The Transmigration of Souls Page 8

Maybe, later, I would change my mind. Go on home. Live out my life and die. Maybe she’d forgive me. Maybe she’d understand. Oh, Astrid Astride, you deserved better than me. And now I feel the pang of your fall...

  Three. Children of the Lens.

  Underground, continuing to work their way through all the dials and switches of the control panel, Inbar and Rahman were uneasy, ignoring their feelings...

  Should we be up there now?

  What good would that do?

  Our duty...

  But... this.

  Thoughts universal, however unspoken.

  Next to the “Power Main” switch was another one, almost identical, similarly caged, with a red label tape that said Link. Subaïda Rahman eyed it, knowing there was nothing left to do. Either we act, or we do not. Fretful fears: Only a fool does things like this. Meanwhile, up on the surface, the Americans would be landing about now.

  Inbar said, “We’d better wait for Alireza. Maybe we should go up and see...” The ground twitched under their feet, a barely perceptible movement, fine dust sifting down from the ceiling.

  Nothing. Motionless. Looking at one another, faces drained of color, filling up with fear. The ground twitched again. More dust. Rahman thought, That’s it then. I’ll never know if... She reached out and uncaged the switch, reversed its position.

  Pale golden light, a luminous hint of rainbows splashing at their feet. Abandoned scrap of paper with its cryptic numbers and scrawled English words suddenly lifting off from where it’d been set on the edge of the console, blowing away out over the bushes. Dust flying off the ground, gusting around their space-suited ankles.

  Inbar turned toward the wall, gaping, and said, “In the Name of God.”

  o0o

  It felt very strange to be standing on the familiar, dusty surface of the Moon after all these years. Standing there in old-fashioned combat tans, mottled desert-warfare fatigues of the sort she’d worn, way back in the late 2020s, when America had what turned out to be its penultimate foreign adventure, the destruction of Morocco’s nuclear weapons capability.

  Soldiers, if you could call them that, gathering in a ragged row at the foot of the ramp, by the Scavenger ship’s landing jacks, each muscular dwarf, each tall, grinning gargoyle, shouldering pack and rifle, each surrounded by a pale, intangible nimbus of silvery light.

  Take a deep breath. Nice, clean air, at standard temperature and pressure. Faint smell of gunpowder. Lunar dust sifting in through the curtainfield, where it’s compressed by our boots. Brucie and his boys were standing in a little knot nearby, grinning, goggling around at the scenery, staring over at those two bubbled craters, cooled already to the point where they were just black glass, little rims of dull red light showing through here and there.

  Brucie said, “Man, that sumbitch really worked.”

  Kincaid turned over a bit of twisted metal with one foot. Sure did. No way of even knowing what this used to be part of.

  One of the other techies said, “Radio traffic seems to indicate there were two crew on each vessel at the time of attack.”

  Four dead then, which meant there were five more somewhere else. Looking up at the dome, which should have been dark. Someone has turned on the lights, then. Four more Arabs. One last Chinaman. Poor fucking bastards. The communicator on her belt chirped. She put it to her ear, and said, “Here.”

  “This is Athelstan. Thought you should know the Arabs assaulted our observers at their launch complex. We’ve blown their autodestruct mechanisms. Hammaghir is gone.”

  Observers. Teleoperated androids, with bigger-than-usual bombs in their heads. Cooling radioactive holes in the sand. So why did we wait? Why did we let it get this far? Who knows? Politicians and generals make their decisions. Maybe they argued about Pearl Harbor or something. Argued ‘til it was too late for anything but... this.

  “We saw your explosions. Are you finished up there?”

  “No. We’ve got to go inside the base and catch five survivors.”

  “Inside the base?” You could hear the upset in Athelstan’s voice. “Too bad about that.”

  “Yes sir. Too bad.” As you say sir. She put the communicator back on her belt, not bothering to sign off. All right. Time to go.

  o0o

  Looking out through the dome, Alireza whispered, “Trust to the Americans to send Djinni for us.”

  Zeq, voice fainter still: “Djinni are saved as well, some of them. Allah sent a separate revelation to all their kind, to be accepted or rejected, just as with men. Djinni, the Book says, have their own Quran...”

  Ling, edging backward, feeling fear curl through his abdomen, said, “Something more has been going on in America than we ever suspected.” All those years of satellite photos, of skulking along the borders with Canada and Mexico, spies trying to get in, always failing, never a chink found anywhere in the walls of Fortress America. Watching the embassy, with its magic planes. Shadowing the tourists here and there. Picking mysterious flotsam from the ocean. Now, here were the Americans, like things from some old movie, bounding toward them across the Lunar plain. Coming for us.

  Why am I afraid? Why am I so afraid? I’ve played out scenes like this in my imagination a thousand times. American scenes, from old American books, old American movies. But this is real. And Chang Wushi is dead. Da Chai is dead. Blown away to... not even dust. Blown away into the sky as vapor and fire. Soon, most likely, I’ll be dead as well. This is real. That’s why I’m afraid.

  Even Dorian Haldane would be afraid.

  Alireza said, “We’d better get back down to Inbar and Rahman. We should face this together...”

  Then...

  Trying to run, pretending to run, in a spacesuit of hundred-year-old design, Ling Erhshan imagined he could feel every one of his fifty-five years. Could count them, see them flashing before his eyes like still frames from his personal movie.

  Such a simple movie. Confused scenes of infancy. Those people who might or might not have been his parents. Ice and snow. Mountain scenes. I never knew my name, or who I might be.

  Then the fast drumbeat: Orphanage. School. Books. Scholarship. College. Politics and grantsmanship. Graduate school. Science awards. Doing real science. Working toward a goal. Bureaucracy. Politics. Moonshot. Politics...

  And monsters running at you across a dusty black plain, Earth hanging bright in the sky.

  That inane voice, refusing to shut up as they scurried into the tunnel, closing the door behind them: You’re having an Adventure, Ling Erhshan. Having an adventure at last. I wonder if Chang Wushi and Da Chai were afraid, in that last moment of theirs. If they had an instant of regret, just before being burned away to nothing, being torn to pieces and...

  Then they were out on the balcony, closing another door behind them, as if, somehow, its flimsy metal would keep the monsters out on the plain at bay.

  That one thing, out in the lead, taking point they’d call it, looking like the cover illustration from my old paperback of Number Thirteen, the one I stole from the orphanage library the day I went away to school, so I’d have something to read on the train, all eyes and long, sharp teeth and dark, ragged hole of a nose...

  Running through all these crazy bushes now, crazy American bushes in a cave under the Moon, while dust swirled around them on winds of... winds of...

  Scientist mind waking up.

  Winds of what?

  I’m in a cave, buried under the surface of an airless world.

  Winds of what?

  And that soft golden light, coming from the back of the cave, where they’d left Inbar and Rahman...

  Rahman, who’d already had the temerity to touch those mysterious controls, put power to whatever it was that had lain here, silent and alone, for three long generations. Whatever it was that had... given the Americans their magic. And made them into the things you saw up there. Things coming for us now.

  They came out of the bushes and stopped. Stared. There. Almost as if you knew this would happen. As if the ol
d stories had prepared you for it.

  Inbar and Rahman, bulky in their spacesuits, standing together, facing what had been a featureless wall. Staring out through it. Long, long vista of rolling yellow hills under a pastel pink sky that could not, could not be making this mellow golden light. Pale silvery clouds up in that sky. Small, pale, metallic sun, fiery disk of molten gold.

  Fine yellow dust, blowing in through the opening in the wall, drifting across the floor, seeming to hover above it, swirling like liquid. Alireza’s voice, dry, very dry in their earphones. “Well,” he said. “I wonder where they parked the flying saucer?”

  Ling Erhshan suppressing an urge to giggle, suppressing a momentary fear that he would have one of those “nervous breakdowns” Americans in old books and movies loved to fret about. Not I, not I, because this is... He said, “This explains a lot, doesn’t it?” His own voice so very laconic, English so very precise and crisp. Calm now. Because this is... looking out at that golden-pink world, because... because this is glorious.

  There was a crack of thunder behind them, making them turn way from their window. An explosion, gouting flower of crimson fire, the door above the balcony flying outward, tumbling as it fell down into the garden, leaving behind a pale contrail of faint gray smoke.

  Ah, yes, thought Ling Erhshan. The monsters. I did forget about the monsters...

  o0o

  Kincaid up on the balcony with her troops, looking out across the lush, level expanse of the Pierre Boule Memorial Lunar Gardens: Always wondered if that was a penname, French “boule” the source of English “bull,” nothing to do with manure after all, merely an old-fashioned word for “lie.” Garden looks well too, looks just like it did when we shut the door here, 76 years ago.

  Except, when you looked over your shoulder, one last time, on that long-gone day, there was no golden light spilling across these beautiful lawns... God damn you, Stanley Krimsky. You were supposed to spin the fucking dials before you shut off the gate. Spin them, then kill the power and run...

  But Millikan’s team is still out there, Sarge...

  I’m giving you an order, Corporal. Spin ‘em.

  Yes, ma’m.

  Hell. I should’ve done it myself. Right. And you should’ve obeyed fucking Major Grimaldi and emptied your clip into the Gate’s control console too, while you were at it.

  Dale Millikan would’ve understood.

  Brilliant golden light on the far wall though, making you remember what it’d been like the first time you saw those yellow hills, that pale pink sky, that sun of molten metal... Or the last time. Angel of Death hovering over those yellow hills, thrum of a thousand wings, Angel of Death like a flock of half-invisible birds, taking on some strange, indefinite shape, hovering over the ruins of Koraad.

  Snap. Snap. Snap.

  Human artifacts disappearing from the landscape, like that.

  Men and women bringing their weapons to bear, opening fire...

  Snap.

  Men and women gone.

  Sergeant-Major Astrid Kincaid, USMC Lunar Expeditionary Forces, ordering her soldiers to turn and run away. Live to fight another day. Sometimes a better soldiers’ motto than good old Semper Fi...

  Turning to run herself, but not before casting one long, regretful glance at old Koraad, tasting a memory of making love with Dale Millikan far into the alien night... Made me giggle by calling me “Astrid Astride,” the silly bastard. Cried my last tear ever on the flight home from the Moon.

  Brilliant golden light on the far wall now, shadows of humanoid shapes moving within it. Kincaid motioned to her soldiers and went on down the stairs. Too late maybe. Or maybe not.

  o0o

  Down in the garden below, Alireza watched the Americans descend, and formulated his command decision. Not much of a decision, really. Hope their officer was a reasonable fellow. Hope he’d let them surrender. Chinese had fired on them after all. Destruction of al-Qamar merely a reasonable precaution. Which didn’t make poor Mahal and Tariq any less dead of course.

  Mahal and Tariq, who’d never see this... this...

  Maybe the American officer would offer some kindly explanation, before he shot them down like offending dogs. He glanced at nonplused Zeq, who glanced at frightened Inbar, standing beside bright-eyed Ling, bright eyed, curious, seemingly unafraid, standing there, staring through this magic portal, at what appeared to be some other world. Appeared to be...

  In English, Ling whispered, “So much trouble to go to, for a mere diorama.” Wind still whispering around their booted feet, stirring the vegetation of the garden.

  Subaïda Rahman said, “Too much trouble, yes. Far too much trouble.”

  She glanced at Alireza, a daring look, daring him to do something, as if the American soldiers were forgotten, and stepped up to the image. Hesitated. Looked at Ling. Eyes wide, full of unnamed fear, but...

  Took one step forward, stepped through into the diorama chamber. Stood stock-still, stood looking around. Turned, looked back through the portal at them, then looked up, above the portal, at something apparently far away.

  Alireza said, “I don’t want to believe. I do not.”

  Ling said, “E pur si muove.” Shuffled forward, clumsy in his antique spacesuit, stepped through the portal to Rahman’s side. Turned to look around. Broke into a bug-eyed grin of obvious disbelief.

  In English, an amplified voice bellowed, “HALT! DO NOT PROCEED!” It was the voice of the barbaric woman. There was a crisp, muffled report, a sparkling explosion from the ceiling above them, small rocks falling, spattering on the ground.

  Alireza to Zeq to Inbar. One last look back at the soldiers, visible now through the bushes, silvery light sparkling around each one. They went through the gate together.

  o0o

  Kincaid burst through the bushes, still thinking, Maybe not too late, rushing forward to the Gate console. Golden light still flooding through, soft wind still blowing, crossing the curtainfield boundary to stroke her skin, just as it had so long ago. Five people in old fashioned space suits standing there on the other side, outlined against yellow hills and familiar pastel pink sky. She leveled her rifle, opened her mouth to bark one final warning.

  One of the interlopers, smallest of the five, stepped to one side quickly, stepping out of the Gate’s image area, probably ducking her impending fire, just getting out of the way...

  Good that they’re afraid.

  The image inside the Gate shimmered and dissipated, replaced by rainbow-spattered black formica. “Shit!” Not afraid enough, apparently.

  Her soldiers gathered behind her, looking around curiously, then fanning out like they’d been taught but still entirely too much like a bunch of huge, friendly puppies. Corky Bokaitis said, “What’s going on, Sarge?”

  This is a bad thing. Why the Hell are you grinning, Sergeant-Major Kincaid? Why the Hell? Just because. Because. She walked over to the console and sat down, started running the scanner, watching numbers scroll across its little LCD screen. Grin flattening. “Well. Sons of bitches were crazy enough to give the tuner a little spin before they cut power.” But I know where they went.

  PeeWee Roth said, “Yuh mean, we lost ‘em?” A little relief in his voice. Maybe he’d read up on the mission beforehand. Smarter than he looks? Hard to tell, with a face like that. She said, “Gillis, go up to the surface and put through a comline link to the ship. I’ll need to tell somebody what’s happened.” Pointing, then. “You six will set up a base here and stand watch on both sides of the gate. The rest of you...”

  Bokaitis handed her a scrap of old paper. “Found this in the bushes, Sarge.”

  Millikan’s team... Krimsky’s handwriting. I wonder if Krimsky’s still alive? Maybe I’ll kill him a few times after we get back. When. If. She reset the boards to what was, after all, an unforgettable address, and powered up the Gate. Soft wind rising. Pink sky. Yellow hills, Golden sun. Silver clouds. Empty and bare. “All right. Let’s get going.” A bad business, then. But what is this thri
ll I feel? Hell. You know what it is...

  o0o

  No more than an hour and the five of them were standing together on a shallow-sloped hillside looking down on the city, sweating in their spacesuits, puffing at each other through the common radio link. Alireza said, “Nothing moving down there...” English clumsy, spoken out of politeness.

  Nothing moving anywhere, except that golden fleck of sun, which continued to drift at an angle toward the far horizon, except the silvery clouds, pale and diaphanous, drifting slowly, north to south apparently, across a pastel-shaded backdrop. Faint mother-of-pearl layering, like those first images from Mars...

  Dust? Fruitless speculation. Ling listened to his suit vents hiss, the air’s sound, along with his breathing, almost overwhelming the noise of whining motors behind his back. Almost. He wondered if the others could hear it as well. Or if their own suits... Probably not. This suit was based on an old Russian design, life-support hardware actually inside the suit’s pressure vessel, and he could fancy feeling a bit of excess warmth through the beta-cloth shield at his back. A quick glance down at chin-level dials. He said, “My pump-motors are redlining. There are circuit breakers that will trip if the bearings start to overheat.”

  Rahman said, “Can you reset them?”

  He shrugged, felt a little torrent of sweat go down through his neck ring. “Yes.” Tapping the panel door on his chest pack. “But... if the bearings burn out...”

  Zeq said, “Maybe it’s time to make that decision now.”

  Snarly, guttural Arabic from Alireza, reply like a hissing whisper from Rahman. He’d gotten little sense of their argument back at the gate, though Inbar, with his fluid, skilled English had thoughtfully provided snatches of translation, between his own participatory remarks.

  Shock when Rahman shut the magic portal in the face of those impossibly monstrous American soldiers. The four of them watching her snap a quick series of photos of this second, identical control panel. Consternation when she reached out and spun those dials.

  Inbar’s panicky scream crossing the language barrier easily.