Girl on the Moon (26 page)

Very few people on Earth understood what it was like to go to the moon and meet aliens for the first time. Her relationship with Daniels was often contentious, sometimes caustic, but they each had something the other couldn’t find anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere: someone to truly share with.

The point of their being in Moscow a day earlier than their “diplomat” colleagues was to reunite with Erik Tyzhnych, have a few beers, hear all about the deal he made with the Basalites—intelligence gathering. Daniels didn’t seem to mind using his fellow moon walker that way. And ultimately, Conn knew, he hoped Eyechart would be an ally in their efforts to explore the sharing of the alien tech.

After barely stopping at their hotel, they caught another maglev train to Roscosmos, where they were unhappy to hear that Eyechart wasn’t available, and they had to talk to his boss instead.

January, 2035

Evgeny “Gene” Pepelyaev was waiting for them in the cafeteria. “Erik is monumentally busy,” he told them, in good, barely accented English. “Those Basalites, they always have something to say, but they won’t teach anybody else their language. The burden of translation falls on Erik, I’m afraid.”

“Can’t the Basalites speak Russian?” Conn asked.

“Erik interprets for us conversations we’re not meant to be a part of.”

Conn and Daniels looked at one another.

“I completely understand how busy Erik must be,” Daniels said. “That’s why I confirmed this meeting with him well in advance.”

“I deeply regret the conflict in his schedule. Perhaps I can be of assistance instead?”

“Doubtful. No offense,” Daniels said politely, but Conn could feel him seething. “We can wait until he’s free.”

“I’m not sure that’s advisable.”

“Look, Mr. Pepelyaev—”

“Gene.”

“Gene. We’ve been on a plane for eight hours and we rushed over here so we wouldn’t be late. We’ve planned to go out for drinks and dinner. We went to the moon together, you know? I haven’t seen him since. If you have this idea that we’re going to try and wrangle information out of him, we’re not.” They were, Conn knew. “We’re going to be joined by two other Americans tomorrow and the four of us are going to try and wrangle information out of your trade representative. That’s tomorrow. There is no reason to keep us from seeing Erik today.”

Pepelyaev just smiled. “I’m not keeping you. Erik is busy. Would you like to talk about the Basalites?”

Conn was starting to get angry herself. “What about them?” she said.

“Why don’t we start with the free, limitless power they’ve apparently given our Chinese neighbors. We’re all deeply concerned about the balance of economic power in Asia.”

“How balanced is it now?” Conn said.

Another smile. “I don’t mind telling you, we—Russia—feel we’ve gotten the short end of the stick, as you say.”

“Wish you had asked for nitrogen power?” Daniels asked, with a smirk.

“Were you able to find out what exactly China gave the Basalites in exchange for nitrogen power?” Gene asked, looking down at his own knees.

“Does that mean you don’t know, or you just want to find out if we do?”

Gene’s smile became more of a grimace. “All I know, Mr. Daniels, Ms. Garrow—may I call you Scott, and Conn? Thank you—is that we bargained with them in good faith and have given them several hundred square kilometers of land, which, believe me, they are using. In exchange, we’ve received their survey technology, which will come in useful, to be sure, but the sleeping dragon to our south has received a much greater boon. If we decide to...renegotiate, we would like to know what pieces everybody on the board is playing.”

“They gave me faster-than-light travel,” Conn said, more out of pride than anything.

“And you’re welcome to it, Conn. You are unlikely to declare war on Russia in the coming decade.”

Conn had to concede the point, but was firm in her belief that her company had gotten the most out of the Basalites, nitrogen power or no nitrogen power. Provided they could reverse engineer everything.

“Nobody is going to believe you only got surveying tech out of the Basalites,” Daniels said. “I heard you also got the tech to upload languages and information directly into the brain.”

Pepelyaev gave no reaction. “I don’t know where you might have heard that, Scott. My understanding is that kind of information transfer only worked when the originator has a Basalite brain. We evidently don’t have all the lobes and such necessary.”

“You heard this how?” Daniels asked.

“We were promised that technology, and then didn’t get it. Do you begin to see how we are feeling about our new friends from Basal?”

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t surprise me. Gene, you’re not Erik’s supervisor at all, are you? In fact you don’t work for Roscosmos. You’re more of a...civil servant. Right?” Daniels was accusing Gene of working for some more intelligence-centered part of the Russian government, Conn gathered. She had gotten the same strong impression.

“In the end, we all serve the people of Russia. Do you know what the Chinese gave the Basalites in exchange for nitrogen power?”

“We do, but we were told in confidence,” Daniels lied. “I’m sure you understand.”

Pepelyaev slapped his thighs and rose. “Thank you for indulging me as long as you did, Scott, Conn. Again, I regret that Erik is otherwise disposed. I’m sure he was looking forward to seeing you both.” He shook hands with them and left them gawping after him.

“So that’s it?” Conn said.

A woman arrived who described herself, in heavily accented English, as “public relations.” She offered a tour of the Russian spaceflight operations center, a half-hour’s drive away in Korolev. Conn wanted to say no. Really, she just wanted to go back to the hotel. They could afford to be rude given how they had just been treated by Gene Pepelyaev.

But Daniels said, “Never seen it. That OK with you, Conn?”

It didn’t matter what Conn said, so she said it was.

There was awkward small talk during the drive, and even Daniels was irritable by the time they arrived at Russian mission control. He perked up on the tour. Conn didn’t.

The building, and tour, were dominated by two large flight control rooms with rows of open work areas, each demarcated by a keyboard and fone projector. Enormous screens loomed at the front of the room for mission data. Russian satellites were controlled here, and it was still the heart of operations for the old International Space Station. The Roscosmos workers gave Conn the most enthusiastic affection she’d gotten so far in Russia. As they walked from one part of the complex to another, they formed a trail of employees behind them. At the main flight control room, the group had its picture taken with Conn and Daniels. Conn smiled for the camera, and stayed polite, and remained tucked in her numb shell. She wanted to go home. She would settle for the hotel, but she wanted to go home.

And she wanted to sleep alone. She was too exhausted to rouse herself to anything else. The night after their first day in China, Conn and Daniels had slept together, Daniels going on about wanting to have sex in a country he’d never had sex in before. She currently found herself hoping against hope he had already had sex in Russia. She didn’t even want to have the conversation.

Their public relations guide noted that the facility would send an elaborate series of unmanned probes to the moon in the current calendar year, which would be controlled from the second flight control room. Conn’s interest was briefly piqued: Russia sure did want to know what the Basalites were up to.

The aliens’ exploitation of the moon had begun shortly after Conn and Jake’s return to Earth. Basalite spacecraft left and landed on Siberian ground on a regular basis, and Gasoline Alley was accommodating their traffic, for parking or for maintenance. As yet, the Basalites hadn’t availed themselves of Conn’s offer of transportation from Earth to space. She wasn’t complaining—each such launch was still hugely expensive, even if Dyna-Tech could do it more cheaply than anyone else. She supposed the Basalites could do it a lot cheaper.

Nobody had yet seen
a Basalite. They would move a complement of workers from Siberia to Gasoline Alley in one of their large rocketships, and shuttles from the moon came and got them as needed, dropping off others. When there was total turnover, they ferried their new passengers back to Siberia. Regularly, a fuel freighter would arrive at Gasoline Alley for use by the spacecraft there, but it seemed to Conn from observing Basalite patterns that the craft must also be getting fuel on the moon, and maybe even Earth. Whatever the particulars, the aliens had been able to remain unseen.

Any interaction with humans was through avatars of twentieth-century luminaries. Each of the avatars spoke Hindi, Japanese, or English, when on state visits to India, Japan, or Canada (the US hadn’t agreed to receive them yet). The Basalites had refused to teach their language to anybody else. The four moon walkers were the only humans on Earth who could (rudimentarily) understand it.

Whatever the Basalites were doing on the moon wasn’t visible—the prevailing theory was that they were mining the far side. What signals humans could intercept often ended abruptly, presumably because whatever was originating them passed on to the far side.

The fact that pretty much all the human race could do at the moment was look at the moon through telescopes was a tragedy, and an embarrassment, Conn thought. NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory had the opportunity to “see” the far side of the moon twice a year, but not at any useful resolution.

No fewer than two deputy directors of the CIA, and then the director herself, requested permission to embed a spy on the space station who would observe and examine the Basalite craft and tech. Conn denied these requests, and took the further precaution of insisting that she be made aware of every arrival and departure from Gasoline Alley. She didn’t doubt the CIA, and probably other countries’ intelligence agencies, would try to buy a mole to do their bidding.

She practiced some preventative medicine in that area. Working in space got Dyna-Tech employees and contractors hazard pay: an additional two-thirds of their wages or salary. Conn bumped it up to double pay. She wanted her people to be less susceptible to economic pressure to spy. The goodwill the move generated didn’t hurt, either.

She felt some small measure of additional satisfaction from turning down the CIA after Deputy Director Raich had made her life so miserable. But she also enjoyed the fact that her people were examining
the Basalite spacecraft, to the point where they were starting to draw up schematics. If the CIA wanted information on Basalite tech, they could damn well come to her for it.

The tour finally—thankfully, as far as Conn was concerned—concluded, the public relations chaperone drove them back to their hotel. She watched from the car as Conn and Daniels entered the building. Inside, they took the elevator up to the twelfth floor and entered their respective rooms. Conn collapsed on her bed. She was dozing off when a knock on her door woke her. “Go away,” she said, thinking it was Daniels. It wasn’t. She could hear someone knocking on another door in the hallway, too—Daniels’s room, she was pretty sure.

She dragged herself upright and to the door. “Can I help you?” she said, through the closed door.

“Constance Garrow?”

“Who are you?”

“Federal Security Service. Open the door.”

“Show me identification.” The man held up a badge to the door as Conn watched through the peephole.

She opened the door and was under arrest.

January, 2035

While Conn and Daniels were on tour in Russia, someone on the space station saw a Basalite. And got lots of pictures and video.

The Basalite rocketship was moored in its usual space, resting underneath two bays and tethered to one of them. This clearance allowed the smaller shuttle craft to dock with it and exchange workers.

Sam Hogarth, a Dyna-Tech systems analyst, happened to be looking out a window in the direction of the rocketship when a Basalite took a spacewalk. Hogarth couldn’t tell what he was doing there: well,
he
may have been a
she
, but Hogarth obviously had no way to tell them apart—and anyway, Basalites had three sexes. Hogarth thought of him as a
he
. He was using a pressure field, and unless he had lost a bet and had to spacewalk naked, it was apparent that the Basalites didn’t wear clothes.

After a moment in shock, Hogarth recovered himself enough to start taking photos with his fone, and he got the attention of two of his coworkers, who thereafter witnessed the spacewalk, too. “You keep taking pictures,” one of them said. “I’ll get video.” That quick thinking made Molly Imrie, Dyna-Tech mechanical engineer, more famous than Hogarth, although Hogarth went on to earn a healthy amount of money from the feeds for rights to use his stills. The pictures were much clearer than the video, and less bouncy, but people ate up the videos.

What they showed: three squat torsos, each connected to the other two radially. At the ends of the torsos, three limbs each, in a sort of triangular formation, skinny and bent midway, similar to human arms, with digits resembling fingers at the end. Scales covering everything, bluish and purplish in the prevailing light outside the rocketship. A large, three-sided slit, dead center, where the torsos met, which caused many arguments. Some thought it must be a mouth; some saw the breathing apparatus attached to the Basalite’s underside and decided
that
must be covering the mouth. Magnified stills showed an oval-shaped slit at the center of all three clusters of limbs, and six indentations, two on each side of the torso where they met in the center. The slits looked like eyes, and the indentations like ears. Some thought it was the other way around. Still others refused to assume Basalites had access to only the five senses humans have.

The pictures and video were taken from above, looking down, and the Basalite was helpful enough to stretch out as he thrust himself from one place to another. The images couldn’t have been better if he had posed.