Qi had turned the baby’s suit microphone on, and he could hear the girl crying. Qi cursed, and Fred rode on a bit faster. But this made the ride jouncier, and after a while Qi said, “Stop for a minute.”
Fred slowed the bike, and at that very moment it hit a dip he didn’t see; they tilted hard left and he put his leg out to hold them up. A flash of fear that he would break his leg dissipated when his foot struck the ground and almost pushed them over the other way. He had to turn right to compensate for that, then left again to straighten out—finally the trike came to a halt, and he got both feet on the ground.
They had slewed sideways across the road such that they could see the low plume of dust they were leaving behind them. Then Fred saw a much taller plume farther back, a brilliant white cloud billowing up into the black sky. “Oh my God,” Fred said.
“What!”
“Look behind us.”
Qi had been looking into the faceplate of the baby’s suit. Now she looked at the tall cloud, which originated over the horizon behind them and was spreading at its top like a fountain of water falling onto itself, rather than the iconic nuclear cloud or an afternoon thunderhead.
“Is that our shelter?” Qi said.
“I think so.”
“It looks like Ta Shu’s informant is reliable. Damn. I can’t see into her suit very well, so I don’t think she can see me either.”
“Do you think she can see anything?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not, with the faceplates between us.”
“Should we get going then?”
“Yes.”
Fred got them underway again without tipping over or driving off the road. He was feeling a bit more used to their balance, and the trike’s controls. Off they hummed. Shelter behind them destroyed. Someone shooting at them with missiles. Ta Shu had said one had come from Earth, maybe both, Fred couldn’t remember. If Qi’s enemies had any weapons on the moon, or in lunar orbit, and could locate them on the trike, then they could still be a target. If their enemies were shooting at them from Earth, presumably they had a day or two before another one struck, unless they were coming up in a string. Anything was possible. This mine they were heading for could have a security system in it. Smart bombs could be headed their way, keyed to some GPS implanted in Qi long ago, or recently put in something she had swallowed in her food—or stuck into Fred while he had been in the hospital—who knew! Out here on this blinding desert floor their exposure felt infinite. There was nothing to be done but to stay on the run, with as little instrumentation as possible. Stay a moving target. The trike no doubt had GPS too, activated when it was operating or on all the time. Fred’s mind spun through various paranoid death spirals as he drove, and these thoughts seemed to twist his hand on the throttle without him being able to stop it, until they were going a lot faster than what would have made him comfortable in ordinary circumstances. They could so easily tip over! But he couldn’t bear to slow down.
And actually, going faster seemed to make balancing the trike easier in some ways. They blew through dips and flew over lumps, but their momentum always cast them forward. It was hard to know how far he could push that in a situation where no mistakes were allowed. Now they were going fifty-five kilometers per hour. Fred tried to stick to about eighty percent of the highest speed he felt he could handle, just in case. Even so, Qi’s voice said in his ear: “Be careful!”
“I will.”
“Saving ten minutes doesn’t matter. Even an hour.”
“I know.”
He didn’t know, but he let back on the throttle a bit. The trike hummed between his legs. For Qi this vibration had to be bad. And yet as he drove she gave him bits of news she was hearing through her helmet’s radio; she had been contacted by the people now with Ta Shu, she said. Fred was happy not to be hearing anything of that, as he needed to stay focused on riding the trike. “Don’t tell me now,” he said. Nevertheless her voice kept up a running commentary in his left ear. He could barely understand it. New standing committee had reconfirmed Peng as president, general secretary, and head of the military. She had made an appearance in Chengdu, which was surprising to Qi. Run the country by doing the unexpected, she said, isn’t that what the Dao advised? Or was it by doing the expected? She couldn’t remember. And the Party wasn’t Daoist anyway. But Ta Shu was Daoist, Fred thought. Maybe Ta Shu was the one orchestrating these moves. Then he had to dodge a stone on the road.
“Please,” Fred begged.
Qi went on nattering. Return of the iron rice bowl, of course! Reform of hukou, of course, but listen to her, people don’t want shantytowns outside every city do they? People have to have a proper home! As for the Great Firewall, there’s no such thing she says! The Chinese Internet is self-regulating, everyone knows that! Just Chinese patriots doing what is best! So many high citizen scores, people giving a hundred and ten percent, oh come on! Give me a break!
“Quit it!” Fred told her. “I have to concentrate.”
“It’s just I can’t stand it. She’s taking over same as all of the rest. But wait, what’s this. …” Qi was quiet for a while and then she laughed outright. “I can’t believe it! That person I was talking to on that quantum phone has just given every person in the world a million carboncoins and invited them to join a global householders’ union, and something like four billion people have already joined!”
“Please,” Fred said. Then, curious: “What will that do?”
“I have no idea! The backlash to it has already started. Peng doesn’t know what to do about it, no one does!”
“Things will work out. How is the baby?”
“She seems to be asleep. I can’t believe it.”
“Better than having her crying.”
“I’d rather have her crying,” Qi said.
“Babies sleep a lot. Don’t worry.”
“What if there’s another solar storm?”
“Then we’re cooked.”
“What if there’s another missile attack?”
“Then we’re blown up! But we’re almost there.”
“Stop saying that!”
“But we are. Stop talking, please.”
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. He realized as he tried to ignore her and keep his focus on the road that she would never stop, that he would always be hurtling along trying to keep up with her, that everything would always be excruciatingly interesting all the time, the three of them buffeted by fate in all the ways he had worked his entire life to avoid. When the trike’s odometer said they had traversed ninety kilometers, Qi said, “Ta Shu is on my radio, he says we’re soon to come to a big parking lot. Go across it to the building on the left, that’s the terminal. The pod will be in there. They’ll launch us from where they are.”
“Okay,” Fred said.
“Who are you working with?” Qi said, apparently to Ta Shu. Then after a pause: “Can you trust them?”
“Who is it?” Fred asked.
“Be quiet!” Then after a while she said, “But how are these strikes coming so fast?”
“They’re coming in a string,” Fred said aloud.
After a while she said to Fred, “That’s right. He says they launched this one yesterday and are aiming it as it goes. We have to get off the moon as soon as we can.”
“We are! They’re handling our launch, you said?”
“Yes, he said everything is ready. The pod is at the very back of the terminal. He said be sure to be lying back and facing straight ahead.”
“Eyeballs in,” Fred said grimly.
“He said maybe I can give the baby mouth-to-mouth and more air will be pushed into her from me than gets pushed out of her. It’s a freight launch, but he said this pod will be dialed back to human speed.”
“Good,” Fred said.
Over the horizon reared some low peaky hills, different from the usual crater rim arc. Fred accelerated the bike, ignoring Qi’s order to slow down. At the foot of the hills he spotted the cubical shapes that indicat
ed buildings. Aside from the knot of hills, the white plain blazed flatly to the horizon in every direction. Everything white on white. Fred sped up more. They came to the parking lot Ta Shu had mentioned and he aimed for the building on the far left. Stopped right in front of an air lock door. Qi got off with her baby in her arms. Fred got off. Into the air lock, into the terminal. Very dark in there, until their pupils adjusted to the absence of sunblast. Then it was just a dim empty space, unoccupied, like some abandoned subway station. Big piste of a magnetic rail running down the middle of the building in a long glass-walled room of its own, stretching out of the structure and off to the horizon. They hurried to the back of the terminal, where the piste split into various closed doors. Fred chose the one at the very back, tapped on the door panel and it slid up, revealing a squat little rectangular spaceship, like a rover car. Its door opened even before he could tap on it, and they got in and closed the outer door. Inside they found a small cabin with several thick chairs in it, like recliner chairs. The ship’s systems were on. Fred and Qi took off their helmets, and Qi unsnapped the baby’s helmet and pulled her out of it and held her close. The babe was crying, she clutched to Qi with her tiny fists. Qi sat down heavily with her in one recliner. Fred sat in another recliner, then got up again and picked up Qi’s helmet and spoke into it.
“Ta Shu, we’re in the passenger pod, ready when you are.”
He sat down in the chair, grabbed an arm and pulled himself down into it. The little spaceship lurched forward. Quickly it was out of its room and on the piste. Thick little oval side windows showed nothing but the terminal’s walls. Then the surface of the moon, white as the big bang, moving by them faster and faster. They were shoved back in their chairs. Fred felt the gel under him give and give until there was no more to give. He was crushed against it until it felt like concrete, concrete scooped to the shape of his body. The babe was wailing, then she stopped. Maybe Qi was giving her mouth-to-mouth. Fred couldn’t look, he could barely take a breath. All his effort had to go to sucking in air and then holding on. His vision blurred. The world went from too bright to too dark. He felt conscious but besieged. The world went blacker and blacker, his whole body squished, it was a struggle to breathe or even to hold his breath, even to hold his muscles tight enough to keep his ribs from cracking. His body became one big shout of pain. Little choked yelps of protest came from the babe, who was not to be silenced by a mere several g’s. Possibly it was not that much different from her passage out of Qi. Life just one crushing after another. Qi too called out something wordless.
Then the pressure went abruptly away. Fred sucked in hard, shook his head, gasped hard, sucked in air. He sat up. Everything was blurry. They hadn’t even been strapped in. Out the window he saw only black space and stars. Weightlessness: he was floating up, he grabbed his seat arm again, he pulled himself to the window and looked out. White moon behind them, shrinking fast, a bone against the night. Qi’s child wailed, music to his ears, drilling like a fire alarm right down his spinal cord.
“How’s the baby?” he asked.
“She seems all right. Where are we headed?”
“I don’t know.”
By Kim Stanley Robinson
Icehenge
The Memory of Whiteness
THREE CALIFORNIAS
The Wild Shore
The Gold Coast
Pacific Edge
The Planet on the Table
Escape from Kathmandu
A Short, Sharp Shock
Remaking History
THE MARS TRILOGY
Red Mars
Green Mars
Blue Mars
The Martians
Antarctica
The Years of Rice and Salt
SCIENCE IN THE CAPITAL
Forty Signs of Rain
Fifty Degrees Below
Sixty Days and Counting
combined as Green Earth
Galileo’s Dream
2312
Shaman
Aurora
New York 2140
Red Moon
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Red Moon Page 44