To Crush the Moon

by Wil McCarthy

  All of this was charged to King Bruno's accounts. No private charity or government agency seemed prepared to take charge of these people, for fear of an implied obligation to care for their thousands of shipmates. Even if those revivals were free—which they surely would not be—the housing costs alone would be considerable. There weren't that many vacant apartments in the whole of Earth!

  As for Newhope herself, the navy guided her—bodies and all—into a parking orbit in the lower Kuiper Belt. There to remain, like the Instelnet message-ghosts, until some brighter future should happen along.

  “Appalling,” Bruno said to his wife as they lounged that night in their bed on Tongatapu. “Have we not wealth enough?”

  “It's more a matter of space,” she reminded him. “If we're to have any wilderness at all, we must contain urban growth on the habitable worlds, and our own children—natural-born humans with no sins on their shoulders—must have the first pick of what growth we allow. Or do you propose a Queendom without children? I confess, I can't see the point of that.”

  “Mmm,” Bruno grumbled. “No one volunteers to die anymore. To make a bit of space.”

  “Would you?” the queen asked with a bitter-tinged laugh.

  “No,” he admitted. Not while the wormhole project remained incomplete. Indeed, he had dozens of incomplete projects which held the promise of a better life for all. “But we must do something, you and I.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, taking his hand. “We must. This trickle of refugees has begun to add up. We could almost fill a city.”

  “A floating city?” he suggested.

  She made an unhappy face. “Not another one, dear. Please. The oceans need to breathe.”

  “The oceans are vast. One more won't hurt.”

  “But a hundred more,” she said. “A thousand more. Where does it stop? Why don't you revive your Lunar program instead?”

  It was Bruno's turn to laugh, stroking Tamra's hand against the wellcloth sheets. “It was you, my dear, who ordered a halt to it. Too many displacements, you said. Too much economic disruption, including the loss of one of history's greatest landmarks. And you were right: sparsely domed though it may be, the moon is proud home to four million people. Where shall I put them?”

  “On a floating city,” she said, and sighed. “It's like a puzzle. Slide one piece and the others have to move. To make an opening, you've got to close one. And yet, the alternative is death.”

  “So say the Fatalists,” Bruno chided. “Do they lack imagination? Do we? ‘Everything has an end,' they insist. ‘Let's engineer it, peacefully and with love.' By which they mean the vaporization of innocents, the sabotage of shielded archives. Bah! I say everything has a solution, and we've only to find it.”

  Tamra kissed him firmly. “And I, my darling, say that everyone must sleep. Come, let's have a bit of darkness.”

  And suddenly, for no discernible reason, Bruno knew just what to do about his wormhole problem. “Egad!” he said, grabbing for the sketchplate he theoretically kept on his nightstand for moments like this. But theory and practice were only lightly acquainted; the sketchplate wasn't there. Bruno searched the area for a second or two, but the idea was hot on the tip of his brain, and though his fatigue had vanished he was nevertheless terrified he would fall asleep or suffer some distraction, or that the idea would simply trickle away before he could record it.

  In desperation, he slid to the floor and began scribbling there with his finger. The wellstone, long accustomed to such behavior, responded with trails of black obsidian in its surface of faux bleached wood. These rough figures arranged themselves into elegant numbers and symbols as the king's finger raced ahead. “There's a long axis,” he muttered. “Indeed, indeed. Where the mass distribution falls away as a function of Z, it drives an instability in X and Y. But it needn't! We shall present the spherical opening with a cylindrical plug!”

  Her Majesty Queen Tamra was also accustomed to these intellectual fits and spasms—her husband's renowned mind was anything but linear—and she knew better than to disturb him in the midst of one. Indeed, she watched with sleepy interest for a few minutes as the obsidian equations spread upward along one wall, and were joined by holographic diagrams: spheres and cylinders surrounded by a forest of right triangles.

  “Two spheres,” Bruno said to himself. “They're one and the same—the real and imaginary component of a single object—but to an observer that's not evident. How could it be? And the observer's viewpoint is valid, yes? Or relativity be damned. Two positions in real space, connected by a line. By a cylinder.”

  The queen was no mathematician, but she'd seen enough of her husband's work to know he was trying—vainly trying—to sketch out some four-dimensional object or relationship in a 3-D image.

  Fortunately their bedroom was a suite whose outer chamber could be sealed off from both the outside world and the bedchamber itself. And so, sighing, the Queen of Sol stooped to kiss her king upon the shoulder, then dragged her blankets from the bed and stumbled off to sleep on the couch. For the one message she could read clearly in the walls, albeit implicit, was, This will be a long night, dear. Don't wait up.

  When Conrad Ethel Mursk opened his eyes, he was astonished to see something other than the afterlife. There were no angels, no clouds, no twinkling stars, and certainly no God or devil waiting to judge him. Instead, there were green walls and white examination tables, and a young-looking woman with copper hair and eyes the color of jade, dressed in powder-blue medical pyjamas.

  “I'm not dead,” he said, and was surprised by the clarity of his voice. He sat up, and was surprised by the pull of gravity. Not grav lasers or spin-gee but planetary gravity. Then he charmingly added, “Where the hell am I?”

  The woman was fiddling with controls of some sort behind Conrad's headrest, and in sitting up he had placed his viewpoint only centimeters from her torso, so that she appeared mainly as a pair of breasts. Still, he caught her smile.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Mursk. How do you feel?”

  “I don't know,” he said, pausing for a moment to take stock of himself, to feel his body up and down for numbness or injury. “I suppose I feel all right, all things considered. Is this Sorrow?”

  She chuckled. “This is Earth. More specifically, Frostbite Trauma Center in the city of Glacia in Victoria Land, Antarctica.”

  “Oh,” he said, digesting that. “What year?”

  She told him, and he heard a low, pathetic groan escape from his lips. He'd been gone a long time—so long that the numbers barely made sense. A thousand years? Forty childhoods? Fifty thousand episodes of Barnes and Manetti? The Queendom he knew was ancient history. And so was he.

  “Shit,” he said. “Wow. How's my crew?”

  “All fine,” the woman assured him, now stepping back to give him a view of something other than her chest. “We've woken you last, since your reconstruction was the most difficult.”

  “I was burned,” he remembered suddenly. “The coolant lines blew out. There was this swarm of damage-control robots, just pouring out of the fax machine, draining the mass buffers, hustling us down into storage and trying to stop the air leak. But the ship was coming apart, and somebody had to be last in line. I remember thinking, We tried. We did our best, but this is where it ends.”

  “You were fortunate,” the woman said. “It could have been a lot worse.”

  “Hmm,” he answered, mulling over the sheer obviousness of that. “It seems I'm in your debt. Or someone's. What about the passengers? We had twenty-five thousand in cold sleep.”

  Her expression shifted, and he had the sense she was choosing her next words carefully. “Well, yes. It should be possible to recover most of them at some point. But sleep is a generous term here, don't you think? Some of those people were already partially decomposed when you froze them.”

  “It was a rescue mission,” Conrad said vaguely. And right away he could see how stupid his plans had been, how pointlessly optimistic. The Queendom of Sol c
ould help his countrymen, yes; it had the wealth, the technology, the notable absence of psychotic leadership and sociopolitical collapse. The Queendom of his dreams would have done exactly that. But the Queendom of the real, physical universe had problems of its own—didn't every place? A pile of dead colonists would be a curiosity at best, an unwelcome intrusion at worst.

  “I'm an idiot,” he said. And it was true; he'd come all this way on the theory that a faint hope was better than none. But if the faint hope didn't pan out, then it was as good as none. Or worse.

  “I doubt that,” the woman answered, offering him a handshake. “Angela Proud Rumson, Doctor of Medicine and Extrapolative Cosmetics.”

  He examined her hand for a moment—it looked absurdly soft, like she'd never used it—and then shook it. It was soft.

  “Conrad Mursk,” he said, and was about to add a title or two of his own. But what was the point in that? What status did he hold here? What he said instead was, “Refugee.”

  “Very pleased to meet you.”

  “Can I see my friends now?”

  Angela Proud Rumson's smile was reserved. “Tomorrow, if you please. They've gone to their temporary quarters already, and I'm expected to hold you for observation. Test drive the old nervous system, make sure we've done all the wiring correctly. Shall we say twelve hours?”

  chapter four

  in which fatalism is

  confronted by action

  Perhaps the event at Newhope's lonely drydock was inevitable. Certainly, its cargo of dead human flesh invited public commentary: Are we responsible for these lives? For their premature ending, for their mere existence? If so, then aren't these corpses likewise culpable in the demise of the Barnard colony? Do they then deserve a second chance, at our expense?

  Or: Why'd they send us their bodies at all? Why not just their heads, their brains, their memories? If the medium is the message, this message stinks. Where exactly did we sign up? To salvage putrid alien flesh simply because it's dumped in our laps is to play the chump.

  Or: A species of promise was made in the Queendom's banishment of morbidity—a statement of ultimate equality before God and Nature. Thou shalt not die. This was affirmed in the Fall, and has thereafter formed the defining aspect of our societal character. Such pains as result are ours by choice, and by example we endure them gladly, ever mindful of the alternative. That these folk are the get of our own miscreants is beside the point; by definition, any justice must exist for all comers, or it be no justice at all. Dare we, my brothers and sisters, choose death for those who have come in search of life?

  And it was this, more than anything, which inflamed Fatalist sentiment, for if the so-called “right to life” could not be waived for the long-dead corpses of nonhuman noncitizens, then it could not be waived at all, and the Fatalist cause was utterly lost. But by its very nature, Fatalism could not take an armchair view of these matters.

  Shall we imagine a deathist philosopher and Fatalist general? Call her “Starquake” or “Dark Cloud” or “Shiva.” Shall we imagine her followers, in their dozens or hundreds, or perhaps even thousands? Shall we describe the terrifying Death persona they crafted and physically instantiated, to loom cadaverously in their midst and remind them of their supposed duty?

  This much is certain: a group of individuals held a meeting. Enormous care was taken to conceal their identities, as well as the meeting's location. In theory this was both possible and legal, for the Queendom was not a tyranny. But it was astronimically difficult, for by its own nature the Nescog must store buffer images of the people passing through it; must log their movements and enforce their copy-hour limits. Too, nearly everything under Sol's light was made from wellstone, or from other forms of programmable matter, and its nature was to record the commands—even subtly implied commands—that washed over it every moment of every day. Indeed, the universe itself was a witness to all of the events within it, and like any witness it could, with the proper inducements, be compelled to testify. And then, of course, there were the participants themselves, human and therefore corruptible.

  To gather a “cluster house” or secret assembly from all corners of the solar system, whether virtually or in the flesh, and to leave no trace of having done so, was a work of great cleverness of which only a few thousand citizens were capable. And for no one to blab or squeal or accidentally invite a government informant would require not only an improbable degree of dedication, but also a meticulous attention to matters of psychology and logistics. Indeed, from this and other circumstantial evidence we may suspect that at least a few of the participants came from the highest echelons of bureaucracy and law enforcement, for such meetings had been going on for centuries, and none had ever been discovered.

  The list probably also includes the most prominent and vocal right-to-death pundits and commentators of the day, as well as convicted murderers who had outlived their hundred-year “life” sentences. Surely they felt that life could be taken without consent, for some higher (or lower) purpose. Too, there may have been workers from the assorted and largely bygone deathist industries—the morticians and hospice orderlies, the coffin designers, the groomers and protectors of Earth's historical graveyards. These were the people most displaced by the death of death, and also those most inclined, by general disposition, to see some value in its return.

  But it must be said that the Queendom government, following this same line of reasoning, applied particular scrutiny to these individuals without ever turning up a single conclusive lead. “Vast conspiracy” is an oxymoron in any era, but despite this movement's scope and influence and funding, it held successfully to the shadows of a nearly shadowless society. From this we may conclude that the conspirators were in fact the cloistered copies of our suspect individuals, secretly created without their progenitors' knowledge. Imagine our Shiva—officially deceased, perhaps a victim of the Fall—selecting the most trustworthy of her living friends, hijacking their fax traces and printing unauthorized copies. Briefing and drilling them, yes, scanning their loyalties in a hidden cavern somewhere and killing off the ones who presented even the slightest security risk. If five captains—call them the Reapers—each found five lieutenants, who found five sergeants, who found five corporals and privates and orderlies, then an army of thousands could be assembled in as little as six months. Across the centuries of known Fatalist activity, we can only guess at the true scope of their operations.

  Still, in the absence of evidence we may safely imagine our Shiva banging her gavel or drumhead, calling the attendees to order. We may then suggest that words were spoken in praise of death, for death was an integral component of the “natural cycle” which dominated their philosophy. If they (or their progenitors) did not choose death for themselves, it was because their lives were necessary for the advancement of the cause of death—a higher-order effect. The reasonable deathists were long in their graves; these were diehard visionaries, and this much at least can be said in their favor: they were more likely stout game theoreticians than cowards or hypocrites. They knew what they were doing, and they did it well.

  Little is known of their religion, although the public writings of the pro-death movement argue for a variant of the dominant animism: a megapantheon of small gods or kami ruling over the mundane articles and processes of life, both natural and technological. And a single God, yes, who either rules over these kami or is, in some information-theoretic sense, generated by them. An afterlife—involving both reincarnation and divine judgment—is strongly implied. Drum music apparently played a symbolic or therapeutic role, along with more obscure rituals. “Grounding and awareness techniques” and “energy circles” and “silent cheering” were enlisted to generate “an atmosphere of support and appreciation and joy.” That these phrases are difficult to reconcile with the movement's coercive violence is, one assumes, a failure of our own empathy; the Fatalists clearly viewed themselves as heroes rather than villains.

  In any case, we shall suppose that under t
he guidance of Shiva and the Stygian glower of Death, certain motions were proposed, debated, amended, and voted affirmative.

  “We have a direct action opportunity,” Shiva may have said, “which combines the salubrious traits of an open target, a high symbolic value, and a higher-than-usual alignment between public sympathies and our own cause. We have carried too much for too long, we few, but this is energy work for the soul of Humanity itself. Power originates in freedom of movement, and the love that flows in this circle must be channeled outward in a strong and coherent way. Can you feel the presence of the Whirlwind? He is storm and revolution and fire, lord of wild transformations and sudden, chaotic change. Great forces are gathering here; great deeds will flow through this space and into the physical Queendom. Nature herself feels enraged at the continual violation. Our natural ally, Entropy, held long at bay, grows stronger and more insistent, and Rage rises over her sister Compassion. They will dance, comrades, with ourselves as their avatars.”

  Or perhaps it went nothing like that. Perhaps there was no Shiva. But certainly there was a Death, for he was physically present among the Newhope strike force.

  This much is a matter of historical record: fifty days after the delivery of QSS Newhope into her parking orbit, a nameless inertial fusion boat, stealthed, without running lights or identity beacons, appeared some three thousand kilometers off the boot of Newhope's docking cradle, and matched velocities with a hundred-second blast from its motors. The boat then fired a cable lanyard which wrapped itself mechanically around Newhope, and shortly thereafter, nine space-suited figures emerged bearing rectangular wellstone bricks of unknown programming and purpose.

  They were accompanied by Death, who apparently needed no space suit, and whose black cowl had been programmed to swirl about him in a picturesque and unvacuumlike manner. The precise nature of this Death figure is not known, but he (or it) appeared skeletal within the robe—in some images, starlight clearly showed through the chin and neck vertebrae—and his movements showed a humanlike purpose and articulation.