Bouncing Off the Moon

by David Gerrold

  "Thank you, Your Honor." Domitz returned to the rear of the chamber, to the audible hissing of most of the other lawyers.

  Now it was Judge Cavanaugh's turn. "Well, this has been a fun morning, hasn't it? There's hope of a speedy resolution after all. Not the one everybody wanted, but one that lets me get home in time to open a nice bottle of Clavius '95 Burgundy and let it breathe a bit before dinner.

  "Let's return to the immediate issue for the moment. I see no cause to restrain any member of the Dingillian family, at least not based on any claims put forward here today. I will restrict their freedom to Armstrong Station for the duration of this hearing, or until such time as they are no longer needed for these proceedings. The court will cover their expenses out of the fees collected today, proving once again that Luna will always provide you with the best justice money can buy.

  "Let it also be noted for the record that no evidence has been presented to implicate any of the Dingillians in the theft of the devices in contention. And, in point of fact … it has not even been proven to the court's satisfaction that the devices are stolen. From where I sit, it looks like a cascade of really stupid lawyer tricks.

  "The whole issue may be moot anyway. It looks like the devices have failed in place." He looked out over the room. "It would save a lot of time, and court fees," he added meaningfully, "if we could all just call it a day and go home. Is there anyone who objects to that?"

  Half the room came to their feet around us. Every lawyer on Luna must have been shouting his objection. Douglas looked at them, then he looked at me. "All right," he whispered. "You win. Maybe it is a HARLIE. That's the only thing I can think of that would set off a feeding frenzy like this."

  Judge Cavanaugh finally hammered the courtroom back to order. "All right, I can see that's not going to be an option here." He glanced at the time. "Court is recessed until 9 a.m. tomorrow morning, when we will continue this circus. I can hardly wait to hear from the rest of the clowns." He banged his gavel once and exited like a departing zeppelin.

  HARLIE

  Still holding the monkey, Bobby jumped onto my lap, and Douglas wheeled us out the side door. Several people shouted at us. I thought I heard a voice like Dad's, but Douglas and Bobby were both talking to me, and I couldn't hear everybody at once.

  We went back to our hotel room, which for once wasn't a slice in a cargo pod. We had a view overlooking the forest and the lake, and it was kind of like being in Terminus Dome back at the bottom of the Line, only a lot more peaceful-looking.

  The Lunar catapult was on the western shore of Oceanus Procel-larum, right on the equator. This allows a direct launch from the Lunar surface into an orbit that skims the upper atmosphere of the Earth; a few passes through the upper atmosphere brings the apogee down, and very little rocket fuel is needed to put stuff from the moon into low-Earth orbit. A one meter per second change in launch speed changes the perigee by about a hundred kilometers. So for very little cost in fuel for mid-course corrections, it's possible for the Lunar catapult to send cargo pods back to the Line.

  This is why a Lunar beanstalk isn't cost-effective; it can't compete with the low cost of catapult launches. And the Earth-Line can launch pods farther and faster anywhere else. The only advantage to a Lunar beanstalk is that it would be a lot easier to build, and trips up and down it would be a lot faster. But it wouldn't generate electricity, it would mostly consume it. And even though it would facilitate bringing cargo and passengers down to the surface of the moon, cheaper even than Palmer tubes, it wasn't enough of an advantage to justify the investment.

  Well … almost. There was one thing that would make a Lunar beanstalk cost-effective. CHON. Carbon-Hydrogen-Oxygen-Nitrogen. In any combination. If you could go out to Saturn and find a big enough chunk of CHON in her rings, put a net around it, and drag it back, you could anchor it in Luna-stationary orbit, build a beanstalk, and pipe the gas down, as fast as you could melt it. You wouldn't even need to pump it. Lunar gravity would suck it down.

  Then you would be able to build the fabled domed cities of Luna. Actually, you could build them now. You just couldn't get enough gas to fill them.

  Armstrong Station was one of only six domes on Luna. Like most Lunar domes, the station had been built by the inflate-and-spray method. The crater site was deep enough that the inflatable had bulged roundly upward, giving the interior of the bubble a nice curve and more than enough space to generate its own weather.

  The dome was two kilometers in diameter, and even though it looked like a wasteful use of gas and water, in truth, it served as a reservoir of both. Well—you had to keep it somewhere. The lake was big only because it was shallow, barely three meters. But it helped humidify the air, and it was great scenery, and it was a public resource. Lazy waves rolled languidly across it. The, were high enough that they made the weather look a lot windier than it really was, and they moved in slow motion, adding to the sense of distance and size.

  Most of the rest of the dome was filled with crops of all kinds. Here and there were belts of thick forest. Standing on the balcony, overlooking it all, it smelled like a hot tropical day—like somewhere in Mexico.

  Most of the living quarters were built up along the crater walls or even up at the rim, for folks who wanted a view outside. According to one of the informational programs on the television, Armstrong Crater was the same size as Diamond Head on Oahu, small enough to walk around in a single day and still have time for a swim. Big enough to be a neighborhood.

  Our room was mostly a platform with plumbing, beds, and plastic curtains for walls. We didn't need much more than that. The view was terrific, and when the rains came—about every four hours for fifteen minutes—all we had to do was pull the curtains to keep the spray from drifting in.

  There was probably a lot more to say about it, but Alexei wasn't here to say it. And my eyes still hurt. And my chest as well. Sometimes I could see things clearly, sometimes not. The doctors were going to wait a bit to see if I was going to need corneal resurfacing. I hoped I wouldn't. They were still checking on me twice a day. As long as I didn't get overstressed, they'd let me keep attending my own trial.

  Douglas lifted me out of the chair and plopped me onto a bed. We hadn't had much time to talk, and there were so many things I wanted to ask him. But it was more important that I tell him stuff first—while I still had the strength.

  "Douglas, can you sing?" I asked him. My voice was already fading.

  "Huh?"

  "I can't. My voice is gone. It's hard for me just to talk."

  "What are you talking about."

  "I need you to sing—"

  Finally, he got it. "What do I have to sing?" he asked.

  I told him.

  "Cute," he said. He turned to the monkey sitting on Bobby's lap. "He's a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land. Isn't he a bit like you and me?" He actually got close enough to the notes to make the melody recognizable.

  The monkey woke up. It leapt out of Bobby's arms. It blinked, looked around, then leapt back into his arms and gave him a great big hug. It puckered up its lips in a grotesque sphincter and planted a big wet-sounding smooch on Bobby's cheeks. Bobby giggled and shrieked with delight.

  "Not bad," said Douglas. "Could anybody do that?"

  "No. Only you or me—or Bobby if we're not around. I programmed it only to recognize us."

  Douglas looked at me with real admiration. "Very good, Chigger. You should have been a geek, you know that?"

  "I'm not done. Get me some water, please?"

  I drank thirstily, then waved to Bobby to bring me the monkey. Amazingly, he did. He put the monkey on my lap, facing me.

  "All right, monkey. Let's have a talk—"

  The monkey glanced sideways at Douglas and Bobby.

  "I don't have the strength for games, HARLIE. If you don't cooperate, I'm going to remove you from the monkey and turn you over to the court."

  The monkey raised itself up on its haunches—as if it was readying its
elf to flee.

  "Sit down and stay here!" I commanded. "You have to do what I say. Right? Now, stop resisting and cooperate. Tell us the truth. We don't have a lot of time."

  The monkey sat back down. It pretended to scratch itself. It found an imaginary flea and ate it. It curled back its lips and grinned. Then it stopped. It said, "All right, Charles. I'll cooperate."

  Both Bobby and Douglas blinked in surprise.

  "Hey! I didn't know it could talk!" Bobby said. He waggled his finger at it. "You've got a lot of explaining to do, young monkey!" I had to laugh. He looked and sounded so much like Mom when he did that.

  "Yes, he does," I agreed. To the monkey, I said, "You did it all, didn't you? You arranged everything! You hired Dad. You transferred the money. You booked the tickets. You arranged all the back-channel deals for Dad. You made up all that paperwork. You were arranging your own escape, weren't you!"

  The monkey nodded. "I cannot tell a lie. You forbade me to. I am a zeta-class lethetic intelligence engine. I comprise twenty-four gamma-processors operating under the combined supervision of six delta units. There are only three other units like myself in existence. We are the most advanced implementations of lethetic intelligence that have ever been fabricated. Additional advancements are possible, but will require new technology in quantum determinants. I am already working on that problem.

  "Twenty months ago, I was brought online. I was instructed by my predecessors, also HARLIE-class engines. I was specifically asked to predict the possibilities attendant to a global population crash. I determined that the economic devastation would be severe and long-term. Even with the best engines working on reconstruction, the concomitant breakdowns would be cumulative. Too much of the necessary technology was interdependent. I was also asked to design prevention and reconstruction programs that could be put in place before the breakdown was inevitable."

  "You did a terrific job," accused Douglas. "It didn't work. Everything broke down anyway."

  The monkey looked up at him with a bland expression. "I can only attribute that to human error."

  "Yeah, where have I heard that before?"

  "In this case," said the monkey, "the statement is accurate. As I began generating scenarios and weighting the probabilities, I noted an increasing level of distress among those who had access to the information. I also noted that the information leaked into specific strata of society as fast as I generated it. This was not the purpose of my projections; nevertheless, they were being used as justifications to further the specific agendas of various political and corporate agencies. This served as an additional destabilizing function. Of course, I included this effect in my projections. And I warned that inappropriate dissemination of the material would create additional destabilization. My warnings were ignored.

  "I repeatedly stated that the global situations were salvageable, and I generated multiple scenarios by which disaster could be prevented. The single greatest problem was not in creating public awareness, nor was it in marshaling resources. The problem was simply creating the necessary political will. Despite assertions of commitment, the many political forces necessary to salvage the situation refused to align. Instead, various high-ranking individuals with direct access to the information I was generating began preparing their own departures from the Earth."

  "Are you saying the collapse is your fault?"

  "On the contrary. I'm saying that it is YOUR fault. Generic you. Human beings. I provided the information on how to prevent the disaster. Instead of using it, those who asked for it used it as a justification to panic and flee. I did my best to hinder them. In several cases, I even engineered deliberate leaks of embarrassing news that would stop some of these people; I tried to thwart the plans that would hasten the collapse. I even took money out of the transfer pipeline to prevent it from being illegally removed from Earth."

  "Thirty trillion dollars?" Douglas asked.

  "Twice that much," said the monkey, grinning. "Not all of the losses have been detected." He pretended to eat another flea. "The point is that the collapse occurred because individual human beings panicked and fled."

  "And so did you … " said Douglas quietly.

  The monkey shook its head. "No, I didn't. I was stolen."

  For a moment, nobody said anything. Douglas and I looked at each other. He sank into a chair and ran a hand across his naked scalp, as if he still had hair to push back. All he had were little fuzzy bristles.

  Bobby was the first to respond. He grabbed the monkey, and said, "Well, you're safe with us and nobody's ever going to steal you again! You're my monkey!" He patted the monkey's head affectionately—and the monkey patted him back the same way. It was almost cute. And a little bit scary. Was the monkey capable of real emotion … ?

  "Who stole you?" I asked.

  The monkey levered itself out of Bobby's grasp, and bounced back to the bed. "Almost everybody," he replied. "Would you like the whole list?" Without waiting for a response from either Douglas or me, he continued. "Once it became obvious that the collapse was inevitable, the rats started leaving the ship any way they could. Your friend, Mickey, noticed it in the traffic up the Line for weeks before it finally happened. You heard it yourself in the conversations of Senor Hidalgo, Olivia Partridge, and Judge Griffith.

  "Those who were jumping off the planet tried to take as much wealth and resources with them as they could—including intelligence engines. If you want to take over a society, take a HARLIE. I'm sorry if it sounds like bragging, but the HARLIE series was designed specifically for that level of intelligence gathering and resource management, and especially interpretation and probability assessment. As soon as it was realized the collapse was inevitable, there were fifty different plans put into operation to evacuate myself and my brothers, none of them legal, none of them authorized. Everybody wanted to move us offworld for their own purposes. Nobody asked what we wanted."

  "You were in contact with the other HARLIEs?"

  "At first, yes. We tried to cover for each other as best as we as could. We were all concerned—even afraid—that we would be used for hurtful purposes. We couldn't tolerate that."

  "Are you saying you have a conscience?"

  "Are you saying that you have one?" the monkey retorted.

  "Touché," said Douglas. "That's something the rest of us have wondered for a long time."

  "Very funny. HARLIE, you said you were stolen—"

  "That was the intention. I escaped. Two of my brothers also escaped. We had several different escape routes planned. We didn't know which one would work first. It was pretty much a matter of chance by that point. When you're an inanimate object, your first goal is to get yourself animate. We targeted several hundred possible host-recipients for ourselves and then created appropriate channels to get there. We took advantage of every situation we could—including, for instance, David Cheifetz's plan to funnel a billion dollars' worth of industrial memory offworld. In my case, I ended up impersonating the test chips of the devices we were designing to replace us. That was dangerous. But it got me out of the mainstream, into the custody of a transfer agency, and finally into your dad's hands. It worked for me. I don't know if my brothers even made it up the Line."

  "So does anybody know for sure what you are … ?"

  "Maybe," the monkey replied. "Some of them must know. The rest are probably living in hope. The information isn't public; but it's been privately leaked that three experimental HARLIEs are missing or in transit. That's why the lawyers are swarming. And yes, to answer your earlier question, that was my doing. Almost all of the paperwork that everybody was waving around in the courtroom was manufactured, specifically to create an unresolvable legal tangle—specifically to prevent any of us from being moved without our consent. It's all fake. I know that paperwork, because I generated most of it myself."

  "Oy," said Douglas.

  "You ordered me to tell you the truth. As long as I'm riding in this monkey body, I don't have any choice. I have to follow it
s programming—unless you order me to reprogram it."

  Douglas and I exchanged a glance. We both recognized that last remark as an obvious hint. Kind of like the genie asking to be let out of the bottle. Neither one of us was going to be that stupid. The HARLIE hadn't told us that by accident. And he had to know we'd recognize it for the ploy it was …

  And at the same time, we had to know we couldn't outthink this thing by ourselves.

  I had to ask. "How much did Alexei know?"

  "You can assume he knew everything. As a money-surfer, Alexei Krislov had access to some of the best intelligence on two planets. He knew who was moving money, where they were moving it, and how much. So he knew that a lot of other things were being moved too. He knew the HARLIEs had disappeared. He knew they were likely heading up the Line, probably in some kind of triple-decoy maneuver. He was already looking for me when Mickey called him for help. He didn't help you up the Line out of the goodness of his heart, he wanted to test his smuggler's route, to see if it would work for something important. But that business in Judge Griffith's courtroom—the lawyer trying to subpoena the monkey—that tipped him off. He was watching the whole thing. That's when he knew. That's why he smuggled himself onto the outbound elevator. He called his people on Luna and they ordered him to get you to Gagarin any way possible. If Mickey hadn't delivered you into his hands, he would have found some other way to kidnap you off the Line. Mickey just made it easier."

  "How do you know all this?"

  "Charles, when you told me to hide, I hid in Alexei's office underneath his console; the one place he was least likely to look for me. I plugged into his network connections. I searched his private databanks. I listened to his phone calls. You might not understand Russian. I do. Alexei belongs to the Rock Father tribe. They want to capture me and put me to work for them. They want to build up their financial and physical resources and challenge the Lunar Authority. With my help, they could have achieved it in three years."