Building Harlequin’s Moon (6 page)

The planter hummed and vibrated, rocking as it pulled soil up into the analyzer. Rachel watched displays identify the mineral content of the sample. The machine rumbled, stirring nutrients and measuring pods into the regolith and compost mixture with huge metal paddles. Finished soil dropped into a cone-shaped pile next to a hole. The whole process took about five minutes.

Rachel nudged her planter fifty yards past the waiting hole and shut it down, ears ringing in the sudden silence. As she clambered down the ladder on the side, she looked over her shoulder at Ursula and called, “Lunch after this planting.”

The planters frightened Ursula. So Rachel rode and Ursula followed, doing the stooping and planting and watering. This was the last week of this season’s planting, and even working into the steadily duskier nights, they were ten percent behind their goal, muscles tired and sore from the extra work.

Harry and Gabriel were already seated when Rachel joined them, choosing a rocky perch where she could look back across the field at the other ten teams. They were all Earth Born. Earth Born were shorter, wider, brawnier than Moon Born. She watched in silence, drinking water and letting a soft breeze cool her.

“Your shadow is always slower than you are,” Harry said.

“She’s careful.”

“You’re careful.” He caught her glare and said, “Hey, hey, easy. Just noting the facts.”

Ursula was just now unbending from watering the cieba tree she had just planted. Adult Moon Born were taller than most Council, and Ursula, the tallest teenager, was already taller than Gabriel. Her sun-silhouetted figure looked like two branches on a tall stick, topped with a halo of light broken by flyaway bits of her spiky hair.

Ursula sat near Rachel, as far away from Harry as she could get and stay in the group. She blotted sweat from her forehead and high cheeks with a rag before reaching for water.

“Hey, slow and thin, we saved you some food,” Harry teased.

“Nice of you.” Ursula reached for the still untouched basket, extracting a bit of bread and a handful of berries.

“Maybe it will make you move faster.”

Ursula threw a berry at him, hard enough that it left a thin streak of juice on his cheek.

“Ahhhh—quit wasting food.” Ali’s voice chided them as she came up on the group. “Ready for tomorrow?”

“Do we still get to go flying?” Rachel asked.

“Yes. We need to start tilling now if we want to plant next year. That means a ground survey. It will be hard work, even though we’ll use a plane to get from place to place. We’ll be gone three days.” Ali pulled up an aerial photo in a data window, tracing the path they’d fly over.

“I’m tired,” Ursula said. “Can we have a rest day first?”

“We’ll rest during the winter, when it’s raining more often. Selene is growing, and people need plants. Right now, there are hundreds of us. There will be thousands by the time we build up industry, and a bigger town,” Ali said.

“You mean the antimatter generator,” Rachel said.

“I mean the town. And after that we’ll build the collider.”

Ursula broke in. “If there are so many people, how will you get them all to Ymir?”

“John Glenn
carried two thousand of us here, all frozen,” Gabriel replied. “Let’s look at the near future, like tomorrow.”

“But there’s going to be more than two thousand. There already are. You want us to help
John Glenn
leave us? For someplace nobody has ever even seen?” Rachel asked.

“For a place where we were supposed to meet our friends a long time ago,” Ali said.

“Your friends,” Rachel muttered under her breath. Harry must have heard her, since he shot a warning look her way.

“How do you know Ymir’s still there?” Harry asked loudly. “Or that the other starships made it to the system?”

Harry was covering for her thoughtless comment.

Now Gabriel spoke. “It’s a planet. They don’t wander away from their suns. I have faith the other two colony ships got there.”

“I still don’t see why one day off would make a difference,” Ursula said.

Everyone ignored her.

Rachel wanted to know more about
John Glenn
, but Gabriel’s face was closed tight. She gave up, sighing. “Go over where we’ll be tomorrow; tell us what you need us to do.”

Ali rewarded Rachel with a smile. “It’s beautiful out there, wild and rocky. Empty. I think you’ll like it.”

They worked without stopping until Apollo set. The students shared a quiet dinner alone, sluiced sweat and dirt away with buckets of cool water they pulled from the irrigation pipes, then ducked into a big shared housing tent nestled in rocks at the end of the field. It was protected from wind and separate from the Earth Born’s camp.

Rachel twisted and turned, uncomfortably awake for hours. Loud talk and laughter from the Earth Born threaded in and out of her thoughts, and she covered her ears with her arms. The lunch talk was the first time in six weeks of planting she’d heard anything that reminded her of her conversation with her dad about Council the night before she left home. She wished her dad was there to fix her tea, and she wished Gabriel would tell her his plans. Even exhausted, she remained aware of the breath and movement of the others for a long time.

Harry snored.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
all five of them were crammed in the little flier they’d brought out from the grove. A brush-work of saplings dotted the ground below, becoming shorter and newer as they flew over two seasons of work. Then they passed greens and reds of cyanobacteria and molds; signs of regolith being given life. The ground changed to jumbled rocks and sand, streaks of reds and browns and blacks where surface soils mixed unevenly. Small ridges and shallow craters flowed below, everything rock and sand. Rachel had seen pictures and read about the regolith deserts, miles and miles of dead land waiting to be coaxed awake. It was most of Selene, and flying over it, Selene seemed huge. She sat wedged between Harry and Ursula, and had to look past them on either side to get a view.

They flew above one of the few roads on Selene. Dry, dusty, and rocky, the Sea Road terminated at the edge of the Hammered Sea, a quarter of the way around Selene from where they were now. Back when Aldrin was still tented, Council used the road for big equipment to lay water pipes between the Hammered Sea and Aldrin. Now, Selene’s stable heavy atmosphere encouraged flight; Council designed for it. Mostly unused, the road looked abandoned. Long stretches were still smooth glassy road surface, punctuated with hundreds of feet of sand drifts. Watching carefully, Rachel noticed how the makeup of surface soils affected the amount of drift.

“Let’s stop for lunch,” Ali suggested.

Gabriel banked the little plane, looking for a good landing place.

The cramped cabin filled with a piercing warning whine. Wrist pads chimed and beeped.

Gabriel leveled the plane and sharply increased speed.

Ali flicked her data window to a new search and stared
at it, mumbling, “We’re lucky we weren’t on the ground.”

“What is it?” Harry asked.

“Flare,” Gabriel said.

“How much time do we have?” Harry’s voice didn’t even quiver.

Gabriel answered, just as smoothly. “Two hours. We should have heard about it earlier—Astronaut must be slipping.”

Pain sliced through Rachel’s knee as Ursula’s fingers dug into flesh.

“We won’t get back,” Harry said.

“Not to where we came from,” Gabriel replied, then, to Ali, “Closest shelter?”

“I’m looking.” Ali’s voice was musically, cheerfully sarcastic.

Rachel felt her breath coming high and fast, closed her eyes, and peeled Ursula’s hand from her knee. Everyone in Aldrin drilled regularly, but Rachel only remembered one other real flare.

She’d been smaller, just seven. Running with her father, being swung low into a shelter in the center of Aldrin, underground. Pulled by strange hands down into a place she hadn’t even known existed. She remembered struggling to breathe standing against the adults’ legs, until finally she cried out and people shifted, making room for her. She could still hear Frank calling for her mother: “Kristin,” then louder, “Kristin!” and the door closing and Frank shoving her hand into a neighbor’s, and looking hard at her, commanding her to stay. His back as he turned and struggled for the door, now closed. His fists pounding on the door as he looked back at the crowd, at Rachel, and finally stood still, an angry lost look on his face. After what she remembered as a long time, he had come back and held Rachel tightly to him, his arms quivering.

She had not seen her mother since. Her father’s face was empty when he told her Kristin had gone to
John Glenn
.
Within a few weeks he stopped talking about her. Sometimes Rachel noticed him stroking the violet and rose embroidered curtains her mother had made, and staring out the window.

It was as if she’d died.

The flier banked, the change in angle drawing her back into the present.

Gabriel flew with purpose, driving the little plane near the top of its abilities. He was totally focused. He and Ali spoke too low and fast for Rachel to make out the words. Half an hour passed before Gabriel throttled the plane back and brought the nose up, clearly meaning to land.

Rachel couldn’t see anything. No people, no vehicles, certainly no shelter.

No one spoke as Gabriel landed the flier. She looked at her wrist pad. Almost an hour had passed. They wouldn’t see radiation. Would the sunlight be brighter? What if the timing was wrong?

Gabriel pulled a pack from under his seat, climbed out, and stood by the door, helping them down one by one. “We had to land a little ways from the shelter. This was the closest stretch of road long enough to take the plane safely. We have time. Follow me, stay close.”

“But where—” Ursula started to ask.

“They built shelters along the Sea Road,” Harry whispered. “That must be where he’s taking us.”

The sunlight didn’t look any different.

None of them wore wings. Rachel, in a chaotic bouncing run, quickly ran out of breath. Gabriel ran with one hand in Ursula’s and one in Harry’s, pulling them into bigger strides than they’d have managed on their own. Ali grabbed Rachel’s hand and pulled. Rachel’s longer legs barely let her keep up with the help of the smaller woman, and Rachel wondered where Ali got her strength.

They ran until Rachel’s breath came in small desperate gulps.

Rachel felt the pull of Ali’s hand change suddenly, pushing her back. Gabriel had stopped where a tall metal rod poked up out of the ground, bright yellow streamers and green bands decorating the top. He dug in the dirt below it. “Harry, Rachel, help me,” he said.

The five of them frantically pushed sand and small stones away until they uncovered a handle on a slab of metal set into the ground. Gabriel leaned down and pulled, his whole body straining against the weight. It didn’t give.

Harry walked over to the metal stake, began pulling on it. No give there either. Rachel saw what he was doing, stepped over, and began to pull as well. They worked the stake in a circle, loosening it, tugging upward. Nothing, then a slight movement, and then nothing again. “Ursula!” Rachel called.

Ursula turned, and then Ali said “Good idea!” and came to help. With four sets of hands pulling, the rigid pole finally slid from the ground. They carried it over to Gabriel, and he threaded it through the metal door handle, making a lever. Ali said, “Twenty minutes.”

Gabriel grunted. They pulled up together on the rod, and puffs of dust rose from two spots on the long edge. “Now, more,” Gabriel said through gritted teeth, pushing the sound out so it was barely intelligible.

They pulled. The door didn’t budge.

O
N BOARD THE
John Glenn
, Ma Liren stalked into the galley. Two gardeners stared at a video wall, watching something on Selene’s surface. Liren stopped, frowning, watching the women, Mary and Helga.

Liren stepped forward to look. She recognized Gabriel and Ali and three Moon Born children, outside, exposed to the coming flare. They were pulling together, everyone on one side on some kind of lever, faces strained. It was a micro-camera image; a slightly grainy picture and no sound. The door jerked, flew up a few inches, and fell back to the surface of Selene. Harry jumped as the lever was torn from his hand.

“Come on,” Mary whispered, rapt, “you can do it.”

“Astronaut,” Helga demanded, “time left?”

“One point four minutes until initial effects, seven minutes before serious radiation.” The AI’s calm voice contrasted with Helga’s high-pitched tones.

The image was small. One of the children—Rachel—separated from the group and picked up a rock, setting it down next to the door. The children all reached together, joining Ali and Gabriel, pulling up again. The door rose—inches, more inches, and Rachel toed the rock under the edge just as the group lost leverage and the door started to fall again. The lever angled up, and Ali and Gabriel squatted, using the strength of legs accustomed to more gravity than the Moon Born. The door rose and, finally, balanced at a ninety-degree angle to Selene’s surface. Gabriel and Ali held the door.