“He’s got to practice,” Natasha said. “My own race is tomorrow, but his isn’t till Wednesday. He’ll get your bags and put them in your room, so we can get you something decent to eat.” Holding Robert by the hand, she led the way. With Natasha’s help the child quickly learned a decent approximation of Ron’s gait. Ranjit was less fortunate. He found it was easier, if less graceful, to execute a slow-motion hop from point to point.
They didn’t have far to go, and it was worth their while when they got there. The food was as unlike the extruded fodder of the Skyhook capsule as anyone could have hoped for: a salad; some kind of meat, perhaps ham, chopped and molded into croquettes; fresh fruit for dessert. “Most of it’s shipped up from Earth,” Natasha told them, “although the strawberries and most of the salad stuff are grown in another tube.” It wasn’t the food they wanted to hear about. It was what Natasha had been doing, and how she felt. What Natasha wanted was to hear all about their trip, listening with the somewhat amused patience of the veteran who had done all those things herself already. She paid attention when they told her about Robert’s shrieking the word “fish,” although when she queried Robert himself about it in their own personal dialect, he was more interested in his shortcake than giving her answers. “He just says he saw something out the window that looked like a fish. Funny. Some of the other people here said they saw something on the way up, too.”
Myra yawned. “Probably frozen astronaut urine,” she said drowsily. “Remember those stories about the Apollo crews seeing what they thought were space fireflies? Anyway, did you say we had a room? With a real bed?”
Natasha had said it, and they did have it—not just any bed, either, but a bed that was more than ninety centimeters across, which meant plenty of room for Myra and Ranjit to cuddle up. As soon as they saw it, they couldn’t resist it. Just a nap, Ranjit told himself, one arm around his wife, who was asleep already. Then I’ll get up and explore this fascinating place—oh, I mean after I take one of those real showers.
That was his definite intention. It wasn’t his fault that when he woke it was with his wife gently shaking his shoulder and saying, “Ranj? Do you know you slept for fourteen hours? If you get up now, you’ll have time for a decent breakfast and a look round the tube before we have to get to the race.”
Some Olympic events have been witnessed by crowds in the hundreds of thousands. The in-person audience at these first lunar games, by comparison, was almost invisibly tiny. There were just enough people to fill the eighteen hundred lightweight seats that climbed the walls of the tube, and the Subramanians were lucky enough to have their seats less than a hundred meters from the finish line.
By the time they made their way to them along the footwalk, Ranjit was feeling about as good as he ever had in his life. A good long sleep, a quick shower in real, if reprocessed, water—only thirty seconds of the spray by its timer, but you could get really wet in thirty seconds—and a quick look around had marked the beginning of a good day. He was surprised to find that the living quarters weren’t in the giant stadium tube itself but in a smaller one nearby, connected by a man-made tunnel.
But he was there! On the moon! With his dearly beloved wife and son, and on what might be his dearly beloved daughter’s happiest day ever!
Although the man-made atmosphere in the tunnels was at only about half the pressure of sea-level Earth, it had been considerably oxygen-enriched. That was more important to the balloonatic who was Natasha’s opponent, Piper Dugan, than to herself, although in the moon’s one-sixth gravity he still needed a capacity of less than thirty cubic meters of hydrogen to lift him. He was, as it happened, Australian. As he entered, with three assistants on the ropes to make sure the machine didn’t get away, his streamlined hydrogen cylinder floated overhead.
As Dugan entered, an invisible orchestra played what the program told Ranjit was Australia’s national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair,” and most of the audience on the far side of the tube went mad. “Uh-oh,” Myra whispered into Ranjit’s ear. “I don’t think there are enough Sri Lankans here to equal that for Tashy.”
There weren’t, to be sure, but there was a big contingent from next-door India, and an even bigger one from people of any nationality who just happened to give their affection to a young girl from a tiny island. When Natasha came in to take her place, she had her own single assistant, this one carrying what looked like a bicycle without wheels but with flimsy, almost gossamer-like wings. There was music for her, too—if it was the Sri Lankan anthem, that was news to Ranjit, who hadn’t known there was one—but it was almost drowned out by the yells of the spectators on her side of the tube. The yelling kept up while the handlers attached the racers to their machines—Piper Dugan suspended from his hydrogen tank, with his hands and feet free to pedal, Natasha seated at a forty-five-degree angle on the saddle of her sky-bike.
The music stopped. The yelling dwindled away. There was a moment of near silence…and then the sharp crack of the starter’s pistol.
At first Dugan’s blimp surged horizontally forward while Natasha’s sky-bike dropped half a dozen meters before she could get it up to speed.
Then she began to overtake her competitor.
It was a neck-and-neck race almost to the end of the stadium, with both flyers being loudly cheered by everybody—and not just the handful of spectators in the tube but by the tens and hundreds of millions watching wherever in the solar system a human being possessed a screen.
Twenty meters from the finish line Natasha passed her opponent. When she crossed the line, it was no longer even close, and the howling, screaming, and shouting noises of the eighteen hundred spectators in the tube was quite the loudest sound the moon had heard in many a long year.
The trip back to Earth was quite as long and quite as restricted as the journey up, but at least they had Natasha with them this time—and Natasha had her rewards of victory.
Those were quite impressive, when you added them up. It seemed that her personal screen never darkened, with messages of congratulations from basically everyone she knew, as well as a very large number of people she didn’t. The presidents of Russia, China, and the United States were among her well-wishers, not to mention the leaders of nearly every other country in the United Nations. And Dr. Dhatusena Bandara on behalf of Pax per Fidem, and just about every one of her old teachers and friends, and parents of friends. And the ones she really cared about, too, such as Beatrix Vorhulst and her whole domestic staff. And that is without mentioning the ones who wanted something from her—news programs seeking interviews, representatives of several dozen movements and charities begging for an endorsement. Not least, the International Olympic Committee itself was promising their new champion a place in the planned solar-sail spacecraft race, to be held as soon as enough viable solar-sail spaceships existed in LEO and could be spared from the urgent work of settling the solar system. “Now, that’s because they’re getting more pressure from the big three, I’ll bet,” Myra informed her family. “They want to get everything going at once for their own purposes.”
Her husband patted her shoulder. “And what purposes are those?” he asked tolerantly. “According to you, they already own just about everything.”
Myra wrinkled her nose at him. “You’ll see,” she said, though what it was he would see she did not say.
They were nearly to the upper Van Allen before the volume of calls dropped low enough for their traveling companions to catch up on some of their own neglected calls home. This time there were sixteen others sharing their capsule, two wealthy Bulgarian families, though what their wealth came from Ranjit had not been quite able to identify, and a handful of almost as wealthy Canadians. (In their case, the cash cow was petroleum from the Athabascan tar sands.) Ranjit felt an obligation to apologize to their fellow passengers for Natasha’s hogging of the communications circuits. They were having none of that, though. “Bless her,” said the oldest of the Canadian women. “Things like this don’t come often in a yo
ung girl’s life. Anyway, the news channels stayed open. Mostly that rash of new flying saucer stories, but did you hear about Egypt and Kenya?”
The Subramanians had not, and when they did, they were as delighted as any other. Kenya and Egypt had not only agreed on fairly sharing Nile water, but both countries, by a suddenly called plebiscite, had voted to join the transparency compact voluntarily.
“But that’s very good!” Ranjit said.
However, just then the shrill radiation warnings sounded and it was time for them to get into the shelter once more.
Ranjit sighed and led the way, followed by Natasha in conversation with one of the Canadian girls, and his wife, with Robert by the hand.
It took several minutes for all twenty of them to check out their bunks, with the warning whistle sounding all the time. And while Myra was fluffing up their pitiful excuse for a pillow, she stopped, looked around, and then demanded, “Where’s Robert?”
The answer came from one of the Canadians. “He was standing by the door a minute ago,” she said.
She didn’t have to say anything more. Ranjit was already out of that door himself, shouting Robert’s name above the screeching warnings. It didn’t take him long to find his son, interestedly gazing out of the window at the polychrome blur that was the Van Allen belt, and not even that long to drag him back inside the shelter, slamming the door behind them. “He’s all right,” he reassured his family—and the others, all worriedly gathered around the door together as well. “I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, and he just said ‘fish.’”
Among all the sounds of amused relief it was the Canadian grandmother who pursed her lips. “Was he saying he thought he saw a fish?” she asked. “Because it was on the news that other people have seen things from the Skyhook—metallic sorts of things, kind of pointy at both ends. I guess you could say that might look like a fish.”
“The same things they’ve been claiming people saw all over,” her son-in-law confirmed. “I thought it was all just another of those crazy things people get themselves into, but I don’t know. I guess it’s possible they could be real.”
And at that same time those quite real Nine-Limbeds in their little canoe-shaped craft were having a great debate.
The decision to turn off the vision-deflecting shields so these Earth primitives could actually see them had seemed like a good idea at the time. Having done it, the Nine-Limbeds were all trying to talk at once over the tight-beam network that allowed them to communicate without being overheard by the humans on the ground. And there was only one subject for discussion: Had they done the right thing?
In order to try to answer that, the standing orders were refreshed and restored to visibility, and studied by all. The experts in communications between the Nine-Limbeds and the Grand Galactics meditated for prolonged periods before issuing an opinion. Since they had been trained from whelping to understand every nuance of every instruction ever handed down by the Grand Galactics, their opinions were listened to attentively, and their findings were nearly unanimous.
Expressed in the sort of terms a human lawyer might use, they were these: The Grand Galactics had flatly forbidden the Nine-Limbeds to enter into communication with the rogue race of humans. They had not, however, ordered them to take any care to see that humans didn’t suspect their presence.
Accordingly, the experts reasoned that the Grand Galactics could not in justice punish the Nine-Limbeds very severely for what they had done. And, the experts concurred, the record was clear that the Grand Galactics did have some concept of justice, or of something somewhat like it. So they might reprimand. They might even punish. But it was highly unlikely that they would respond by exterminating the entire Nine-Limbed race.
Other client races of the Grand Galactics wouldn’t ever have taken that sort of chance in the first place. The One Point Fives wouldn’t have. Neither would the Machine-Stored. Not one of the Grand Galactics’ subject races had that keen a sense of humor, nor had ever dared such a transgression. Up until that point, that is.
33
PRIVATE PAIN IN A REJOICING WORLD
The Nile waters might never threaten the world’s peace again, because both Egypt and Kenya passed the Pax per Fidem vote with resounding margins. Even before Pax’s peacekeepers were in place, teams of Kenyan hydrologists had begun setting up shop in the control buildings around the Aswân High Dam, and both countries had opened their (rather puny) missile sites to international control. Transparency of their heavy industry, such as it was, followed quickly.
They were not the last, either. The four countries in sub-Saharan Africa that had been contesting the waters of one medium-size lake saw what became of the one of their number that had sent a force to drive the other three away. When that one—properly warned, heedless of the warning—tasted Silent Thunder for itself, all three of the others joined the first in the contract.
And then there was a major breakthrough.
The Republic of Germany debated and argued and finally held a giant plebiscite of its own. Their terrible national memories of huge and violent lost battles trumped that sometimes troublesome German sense of destiny. They, too, signed up. They threw their borders open to the United Nations, disbanded the token armed forces they had retained, and signed on to Pax per Fidem’s draft constitution for the world.
Those were times for rejoicing for the people of planet Earth.
There were only two things that dampened the joys of, say, the Subramanian family. The first was the one they shared with the whole human race, namely, those pesky little apparitions that kept showing themselves—in cities at night, in the air above seagoing vessels in broad daylight, even—perhaps like young Robert’s “fish”—in space. Some people called them “bronzed bananas,” some “flying midget submarines,” some by names a lot less printable. What no one knew was exactly what they were. The devout UFO-ologists called them the final proof that flying saucers were real. The hardened skeptics suspected that one or more of Earth’s sovereign states was developing a mystery weapon unlike anything that had gone before.
What everyone agreed on, however, was that none of these objects had done any human being any detectable harm. So comedians began joking about them, and human beings have never been able to be very afraid of things they laugh at.
But for the Subramanian family, at least, there was this one other thing.
Earlier than most, little Robert had begun walking on his own, but since they’d come back from the moon, his parents had noticed something odd. The whole family would be enjoying that happy playtime between baths and bed. Little Robert would let go of his mother’s knee to wander over to where his big sister was coaxing him on. And then sometimes, without warning, Robert would drop in his tracks. Would fall like a sack of potatoes, and lie there, eyes closed, for just a moment. And then the eyes would open and he would scramble precariously to his feet and, grinning and murmuring to himself as always, head for where Natasha waited.
This was new…and frightening.
These little episodes didn’t seem to bother Robert. He didn’t even seem to notice that they happened. But then, another time, it would happen again. And again.
That was the place where there was a blemish on the otherwise nearly ideal happiness of Myra and Ranjit.
They weren’t exactly worried, because Robert was so conspicuously healthy in every other respect. But they were concerned. They were feeling guilty, or at least Ranjit was, because he was the one who had let Robert escape the secure chamber when they were already entering the upper Van Allen. And who knew if there had been enough of the wrong kind of radiation to do the child harm?
Myra didn’t believe that for one second, but she saw the worry in her husband’s eyes. They decided to seek medical help.
So they got the best and most experienced there was, and a lot of it, too. Everywhere he and Myra took their son, Ranjit’s fame was on their side. The member of the medical staff who came out to greet them was never
some thirty-or-so-year-old, fresh out of medical school (and thus freshly exposed to the very latest in medical lore). It was some sixty-or-so-year-old, rich with the skills of an earlier generation and now at least a department head. All of them were honored to have the famous Dr. Ranjit Subramanian come to their facility—hospital, clinic, laboratory, whatever—and all had the same dismal tidings to offer.
Robert was in almost every aspect a healthy child. Every aspect, that was, but one. Somewhere along the line something had gone wrong. “The brain is a very complex organ,” they all said—or meant, although several of them found other ways to phrase the same bad news. There could have been an unsuspected allergy, a birth injury, an undetected infection. And then the next thing they all said was pretty much the same. There wasn’t any medicine, or surgical procedure, or anything else that could make Robert “normal,” because the one thing all their tests had agreed on was that the son of Ranjit Subramanian and Myra de Soyza had regressed. And now was developing intellectually somewhat more slowly than one would have expected.
By then the Subramanians had worked their way through a long list of specialists. It was one of those, a pediatric speech-language pathologist, who struck fear into the hearts of Robert’s parents. “Robert has begun dropping consonants—‘ ’athroom’ and ‘ ’inner,’ for instance,” she reported. “And have you noticed whether he talks the same way to you as to his play group?” Both his parents nodded. “By now most children modify their speech patterns according to whomever they’re talking to. For one of you it might be ‘give me that,’ for another child ‘gimme ’at.’ And what about comprehensibility? I imagine you can understand what he’s saying, but how about friends or relatives?”
“Not always,” Ranjit admitted.
Myra corrected him. “Not usually,” she said. “It upsets Robert sometimes, too. But isn’t there any chance he’ll outgrow it?”