by Garon Whited
“I think so. I don’t want the job, if that’s what you’re getting at, but I’ll step up and swing at it if I have to.”
“That’s my boy,” he said, and pushed himself to his feet. “When I’m gone, Luna will have Kathy as a commanding officer, and you’ll make a competent executive officer. And I think—I can’t be sure, but I believe—that you’ll make a good commanding officer if you have to do it.”
“Hold on a second,” I protested, rising with him. “That’s all well and good for us, but what about after us? What do we do if there isn’t a handy war to field-test the next generation?”
“That’s your problem,” he told me, cheerfully. “But now I don’t worry about it. I have faith in you two. You’ll figure it out together.”
* * *
The prisoners had to wait for their rides; I wasn’t quite done with the capsules, and I wanted to fire a test capsule to be sure they landed well. So, there was delay of a few hours while I finished a capsule, then another three days to watch it fall to Earth.
In theory, the capsules should hit atmosphere, fire deceleration rockets, and deploy a set of counter-rotating airfoils. The airfoils, once they folded out, were much like helicopter rotors and would allow the capsule to soft-land. One of the modifications I’d made was an explosive locking bolt; it would blow the doors open on landing.
The accommodations weren’t too comfortable. The seat was hard, the rations minimal, and the waste-relief system not at all pleasant. But everything was functional, and that’s all that was required. Still, it was going to be an unpleasant three days in solitary confinement for the passengers.
As far as we could tell, the test capsule worked just fine. It was hard to tell through the cloud cover, but we figured out the infrared telescope and everything looked good.
We lined all seven of them up and brought in the deportees. Captain Carl resumed command of the base in time to see them off.
Some of them didn’t want to get into the capsules. Well, none of them wanted to get into the capsules, but some of them fought it. I’d modified the design, though, so it didn’t require one of our spacesuits. All we had to do was hold each one in place and strap them in.
I didn’t want them strapped down so securely they couldn’t get out of the capsule, so the struggling ones had a hand taped to a strap, tight enough to take a few seconds to wriggle it out. This gave us time to close the door and seal it. Once sealed, it wouldn’t open again until after touchdown.
Svetlana didn’t fight it. She just looked like the most miserable person since the invention of hindsight. Wu and I helped her into the capsule and she settled herself into position.
“Max?” she asked, sounding very tiny.
I paused, one hand on the hatch. “Yes?”
“Will you kiss me, please?”
Wu pretended to examine the overhead. The rest of the Marines were suddenly inspecting the other capsules with great attention.
I leaned down and kissed her, of course. She cried and put her hands around my face until I pulled back. She sobbed quietly, afterward, and I closed the hatch over her.
That was the last time I saw her.
Seven robots, each carrying a long, narrow capsule, trundled out to the injection end of the coilgun. I went with them, driving the rover ahead of the lead ’bot. One by one, they deposited their burdens in the underground loading bay. I lined the capsules up for the loading ’bot and watched it put the first one into the ready position.
“Luna base, the prisoners are prepared for departure.”
“Roger that, sir. Ready to begin firing on your command.”
“Li, are you sure you should be up and around?”
“Why’s that, sir?”
“Because the knock on your head seems to be bothering you. Captain Carl is the one who orders that, remember?”
“Ah. Yes. Sorry, sir.”
“Captain Carl?”
“Go ahead, commander.”
“Ready when you are, sir.”
“Understood. Stand clear.”
“I’m clear,” I told him, and turned off my microphone.
I heard him order Li to start the firing sequence. The piston shot the capsule into the coils and it leaped away into the darkness, followed again and again by quick flashes of the next capsule, and the next, and the next.
If all went well, they would land fairly close to each other—within a dozen miles or so—somewhere in what used to be the northern Mississippi region. If things didn’t go well, they wouldn’t need to worry about it.
The capsules were bright spots in the light of the not-yet-risen Sun, a row of diamonds sliding slowly across the sky. They crept away, shrinking, dwindling, drawing gradually closer to the curve of the Earth.
Good riddance, I thought. When the world moves on, move on with it. Having a sense of history is fine and dandy, if it teaches you something, but clinging to the past at the expense of the present is not smart. Or wise. They were trash—living trash, perhaps—but trash we had to throw out.
Still…
I saw the logic and the need. I didn’t have to like it and I didn’t. Sure, sure—Captain Carl was right. Kathy was right. I agreed with them, and I was right.
Being right doesn’t always feel good.
It wasn’t that I really cared much for the fate of a bunch of sword-wielding, crossbow-shooting idiots. If they could survive, that was fine by me. Their fate was much the same as Yakov and Karl in the frozen bathroom of doom. It was the seventh capsule I regretted. She hadn’t actually done much, and what little she actually did wasn’t because she was a traitor to our race, as such. She just wanted something she couldn’t have—me. That made me feel… not guilty, perhaps, but unhappy.
I couldn’t forgive her for trying to kill Kathy, but I didn’t think she deserved exile.
“Goodbye, Svetlana,” I said, softly.
I turned the ’bots around and headed home.
Epilogue
“If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.”
—Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
That pretty much sums up the start of the citizens of Luna and the unification of the human race. I may be a little off in spots—it’s been decades since then—and I’ve taken a few liberties with actual dialogue, but the gist of it is correct. I did have a rather inconsistent personal diary to draw on to supplement my memory. Captain Carl wanted me to set all that down for posterity, uncensored, unedited, and without any bias but my own. I guess I did it well enough; he didn’t send it back.
But that’s just the beginning of things! So much more has happened that I have to add a bit, just for my own peace of mind. I hate leaving things unfinished.
When we finally settled into a more stable political setup, the population of the base was fifty-nine people, all citizens of the Moon. Some months later, the population began to increase. And, even though I’d been warned, I was surprised. The population count rose to sixty-one when Kathy produced Carl and Carol, a healthy baby boy and his twin sister, all in one go.
Raising them has been interesting. It got even more interesting when Kathy produced Katie and Harvey almost a year later. I’ll say this: I’ve never been bored. A lot of other things—but never bored! Two sets of fraternal twins is enough to keep a man not merely occupied but busy.
“Busy” may not be the best word for it. I’ve run as fast as I could just to break even. There was always too much to do! Putting the Luna back together, salvaging what was left of Heinlein Station, building and placing more hydrogen collectors, finishing the runway for the Luna’s landings, installing a magnetic catapult for her takeoff and landing, building Luna-to-orbit shuttles, reclaiming the Liwei habitat…
And we’ve needed the Liwei habitat in order to raise kids. They can’t grow strong bones in low gravity. Liwei is the only place we can safely let them grow up in full gravity. My goodness, but we’ve tu
rned the place into a floating schoolhouse over the years, complete with weekly shuttle bus service.
Nowadays, I still build ’em, Kathy still flies ’em. Our eldest, Carl and Carol, do both—with help from their younger siblings, Katie and Harvey. This week, they’re in my shop, doing most of the work I used to do. I tend to think things up more than I put things together. Four grown kids make a lot of things easier, but cause new headaches, too.
The family keeps growing.
Kiska hasn’t contributed to the production schedule, but she’s talked to Anne and contributed to the gene pool. I guess that she may never be totally free of Yakov, but I don’t know how to kill a ghost. Things aren’t perfect, I suppose, but whatever her inner scars are like, nobody pokes at them. I suppose it’s not really a surprise that Kiska has some issues with the reproductive process, but she loves the kids.
Meanwhile, she does a bang-up job of being a stand-in mother. She doesn’t exactly live in our quarters—I’ve had to expand the living arrangements of the base to cope with families—but she’s usually there. Unlike Svetlana, Kiska isn’t chasing after my gonads; she’s just… always nearby. Since Kathy and I are two of the people with whom she feels comfortable, Kathy always makes it a point to be extra nice to her. Kiska made it possible for Kathy to pilot while the little hummingbirds-in-training were still too little to fly. Heck, Kiska made it possible for me to work.
Kiska has also been good for Kathy. I don’t think Kathy has ever really had all that many female friends. The whole “girl-talk” thing just wasn’t something Kathy ever did before. I’d say it’s been good for both of them. Kiska is less panicked by other people, and Kathy… well, I think Kathy was glad to have a “human” woman with her while raising children.
Julie hasn’t married, either, but she has a son by Chang and a daughter by Peng. The adults seem to get along wonderfully, and the kids are examples of happy children. There was a little snoopy questioning from some people about the three-way relationship, but that was dealt with fairly quickly. Chang still has a habit of answering questions rather directly, and he’s got a brutal punch. Peng just smiled whenever people asked snoopy questions and referred them to Chang.
It was Chang’s son, Chou, who married Carol. Carol and Chou wasted no time; a few years ago, they produced Jim, my first grandchild. And, I might add, the first grandchild on the Moon. Pardon me while I swell with pride.
Sara decided to have children without bothering to ask anyone for help. Apparently, she’s always intended to be a Mom, but has never been all that keen on men. Presumably, she and Anne know who the father—or fathers—may be but they haven’t bothered to tell anyone else. Nobody’s business but hers. Her eldest girl, Tarisa, married my son, Carl, and they have a daughter named Crystal.
Crystal and Nate—Li’s youngest son—are the closest thing to computer nerds we have. He leans toward software, she leans toward hardware; nice to see her carrying on in the family tradition, sort of. But they’re both better at driving a ’bot than I am, despite my years of experience. Nothing like a child’s reflexes, I suppose.
Being a grandfather wasn’t something I ever thought about until Jim and Crystal came along. It’s a lot more fun than being a father, I’ll say that. Well, less tiring, anyway. The trick lies in being able to send the kids home after they’ve been spoiled rotten. Not that we ever spoil them. Oh no! We teach them a lot of useful things. Truly, we do. And we never ever spoil them. Ever. Really. Would I do such a thing?
For example, even though it will be another year or two before Jim and Crystal can reach the pedals, Kathy’s looking forward to teaching them to fly. Strangely enough, everyone in the family but me seems to have inherited Kathy’s gift for flying, along with her hair. On the other hand, the boys inherited size and muscle from me, and they all have my mental trick for seeing the whole project in a moment of inspiration. Maybe I’m not genetically useless after all.
As far as I’m concerned, Kathy’s still the most beautiful woman on base, with Carol and Katie tied for second. There’s some grey in Kathy’s red these days, but only a fraction of what’s salting my hair—and some of that’s fresh; Katie brought home Captain Carl’s youngest son, Gary, for a formal family dinner last night. Captain Carl and Anne just looked incredibly smug.
The Captain still gets around with a cane, and Anne is a little slower than she used to be, but the Captain is still the Captain. He finally married Anne, but it took a while. I think he spent so long married to his job that it made him edgy about taking up another commitment. Anne says that she had to ask him twice before he agreed, and the second time she asked, she had a drill in his mouth and a needle in her hand. I’m not saying that influenced his decision, of course, but they seem happy with the arrangement.
As an aside, the reverend Wembleson also performed their ceremony, but he didn’t stay with us long enough to handle any of the kids. I still miss him. Martin believed in the understanding and mercy of God, not in the ruthless rules of any religion. If there is a God, He better not let Martin down or He’ll have to answer to me.
Anyway, after the family dinner, Captain Carl and Anne took me aside. Katie has asked for a workup on her possible children with Gary. They told me because, while Kathy has mellowed a lot over the years, she’s still sometimes unpredictable and tempery. See, nobody’s mentioned anything yet about marrying our youngest daughter, and Kathy’s a bit old-fashioned about it these days. I can’t imagine her objecting, but still… people do tend to come to me instead of her.
I don’t even own a shotgun. I guess I could paint the base’s space-defense railguns white. Aren’t fathers supposed to be the touchy ones when it comes to the daughter’s boyfriends?
I keep thinking that maybe we didn’t do the whole parenting thing right, but who am I to say? We did the best we could, considering they were raised by a gorilla that shaves and a redheaded genetic construct while living on the Moon, in a spaceship, and in a floating habitat in Earth orbit. Looking back, I have to say I don’t know how good we really were. I’m sure we weren’t perfect, but that doesn’t seem to have hurt them much. The kids have grown up healthy, well-balanced, and strong in body, heart, and mind.
If we’re measured by our children, I’m three meters tall.
As I write this, I’m sitting in the observation lounge and watching a landing through a meter and a half of homemade lunar glass. The Luna is pouring bright fire from her underside as she comes down on the runway. No matter how often I see it, it’s still a beautiful sight, and made more so by the artistry of my wife and the clever mechanisms built by my offspring. The new forward gear will lock into the coupler and the magnetic catapult will work in reverse as a brake. Kathy will park our lady in the hangar, sing out that she’s home, and we’ll see who and what she’s brought back from the Liwei gardens and classrooms.
We still haven’t heard anything from Earth, nor have we seen any signs of either civilization or survivors, including the seven we sent back down. That’s disappointing—not unexpected, but still, disappointing.
But the clouds aren’t as complete as they were thirty years ago, or even ten years ago. The radiation count is down to something close to normal, and the temperature is slowly starting to drop as plants—lots and lots of plants!—eat up greenhouse gases. Things are clearing up as the planet heals itself.
We’ve already sent probes on an air-scooping slingshot around the world to harvest some nitrogen—it’s one of the things we really need from Earth—and to bring back samples for analysis. Anne hasn’t found anything resembling a deadly microbe, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone. Still, we live in vacuum; that’s good training for nuclear-biological-chemical warfare safety. Keeping your personal air next to you is a good start on keeping someone else’s air away. Who knows what the future will bring?
For one thing, tomorrow. That’s when I start my most complicated and ambitious project. Everything else in the base is about to be someone else’s problem, because I’m not go
ing to have time for anything else. It’s not going to be quick or simple, and I may not live to finish it. I have no doubt that, as I go along, it will turn into a family project.
You see, a week ago, my grandson was sitting beside me as we watched his grandmother launch for Liwei. He asked me why the Earth was so many colors, and I gave him a thumbnail explanation of Earth’s old environment.
“But there’s a nasty microbe in the air?” he asked, once I finished.
“That’s what we’re told. Probably a virus, but I guess it could be a bacterium.”
“We should go see for sure,” he said, with the calm assurance of a six-year-old.
“I think you’re right.”
“I’ll go look,” he said, firmly. I recognized that tone; it comes from his grandmother. “Gramma Kathy will teach me to fly soon. An’ I’ll get Missus Anne to teach me how to clean the air, too.”
“But we don’t have a ship that can go there and still come back,” I pointed out.
“Then we’ll make one,” he informed me.
“Tricky,” I replied, thinking about avionics, computers, heat shielding, and—worst of all—fuel.
“You could build one, Grampa Max. You can build anything!” His expression was one of complete and utter certainty.
Who knows? Maybe he will go down there and take back the Earth. Someone has to try, and by the time he’s ready, I might be finished with his ship. He wants to do it, and he expects me to make it possible.
I’ll be damned before I disappoint him.