The Transmigration of Souls Read online

  “Why didn’t they take it down?”

  “Why bother? It makes a pretty good work area and airlock system.”

  Alireza said, “Mahal?”

  “Here.”

  “Keep an eye on the Chinese. Let me know when they come out.”

  “All right.”

  He looked at Inbar. “You stay here. We can try to use you as a radio link if the signal gets cut off.”

  A nod through the faceplate, a look of almost-relief.

  The dark tunnel was short, featureless, without anything that looked like a light fixture, ending in another door, an old airlock door set in a hull frame, frame buried in the rock wall. Alireza stood for just a second, looking at it, then reached out and popped the latch. Light, bright white light, like natural sunlight, came flooding through.

  “What in Shayol...” Rahman pushed past him, pulling the door open, stepping into the next chamber.

  Silence. The three of them almost huddling together, spacesuits all but touching, looking down off a rough hewn stone balcony, down a long flight of fresh-cut stone stairs, at a vast underground chamber, giant cavern full of sourceless, hazy morning light, with green trees and rosebushes in bright red flower, broad lawns of grassy sward, buildings, like some remote mountain village, clustered in the near distance.

  Inbar’s voice crackled in their earphones. “Mahal says you’d better come up. Chinese have broken out their rover. At least one individual is driving your way.”

  Zeq said, “I wonder if this is some kind of optical illusion.”

  Rahman: “You mean, like the VR art that was popular in America back then?”

  Alireza said, “We’ll find out in a few minutes. Let’s deal with this other problem first.” He turned back toward the hatch.

  Rahman said, “Are you kidding?” Tableau moment, then she turned and went bounding down the stairway.

  Zeq looked at him, face framed in his helmet faceplate, then said, “I’ll stay with her.” Turning away as well.

  What? Order them back? Military discipline and all that? No. Deal with the problem yourself. Let them do what they came here to do. He watched them go down, watched them disappear into the shrubbery with a twinge of unease, turned back toward the hatch, regretting its necessity.

  Turning my back on... What shall I call this? Magic? Or only typical American nonsense? Sell the sizzle not the steak. Magic fountains in a cold gray moonbase. Maybe Ali Baba will come scurrying from the bushes any moment now...

  o0o

  Rolling across the rugged plain of Peary’s floor, Ling Erhshan felt the makeshift Lunar rover waddling under him, unstable. Unstable, because I’m alone here, an empty seat where my companion should be, but...

  Chang and Da Chai working over their consoles, tuning up the particle beam device, charging its capacitors, or whatever. Getting “ready,” whatever that meant.

  “You go on over to the base and talk to the Arab commander. The American... missile will be here in no time at all. When... Well. When it’s over, we’ll come over on foot. It’s not far.”

  Riding now through a field of debris, crawling up to park beside a newer vehicle. Those squiggly lines must be Arabic...

  Sitting there motionless, staring up at a flat black sky, at brightly lit mountains, low, eroded ringwall mountains, dimensionless, as if painted on black glass. Like a movie set. Rubble of artifacts all around him now. Like an abandoned movie set. And then, sudden exhilaration.

  Because I’m really here. Because I’ve been permitted to see this. With my own eyes. Whatever happens next, or doesn’t happen, there will have been that. A magical thrill I can carry with me from now until the moment of my death. Uneasy stirring, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of a bright crescent Earth. Thinking, A moment that may not be so very far away after all... Vision of a missile streaking down out of that starless sky, striking, exploding, bright flare of nuclear fire, then nothing at all. Black eternity.

  So. If it comes, it comes. No reason to think about it before that last fearful moment arrives.

  He unhooked himself from the seat harness and stood, teetering unpleasantly, getting his footing in the dusty soil, then turning to walk toward the wall, where the outline of a hatchway of some sort was visible. Walking, almost tangling his feet, suddenly remembering patchy old black and white video footage. Kangaroo hop. Use your ankles.

  The hatch swung open, bright yellow-orange incandescent light flooding out, spacesuited figures waiting.

  Inside the dome, beyond the inner airlock door, Ling stood facing his two Arabs, looking in through their faceplates at swarthy Levantine faces, at beetle-browed, primitive-looking men with round black eyes and enormous noses. Wondering, for an inane moment, how they kept those huge brown beaks from smashing into their helmet glass... But they look more like the heroes from my old American science fiction novels than I do. Why did I never picture Dorian Haldane looking like this? Or lovely blond Valetta with a nose like a ripe banana planted in the middle of her face?

  No. My child’s imagination made her a pale northern Chinese woman with long, straight yellow hair and unusually big eyes. And, of course, because I was an adolescent boy, a dense forest of curly yellow pubic hair. Yellow like a grocery-store lemon. And big breasts of course. Breasts the size of cantaloupes. American women always had big breasts. You saw that in all the movies.

  Ling sighed, pushing away silly old memories. I am here. It is now. Focus. Because the UAR program had been conducted so openly, their suit radio frequencies had been published, and his own hardware was equipped to transmit on it. “Chang?”

  “Here.”

  “I’m switching ever now. Will you monitor?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Americans?”

  “The missile is no more than an hour out.”

  The missile. So certain, they are. That cold, cold hand, thoughtfully fingering the spaces of my spine...

  He touched the button on his chest-mounted control panel and, in English, said, “I am Ling Erhshan,” careful to subdue the tones, say it low and flat, so they’d hear something other than ping-ping pong, “commander of Ming Tian.” A gesture, out through the dome.

  The narrow-faced man, his English thick and guttural, almost incomprehensible, said, “Alireza, commander al-Qamar.” He motioned to the other man, whose face was fatter, paler, sweatier looking. “Omry Inbar, scientist.”

  Omry Inbar... recognition. “The author of ‘The Oil Shale-like Properties of Certain Fore-Trojan Asteroids’?”

  A surprised look. “The paper I presented at the 2133 IAF congress in Teheran, yes.”

  “I was there. But not permitted to ask questions, sadly.”

  Inbar, eyes suddenly alight, opened his mouth to speak.

  Alireza interrupted, “What of your crew? Why not here?”

  Ling looked into his eyes, finally decided they were just too alien to be read easily. All those old American movies. If this was an American, I’d know what he was thinking. “Manning Ming Tian. Waiting for the Americans to arrive.”

  Inbar said, “So. You think it is manned after all?”

  Then they did know about it. Silly to imagine the Arabs would not be tracking objects in near-Earth space. “Perhaps. My companions think not.”

  Alireza said, “And if it is a missile?”

  Long stare. What are you thinking, my slim desert chieftain? “Unhappily, my government has insisted that Ming Tian be equipped with a collimated particle beam device.”

  Inbar muttered, “My God...” Spoken as if he were quite used to speaking English. Still the language of science, after all these years, because no one wants Chinese or Arabic or Spanish or Swahili or Hindustani to predominate.

  Alireza said, “What good will that do?”

  You could see the fear in his eyes after all. But only in his eyes, otherwise, this was some army officer, like army officers the world over. Like Chang Wushi, for instance. Back in Ming Tian, calmly preparing to open fire on an unknown
vessel, with unknown powers...

  Just then, their suit radios crackled and spoke.

  o0o

  First you watched the Earth grow small, shrinking visibly out the viewports, watched, silent, surrounded by gaping young gargoyles who, perhaps, never once, in all their short, immortal, playtoy lives, imagined they would be here. Then you watched the bright Moon grow larger and larger, faster and faster...

  And then, just then, you felt that savage anger grow large as well.

  Hours to the Moon. Days to Mars and Venus and any asteroid you cared to name. A week or two to Pluto...

  Why the Hell aren’t we using this stuff? Why are we sitting home? Fortress Fucking America...

  Because we’re afraid.

  Afraid that ole Boogeyman goin’ come git us.

  But the Gates are shut. Scavengers couldn’t figure out how to build a Colonial hyperdrive and neither can we. And the Space-Time Juggernaut won’t come for us, so long as we keep our noses out of its... business.

  We could still have the stars, so long as we’re content to take the long, slow route...

  Memory. Hard, sharp memory of standing underneath a dark, blue-lavender sky, looking up at a big bright sun and a small dim sun, dim but still too bright to look at. Of standing in an Arctic parka, breathing through a respirator because the air was way too thin, thinner than the air atop Mt. Everest. But a lot damned better than the air on Mars! Standing there, staring up at a starry sky full of oh-so-familiar constellations, knowing that yellowish first-magnitude star was Home...

  But, Sergeant-Major, a starship built with Scavenger technology would take forty years to reach Alpha Centauri.

  So the fuck what?

  We’re fucking immortal, God damn it!

  But we’re also fucking afraid...

  Jug might not like it. Might come. Might kill us all.

  Brucie’s voice over the intercom: “Forty-five minutes, Sarge.”

  “Right. Thanks.” She picked the old communicator off her belt. Patch me into the comlink.”

  “Will do,” bluff, hearty words, little Brucie now in his technohero role. “Through the translator and out, on one freq in Arabic, the other in Chinese.” Unspoken: no sense wasting good English on them gooks. Though, of course, Brucie was probably a gook, most 21st century Americans had been gooks, made up now to fill his fantasy role...

  “Thanks.” A moment for thought, then, “This is Sergeant-Major Astrid Kincaid, USMC Lunar Expeditionary Force,” What a laugh, like Pershing’s Heroes landing in France, come to end the War to End War, “addressing all groups and individuals currently landed on the United States External Territory of Luna. Board your ships now. Begin making preparations for liftoff. If you do so, you will be permitted to depart in peace. If your vessel cannot make trans-Earth injection at this time, lift off to Lunar orbit. You will be taken in tow and returned to low Earth orbit for repatriation.” Long pause, then, “If you attempt to resist, you will be attacked by armed infantry. Sergeant-Major Astrid Kincaid, USMC, signing off.”

  Corky the Neanderthal Girl said, “Way tough, Sarge! Just like in the old TV shows.”

  Shit. Just like in the old TV shows... She put the communicator on her belt and kept looking out the window, watching the Moon grow, wishing it was that bright blue moon she’d seen once, long ago, in a galaxy so damned far away they never did figure out just which one it was.

  o0o

  Consternation.

  Arabs gabbling to each other, big eyes even wider, like white European eyes now, probably saying, “Did you hear that...” fat-faced scientist waving his arms, teetering off balance in the low gee, commander reaching out to steady him, muttering low.

  And confusion in me, as well, thought Ling Erhshan. Two voices in my ears. One a woman, snarling nearly-incomprehensible Arabic, a language I only studied for two years as an undergraduate, thirty years ago now. And another woman, hard, barbaric voice speaking Chinese, echoing back through the circuit from Ming Tian.

  Recognizably the same woman’s voice. Metallic, angular and deadly. Well. Not such a difficult trick. The UN computer in Singapore does just as well.

  Da Chai, speaking in his left ear now: “Ling...”

  “I heard.”

  “Maybe you’d better come back to the ship.”

  “I... think not.”

  “If there’s fighting...”

  Image of technogenic lightning bolts. “It would appear that it’s a manned ship we face, not a missile. I assume you will... hold your fire?”

  Soft static in the earphone, Arabs still snarling to each other, then Chang Wushi said, “The particle beam weapon will not be much use against infantry, once they’ve debarked. Other than that, all we have are our sidearms.”

  Ling was trying to keep consciousness his own little gun, with its pathetic little bullets, tucked away in the suit’s right knee pouch, suppressed. “Still. I think there’s no other choice.”

  “We’ll do whatever seems appropriate, when the time comes.”

  That cold hand again.

  o0o

  Alireza kept listening to Inbar, hearing his insistent, frightened plea, “Let’s just go back and get in the ship. Let’s wait. What harm can it do?” But the decision was already made, his arguments fading away. “Mahal?”

  “Here. What do you make of it?”

  Nothing. I make nothing of it. He felt a momentary urge to tell them to get out of the ship and come over to the dome, stay together, but, “Sit tight. Um. Maybe you’d better do a preflight.”

  Tariq: “We’d already started that. Even before...”

  Right. Memory of a ridiculous woman’s voice, grating in his ears. Old fashioned Arabic, full of heavy consonants and sharp sounds. Guttural stops where glottals should be. Like the Arabic of my country cousins in Hejaz, rather than the crisp, modern sounds of bälädi, Dialect of the Cities, the Arabic you heard on the nets, were taught to use in school...

  And Zeq, suddenly popping out of the rabbit hole: “Qamal, Omry, you have to come see this!...” Stopping suddenly, at the sight of Ling.

  Inbar put his hand out, touching the arm of the Chinaman’s suit. “There’s... something here. We don’t know what.”

  Alireza felt a quickening surge of... what? Ownership? A desire, at any rate, to prevent this... foreigner, he supposed, from seeing the underground gallery. Silly. Not mine. Not ours. In just a little while the Americans will come and take it away from us. Try to, at any rate.

  Sigh. “We’ve got about half an hour. Let’s go look.”

  o0o

  Subaïda Rahman was standing by the rear wall of the underground chamber, perhaps a kilometer from the entrance, with its balcony and stone stairs. Anomaly after anomaly. Now this... thing. Most of it had been merely strange. Inexplicable. Funny looking bushes and trees. Bits of machinery that were like nothing she’d ever studied. Not stuff from the Renaissance, certainly. Not much like the few bits and pieces that had escaped from Fortress America over the years.

  Memory of being in the top secret government laboratory south of Äwbahri, at the terminus of the Fäzzan rail line, buried in the hardpan desert of Idehan Marzuq. Hot desert wind without, cool airconditioning within, while her colleagues lowered the little silver helmet over her head...

  Just found it out there, floating in the sea, though something that felt this heavy and dense to the hand should have sunk like a stone...

  Feather light on my head though.

  How does it feel?

  All right.

  Can you see anything?

  No.

  How about when I do this?

  Well...

  Pins and needles at the base of her spine, building, building...

  The sudden orgasm had made her surge from the chair, ripping the thing off her head, standing almost bowlegged, then almost knock-kneed, crying out...

  Male scientists staring at her in puzzled astonishment.

  Maryam, the one other woman on the team coming forward sud
denly, brushing back her short, stiff hair, looking into her eyes, seeming nonplused.

  Did what I think just happen to you?

  Shaky whisper, Yes. Yes, I think so...

  Maryam picking up the little silver helmet, smirking, We could make a lot of money, if we could learn to manufacture these...

  Shaky laughter, ignorant male colleagues gathering round, demanding to know what was going on.

  Dr. Saddiq taking the thing from Maryam, saying, Well, maybe we’d better try harder to find an English dictionary with this word in it. Tapping the front of the helmet, where it said, Orgonogenesis Inc.

  Who wants to be next? Mahmuhd?

  Maryam and Subaïda hid their smiles until after the young man went through his version of the experience. Tried not to laugh when a stunned Mahmuhd excused himself to go change his linen. It was a few days before someone figured out the connection to the word orgone, which had been in their dictionaries, all along...

  This thing on the chamber’s rear wall though... not like that at all. More like an altar to some technological god, some typically American god. Big smooth sheet of what looked like polished black formica, set flush with the rear wall, coated with a thick layer of plastic sealant.

  Not quite featureless. If you leaned close, you could see rainbow refraction, an interplay of colors just like the ones you saw on the surface of a 20th century videodisc. Microscopic pits in the formica? Invisibly tiny bubbles, like dust motes in the plastic coating? Or some property of the plastic itself?

  There was a heavy frame around the thing, marking out an area perhaps twenty meters square, things like insulated wires, red and blue and black, marked by various colored stripes, coming out here and there.

  Ham fisted. Hardly the sophistication you’d expect from the Great Renaissance. We do better work than this, even now. Almost as if it had been built by those old Germans, building for Apollo. Heavy. Redundant. Brooklyn-Bridge engineering they’d called it.

  There was a little chair, covered with fine white dust, a small control panel mounted on a console. Dials, meters, gauges, what looked like dead LCD readouts. Brute force toggle switches and big square push-buttons. All of them carefully labeled, in English, with bits of embossed color tape. Very enticing, that caged switch that said, “Power Main.” Flip it on and...