Ride the Moon: An Anthology, page 21
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.
MOON LAWS, DREAM LAWS
By Ada Hoffmann
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.
“Look at that man,” I said once, pointing to an image on our home video-screen. I was trying to teach her. “How is he feeling?”
Trulia squinted at the screen. “He looks tired.”
It was a public health announcement, the Lady of Mercy and Discipline’s propaganda. He was an actor playing a drug addict, wracked with regret and despair.
“Look at the quirk of his mouth. The way the corners turn down.”
“What about them?”
“It means he’s very sad, Trulia.”
She sighed in disgust. “I don’t even know how I’m feeling.”
She never understood dreams, but she dreamed as everyone does. I built a tower of numbers in the dream world, every floor built from the angles of a single digit. More often than not, when we slept side by side, she found it. “Did you build this for me?” she said, and the familiar phrase shocked me lucid.
Sometimes she refused to believe she was dreaming. Sometimes all she wanted to do in a dream was make love, which is like making love in real life, only sometimes the bed turns into a giant piano when you aren’t looking.
Other nights, a light went on in her head. “Let’s go flying. I’ve always wanted to fly.” Those were the good nights—hand in hand, soaring into the clouds.
Every morning, I asked what she had dreamed. She said, “I don’t remember.” Or sometimes, “I remember a cloud.”
“We flew, Trulia. You met me in a tower of numbers. We flew over a city and into a cloud.”
“That’s what you dreamed. I just remember a cloud.”
I tried to explain. “That must be it,” she would say, humouring me. “That must be what we did.” But she never really believed.
She promised to dream of me, but I knew it was hopeless. The tower of numbers stood empty.
Day turned to night, night to day, and the moon did not appear. My hands shook. I spilled wine and oil and had to start over. I bumped into walls and scarcely noticed. All I could think of was Trulia. Any second now, Friana might come running back in with news.
I knew my Lady would curse me for looking. I didn’t care. I pulled books brazenly from the temple library, downloaded the colony’s plans and schedules, searched for news with my phone. No one stopped me. I did my duties one-eyed, hunting vainly for clues.
Everyone had noticed the moon’s absence by now. There were headlines, frantic arguments, tearful interviews with others who knew someone up there. Self-proclaimed scholars declared that this was nothing: it would blow over like all my Lady’s moods, though perhaps not with all the human lives intact. I found nothing useful in the news, and turned to the oldest stories.
There were no stories of the moon disappearing, but there were some of the sun. The Lord of Fire and Sky, my Lady’s father, sometimes tried to marry her to a god or a mortal hero. Enraged, she pushed him out of the sky.
The Un-God told us, later, that this was a lie, and that the sun’s disappearance was astronomy and optics. But a story can be true and not true, just as my Lady is the moon and not the moon.
I thought about that, singing the Moon’s Awakening over a moonless horizon. My Lady was the moon and not the moon. Could Trulia be alive and not alive?
One suitor, the Lord of Green and Crawling Things, was unusually persistent. He chased my Lady and sang songs of beautiful, many-limbed children. She cast him into darkness so complete that the other gods could not find him, but within the week, there he was, cavorting under a mossy rock.
“I plucked a leaf from my hair,” he said, “and it found the ground. Leaves know how to fall.” But he never chased my Lady again.
I could hardly even read. I would get through a page, or half a page, and Trulia’s name would abduct me. Was she alive?
Once the Herdsman of the Dead sent a bleating messenger to ask my Lady a question. It found her asleep amid her stones, unclothed, with trickles of blood running down her divine limbs. It did not want to wake her. Bleating, trusting, too stupid to know better, it curled up against her thighs and joined her in sleep.
When my Lady woke up, panicked by the unfamiliar presence, she picked up the messenger and threw it off the moon, into a comet so cold that it broke and burned. Its bleats became screams, and it never stopped screaming.
I meditated every evening, willing myself to find Trulia somewhere in the twisted dream-world. It didn’t seem to be working. Tonight I dreamed of a wailing darkness.
Cold, inexorable currents tugged at me. The gods can’t enter dreams, but other dreamers can, and sometimes stranger beings. The current could have been theirs—or a part of my mind I didn’t want to deal with. I thought of forcing myself awake. But what would I have then? An empty room and a head full of fear. So I let myself drift.
I washed ashore in a tower of numbers.
It was not quite like my tower. Mine was made of black numbers on a blue and salmon seashore, reaching the clouds. These were white numbers floating in the dark. Through their curving forms I could see stars.
I scrambled to my feet.
“Trulia!” The darkness swallowed my voice. I knew, deep in my gut, that she had made this place for me. “Trulia!”
No one and nothing answered me. I gathered my breath for a scream.
“Trulia!”
“I’m here.”
She was suddenly behind me, buzzing softly with concern—and relief. I turned and crushed her in my arms. “You’re alive.”
“I missed you,” she said. Her hair twirled around her face, longer than I remembered. Her belly was distended in a familiar way; we had often dreamed she was pregnant. Dreams can be like that: wish for something and it’s so. She nuzzled me, warm and solid. I could smell her shampoo, feel her affection all around me. “It was a whole year.”
