Ride the Moon: An Anthology (27 page)

In the morning, for what I thought would be the last time, I followed my usual routine. After a simple breakfast of reconstituted cheese, bread and fruit, I donned my moonsuit and made the trek across the crater floor to the shrine. The Earth had reached full, and its perfect white ball threw my shadow in sharp relief across the crater floor even though the sun itself was out of sight beyond the wall. I wondered who would take my place; what brother or sister, young and idealistic as I had once been, would make this trek next.

That thought stayed with me as I swept the shrine free of the dust Tia and I had tracked in, refilled the red lamps with oil in the hope they would burn until my replacement arrived, then opened the stone chest before the globe where I kept the holy symbols of Earth's religion, swathed in black velvet, and began the two-hour litany of prayers.

Once I had had to refer to the red-bound book that also lay within the chest for the words of the prayers and instructions on how to spin the prayer wheels and burn the incense. But the litany had long since become second nature, a calming ritual that seemed to take both no time at all and all the time in the world.

Today, though, I stumbled over the words, as the constant thought intruded: “This is the last time...”

Relief mingled with my sadness when I finished. I packed away the holy items, bowed to the shining globe, donned my dust-stained moonsuit, and went out through the black stone airlock.

A silver hopcar waited near the habidome.

Its profile looked odd. As I got closer, I realized the hopcar did not carry the usual crates of supplies. Instead, there was only a small black octagonal chest, a light in its lid blinking green: a message capsule from the Order.

Puzzled by the absence of supplies, but not overly concerned, since I intended to leave the shrine anyway, I took the message capsule inside. It contained a small silver datachip nestled in thick red padding. I removed the chip and slipped it into my computer.

“Greetings in the One whom all humanity serves,” began the message, which appeared only in text, without voice or vid. “I write to tell you that your long and worthy service has come to an end. The Order has decided that the Shrine to Home, which you have tended for so many years with such faithfulness, is to be abandoned. It seems clear to us that humanity no longer feels the need of worship or meditation in that once-holy spot. Our resources are limited, and constantly shrinking, as human spirituality fragments among the Hundred Worlds; and so we feel it best to close the shrine.

“This car will remain at your disposal until you are ready to leave, then will return you to Apollo City. We have arranged passage back to your homeworld of Manor, where you are to report to the monastery at your convenience. In the Service of the One, Henri Michaud, First Secretary.”

I sat and stared at the message for a long time. Here was official permission to do the very thing I was preparing to do: leave the shrine and return to the mainstream of humanity. But it had never crossed my mind that the shrine would be abandoned, that I would be its final keeper.

I should have been excited, happy, ready to drop everything and seek out the medical attention that might prolong my life. But instead, brought face to face with the impending closure of the shrine, my thoughts did not turn to the length of my life, but to its purpose.

For fifty years, I had lived to tend the shrine. Abandoning that purpose to save my own life would make those fifty years, the greater part of my life, meaningless. It would mean Tia had been right, and this place no longer mattered—not to the vast crowd of humanity spread among the Hundred Worlds, not to me...perhaps not even to God.

And who even knew if my life could be saved? The medirobot was not optimistic, and it was a long journey to any place that would have the latest medical technology; certainly Apollo City, an interstellar backwater now, did not. I could be dead before any ship I might board could reach any place that might have a hope of saving me.

I put on my moonsuit and stepped out into the crater; but instead of going to the shrine, I stood just outside the habidome, looking up at the pure white pearl of the Earth.

The asteroid that slammed into humanity's home had been unexpected, devastating, and fatal. But humanity lived, through God's grace; and in a way, the Earth, too, lived on, in images, words, thoughts, beliefs—and in this shrine to its memory.

My cancer was just as unexpected, just as devastating, and just as fatal. But if the shrine closed, nothing of me would live on beyond my death; my years in service here would be forgotten, a footnote in the Order's archives, nothing more.

I could do nothing to make the Order keep the shrine open; but I could, perhaps, reach beyond my death to those who might someday come here after me, just as the shrine was meant to do.

I sent the hopcar back with a reply acknowledging the message from the Order, announcing my resignation, and letting them know I would not be returning to Manor.

Then I began my final vigil.

For days now the pain has been constant. I will no longer let the medirobot dispense the drugs that could ease the discomfort. The pain will end soon enough, and in this place of mourning, pain is appropriate.

I no longer follow my ritual of cleaning and prayer. Instead, I spend most of my time in the shrine, gazing at the globe. I let its silvery light wash over me like water, light from eight billion fitful ghosts...soon to be joined by one more.

The last oil has burned in the blood-red lamps, so the shrine is darker now. Soon, the last of the food will be gone, or the water will run out...or perhaps the pain in my cancer-ravaged body will become too much for me to bear. And then, my waiting will cease.

I have programmed the computer that controls the shrine's functions to open the inner and outer doors together on my voice signal. When the time comes, very soon, I will enter the shrine, hang my moonsuit by the door and make my way to the altar. I will surround myself with the holy items of a hundred faiths, open the red-bound book and place it on the floor, then prostrate myself before it. And then I will command the airlock to open.

Open to vacuum, sheltered in the crater wall, the shrine may last a million years or more. The fiber optics that cause Earthlight to play across the basalt globe may fail, but the globe itself may endure long after humanity itself has vanished from the galaxy.

But if, someday, a human or whatever humans have become returns to the Moon and finds the shrine, they will also find, prostrate before the globe, one faithful man still honouring the billions who, unable to flee into space, died on humanity's ancestral home—and the grace of God, through which a remnant of the human race survived.

We each must find the purpose for our own life.

This is mine.

I was in temple, mixing libations for the Lady of Blood and Stone, the night the moon did not rise.

Even here, where we worship the moon, it took too long to work out what happened. We are too used to the Un-God, his demand for knowledge and order instead of worship. We talk to each other on phones with his bright little screens. We forget that all the gods but him are still wild as beasts.

It was an overcast night. We chanted the Moon's Awakening unknowing, with nothing but a blur of cloud on the projection screen at the temple's apse. The ceremony was long over when Friana, the Acolyte of the Telescopes, ran in.

Friana is always running, tripping over the hem of her blood-red robe, her hair in disarray. It's usually nothing. But she ran past the sub-altar where I was measuring wine and oil, and her panic cut through me. Sharper than Friana's usual panic.

She ran all the way to the High Priestess. I put down my sacrificial dishes to watch. She spoke breathlessly, and I couldn't make out the words.

The High Priestess's voice was clear: “You what?”

And then, “You checked every instrument? The radio telescopes? The laser optics?”

Friana bowed her head, mumbled.

Then, “That's impossible. You've mixed up the coordinates again.”

“No.” This time Friana was loud, shrill. “I double-checked that! The moon didn't rise. It
disappeared
.”

Everyone looked up at that. The High Priestess glared around, then picked up her robes and swept off with Friana. “Back to work. We'll sort this out.”

Terrified chatter burst out in all directions.

The Lady of Blood and Stone
is
the moon—in a way. She is also a stern maiden, and also... Well, with gods, you could never finish counting the things that they are. But the moon is what we weave in our tapestries, praise in our poetry. The moon is our livelihood.

That is why the others were worried. It is not why I suddenly had trouble breathing. The world blurred, and the libations ceased to matter. All I could think was a name.

Trulia.

I remember saying goodbye to Trulia. I clutched her in my arms and kissed her, on the launch pad, breathing her sharp scent while her separation anxiety tangled painfully with mine.

“It's only a year,” she protested. “Then I'll be back.” But no one had tried to live on the moon before. Anything could happen.

“Call me whenever you can. And dream of me.”

“Yeah.”

She didn't mean it. Even waking up next to me, arguing over breakfast about what we remembered, she had trouble believing in dreams. I had tried to teach her to travel that world, but there hadn't been time. At least we had phones.

I let her go. The Un-God's rocket flared to life, and she flew away.

I called Trulia over and over again. All I got were error messages. A few priestesses gave me sour looks, which I felt more than saw—I ought to have been readying the wine and oil for the next ceremony. I didn't care.

When the High Priestess strode back into the sanctuary, she had changed clothes. The silver-and-white diadem of the Highest Days crowned her head. Blood-red ribbons draped her limbs, and new crimson lines—real cuts—stood out on her face. Her fear was even worse than Friana's. It startled me, feeling that sting from someone so outwardly serene.

Her amplified voice echoed in every niche. “There is no reason to panic. Remain calm.”

There was no calm. Hysterical murmurs rose at the corners of the room.

“I have gone into trance and spoken to our Lady.” The High Priestess's voice was crystalline, betraying no trace of the fear underneath. But that is how we choose High Priestesses: they must be cold as space, celibate, queenly and unshakeable. “She is hidden for a time. She is angry, but not at us. We will continue our duties. That is all we need know.”

That is all?

She knew about Trulia. She did not meet my eyes.

Voices rose in chaos as she swept out. But only I was reckless enough to follow.

Trulia didn't mean to go to the moon. She disliked my Lady, even though I could see a resemblance, a moonlike hardness in Trulia's eyes at times. Her supervisor guilted her into adding her name to the recruitment list, promised she'd be a fifth-string backup at best, just some quick training and a prestige point for the university. We didn't think anything would come of it.

Then exotic-materials engineers started bowing out—family concerns, sudden illness—until Trulia was the only good candidate left.

“I can't go,” she blurted when the colony's recruiters came knocking. “We're having a baby.”

“You're what?”

We weren't really. We'd talked about it, decided we wanted it, even though Trulia would be barred from my Lady's temple for nine months. We'd drawn blood for the Changing God's rites—turning my woman's cells into something that could burrow into Trulia's womb and make life. But those rites, like anything of the Changing God's, are experiments. It takes months before the cells get it right, and we'd only just started.

We stopped the rites. We stopped making love. The recruiters tested Trulia's urine. They waited a month, and she bled like any woman. Trulia never understood how barrenness could be beautiful and holy. But she knew that it was important, that strict rules had been laid down before my Lady would allow humans on her surface at all.

“The colony needs you,” the recruiters said. “It's only a year.”

I bit my tongue till it ached. I wanted her here, having our baby. But Trulia believed in rockets the way I believed in blood and privacy.

“They need me,” she said. And I let her go.

I couldn't disturb the High Priestess in her Highest Days regalia. She must be utterly untouched in that diadem: even a tap on the shoulder could bring down my Lady's curse. I waited by the vestry until she had disrobed to a white linen shift.

“Trulia,” I blurted, once it was safe to speak.

The High Priestess turned to me with tired eyes. “I don't know, Viola. The Lady of Blood and Stone didn't say.”

“You didn't ask.”

She snatched up the red silk cap she wears for everyday duties. “There were fifty thousand souls up there. Do you think I am one of the Un-God's sociopaths? Do you think I didn't ask?”

I took a deep breath in and hissed it out until I trusted myself to speak.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “But you know what she is to me. Give me the afternoon off. I have money saved. I'll ask the Herdsman of the Dead—”

“No.”

The answer was so sharp that it froze me.

“Our Lady has forbidden us to know. Whatever she is doing isn't finished. And if you pry, she'll curse you. You know our Lady needs privacy.”

There were no tears. I was genuinely surprised when my voice cracked. “Then give me the afternoon off to grieve.”

Her pity was a pool now, cold and dark. She had seen more bereavement than any of us. She knew its shape.

“Take it if you like,” she said. “But I think it won't matter.”

Trulia was a woman of numbers and careful measurement. She had the usual range of feelings—love, fear, rage, joy—but without numbers, she could not understand them.