Red Moon

CHAPTER FIVE tao dao diqiu shang Escape to Earth

That afternoon Ta Shu and Zhou Bao got on the train headed south. Ta Shu fell asleep, exhausted by his walkabout, and he woke only when the train hissed to a halt in Shackleton Crater. The big complex there looked pretty sophisticated after Petrov Station. Not that dissimilar to malls on Earth. Ta Shu recalled the way McMurdo had begun to look like a big city after one had been out in the Transantarctics for a while. It was the same here: Shackleton was the moon’s McMurdo, the outer stations like field camps.

They found that most of the people they met in the big station were still flustered by the arrival of the American lander, which had come down on the northern flank of Ibn Bajja Crater, on a peak of Eighty-One Percent Eternal Light. That was the sunniest local highland not yet occupied by some kind of Chinese structure, which no doubt explained why the Americans had chosen it. Their lander was an old-style space cylinder, massive compared to anything the Chinese used anymore. Aside from a radio alert to the spaceport’s control center as they came over the horizon from the north, they had not communicated with the Chinese before landing. After they were down they had called Chinese headquarters to say hello and invite a group over for a discussion of their purpose.

With Chang Yazu dead, and Commissioner Li Bingwen returned to Earth, the local chain of command was in a state of flux. It was Inspector Jiang Jianguo who asked Zhou Bao and Ta Shu if they would make the first visit to the newly arrived Americans. Ta Shu’s old friendship with John Semple was referenced, and Zhou’s English was said to be the best of any Chinese diplomat now on the moon.

“Happy to try,” Ta Shu said. “Although it sounds as if John won’t be in charge of this American station anymore.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Inspector Jiang said. “It’s still better if you’re there. Personal relations always matter.”

It was a short drive on the ridgelines between Shackleton and the American lander on the outside of Ibn Bajja Crater. Sun low on the horizon, as always. The American lander was a big fat cylinder propped on low stilts. Coming from the Chinese complex, Ta Shu could not help but think this vehicle was just a teeny thing, reminiscent of the Apollo landers that still dotted the near side. Here the Americans’ silver cylinder was about as wide as it was tall, with six legs splayed away from the fat rockets under the body of it.

Zhou Bao drove them up to the cylinder and radioed in. An air-lock door in the cylinder opened, and then a tube extended out and adhered to their car’s door. They tiptoed through the tunnel and into the American lander. The three men in its lower chamber shook hands and introduced themselves: a Smith, an Allen, and another Smith, from NASA, the State Department, and the National Science Foundation, respectively. After they sat down, Ta Shu asked the NSF Smith if he knew any of Ta Shu’s old acquaintances from the US Antarctic Program. It turned out they both knew the current head of the USAP, and Smith brought Ta Shu up to date on his institutional work.

Then with this little gesture to friendly diplomacy finished, Allen took up a globe of the moon and put it on the table they were sitting around. The south pole was uppermost, and marked in red by the various Chinese settlements.

“So, here we are,” Allen said, pointing at a blue dot among the red rectangles.

“Indeed,” Zhou said. “We noticed.” Adding a little smile.

Allen said, “We’re assuming it’s okay with you for us to settle here. We need a station at the south pole for several purposes.”

“Anyone can settle anywhere on the moon that isn’t already occupied by another settlement,” Zhou said. “Outer Space Treaty. China is a signatory, and has adhered to all the stipulations in it. Article 9 of the treaty says that if any party to the treaty has reason to believe an activity planned by another state would cause potentially harmful interference with their activities in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, they may request consultation concerning the activity.”

“Yes,” Allen said. “Actually, we were going to invoke that clause ourselves. We had intended to make a geological survey of this area. We’re afraid your excavations here will make our scientific work impossible.”

Zhou nodded. “The treaty says you can request consultation concerning the activity or experiment in question. So now you have requested consultation, and I acknowledge receipt of same. I will transmit the request to my superiors, and they will be discussing it with their superiors in Beijing. It shouldn’t take long.”

“We understand.”

“Meanwhile, we will surely want to reciprocate by taking a look at your settlement at the north pole.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, it’s an equivalent problem. We’ve been attempting to determine the origin and age of the water ice in the craters at both poles, and we’ve been very careful to keep most of the south polar craters pristine until the proper studies have been made. When it comes to the north pole’s ice, however, we’re concerned, because it seems from our orbital observations that you have been drilling in all of the icy craters up there.”

“You should establish a base up there, like we have down here,” Allen suggested.

“Maybe so. I’m sure that’s being considered.”

They sat there looking at the globe of the moon.

“These issues will be decided in Washington and Beijing,” Ta Shu said. “So maybe you can tell us more about what you will be doing here at the south pole?”

“We have a six-month assignment to set up radio transmitters and do some area studies.”

“That’s a long time to be in a room this small,” Zhou said, looking around. “You are always welcome to come over to visit us in the various facilities we have here.”

“Thank you.”

“Will you have the ability to go back north for visits?”

“When we refuel this base we can take off in it. We’ll need to mine some water and split it before we could do that.”

Zhou said, “We’re keeping most of the icy craters down here pristine, as I said. We can guide you to the craters we are mining, or else we can bring you ice to use. Whichever you like.”

“Thank you. Meanwhile, we’ll be visited from time to time by teams from the north, to resupply and swap out researchers.”

“You should definitely come on over and visit.”

“Thank you. We’ll have to get authorization for anything like that.”

“No doubt. I trust it will be forthcoming.”

“I hope so.”

On the short drive back up to the Shackleton greenhouse, Ta Shu and Zhou Bao didn’t speak for a while. As they approached the garage door, Zhou said, “They want trouble. Not those three men in particular, but someone higher up in the American government.”

“Do you think so?”

“I do.”

“So you won’t give it to them?”

“Right. Never give an adversary what they want.”

“But if they really want trouble, they can get it. They’ll just push harder. Because at some point we’ll have to push back. Right?”

“Imagine when your three-year-old loses his temper and goes after you. He bites, he kicks, he screams. If you’re not careful, I suppose he could kick you in the balls and hurt you. But if you’re careful, you just fold him in your arms, right? Or you let him pound on you for a while, until he’s gotten it out of his system. Right?”

“Three-year-old? Really? Is America like a child god? Rockets in his fingertips?”

“No. Just your ordinary kid. Three years old, three hundred years old—same thing, right? When you’re talking about China, five thousand years old? Fifteen times older than this kid?”

“Not your ordinary kid.”

Zhou Bao thought it over for a bit. “Maybe not.”

Ta Shu said, “You can’t make them small just by saying so. They’ve still got seventy percent of the capital in the world.”

“What’s capital?”

Ta Shu stared at Zhou. “Money?”

“And what’s money?”

Ta Shu said, “You tell me.”

Zhou laughed. “I can’t tell you! It would take too long. Even if I knew. Which I don’t. All I know is it’s more mysterious than we usually think it is. Money, capital—they’re just ways of organizing work. And it’s the work that’s real. So the other stuff is mysterious. What if every time you said money you replaced that word with the word trust. Here, I will pay you ten units of my trust.” He looked at Ta Shu and grinned. “A good deal!”

He drove the rover into the Shackleton garage. As they got out and walked through the inner locks and up to the greenhouse dining hall, Ta Shu said, “These Americans may begin to press you harder about young Fredericks being missing, even if just to put you at a disadvantage. And really there shouldn’t be any way to lose him here. Someone among us must know where he is.”

“The infighting can get pretty fierce.”

“But if the people up top want it to stop?”

“A warring agency will sometimes hold on and hope the other side takes the first hit from above. And first hit is worst hit, pretty often.”

When they got back to the greenhouse and had settled before a meal of rice and vegetables, a slender man approached them, graceful in the lunar g. Zhou Bao gestured to him to sit down. “Jianguo, you know about Ta Shu, I’m sure. He’s up from China to do one of his travel shows. Ta Shu, this is Inspector Jiang Jianguo. He runs this place, by way of the Lunar Personnel Coordination Task Force, isn’t that what it’s called now?”

Jiang nodded gloomily. “I’m just a policeman, that’s all. Maybe I used to be more like one of the old imperial district magistrates, but that’s changed.”

“Like Judge Dee,” Zhou said to Ta Shu. “He’s famous for solving all our oddest crimes. The information office writes up his cases in the South Polar Times. The Case of the Locked Air Lock, the Problem of the Faraday Cage, and so on.”

“The good old days,” Jiang agreed without enthusiasm.

“You’ve been here a long time?” Ta Shu asked.

“Maybe too long. When I first came I thought I’d stay six months, and now it’s been fifty-three all told, spread out over eight trips.”

“Jianguo and I are trying to see who can rack up the most moon time,” Zhou said. “So, Construct the Station, what’s up now?”

“We’ve got a problem,” Jiang said. “A couple of problems, actually. And I think you can help us with both of them.”

“What can we do?”

Jiang tapped his wristpad until it began to hum in an almost subsonic way; this was the audible part of a Faraday cage field, putting them under a cone of electromagnetic interference. Ta Shu had heard of these programs for individual use but never felt one in action, and he found it an unpleasant experience. “Testing,” Jiang said, and looked at Zhou’s wrist, which Zhou was holding out to him in a cooperative way. “Okay, we’re under an umbrella. Look, I’ve come into possession of that American who went missing, the one suspected of killing Chang.”

“My friend!” Ta Shu exclaimed.

“That’s good, right?” Zhou Bao inquired.

“Good but bad,” Jiang said.

“Why, who took him?” Ta Shu asked.

“It was the Red Spear.”

Zhou frowned at this news, and Ta Shu shook his head to indicate he didn’t understand.

Jiang explained to him. “They’re a superblack wing of military intelligence. They might be with the PLA’s Strategic Support Force, or their Skyheart program. Whoever they are with, they like to force the action.”

“Hostile pilot,” Zhou added, and Ta Shu nodded to show he understood. Hostile pilots were seemingly renegade officers who did something stupidly provocative at the front lines that could later be repudiated by higher-ups, but were secretly approved of as a warning shot to some foe. The pilots involved were afterward either sacrificed or rewarded, depending on the particulars. A whole unit of such dangerous actors was a scary thought, although not that surprising.

Jiang saw that Ta Shu recognized the tactic, and went on. “Now it looks like Red Spear is leading the military’s push to get on the moon. I didn’t even know they had anyone here yet, but it looks like some of them came up in an engineering team. Then they snatched this American out of the hospital. We ran across him when we were going after them, and took him back from them. So it’s getting tense.”

“Did they set Fredericks up for the murder of Chang? Did they murder Chang?”

“It’s quite possible. Either them, or a group like them from some other security unit. The political leader here, Commissioner Li, was sent home immediately after the attack. The two men who were with him when he introduced the American to Chang disappeared right after they left that room. They aren’t in any data banks or even our surveillance camera feeds, which shouldn’t be possible. Only a few people even saw them in the flesh. That smacks of Red Spear.”

“But why kill Chang?” Zhou asked.

“I don’t know yet. But Chang Yazu was adamantly opposed to any military presence on the moon. So that alone might have been reason enough to get rid of him. Also, the private encrypted phone that Fredericks was delivering to Chang looks like it was going to be his link to someone on the standing committee. I’m still trying to get the Swiss company to tell me who exactly has the other phone, but you know the Swiss and privacy. We’ve traced the company’s shipment records enough to suggest the other phone was sent to the standing committee headquarters in Beijing, but I’ll probably have to come at it from a different angle to find out any more about the phone. Right now I’m looking into Chang’s previous postings to see who he worked with, and if that might lead to anyone who would want him silenced.”

Zhou nodded his big head; the inspector was on the hunt. He said, “So how did you find the American again?”

“When we learned we had a Red Spear group here, we went to arrest them for using false IDs. We intended to kick them back to Earth where they belong, if they belong anywhere, and there your American was, in one of their rooms. Now we have to move fast on this, or else the Red Spear leadership in Beijing may get us overruled and convince our superiors to tell us to give him back to them. I don’t want my bosses back home to order me to do something I don’t want to. So the safest thing would be to get this guy off the moon as soon as possible. But it can be hard to clear the checkpoints without tipping people off.”

“So how can we help?”

“Two ways. First, we’d like to give this guy a cover and push him through fast. So, you know.” He looked at Ta Shu. “You’re famous, and you often travel with a crew. So I was wondering if you would be willing to go back to Beijing early, and insert this guy into your crew when you go.”

“I didn’t bring a crew this time.”

“We’ll generate a record of one for you, and it will show him in it. Then we jam him home with you, and let people deal down there.”

“What will you do with him down there?”

“Probably give him to the American embassy in exchange for some favor we want from them, but I’m just guessing. That’s a decision that will be made above my level.”

Zhou said, “It would be a shame to get Ta Shu embroiled in a war of agencies.”

“I think he’ll fly above all that. That’s why I’m asking. There’s no one else on the moon right now that you can say that about. And”—to Ta Shu—“we can arrange to bring you back up here after this is over.”

“You can’t just give Fred to the Americans here on the moon?” Ta Shu asked.

“We don’t think that gets him clear. The moon is just too small, and it’s a Chinese place. And whoever weaponized him probably wants him dead.”

“What if we got him to the American base at the north pole?”

“We’ve got that infiltrated, and now I think Red Spear does too. So it might not be enough.”

Ta Shu and Zhou Bao looked at each other.

“It’s getting complicated,” Jiang admitted. “And it doesn’t help that the Americans just dropped that lander down here.”

“We were just visiting them.”

“I know.”

Another look shared by Ta Shu and Zhou. Jiang’s Faraday cage growled in their stomachs, adding a little wire of dread to their deliberations.

“So Fred would become my assistant?” Ta Shu said.

“Right. He’ll be in the records as having come with you. And so will a young woman we have in our charge, whom we also want to send home as fast as possible.”

“Wait, who’s that?”

“It’s just someone we want off the moon. Better you don’t know who she is. These two will join you on tonight’s launch home as your crew, and back you go. There’s a bit of a need to hurry, because these launch rails are fixed on the land, and each one is only pointed toward Earth for a few days a month. The one I want to use is about to lose its launch window, and the next one won’t align for a week or so, so we need to work fast. You take them back, then in Beijing we’ll hand them both upstairs and be done with it. And you can come back up here as soon as you want. Very next launch, if you want.”

“If they’ll let me,” Ta Shu said. “Could be elements down there will be unhappy with me taking sides like this.”

“I think you fly above that level, as I said.”

“Above the Politburo?”

Jiang cracked a little smile. “All but the standing committee, yes.”

“Actually I do know someone on the standing committee,” Ta Shu said. “Secretary Peng Ling was a student of mine, back in the day.”

Jiang and Zhou eyed each other: friends with a big tiger! “So there you go,” Jiang said. “It’s like I said. You’ll fly above this.”

Ta Shu thought it over. “Okay, I’ll do it. I like this American.”

“Thanks. We de-chipped him and gave him a wristpad with an ID that has him traveling as your assistant. In Beijing we’ll have people there to take care of him. It’s only up here that I feel we’re a little undermanned.” Jiang grimaced. “I used to think of myself as the top cop in this place, but those times are gone. Someone is messing with my district.”

“Okay,” Ta Shu said. “I’ll help.” He said to Zhou Bao, “I hope I’ll be back soon.”

“Me too,” Zhou said. He looked at Jiang. “Why is the young woman being included in this, again?”

Jiang shrugged. “Thing are getting so uncertain, we want her out of here. She’s a princeling. And she’s pregnant.”

“How could that be!” Zhou exclaimed.

“What?” Ta Shu asked, puzzled. “No sex on the moon?”

“No getting pregnant,” Zhou explained. “It’s against the rules.”

“Not to mention common sense,” Jiang added.

“Because?”

“Because no one’s ever done it. So no one knows how it would go. It might be okay, but just as a precaution, contraception is mandatory for women here. This woman could get arrested, but it would be better if we get her down to Earth as soon as possible.”

“What will happen to her then?” Ta Shu asked.

“She’ll be banned from ever coming to the moon again.”

“What about the man involved? Assuming it’s not a case of artificial insemination.”

“Same penalty. They’ll do a DNA test on the fetus and then track down the perpetrator.”

“So you’re sending her with us?”

“Yes, if it’s all right with you. She’ll be the rest of Ta Shu’s film crew. They’ll look more like a real crew, and we’ll solve two problems at once.” He gestured. “Here they come.”

A small group approached, Fred among them. When Fred saw Ta Shu he jumped a little, startled; then he extended a hand as if reaching for help. He moved unsteadily, and looked scared.

The woman with them was young and slight, clearly pregnant, her face red-eyed but otherwise a fierce mask. Broad cheeks, fine features. A hawklike look, wild and unfriendly. She gave Ta Shu a single glance, looked away. She withdrew into herself; she was not there for anyone to see.

“Time to go,” Jiang said. “We’ll see you through security.”

“What about my stuff?” Ta Shu asked.

“We gathered and packed it for you.”

Zhou Bao snorted. “Somehow I think this consultation was a little pro forma.”

“It’s all right,” Ta Shu said. He wasn’t sure it was, but he wanted to reassure Zhou, and even Jiang. The man seemed sincere to him.

Jiang led them all to the subway that ran out to the spaceport. They got in an empty car and it slid out of the complex and across the gray surface.

Ta Shu looked out the tram window curiously, wondering if he would ever return to this strange world, so light underfoot, so monochrome to the eye. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to. Cutting the trip short had actually occurred to him once or twice during the last few nights, the idea coming to him out of some feeling of oppression hard to define. This was a colorless, lifeless place. An anti-Earth. Feng shui had no purchase here, all its systems of analysis were baffled. That very aspect made it interesting in some ways, and one strand of his ambivalence was definitely a desire to stay. Now that had to mean a desire to come back.

The tram entered the spaceport and stopped at a platform empty but for a trio of men. These men were known to Inspector Jiang, who spoke briefly with them. Then they all went together to the end of the subway room and passed through a double lock to a larger chamber with but one platform. This was the loading end of a launch rail like the one Ta Shu’s spaceship had landed on. A spaceship here filled the chamber almost to its roof, lying on its side ready for takeoff.

Before they could enter the craft there was a scanning arch they had to pass through, manned by men in uniforms. Ta Shu looked for red on the uniforms and saw nothing; all the splashes of color were white and gold. Of course Red Spear was a secret organization, so this meant nothing: they would not be wearing a badge. If Jiang was right, there very well might be Red Spear agents among these guards. And the young woman with them, so distinctive, clearly pregnant—surely she was a magnet for extra inspections? Neither face recognition technology nor the human eye would ever mistake her for anyone else.

No doubt Fred and the woman herself were thinking much the same thing, and they stood there nervously behind Zhou Bao as Jiang spoke to the men at the scanner. Then they walked through it one at a time, enduring the stares of the men manning the gateway. Retinal scanners were held to their eyes, and Ta Shu wondered if the records being using to judge Fred and the woman had been tampered with, in effect changing the past to affect the present: a nice trick. Either that or the guards were in on the operation.

Then with a wave to Zhou the little group was into the spaceship, moving carefully in a passenger area and strapping themselves into plush seats. None of them spoke; it wasn’t obvious that they were free from surveillance, and now Jiang and Zhou were no longer with them to explain their situation. Their friends’ parting expressions had suggested silence would be best. Best now just to eye each other, and wait to speak until they were more sure of what was going on. And there wasn’t much to say anyway. They all reached this same conclusion, shrugged at each other, and waited to endure the acceleration into space, and then the flight home.

“We’ll face forward on takeoff,” Ta Shu said casually in English, filling the silence with something innocuous. “The taikonauts call it eyeballs in. It’s much better for the body than eyeballs out.”

“It’s only three g’s,” the young woman said dismissively. “People can stand a lot more than that.” Her English was polished.

“Yes,” Ta Shu said. He liked her voice, low and unruffled. She wasn’t to be judged or shamed by this expulsion from the moon, her tone of voice said.

Fred Fredericks, on the other hand, simply looked stunned. Ta Shu said to him, “I read that certain taikonauts have been subjected to something like twenty g’s without lasting ill effects.”

Fred nodded unhappily.

“We’ll stay far below that,” Ta Shu reassured him, to keep the chatter going. “I am Ta Shu,” he said to the young woman, “and this is Fred Fredericks.”

“Call me Qi,” she said.

Then they felt the push of the spaceship accelerating forward. Quickly they were shoved back hard in their chairs, and Ta Shu tensed his muscles to resist the pressure as best he could. He looked out the craft’s little window and wondered if things would go gray in his vision, then realized that would be difficult to determine on the moon. By the time they neared the end of the piste they were going six kilometers a second, and the landscape out the window flashed by. The pushback into his chair got more and more stifling.

Then they left the launch rail and were suddenly weightless, held in their chairs only by their restraints. The shift in pressure made Ta Shu feel a little woozy. “I’m getting too old for this,” he said to no one in particular.

The younger ones seemed too distracted to feel sick. They were both wrapped in their own dramas. Who could tell what they were thinking? Ta Shu glanced at them from time to time, saw they were also cautiously looking around. What had happened to them on the moon? What would happen to them when they got home?

They were joined by the ship’s sole attendant. She helped them out of their chairs. After that they floated around the room, a quiet and nervous group.

Later, when the attendant was in conversation with Qi, Ta Shu floated to Fred’s side and said to him in a low voice, “What happened to you?”

“I don’t know.” Fred shrugged, shook his head unhappily. Clearly he didn’t want to talk about it. His face was pinched shut. At their breakfast on the morning after their arrival, he had seemed a little tentative, but also quick and alert; now he looked crushed. He was trying hard not to be afraid. During their breakfast Ta Shu had guessed he was in his midthirties; now he looked about ten years old. Clearly he had had a very bad week.

Their transit home passed without incident, marked only by meals and naps. The rapidity of their launch off the rail meant the trip home took less than two days. The Earth grew bigger at a rate that was at first negligible, then alarming; all of a sudden it filled half their visible space, and was not a sphere but a concave curve under them. After that it was very obvious they were headed down. The world below grew huge. Its intense blue was composed of a vivid cobalt ocean sheathed under a turquoise arc of atmosphere, with the usual swirls of cloud layered between the two blues, all their characteristic patterns deeply textured and obviously three-dimensional. Ta Shu had not seen this sight on his voyage out, and he found himself breathing deep, squeezing his chair arms. Earth, blue world, living world, human world. He was going home.

They strapped in again. This descent, their attendant told them, was going to entail a pressure more severe than the departure from the moon. One of the ways the engineers had made the transit from moon to Earth so fast was to exploit the Terran atmosphere’s capacity to swiftly decelerate an incoming object. Improvements in materials had brought things to a point where the limiting factor in this deceleration was the human body’s ability to endure g forces without lasting harm. For ordinary civilian transit, they did not press this limit very hard. No reason to risk injury just to save a few hours of flight. Still, they were going to feel a hard squeeze.

They hit the atmosphere and immediately began quivering, then shuddering. While they were in the burn phase they sat facing backward, again to take the pressure eyeballs in. The ablation plate at the front of the ferry got so hot it shed atoms, and the air rushing by them therefore torched to burning.

They endured the pressure silently. A few minutes of solitude, then their spaceship was suddenly rocking back and forth at the bottom of a giant set of parachutes, then firing its retro-rockets and thumping down on the spaceport sands of the Gobi. One g felt pretty light after the crush of their deceleration.

They got out of their seats with help from the attendant, then followed one of the crew out a door into another jetway. Earth’s familiar gravity quickly got heavier for Ta Shu, until it became oppressive, even a little crushing. No doubt he would get used to it again, but for now it was not a happy feeling.

By the end of the jetway he was stumping along, hardly able to move. So heavy! They passed through a double set of glass doors where some people were waiting. Four men, three women. Qi saw them, paused, hissed. She glanced at Ta Shu, scowling, then continued through the doors. Immediately she was surrounded by the waiting group. Then three of the waiting men went to Fred and surrounded him too. Without a word the two young people were escorted away. Fred looked over his shoulder and gave Ta Shu a miserable, desperate glance. Then they were gone.