A Grey Moon Over China

by Day, Thomas, A.

  “—of little faith! Oh, ye of little faith! And you thought I couldn’t jump! ‘Done in a table,’ he says! ‘How did you get up on that roof,’ he says! Oh my, look at me, look at me, ten feet that must have been. Ten feet!”

  I turned the wheel, and with a thump we rolled over one of the drones. We were into the lock tunnel.

  “Eddie, look out!” Pham pointed to the rear-view screen where twin lances of flame slid across the ground toward our tunnel.

  “Down!” Something burst into the cab behind us and the air filled with smoke, then in the next instant the tractor hit the outer door of the airlock at full speed with the inner door still open. The tractor staggered for an instant then lifted completely off the ground and shot forward, driven by the wall of air from the dome’s decompression. Debris and equipment and drones shot past us in a cloud of freezing vapor, which turned the surface into a blinding world of white as it sparkled in the dying sun.

  I groped for Pham’s helmet to swing home the ring, then pulled it up against my visor so I could see her pressure readings through the mist. They steadied just as our burning motor and the crashing of the debris went silent and the mist dissipated. The tractor slued sideways one last time and rose up on its edge before settling to a stop. For an instant neither of us moved, then I was pulling Little Bolton and Pham down the ladder. She held a hand under the swell of the baby in the front of her suit.

  “No, Eddie,” she said, “we go this way. We need an unarmed shuttle.”

  Inside the supply shuttle she’d chosen she peeled off her suit while I maneuvered the craft around to the west side of the dome then gradually upward. The plains below were strewn with ships and large areas of bewildering activity. Drone ships came and went, but none paid us attention and only a few moved toward the blown-out dome to see what had happened.

  The baby cried as Pham tried to get the tip of a water bottle into his mouth, then finally he was quiet as he sucked.

  “We need milk,” said Pham. “Eight hours old, nothing. How long we got?”

  “An hour before we reach the ships.”

  I called Tyrone Elliot and gave him the news, that I was returning with nothing more than a password, and Pham with an infant. Elliot was to have his medic friend, Susan Perris, prepare milk and a neonatal exam, and beyond that we would talk when we reached the fleet.

  The fleet, Elliot told me, the civilian fleet with the can in tow, was moving into a slow orbit toward the now-deserted inner moon of the fifth planet, where it was felt we would be safe in the abandoned Indian mines.

  I pushed away the microphone.

  “So,” I said to Pham. “What now?”

  I felt drained and bitter, scarcely interested in going on. I’d been awake for twenty-six hours with too little to eat, and too many people had died. I’d failed.

  Pham had turned all of the heaters and lights on in the back of the shuttle, and now she sat in the center of the glow with the baby wrapped in a silver emergency blanket, held awkwardly against her as he sucked at the water bottle. She adjusted his position off and on, trying to hold his head up with her good arm.

  “Why we got to do anything?” she said.

  I looked at her.

  “What about the drones?”

  “Hell with drones. I know, Empty-Eyes got big plan now, I bet, all fleets, everybody new guns, try to kill little dead drones forever. But you not so stupid, hah? Got person inside, maybe. Leave Empty-Eyes alone, Eddie, go someplace nice. West side of Boar River, nice place. Maybe you go there, hah?”

  “You’re pretty cheerful.”

  “Why not? I got nice company. Anyway, today maybe last day we got, and kid should have good time.”

  I thought about that for a while.

  “What about the drones?” I said.

  “What you care about drones! Drones be here forever, nothing we can do to change it.”

  The baby choked. In a panic Pham hit him on the back, only to set off a new round of crying.

  The drones, with all their power, I thought, would indeed become a constant of colonized space. There would be nothing that could change it. But it was hard to accept.

  “Life full of stupid things,” she said, “and most stupid things we make, hah? Like drones. Nothing we do can change it, so what you care? Get China-Girl, go someplace nice.”

  “We still have to do something about the drones, Pham. Are you just going to wish them away?”

  “No! Why you got to fight? You no fight, they no fight. Don’t beat head on wall all the time, hah? Maybe smart choice I make in there, leaving box behind. Now pretty soon drones make everybody stop fighting. I think not so much coincidence, Ice-Lady’s little password.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If she picked big important number for password like everybody think, then you find it and get all hard-on powerful again, hah? But for one time in her life, Ice-Lady pick something pretty. So instead, we find baby. So, good, finished. Everybody go someplace nice. Some people even taking little farmer-boats through torus to new planet. You go there, too, maybe.”

  The thought of taking a ship into the maw of the drones’ forces at the torus again was chilling. Especially in an unarmed trading boat. Our own past experience, together with the vestiges of the terrible destruction that had befallen the Europeans, spoke against traveling into the tunnel before the drones were completely defeated. No matter what prize waited at the other end.

  “Eddie?” said Pham.

  “Yes.” The infant was quiet on her shoulder. His eyes were almost half open. He had a well-formed face, with olive skin and black hair, and dark eyes. His lips were moist from the water, and were opened slightly where his cheek pressed against Pham’s shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  My mind was still on the tunnel.

  “Why?”

  “Before,” she said, “when we try to go through tunnel to Serenitas you save my life. I pretty mad, so I not say thank you.”

  “Why mad?”

  “Yah. You such perfect person, always okay, always important guy, then you almost get killed saving crazy person—”

  “You’re not—”

  “No, it’s okay. It’s true, I pretty crazy sometimes. Stephanie, she say I got to tell you thank you, but always I say no, later. But now it’s time. So, thank you.”

  The baby’s eyes fell closed.

  H

  ull Zero-Zero floated among the few remaining ships of the civilian fleet, heavily patched from the damage of the year before. Its engines flickered at a meager tenth of a G to save precious fuel and power cells. Nearby drifted Bolton’s ships, with skeleton crews under the command of Roscoe Throckmorton. And far below us—or behind us—a ring of eight ships in their landing configuration under the command of Priscilla Bates, towed the giant orbital can, home to the orphans and now an orphan itself.

  We were on a gentle five-month climb to the fifth planet, where Polaski had set up camp by the abandoned Indian mines. He’d called for a gathering of the powers in the system in order to disclose a stunning discovery he said had been made about the drones, and to implement a new plan of attack that hinged on it.

  Among all of those to whom I’d had to break the news of Peters’ and Bolton’s deaths, Kip had surprised me by being the most upset. From that moment on, in fact, he stayed close to me, following me where I went and sleeping nearby, sometimes sitting and watching me for hours with an odd intensity. He became like a shadow to me after a time, and now and then it seemed as though, as he watched me, his face reflected thoughts I was at that very moment having. I would notice that his eyes had filled with tears, only to realize that I had myself been thinking about Charlie Peters’ old face, or recalling the gentle Gaelic rhythms of his voice. Then sometimes I would wonder at an apprehension in Kip’s eyes, only to realize that I’d been thinking again about drifting unarmed through the tunnel to Serenitas, the way Pham had said.

  But mostly Kip just watched me, and mostly I ju
st sat and brooded about the lost case and about the password, and about the green and blue planet we could no longer reach. Or about Polaski’s plan.

  At first Chan seemed less affected by the news, but after a time it seemed as though she’d finally lost whatever spark had been left in her. She still spent her time working in the children’s quarter of the can, but no longer with any great interest.

  Pham, on the other hand, had pretty much disappeared.

  Elliot toiled unenthusiastically to keep the fleet running. He spent his spare time alone with Perris, or else in desultory radio conversations with acquaintances around the system.

  “I’m leaving the fleet after the conference, Torres,” he told me one day. “Me and Susan. We’re going to try Boar River, helping out on a farm, maybe. Grew up on a farm.” He didn’t look at me as he told me, and I didn’t answer him.

  Later that day he was on the MI decks with his feet up and his eyes closed, and his hands behind his head. Sweet Lord, he sang, come and take your angel, lyin’ on the banks of Jordan. . . .

  It was Elliot who brought me the news about the torus here in Holzstein’s System.

  “They’ve rotated it. The drones. First time in sixteen years it’s pointed anywhere but Serenitas, and now they’ve rotated it and sent more’n six hundred ships through it—some special kind of ship they been building down on our old base.”

  “Rotated it where, Tyrone?”

  He looked away, and in that moment he looked more tired than I’d ever seen him.

  “Earth,” he said.

  The following day the torus was turned back toward Serenitas, as though nothing had happened. It remained under heavy guard by the drones.

  Nearly a month later, after four months in space, I finally ran across Pham. One of the eight ships in Bates’ ring still had its original gardens, and I found her at the very top level of them, where an open plot of grass baked under artificial sunlight, surrounded by a hedge. I’d gone to the gardens meaning only to visit the lower levels for a moment, but a lullaby was filtering down from above with a familiar tune. I started up the path to see, Kip following behind.

  Your tears, you whisper, like rain

  Have washed away your dreams . . .

  Near the top of the spiraling path the bright sun above trickled down through the foliage, and Pham’s voice became clearer, singing with the same minor tones and lilting inflection her speech always carried, giving the lullaby an odd and haunting sound.

  So take me along with a kiss for your fears;

  They’re old friends and bring me no harm.

  It was the same tune I’d heard more than twenty years ago, from Kip’s flute, the one he still played when he thought he was alone. And finally I placed it. The tune I’d heard in the darkness after the theft, the one Pham was singing now, was a lullaby my mother had sung, too.

  Tus lágrimas, como la lluvia . . .

  Pham was sitting on the grass in the bright sunlight, leaning back against a carrying bag. She wore only the briefest of shorts and an open blouse, her eyes closed and the baby at her breast, her skin shining with oil.

  She opened her eyes when we reached the head of the path.

  “So,” she said. “We there already?” She shifted the baby and sat up straighter, pulling the blouse a little closer around her. “No, is okay, Eddie, don’t go. Sit, make company, yah? Where’s China-Girl?”

  I sat across from her while Kip dropped down in the grass to look at the baby. Pham watched him for a moment, then looked back at me with a hint of amusement. “So! Your face all full of ‘how she do that?’ I think. Needle-Lady, she make estradiol-something out of nothing, put it in all right places. Baby healthy, what you think?”

  “He looks fine. No, we’re not there yet. We’re still a month out.”

  The baby heard my voice and turned around, and with a gurgle and a shriek of excitement squirmed out of Pham’s arms and onto the grass, not about to be put to sleep. Under the low thrust he pushed himself onto his hands easily and pulled himself forward, his undersized legs working behind him as best they could. His dark eyes were wide and shining with the adventure, and he smiled, dribbling bits of milk as he babbled his way across to Kip. Kip put down his flute solemnly and lifted the baby into the air, soft and pink against his smooth black hands.

  Pham lifted her arms over her head and stretched luxuriously, her face tanned and relaxed, framed by jet black hair cut short in front and long in the back. She leaned back on her hands and slid a foot closer to her to raise one knee, her feet bare and her blouse still open.

  “So, you,” she said to me. “If we still got month left, why we go all this way, chasing goose, hah? Old mines bad place, all cold.”

  “We have to work out a plan with the rest of the system, Pham. That’s what the conference is for.”

  She leaned back a little further and shook her head. “Nah, you just follow Empty-Eyes all the time, like he got something. What’s he got, Eddie?”

  “He’s learned something about the drones.”

  “Hah! You don’t be so stupid, he just say that. You tell Polaski, go suck his own pecker, hah? Why we go all this way for shithead like him?”

  She sighed and lay all the way back. “Ah, Eddie, you still got no balls.”

  I

  ’d been looking for Chan when I heard Pham’s lullaby, and later that day I finally found her in a berth on the can, just waking up.

  No one followed ship’s time any longer; the lights were simply kept half dimmed while people wandered in and out of sleep on any schedule. Especially in the cavernous can this created a sense of unreality, as flying platforms rose and fell through the dim central corridor, no longer horizontal now but a quarter-mile-deep, vertical shaft.

  I’d come to ask Chan one more time if there was a chance the fleet MI could reconstruct the lost communications codes, given that it had once used them. But she wouldn’t discuss it.

  “Why don’t you just find someone like Bolton and go back and get your codes, then,” she said.

  “Bolton’s dead, Chan.”

  “I know, Eddie, I know. So are you. So are we all.”

  That night, for the last time, I dreamed about being in the cavern underground. The tunnel was still there, and in it the demon was still waiting. Someone still watched from my shoulder, and a figure still stood in front of me, slowly raising his hand. But the figure’s face was clear this time. It was my own.

  T

  he last time I saw Pham on that trip she was standing by a porthole on one of the iron ships, with the baby asleep in her arms. She was looking out into the darkness with tears on her cheeks. For old friends, she said, and for friends she’d never had.

  Then we were on the cold moon of the fifth planet, preparing for the conference. The ground shook with the roar of more ships arriving, while unfamiliar faces rushed past in the causeways interconnecting the old mining structures, carrying papers and memory blocks and terminals, some people still wearing their ship’s suits and hull boots as the heaters struggled to warm the air.

  Visible from the windows of the main causeway, smaller causeways snaked out across the pitted surface to the mining control towers—tall, hollow buildings with glass windows in their upper floors, from which the surface robots had once been directed. The weak light from the distant sun, now a tiny disk in the black, washed across the towers and filtered into the causeways, illuminating faded Devanagari characters at the intersections and complicated warnings in Prakrit over the airlocks. Iron bars ran the length of the ceilings, welded haphazardly into place as handholds—gravity on the tiny moon was so low that without hull clamps people tended to float away from the floor and drift.

  Polaski spent several days attending to his units after their return from the campaign on the sixth planet, and occasionally he met privately with Bart Allerton and the other emissaries. But we didn’t meet formally until three days later. It was the first time since Boar River that I’d come face to face with Allerton.<
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  The conference table was a long, single slab of steel, tapering near the ends, gleaming faintly in the watery light from the sun and the stars shining through the windows. Thirty chairs were pulled up to the table, one end of which was reserved for Polaski and the other for Allerton. More chairs lined the walls, set aside for aides and observers. Each place at the table was marked with a neat vellum pad, and a water decanter and cup made from real glass.

  The participants milled about deciding on places, or else peering out the narrow strip of windows at the wild hills and strip mines on the surface, turning back toward the room now and then to shake hands and squint at one another in the bad light. Near the door, a boy in a grey and black uniform worked studiously on the electrical box that controlled the lighting, finally giving it up with a frown and sitting back down next to Polaski. Though nearly full-grown, the boy was less than five feet tall, heavy and broad in the shoulder, with expressionless eyes.

  Polaski, dressed in a grey and black uniform like the boy’s, reached for a phone and summoned a technician who came and worked futilely on the lighting box. He also gave it up, much to Polaski’s disgust.

  I chose a place a good three or four away from Allerton’s end of the table, between Chan to my right and an impatient Lal Singh the Younger to my left. Across from me sat Elliot, who left the room for a moment to bring back an extra chair, which he squeezed in next to him for Susan Perris. Polaski glared at him.