Bouncing Off the Moon

by David Gerrold

  Except it doesn't matter how loud you complain, nobody listens—and nobody cares whether your complaint gets addressed or not. It's not their problem. Everybody only cares about their own problems, no one else's. A complaint is about as useful as a morning-after contraceptive pill for men.

  Dad used to say that the only way to get anyone else involved in solving your problem is to make it their problem. But that didn't always work either—if their way of solving problems was to blame them on someone else. Like Mom and Dad always did.

  But even though it didn't really work, speaking up was still better than keeping silent. Because if you're silent, they think you're agreeing. When you complain, when you speak up, when you argue, when you fight back—at least the blood on your hands isn't all your own.

  Watching Alexei in his booth … it was like watching Mom and Dad.

  'Chigger?"

  "Huh?"

  "Showers? Remember?"

  "Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry. I was thinking."

  "That's a nasty habit to get into," said Douglas. "You should only do it in private, and make sure you wash your hands afterward."

  "I said thinking!"

  "I heard you—"

  I pulled off the wig, shrugged out of the dress, peeled out of the slip and panties. I felt weird doing it, like I wasn't just changing clothes as much as changing from one life into another. And Alexei had been right about the luxury of clean underwear.

  The showers were wonderfully hot. Clouds of steam rose around us. It was delicious. This was the first real scrubbing we'd had since we'd left Earth over a week ago. Since before we took the elevator up the Line, since before the SuperTrain. Our last bath was at the motel in Mexico, after the night that Stinky scared himself by almost drowning in the Gulf of Baja. But even that shower hadn't been all that great. The water had been brown and there wasn't much pressure; it had smelled bad and felt worse. We ended up feeling dirtier than when we'd started.

  This was better, much better, almost perfect. The water fell lazily around us in great fat drops, splattering everywhere in slow-motion bursts. It rolled slowly down our faces, down our chests and legs. It dripped like oil off our fingers and our noses and our dicks. Stinky laughed and pointed. Mickey held up his hand and angled a water spray so it arced high and slow across the shower space and splashed across Bobby's chest and face. Bobby yelped, but it didn't take him long to figure out how to splash back—and in no time at all, we were all aiming our respective torrents at each other, laughing wildly in a silly hysterical naked water fight. Everyone got doused in turn. Douglas and Mickey ganged up on me, then Bobby and I and Douglas plastered Mickey. And then Mickey and I and Bobby aimed everything at Douglas. We were making and breaking momentary alliances, one after the other, none of us were safe from betrayal. As soon as someone had been thoroughly splashed, we all turned on his most vigorous attacker and he became the new target of opportunity.

  Finally, still laughing, the water fight ebbed. Even Bobby hollered enough. Then we soaped up slowly, one more time. Our skins were red with heat, shiny with water, and slippery with lather. And for a moment, we just stood and grinned and caught our breaths. We were safe on Luna, Douglas and Bobby and me. And Mickey. It was a truly happy moment for each of us.

  "We must have used a lot of water," I said, just to have something to say.

  "We didn't use it up," said Mickey. "It just goes round and round."

  Douglas was soaping his head. He said thoughtfully, "This shaft looks like it makes a lot of water, doesn't it, Mickey? I can't see why the corporation would abandon it as not cost-effective."

  Mickey shrugged. "They would if they were deliberately trying to set up a cover operation for funneling money without paying taxes."

  "Do you think that's what they did?"

  "I've heard speculations. More likely, Alexei was telling the truth. This site is too far away to make shipping water cost-effective. Gagarin is pulling enough water out of the crust, they don't need to worry about sites like this for a long time. Maybe someday the price of water will be high enough, or there'll be a settlement close by, or Alexei will go into farming and start growing his own catfish or cactus or whatever."

  It sounded convincing, the way Mickey said it, but the same way I was wondering about Alexei, I was starting to wonder about Mickey too. And I was thinking about speaking up—doing the annoying brother thing—until Douglas interrupted.

  "Chigger?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Remember that question that Judge Griffith asked you?"

  "Which one—?"

  "About telling your left from your right? How do you tell someone else which is which?"

  "Yeah, what about it?"

  "You gave Judge Griffith the wrong answer."

  "No, I didn't. The question isn't answerable."

  "Oh, yes it is." He pointed at me. "The left one always hangs lower."

  "Huh?" And then I got it. A quick look at Bobby, Mickey, and Douglas confirmed it.

  I blushed and laughed at the same time. And then I splashed him, because what else could I do, so he splashed me back, and then Bobby joined in, aiming his shower spray with both hands, and then Mickey tco, and then everyone was shrieking as the water fight began again—

  COUSINS

  When we got out of the showers, Alexei had already left. That wasn't a surprise, he had told us he would be gone; he had a water-meeting to go to. Actually, it wasn't just about water, it was also about nitrogen. "Water is gold, but nitrogen is silver. We are building new ammonia plant," he explained. "This means electricity. We will have to put up more solar panels. But we cannot build our own panels unless we build solar-cell plant. But solar-cell manufacturing plant uses as much power as small city. So we cannot make enough panels to make enough electricity to make panels because we cannot make enough panels. Is circular dilemma, da. Is hard to be invisible—we cannot buy enough electricity off the lines without someone wondering where electricity is going. So we have to use invisible electricity, of which there is not enough."

  He waggled his finger at Mickey and Douglas. "You think everything on Luna arrives by magic? No, it does not. Everything is connected to everything else. Everything is built on top of everything else. Is not enough electricity to make more electricity, so is not enough electricity to make ammonia or nitrogen, so we cannot make enough gas to fill all the spaces we can make. And we can make lots of space on Luna, but even if we do, without nitrogen, we cannot make soil to grow things or gas to breathe. And problem is much more complex than I can explain here. I give you word of advice. If anyone asks you to be cousin, say no. You already have cousin in Krislov and he is crazy cousin enough for you. I go now. You take shower, I be gone when you are done. Do not go crazy from silence." He gave us all enthusiastic Russian kisses on both cheeks and pushed us toward the water. "Take as long as you want. Shower is free here, it goes round and round and never goes anywhere. More than enough. Enjoy. Least I can do is show you real Loonie household. Dos vedanya."

  I didn't understand half of what he'd said. But Douglas and Mickey seemed to think it made sense. We talked about it, after our shower, while we were drying off under the heat lamps. It was that place where economics and science collided—and if you had either bad economics or bad science, you usually ended up with a disaster. Like a rebellion, a coup, a war, a collapse—

  "Is that what's happening now?"

  "You heard him talking about cousins, didn't you?"

  I thought back. "Only a couple of times."

  Mickey said, "How do you think Luna got built? Especially invisible Luna?"

  I shrugged. I hadn't given it any thought.

  "People do favors for each other. They form tribes. Membership in a tribe makes you a cousin. You help your cousins, they help you. Families with cousins survive better than families without. Invisible Luna has fifteen major tribes and a couple hundred minor ones. The tribes would like to see Luna independent."

  "But Luna is independent. Isn't it?"
/>
  "On paper."

  "I don't understand."

  "Most people don't. Follow the money. When you do that, you see that the Lunar Authority is still controlled by Earth-based corporations."

  "Oh."

  "And invisible Luna wants to revoke that charter."

  "So they really are subversives."

  Mickey shrugged. "I think they're playing at being subversive. They don't have the power to make a difference. Not the political power, not the electrical power, not the processing power—but they're having a great time talking about what they would do if they had the power. Just like all dreamers—"

  "Processing power?" I asked, probably with a little too much innocence.

  "Like an intelligence engine."

  "What do they need that for?"

  "Do you know how an intelligence engine works?"

  "Yeah, sort of. It's like a computer with a 'do-what-I-mean' button. You tell it what you want. It tells you how to make it happen."

  "Right. That's close enough. Well, if invisible Luna had a lethetic intelligence engine, it could tell them six ways how to get the electricity they need and a dozen more ways to get the political power. Intelligence engines are great equalizers. That's why some people think they're destabilizing influences and others think they should be mass-produced."

  Now Douglas jumped into the discussion. "Some people think that the latest generation of lethetic engines have demonstrated true self-awareness. And that raises a whole bunch of questions about everything—what's the nature of sentience? Can machines have souls? Do they come from God? Or some other source of soulness? And if they are truly self-aware, then you can't buy and sell them, can you? And you can't mass-produce them either, because that's … I don't know, what? Do they get to vote? Will they outthink us? Outvote us? If they're smarter than us, are they going to steal our world out from under us? Or what?"

  "Yep," agreed Mickey, "And that complicates the issue even more. If they are self-aware, what do the intelligence engines think about this? Where do they want to be?"

  There was something about the way he said it. I looked up, and he was looking straight at me. Did he know? Did he suspect? How could he not?

  "Hey!" shouted Stinky suddenly. "Where's my monkey?! I can't find my monkey! I left it sitting right here on this bench, waiting for me when we got into the showers, and now it's gone!"

  "Are you sure you left it there?" Douglas asked. "Maybe you left it on your bed?"

  "No, I left it right there—I remember! I told it to wait for me."

  "Alexei!" Mickey called. "Are you still here? Alexei?" Still naked, he padded over to a nearby console and punched some buttons. "No, he's gone. He and Mr. Beagle left thirty minutes ago."

  "Are you saying he took the monkey—?" Douglas whispered to Mickey.

  But not soft enough. Stinky heard it anyway. "He stole my monkey! Alexei stole my monkey! I want it back!" He started shrieking and crying. It wasn't fair. He'd already lost everything else—his home, his mom, his dad. Now he'd lost the only toy he had left. I felt like shit.

  FIRE AND ICE

  When Douglas tried to comfort Stinky, I watched Mickey. He was ashen-faced. He was taking this more serious than anyone.

  Still naked, he climbed up to Alexei's office and began making phone calls. In private. That was interesting. At least he didn't scream and shout like Alexei did. I wondered if Alexei was monitoring everything we did here. Sure, why not? Privacy had died a long time ago. We'd learned that in school. The only defense anyone had against snoopers was not to care—live every moment as if everyone is watching. The only privacy left is inside your head.

  While Mickey was upstairs on the phone, Douglas tucked Stinky into bed, promising we'd find his monkey no matter what. Then I gave Stinky a hug and told him his monkey was safe and not to worry. And then Douglas pulled me out of there and told me not to get Stinky's hopes up. If Alexei had stolen the monkey, and it sure looked like he had, then we'd probably never see it again, and we had a bigger problem anyway. If Alexei had the monkey now, he didn't need us anymore, and if he was too big a coward to terminate us himself, then he was probably sending someone else to do it. And then I told him that the monkey wasn't the problem, it was Mickey. Didn't it strike him as very odd that Mickey was taking the disappearance of the monkey so hard? And why was Mickey making so many emergency phone calls now? And I'm really sorry to have to say this, Douglas, especially because I think he's nice too, I really do, but I think that Mickey knows a lot more than he's saying.

  And then Douglas started to tell me that my imagination and my paranoia were dancing a dangerous duet, and he put on the Daddy voice and got all serious and comforting, and told me how we'd been through a lot and it was normal to worry about all kinds of impossible stuff, but I should really leave this to the grown-ups to handle—and that's when I stopped him again and reminded him of the promise he'd made to me back on the cargo pod, that he'd never do this again, never again shut me out of a decision, no matter how silly I might sound at the time. And he got it and shut up and gulped an apology, and said, "You're right, I was acting like Dad, wasn't I?" Which was so insightful that I actually complimented him. I gave him a little punch on the arm and said, "That's good, my weird older brother. We might make you into a human being yet." And then we both laughed a little, even though we were in a serious mess. At least, we were going to handle it like brothers.

  So we talked about it for a bit, and I told him everything I knew—well, almost everything; there was one piece of information I left out—but I told him everything else I'd seen and thought about.

  And then I added one more thing, which hurt me to say more than anything else I'd ever said in my life—even more than asking for a divorce from Mom and Dad. "I don't want to say this, Douglas, because I don't ever want to hurt you. And I've never seen you so happy in your life as you've been since you met Mickey. But I have to say it and you have to think about it. You only met Mickey what?—a week ago? Didn't you ever stop to ask, who is he really? And what does he see in you? I mean, I love you, you're my brother, I don't have a choice. But he's not your brother, he does have a choice, so you have to ask, why? I can see why you like him. He's good-looking and he's nice and he's smart—but why does he like you? I don't mean to say you're ugly, Douglas, you're not—but we're not going to see your picture on the cover of PrettyBoy either. And it's not that you're not nice, you are in a geeky sort of way, but you're not nice in that way that makes people want to hang out with you. And you're smarter than anybody else I've ever met in the whole world, but it's not street smarts like Mickey has; it's book smarts, which is exciting only to other people who are book-smart and absolutely boring to everybody else. The same way I am with my music. Remember the time I tried to explain to you that the blues were called that because of the blue note, the flatted fifth that gave them their special sound? And you thought that was the most boring thing you'd ever heard? Well, that's what you're like when you start talking economic bonding among the polycorporates and crap like like that. So you gotta ask yourself, Douglas, just why is Mickey hanging out with us? What does he want?"

  And Douglas didn't answer right away, he just sat down on theedge of the inflatable bed and hung his head down and stared at his bare feet, and as bad as I'd felt when Stinky started crying for his missing monkey, I felt a thousand times worse now. The tears were silently rolling down Douglas's cheeks and falling lazily to the floor. He didn't sob. He just let the water flow.

  He didn't get angry, he didn't hit me—I wish he would have taken a swing, I certainly deserved it—but he didn't even argue. That's what hurt the most—that he saw the truth in what I was saying here. And finally, after a long moment, he said, "I've been asking myself that question from the very beginning, Charles. Why am I so lucky? What did I do right? And then after we found out what was going on—or at least, what we thought was going on—yeah, I started thinking the same things you did. And it always comes back to the same question. W
hat does he see in me? And I can't see anything he could see in me except the monkey—so yeah, Charles, maybe you're right and maybe he's using us, just like Alexei. Only I thought we'd be smart and use him to get off the planet and off to a colony, and at least we'd get that far. Only we're playing with the big kids here, aren't we—?"

  It was time to undo some of the damage. As much as could be undone.

  "Douglas—" I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder. "I can think of a lot of reasons why someone would care about you. And so can you. All you gotta do is be who you really are—"

  Except when I said it, it sounded really stupid.

  "I'm such a jerk," he said. He sounded defeated.

  "No, you're not."

  "I felt so lucky. I wanted to believe so badly, I really did—I thought I was smart enough to know better, but I wasn't. I'm just as stupid as everyone else."

  "Then you're normal."

  He almost smiled. He put his hand on mine. "Thanks for sticking by me, Charles."

  "You're my brother. I have to."

  "Yeah. That's the same thing I said, when I grabbed your hand back at Barringer Meteor crater. You're my brother. I have to."

  Mickey came back then, still naked—we all were—in the excitement, we'd forgotten about clothes. "What's going on, fellas?" He looked from one to the other of us. From the expression on his face, he looked as if he already knew.

  Douglas stood up and crossed to the rack that served as a closet. He grabbed a jumpsuit for himself, tossed one to Mickey, found a smaller one for me.

  Mickey held the jumpsuit in his hands, but made no move to put it on. He looked across to Douglas, "What's going on, Douglas?"

  "Who do you work for, Mickey?" Douglas's voice was very cold.

  Mickey let out the breath he was holding. He sagged where he stood. He looked sad and deflated. "I was hoping I'd have more time before you figured it out. I was hoping—"