Tongues of the Moon

by Philip José Farmer

  He pressed the button that released them from stasis, rose, and went to the control panel. Powerful searchlights stabbed into the brown-grey mists. Below, the huge waves of the sea raced up and down. Then, they were near, lashing at the ship; then, the waves were gone, and the darkness of the sea, speared by the light beams, was around them. There were no fish to be startled by the frightening appearance of the strong lights.

  Abruptly, one of the rays struck a projection, obviously not a natural formation. It reared 200 meters above the black ooze of the sea bottom. Moshe guided the vessel above the flat top of the tower, halted it above the exact center, and pressed another button.

  "According to what Ziolsky told Scone, the port is set to activate only to a certain sonar code. Ziolsky was not sure the code would not be changed by now. But, if the code doesn't work, we can enter by another port, near the base, in our suits."

  "It's working," said Moshe, pointing at the door sinking within the flat surface of the tower top. He lowered the ship past the entrance. The ponderous door stopped retreating directly in front of them and began to slide to one side within the inner wall of the great tube. The vessel dropped below it. Broward, looking at a screen which gave a view of the exterior from above, saw the door move ponderously but swiftly from the wall, then begin to move upwards, to reseal the opening.

  The ship was stopped from further descent by a metal floor, but around them, piercing the walls, were four openings each large enough to admit a vessel twice the size of theirs. Moshe chose the one straight ahead of him; the forward beams showed them that the tunnel dipped sharply downwards. They followed this decline for perhaps 350 meters, then were floating on the surface of the water, and they were in a blaze of lights.

  "Here's where we get out," said Moshe. He lifted the ship from the water and deposited it on the other side of one of the dozen docking berths. All of these were occupied by a vessel. Broward checked the radiation meter and found what he had expected. A background normal for this level.

  "Do you suppose that there could still be people living down here?" he said.

  "Why not?" replied Moshe. "If what you told me was valid, there were quite a few personnel here. The question is, did they stay here?"

  A few minutes later, they left the ship. They were clad in coveralls and carried only automatics as weapons and a small gravity-propelled blaster for drilling in case they encountered any doors that refused to open to normal means. Near the entrance to a tunnel leading inwards was a small car, a Siberian Voluto. It was ready to go, so the two climbed in with Moshe at the controls. He found that it could not be lifted more than seven centimeters off the floor; evidently, it had a governor on the motor. He began to drive it down the tunnel, which was identified by Arabic numerals and Cyrillic characters. Broward, comparing these against the map given him by Scone, quickly found where they were and where they were going. At the first junction they came to, he directed Moshe to take the tunnel to the extreme left. Moshe obeyed, and they shot down it at top speed, 20 kilometers per hour. On either side of the tunnel were doors, all shut.

  "I'd say everybody had left if it weren't for those ships in the dock," said Moshe. "So, where is everybody?"

  "Mass suicide?" said Broward. "Not likely. There'd be a few that would live as long as they could draw a breath." Moshe shouted and stabbed his finger at a button and the little car stopped. Ahead of them, a plate of plastic had dropped down and completely blocked the tunnel. And the rear view mirror showed that the same thing had happened behind them.

  "Good thing we brought the driller," said Moshe. He started to climb out of the car but stopped when a voice blared at them.

  "Drop your weapons on the floor. Go to the shield nearest you; face it; raise your hands in the air. Remain immobile until you are told otherwise!"

  The voice, coming from a loudspeaker located somewhere in the wall, spoke in the East Siberian Russian dialect. The two men loosened their belts, dropped them, and then proceeded to obey directions. No sooner had they faced the plastic wall than it rose to reveal four men on the other side. These held guns pointed at the two.

  "Boris Voget!" said Moshe. "Don't you remember me, Yamanuchi?"

  Voget, a tall gangling man with a Lincolnesque face, smiled and said, "Surely, it can't be the Japanese Jew? Moshe Yamanuchi! But I thought that you..." "I was on the Moon," Moshe said.

  "I was sent by the commander of the surviving Soviet forces on the moon," replied Moshe. "He..." and Moshe hesitated.

  Broward guessed why he did not know what to say next. Should he tell them that his sole reason for being here was to obtain the planet-shaker, that he had thought that every living thing on Earth was dead? What if these people here did not care to place themselves under the disposition of Scone? The Siberians were famous for their desire for independence, their underground movements. The experiment conducted by the Russians in transporting enormous numbers from every place in the world to settle here had been successful in that the colonists had succeeded in making the area a fertile one. But they had brought with them an anti-Russian feeling that had not died out in their descendants.

  Perhaps, thought Broward, if they knew that a North American now held the whiphand on the moon, the Siberians might be friendly. But what would they think when they discovered that their supposedly secret area was known? What would they do? Much of what would happen would depend on what Yamanuchi and Broward told them.

  After being searched, the two Moonmen were conducted to a large car and made to sit in the back seats while two Siberians held guns on them. A third talked softly into a wrist-radio. A man got into the Voluto and followed them through the various tunnels until they reached a large room that was at least a kilometer square and 40 meters high. This had been hewed out of the rock below the sea bottom.

  "They're in the same situation as we on the Moon," said Moshe to Broward. "Except that nobody knows this place is occupied by living men."

  Broward could see at once what Scone would think when —and if—he found out about this place. It would offer a refuge from the danger of the Martian attack.

  Near a tall tunnel entrance topped with a legend: Chief of Operations, the car stopped. All got out, and the two Moonmen were led into the tunnel and thence through a series of other rooms until they came to a large office. On the way, they passed at least a dozen men and women, either working at desks or on sentinel duty. The goal was a big room with a large desk. Behind it sat a thick-bodied man with very broad shoulders and a large heavily-boned head. His skin was dark; his eyes, black; his nose, an eagle's. He was dressed in coveralls and was the only person the two had so far seen who was not in uniform.

  Voget, Moshe's acquaintance, had talked enough during the ride to give them a little information on the man behind the desk. He was Dr. Pyotr, the former head of the scientific operations, a physicist. His father had been a Sioux Indian, and his mother was a Saudi Arabian. The day after the war, Pyotr, in company with a band of his scientific workers and some military personnel, had arrested the commander of the project, shot several soldiers and civilians who had resisted, and taken over the leadership of the only human beings left alive in the world—as far as they knew.

  Broward, looking at Pyotr, saw a man who reminded him of Scone. He had the same aura of strength and of confidence and gave the same impression of a man who would knock down and crush any one who got between him and his goal.

  Pyotr's voice was as muscular as his body. He said, "I know who you are, or who you claim to be. Let's hear your story."

  Broward, as nominal superior, felt he should talk. He did so without holding anything back because he expected that Pyotr would, sooner or later, find out the truth. He did not look like a man who would tolerate being lied to.

  After listening to Broward's story, frequently interrupted by questions from him, Pyotr was silent for a while. Then, he said, "If I keep you here, Scone may send out another party. He wants the bomb pretty badly, and I can see why. And if we ke
ep the second expedition, then... ?"

  "He'll come in full force," said Broward. The bomb is his only chance of defeating the Axe."

  "We can't fight him," said Pyotr. "If we sealed up the tower, he'd just blast his way in, drown us, no matter how many of his own he lost in the process. Am I right?"

  "Right."

  "On the other hand, if I were to destroy the bomb, he'd have no reason to bother with us. Right?"

  "Wrong. If you did that, you'd be his enemy. He'd just drop a hydrogen bomb by the tower. You can't defend yourself."

  "Mars is as much a threat to us as the Moon," said Pyotr. "They don't know about us now, but if they attack the Moon, which they may be doing at this moment, and crush the Moon forces... well, if anything is left of the bases, the Axe might find references to us in the files."

  "I doubt that Scone has recorded this expedition," said Broward.

  "And the Axe must not have heard about us, otherwise, we'd have heard from them long ago. They'd know as well as Scone what the bomb means."

  Pyotr paused and made a steeple of his huge brown hands and rolled his eyes upward as if in prayer. Broward wondered how Pyotr would handle this. No matter which way he moved, he would be in a very bad situation. That is, unless he had some place else on Earth to hide.

  Abruptly, Pyotr said to the guards, 'Take them away." They were led back into the huge center room, across, and down another runnel. The room they were locked into was a small one with two bunk beds along one wall, a chemical toilet, a small washbowl, soap, and towels. The lighting was from luminescent panels.

  Broward paced back and forth like a tiger in a narrow cage. "I wonder if Man's worth saving," he said. "He almost succeeds in annihilating himself. But, despite himself, he's given another chance. You'd think every man and woman left alive would think of only one thing, of perpetuating the species. You'd think that everybody would forget his national and ideological differences, would say to every other man, 'Let's lay down our arms, work together, make sure that we live and that our sons and daughters live and their children live, and ensure that they have a worthwhile world to live in, make sure that this doesn't happen again.' But they don't They're all fighting each other as if nothing had happened. Is man logical but irrational? Logical in effectively carrying out his irrationalities? Is he worth saving?"

  "If he survives, then he's worth it," said Moshe. "If he dies, then he's not worth it; he proved it by becoming extinct. Why worry about something abstract like that? Let's consider how we're going to get out of this."

  "All right. Let's think about Pyotr. What can he do? He could detour Scone. Go to the Russians or the Chinese. But what kind of a deal could he make with them? None that would be any better than a deal with Scone, He couldn't trust them. No, the only thing for him to do is to leave his once-safe snug little nest and hide elsewhere. But where could that be?"

  He stopped talking; the door had swung open. A young woman carrying a tray of food entered. Behind her were two men with guns. She was a tall well-built woman with wide shoulders, beautiful but rather strong features, green eyes, and auburn hair. She set the tray down on the lower bunk and said, "Eat, citizens, while I question you about certain matters."

  Broward looked at the emblem on her uniform and said, "Psychological warfare?"

  Before she could reply, Moshe said something to her in a foreign tongue which Broward identified as Hebrew, although he was not familiar enough with the language to understand it.

  She looked startled, then replied swiftly in the same tongue.

  The two guards looked uneasy. One said, "What are you doing, Katashkina?"

  She answered in Russian, "He thinks I look like a girl he used to know. An Israeli."

  The guard exploded with laughter, then said, "You, a Jew?"

  The other guard said, dourly, "How do you happen to be able to talk Hebrew? That was Hebrew, wasn't it?"

  "I know many languages," she said.

  Moshe spoke again in Hebrew, and she answered briefly. Thereafter, the conversation was in Russian or English, but Broward detected that Moshe was elated. She asked them questions about their life on the Moon and events since the war. Several times, she required that they identify Moon personnel with detailed descriptions.

  "What are you trying to do?" Broward said. "Establish that we are not Axe spies? If we'd been Axe, all we would have had to do to dispose of you was to drop a bomb on the tower."

  She did not reply to him but instead continued her line of interrogation. Finally, she picked up the tray and started to walk out. At the door, she paused a second and said a few words to Moshe, again in Hebrew. Then, the door was closed.

  Broward did not ask Moshe to translate his words with the woman. He knew that, if the cell was bugged, and it probably was, the monitor had asked for somebody in Pyotr's group, other than the woman, who knew Hebrew.

  Moshe, guessing what Broward was thinking, put his hand on Broward's wrist, and he tapped out in code what he did not dare to say aloud.

  "I was right I knew her. She was the child of very good friends of my parents when we lived in Ugolyak. I always suspected them of being Jewish, and I knew that if her parents had attempted to educate her as mine had tried to educate me, then she'd know Hebrew."

  "So?" Broward tapped back.

  "So... I was right So, I'm not the only Hebrew left alive in the world."

  "She doesn't have to be..."

  "No, she doesn't But I gave her the opening phrases of Hatikvah, the national anthem of Israel. It's long been a criminal offense to sing it, so if she knew it... well, she replied with the the second line."

  Moshe sang softly, " 'Kolod balevav penimah,' I said. And she answered, 'Nefesh yehudi, homiyah.' Translated, 'Oh while within a Jewish breast beats true a Jewish heart'"

  "I still don't see..."

  "But you'll see."

  'But when they translate what you two said, she'll be in trouble. If you're planning on her help, you might as well forget about her."

  "She's no dummy. Remember, she has a perfectly good excuse for talking to me in Hebrew. And I didn't ask her openly to help me. Just made some pleasantries, complimented her on her good looks. I didn't even remind her that we once knew each other. But she knows."

  "Just what are you banking on?" '

  "That she'll think I'm a Jew and will help me."

  "Are you or aren't you?"

  Moshe shrugged and smiled. Then, he tapped, "I never wanted to be. But everybody insists that I am. Can the whole world be wrong?"

  Pyotr said, "You presented a great problem. But Lieutenant Katashkina has suggested a plan with high probabilities of succeeding. Unfortunately, it involves your deaths and those of all on the Moon. I would rather not do this, but I have no alternative."

  Pyotr looked at them intently as if expecting a violent reaction, but the two, frozen-faced, merely stared back. Pyotr smiled and then said. "There's no need my informing you what we're going to do, since your cooperation will be complete but involuntary. However, the lieutenant's plan is such a clever one that I can't resist telling it to you. It'll give you something to think about on the way back."

  His plan was very simple, and, from his viewpoint, admirable in that it solved everything. It did not matter that it meant the deaths of three hundred people, perhaps the extermination of half the human race.

  Broward and Yamanuchi were to be placed back inside their ship and in a state of stasis in their chairs. Only, this time, they would have no means to release themselves; they would be prisoners of the field until the ship crashed onto the Moon's surface at a velocity of 50,000 kilometers per hour.

  The two would have company: the "planet-shaker" bomb, This would not be in the ship, since it was too large to fit inside, but would be attached to the vessel. It would have its own drive, and, at the proper moment, would release itself and dive at the moon. The inconceivably violent explosion would create a crater at least two hundred kilometers wide and fifty deep. The shock waves wo
uld not only shatter every base on the moon but would instantly kill every living being.

  "To quote an old American proverb," said Pyotr, "we are killing two birds with one stone. We will not only remove the peril of attack by the Moon, we will take away any chance the Axe might have to find out about us from the Moon personnel."

  Broward was stunned but he managed to protest.

  "You monster! You are as evil as Howards!"

  "Not at all." said Pyotr. "I am merely doing what I must do to make sure that I and my people survive. I am doing so reluctantly, but..."

  "Can't you just join the Moon, become part of it, help us in our fight for survival against the forces of Nature and of Mars?"

  "Your people are Communists," said Pyotr. "We have rejected that false doctrine, and we are determined to build a new society. We can do it because we have a small group that can be closely controlled. We can educate our children into Pyotrism with no chance of foreign and contradictory ideas being introduced to confuse them. Moreover, we have a chance to get rid of our enemies once and for all."

  "But, there are some on the Moon who are not Communists!" said Broward. "I am one of them. For a long time

  I've been a member of an underground known as the Athenians. Perhaps you've heard of them. Moreover, Moshe is not a Communist; he despises them. I—"

  "You are not a Pyotrist."

  He gestured at the two and said, 'Take them away." Broward and Moshe looked despairingly at him and then at the woman. She regarded them coldly and unflinchingly.

  "I have never been so wrong about a woman in all my life," said Moshe as he and Broward were marched away. They were not, however, taken at once to the ship. The Pyotrists had to compute and tape a new journey to the Moon, one for the ship and a different path for the bomb's motor after it separated from the ship. The process took three hours; meanwhile, the two sat in a small room near the undersea port. Broward tried to talk to the three guards, but they only told him to shut up. Oddly, he felt nothing at that moment but a longing for a cigarette. Now that he was to die soon, he did not see any reason to hold to his determination to quit smoking. , "At least give me a cigarette," he said.