by Neil Clarke
“Let me see,” Laurie Two says faintly.
Sol drags the footage onto his tablet and goes back to the airlock, Laurie One drifting along after him. She’s chewing her lip the way she does when she’s thinking of something unpleasant or complicated or both. The three of them huddle up around the interior door, Laurie Two on one side, Sol and Laurie One on the other, and they watch the video.
“So what are we saying?” Laurie One asks. “Whatever crashed into the rock was some kind of alien copy-print machine?”
A gloved fist raps against the airlock window.
Laurie Three has brought company in the form of Laurie Four, whose smashed faceplate is swathed in electrical tape. Her head is lolling inside her helmet, and her eyes are fluttered shut. Laurie Three is alert, if exhausted from having dragged Laurie Four from the crevasse to the hopper. She takes the presence of Laurie One and Laurie Two a little better for having already saved her own life.
“I found her facedown on my way out,” Laurie Three says. “I thought I was having some kind of out-of-body experience, or something. You two must know all about that.”
Laurie Two snorts. She and Laurie One nod. Everyone is inside the hopper now; the airlock is jammed with shed spacesuits and Sol is reasonably sure there are no shapeshifting alien parasites afoot. Laurie Four needs medical attention. She’s lying on the chair now, still unconscious but with more color in her face and a blanket pulled over her. Laurie Three is hovering, feeling residually responsible. Laurie One and Laurie Two are on opposite sides of the cramped cockpit.
Sol is at the screen, checking the timestamps from Three and Four’s helmets, or rather, Four and Three’s.
“So first we had a forty minute jump, then a one-hour eighteen minute jump—except she slipped on her way out and cracked her faceplate—and then a one-hour forty-four minute jump,” he says. “Which means for us, outside the crevasse, the arrivals are coming quicker and quicker.”
“The copies,” Laurie Two says glumly. “We’re copies. You can say it.”
“The electromag fluctuation,” Laurie actually-Four says. “At the bottom of the crack. It’s somehow spitting out clones of me?”
“Of her,” Sol says, jabbing his thumb at Laurie One, who looks increasingly uncomfortable. “But yeah. Basically, that’s the situation.” He can feel panic blocking up his throat. He still can’t raise Control, and the pickup window is approaching, and . . .
“Sol, I gotta talk to you for a second,” Laurie One says abruptly, coming up off the wall. “Alone. Just for a second.”
Sol shakes his head. “There’s going to be another Laurie knocking any second. Do we really have time for—”
“Bathroom,” Laurie One hisses. “Now.”
“Yeah, okay,” Sol says. He gives the other Lauries a pained look. “Be right back.”
“Original Laurie, asserting her authority,” Laurie Two says dryly. “Why the need for privacy? I know you’re going to be talking about—”
“Life support,” Laurie Four says. “The hopper’s not specced for this many people, neither’s the ship. Weight restrictions, too, for launch.”
Sol lets Laurie One drag him into the bathroom stall and shutter the door. “They’re dead-on about the life support,” he says. “Fuck.”
“Solly, listen,” Laurie One says with something rasping in her throat. “I’m not sure I’m the real Laurie.”
“Oh, Christ, Laurie, don’t say that,” Sol groans. “Don’t mess with me, remember?”
“I’m not.”
Laurie One’s breath is stale and hot and Sol desperately wants to get out of the bathroom, even though there’s nowhere else to go but back to more Lauries.
“I blacked out, too, when I was down there,” Laurie One says. “I didn’t tell you about it earlier. Didn’t want you stress-eating for the next two-and-a-half hours.” Sol grips his hair with both hands, weaving it through his fingers. “But you were the first one back. So it has to be you.” His voice has a whiny edge to it he can’t quite erase. “It has to be, Laurie. Come on.”
Laurie One shakes her head. “Maybe I’m the first one back because I was the first copy,” she says. “Maybe the real Laurie, like, the original Laurie, maybe she’s wherever the drone is. And wherever the thing is. The unidentified body that made this trench in the first place.”
“Does it matter?” Sol demands. “Jesus, look, you’re Laurie to me, okay? You’re Laurie to me. You’ll be Laurie to everybody back on Earth. The pickup window is less than an hour away, and we can launch the hopper with three people aboard, max.”
“But they’re all me, too,” Laurie One whispers. Her face is blotchy red and Sol can see tears pushed back under her eyes. His stomach rolls over like a dead fish.
“What can we do?” he asks.
“Number Four,” Laurie One says. “She’s been unconscious. She doesn’t know any of this shit. Take her. Leave the rest of us.”
“Technically, that’s number Three,” Sol says. “And are you fucking kidding me? Laurie, she could be brain-damaged. Or, or, barring that, what if she dissolves in twenty-four hours? Into some big puddle of alien goo?”
“I might do that, too.”
“Or you might not, because you’re the original Laurie, okay?” He grabs her by the shoulders and almost shouts it. “You’re the original fucking Laurie!” She glares at him and he glares back, neither of them moving. The bathroom light buzzes and flickers between their heads. Laurie One’s breath smells even worse now, and Sol’s about to say it, just to be a dick, but then she might take it as evidence of her mouth dissolving so he says nothing at all. Not until a gentle knock on the airlock window makes the wall tremble. “I wonder who that could be,” he says.
Laurie One does something between a laugh and a sob.
Laurie Five has her radio working; Sol listens to her voice pitching upward as she demands to be let in, demands to know why there are footprints all around the hopper, demands to know whose spacesuits are piled in the airlock. Finally he switches off his headset, and it becomes a silent film. Laurie Five pounding her gloved fists against the airlock window in slow motion, catching sight of a warped reflection behind her, turning to see Laurie Six struggling up from the crevasse.
“Don’t watch,” Laurie actually-Four says, from where she’s checking on Laurie actually-Three’s vitals. “That makes it worse for them. And us.”
Sol drags his eyes away from the scene. Puts his back to the airlock and sits down. Laurie One and Laurie Two are already sitting cross-legged on the floor; Laurie Four is still tending to an unconscious Laurie Three.
“If we cleared the suits out, we could fit one more person in the airlock,” Laurie One says miserably. “At least for a while.”
Sol takes a deep breath. “No point,” he says. “Max of three people to launch. So, we have to make a decision. Have to decide. On who, if anybody, comes with me and Laurie . . . One. Laurie One.”
“Wait,” Laurie Two interjects. “Why is she a sure thing? She doesn’t even know if she’s the real Laurie.”
“We could hear you in the bathroom,” Laurie Four says. “Sol gets loud when he’s agitated.”
Sol gives an irritable shrug.
“You really do, Solly,” Laurie Two says.
“She’s the most likely to be the original, okay?” he says. “If she doesn’t come, and I take one of you guys instead, what if you dissolve into . . .”
“Why do you have this fucking fixation with alien goo?” Laurie Two sighs. “And then no Laurie comes back at all,” Sol finishes. “Her family has nobody at all, and Laurie’s stuck asphyxiating on the surface of the goddamn Moon.”
“Ifwe don’t dissolve, we’ll be doing the same thing,” Laurie Four says quietly. Sol runs his hands through his hair again. “Can we agree that Laurie Three is out?” he asks. “She’ll never know. She’s unconscious.”
Lauries One, Two, and Four all flinch.
“Goddamn it, Sol,” Laurie Four snaps. “Th
at’s even worse, dumping someone out the airlock while they’re asleep.”
“How about we dump you, and take an all-Laurie crew back to the ship?” Laurie Two says, jutting out her chin.
Sol blinks. More than the words, the expression on her face punches a hole right through him. Then he remembers how panicked she was, begging him to let her into the cockpit, and how she deflated all at once when he told her to pass the datastick through the door. Guilt churns his stomach.
“Laurie, you don’t mean that,” Laurie One says. “He’s the only one we know isn’t a copy. He wasn’t in the crevasse. He goes.”
Laurie Four nods. Laurie Two gives a sour shrug.
“Look,” Sol says shakily. “I know it sounds fucked up, but this whole situation, in case you haven’t noticed, this whole situation is supremely fucked up.” Vibrations sing through the cockpit again, as if to punctuate his words. More fists banging on the airlock. Sol forces himself not to look.
“We’ll put it to a vote,” Laurie One says. “And if there’s a tie, we rock-paper-scissors.” She rubs hard at her face, kneading the skin. “Okay?”
Sol holds his breath. The other Lauries slowly nod.
“Good,” he says hoarsely. “Who goes first?”
“You don’t vote,” Laurie One says. “And you don’t watch, either.”
Sol swallows. “But . . . Laurie.”
“We’re all Laurie,” she says. “You don’t get to know who stays.”
Sol searches her face, trying to find some fleck of food, some distinct clump of hair that will let him differentiate her from the others. But she looks exactly like Laurie Two and exactly like Laurie Four, and maybe she’s right. Maybe there is no original Laurie here, because they all are.
“Okay,” he says.
Sol sits in the airlock while the Lauries decide. Outside, there’s a crowd of new Lauries bounding around in their puffy white suits, crackling to each other on the radio or putting their helmets together to speak that way, gesticulating at the hopper, at the crevasse. He wonders what conclusions they’re coming to. More and more of them are emerging from the crack, hauling themselves up the rock, and bouncing to their booted feet. Sol wipes the tears off his cheeks when he hears the interior door scrape open.
Two Lauries silently walk in and start suiting up. Sol looks between them, trying to guess, but there’s no way of knowing. He looks back and sees Laurie Three, still unconscious in her chair, and the last Laurie sitting on the floor with her head in her hands.
“Just couldn’t do it,” one of the airlock Lauries says, stepping into her suit and working the zipper. “That dumbass caring instinct, I guess. Same reason we’re always looking out for you, Solly.”
“I’m sorry,” Sol says. It’s the only thing he can think to say.
“Yeah, yeah,” the other Laurie says. “I know. It’s. Uh. It’s fucking tough.” She blinks hard and reaches for her helmet. “We’ll clear everyone away, if we can. So you have space to launch without frying a bunch of coworkers.”
The other-other Laurie has a stuck zipper. Her chest is pumping sharp shallow breaths. “Fuck,” she says. “This isn’t right. It’s not logical. She could be brain-damaged, you know?” She licks her dry lips. “And her, she went a little early with the scissors. I think. I think I want a rematch.”
“Shut up, Laurie,” Laurie says. “Come on. Let’s just do this. You’re brave. You better be, because if you’re not, then I’m not.” She reaches in and yanks the zipper free. “So. Am I?”
Laurie shakes herself, looks right at Sol, and for a second Sol’s sure she’s Laurie One, but then the feeling twists away. “We’re brave,” she says. “Sure. Or unlucky. Or both. Whatever.”
“Have a safe trip home,” Laurie says. “Bye, Solly.”
They put their helmets on and seal them. Sol can see his grimacing reflection in their faceplates. He tries to smile; doesn’t manage it. Salutes instead, and squeezes past them, back into the cockpit. Just how he did a lifetime ago at 0600 hours, he vents the airlock, waits for the thumbs up, and opens the outer door.
Laurie and Laurie step out into the gray dust, sending a ripple through the crowd of spacesuits, helmeted heads turning.
Sol staggers back to his chair. “Let’s get prepped, Laurie,” he says, not looking at her. “Yeah,” she says, not looking at him. “Go time.”
They secure Laurie Three between their chairs with insulation and electrical tape, making sure her head’s as cushioned as possible. Then they strap in for launch. The hopper rumbles through its ignition sequence, testing each engine in turn. On the screen, Sol sees the pickup window flash green. The ship is directly above them, ready to retrieve them and their inconclusive data from the crevasse. He tries to raise Control one last time but gets nothing. So long as they’re in position, the radio interference shouldn’t matter.
Neither of them speaks as the countdown ticks away, and then the roar of the engines is too loud to speak anyway. It shakes them like pennies in a jar, and Sol reaches out an arm to brace Laurie Three. He sees Laurie’s arm reaching from her end, too. Then the hopper shudders up into the sky, shedding gravity all at once. Not all of the Lauries cleared the area, and Sol tries not to imagine them bursting into flame.
They pull away from the Moon’s surface, and on the screen Sol can see the crevasse blooming like a snow-white flower as more and more spacesuited Lauries pour out of it, spilling in all directions across the gray rock. If it doesn’t stop, the entire face of the Moon will be covered in asphyxiating astronauts.
Sol switches the screen to show the waiting ship, hanging in orbit. Are they observing the surface? Are they seeing the bloom? They must be. The thought of trying to explain what’s happened makes Sol want to laugh and die at the same time. He checks their trajectory and sees it’s a little off, but nothing serious.
“You’re not going to tell me which one you are?” he finally asks.
“We figured that would be better for you,” Laurie says dryly. “You don’t have to know who you left behind.”
“I left everyone behind,” Sol says. “Christ, Laurie. I don’t even know who I
am now.
“Join the club.” She leans forward in her seat. “Sol? What’s that?”
Sol zooms the screen and his mouth goes dry. They’re still on course for the ship, but so is someone else. He and Laurie watch speechlessly as a hopper, identical to their own, maneuvers into the dock on a gentle burn, cuts its engines, and slots perfectly into place.
PERMISSIONS
“Bagatelle” by John Varley. Copyright © 1976, 2004 by John Varley; originally published in Galaxy, October 1976; reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.
“The Eve of the Last Apollo” by Carter Scholz. © 1976 by Carter Scholz. Originally published in Orbit 18, edited by Damon Knight. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Lunatics” by Kim Stanley Robinson. © 1988 by Kim Stanley Robinson. Originally published in Terry’s Universe, edited by Beth Meachem. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Griffin’s Egg” by Michael Swanwick. © 1991 by Michael Swanwick. Originally published by Legend / Century. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“A Walk in the Sun” by Geoffrey A. Landis. © 1991 by Geoffrey A. Landis. Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, October 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Waging Good” by Robert Reed. © 1995, 2018 by Robert Reed. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, January 1995. Revised in 2018. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“How We Lost the Moon, A True Story by Frank W. Allen” by Paul McAuley. © 1999 by Paul McAuley. Originally published in Moon Shots, edited by Peter Crowther. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“People Came from Earth” by Stephen Baxter. © 1999 by Stephen Baxter. Originally published in Moon Shots, edited by Peter Crowther. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Ashes and Tombstones” by Brian Stableford. © 1999 by Brian Stableford. Originally published in Moon Shots, edited by Peter Crowther. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl’s” by Adam Troy Castro. © 2001 by Adam Troy Castro. Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Stories for Men” by John Kessel. © 2002 by John Kessel. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, October/November 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Clear Blue Seas of Luna” by Gregory Benford. © 2002 by Gregory Benford. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, October/ November 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“You Will Go to the Moon” by William Preston. © 2006 by William Preston. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, July 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“SeniorSource” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. © 2008 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Originally published in Fast Forward 2, edited by Lou Anders. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Economy of Vacuum” by Sarah Thomas. © 2009 by Sarah Thomas. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Cassandra Project” by Jack McDevitt. © 2010 by Jack McDevitt. Originally published in Lightspeed Magazine, June 2010. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Fly Me to the Moon” by Marianne J. Dyson. © 2010 by Marianne J. Dyson. Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August 2010. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Tyche and the Ants” by Hannu Rajaniemi. © 2012 by Hannu Rajaniemi. Originally published in Edge of Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Moon Belongs to Everyone” by Michael Alexander and K.C. Ball. © 2012 by Michael Alexander and K.C. Ball. Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2012. Reprinted by permission of the authors’ estates.