A Learning Experience

Chapter Eight

Lunar Base, The Moon

“Now this,” Steve declared, “is impressive.”

“Glad to hear it,” Graham Rochester said. “And glad you decided to look in on us.”

Steve smiled. Rochester had been a British Army Combat Engineer before being seriously wounded in Afghanistan and sent back to face the tender mercies of the British National Health Service. He’d been as badly crippled as Romford — perhaps worse — and the offer of a new life had been too much for him to refuse. Unlike Romford, he’d decided to become an outright cyborg. One of his arms had been replaced by a cyborg arm that whirred and clicked at inappropriate moments, his eyes had been replaced by sensors and his skin had been coated in a material that allowed him to survive in vacuum. He claimed it was far better than mere humanity.

“I was taught it was always a bad idea to let subordinates think I didn’t care about them,” Steve said. “But you’ve done wonders in a single month.”

“That’s what the Royal Engineers are for,” Rochester said. “You should see some of the bases we had to put together in Afghanistan at a moment’s notice. Compared to that, this is a snap.”

Steve nodded, his gaze sweeping across the surface of the moon. It looked oddly dirty, with modified human vehicles and mining tools scattered everywhere. The foundations of Heinlein Colony were under the lunar surface — it would provide additional protection and camouflage for the colony — but enough was visible for him to know that work was proceeding smoothly.

“We had to set up the living quarters first,” Rochester continued. “Not everyone wanted to become a full cyborg, after all. Once they were done, we started to expand the base and look for sources of raw materials. Once we found ice…”

He smirked. “This base is well on the way to becoming self-sustaining,” he added. “So much for NASA’s little fears, right?”

Steve nodded. As soon as Heinlein Colony was ready to take a small number of settlers, he’d had two of the fabricators and their alien prisoner moved to the settlement, along with half of the supplies the Hordesmen had gathered over the years. Added to the supplies they’d purchased from Earth, Heinlein Colony would definitely be capable of feeding itself indefinitely soon enough, while continuing to expand under the lunar surface.

“We’ve actually got a couple of people who think we can terraform the moon,” Rochester said, as he led the way through the airlock. “There’s quite a bit of ice at the lunar poles; they think we can use it to create a thin atmosphere, then build up plants on the soil that will eventually thicken the atmosphere to the point humans can breathe normally.”

Steve shook his head in disbelief. “Really?”

“Sure,” Rochester said. “It’s definitely theoretically possible, but it would also be extremely visible. And we’d have to built up a magnetic field. That’s going to be the real bugger.”

Steve scowled. One disadvantage of having to keep everything secret was the very real danger of being spotted from Earth. Heinlein Colony was on the far side of the moon, permanently out of sight, but the shuttles and modified tractors they used often went to the near side, where they could be seen. Fortunately, he doubted anyone would believe a word of it unless there were hard recordings of the observation. But who knew what would happen if someone on Earth did observe their presence? Maybe they’d think it was an alien settlement.

Inside, he couldn’t help thinking of the abandoned mines near the ranch in Montana, the ones his father had forbidden him to go near on pain of a thrashing. The tunnels were cut from the lunar rock, carved out with automated tools then left bare and almost unmarked. Someone had carved a handful of corridor references into the crossing points, but nothing else. It would need to be made more hospitable, Steve decided, as they walked down under the lunar surface. Some of the kids would have to be hired to draw or paint pictures for the walls.

“We’ve set up the barracks in here,” Rochester said, as they paused in front of a solid hatch. “I didn’t want to take any risks with our sleeping personnel, so the barracks is actually a self-contained survival room in its own right. Should there be an atmospheric leak outside, the barracks will seal itself.”

He keyed a switch and the hatch hissed open, revealing another airlock. Steve waited patiently until the first hatch had closed, then smiled as the second hatch opened, allowing him to see into the barracks. It looked, very much, like a military barracks, complete with metal bunk beds and a handful of showers at the far end of the room. The only real difference was the row of laptops on a desk along one wall and the rubber on the ceiling.

“We had quite a few people bang their heads because they weren’t used to the lunar gravity,” Rochester explained. “So we ended up putting rubber on the roof to ensure they wouldn’t be seriously hurt. It does help, a little. I’ve insisted that no one gets to actually do any work for at least a week after their arrival, giving them time to get used to conditions here. We had some accidents when we were trying to use the tractors on the moon because they were designed for Earth.”

He gave Steve a challenging look, as if he expected to face disagreement. Steve merely nodded. Rochester was the man on the spot, after all, and he’d accomplished miracles in barely a month. There was no point in disagreeing with one of his decisions, particularly one that was clearly suited to their current conditions.

“Morale is generally high,” Rochester said, when it was clear Steve wasn’t going to say anything. “The only real complaint comes from the unmarried men, who wish there were more women up here. Most of them are newly rejuvenated and want to put their dicks to work somewhere other than the shower.”

Steve had to smile. If he’d been in his late seventies and then been returned to his early twenties, he’d start chasing women too. “Have there been any real problems?”

“No, but there will be,” Rochester said. “So far, the few unmarried girls we have here have earned a lot of attention. But hormones and men and tight conditions are asking for trouble.”

Steve scowled, remembering some of the stories from Afghanistan. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who had a friend who’d got into trouble with a woman on one of the bigger military bases, one of the places where it was impossible to believe that one was in the middle of a war zone. Despite all the rules and regulations, hundreds of women had been sent home for falling pregnant. The coldly practical part of him knew that brothels for the troops would have been a great idea, but it wasn’t something the government could ever allow. There would have been an outcry from their more progressive factions if they’d tried.

But Steve didn’t have to worry about that, did he?

Mariko might have a few things to say about it, he thought, a moment later. And so might Jayne.

“We’ll have to give some thought to starting a brothel,” he said, finally. “But it won’t be as easy as finding veterans and space enthusiasts to work on our colony.”

“Plenty of desperate young women out there,” Rochester said, as they turned and walked back through the airlock. “And the guys here will behave. I’ve already threatened to tear off the testicles of anyone who sexually harasses one of my people.”

Steve nodded in agreement. “Any other problems?”

“Not really,” Rochester said. “There were some grumbles over restrictions on internet use at first, but we eventually overcame them once the system was properly set up. However, sooner or later, there will be a leak. Someone will say something they shouldn’t on an open system.”

Kevin thought it wouldn’t matter, Steve recalled. They’d discussed the issue several times, when it became apparent that the alien database wouldn’t be enough to distract everyone from demanding access to Earth’s internet. Kevin had pointed out that there was so much fantasy online that no one would believe a claim that someone was talking from the moon. If someone could claim to be a time traveller, or a man could pretend to be a teenage girl, few people would believe the truth. Besides, sooner or later, it would no longer matter.

He leaned forward. “You have the system completely secure?”

“Oh, yes,” Rochester assured him. “Everything going to Earth and back again goes through one of the alien systems. If someone wants to hack into our computers they won’t get any further, at least not with human-level tech. We’ve also developed a system for scanning all files for potential problems before allowing them to move through the buffers. Standard precautions, naturally, but you won’t believe just how much trouble carelessness has caused in the past.”

Steve smiled. Two years ago, one of the kids had downloaded a pornographic video from the internet that had turned out to have a nasty virus attached. Kevin had had to fix it, while Steve delivered a sharp lecture on the dangers of downloading anything from the internet without taking proper precautions. And then they’d had to have the Talk. The thought of having to have it again with grown men was definitely cringe-worthy.

They stopped outside another airlock. “The alien is inside,” Rochester said. “He’s been quite helpful, but he’s also quite ignorant. The sociologists think he truly has no idea of the depth of his own ignorance.”

Steve, who had met a great many people with the same problem, nodded. “What sort of precautions have you taken against escape?”

“The room is shielded, then held on a separate system from the rest of the colony,” Rochester said. “If the sociologists or anyone else wish to speak with him, they do so with guards monitoring everything that takes place inside the cell. He can’t take a piss without us knowing about it.”

“Good,” Steve said.

“He also seems to have developed something akin to Stockholm Syndrome,” Rochester added. “The sociologists think he expected to be killed as soon as he was captured, perhaps after interrogation. Instead, we’ve taken fairly good care of him. I’ve seen similar patterns among captured Iraqis and Afghanis.”

Steve nodded. A distant cousin of his, an MP, had been charged with guarding prisoners in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. The prisoners had almost collapsed in fear when they’d been told to dig latrines, even though they were desperately necessary. It had taken some time before the MPs had realised the prisoners thought they were being asked to dig their own graves. Once the prisoners had realised they weren’t going to be shot out of hand — their former leaders had told them the Americans would kill anyone they captured — they’d relaxed a great deal. Some of them had even gone on to lead successful careers in the new Iraq.

“Monitor me,” Steve said. “I’ll call when I want out.”

Inside, the alien’s chamber was hot and moist, as if he’d stepped right into a sauna. There was a faintly unpleasant smell, like rotting meat, in the air. The alien himself was squatting against one wall, one clawed hand tap-tapping at an Ipad and trying to play a game. It — he, Steve reminded himself — had requested access to the internet, or a terminal with a translator, but Steve hadn’t been willing to allow either. But the alien was learning to read English, even if he would never be able to speak it. They just weren’t designed to speak human tongues.

“Greetings,” the alien said, through the translator. The security officers had suggested taking it away when the alien wasn’t talking to anyone, but Kevin had argued against the suggestion and Steve had accepted his arguments. “Thank you for visiting me.”

“You’re welcome,” Steve said. He found it hard to understand what the alien must be feeling — there were no other aliens in the colony — but he couldn’t help feeling sorry for the creature, no matter what its superiors had intended to do. “How are you coping with living here?”

The alien produced a spluttering noise. “I am not being hurt or killed,” he said. “But not all of your people believe what I say.”

Steve had to smile. The sociologists Kevin had recruited were sensible people, men and women who had actually done field work rather than learning everything from politically-correct books. But, from some of their reports, even the most sensible of them had great difficulty in wrapping his head around what passed for culture among the Hordes. What sort of race could live like that, he’d asked, when there was so much potential in the galaxy?

But being poor often leads to a stubborn pride, Steve thought. Or perhaps to a helpless despair.

It seemed fitting, he suspected. The Horde knew, at a deep level, just how inferior they were to races that actually produced starships and weapons for themselves. They were dependent on those they considered their soft social inferiors, so dependent that a sudden withdrawal of support would leave the Hordesmen to fade away and die. But, at the same time, they did nothing to overcome their dependency. It would be a tacit admission that their lives were far from perfect.

“You’re the first non-human they’ve spoken to,” Steve said. The alien interface had noted that there were almost ten thousand intelligent races known to exist, a number far beyond Steve’s ability to grasp emotionally. Compared to the sheer number of aliens out there, humanity’s eight billion souls weren’t even a drop in the bucket. “We have no experience with anyone outside our own race.”

“You have been lucky,” the alien stated. “Open contact might well have destroyed you.”

Steve nodded. It still might, even if humanity avoided a military invasion or becoming a protectorate of a more advanced power. The sudden discovery that there were thousands of intelligent races in the galaxy, almost all of them far more powerful than humanity, would shock the entire planet. Some would see the presence of aliens as a challenge, Steve knew, others would quail away from the stars. What was left for humanity to achieve, they’d ask, if the aliens had done it all first?

“It might have done,” he agreed, finally. “Is there anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable?”

The alien spluttered again. “These quarters are perfect,” he said. “You do not have to improve them for me.”

“If you need anything, just ask,” Steve said. He glanced into the bathroom. The alien had requested a bathtub large enough for several humans to share, rather than one of the showers in the human barracks. From the reports, the sociologists were still arguing if the request constituted luxury or a simple necessity for alien life. “We are quite happy to provide.”

“In exchange for answering questions,” the alien said. “Why are so many of your people unwilling to believe that I am telling the truth?”

Steve hesitated, trying to put it into words. “There are some people, no matter how smart, who have a view of the universe that is focused on us,” he said. “Not just humanity, a subset of humanity. They have problems coming to terms with the fact there are groups of humans who refuse to behave as their models suggest, let alone non-human life forms such as yourself. And when theory comes up against reality, some of them even think that reality must be wrong.”

“Like one of our Horde Commanders,” the alien said.

“It certainly sounds that way,” Steve agreed. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“I wish to learn more about your people,” the alien said, as Steve turned back to the airlock. “Can you not provide me with information?”

Steve hesitated. Part of him wanted to restrict what the alien knew, part of him suspected that if they lost Heinlein Colony, they would have lost everything. But he didn’t want to provide the alien with any non-human technology. It might have an unexpected sting in the tail.

The answer struck him a moment later and he swore, inwardly. “I’ll have you provided with a device that will provide information,” he said. There were computers for the blind, computers that read information to their users. One of them would suffice for the alien. In hindsight, they should have thought of it earlier. “It should help answer your questions.”

He stepped back through the airlock, then waited until it closed behind him. “Have them dig up a computer for the blind,” he ordered. “But no internet access, nothing that can possibly provide a security risk.”

“Understood,” Rochester said, gravely. “Do you wish to see the Theory Lab now?”

Steve nodded. “Yes,” he said. He was looking forward to hearing what Keith Glass and his band of researchers had come up with to expand their operations. They’d already proposed several ideas for making more money on Earth. “It should be interesting.”

“Very interesting,” Rochester said. “Do you realise we can make diamonds in orbit? There is an endless demand for diamonds of certain specifications and we can produce them, very cheaply. And then there’s the supplies of raw materials from the asteroids, once we start mining them. They’re even working out a Homesteading Kit for anyone who wants to set up as an asteroid miner. Once we get them out to the asteroid belt…”

He broke off as Steve’s communicator buzzed. “Steve, this is Mongo,” Mongo said. “You need to get back to the ship. We may have a serious problem.”

Steve looked up at Rochester. “I’m sorry to cut this short,” he said, “but I need to go.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rochester said. He gave Steve a smile that looked somehow inhuman on his modified face. “Give them hell.”