head. It was beautiful, but it was the last of its breed. The Chinese Bubble had been amazing while it lasted, but once the economy had started to crumble it was no surprise that Chin Zhou's artistic - and expensive - taste made him a perfect target for the Peasant Justice Squads. John winced as he remembered the video of Zhou being cornered in the parking structure, the twelve minute trial, and his execution. Ugh. John was no stranger to death and fire held a special horror for him.
Duncan was barking. He was doing laps around the ladder in his excitement, jumping every few steps.
Rex looked over his shoulder at John and then ran to the lander, where he stood on his rear legs and started working to open a panel. Duncan stopped his jumping and barking and came over to watch Rex work.
Blue turned to John. "You know, this is the first time we've taken something right off a lander. Usually we just take artifacts that were scattered nearby -"
"Worried that we're desecrating something here?"
Blue shook his head. "Not 'desecrating'." He paused thoughtfully. "That's a theological term. I don't think the lander is holy, whatever that means. It's just... I guess the fact that it's sat here for so long here... it's quite something, isn't it?"
Max shrugged. "I'll tell you what this lander is, and it's the opposite of holy. The People's Republic was a dictatorship - the government stole over half of everything people produced. Not to mention that they allowed people to eat dogs. Did you know that they even let people torture dogs to death to make them 'taste better'? The entire society -"
"Enough!" said John and Blue at the same time. Max grumbled, but fell silent.
A moment later, Rex called out from near the lander. "John, I think thirty years of freeze-thaw cycles have screwed this up. Can you help?"
John smiled. He knew the problem with the cultural archive chest on the side of the lander was more likely Rex's stubby fingers, further encumbered by the suit gloves. "Sure." He started walking to the probe.
"Hey, John," Duncan asked. "Did you hear what Max just said? About eating dogs?"
John sighed. Oh shit - here it comes.
The Dogs knew the history of human and canine co-evolution - even some of the darker parts, like over-breeding and euthanasia. John had been trying to keep some things from them, but apparently Max had found and disabled the filters he'd hidden in the stack. It wasn't the first time Max had slipped around them - John could still remember when he'd told a bunch of the others back in the Den in Aristillus about the Soviets immolating trained dogs in attacks against Nazi tanks. John liked Max, but he almost seemed to relish opportunities to dig up interspecies wounds.
John took a deep breath and steeled himself to discuss the topic with Duncan, but before he could start reassuring him, Max resumed his rant. "Don't ask John if it's true, Duncan. It is true. If that's how they treated us, how should we treat them? I'll tell you: screw this lander built with stolen wealth, screw the Chinese space agency, screw the whole country of dog-eaters, and screw the human race. If we want to loot this, we can. Even if it wasn't abandoned, we'd be entirely right to -"
"'Screw the human race'?" John interrupted. "Present company excepted, I hope?"
Max shrugged. "Well, of course."
John had big problems. Immediate problems. The war breaking out, Gamma's odd and worrying behavior, the lack of satellite contact with Aristillus, the need to get back home - but that didn't stop him from also worrying about Max.<
br />
If everything worked out - if Gamma's sats came back online in a few hours, if they called in their new location for a supply drop, if they evacuated on the ship and got back to Aristillus - then at some point he had to figure out what he was going to do with that Dog.
Regular parents thought they had it hard, trying to get little Sally through high school without an unplanned pregnancy? That was nothing compared to shepherding an entire species out of captivity and into full-blown - what? Citizenship? Adulthood? Civilization?
"John," said Duncan again, "Is it true what Max said about the Chinese eating dogs?"
"That was a long time ago. But speaking of the Chinese, let's take a look at the lander. Even if Rex can't do it, I bet you and I can get that door open."
"Oh, yeah - right!"
John breathed a sigh of relief.
"I've almost got it," said Rex. "Let me try just one more - there!". The panel popped open and Duncan raced over, barking the whole way.
Blue cleared his throat and yelled over them. "Wait. Wait! Before we pull those coins out, let's think this over one last time."
John felt the urge to step in, but thought better of it. At times people - and Dogs were people - wanted a leader. This, though, was one the other times. His role was to sit back and let them settle it themselves.
They debated and then called for a vote. As usual, Max objected to the very idea of democracy as a "disgusting legitimization of force with a veneer of statist respectability.” Max also, as usual, voted.
Blue saw the three paws raised against his one and sighed. Max, uncharacteristically, struck a sympathetic note. "If it makes you feel any better, we're not the first ones to take artifacts from landers."
"I thought most of the legal firms at Aristillus had laws against that," said Blue. "Didn't I read that Red Stripe has a clause in their rental -"
Max shook his head. "No. I'm talking way back. The Apollo 12 astronauts took part of a probe. So we're carrying on a tradition."
"That's not the same. That was science. This is just..." he gestured at Rex and Duncan pawing through the cultural archive chest, "vandalism. This has sat here untouched for decades. Now Rex and Duncan aren't just pawing at it, but they're stomping all over the pristine dust." Blue went on, but John tuned it out.
'Pristine dust'? The phrase was a bit florid for John's taste - but he kept turning it over in his head. Something about it bugged him.
He looked down at the dust at his feet. There were his boot tracks, and those of the four Dogs. There were no hands-width micro-meteorite craters. That was odd. Ah, of course. This close to the probe they must have been blasted away by the landing rockets when the probe...
Something in the dust a few meters distant caught his attention. What was it? He turned his the magnification up.
Tread marks.
John's scalp prickled.
He scanned the horizon. Or tried to. In the dark he could see nothing. The lunar darkness had never struck him as unnerving before, but now - now that they knew that Gamma had secret facilities and could be lurking anywhere - he felt something. Like there were eyes on him.
He keyed his mike. "Gamma, are you here? Are you listening?"
Immediately Gamma's emotionless voice sounded in his helmet. "I am not 'listening' in the sense of eavesdropping, but I do keep a low-level filter open for my name being used in ejaculations or in the imperative mode."
John exhaled heavily. "The sats aren't back yet, are they?"
"No. We're talking via a relay rover. Replacement satellites have been launched from Sinus Lunicus but have been burned within minutes. This shard has had only intermittent contact with the primary facility."
John's lip twisted. Earth was continuing to burn sats. This was bad news. "Gamma, if you do regain contact, even for a moment, can you pass on a message: we need a pickup ASAP."
"If I establish contact, I will pass that along, but I frankly do not expect contact until the new armored satellites are launched. That should be several more days."
John sighed, then remembered the nearby tracks. "I see you've had rovers here at the probe."
"Yes. I first visited this lander about four years ago."
John raised an eyebrow. It was possible that Gamma had dispatched a rover from SL that far back, but the more likely story was that the redundant facilities dated to then. Or earlier. "Why did you visit the lander?"
"Perhaps the best way of expressing my motivation is to say 'I was curious.’”
"'Curious'? Really?"
"Are you shocked that I have curiosity, John?"
"No, it makes sense. It's just -"
"Yes?"
"It's just - surprising."
"In what way?"
John coughed. "Surprisingly human, I suppose."
"I do note the irony of that comment given your choice of hiking companions."
"Valid point." He paused for a moment. "You said that you visited the lander because you were curious. Any other reasons?"
In the background the Dogs had unpacked the lander's cultural archive locker and spread its cargo across the dust. All but Blue were poking at the mementos and debating their merits.
"I contemplated for a time the idea of cannibalizing the lander for elements. In addition to the kilogram of gold coins, there are another one point three kilograms of gold in the lander's circuitry and thermal shields, as well as platinum, iridium, and a small amount of uranium in the radioisotope thermoelectric generator."
"But you didn't."
"No, I decided not to."
"Why?"
"After contemplation I decided to act on a principle."
"A principle? What, an ethical principle?"
Gamma took a moment before continuing. "It could be described as such. Or perhaps an aesthetic one. In short: even if I was no longer around to use them, I wouldn't want my most complicated works destroyed or perverted by others, and after reflection, I decided that the appropriate way for me to act was to use that standard of behavior in my own actions."
"The golden rule?"
"A pun referencing the gold coins? Oh, wait, I see. You mean the principle of reciprocity. Yes, there's some parallel there, but my point is more related to the pride of craftsmanship than to the Kantian categorical imperative. As an aside, I find it odd that human philosophers have spent so much more time dealing with ethical taxonomies than those related to the virtue ethics of craftsmanship."
John shook his head. What the hell did that even mean? And, for that matter, what the hell kind of entity would say such a thing?
He looked out into the lunar night, wondering where Gamma rovers, and his facilities, were out there. The pitch black lunar landscape offered no clues.
Sometimes - often, recently - John worried that Gamma was the stuff of anti-singulatarian nightmares, just waiting for the whim to strike him before he began reproducing and eventually took over the entire moon, or the entire solar system.
And then other times - like now - Gamma struck him as a strangely precocious adolescent, a fragile child alone and worried about his own survival.
He wanted to look Gamma in the eye and figure out which it was. Lonely child, or existential menace.
He wanted to.
The problem was that he couldn't.
Chapter 67
2064: Morlock Engineering office, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
Mike looked down the length of the table at the packed boardroom. The group had grown from a small seed to almost two dozen people. Mike lightly touched the gavel that Javier had put in front of him. Effective use of props. That had been, what, bullet point number three million and six in Javier's lecture? Was that before or after 'symbolism of seating arrangements' ?
Javier sat, and then nodded.
Mike picked up the gavel and smacked it smartly against the walnut block. The murmur of conversation ended and was replaced with an expectant electricity. "OK, I think we're ready to start."
* * *
Mi
ke read from his slate: "Item five: review petition before signing." He looked up at Mark. "Mark, thank you for your hard work on the petition. Do you have any objection to me distributing copies to the members of the group so they can review it before the next meeting?"
Mark looked puzzled. "I - sure, we can do that...but I thought that the idea was that we'd send it?"
Mike looked to Javier, as if asking his input on an unforeseen issue. Javier looked to Mark. "Oh, absolutely - I don't think there's any disagreement on that." He looked around at the room and then shook his head, as if to dispel even the merest idea that anyone might object. "We'll send it - but if we're going to have everyone sign it, they deserve a chance to see what their names are going on. Karina, are you ready to sign it right now?"
Karina Roth looked a bit surprised at the question. "I - well, I'd certainly like to review it."
Javier raised his eyebrows apologetically.
Mike struggled not to smile. Karina's response matched - almost word for word - what Javier had predicted she'd say.
And, for that matter, Mark hadn't even objected when the agenda item was presented as "review before signing.” Frame the debate - what bullet point was that?
"...Mike?"
His cue.
"Right." He cleared his throat. "Item six: finance and manpower. When - ah - if. If we do end up in an armed struggle against Earth forces, we're going to need two things. The first is money. We need to pay troops, buy equipment, beef up our infrastructure, establish -"
Karina Roth raised on skeptical eyebrow. "I think it's premature to even talk about raising an armed force - we haven't submitted the petition -"
Javier interrupted. "We've distributed copies. As soon as everyone reads it we'll be able to move forward."
Karina nodded. "OK." A beat. "But escalating hostilities with the governments before it's even clear that our adversaries are the governments - that risks making negotiations more difficult. Much more difficult."
The Powers of the Earth (Aristillus Book 1) Page 27