Mother Moon

by Bob Goddard

  Mostly they just hugged each other and talked, with gentle caresses and an occasional kiss, but Nadia knew her will power was ebbing away. She longed for the warmth of Yasmine’s copper skin against her own.

  A lot had changed over the last four weeks, most of it for the better. The colony had settled down to the rhythm of the three-shift system and progress had accelerated. Power generation was up by a quarter despite the number of PV panels damaged by the meteoroid storm. Water production was up 29 per cent thanks in part to Will’s hard work bringing the second tractor back into service. Ferrying mining crews to the ice-face and hauling the water out was a logistical battle, but they seemed to be winning it for now.

  A second shelter for Haworth Crater had resolved safety and hygiene issues but they were nearing the end of extractable ice in Haworth. Soon they would have to travel further and relocate all the plant, machinery and shelters.

  Production from the manufacturing units inside the mountain was greatly improved. This was due as much to Neelam Kapoor’s inspired efficiency upgrades as the 24-hour working. The Indian woman had spotted opportunities to fine-tune the farm too. From automating planting and harvesting to suggesting the corridor tubes be used, she had increased output and allowed staff to be re-deployed elsewhere.

  Fourteen new tubes had been added since Comet Santos first raised its ugly head. While most of these had yet to produce a crop, they promised relief from the current tight rationing.

  It wasn’t all rosy, however. Four colonists were being monitored daily by the doctor and helped by Tamala due to stress disorders. And Takemo Nakashima had acute schizophrenia. He was heavily medicated and reduced to sweeping duties in the cavern.

  The persistent dust clouds, constant eruptions and lack of communication from Earth weighed heavily on them all. Complaints over petty disputes in the Ghetto were more frequent. They were partly due to the shift working and sleep disturbance, but mostly because of frayed nerves and intolerance. As soon as the colony’s food needs were met, Nadia would have to find a way to resolve the cramped accommodation problem.

  Converting Tamala’s tiny office and bedroom into married quarters had been easy enough, but Nadia had received two more requests for weddings since Tamala’s and there was nowhere else to house couples.

  Unless the dust cleared, supplies resumed and colonists could return home soon, it would be necessary to rethink the layout of Armstrong Base altogether. Maybe she could hold a design competition to engage all the colonists in the planning process? It would give them something else to think about and with 297 of the sharpest brains involved, they would surely get some good ideas put forward. She would discuss it with the department heads tomorrow.

  The plain fact was they were now a month on from the comet impact and there was no sign of Earth’s dust clouds receding. Nadia had the disquieting thought that their original contingency plans for one, three and six months might prove to be inadequate. But how could she suggest this possibility to the others without provoking alarm and despondency?

  A gentle knock at the door allowed her to drop that worrying train of thought. Yasmine slipped in to her office with a smile. For the next hour the pressures of the Moon colony’s top job could be put on hold. Nadia sighed, smiled and held her arms out to receive the embrace she’d been longing for all day.

  15. The Cardinal’s Treasure

  Earth, 1504

  The Cardinal paced the Pelican’s deck, stamping his hobnailed boots, barely able to suppress his fury. It had all been so well planned: the parade through Loming with his Convertors bristling with pikes and swords in case of trouble; the public double hanging to instil fear and obedience in the populace; his investiture as Pope, witnessed by the three regional bishops. It would have been so perfect. And now this.

  He’d been awake long before dawn that morning, too excited to sleep. In his private rooms at the back of the church, he had lit his lamp and unlocked the trunk that contained his greatest treasure. He had lifted out his wonder, his great secret, his book. Gently, reverently, he’d opened the crumbling, leather-bound cover and feasted his eyes greedily on the lines of strange symbols and squiggles that he alone could read.

  Discovering this fragile relic had been the turning point in his life. An unhappy childhood had turned him into an awkward youth, a misfit who spent his days roaming the countryside. Picking through a pile of rubble one day he had come across stone slabs covering a vault, and a metal casket unlike anything he’d seen before. Inside was this precious book.

  Years of puzzling over the mystery language had finally paid off when the meaning slowly began to emerge, with tales of an earlier civilisation in a distant land. He told no-one, not even his widowed mother, whose failing health signalled the end of his days of leisure. After she died following a row with her son, the plump twenty year old joined the Loming church. He soon set about bending it to his needs... and eradicating any challenge to his radical new teaching. The greatest danger, he knew, came from others gaining his knowledge of those earlier times. All traces of this ancient language, except for his book, must be destroyed.

  That morning he had been halfway through his favourite passage describing a mighty flood when his peace was shattered by a frantic banging on the church door. It was that idiot Gorbel jabbering about a rope from the tower window and an empty cell. How could they have escaped while his men kept guard below? Gorbel’s beer breath and bloodshot eyes told him all he needed to know.

  The Cardinal’s anger had been volcanic, but news that the lookout at the top of the tower had spotted a white sail to the west demanded action before retribution. He would set off in pursuit at once, taking the three bishops and half the Convertors aboard the Pelican. Gorbel and his remaining men would seize the Captain’s family and hold them at the church until the Cardinal returned to decide their fate.

  And now, stamping on the heaving deck with his boots, shouting at the four crewmen to make the ship sail faster, he had one clear purpose. To ensure that Captain Yonaton and his Navigator Benyamin did not live to see another day. A drowning would serve in place of a hanging, he thought with a smile.

  * * * * *

  Moon, 2087: Saturday, 27th September

  It was seven months and thirteen days after Comet Santos when Nadia’s comm chimed with an unusual ring tone. She stared at the display but there was no image of a caller. It must be a malfunction, she thought. It happened occasionally. Then it rang again and on an impulse she tapped to accept the call.

  A faint but familiar voice was calling her name repeatedly: “Nadia, Nadia, Nadusha, Printsessa… please answer.”

  “Father! Is that really you, Papa?” Her involuntary leap of excitement lifted her a metre off the floor. There was an agonising delay and she thought she had lost him.

  “Ahh! Nadia. My printsessa! At last! Thanks to God… you are still alive!”

  “Oh, Papa. It is so good to hear your voice. I was beginning to fear I would never hear it again. We are all fine here and Armstrong Base is self-sufficient at last. Are you both okay, father? How are things in St Petersburg and how did you manage to make this call through all the dust?”

  Another long wait listening to a hiss of static.

  “I knew you would do it, Nadusha. I’m so proud of you…” his voice faded then returned, “… had to move from St Petersburg. We are now in Sochi. It is still very cold but the snow is not so deep here. They are still able to cut through the ice, for now at least, so we have fish sometimes.”

  “Cut through the ice? At Sochi? In September!” Nadia was aghast.

  “Yes. The Black Sea is frozen over. Most of the Mediterranean too. We have made contact with many of the surviving communities around the world using the old telephone cable sys…” his voice faded away for a long time and finally Nadia could wait no longer.

  “You are fading out father. Can you hear me? How are you managing to transmit through the dust?”

  Finally his voice returned. “Yes, I hear you. We
are using the military transmitter on Komsomolets Island. It is so far north and the dust is thin near the North Pole. We think less than half the satellite network is operational, so communication will be…” he faded again.

  After a long minute of listening to hiss and whistles Nadia ended the call and summoned Thijs Jansen to her office. Her father would call again, she felt sure. If they could tell him when the working satellites would be in the best positions maybe they could improve future calls.

  This was the breakthrough she had been praying for. The months of anguish and heartache were finally over. Despite the hardships and the hunger of their struggle for survival, it had been the loss of communication with Earth that had weighed heaviest on the colonist’s hearts. Not knowing if their loved ones were still alive, not being able to talk to their families, had been the hardest cross to bear. Keeping their hopes alive had seemed impossible at times and without Tamala’s resourcefulness she knew it would have been much worse.

  There had been protests and dissent, petty arguments and religious fervour, but somehow she had maintained control. Doctor Rozek had cared for the most seriously depressed and Tamala’s ingenuity had created a sense of community. But with no break in the dust and no news from their families it had been a close run thing. This, she felt sure, was the light at the end of the tunnel.

  Nadia sat at her desk and tapped her screen. After seven months of silence the whole colony would be ecstatic to hear about this message from Earth.

  “My dear fellow Lunies. This is Governor Nadia with the news we have all been waiting for. In the last few minutes we have received a communication from Earth.” She paused and smiled, a rare treat for her vidcasts.

  “It was only a short and broken phone call with no visuals. It was from ISCOM’s Roscosmos Liaison Officer – who also happens to be my father – Sergei Sokolov. I hope this may be the start of a new phase for us. In a few moments I am meeting with Thijs Jansen, our Chief Astronomer, to see what we can do to improve these communications when they are repeated.

  “The phone call got around the problem of atmospheric dust by using a Russian military transmitter in the high Arctic, on Komsomolets Island. It is sufficiently far north to be able to project a signal through the hole in the dust at the North Pole. Many of Earth’s communications satellites were knocked out by the meteoroid storm which came with Comet Santos, so there are difficulties maintaining contact.

  “We have very little information at this time about conditions on Earth, other than it is a bit colder than normal. This is as we expected due to the sun’s energy being blocked. However, the good news is there are communications between the distant communities via old telephone cables that lie underground and under the seas. I am hopeful that we may learn of conditions in other countries in due course.”

  She saw Thijs approaching her door so she wrapped up the vidcast quickly.

  “That’s all for now, but I will bring you more news as soon as we have it.”

  * * * * *

  Moon, 2087

  Tamala laid Ngaio in her cot and tucked the blanket around her hoping she might settle down to sleep. Ngaio liked this game. With a big toothless smile and shining eyes she kicked her chubby legs and the blanket was shuffled off instantly. She raised her fat fists towards her mother’s face and stretched out her fingers. She didn’t want sleep, she wanted more cuddles.

  “Oh, Ngaio!” Tamala sighed, but couldn’t help smiling back at her beautiful baby girl. “What am I going to do with you?”

  It was three and a half exhausting but wonderful months since her daughter’s birth. The moment Doctor Rozek laid the warm wet newborn on Tamala’s chest, she’d realised things would never be the same again. This glorious bundle of life would need constant care and love. She’d looked up at Darren who was grinning from ear to ear.

  He’d said: “Say hello to Ngaio, our beautiful baby girl. Her name is Maori and it has three meanings. The first is clever, just like her mother. The second is a flowering tree. And the third is reflections on the water. I hope you like it?”

  “Nigh-o?” She’d tried out the sound of it, then looked down at the wrinkled, coffee-coloured face of her daughter. “It’s a lovely name.”

  Despite the old fears that conceiving and giving birth on the Moon might lead to problems with the child’s development, Doc Rozek had declared that Ngaio was perfect. In the days that followed, Lian’s analysis of the infant’s genome showed no abnormalities other than the usual inherited ones, and she would be able to correct those, she said.

  This was a huge relief for Tamala and Darren and had also reassured the two other women who had become pregnant in the past few months. She may have been the first to give birth on the Moon, but Tamala wouldn’t be the last. Even if today’s wonderful news of a phone call from Earth was the herald of a supply ship in the near future, it would be too late for the next two Moon mums. They were at six months and five months respectively, which should mean a new baby for Christmas and another early in the New Year.

  Tamala was excited at the thought of two more babies, little playmates for Ngaio, although she fully expected to be going home with her daughter by mid-2088. A sudden image came to mind of three toddlers – maybe more – bouncing around in a Moon-base crèche. But she shook her head to dislodge the thought.

  She had to focus on returning to Malawi and showing off her beautiful daughter and wonderful husband to her family next year. Otherwise thoughts of being marooned here forever would creep in followed by the gut-clenching panic that she had trained herself to avoid. They had enough colonists struggling with depression and panic attacks without Tamala adding to their numbers.

  What was needed was another celebration, a party in the Lunchbox to lift their spirits. It was a month since the last wedding, the third since hers back in February. That was why she wanted to go and see Nadia, to suggest they celebrated this long-awaited contact from Earth with a party, but it didn’t look as though Ngaio was in any mood to sleep.

  “Very well young lady,” she said, reaching into the cot and lifting the delighted infant out. “You and I will have to make a joint delegation to the Governor.”

  She balanced her daughter on her hip while she scooped up the broad band of material she used as a baby carrier. With it looped over one shoulder she settled Ngaio into its fold then swung her around behind her, just like all the mums in Malawi did. With the child snuggled contentedly against her warm back, Tamala set off towards the Governor’s office.

  * * * * *

  Moon, 2087

  Will knocked on the Governor’s door and was summoned inside where he found Thijs Jansen was about to run an animation on Nadia’s window screen.

  “You are just in time, Will,” said Nadia. “Thijs is about to reveal the state of Earth’s remaining communications satellites. Go ahead please, Thijs.”

  “Well, as I was saying, we’ve run a diagnostic check on Earth’s comm-sats several times since the comet and the meteoroid storm. Of the 98 satellites able to receive and transmit vidcalls, or in this case phone calls, only 43 remain in operational condition.”

  He tapped his comm and the image of Earth was surrounded by a swarm of encircling lines, some with green dots orbiting, slightly more with red dots. He tapped his comm again and the red dots disappeared, but there still appeared a bewildering number of lines and green dots.

  “These are the 43 remaining in service. They’ve responded to our tests okay. It looks like plenty but to pick up signals from the Russian transmitter on Komsomolets Island they have to overfly the poles, which leaves us with these…”

  He tapped his comm again and all the green dots and crisscrossing circles disappeared except for a few on polar orbits.

  “As you can see there are only seven operational comm-sats that orbit over the poles. Unfortunately they pass irregularly on orbits of different duration. This means there will be one, two or sometimes three of them in position to pick up a transmission from near the North Pole at times.
And then there will be quite long periods when there are none in range.”

  “Ah,” said Nadia, “that would explain why it took my father three days to get a call through.”

  “Well, if he was transmitting continuously he would have found there are several times each day when a comm-sat will be in position, but there is still some dust disruption, even in the high Arctic.”

  “So, how do we effect reliable communications?”

  “Unfortunately, due to the military transmitter’s configuration, we cannot initiate calls. So if we ask your father to make his transmissions to coincide with the satellites we should achieve clearer and longer contacts. We will need to give him a daily schedule. Whether he can connect us to other population centres is unknown. We are dealing with ancient technology and a cable network that is over a hundred years old, some of it disrupted by earthquakes.”

  “Very well.” She turned to Will. “Do you have some input on this, Will?”

  “No,” he brushed his hand over his head, “not my field, sorry. I was kinda hoping I might be able to talk to my dad in California… see if there’s any news of Ginny. Purely selfish I know, but I just gotta know if she’s still alive.”

  “Of course.” Nadia could see his anxiety. “Next time I speak with my father I will ask if he has any contact that might help.”

  “Thanks. I’ll leave you to it.” He turned and opened the door. “Oh! Hi Tamala. I’m just leaving.”

  “Come in Tamala,” called Nadia. “What can I do for you?”

  “Hello Nadia. Hello Thijs. I was wondering if this excellent news justifies a party to celebrate? The whole colony is buzzing with excitement. It would be good to get everybody together to dance and sing and let off steam.”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea. Perhaps this evening for an hour either side of the shift change, so everybody can attend without disrupting work. Would you set it up with the catering staff please, Tamala?”

  “I will.” Tamala beamed her toothy smile. “Also…”