Girl on the Moon (21 page)

“Then we’ll take five of your computers,” Conn said, knowing Peo would work her people 24/7 until they had reverse-engineered the fifth one, “and the specs for a spacecraft to use them in.”

It was a deal.

The Basalites decided to use Russian land in Siberia for their temporary home and Earth base. Conn wondered if that meant Luan was going home empty-handed. And she couldn’t resist telling the Basalites about the cultural significance of Siberia—that since the mid-twentieth century and the ascendancy of the Soviet Union, getting “sent to Siberia” was an analogy for being exiled, banished, as punishment.

“Don’t worry,” she promised. “We can use that in our public relations efforts. There’s nothing to fear, they can’t harm us, they’re already in Siberia.” Persisting seemed unconvinced.

“Conn,” Persisting said, “we’ve bargained for the right to exploit your moon.” And Conn still didn’t know for what purpose—the Basalites had refused to be specific. “That some may believe otherwise doesn’t change that.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Persisting,” Conn assured him. “Accusing you of taking our moon essentially by force would be bad PR.”

“What we will give the human race is exceptionally valuable.”

“It’s also something you can afford. You’re not exactly going to have to take out a mortgage to tell us how to make avatars, or pressure fields. Or even how to travel along the fifth dimension. That part costs you all of five computers. Big deal.”

“I know the representative from Russia will report that he’s struck an excellent bargain with us. With China, talks are...ongoing.” Conn wondered what the Chinese had to bargain with. “I believe the NASA representative will not have a favorable report to make about us. My concern is you, and you have eloquently illustrated the basis for it. If you report that we have given up
all of five computers
and acquired no legal right to exploit your moon because none of you has that to offer us, our efforts to bring you here will be undermined.”

“But what I’m trying to say is, you have bargained from me my promise to say wonderful things about you, and about our new partnership. You give me five computers, I give your activities here and on Earth a positive spin.”

“I believe we are in, I think you say, good shape, until you build your first faster-than-light spacecraft. Then you’ll have what you want, and will be free to turn on us.”

Conn said, “You said to me once, ‘Forgive me for saying, your people deceive often.’
I don’t do that. The owner of my company does not do that. We honor the agreements we make.”

“I hope so,” Persisting said.

The Basalites took their leave, promising to receive any world leader who wished to visit them, and to entertain invitations to visit in return. The aliens reiterated, though, that they would not be teaching anyone else their language—for security reasons. So these supposed visits, Conn mused, weren’t likely to be very productive—unless all the Basalites spoke Earth languages as well as Persisting spoke English.

Conn stipulated one more term: she needed to know the full Basalite language, usage, structure and all. Only then could her company effectively provide the agreed-upon services. She was frustrated by Persisting’s reluctance. “There is no single language,” he said. “Like you, we have many languages.”

“I need to be able to speak with your people living on Earth and working on the moon,” Conn said. In Basalese: “It is required.”

The Basalites arranged to keep in contact with Earth via the four of them, and asked their permission to “chip” them—a marker that would allow the Basalites to find them wherever they were. Eyechart and Luan agreed. Conn compromised, and gave the aliens the frequency of the GPS locater in her Wear. Daniels refused. Persisting and his friends responded to that cheerfully enough, but Conn could tell they weren’t keen on Daniels not being chipped.

Conn rode with Persisting and the other Basalites to the fourth sled they had left by the canyon. When the four aliens were all on sleds and ready to depart, she shook the avatars’ hands and thanked them again for their help with Cai Fang’s body. It was a moment that seemed like it should require a ceremony, the start of an era of cooperation between two civilizations, but a handshake seemed like a good punctuation in lieu of that.

Everybody dispersed back to their respective landers. But as Conn returned to hers, she saw Luan working outside, on one knee, whacking the lunar surface with a hand tool. He was behind schedule, and trying to complete by himself all the experiments assigned to him and Cai Fang by his government. Conn offered to help, in their rudimentary Basalese. Luan looked at her distractedly and blurted, “My government wants me to bury him. Cai Fang—they do not want his body back.”

Conn thought that was probably a good idea, practically speaking. She imagined what it would be like to travel two and a half days back home with a dead body, especially in such tight quarters. But Luan seemed distressed, so she said, “I am sorry. We can bury now. I will help you.”

The lunar surface was rock, but they did their best. They crouched and used the small trowels meant to dig out geological samples. They could only manage a small trench, six feet by three feet by a couple inches deep. The Apollo 11 American flag had only been planted about six inches deep, Conn knew. Conn only noticed while they were working that Luan had already stripped the pressure suit off his comrade. She didn’t envy him what he was having to do.

When they were satisfied that they had done the best they could, Luan led her to Cai’s body. They carried Cai to the trench and laid him in it. They filled the grave with the rock they had dug out of it, then gathered larger rocks to pile on top as a cairn. As they were finishing, Eyechart and Daniels arrived. Daniels gave the grave an impatient look and exhorted Conn to help them get started with their collaborative experiments.

She ignored that, and said, “Please come pay your respects.” In Basalese, to Luan: “You will say words? Eulogy?”

Luan spoke in Chinese, but it was clear from his manner that he sincerely mourned his comrade. Conn hadn’t thought about it until then, but she was sure a billion or more Chinese were watching.

When Luan finished, the four astronauts held a moment of silence, or prayer, depending. Then Luan shook Conn’s hand and thanked her for her help.

Conn, Daniels, and Eyechart pooled their labor to plant the components of a large sensor array that would perform the most thorough survey yet of an area of the lunar surface and subsurface. Afterward, the three assembled and installed a probe at the base of the Apennine mountains that could lift from its dock and hover its way up the mountain, or down into Hadley Rille, a range of about three kilometers. At the same time, the probe’s sensors would map the elements on and just below the surface. Humankind would know more about the Hadley Rille region on the moon than it did about some well-trafficked parts of the Earth.

Conn learned as they worked together that Daniels, in fact, was not happy with the negotiations with the Basalese. He was not at liberty to discuss what he expected or how the results fell short, but Conn could tell he was angry. Mostly, it seemed, at her.

She guessed that he had asked for tech to benefit everybody, but wasn’t authorized to offer anything the Basalites wanted. She thought he would appreciate her having come through for him—even though she did it because it was the right thing to do, as well as benefiting Dyna-Tech. He did not appreciate it. The three and a half hours the three of them spent working together were awful, especially with Eyechart being his normal, charming self.

They were on the moon, for God’s sake. They had just met aliens. Couldn’t these two lighten up a little?

Eyechart and Daniels were scheduled to lift off Monday evening, about twenty-four hours after their collaboration thankfully came to an end. Luan was scheduled to stay an additional day, but the Chinese were considering keeping him on the moon even longer to give him more time to complete the mission on his own. The trouble was that part of his mission depended on the rover wrecked at the bottom of Hadley Rille.

So the Chinese rented Conn’s lander/rover for ten hours. Conn was to drive. If Conn wanted some encouraging news about Peo, this was it—she would have been the one to make the deal with the Chinese.

Conn was torn between feeling terrible for what Luan had been through and pissed off that she had to drive him around for ten hours instead of doing her own exploration. She wished the European mission had sent a rover, and that they were leaving it behind—then Luan could have one to himself, and so could she.

The first of two sojourns was four hours long, with Conn taking orders and driving where Luan instructed. They were hemmed in to the east of Hadley Rille, between the canyon and the mountains—Conn was pretty sure the aliens had chosen the site for that reason—so there wasn’t much variety to the scenery. She was grateful that at least she and Luan had a common language now, although he didn’t seem in the mood for small talk. Conn could hardly blame him.

She kept the lander depressurized so he could go in and out as he wished. That meant they were both in full pressure suits: what Conn wouldn’t have given for one of the Basalite pressure fields. Her suit seemed even stiffer and bulkier to work in now that she knew there was “pressure field” tech.

There was no time to do any work of her own. Instead, when he got out, she did, too—to take pictures. But she felt that being relegated to Luan’s chauffeur was providential when she got to see, and photograph, a lunar sunset.

September 5, 2034

Conn parked the lander close to the Chinese base and slept for seven hours. After breakfast, she spent a few hours performing triage on the geological samples she had gathered so far. She had a weight limit, and she couldn’t bring back everything. She examined each sample, then showed it to geologists and other scientists via her comm link and her helmet camera. It went in a “keep” or “throw back” pile, depending on their verdict. The scientists at first wanted to keep absolutely everything, until Skylar Reece, who, for reasons unknown, was lurking during the triage, told them that three-fourths of what Conn had collected so far had to go into the “throw back” pile, and they could either decide which or she and Conn would decide for them. They got their act together after the ultimatum.

After triage, Conn went outside for a scheduled eight hours, at the end of which she would watch the European lander take off for orbit, and home. Eyechart and Daniels were at the end of a six-hour EVA, Luan in the middle of eight hours. She found Luan—he couldn’t stray far from his lander with no rover and no sunlight—and talked him into coming with her to say goodbye.

She gathered everybody together for a group picture. She cordially shook pressure-gloved hands with Eyechart and Daniels, and wished them Godspeed on their return. The two climbed back in their lander, leaving the surface of the moon for the last time. They would sleep four hours, then lift off.

Conn returned to her own base. The sun had set on Hadley Rille, and she didn’t want to stray too far on foot with only artificial light. Luan’s helmet light bobbed to the west, near the Rille, so Conn headed for the foot of the mountains.

She shut off her light.

The sunless sky was spattered with billions of stars. It was a familiar sky, but there was so much more of it. There was so, so very much
above the darkened moon. And this was with a gibbous Earth floating serenely in the sky. Without its light, she would have been able to see even more stars.

She felt very small.

She recalled that Peo had scheduled her own moon landing so that after a few days she would be in darkness as well. She wished she could be sharing the sight with Peo, that Peo was with her. There was no way even her highest-resolution cameras were doing the scene justice.

“You would have loved this,” Conn said under her breath.

A little more than three hours later, Brownsville let her know that the European lander was getting ready to lift off. “Minimum safe distance: six hundred meters,” Gil said. Conn was pretty sure that was about double the minimum safe distance, but she was fine either way, about half a mile from the launch. She found a promising boulder to lean on, and faced the direction of the lander. The pinprick of Luan’s light was still visible far to the west. It stopped moving as Luan found his own vantage point for viewing the liftoff.

Soundlessly, a glow appeared underneath the lander. What little dust and small rocks that remained after touchdown scattered as the lander became airborne and went fast on its way. Conn had pictured it happening more slowly. She wasn’t sure why—probably all her hours simulating her own lander’s liftoff, all the steps that had to be done in the right order, made it seem like it was happening in slower motion than it was.

Eyechart and Daniels were gone. Eyechart would return a national hero, depending on what he was able to bargain out of the Basalites in exchange for Siberian land. Daniels? Hard to tell. There was no reason anybody had to know it was she who got the tech for the pressure fields and avatars released to the public. And anyway, he’d gone to the moon. Surely that still made a man a hero.

She returned to her lander to sleep, then got up to drive Luan for another six hours. After that, their inside-outside schedules were synced. Conn thought it was a good idea, making sure one was awake and outside when the other was, in case of emergency. They both spent fourteen of the twenty-four hours outside, and six of the remaining ten sleeping.

Conn’s own mission had been extended by the ten hours Luan had use of the lander/rover, plus another fourteen to make it a full day. She would be able to watch Luan lift off. Then, she would be alone on the moon.

Before they retired to their individual landers at 10:00 a.m., Conn took pictures of Luan outside his lander. Then the astronauts shook hands and Conn brought Luan in for another awkward, pressure-suited hug.