Ride the Moon: An Anthology (19 page)

“You mean like watching those giant lightning storms stretch from pole to pole when the Earth's magnetic field lines started to compress together?” Jacob said. “Or when the upper atmosphere began to stream away into space?” He stepped away from the board, frowning. “It's just as well we can't watch.”

DeSilva sat in silence, trying not to look up. “Jacob?”

“Yes?”

“Are we safe in here?”

“You mean here in the Pasture?” Jacob nodded. “On emergency power, the fans are moving the air, but everything else is more or less shut off. We're not going to have full power again until sunrise, still more than seven days away.”
At least we'll be able to store power from the solar arrays,
he thought
. If those power surges had fried the nuclear lattice batteries, we'd only have power during the fourteen days of sunlight. We'd be dead at the next sundown.

Jacob returned to the board, revising his predictive model for the life support system. When the solar plasma short-circuited everything, electrical fires had consumed some of their oxygen, but eleven people died from electrocution, another fourteen from asphyxiation before they got the fans working again. He worked and re-worked the numbers.

“Well?” asked DeSilva.

The light from the dome flashed overhead. Horrific, tempest lightning, but without the thunder, punctuated only by the sound of the irregular blowing from the vents.

“Losing twenty-five people extends our food and water significantly,” Jacob replied, “but it only extends the air by two days.”

“Oh.”

“What about you? Are you making any progress?”

DeSilva put down the luminometer. “It's only about four percent as bright as normal sunlight.”

“The carbongrasses are as heavily gene-engineered for the lunar environment as the rabbits are. There's enough light from the plasma storm to trigger some level of photosynthesis, isn't there?”

“Maybe, if it's the right spectrum,” DeSilva said. “If the wavelengths are wrong, the plants won't photosynthesize no matter how bright it is. I wish we could run the overhead flood lights to supplement it, but that takes power.”

“Which we don't have.” Jacob felt more tired than he could ever remember. “I didn't expect to get even this much light from the plasma. It's just that I was hoping it would push the numbers more.”

“So we're screwed?” said DeSilva. “We just wait until we all start passing out?”

Jacob paused, then straightened. “No,” he replied, “we don't just wait. We take action.”

“What do you mean? What more can we do?”

“I don't have time to explain it in detail. I need you to go over to the tool room by the loading bay. There's a crate of equipment marked ‘condensors—manual operation'. Find it and bring it back.”

“Tool room, loading bay, condensors. Got it. I'll be right back.” DeSilva hurried from the office.

Jacob sighed. He closed the door then twisted the manual override lever on the control panel. Heavy bolts shot home, locking the door and preventing access to the office from the outside. There were four entrances that led directly into the Pasture; walking around the perimeter, he secured them all.

“Jake?”

Irina,
he thought.
She suspected me all along. I wonder why that doesn't surprise me?
He turned to face her.

She held the anti-personnel taser gun up high, aimed at his chest.

Has she been crying? Or is that just a trick of this light?

“You son of a bitch,” she said. “You sent him out there to die.”

“I couldn't let him stay here. They would have broken down the doors to come in after him. If it's just me in here, they might not come in. I might be able to talk them out of it.”

“You would have left me out there to die, too.”

Jacob shook his head. “No, Irina, that's not true. DeSilva is... look, I'm sorry about him, OK? I'm sorry that it's come to this for all of us. But in here or out there, when they start drawing up lists of who's essential and who's not, he's not going to make the cut.”

“And you are? You're so damned important that you get to live while DeSilva and who knows how many others don't? What's it going to take, Jacob? How many have to die so the rest can live? And all that while you're safe in here with your precious goddamned rabbits?”

“Without the Pasture, everybody dies. And without somebody to maintain it, the Pasture dies. Believe me, I wish someone else could do this job. I was expecting Jardin to come over from Farside in the evacuation. We could have, I don't know, flipped a coin or something, made it fair. But as it is? The emergency committee is going crazy out there, only pretending to be rational. I have to keep them from destroying the Pasture's ecology, or the sacrifices the volunteers are going to make won't be enough. Please, Irina, I have no choice. “

“But you chose not to tell me you were going to barricade yourself in here. You were going to abandon me.”

“I wasn't abandoning you. I knew you'd be safe. You're their expert for the nutrient recyclers. The committee wouldn't ask you to volunteer, they need you.”

She lowered the gun. “No,” she said, “they don't. I saw the new list before the power went out. You're safe. I'm not.”

“No. I don't believe it.”

“My name won't be in the first round of volunteers. If I'm lucky, it won't be in the second round, either. But by the third?” She shook her head.

Jacob sagged against the wall. “You were supposed to be safe. I was sure of it.” He looked up at her. “But you're safe now. You're in here, with me.”

She shook her head. “No, Jake. I'm no different from DeSilva. If I stay in here with you, they'll come in to get me, and once they're in, they'll kill the rabbits and then they'll kill you. I can't let them do that.” Irina tucked the gun into her waistband and approached him. She tilted his face down and kissed him. “Make it work, Jake. If the Pasture keeps the air and water clean, they won't have to start drawing names.” At one of the doors, she undid the manual override, opened the hatch and stepped out into the hallway. “Lock this after me, Jake. I'll do what I can to keep them from breaking in.”

“Get the power back on, Irina. Drain the batteries, use the generators from the rovers, cannibalize the transports, anything. If I can get the flood lights on and push up the photosynthesis rate, we might have a chance.”

She nodded, touched her fingers to her lips and closed the door. He re-engaged the manual locks and sealed himself in.

For the next hour, Jacob sat in his office, numb. The rabbits emerged from hiding and moved across the Pasture, nibbling the carbongrass beneath the shifting, spectral light of the sun's wrath.

Days passed in the silent, stinking dimness of the Pasture. After the solar storm moved on, the Earth was all but incinerated. Jacob searched its surface for hour after hour. Wherever his telescope was able to peer through thick, dark clouds, he saw no trace of green on any continent—only brown, white and black. All the forests of the world had burned to the ground, filling the skies with soot and ash.

Right on schedule, the sun, once again pure and bright, rose over the eastern limb of Mare Fecunditatis. When the thin blade of light hit the leading solar arrays, the dim floodlights under the dome flickered and strengthened. Through the walls and the floor, Jacob heard voices cheering as systems returned to full power. In a few minutes, the sunlight would touch the floor of the Pasture. The grasses would grow, the rabbits would feast; Nearside would have a chance.

The phone rang.

He jerked at the sound. It had been dead since the power surge.

“Yes? Hello?”

“This is Enrique DeSilva. Open those doors, you son of a bitch.”

“Who? DeSilva?”
He's alive?
Since he'd locked himself in, Jacob had heard only threats, shouted at him through the heavy doors. He hadn't known who had volunteered, or had been sacrificed.
But if DeSilva is alive, then did anyone have to die?
“Listen, DeSilva, is Irina... is she...”

“Yes, she's alive, as alive as any of us are out here. Irina told me what you planned, why you did what you did. She and I convinced them to divert power from all the other systems to feed your lights, to just hang on until sunrise. Now, the power is coming back on, to the ventilation, the lights, water pumps, everything. But, dammit, we're half-dead out here! We need fresh air, we need to see something green and growing. Open the damned doors, Jacob, now!”

We made it
, Jacob thought.
This far at least, we made it
. “I will, DeSilva, I will. But the rabbits need some time to adjust to the sunlight. I'll open up in twenty-four hours, I promise, after the base is flushed with fresh air and everyone out there has a chance to get some rest
.” Plus, I don't want you to kill me as soon as you come in.

DeSilva was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “There are pockets of survivors on Earth, but it's bad down there. Real bad. We can hear them on the emergency-band radio , but they aren't paying any attention to us. There isn't going to be a rescue, not soon. Maybe not ever.”

Jacob said nothing.

“If we can cobble together a second dome with what we can salvage from Farside,” DeSilva continued, “can we establish another Pasture? Are there enough rabbits and carbongrass to transfer some? The committee is trying to make plans for the long term.”

Sunbeams glinted through the uppermost panes of the dome, angling downward onto the Pasture and the grazing rabbits, males and females sniffing each other.

“Yes,” Jacob said, “we can do that.”

The banging at the cottage door was insistent, impatient—as were the voices of my confederates.

“Open up, Josiah. It's us. Open up, Man, the moon's full on. The wagon's ready. It's time to get to work.”

Swallowing hard, I laid my clay pipe by the grate and got up from my rocker. The bangs continued but I ignored them, peering worriedly through the dusty glass at the full, fat orb blazing high in the sky, its brilliance pushing back the darkness.

It was as bright a night as I could ever remember; an unwelcome amount of illumination for the furtive task we had to perform.

“Please, my love, don't go. I'm begging you.” Mary's voice was taut, eyes moist in the candlelight. “Tell them you want no part of this. They can keep the money. We'll make do, scrimp and sacrifice a little more. We'll get by somehow.”

I shook my head. I wasn't going to allow our children to go hungry another day; to pretend not to notice as Mary, gaunt and weary, took what meagre victuals were on her plate and stuffed them in the mouth of our youngest. I wasn't prepared to go on confronting my haunted face in the looking glass, the expression of self-loathing and helplessness tearing my soul apart.

They said the famine was an act of God and no man should feel he'd failed, but that didn't make me feel any less wretched. What pathetic kind of man couldn't provide for his family? I had to do something, even if it was against the law and risked me dangling at the end of a noose.

Besides, even if I had wanted to pull out, I couldn't. Not with these stone-hearted men. My new companions weren't the kind you let down. I had only been acquainted with them for a few days, knew them only as Daniels and Lafferty, but in that time I'd witnessed enough to comprehend the unspeakable pain and cruelty they could inflict if I displeased them.

“I won't tell you again, Farm Boy. Don't vex me. Open up or we'll break this bloody door down.”

Squeezing Mary's sagging shoulder, I pulled back the metal bolt and let in the sharp, dry, Autumn air.

“What's your game, Matey?” Daniels pushed his gangly frame past me and grinned darkly at Mary, making no attempt to hide his appraising gaze. “What kept you? Having some slap and tickle with the lovely wife?”

“No,” Lafferty corrected, slamming the door shut behind him. “He got cold feet. Thought he'd just leave us outside and we'd quietly go away. That it, Carrot-cruncher? Planning to welch on your side of the bargain?”

I gasped, unprepared for the beefy fingers that grabbed my throat and dug in viciously.

“Nooo... no... it wasn't like that,” I tried to say, but the pressure was agony, my neck burning, my tongue tasting coppery blood as I spluttered and coughed.

“Cos we'd take it right badly if that's what you thought, friend.” Lafferty's plump unshaven face came close and I was assailed by the stench of raw onion and cheese. “There's too much at stake,” he hissed, “to let some frightened, gutless bumpkin ruin it for us.”

“I wasn't backing out, I promise...” My words rasped, barely comprehensible, yet the trepidation they contained seemed enough to satisfy him. With a shove, he released his grip and I dropped to my knees, retching.

“You are nothing but villains, cowards— “ Mary cried, but I signalled her to be silent. Defiance could only make things worse. After an anguished moment, she acquiesced, but stared at both with undisguised loathing, fists balled.

“Ma-ma, what's going on? What's all the noise? Who are these strangers?”

My heart chilled. I'd prayed that the children would stay deep in slumber in the other room. Tom rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, frowning, as he came fully into the front room.

“It's fine, Lad,” I told him. “Go back to bed, Son. This doesn't concern you.” But he remained rooted to the spot, puzzled, blinking at me prone on the floor.

“What's wrong with Pa-pa? Is he ill?”

“Tom, do as you're told. Bed. Now.” Mary bustled towards him anxiously, shooing the child away.

Daniels bared his tobacco-stained teeth in a snigger, waving his hands in a mocking pantomime of Mary's gesture.