To Crush the Moon

by Wil McCarthy

  Then, with offhand grace, Bascal kicks Radmer hard in the stomach, and raises a hand in the air. As if by magic, another blitterstick flips into his grasp, hurled by one of the robots somewhere in the room. He touches it to Radmer's suit, which has some built-in resistance and doesn't immediately fail. But it does burn and sizzle in glowing, expanding rings, and Radmer shouts, “Escape sequence!” Unnecessarily, for the suit, sensing that he's not surrounded by vacuum or poison, is already peeling away. Better no armor than dying, defective armor! There's another blow to Radmer's stomach—unprotected this time—and he falls away, gagging and coughing.

  And then the Glimmer King is attacking Bruno, striking down his staff and his armor. There is no expression on his blank metal face, but his body is fluid with rage.

  “You've ruined my . . . only fax,” the robot says angrily, over the din of battle all around. “You've set me back a hundred years. I should kill you both in the most horrible ways. But in memory of our . . . history I will simply deactivate you.”

  And with that, he punches again. Very hard. Bruno's sternum is reinforced with diamond and fullerenes and assorted species of brickmail, and the heart behind it is as tough as a treader wheel. But there are valves; there are weak points. Underneath it all he's still a creature of flesh and blood. The strike is precisely aimed, and Bruno feels something give way.

  How astonishing it is! He feels himself collapse, watches the world spin around him, sees the floor come up to smack his helmet. He can actually feel his blood pressure dropping—it's a distinct sensation, like standing up too quickly—and for a second or two he's simply fascinated by the novelty of it all. Internal hemorrhage; the blood spilling warmly inside him.

  But then the Glimmer King is looming over him, preparing to deliver some coup de grace, and Bruno feels a flicker of worry at what awaits him. He is afraid to die, at least a little, and he's even more afraid of leaving this business, his final business, unfinished. In the end, a man owns nothing but his past.

  But the robot says, “What does it mean that I crave your . . . forgiveness? Malice hurries me on, and yet my . . . heartless soul is toxic with remorse. In loosing so much creation upon the worlds, you've entrained . . . forces to which our mere passions are unequal. Shall we sit among the ruins and lament? Embrace your . . . fate, Father. I beg you.”

  To which Bruno replies, weakly, “Son, the office thrust upon us we'd've handed you gladly, eons ago, if you'd shown the maturity that chair requires. We're still waiting, I'm afraid.” His voice drops to a rasp. “Shall I tell you the secret of rule? It's love. Simply that. They'll forgive you anything if—”

  But something's wrong; among the shots ringing out, several have struck the Glimmer King himself, in the chest. The darts bounce right off the impervium, whining and buzzing off into the room somewhere, but the sites of their impact are dead gray circles, and the next volley punches right through. The Glimmer King's hull is thin, lacking in countermeasures. Now it gapes, throwing off sparks. At the end of the day, he's little more than a crazed household robot.

  He looks down at himself, staggering, then looks to the figure of Radmer seated on the floor, his back against the wall, a well-aimed rifle tucked beneath his arm.

  Indeed, Bruno sees, all the robots are looking at Radmer. All motion has ceased, and if a featureless metal head can convey shocked betrayal, then the room is drowning in it from every angle. There are no more Dolceti; Zuq and Bordi have dropped somewhere, amid the heaps of slain enemies.

  Says the Glimmer King, “Nineteen years ago, when I was fallen fresh upon this world, when I glimpsed the cheering twilight and heard the rustle of leaves and the trilling of birds, this second life seemed precious indeed. I knew it would be you, Conrad. Someday, somehow, my dearest friend, I always knew it would be you. Alas, this body sheds no tears.”

  That said, the thing collapses to the stone floor and moves no more. Nor do the other robots move; they're frozen in place like statues, with blank surprise written across their bodies. The army of Astaroth is defeated.

  Radmer drops his rifle and crawls to Bruno's side.

  “Sire! Are you hurt?”

  Looking up at his old architect laureate, Bruno gasps out a chuckle. “You could say so, yes. My heart is broken at last, my chapter in history drawn finally to a close. It feels so strange, and yet I know exactly what to do. To die. The arc of my life has led me to this moment fully trained. Are you hurt?”

  Radmer looks pained at those words. “I'll live. Oh God, I'm sorry, Bruno. About your son, about everything.”

  He doesn't bother with platitudes, with assurances, with medical lies. He has, Bruno thinks, seen too many dying men.

  “My son left us long ago,” Bruno says, and now his voice is just a whisper. His limbs are cold and numb; he needn't move them ever again. “But you're still here. Shall I claim you for my own? Don't be sorry, lad. I'll let you in on a secret, my own private sin: I have no regrets.”

  He would fondle an air foil if any had survived the journey through the fax, but they, too, are gone. And it's a pity, for they illustrate so much! But perhaps mere words will suffice. “To make a thing of fragile beauty and wonder, Conrad—even to try—is a worthy task for human lives. I'd do it all again, every moment of it.”

  He'd like to say more about that, but there isn't time. There isn't need. He appears to be finished.

  chapter twenty-five

  in which power fails to corrupt

  Radmer wept for hours. For Bruno, yes, and for Bascal. For the Olders and Dolceti, for Xmary and Tamra and the Queendom of Sol. And for himself, with the misfortune to be the last of them all. If ending comes to all things, he wondered, and gives them meaning, why do we despise it so?

  When he was finished weeping he slept, for his body was tired and his injuries serious. He never knew how long he slept, for when he awoke, the twilight over Astaroth was unchanged. But he felt a little better—his body was healing itself—so he found a kitchen all decorated with cobwebs, and made a fire from the dusty wood he found there, and grilled up the last of his olives and fatbeans. Oh, what he wouldn't give for a flavor designer now! He'd been eating this slop for a thousand years too long. He was ready for something new, or an end to all of it.

  When his meal was done he found his way outside, and located a shovel, and dug seven graves in the rocky polar soil. Incredibly, there were some small trees here, and birds warbling from their branches, and soil-grubbing bugs and worms for the birds to eat, and tufts of grass to house the bugs. It was a whole twilight ecology, which apparently had grown here all by itself, for Conrad Mursk had never scheduled or budgeted such a thing. And it was quite beautiful, really—a fitting place to leave his friends.

  So that's what he did.

  Six weeks later he found himself addressing the Furies, in a darkened chamber deep within the battered city of Timoch.

  “. . . and that is the tale, I'm afraid. The long and short of it, for better or worse.”

  Said Danella Mota, “You've concealed information from us, General. Important information, which might have colored our judgments and informed our actions.”

  “I withheld only suspicions, Madam Regent. As you said yourself, I hardly know you.”

  “Ah.” Pine Chadwir clucked. “But we had history's greatest hero right here in our midst—King Toji himself!—and you told us nothing.”

  “King Toji never existed, Madam.”

  “Towaji, then.”

  “Still. The creatures of fable bear little resemblance to the human beings of actual memory. His name was Bruno, and he once taught university. The rest is mere happenstance.”

  Which was neither completely true nor completely fair, and would have been a perfect opening for Spiraldi Truich, the oldest of the Furies, to further demolish Radmer's pretenses. But Spiraldi was among the casualties of the siege; she'd died on the walls with a rifle in her hands, protecting her people as a good ruler ought.

  So instead, Radmer took the opport
unity to change the subject. “When will new elections be held, Madams Regents? And in their wake, will it still be you who address me here in this chamber?”

  “Likely not,” answered Danella Mota. She lifted a Luner globe from its rack and turned it idly in her hands. “With the southern hemisphere in such disarray, Imbria and Viense are the only real nations remaining. And we're wounded, both. We can't leave the south to its fate, and neither can we help them—or each other—through separate efforts. We must work together—truly together—to clean the mess and build this world anew.”

  “A global government?” Radmer asks, impressed with the audacity of such a scheme, at such a time as this.

  “A global monarchy,” says Pine Chadwir. “And then a Solar one, to rival the glories of old. And now we come to the deeper purpose of your summons here, General, for no living person remembers the glories of old more fully or more truthfully than you.”

  Oh. Crap. Radmer doesn't like the sound of that.

  “No one has fought longer or harder than you, for the peace and justice of Lune.”

  Worse!

  “No one knows this world better than you, who built it.”

  “Stop right there,” Radmer says. “I am out of the leader business, and I mean forever. Once we're done with our little chat here, I'm going to hightail it under the veils of Echo Valley and never come out. I'll rot my brain. I'll walk a groove in the soil with the endless reptition of my steps.”

  “A selfish gesture,” says Danella Mota.

  “Not at all,” says Radmer. “This isn't my world. We speak different languages, Lune and I. If I'm as wise as you suggest, then listen to me now: choose your leaders from among yourselves. The past is dead because it killed itself. Through better management than mine.”

  “There is renewed interest in the Old Tongue,” says Pine Chadwir. “In the old ways. In yourself.”

  “I said no.”

  More words would certainly have been exchanged on the subject, had a page not chosen that moment to run in screaming, “A ship! Madams Regents, a ship has landed!”

  “Inform the port master,” said Danella. “All cargoes are welcome, but we're in session here, boy.”

  “Madams, please, it's a spaceship!”

  And so it was that C. “Rad” Mursk came face-to-face with Ambassador Tilly Nichols of the Biarchy of Wolf and Lalande.

  “You look just like your pictures,” she said, shaking his hand out there on the cement of the Timoch International Airport. Her gleaming starship hulked in the background like the end of a world, appearing less like something out of history than something out of its most fanciful stories—a Platonic dream of starshipitude.

  “And you look . . . familiar,” he said, trying to place the woman's face.

  “You knew my birth mother. Bethany.”

  “Ah! And how is the Queen of Lalande?”

  “Retired,” said the ambassador, “and thrice reincarnated. When I left Gammon she was a little girl on a solar farm, way out on the western coast. But she remembered you a little. And my father, King Eddie; she said she was going to find him someday and marry him all over again. But she asked me to give you her best. Poor dear; it never occurred to her that you might be dead.”

  “I certainly might. Everyone else seems to be.”

  “Well,” said Tilly, “I'm sorry for your people's suffering, and I want you to know, we're here to help. We tried remote activation of your inert systems, and when that didn't work we tried synching to the remains of your collapsiter grid. And when that didn't work, we decided to show up in person. We're installing a wormhole gate now, so you should be up and running in a few days. Then we can start in on educational travel and the real-time transfer of materiel. This place looks like a long, long shortage of just about everything.”

  Conrad gawked. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken to him like that! “What and what? You're . . . Young lady, I don't even know what you're talking about. Did it ever occur to you to ask permission? To await an invitation for your help?”

  “Fallen colonies are often too proud,” she said. “We understand, having been there several times ourselves. Only with great determination and patience have we elevated ourselves to what you see.” She nodded back at her ship, from which strangely attired workmen were already unloading crates and tubes of . . . something. “And it must be particularly galling, for the very seat of humanity to fall. . . .”

  “Fall where?” he demanded. “Enlightened lives are played out here all the time, as always.”

  “Short lives.”

  “Oh, so. Does quantity suddenly matter more than quality?” That sounded lame to him. What he really meant was something grander, but he lacked the words. He had always lacked the words.

  “If there isn't time to achieve personal fulfillment,” said Tilly, “then yes, I would say quantity matters. In the Biarchy, we strive for milestones and then reinvent ourselves upon their achievement. Before we grow stale. We join the Exploration Corps, which will soon be visiting a hundred new stars. Or the Diplomatic Corps, which visits the old ones and invites them into the wormhole network, which we call the Muswog. Five systems and counting! The point is, we have these choices, and we make them freely.”

  “Hmm. Well. I believe I understand your offer; you've clawed your way up from the ashes of your parents' great blunders, and it has made you strong and clever and smug. And now, in your boundless generosity, you seek to deny the same privilege to the people of Lune. The only thing wrong with this place, kiddo, is people like me who never cleaned up our toys. But that's all finished now. Help? What do you expect to help us with? What is it you think we need?”

  “That's what I'm here to find out,” she said reasonably. “I asked to speak with someone in charge, and you're the one they sent. Has there been . . . some error?”

  “Definitely,” he answered, turning his back on her and everything she stood for. “Like your mother, I'm just some farmer who used to be somebody.”

  chapter twenty-six

  in which an act of kindness

  takes flower

  Conrad would have cause to regret those words, for as a king he'd've been entitled to throw these smug missionaries out on their collective ear. As it was, they dealt with the Furies instead, and with the Grand Kabinet of Viense, and in short order they had conspired together to launch the largest restoration project in history.

  Murdered Earth was, apparently, an affront to all humanity, for the Biarchists promised, at their own expense and under their own supervision, to place a shell around it which closely mimicked the original surface to a depth of fifty kilometers. Following this, they contemplated the resurrection of Mars, and possibly Venus as well. And resurrection was the proper word, for they planned to populate these worlds with simulacra of their departed residents—most especially the famous ones.

  “It's nothing personal,” Tilly Nichols insisted, in response to Radmer's outrage. Was Earth to be an amusement park, then? A monument to its former self, incapable of growing beyond the fairy tales that had accreted around it like orbiting debris?

  “Not at all,” Tilly said, looking and sounding politely amused. “We expect it to be as different from the original as you are from the dapper fellow my mother once courted. In your experience, eternal life and eternal death are the only options. You admit no shades of gray.”

  “But some people will remain dead,” he accused. “Most, in fact. The vast majority.”

  To which she simply shrugged. “Our powers are limited. And the ones who do live will be reincarnations, yes. Not literal resurrections, not faxed copies. But also not witless and alone, like the natural-born, with no past lives to draw upon, no wisdom to inform their childhoods . . . I don't know what you're so offended about, truly; in Barnard your children were born as functional adults!”

  “That also offended me.”

  “Oh. Well. We'll try to be conscious of societal norms here, to avoid such offenses wherever possible.” />
  “How kind of you.”

  Unperturbed, she said, “To answer your question, Mr. Radmer, we start with celebrities because the reincarnation process is more accurate the more we know about a person. And through the gratings and lenses of their memory we can sift the quantum traces of those we know less well. Slowly but surely, Earth will give up her secrets.”

  And it was with precisely these sentiments that they exhumed the grave of Bruno de Towaji, and scanned his rotting carcass and the many electromagnetic ghosts it had left behind. De Towaji had gotten around in his long life; there were imprints of him all over the ruins of Sol system.

  And of Tamra, who'd left nearly as many writings behind, and a great many more recorded images. “The lift of an arm,” said Tilly, “speaks volumes about the mind that controls it.”

  Alas, through Tilly's eyes he could see that it was true. Poor Tamra. To be a literal puppet for these oversweet invaders, lifting her arms for their amusement!

  “I'd love to scan you as well,” she told Conrad on another occasion. “You knew the king and queen personally; you knew the age. Living brains make questionable witnesses when it comes to detail, but for recalling the scope and flavor of a bygone era, nothing else really quite compares.”

  But Conrad had no desire to meet—much less help create!—the Biarchy's caricatures of his dead king and queen. And as for the Xmary they would surely pluck from his dreams . . . God, the notion was seductive. Fragments of a woman half-remembered, whom he'd loved fiercely but never wholly known, for who could know the mind of another? Still less a woman! For all he knew, she would be as monstrous as the ghost of Bascal in a robot body. And know it! And resent it!

  “Thank you, no,” he said to Tilly. “My wife would kill me.”

  Finally, though, during his fiftieth or two hundredth argument with this alien woman, relations began to shift. They were in her quarters near the top of the starship, seated on opposite sides of a dining table that had risen up from the deck, overflowing with faxed meats and cheeses, steaming flavor-designer breads and lightly chilled fruits. The outer bulkhead had gone transparent, and the views of Timoch and the ocean behind it were pleasing.