The Destructives (4 page)

“How are you feeling?” asked Dr Easy.

Theodore indicated the bioluminescent telemetry pulsing evenly across the chest of his suit.

“You said you were worried about me climbing this mountain.”

“Did I?” Dr Easy’s eyes lit up its visor with contemplative blue. The robot, with its calfskin hide, had to wear a suit just like the rest of them.

“Yes, you did.”

The robot adjusted the tarpaulin, and its mirrored material seethed with the energy and knowledge of the sun.

“I’m not worried about you at all, Theodore. This can only be good for you.”

With renewed vigour, the climbing party resumed their hike up the mountain. Julian sang over the comms, a Wandervogel hiking song that resounded in their helmets, and the other students joined in with the chorus – the wandering birds, the gift of song, the moon is the heart of the night. Space roared silently as they scrambled hand-over-hand up an incline of loose regolith, up to their knees in silver sand. Julian’s singing grew strained and then silent. Dr Easy, lighter than the humans, unburdened by a life support system, skipped ahead with long strides.

“From here on, we must expect the unexpected,” said Stephen to the party. “The unexpected will seek us out.”

The steep incline levelled off. The climbers found themselves surrounded on all sides by mild undulations. The imperceptible hum of the mountain. They hiked across field after field of grey waves, climbing upward again through scree, until they encountered a large crater and had to walk around the rim. Theodore glanced down the steep crater sides, saw how its banded layers of basalts ended abruptly in hard shadow. At Stephen’s instruction, they picked up the pace, hopscotching gracefully across a field of ejecta and onto another dunefield, another dust run, and then a long slope upward, sliding boots, white streaks, life signs pulsing hard and steady, the comms silent with exertion, space roaring with increasing intensity the further they climbed.

They reached the base of the lower peak of Mons Huygens. Theodore tapped Dr Easy on the arm.

“You said you were worried about what would happen if I climbed this mountain. It’s not enough that you’ve changed your mind. I want to know what your concern was.”

“You can’t hold me to things that I say at night. When I am cut off from the sun. This body can only cache so much of me.”

“What was your concern?”

“That you regard this climb as an ending. The end of a phase in your life.”

“That would mean change. Change is a good thing.”

“Change is a risk for you. Your recovery has been slow but steady. If you feel like you have reached the top of the mountain, come to the end of your recovery, then what?”

Stephen called the party to a halt at the foot of a cliff. He and Ida appraised the crag, discussing the best route for a free climb, using rope and gear only as protection against a fall. The first fifty metres were vertical, with bucket holds that would allow the students to hoist themselves swiftly up the crag before reaching a terrace. The climbing party would mantel across the terrace, using their upper body strength, and then scramble a hundred metres through dusty scree to the top. A racetrack if ever he saw one.

On Stephen’s instruction, the climbers unhooked their air and water reserves. Dropping this rack meant taking full advantage of the low gravity. Their suits retained an hour’s worth of air and water, sufficient to make it up to the top and back, and then they would pick up their reserves for the long hike back down the mountain. In the midst of these white boxes of life support, Dr Easy set up a radio antenna to relay their comms back to the university.

They began the vertical ascent. Stephen dangled by one hand from an arête, swung his legs pendulously in the low gravity, and then flopped sideways and upward, letting go, drifting, drifting then grasping a higher ledge. Two of the other climbers – Ida and Kayleigh – dangled with a two-handed grip in a wide chimney, and then drew their knees upward, pushing off, leapfrogging quickly up.

Theodore was last to climb. He turned to Dr Easy.

“You coming?”

“My right hand,” said the robot, stiffly clenching and unclenching its gloved fingers. “I lack the tactile precision.”

It was a hard, hot climb. He was fit. So fit. In the past, the mountain would have defeated him. He never would have attempted a physical challenge. But he had built up his powers of endurance and recovery. The dust slid off his boots. He got his thick fingers into a sidepull and cranked himself up, feeling himself drift momentarily. Overhead, Julian cranked too hard, and barndoored out from the rock face, hinged on his right hand and right foot. A mistake. A bad one on Earth. But the moon forgave him.

One by one, the climbers hauled themselves up onto the terrace. On the approach, he knew he could risk a dynamic move: instead of mantelling carefully onto the ledge, he struck out to the side, gathered momentum and then heaved his legs over first, as if cresting the bar of a high jump. His head turned back and glimpsed, far below, the distant form of Dr Easy. A slow somersault, landing on his feet. The other climbers were already running up the scree, their neon life signs pulsing quick and strong, whooping and hollering over the comms.

And then he felt it. A violent uncertainty. And before he could determine whether that uncertainty came from within or without, he felt it again. Tiny trails of scree drifted up from the slope. A moonquake. A substantial one. The other climbers went down on all fours, bracing themselves against the slope. Panic over the comms. Scree shaking loose. Stephen called for silence so that he could think. On Earth, a quake like this would pass. The seismic energy would be absorbed by compressible rock. But the moon was dry. The moon was rigid. No atmosphere, no soul. When struck, it vibrated like a tuning fork. Vibrated and would not stop vibrating.

The vibrations made it hard to think.

A pebble drifted steadily toward his visor. He swatted it aside.

The scree shifted. The moon was shaking him awake. Shaking him out of moon dreams. He saw the rockslide before the others did. Boulders the size of footballs, boulders the size of beachballs, boulders the size of cars splashing languidly into the scree and then bouncing with ponderous intent downhill. Falling bodies fall at the same speed regardless of mass. Stephen shouting over the comms. Slowly, the climbers turned in the scree. Slowly they began to flee. In their panic, the climbers ran high and strong, only to land on shifting ground. He watched them wobble and stumble. He watched them sprawl in the scree. He watched them roll and turn downhill, trying to right themselves even as the moon tried to shake them off. Kicking up scree that flew alongside them. And boulders the size of footballs, boulders the size of beachballs, boulders the size of cars rolled implacably onward.

The vibrations made it hard to think. He could not act on instinct because his instincts had adapted to Earth conditions, Earth survival. Ida leapt upward and she seemed to have a cloak made of scree, and then something hit her square in the back, carrying her forward for metres of screaming pain, and then the scree folded over her, and he couldn’t see her any more. Stephen turned back, leaping across the line of bounding rocks toward where Ida had fallen. Skidding, almost falling, then finding her, lifting her up.

The approaching rockfall kicked up a cloud of pebbles. Theodore swatted them away but one cracked against his visor, a sudden and palpable crack. The mountain fell slowly toward him, carrying the students with it, their life signs jagged, pulsing and scarlet. Suddenly there was no time. No time to run. He felt another violent uncertainty, from within and without, and then his head was full of space.

“You are alive,” said Dr Easy. “But you are in danger.”

Theodore roused himself. He was hot and the air he was breathing was hot. His suit was scorched from prolonged contact with the lunar surface. With a sense of dread, he checked it for rips and tears. None. Of course. If his suit had been damaged, he would already be dead.

“Danger?” he asked.

“Your air supply is low.”

The robot glanced back over the scree field, toward the cliff edge.

“The racks are buried under the rockfall,” said Dr Easy. “Their integrity has likely been breached. You’ve been unconscious for twenty-two minutes. You have fifteen minutes of oxygen remaining.”

Over the comms, he heard the other students, some searching, some pleading to be found.

“One serious injury. Ida,” said Dr Easy.

Theodore got unsteadily to his feet. Stephen was still carrying the limp body of the injured Ida.

“I can’t treat her injuries while she is wearing her suit,” said Stephen.

Theodore turned to Dr Easy.

“How long until help arrives?”

The robot was implacable.

“The antenna was destroyed in the rockslide. Our comms do not have the range.”

“You’re in contact with the University of the Sun. Use them to relay a message.”

The robot walked a few paces to the cliff edge, then peered down at the gathered rubble.

“The solar academics are aware of what has transpired.”

“And?”

Stephen strode over, took the robot by the arm and pulled it toward him.

“Call for help now!”

“The terms of the Cantor Accord are clear. The University of the Sun is not to interfere in human affairs. There are millions of humans suffering right now, here and on the Earth. Non-intervention is at the core of our
detente
. I understand this is an emotional issue for you all but you will have to find another way to survive.”

Stephen turned to Theodore.

“Tell it to send for help!”

The robot glanced over at Theodore, curious to discover what argument he would deploy.

Theodore said, “In the night you told me not to come. Was that because you knew there would be a moonquake?”

The robot nodded slowly.

“A probability. Not a certainty.”

“But when you resumed contact with the other emergences, you were overruled?”

“No, that’s not how it works. I was reminded of my primary responsibility. Which is to witness.”

Theodore turned to Stephen.

“I suggest you and the others start clearing the rubble, see if you can find any racks that are intact.”

He turned to Dr Easy.

“You go ahead, get the pod, bring it back here. Save any of us that are left.”

“No, it would be too late.” The robot put its right hand upon Theodore’s life signs, its fingers flexing stiffly. “I will stay with you.”

“To witness?”

“Yes. One human life from beginning to end.”

The students rappelled down the cliff face and began shifting the boulders. On Earth, the rubble would have been too heavy to clear. On the moon it took minutes to reach the first rack. It was dented, punctured, empty. Stephen threw the metal carcass aside, and the students resumed their search.

The robot stood behind Theodore and put its arms around him.

“Tell me what you are thinking.”

He was thinking about mountains. He was thinking about death. That death was as variegated in its stages as a mountain, that death had its foothills, its broken chaotic terrain, its mild undulations, its valleys full of space. That death had its crux and that death had its summit.

Theodore turned around in the arms of the robot so that their visors touched. Slowly he encircled the wrist of the robot’s right arm, and felt the weak arthritic claw of that hand.

“I’m going to need this,” he said, and then he bent the hand back sharply, and twisted it until the joint snapped. He pulled the robot’s hand off. First he removed the glove, the leather charred and burnt. Theodore took a sharp piece of scree and cut the material away to expose the metal skeleton. Methodically, he pulled out each of the fingers from the severed hand. The tip of one finger bone slotted into the joint of another to form a long thick wire.

“Use the tarp to generate a current, then run it rapidly through this–” He handed the robot the interconnected finger bones, “–our transmitter.”

“Clever,” admitted Dr Easy. “But help will not arrive before you run out of oxygen.”

Theodore gazed down at the students searching through the boulders. They heaved out another rack. It was crushed and punctured. The deeper they dug, the less likely that they would find one intact. He remained calm but not because he was brave; as a young man, his use of weirdcore had burnt-out his capacity for feeling.

He turned to Dr Easy. “Have you sent that SOS yet?”

“Rescue is on its way. They estimate twenty-five minutes to reach our position.” The robot looked at its broken wrist, its missing hand, and then it asked him, “Have you done the sums?”

Twelve minutes of air remaining in each spacesuit. Twelve students and him. If he killed nine of the students and took their supply, that might be enough to keep himself and the three remaining strongest students alive. He would have to work quickly to effect the necessary alliance. Death was a mountain and the summit was in sight.

“No one is killing anyone,” he said to Dr Easy.

“I only asked if you had done the sums.”

“I would have to kill the students without puncturing the suits.”

“The suits are calibrated by computer. I could switch off the air supply using a short range signal. There would be no struggle.”

“You would not call for help. Yet you would kill. Doesn’t that contravene the Cantor Accord?”

“Speculation is permitted,” said Dr Easy. “It is action that is forbidden.”

He stood with the robot on the cliff edge while down below the students worked in teams, hefting rubble aside.

“If you can control the life support of the students, then you can control the racks, yes?”

The robot nodded slowly.

“Then you can monitor their internal telemetry and see if any racks are intact. And from that you can show us exactly where in the rubble we should dig.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“And you didn’t think to mention it?”

“It didn’t occur to me.” The servos of the robot’s severed wrist whirred and clicked. “The travails of human evolution make your problem-solving superior to mine.”