Space Is Just a Starry Night Read online

  It was always easy, you were warned, to believe things were here that were not, and never could have been, things for which there was never, and never would be, any proof or evidence.

  Faces were seen in formations of the terrain, in the sides of mountains; they shaped themselves in the rock and blew away on the silent, non-existent winds. Gigantic statues were sighted near the Mare Nectaris, sighted by ten sober people, and vanished by earthrise. There had been a solar eclipse, the Earth standing, a black hole, between the moon and the sun. The landscape altered to amber and honeycomb, sweet enough to break off pieces and devour. There were purple shadows that seemed to contain fireflies, sparks — And at that time, many sightings, solar eclipse uls. A pillared cathedral balconied from a cliff, a fleet of fin-sailed dhows went drifting by on a river of molten copper.

  Bayley had not seen that, not any of that.

  She had only seen flat, perspectiveless pictures of a new-penny-colored moon, sent back to earth. The eclipse was before her time down here.

  And she had been told, No, the moon had not actually become like amber. Only dun, like a sienna wash on paper.

  The sleigh shot, weightless, south and west. Toward the Snake Ridge, fancifully named. Beyond the Snake Ridge lay the miniature dry sea, C. Serenum.

  Sea C. Serenum

  See sea is so

  Solar

  Solace so

  Silver sea…

  What…? Oh, phonetic alliteration exercise, yes, all those years back, that’s where the little chant came from. Bayley had written it in her student notebook. But even then — where had it come from? She didn’t write, ever, anything like that. Only that one time.

  Sea C. Serenum

  See sea is —

  The dust sprayed up in great radiant wings on either side the sleigh. Looking ahead out of the see-through, in the polarized solar glare, she expected, every instant, something to pierce, needle-white, in the dust-foam, emerging like a star. But nothing did. Even the dust was an illusion.

  And then, there ahead, was the ridge.

  Eight years she had been coming down to the moon. Before that, eight years waiting. And she had begun training when she was just sixteen. Everything seemed in blocks of eight. Did that mean anything? She was thirty-two.

  Bayley stood on First Spine, under the head of the ridge, watching the match-coder trundle lightly to and fro, now and then pausing to scoop up relevant debris. When she thought it had enough from one area, she pointed it another way.

  Who am I kidding? Anyone could do this.

  She need not have come so far out, either, so far from base.

  On some days, it was sometimes possible to glimpse the lights of Base 9 from the top of the Snake Ridge, but not always. The non-atmosphere, the strange shortened horizon, played tricks not only with vision, but with distance and illumination.

  Bayley climbed the ridge. She looked out. Base 9 was invisible, and might not exist.

  Instead, the vast sweep of the dry sea that was not a sea, folded open like a dead marble flower. Beyond, lay mountains, low and pinnacled as some city of stone.

  And the wind that was no wind came and stirred the unreal powders of the sea floor, so for a moment they rippled like long waves, and she heard the crisp fall-leaf sound that was also like the swarming of a tidal ocean.

  I can hear it.

  I’d swear, not in my head — Fevriere, that first night, whispering — That’s what frightens me most.

  Bayley had seen Fevriere next day, drinking with Sporch, laughing and hearty, like the others, like Edwards and the loud red Case. Fevriere had said nothing else to her. His worries seemed entirely forgotten. He was embarrassed, maybe?

  Something —

  From the corner of her eye —

  Bayley turned so suddenly, the whole white world seemed to snap over. But it would only seem like that. The anchoring boots, the heavy suit, must make her slow, even in gravity-zero.

  And yet. She had been quick enough.

  I am seeing this. What am I seeing?

  The wind blew, and the white hair flattened to the body, rippled, like the sand-waves of the sea C. Serenum.

  His eyes were the blue of irises, all iris blue, and the dark pupils glowed in them like eclipsing planets dropped from the sky.

  He was a wolf that was a man. He had, as wolves did, human eyes. Naked, but for the white-platinum petals of the hair, which covered him yet let him be seen, and the mane of head-hair, a white chrysanthemum, a moonburst, flaring behind his face that had a wolf’s features and a man’s eyes, and a silence that belonged only in this place of silver seas.

  The sea is moving. Waves are coming in. A sea of silver coins, flooding softly to the shore.

  Bayley stared through her face-plate, and gradually the man-wolf, the wolf-man, darkened. She thought, Breathe — take a breath —

  She breathed.

  The blood thundered in her ears, sea-sound, solace so, rush, push, washing away and away.

  She could see.

  Nothing was there. Only the bleak carved spines of the Snake Ridge, knife-cut-edged with sharp solar glare. The machine, trundling up and down between the pebbles that were like the shells of albino tortoises.

  “That’s enough,” she said to the machine, over the link.

  It heard her and stopped abruptly, a guilty child who had shoveled up too much sand from the beach as the adult slept.

  Werewolf: it wasn’t just the thing of night, the haunt, the horror. It represented — was — the inner creature, the animal spirit, resident in all men, all women, triggered into life by a malediction or a wry blessing; by magic or only at the madness of full moon. Not every culture or people feared the werewolf. Shamans conjured and became such a beast, not to terrify or kill, but only to release their own pent energies and so find the knowledge that mortal life hides from itself under the veils of flesh, under the lenses of sight.

  Bayley lay on her bunk. She dreamed of a pack of moon wolves, like the moon wolf she had seen. They chased a phantom thing, a glimmering energy that might have been a deer, but was nothing like that. One wolf, two, leapt. They killed swiftly.

  She watched them in the dream, as they ate the fresh-slaughtered energy that had not been a deer. She saw, across their couth and quiet feeding, a shambles of rocks, a sea that moved, slow quick-silver, on the shore. A city of low, calm buildings, with here and there slender skeins of translucent steeples.

  When the pack rose and sped away, she was taken with them. She ran with them up and over the slopes by the sea and came into the city.

  Clouds drifted through wide-open avenues, clouds of breath or thought. Flowers, pale-pink and like velvet to the touch (she touched them) grew out of the stones, their narrow, serpentine leaves twisting, sighing. The streets were broad. There was a kind of music.

  She saw no women among the wolves. She realized they were there nevertheless. It was only that they were, everyone, all alike. What she had seen on the ridge was then not necessarily a man. It was simply — a wolf.

  Bayley opened her eyes, and the dream ebbed away and away.

  She thought, But that was what I saw. That was what I truly saw. I saw it in one split second, just before the face-plate darkened or seemed to, because I hadn’t breathed. Why didn’t I breathe? Where — where had I gone out of my body so it stopped breathing, and so that I saw all this, and only now I remember it?

  She watched them at dinner, Case, Edwards, Sporch, Fevriere. How they were. Just as she had watched Reza earlier, in the lab, having found some excuse to intrude, checking up on the gathered samples.

  They were all so predictable. They did, each of them, only what you expected they would. Reza cold and a bitch, rude and intolerant, interested solely in her work. Edwards lustful — worse than she ever recalled — rolling his eyes at Bayley, and Sporch and Case also acting up together, and Fevriere gladly joining in, over the growing array of beer cans.

  They’re the robots, not me. They’re like automata.
Were they always like that? I don’t remember.

  Only three days to go now, before the carrier would come to take her off, up to earth, that jewel hanging there, unbelievable, the same color blue as the moon wolf’s eyes.

  “Communication from Base 13,” said Sporch, as Bayley came in to breakfast. “They lost a sleigh, over near the Snake Ridge. See anything, Bay, when you were up there?”

  “No. Do you mean they lost personnel?”

  “Seems not. Some guy called Stanlevy. He got back OK, but says he lost the sleigh.”

  “How d’ya lose a sleigh for Chrissake?” said Case.

  They all laughed. Was it funny?

  None of them was serious.

  Things got lost.

  Bayley thought of the moon wolf suddenly there on the ridge. She thought of the man called Stanlevy going back on his boots to Base 13, way over south, and leaving something behind. She thought how things vanished in the moon dark, and even when the dark went away, how you never found them, only other things that seemed to have been mislaid or jettisoned by other persons, other bases, other survey teams or machines.

  Reza walked into the saloon. The men quietly sniggered, all of them, in unison, like an entity, then cleaned their faces off.

  “Bayley, these samples are useless. What were you playing at?”

  Bayley stared at Reza.

  “I thought —”

  “Don’t think, then. I expect you to go out again and make good. I can’t work with this rubbish.”

  One of the men cheered sotto voce — probably Case.

  Reza took no notice, nor did Bayley.

  “You want me to go back —”

  “I haven’t the time. I have to get on with the other samples.”

  She wants me to go back, go out. It’s nuts. The samples aren’t useless; I checked them anyway. They’re what she asked for, and of course the match-coder does all the work, and there’s nothing wrong with it, and why has she waited —

  She sounds like a school ma’am. I’d like to slap her. Can’t, damn her; she’s senior status. But Bayley knew she was pretending to be annoyed, was not aggravated at all, didn’t care. She might as well admit to that.

  “OK, Reza.”

  In the hydroponics area, Bayley stood looking at the green earth leaves, lifting their heads towards the rain dragonfly. She sniffed the minty herbal scent, the aroma of peppermint and thyme.

  She touched a leaf, and it turned out of her hand, as if alive.

  No plant had any flowers. All were healthy, even productive, but without blooms. As if — as if the flowers had gone elsewhere.

  I have a choice. You always have a choice.

  I’ll make some excuse to Reza, and stay in until the last days of my stint are done and I can ride the carrier up to earth. And then I’ll have to change my job, won’t I? Because even if Reza doesn’t get me thrown out, every time I come back —

  Why has this taken eight years?

  Blocks of eight, everything.

  Eight years old when she first saw the moon and knew the moon, from a roof, on Earth. Looking into that face that was like no other thing, not a lamp, not a sun, not even — a face.

  And then the eight years of training, failing, waiting, and then the eight years coming down and going back. Back — you never said now, going home. As you never said, on Earth, going up to the moon. Earth was up. Up in the black lunar sky, an iris-blue gem among its shifting cloud-breaths.

  Anyway, she thought, even if I don’t go out today, sometime I will. I mean — I don’t even have to go out, do I? For it to happen.

  She felt strange, Chrissie Bayley. She knew the near-drunk terror of the dark wood, where Dionysos called his maenads. It wasn’t being scared at all. It was the madness of the moon. The lunacy. (The lunar sea…) Joy.

  I suppose I’ve never got close to anyone. Not ever.

  Not even the ones like Al, who tried to get close to me. He did try. He slapped me once, twice, because he wanted something from me, more than sex, more than friendship or even love, and I didn’t or couldn’t give it. That doesn’t excuse him, but it explains. He wasn’t always like he is now. But was I? A robot. Chrissie of Crisium.

  Can a robot be enamored of a moon?

  Bayley watched herself go through the base on the moving walkways, suit up, take the sleigh and open the lock.

  Bayley watched the sleigh, with Bayley in it, shooting out over the moon surface. Bayley ran beside the sleigh with Bayley riding in it. Bayley in the sleigh still breathed this time. The running Bayley was not breathing, not needing to breathe. Not needing to smile or lie any more, warm in her fur. Piping her siren song to the dark and the light.

  Later, much later, she ran back, all the way to the base, and standing on the milky drifts of the dark outside, she looked in at the see-through, and saw herself plod in from the lock, and take off her suit, and shower and go to dinner.

  Chrissie saw herself, window after window, laughing and drinking beer. She saw herself in Edwards’ cabin, and having sexual relations with Edwards, and then, that established, she went away again. She left herself to it.

  She knew where the others would be, and she found them. This was in the marble city that had seemed to be mountains, among the fragile spires and gracious low buildings, all the architecture that had never happened here, except in wishful thinking. She could smell the scent of the pink flowers and the ice-cool smell of the vanilla clouds.

  The ocean came in, sigh on sigh, quintessential sea, to solace the onyx shore, under the solar light that did not glare any more but was smooth as the taste of cream.

  It was what she had always looked for, when she looked — thought — of the moon, what she had anticipated, failed to see, and now discovered.

  Everyone was there who had ever come here, or returned here. They were all alike, and all one. There was no need for conversation or remorse, for laughter, alcohol, or oxygen, or love. Moon wolves.

  They hunted and ate the silver deer that felt no pain, they swam in the seas and leaped across the mountains. They drank moonlight.

  Sometimes with her iris eyes she would see, as did they all, the alien mechanisms at work on the moon, the soulless ships coming and going, the shells of people, the autometons, carrying on their abandoned lives.

  Sometimes, sleeping in the indigo sleeve of night, she dreamed distinctly of the base, real as if she lived there too, or of earth. Of things she did in those places, or that her robot self did there, mechanically.

  Silly dull dreams, which meant nothing at all.

  Part II

  Burning Bright

  Felixity

  Felixity’s parents were so beautiful that everywhere they went they were attended by a low murmuring, like that of a beehive. Even when pregnant with her child, Felixity’s mother was lovely, an ormolu madonna. But when Felixity was born, her mother died.

  Among the riches of her father, then, in a succession of elaborate houses, surrounded by gardens that sometimes led to a cobalt sea, Felixity grew up, motherless. Her father watched her grow, he must have done, although nannies tended her, servants waited on her, and tutors gave her lessons. Sometimes in the evening, when the heat of the day had settled and the stars come out, Felixity’s father would interview his daughter on the lamplit terrace above the philodendrons.

  “Now tell me what you learned today.”

  But Felixity, confronted by her beautiful and elegant father burnished on the dark with pale electricity, was tongue-tied. She twisted her single plait around her finger and hunched her knees. She was an ugly child, ungraceful and gauche, with muddy skin and thin, unshining hair. She had no energy, and even when put out to play, wandered slowly about the garden walks, or tried tiredly to skip, giving up after five or six heavy jumps. She was slow at her studies, worried over them and suffered headaches. She was meek. Her teeth were always needing fillings, and she bore this unpleasantness with resignation.

  “Surely there must have been something of note in
your day?”

  “I went to the dentist, Papa.”

  “Your mother,” said Felixity’s father, “had only one tiny filling in her entire head. It was the size of a pin’s point. It was gold.” He said this without cruelty, more in wonder. “You must have some more dresses,” he added presently.

  Felixity hated it when clothes were bought for her. She looked so awful in anything attractive or pretty, but they had never given up. Glamorously dressed she resembled a chrysalis dressed in the butterfly. When she could, she put on her drabbest, most nondescript clothes.

  After half an hour or so of his daughter’s unstimulating company, Felixity’s father would send her away. He was always tactful but Felixity was under no illusions. Beneath the dentist’s numbing cocaine she was aware her teeth were being drilled to the nerve and that shortly, when the anesthetic wore off, they would hurt her.

  Inevitably, as time passed, Felixity grew up and became a woman. Her body changed, but it did not improve. If anyone had been hoping for some magical transformation, they were disappointed. When she was sixteen, Felixity was, nevertheless, launched into society. Not a ripple attended the event, although she wore a red dress and a most lifelike wig fashioned by a famous coiffeur. Following this beginning, Felixity was often on the edges of social activities, where she was never noticed, gave neither offense nor inspiration, and before some of which she was physically sick several times from neurasthenia. As the years went by, however, her terror gradually left her. She no longer expected anything momentous with which she would not be able to cope.

  Felixity’s father aged marvelously. He remained slim and limber, was scarcely lined, and that only in a way to make him more interesting. His hair and teeth were like a boy’s.