A Grey Moon Over China

by Day, Thomas, A.

  “What is it, Harry?”

  He hesitated. “Well, I know there’s a lot going on right now, and you’re not feeling well and maybe it’s not a good time, but I don’t think I’ll be coming back with you. I’m staying with Carolyn.”

  I turned away to look at the ship, and studied it for a while. It was well-built, I thought, a good use of scarce resources. Something we needed more of . . . I would talk to Chan about it. Where was Chan, at that moment? What would she be doing? And Charlie, what would he be doing? I lifted my face to get it wet from the rain, then wiped it with a sleeve.

  “Torres?”

  “What, Harry?” A cold sweat broke out on my hands at the thought of flying the ship alone.

  “Nothing.”

  “So where is Carolyn?” I said. I had evidently missed whatever there was between them.

  “She left when we were talking to Allerton. One of the techs is going to drive me out to meet her.”

  “Why, Harry?” I turned to look at him. He tried not to look away.

  “Look,” he said, “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of time left for any of us, and I don’t want to spend it in space anymore. I’m grateful you took me on, but I’m tired, Torres. And Carolyn needs someone right now. She’s not going back to West Lowhead, you know.”

  I hadn’t known. “Where’s she going?”

  He shook his head, then turned to watch the cage being raised up to the ship’s rear hatch. The prod slid forward to force the creature through. “You going to be all right flying that thing, Torres?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Oh, okay. I wasn’t sure.” He put out his hand and looked at me, his dark face wet from the spray. “I’m sorry, Ed.” He shook my hand and walked away through the hangar.

  The hatch on the ship slammed and the empty cage was lowered to the ground. The pallet-jack trundled off into the hangar, with the handlers riding on the runners behind the empty cage. Colonel Becker wandered up to stand next to me and put his hands in his pockets, and the two of us watched the engineers climb down from the ship and give me a thumbs-up before walking away. The afternoon light had faded almost to night. The rain turned colder.

  Inside the hangar on the far side, the two solitary guards stood at attention by the green canvas curtain. No one else was in sight. Becker and I were the only ones. We stood and watched the iron ship, a cold, indifferent husk in the rain, with the alien on board, waiting for me.

  “Hah!” said Becker suddenly. It was a sharp, cynical bark, then a moment later he turned and walked away. I listened to him go, then wiped my hands on my trousers and watched the rain. I was alone with the iron ship and the alien.

  T

  he trip home was hard. The vertigo of space and the long, manual flight were made all the worse by being alone. Even in the earliest hours, the monotony and the quiet dragged at me. During moments of disorientation I considered turning back, thinking to get a good night’s sleep before setting out again. But I continued on, telling myself there was nothing to fear, that the time would pass. Yet for two days I held myself awake, not wanting to sleep.

  Beyond the windscreen lay the emptiness of space, with the uncaring, icy sparks of the stars watching me from the distance. For hours at a time I stared at them until the disorientation set in again, then I turned back into the ship to stare at the alien, instead. It stood impassive and silent behind its bars.

  Early in the trip I’d set up the antenna and tried to talk to it again, but I hadn’t had the radio shielding to use as leverage and it had said nothing.

  For the next two days I stared first at the creature and then at the blackness outside, my thoughts confused, now and then gazing at the ship’s readouts in what became a meaningless ritual, as I was no longer sure whether I’d ever even set them correctly.

  Sometimes while I stared at the bars in the rear I remembered Pham leaning against them a week before, shifting uncomfortably on her case and pulling her jacket close around her. And once, briefly, I thought I saw both of them at the same time: Pham, worn and restless, warming herself, the alien, cold and rigid, one just outside the bars and the other in, both appearing as though in a dream, as though there could be one or the other . . . but not both. Choose. I turned and looked out the front. A light sweat had broken out on my forehead.

  On the first day I pulled a headset cord into the head behind the copilot’s empty seat and called Polaski. He’d returned to orbit around the black planet sooner than expected, together with the major elements of the fleet. I told him that during my interrogation of the alien it had revealed a mistaken belief that targets of opportunity lay in the fissures on the back of the black planet. I suggested that dummy targets be dropped into the fissures and an ambush mounted for the aliens. He was clearly excited at this news, and after a long pause he came back on the radio and instructed me to try for more information. For the moment, it seemed, I was back in his good graces.

  It was about fifty hours later that I was sitting in the pilot’s seat, digging food crumbs out of the folds of my jacket, when I twisted around in the seat one more time to look at the alien. I was having trouble concentrating, and for a moment, as I looked at it, I thought I was back on Boar River with Penderson and the alien, staring at it through the bars of its cage in the storeroom.

  The memory of the storeroom came back because on the base at Wallneck, something had struck me as odd when the alien first spoke. But I hadn’t been able to remember what it was afterward, with all the excitement. Still, it was a compelling memory, even though it slipped away whenever I looked at it. All through the trip it had nagged at me. And now it was gone again, and instead a flood of other memories began spilling over me, from some very different place and time.

  For a moment I remembered a jail I’d seen as a boy in Mexico, where a dying man lay on the floor. A rat was biting at his hand, and the jailer paid no attention.

  I blinked at the windscreen and the image of the jail vanished. But now the scene out the windscreen was gone, too. There was instead a different view of space, one I’d seen years ago through another window onto the stars.

  “Do you remember a dream you once described, Eduardo?”

  The voice was close to me. I spun to look at the alien, thinking it must have spoken.

  “A dream in which we suddenly come upon ourselves, out among the stars?”

  It was Madhu Patel’s voice.

  I stared at the alien, then back the other way.

  Madhu Patel sat in the copilot’s seat next to me. He was gazing serenely out the front, his big handkerchief in his lap.

  “Yes,” I said. Or was it I that said it? It was my voice, I thought.

  “That is good,” said Patel, “because sometimes we do not recognize ourselves out here where it is so empty.”

  He was wearing his billowing white suit. A red rose was pinned to the lapel.

  “Why are you here, Madhu?” I said.

  “Why, to look after you, of course.” He turned and beamed at me brightly with his half-moon smile.

  I looked back at the alien. Had it created a mirage—

  “No, Eduardo, no—your alien can do no such thing. It is lifeless, no more than a mirror. It is sleep you need, that is all.”

  I remembered his crutches and looked around for them. They weren’t anywhere on the deck.

  “Eduardo,” he said as I searched, “while these creatures may be lifeless, you must understand that you cannot fight them any more than you can fight your shadow. That is a fool’s errand, and you must leave it to the sharks and the wolves, your Mr. Allerton and Mr. Polaski. Let them tear themselves to pieces fighting their own selves—and the harder they fight, the harder they will be fought, I assure you—it is not for you. Let them be the ones to die alone.”

  But I wasn’t listening; I had stopped looking for the crutches now, and was watching the creature behind us, still motionless in its cage. What was it that it had said—that one comment it had made back on Boar
River?

  “Think, Eduardo. Think what it was that it said to you and your friend. It is important.”

  But I couldn’t. All I could think of was Charlie Peters, muttering somewhere in the background about a different beast. Or was it different?

  “Madhu,” I said, “is this the beast Father Peters goes on about? The fourth beast, in the fourth place I’ve followed it to?”

  “Charles Peters, a priest? Imagine that.” Patel raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips mightily.

  “No, my boy,” he said finally, “don’t be so dramatic. Leave such hocuspocus to the priests and storybooks. If he spoke of such a thing, I’m sure he only meant for you to think of the four horsemen, as a warning. In any case, this thing before you is surely no beast, for there is no beast so fierce as this.”

  Shakespeare now? Peters and the Apocalypse, and now Madhu Patel? The cabin was beginning to swim in front of me.

  “It is only a creature you invented,” he said. Invented? How could that be? It was right there, in the cabin. “And remember, Eduardo, creatures we invent out of fear will always turn on us. We will defend them until the very last, because after all it is we who made them, but in the end they will turn on us and destroy us. Their own makers.”

  “Destroy their makers?” I said. I had half remembered. “Madhu, listen. The shots that destroyed our domes—the dome I was in and the other one—they came from freighters that—”

  But Patel was gone. The copilot’s harness lay across the seat where it had always been, and the ship was as quiet as ever over the hum of its engines.

  Of course, I thought, Richard III: No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity; but I know none, and so I am no beast.

  The alien still hadn’t moved.

  TWENTY-TWO

  A Pale Horse

  V

  oices from the ship’s radios filtered into my sleep, like sand into a crevice. The great sweep of the planet stretched out under the ship, the color of volcanic ash in the weak sun. Messages hung on the ship’s screens, warning that my navigational instructions had run their course and that new ones were needed.

  The ragged wastes a thousand miles below slid by like an old man’s life, I thought, passing in stark review. My dream had lasted a hundred years, a hundred thousand, all of it dim with smoke and shadows. And yet, somewhere in the dream I’d remembered: I’d remembered the words the alien had spoken on Boar River. And they were words I’d heard before, spoken in another voice, another life, decades before. And now I was on my way to see, to be sure.

  Radioed instructions from the surface advised me that the fleet remained in orbit, preparing for the planet’s defense, but that the main dome had been re-pressurized and key personnel were on the surface. I dropped toward the domes glinting against the plains, suddenly comfortable at the controls.

  In the strange dream, Patel had said I couldn’t fight the aliens. But he was wrong: I now knew exactly how to fight them.

  Tractors awaited me as I skidded the heavy ship into the dirt. Tyrone Elliot was in one, while load handlers in the other prepared to re-cage the alien and move it to a spot at the rear of the main dome.

  Elliot’s appearance was sobering. His face was unshaven and lined with fatigue. His clothes were black with grime. Blood had dried in long gashes on his arms. His hands shook as he leaned past me to get a glimpse of the alien.

  “You don’t look too good, Tyrone.”

  “Things aren’t going too good. Half the base is hung over, and the other half is busy picking fights with people. Polaski’s working us around the clock to get equipment around to the other side of the planet where the cracks are, and now he’s pulling grunts out of the crews to handle the surface guns. Then he’s putting kids back in the ships to handle the loaders. They’re up practicing at six fucking Gs, for Christ’s sake. A girl died this morning. The troops are chewed up too bad, or can’t handle the Gs these thoroughbred miracles can, so we’re tossing kids into it. So much for their chance at being kids, for Christ’s sake. Folks are saying we’re throwing them away on a fight we can’t win, anyway.” He twisted the wheel and waited for the airlock to open. “Anyway, we spotted the aliens an hour ago. They’re headed this way.”

  “From where?”

  “H-v. They chewed the shit out of the metal mines on the inner moon. At least there, everyone got out. So now half the alien fleet is back watching the torus, and the other half is on its way here. Be here by nightfall.”

  “Get some radio shielding over that cage, Tyrone.”

  “It’s on its way. It’ll be in place by tomorrow. You told Polaski, remember?”

  I didn’t remember. “Okay. Let’s hope tomorrow’s not too late.”

  The tractor hissed through the airlock and into the watery light of Trinity Square. Elliot stopped at the barracks.

  “He wants to see you.”

  “Okay.”

  He held on to my sleeve. “Listen, Torres, people are scared. I mean, really scared, okay?”

  “Okay, Tyrone. Take it easy.”

  The barracks was in chaos. Piles of debris and bunks had been pushed against the walls to make room for stacks of equipment in the middle of the floor. Terse commands were shouted back and forth across the hall while tractors raced to move equipment to the transports. Commanders hurriedly tried to explain to their units their plan to pour firepower into the fissures while ships overhead used missiles against the aliens, along with the one maneuver known to have worked at the torus, trying to keep them away from the fleet and the surface guns.

  Polaski stood in the center of the hall speaking to his base-defense commanders, looking down through the cylinder of his revolver while he cleaned it. They made room for me when I approached.

  “Hello, Polaski.”

  “That was good work with the alien,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He spun the cylinder. “Should make for a turning point.”

  “Yes. Where are Tawali and Rosler?”

  “Tawali’s trying to pull the can out of orbit. Your woman friend made a stink about it. She’s tying up my ships.”

  “The aliens are going to go after the fissures, not the can.”

  “No? We’ll see. Rosler’s out trying to get Pham’s ass in here. She’s needed.” He sighted through the barrel and pointed it at my forehead. “President Allerton’s pleased with you, Torres. Let’s keep it that way. Keep working on your alien.”

  I started to say something, then turned away. But I stopped myself again and looked back at him.

  “Polaski, why were we leasing ships for the tritium shipments when we had our own freighters?”

  Polaski went still. The officers who could see his face became quiet as well, waiting for him to speak.

  “Bermer,” said Polaski.

  Carl Bermer pushed his way forward and eyed me uncertainly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Carl, Mr. Torres’ contact with the alien has made him a high-risk target. See that he’s well-guarded.”

  C

  harlie Peters was waiting for me in Trinity Square.

  “Why the cane?” I said. He was stooped and looked tired. The skin on his face sagged in the high gravity.

  “Oh, well, ’tis a little thing, really. That little run-in at the torus was a bit hard, is all.” He put an arm through mine and started up the alley.

  “Someone should look at that leg, Charlie.”

  “No, Eddie, they’ll be wanting to make a fuss. It’s not worth the time to an old man who has little enough of it left.”

  Something hissed past my ear and slammed into the wall ahead of us. A shout came from behind, then a ragged form hurried past, struggling for footing in the dust.

  It was Pham. She turned to look back as she ran, then stumbled and fell. She twisted around to look behind her. Her hair was tangled and her face bruised, with smears of dirt and caked blood under her nose.

  She glanced up at Peters. “What you staring at, priest?” Her voic
e was scarcely audible. She struggled to her feet and fell again as another stone smacked into the ground next to her. Behind us, Rosler snickered.

  “Come on, princess!” he shouted. “Come on, you can do it. Let’s see you run!” He pushed past us and followed her down the alley. “Run from your post, run from me. Let’s see how far you get, Princess!” His next stone struck her temple and drew more blood as she limped around the corner into the square ahead.

  Peters gripped my arm, but said nothing.

  Ahead of us a tractor pushed the alien’s cage off its dollies into the dirt, over in a far corner of the square. The creature held exactly the same position as it had all along, motionless and eyeless in the center of the cage, watching us all.

  Pham and Rosler had disappeared, and the square was left deserted as the tractor pulled away. It was the square outside Miller’s old quarters, where I’d stood talking to Penderson and Dorczak the night Miller had told me about Patel. The door to her quarters hung from one hinge, the gloomy workroom behind it nearly empty after the evacuation. The few remaining items had been strewn on the floor during the aliens’ ransacking.

  The dust churned up by the tractor hung suspended over the square, swirling through the vertical columns of weak, midday sun. Pools of the hazy light glowed on the black dirt, surrounded by the shadows from the dome. The doorways leading from the square, and the alien in its cage were difficult to see.

  A soldier stuck his head into the square to stare at the creature, then went back the way he’d come. Peters gave the thing a quick glance, then steered me toward the alley that led to my old office near the empty vehicle assembly building. As we approached the office, voices were coming from inside through the open door, and Peters stopped me before going in.

  “Eddie, listen to me. This is a day I’ve always believed would come. I thought I was ready for it, that all of us were, but suddenly I don’t know how it’ll end. You need to know that.” He looked at me intently, if somewhat cryptically, for a few moments, then finally took my elbow and led me inside.