I, Gyges the Terrible, went forth to do battle. I hope it is something I never have to do again.
Once you decide to pick a fight with someone, you spring immediately into action. You don't threaten first with angry words or menacing gestures, a charade that is mere theater and only serves to give your opponent time to prepare. You simply strike. You strike as hard as you can as fast as you can at the moment of your own choosing and you don't give a moment's warning. Most struggles are won at the first blow. It has nothing to do with chivalry. It has everything to do with winning.
Many people believe that great spiritual leaders must have good and gentle souls. This is simply not true. A strong sense of spirituality has nothing to do with kindness. It has everything to do with a keen awareness that the world is greater than we are as individuals, and yet there is also an essential interconnectedness that definitively transcends the illusion of individuality. We call this interconnectedness God. Spirituality does not preclude hatred. It does not preclude murder and destruction if they are framed in a convenient context. Some of the world's most hateful human beings have been ayatollahs and cardinals. Anyone can call on God's power if only he understands it, because God is not good or evil, either. God simply is.
I was just such a person. I was filled with hatred. And I knew very well how to make my thoughts manifest in the world outside my head. It was magic. I didn't need the ring. No one needs a ring. People do it all the time. They use their hands, mostly. But there are other ways. And I was becoming a master.
The Russians had taken over our most important mining complexes on the edge of the Oceanus Procellarum, a huge basalt mare that dwarfs all its neighbors in size situated a few hundred kilometers to our west. The Russian zone was officially south of the Mare Imbrium, covering two smaller mare that together comprise an area slightly larger than our own. Distribution of the Oceanus Procellarum was not covered by any treaty, since its position made it relatively expensive to reach directly from earth. Like many other of our enemies, however, the Russians had decided to take advantage of our temporary weakness. While we were preoccupied with civil war, they would grab huge portions of unclaimed terroritory and then fortify them, so when the war had ended, regardless who had won, they could present us with a fait accompli. Such was the idea. Of course, to accomplish their aims, they would have to seize the mines at the very edge of our zone, as they were strategically placed for anyone wanting to control the eastern portion of the Oceanus.
We waited for the start of the lunar night. When we set out, the light from the vanquished sun could still be seen hanging above the horizon in the direction we were heading. On the way over in the command ship, I was silent and stared moodily out the aft viewport. Munib, sitting strapped in across from me, studied me carefully but did not try to engage me in conversation. He must have sensed that something had happened, although he could hardly have guessed what. He would remain in the vanguard with a sizeable force and await the outcome of the contest. Without the soldiers he would keep in reserve, I was outnumbered three-to-one by the enemy. With them, we would have been more or less equal. But I think Munib enjoyed putting me in what most people would have considered a precarious situation. It was not lost upon me, however, that it was a vote of confidence as well. Of course, we both knew – everyone knew – that if things took a turn for the worse, he'd be able to swoop in and save the day. Such was Munib's skill and reputation that a victory under his command was believed as certain as falling from a height without any support.
The Russians would be anticipating the attack. One advantage we had, though, was a complete set of blueprints of the mines, the underground complex, and the supporting barracks. They would not have been able to make any significant alterations. But we had very little information on the enemy's defensive strategy. At first, we did not even know who was commanding their troops. But a few days before the attack we snagged a scout and I had the information beat out of her. There are always people around prepared to carry out such orders. Under normal circumstances, her disappearance would have set off alarm bells, but on the moon people disappeared regularly in ones and twos.
Our mines were in the hands of a Major Nadezhda Mikoyan, a totally unknown personality. My advisors were pleased with the news, since they considered someone without leadership experience an insignificant threat. But I thought it was hasty to jump to such a conclusion, for I was such a person, and, anyway, history is full of examples of brilliant natural leaders who won great, unexpected victories their first time on the field of battle.
Major Mikoyan did everything right, but she was doomed from the start. I could smell her blood like an animal hunting its prey in the deep of the night. Not only that, I could feel her thoughts. I knew. She never had a chance.
I knew, for example, that our movements were being carefully watched. So I sent out a group of fighters to make a sortie against their main battery of satellites. Every settlement has one. These are not the ordinary spy or switchbox satellites, these are the big relays that are able to communicate directly with earth. The fighters had orders not to engage. It was a small force that couldn't be considered much of a threat. But I knew they would grab the attention of the Russian commanders below. The main battery is, however well defended, the spinal cord of any presence on the moon, but there was another reason they interested me. The moon rotates too slowly for any satellite to remain fixed in any single position. At the time, the Russian main battery was located about a quarter of the way around the moon to our south-east. If the fighters could hold their attention long enough, by the time the Russians got wind of the real operation, they would be too far away to send out reinforcements. And this is, of course, what happened.
The mines are located in one of the mountainous spurs that run north-south, separating the Mare Imbrium from the much vaster sea to our west. They are spread out over a long, pockmarked slope. Like most of the mountains on the moon, there are no impressive peaks, just graceful curves piled on top of each other and disturbed by craters varying in size from tiny to behemoth. The bottoms of the deepest craters are the most attractive sites for mining because a lot of the excavation work has already been done, but sometimes it is more profitable to dig shafts down directly from the surface. These kinds of mines are far cheaper to build and operate, and there isn't the added cost of flying the payload upwards hundreds or even thousands of meters just to bring it to the surface. There are three transport points around which the shafts are clustered and an underground complex which joins them. The barracks are smaller versions of the same, round construction I was familiar with at Laplace.
To one side of the mines, the slope led gradually and fairly evenly in an undisturbed stretch for almost two kilometers, descending a total of one hundred meters. Not far away on the other side was a yawning drop, the steep lip of an ancient crater that once ran half a kilometer across. But the early solar system was a harsh place, full of flying debris, and the moon had no atmosphere to slowly wipe the scars away. Another, even larger meteor had smashed into the smaller crater, all but erasing it, and created a ruptured, treacherous terrain some twenty square kilometers in extent filled with rubble, crevices, and sudden drops into places where the light of the sun never shines. It would have been fairly impossible to move an army across in an manner orderly enough to stage a credible attack. It was exactly this which I proposed to do.
I knew that Major Mikoyan and the Russians had their attention fixed on the much more inviting slope, which is, of course, the way they had come themselves. I only had a limited number of troops as it was, and it was a gamble to split any more off the main force, but the advantage I would gain by doing so was incalculable. My advisors were almost unanimously against it, but I overruled them. Hologram technology is not yet advanced enough that I could use it, so I had to come up with another idea to swell my apparent strength. In the end, we used scrap metal to create the shells of real fighters and fixed them with strong rods to actual, piloted ships, two or three each. A force of twenty-five ships suddenly looked like seventy from a distance. Of course, they could not be directly engaged since the illusion was produced at the cost of maneuverability.
While the Russians were hastily massing their defences along the slope, the main force carried in two transport ships and accompanied by a squadron of fighters crept up from behind, skimming the crater floor. Our scouts had found a shelf some fifty meters wide halfway down the lip of the crater. The transports hovered over it while they silently disgorged the troops, who had a long, arduous climb ahead of them. My command ship – a tiny little thing outfitted especially for the occasion – landed on the shelf after the transports had moved off. It was there that I would monitor the course of the battle.
The action was over fairly quickly. My soldiers were noticed when they were only a few minutes from the top, an event which caused panic among the enemy. Still, Major Mikoyan was able to rally her troops. Judging correctly that the real threat was in the rear, she abandoned the front line and redeployed her troops inside the underground complex. The transport points were already in my possession. The real fighting occurred under the surface. If we had clashed in those shafts and chambers in equal numbers, it would have been a very bloody proposition indeed. As it was, my troops managed to get a secure foothold before the Russians moved in, and this fact alone decided the outcome. The Russians began surrendering almost as soon as they encountered us.
But in those short moments of uncertainty, anything can happen. I sensed the presence of the assassin moments before he struck. He was just outside the cabin door, feeling along the walls for some trigger or switch that would let him in. I had a guard, of course, and – not taking my eye off the progress of the action for a single moment – calmly instructed him to apprehend the villain. As I said, Major Mikoyan did everything right. About the time he was being led off in chains, word came that we had captured the Major herself. The rest of her troops were surrendering en masse.
I sent word to Munib and ordered the command ship to land on the surface near where the prisoners were being held. I wanted to see them for myself. As Munib pointed out, there was no reason for me to go. And yet I suspect I already knew what I wanted to do before the thought manifested consciously in my brain. I pursed my lips resolutely, clasped my hands behind my back, and walked slowly down the ramp into the hangar. I walked alone. I would not permit anyone to accompany me, not even a bodyguard.
The Russians were sitting in rows to one side, about one hundred of them, ringed by my soldiers, laser tubes at the ready. They were wearing spacesuits, but their helmets had been confiscated.
I got up close and had a look. “Which one is Major Mikoyan?” I asked coldly.
One of the soldiers pointed into the crowd.
“Bring her,” I ordered brusquely and moved off, heading for the control room.
The control room was a small place set behind a window that overlooked the hangar. There were some chairs behind the many panels of dials, buttons, and screens. Two soldiers operated the hangar, opening and closing the vacuum shield to allow ships to land or take off and monitoring the nearby traffic.
I gazed out the window at the prisoners. The soldiers at the console stared at me curiously but gingerly. It didn't take long before I reached down, pressed a button, and spoke curtly into a microphone. “Soldiers,” I said, “evacuate.”
Laser tubes trained on the prisoners, their guards retreated in an orderly manner towards the exit and drained away.
The prisoners started to buzz excitedly. Several of them glanced uneasily at the closed vacuum shield. It was all that separated them from an excruciating death.
Major Mikoyan started to protest in her beautiful Russian even as her guard restrained her. I could not understand, but I knew what she was saying. “No, you can't! They've surrendered!”
But Gyges the Terrible could. I looked down at the panel nearest me and could not make sense of it. “Which one opens the shield?”
The soldier showed me.
I stared at the button. It was large and black and looked like it would emit a satisfying click when pressed. All I had to do was push it with my finger. It beckoned invitingly.
I looked out the window at the men and women clustered in the hangar one last time. They were staring back at me. Some had panic in their eyes, others were furious, and still others were calm. There were one hundred sets of eyes, windows into one hundred different souls, each on its own path, each burning with its own light.
And all I wanted – all I could think of – was to crush out those lights. Forever.
At exactly the same time – in so far as we can say that any two events take place at exactly the same time – a little, brown-skinned girl about six years old emerged from a bombed out office building in upper New Jersey. It wasn't just any office building. It was the object of an entire war. She had pink ribbons in her dark, thick strands of hair and pink slippers and she wore a neat, pink dress, free of any spots or stains. Her eyes were rich and chocolatey and quite large for her small, delicate face. It was, of course, her face that was the most remarkable thing about her – or, rather, what was on it: a look of utter and complete peace, peace with the worlds both inside and out. It made her look much older than she was. She looked calmly out on the rings of soldiers above her and the shot up debris with which she was suddenly confronted and was not daunted.
She came to a halt. She had something to say.
The soldiers, too, stopped firing when they caught sight of her. Even the squads of drones that had been assembled on both sides especially for the storming of the building – or those who acted as sharpshooters or assassins or agents of the military police, or who performed other such sordid tasks – seemed to be calmed by her presence, although they did not come and wonder at her like the others. One by one, the soldiers laid their weapons aside and stared expectantly down at her. No one bothered to point the girl out to his comrades. There she was, plain for everyone to see. All they had to do was look.
She was standing in the middle of a cleared out space about fifty meters from the gaping hole where she had mysteriously emerged, and because of the twisted state the building was in, and the fact that the opposing sides had built towering barricades atop of which they could safely shoot at each other, she was even visible to the soldiers on the far side. Shortly, a total silence reigned over the area, something which had not happened for many months. The soldiers behind pressed forward to find out what was happening – or, rather, why what should be happening wasn't.
There was no doubt she had been inside, for surely she was the first one, and how she had got past the barricades and all the fighting no one knew. But it hardly seemed to matter at the moment. What had captivated all those hardy soldiers was that look on her face. It attracted them. It made the heavy business of slaughter suddenly wearisome.
The little Indian girl (she was from the state of Tamil) was about to speak. She was going to tell them that, indeed, she had been inside the bombed out office building and seen for herself. There was no need to fight anymore because what she had discovered was something they could all enjoy, everyone who wanted it.
She opened her mouth.
Sergeant Kantz from Minnesota was the first to regain his senses. He shook his head slightly and looked around. His comrades, entranced, were all staring downward over the barricade at the little girl. He sensed he only had seconds to avert the threat.
Grabbing the laser tube nearest, he gruffly pushed past Martin and Clover, aimed roughly, and fired.
The little girl tumbled to the ground.
The soldiers blinked as if waking from a dream and stirred.
Good, thought Sergeant Kantz, now we can all get back to fighting. Which is, of course, exactly what they did.
Until now, Gyges the Terrible was a person no one else knew about except myself. But with a single push of a button, he would be plain for all the world to see. There would be no turning back. I would be Gyges the Terrible until I died, in everyone else's eyes if not my own. Even my meaning – my fate, as it were – would change. A full transformation, the kind of which only occurs seldomly and with great commotion.
I could also sense something else. Somewhere else in the universe, a little flicker of hope had burned for a moment and gone out. It made me sad.
In an instant I realized that both my hatred and my hope were intertwined – not just intertwined, but actually aspects of the same thing. It is not enough to say that the one cannot exist without the other. They are each other. They sprang from the same source of being as everything else in the world that seems to have splintered off from God, that we can give a name to. I thought of that classical logical dilemma, the sentence “I am a liar.” If I really am a liar, then I am telling the truth, in which case I am not a liar, in which case I am not telling the truth, in which case I am a liar. The logical circle goes on and on into infinity, and of course the reason is that it is not a logical puzzle at all. Logic is the language of the mental body, nothing more and nothing less. Logic cannot explain God.
I straightened up suddenly. I would not be Gyges the Terrible.
I latched on to my hope and I set the hatred from me. I watched it drift away. Oh, it would linger for a while. But eventually the winds of time and intention would carry it far away.
And the hatred would continue to exist. Someone else who would choose to be the Terrible will catch it and latch on to it and use it, because that is the nature of the world. God is neither hateful nor loving. God simply is, and it is we in our illusion of separation who create and choose between all the paired off aspects of thought and emotion and meaning and have experiences, both good and bad.
I shook my head and rubbed my face as if it had been covered in cobwebs.
The soldiers were looking at me, waiting to see what I would do.
I stepped away from the control panel. Major Mikoyan let out a relieved breath of air. No one else in the room, neither her guard nor the two soldiers at the controls, betrayed their emotions, but I think they were all relieved.
Quietly, I withdrew. Outside in the corridor, I slumped against the wall. What had just happened?
It was then that I saw Munib approaching. He had changed out of his neat, Persian suit, no tie and the shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and was now wearing army fatigues. His face was flushed. I saw the look in his eyes. It reminded me of that day I had seen him return fresh from battle, a few days after I had arrived on the moon some six months before. They burned black.
He strode past me without even so much as a glance and entered the control room. A few moments later I heard a click from the open door. There was the sharp hiss of gas coming seemingly from all around. It lasted only a moment.
I started to cry.
“So.” The Shadow of God on Earth poured himself some more tea. “Do you have your cup with you?” He politely held the pot over the metal table towards me. I shook my head. He set the pot down.
We were sitting in his tower. It was the lunar night. The usually splendid view of the stars and the Milky Way and the lunar plains below did nothing for me. Even the nearly full globe of the earth, hanging not far above Munib's head, was just an unnoticed part of the background, dull and unremarkable. The window-washer stood behind Munib and just off to the right, cleaning the floor with some noiseless contraption that he mechanically swung from side to side.
Since our return, Munib had not mentioned what happened back at the mining complex. There had been whispers at the victory celebration in the Commons, but nothing more. The soldiers loved their general because they felt safe when they went into battle with him, but they also feared him. Icarus had managed to avoid me, too. I knew I ought to apologize, but there was pride enough in me yet. I didn't want to actually have to utter the words. It would have been nicer if he had just known, in the same way I knew never to bring up the incident at the mining complex with Munib.
“I understand you are intent on returning to earth,” Munib said softly and had a meager sip of tea.
I nodded my head.
“And Epstein?”
“I'll worry about him when I get there.”
“Don't you think you ought to have a plan?”
“I have the start of one. Look, general, I can't tell you how right now, but when the time comes I'll know how to handle Judas.”
“You are sure of this?”
“Yes.”
“Ah.” Munib hesitated before continuing. “But do you feel you have to go just yet?”
I frowned. “I don't see why I should wait.”
“Because,” the general began slowly, “there is something else for you to see. Something that might interest you.”
“Stop talking in riddles, general. What have you got in mind?”
Munib smiled at me. “You have never yet taken such a tone with me, Hawkeye,” he observed with a faint twist of humor. And at that he set his teacup down on the table, stood up, and strode across the room. I thought he was pacing or about to give me a speech, but much to my surprise he stepped into the elevator. Turning around, he eyed me calmly, hands folded behind his back, the slight smile never disappearing from his face. Perhaps he was amused by the look on my face. Then the door slid closed and he was gone.
The window-washer set aside his contraption and slid deftly into Munib's seat. “I want you to come and meet my wife,” he pronounced gruffly, peering at me with large, attentive eyes.
“I thought you were a zombie,” I told him warily.
“There are no zombies on luna,” he replied with a sneer. “There are not enough resources here. You should know that, governor. Those who burn out in the sim are usually sent back to earth in a cargo ship.”
“But I've seen –”
“We keep an eye on the settlements this way.”
Suddenly, I understood. “There is another, secret settlement here on the moon!”
The window-washer did not reply, but I knew I was right.
“It's where everyone's disappearing to. Munib knows about it?”
“We want you to come see it.”
“Why?”
“Good question,” the young man retorted and leaned back somewhat angrily. He could hardly have been twenty-five and was exceptionally good looking. It made me vaguely uncomfortable.
“You were against this invitation, I take it.”
The young man snorted. “The decision was made. Will you come and see my wife or not?”
“If she wants to see me that badly, I will come.”
“Yeah, well, don't think you're doing us any favors,” came the rude reply.
The young man told me to put on a spacesuit and meet him in a crater well out of sight of the Observatory. It was located a few kilometers inland. I had to walk the distance. On earth it would have amounted to a relaxing stroll, especially when the weather is nice, but on the moon the weather is always threatening and a single stumble can be life-threatening. It took me almost four hours to get there, and I was exhausted by the time I cleared the lip of the crater and looked down. There he was, sitting a few meters below leaning against a small, rocky outcrop, staring at the stars above. When he saw me, he clambered to his feet and gestured insistently.
Near the bottom of the crater was a small craft of some kind. We squeezed inside, pulled off our spacehelmets, and strapped ourselves in.
“How long till we get there?” I asked as we pulled gently off the ground and rose a mere thirty meters into the air.
The young man chuckled. “We're going pretty much as far from here as you can get and never leave luna. You've got a long ride ahead of you.”
“Long ride?” I frowned and started to scrutinize the controls of the craft's cramped innards. “Is there something wrong with this thing?”
“She'll get us there. But we have to stay near the ground. Which is dangerous on luna if you're travelling with any speed.”
I understood. The space above the moon was owned, organized, and monitored extensively by the four major powers that had divided it up by international treaty. Up there, satellites whizzed by, traffic corridors had been established, and there were regular military patrols, sometimes even clashes. Of course, I knew this from personal experience. Up there were the eyes and ears these people were trying to avoid.
The young man wasn't very affable, and anyway I wasn't in a talking mood, so I just leaned back in the stiff, inflexible chair and looked out the viewport as he guided us down into the inky depths of the crater and back up the other side at a dizzying, almost reckless speed. It seemed to me we were barely skimming the surface and that we barely cleared the crater's lip as we shot back up into the starry night. We hadn't risen very far over the highlands before he jerked us back towards what seemed an imminent collision course with a sloping mountain peak. I closed my eyes and cringed. The inevitable, somehow, never happened. When I opened them again the young man was looking at me out of the corner of his eye and smiling voraciously.
It was obvious the young man was a skilled pilot – probably one of the best I'd ever seen – but still I would rather have passed the trip somewhere other than the forward cabin. As it was, there was no place else to look but out the viewport in front and clench my teeth.
Yes, it was going to be a long trip indeed.
The Aitken Basin is a roughly circular region stretching from the south pole some two thousand five hundred kilometers north on the far side of the moon, encompassing an area as large as the United States homeland. It was created by an immense impact event at the beginning of the solar system's history. The body that struck was moving quite slowly and hit at a low angle, scooping out vast quantities of material and dumping them nearby almost like a shovel. The whole region is surrounded by a gigantic ring of mountains. In fact, an arc of the mountains crossing the south pole is visible from earth by a keen observer who knows when to look.
When I first saw the immense piles of rock out the bow viewport, the sight was impressive enough to make me forget about my queasiness.
“Wow.” The word had escaped me.
“Beautiful, isn't it?” said the young man proudly.
Indeed it was.
“We're approaching the second largest impact basic in the solar system,” he added. It sounded to me like he was boasting.
A day had passed. We hadn't slept, and the food we had consumed was even worse than what we got daily at the Observatory. It was some kind of green, gooey substance we scooped up with our fingers. It was tasteless, and the consistency was abhorrent.
The earth was being quickly swallowed behind us by the horizon and would soon be gone. It was a strange feeling. Until now, even though I had been banished from her surface, I could still see her. Now I would be really leaving her behind. Ahead were enormous, sculpted peaks, the likes of which I never knew existed on the moon. The slopes were piled on top of one another towards incredible heights, and they rose from the peaks of mountains themselves. We were flying over lunar highlands, not the basalt mare over which Laplace Observatory lorded. The whole region was littered with rubble and more recent impact craters.
The ascent began quite suddenly and lasted almost an hour. There were no sharp, craggy peaks here. The rock and regolith simply leaped upwards, sometimes very steeply, other times almost meandering. The earth struggled to rise above the horizon, as if she were making a recovery. But then the surface appeared to level out and we were treated to an incredible view. We were so high up that it seemed we could even sense the curvature of the surface. It was like looking at a map laid out in front of me in incredible detail. Ahead was the basin. It was indeed encircled in a ring of mountains. Inside were more highlands, except there appeared to be pools of basalt that had gathered in the lowest places, the bottoms of craters and the very depths, far to the north, of the basin. That was apparently where we were heading.
We began our descent. The tops of the mountains irretrievably cut off the view of earth. The sun had reappeared, lording over the far, northeastern horizon. We were on our own.
I knew before we even got there that the place we were heading to was the new wild, a rugged outpost in the midst of a wilderness without sure reckoning of medical care, food supply, or bodily safety. Back in the days before human beings had tamed every square centimeter of the earth and cut down the forests of South America, there were people who lived in similar conditions. But nowadays such is the stuff of history books and intercasts on the link, mythmaking and hearsay. Even Laplace Observatory, which had felt so primitive with its tiny rooms, cramped corridors, and liquid lunches, was equipped with the latest in technological innovation. The dome was not going to crack, and there were medical specialists aplenty. I had no idea what kind of existence these people were eking out on the far side of the moon, completely cut off from the earth – even its existence – but I had no illusions that it would be comfortable.
The young man obviously felt more at ease in this place. He knew, in the way that people do, every nook and cranny of the byways and causeways surrounding his home. He flew at a higher elevation, obviously not as concerned about detection from above, and began to whistle happily. He wasn't very musical, and if all the sights and sounds hadn't been so new to me, I might have grown quickly annoyed. As it was, I had a wonderful view.
We crossed the basin to its northern end, a journey of two hours. I saw the encircling ring of mountains in the distance first as a thick line that steadily grew larger. It was, if I was any judge of heights, far larger than the peaks we had crossed on the way over, virtual cliffs of a magnitude that was unsettling to contemplate. And as we went on, the floor of the basin seemed to drop steadily away. We were approaching a large crater, its southern and western parts filled in with smooth, blackish basalt, the inner walls beautifully terraced, a jagged ravine dominating its center. This was Aitken's crater itself. I thought that's where we might be heading, but the young man veered off to the east, where the shallowest, darkest depths of the basin could be found.
Perhaps this is where the space rock that dug out this basin had finally landed. I don't know. But I saw before me a broad, almost perfectly circular ring, the very center of which was dominated by a lake of smooth, dark, basalt material, what was left of a lava outflow. Smaller, sometimes microscopic craters dotted the floor. We were approaching an area as low as you can get on the moon. The ring of mountains separating us from the almost unbroken highlands of the other side loomed directly ahead. I was astonished at the contrast. As we descended further into the basin, the light and wind of the sun – so harsh, so hot – was cut off by the occasional rocky outcrop. The walls of the basin began to close in. Soon, the sunlight was shut out altogether. But it was not entirely night down here, either, at the very depths of the basin. All around on the southwestern side, cavernous spaces shown brightly, like little but brilliant lamps casting reflective illumination into spaces that never themselves saw the face of the sun.
The young man aimed the ship towards the bottom of the crater where the floor met the towering walls of the mountainous ring that defined the basin. As we approached, my eyes scanned the surface for some opening, but I could see nothing. An unsettling feeling began to build in my stomach. My mind assured me that the young man could hardy be intent on suicide, yet my heart wouldn't listen. When it seemed there could be nothing else but a shattering impact against a hard and brutal surface, he jerked the craft upwards and to the left, careening past a protective, rocky outcropping, and dove at a dizzying speed into the blackness of what appeared to be a narrow tunnel. I was gripping the sides of my seat uncomfortably. The young man giggled.
There were guiding lights built into the sides of the tunnel. Soon we were slowing down and eventually we came to a stop. They never told me what the place was called, and I never found out, but in any case we had arrived.
The young man began wrestling with his straps. “C'mon,” he admonished when he saw I wasn't doing the same. “Keep up!”
Sluggishly, I followed him. He pulled on his spacehelmet, thrust mine into my chest, and almost skipped off towards the airlock. He was whistling happily out of tune.
The inside of the tunnel was made of the bare stuff of the mountain. The walls were rounded, the ceiling was low, and the floor was smooth. It was hardly possible to see in the dim illumination of the guiding lights, but it appeared that the young man had parked in some offshoot of the main tunnel behind us. I was still amazed he was able to guide the ship so quickly in such tiny spaces. Were they all such excellent pilots here?
Up ahead was the outside door of what could only be a rudimentary airlock. There were no security lights. In fact, there seemed to be no electronics whatsoever. The young man pulled up a heavy looking bar, braced himself and – using all his weight – swung the vault-like door open. Beyond was a tiny space barely adequate for two persons wearing a spacesuit. For a moment I hesitated to step inside. He gestured again. Placing trust beyond myself, I did as he asked. Soon he was inside with me. I had to press up against the smooth wall to allow him enough room. The door slid closed with a hollow clang. We were drenched in darkness. There came the click of a button followed by the harsh hiss of air. Slowly, it faded away until there was silence. We stood like that, two sardines in a can, for about thirty seconds, until the young man banged two times on the inner door. Someone else responded, and the door was pulled open. There was light.
A young man with Japanese features was standing in the opening, looking curiously inside. My escort pulled off his spacehelmet and pressed forward, whispering hurriedly in his companion's ear even as they stepped into whatever room lay beyond. They blocked the entranceway. I could not see beyond. After a moment, he pulled away and turned to me. “C'mon,” he said brusquely, “you can take it off now.”
The Japanese man stared at me with wide, curious eyes as I pulled off my spacehelmet.
“Now be a good fellow and follow us. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you. Don't catch your spacesuit on the rocks. You can't afford any holes because we can't repair them.” Before I could muster a response, he turned and jabbed his companion loosely in the ribs as if to break the spell I seemed to have laid upon him.
They started off.
The inner door only opened part way, and I soon found out why. The space on the other side was tiny and cramped, just like the airlock and just like the spacecraft. The walls were bone dry and roughly hewn, and the floor was strewn with loose pebbles. The only illumination came from a square of some faintly glowing, blue-white material fastened onto the ceiling. Swallowing thickly, I hoped it wasn't radioactive. In the opposite wall there was the entrance to a tunnel of some kind. The other two men must have disappeared into it. Cupping my spacehelmet under one arm, I ducked in after them.
The tunnel angled slowly upward. There was no light whatsoever. I had to feel around in front of me with my free hand and crawl on my knees, taking care not to drag them across the tunnel floor, as it was covered with tiny, smoothed but dangerous edges and pebbles. Fortunately, the tunnel went more or less straight, and after some time of mucking about in the dark, I thought I could make out a dim light up ahead. As I approached the head of the tunnel, voices reached me. The young man and his companion were standing in the narrow, low corridor outside, having a conversation. The talking died away, though, as soon as I arrived.
I stood for a moment, stretching my aching muscles, and took in the dim, meager surroundings. There wasn't much to see. The cramped passageway stretched off in either direction, curving quickly out of sight. It, too, was rough hewn, bone dry, and littered with pebbles. The ceiling lurked a half meter from the top of my head. The black hole out of which I had just climbed gaped behind me. The dim, almost ghostly light came from patches of the same material fastened to the ceiling I had seen outside the airlock. The young man and his Japanese friend stood nearby, the former looking impatiently off down the passageway and the other staring at me unabashed.
“Hi,” I said to him uncomfortably, but he did not react.
Shortly, there were footsteps from one of the passageway's arms. Moments later, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen stepped into view. She was tall, had long, full, curly auburn hair, and the smile of an angel. The young man, who seemed to be looking out for her, yelped with delight and ran over. Sweeping her up in an embrace as generous as the narrow passageway was forgiving, he twirled around once, set her down, and embraced her dearly.
She laughed and smiled warmly and cupped his face with her hands and kissed him. Her green eyes glowed even in the dim light of the tunnel.
He whispered something into her ear and made her laugh again, although this time her laughter had acquired a throaty timbre. “We can't,” she scolded not very earnestly, looking him deeply in the eyes. Their faces were separated by the mere lengths of their noses. “We have a guest.”
He whispered in her ear again. This time she did not laugh, although her face reacted splendidly to whatever it was he was saying. When he pulled away, she held his eyes, and it seemed to me that although there were no words, they were still speaking.
Finally, she looked over his shoulder and addressed me quickly. “Marcellus Hawkeye, I know we have asked you here at great inconvenience, and I am sure you have many questions. But my husband and I have not seen each other in weeks. Could you not find it in your heart to grant us some time alone? We will be with you shortly.”
The young man took her gently by the waist. She giggled. “Well, we will be with you as soon as we can.” The young man began tugging her by the hand back the way she had come. “I promise!” she called out. Then, giggling with unrestrained excitement, she turned and they ran off together like small children.
I was alone with the Japanese man. He was, just as before, gaping at me, this time open-mouthed. I sighed in resignation and hoped it wouldn't be a long wait.
I was led through what could only be described as catacombs. The passageways were winding and I was quickly lost. My Japanese guide did not speak, so I was left to my own, made-up explanations for what I saw. And I did not see or hear much. Just low, rough hewn rock and the occasional opening covered in some kind of stiff, brown, virtually translucent cloth, almost like the stuff of potato sacks. Sometimes, after we had passed, I turned and noticed a face peeking curiously out from behind a curtain. I didn't know if they were shy or just wanted to avoid identification, but I did see a wide variety of faces, all the flavors of the earth, in fact, from every corner.
My Japanese guide deposited me in a cave-like opening and left me. It, too, was illuminated with a patch of glowing material mounted on the ceiling next to a rickety vent of some kind. Warm, oxygen-rich air flowed from it. I was thankful for the breeze. The space had been dug out in such a way that a low bench of sorts ran across the inner wall. I sat down and tried to get comfortable, although it was difficult because the surface was uneven and the arching wall forced me to lean forward slightly.
I have no idea how long I waited in that dim, silent place. But after some time, I began to notice that I was not alone. Out in the corridor, just beyond the line of sight afforded by the opening to the cave, there were people. I couldn't tell how many, but I could hear them whispering, and occasionally I caught glimpses of them catching glimpses of me. If I stood up to confront them, they scattered like leaves in the wind. After a time, I stopped trying, although I was not pleased. I felt like an animal at the zoo.
When finally my hosts arrived, they looked weary but satisfied. I hoped we could get right down to business.
They took a seat on the rock-bench near the opposite end, the man sitting first and the woman taking her place on his lap, one arm stretched around his neck and absently fondling some of his hair. They both looked at me, but with completely different expressions. A hard suspicion filled his eyes. The spacesuit was gone. It had been replaced by a loose, brown, nondescript robe tied lightly about the waist. The young woman wore a similar robe, made of the same uncomfortable looking material, but it was whiter in color. Her green eyes burrowed deeply into mine, but not aggressively. Above all, I sensed that she knew. I didn't know what she knew, but I felt that whatever it was, she was the right person to know it.
“Welcome,” the young woman bode me gently. “This is Eros, my husband. And I am Nyx.”
“Greek gods?” I asked in disbelief.
Nyx smiled warmly. “Primordial gods. For we, too, stand at the beginning of things.” She played for a moment longer with her husband's hair before asking, “I am very interested to know what you think of this place.”
“Well, I haven't seen much,” I told her and glanced up at the rickety vent. “But I'll be honest with you. I'm glad I don't live here.”
Eros seemed to bristle at the words, but Nyx calmed him with a soft kiss to the forehead. “Don't blame him, dear,” she spoke softly. “This is not his fate.” She turned to me again. Those green eyes, deep as seas, peered out at me from a magnificent frame of gorgeous, springy, amber strands of hair. “This is our home, and we love it dearly. You are not likely to see any more of it, I'm afraid.”
“It's not an official settlement.”
Nyx nodded at me slowly. “No one knows about it except those we choose to tell.” She glanced uncomfortably at her husband before continuing. “Usually those we tell are those who wish to join us, but you are a singular exception.”
“That's why your husband here is so hostile.”
“You must forgive him. My husband doesn't trust you. The truth is, Eros doesn't really like men. He doesn't even like the smell of them. It puts him off.”
How strange, I thought to myself. “He doesn't like the smell of men?” I repeated.
“No. You see, when he was much younger, back when he was on gaia, he fell in love with one of his friends.”
Eros clicked his tongue and pinched his wife in the thigh.
“What?” she murmured to him. “You were never uncomfortable discussing it with me or the others.”
“I'm not uncomfortable,” he told her softly. “But I don't see why you must share the most intimate details of my life with a perfect stranger.”
“Hawkeye may be a perfect stranger, but he is not an ordinary one. If my vision was correct, he must understand.”
Eros did not look pleased, but he nodded reluctantly.
Nyx smiled warmly at him and caressed his cheek. “I love you, Eros. Please don't say I've hurt you.”
Eros mumbled something that made her smile. She leaned her head on top of his. They both turned their attention back to me. “It's quite natural. When you were a boy, did you ever fall in love with one of your friends?”
“Sure. But I still don't see what that has to do with hating men. All men,” I added for emphasis.
“He does not hate them, he just prefers women. And how such reactions come about I do not know. I am not a psychologist. Anyway,” she continued, “as I was saying, the majority of people here do not trust you and are in fact fearful of your presence here. Your knowledge of us is a direct threat. For the powers that be on gaia and luna would quickly move to crush us if they knew of our existence. We are not as yet prepared to withstand their aggression.”
“I see,” I said slowly. “And what would you have done if I had refused the invitation?” I demanded of Eros, suddenly angry. But he just stared back at me dourly from the safely of his wife's silhouette.
“He would have slain you,” Nyx told me plainly.
“I see,” I said again and looked uncomfortably around.
Nyx shook her head, and when she spoke next her voice had taken on a tone of earnestness. “Do not harden your heart against us, Hawkeye.”
“Well,” I responded icily, “that's all very well for you to say, but how am I supposed to know there isn't some other trap you've set? Maybe your next question is what's my favorite color, and if I don't answer green, I'll be led straight to the airlock without a spacehelmet.”
“You accuse us of being human,” Nyx responded patiently. She glanced once at her husband before continuing. “When human beings live in a civilized setting, they lead lives far removed from violence and hardship. Even back on gaia, most of the ordinaries enjoy a relative safety. They have roofs over their heads and they are afforded a salary ample enough to purchase life's basic necessities. They will not starve to death and they will not be beset by wild beasts in the streets. It is only then that people start to think of courtesy and develop rules of etiquette. All save the most adventurous souls will choose to live under such conditions, whatever the cost.
“How else do you think freemocracy came about? Do you think some evil dictator imposed it on Americans from without? No, Americans choose it for themselves. Slowly, bit by bit, they laid the foundations and succeeding generations strengthened them. For their rulers framed the question in such a way that they knew what the outcome would be, and everyone could go on believing they enjoyed freedom and liberty merely because they were offered a choice.
“But do not be mistaken, Hawkeye. We are animals of prey, and we will fight to survive. If, when you returned to Laplace Observatory, some disaster struck and you were shut up inside without further supplies of food and air and there was no hope of immediate succor, you would find that you, too, are an animal of prey. You would do what you have to do to survive and you would do it without hesitation, because you would quickly find that your competition was preying on you. When the rescue party comes and frees the last of the survivors, do you think it would be just to them bring them before the regular criminal justice system because of what they did when they were inside? I think not. Don't pretend otherwise.
“And so it is with us. We are not living in civilized conditions. We are fighting each and every day for our survival. Perhaps you can appreciate the risk we have taken in bringing you here. So, as I said before, do not take our precautions to heart.”
I considered what she had said. “Okay,” I mumbled. “But maybe you shouldn't have told me in the first place.”
“You asked a question and we told you the truth. Would you have had it otherwise?”
Reluctantly, I shook my head.
“Of course not. For lying is an afront to God. It hinders our personal development. They call you Hawkeye, but I doubt you could see very far if the world were weaved with lies. But be comforted, I knew my husband, Eros, would not have to resort to such drastic measures. I had seen it.”
“You saw it?”
“I wished desperately to see you, to speak with you personally, and I wanted to do so here. I have been watching you for some time, you know, and was thrilled that fate finally brought you within reach. Here on luna you are off the grid. I knew you would come and that you would not be tracked, and so the others granted my wish.”
“You are the leader here?”
A slow smile flickered across Nyx's pale face. “In a certain sense, yes. People come and ask me questions, and I give them answers.” She shrugged. “Whether they choose to follow my advice is entirely a matter left up to them.”
“And why did you want to speak to me? And why here?”
“Because,” she answered slowly, tossed her mane of hair with a quick flip of her head, and snuggled up to husband, “I believe you will very soon be President of the United States, and I need to ask a favor of him.”
I couldn't help but laugh. “Munib thinks exactly the same thing.”
“That,” began Nyx, glancing this time with a hint of admonition at her husband, “is because Eros let it slip. Munib believes almost anything I say about the future.”
“You can tell the future? Just like Xiling and the other Justices?”
“No, no, no,” she answered in measured tones, shaking her head patiently. “The Chief Justice of your country – while he is certainly capable of the occasional glimpse into our nearest moments – has not the power that I have. I am a seer, a visionary. My strength lies in divination. He is a common sorcerer, albeit a powerful one. I believe he specializes in evocation and alteration.”
“You practice magic, too?”
“As I said, a different king of magic than the one familiar to you, but, yes, magic nonetheless.” She laughed then like a little girl. “I can make pebbles skid across the floor and tricksy flashes of light, that kind of thing. But I cannot float in the air or transmute rock to mud.” She shrugged. “We each have our particular talents.” After a slight pause, Nyx seemed to perk up. “You, too, can practice magic. Or so I hear.”
“Never,” I scoffed. “It's just this ring.” I held up my hand for her to see.
“That ring is not magical,” she responded.
I didn't know what to say.
Nyx reached out suddenly and gestured for me to approach. “Give me your hand.”
I did as she asked.
She pulled my hand towards her chest and flipped it so she could study the palm. She was not very long at it before she let it go and looked up at me with a mixture of respect and curiosity. “I see you have recently had a religious experience.”
“Yes.” I spoke the word and wondered that it had come from my own lips.
“A good one, I hope?”
“I don't know.”
“From the looks of it, I expect so.” Nyx gestured for me to return to my seat.
We sat for a few moments in silence. Nyx and Eros seemed to be speaking through their eyes again, and I – curiously enough – had nothing to say. At that time I still thought they might kill me, but I had already resigned myself to the possibility.
After a while, Eros shifted his eyes in my direction and spoke. “He doesn't seem to be very interested in this place. What was the point of bringing him here?”
“Oh, dear, we've hardly had time to speak of it.”
Eros emitted a sceptical humph. “Look at him. He's not very impressive. I doubt he'll be President.”
“It's hard to say,” Nyx responded as she doted absently on his head. “It's plainly written in his fate. But the problem is, he doesn't want it.” She lowered her head onto his and peered at me sideways. “You see, fate is part of who we are. It's our meaning in a manner of speaking. A person's fate is inexorable – unless, of course, he changes his meaning.” At that, she picked her head up. “But your spiritual experience was choosing who not to be. Am I correct?”
I was fascinated by Nyx and her mysterious calling, more so than I ever was by the magic of the Justices and their acolytes. Her kind of magic was less threatening but infinitely more powerful. “You saw all that just from looking at my palm?”
Nyx smiled at me as if I were a child asking a silly question. “No. Your palm says you will hold the lives of trillions in your hands and that you will live to a ripe old age. I saw it in your eyes when we first came in the room.”
“It's not true I'm not interested in this place,” I announced suddenly. “I have been governor of the U.S. Possessions on the moon for six months now and I have never heard of it. I don't see how you can survive completely cut off and hidden from the other settlements. You don't receive supplies from them of any kind?”
Eros shook his head. “We stand on our own,” he insisted with pride.
“Munib is the only one on the inside who knows of us,” Nyx added.
“Why Munib?”
Nyx shrugged. “Because he is the only one of significance who would never betray us. You see, Munib hates gaia. I'm sure he has told you. We, on the other hand, do not hate gaia, but we have all turned our back on it to look towards a different future. He protects us, as it were, even from the other settlements, because he is now a part of luna, just as we are, even if a far more violent one.”
“But how?” I asked, looking around. “It's impossible.”
Again, Nyx smiled at me. It seemed she was always smiling at me. But it was – as always – a warm, beautiful smile. Her round, white face waxed even more enchanting. “What is possible and impossible is largely a function of the mind. It's usually a matter of cost.”
“Cost?”
“Yes. What conditions you are willing to put up with in exchange.”
“But where do you get your oxygen from? Your food?”
Nyx laughed lightly at my question. “As I said, it is a matter of cost. You have eaten our food, I trust?”
I nodded grimly.
“There is only one kind of food which we can manufacture, and it always tastes the same. But it is nutritious nonetheless. The water we mine from the lunar rocks, just as you do.” Nyx glanced at her husband as if giving him a cue.
Reluctantly, he began to speak. “This basin we are in offers many advantages. Not only does it hide us from prying eyes above, but the area is rich in titanium dioxide.”
“You can extract enough oxygen from it to live on?”
“Yes, but we must be careful to keep our living spaces small and our population in balance. And we must be producing constantly. But titanium dioxide does even more for us. It acts as our more important supply of electricity.” He shrugged. “Once our three main resource needs were met, the other problems fell into place. There is – usually in minute quantities – virtually every industrial and commercial chemical compound which can be extracted from the rocks of luna, if only one tackles the task creatively.”
“And what about caring for the sick and the elderly?”
For the first time, a look of sadness flickered across Nyx's face, like a passing cloud on an otherwise sunny day. “We are pioneers, Hawkeye. Those of us who live here must be hearty. Most illnesses we cannot cure, and those that are contagious are especially dangerous. We do what we can, but such people usually die. And as for the elderly, there are none among us.”
I recoiled in horror. “What do you mean, there are none? You put them out of their misery when they are no longer useful?”
“No,” Nyx responded coldly, “of course not. You accuse us of being criminals. You still think we are like those you left behind on gaia. I see we have yet to get through to you.”
“I told you so,” murmured her husband.
“Hush,” she scolded him gently and returned her attention to me in earnest. “The sun's rays are deadly, and we spend a great deal of time out on the surface. Over time, even the strongest human being must succumb. We pay a heavy price to be here, Hawkeye.”
“Then why are you here at all?”
Nyx sat up and brought her hands together in a faint clap. “At last,” she exclaimed softly, “we arrive at the heart of the matter. Yes, why indeed?” She glanced at her husband with a soft smile.
He responded faintly and shrugged. “We are here,” Eros told me, “because we seek adventure.”
Nyx suppressed a laugh and nudged her husband with an elbow. “Why must you put it like that?”
“Well it's true, isn't it?”
“Yes, dear,” she agreed, leaned forward, and kissed his forehead. “But there is more to it.” Nyx flipped her thick, amber hair once again and looked at me gravely. “The personal motivation for most is that back on gaia and the settlements, life is tasteless. Most people take pills in order to deal with the misery that accompanies an unfulfilled destiny. But there is also a human spirit which affects us all, a god if you will. Do you believe in such things, Hawkeye?”
I found myself nodding my head.
“Good. It will make my explanation easier. This human spirit has its own will – the collective will of humankind. It, too, wants to survive. And back on gaia, it faces the inevitability of its own extinction. Not just in a figurative sense, but in a very literal one. And it is primarily for this reason that more and more people are finding their way over to us.”
“But the war is ending.”
“There is a declining supply of food and water and an ever-expanding population. The land and air has become hopelessly polluted.” She shifted her weight and chose a different tack of argumentation. “If you were to stop someone randomly on the street and ask him whether or not the human race was destined to destroy itself, by far the majority would answer yes. They each have their preferred method – the outbreak of some virulent, bio-engineered disease, an asteroid, war – but most people believe in it nonetheless.”
I began to protest, but Nyx pushed past my objections. “Why else do you think there are so many intercasts about the end of the world? There is one popular cast about what gaia would look like if humanity suddenly disappeared. They never say how or why, and there is no need, because the cast serves to satisfy a sick and morbid curiosity. It is as if they have been given the chance to observe their own mass funeral. Disgusting, really.”
I chewed for a few moments on what she was telling me. Both Nyx and Eros observed me keenly, trying to read me for any useful signs. “So what you are telling me is that when the earth blows up, you'll still be here to carry on. Is that it? Have you seen this supposed end of the world?”
Nyx shook her head. “There is no need to see it in visions. It will happen. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a hundred years, but history teaches us the nature of being human. When the barbarian Germans were pressing in on Rome, what could the emperors do about it? Nothing. But when the Russians were bearing down on Berlin, Hitler had already given the order to destroy Germany. If he had possessed a nuclear weapon, perhaps the human race would already have found its end. And it can only be called a miracle that an atomic firestorm did not herald the fall of the Soviet Union. Do you know what I am talking about?”
I shook my head, fascinated.
“Yes, well, it was a long time ago, and they don't teach these things in your schools. But the point is, nowadays the empires of gaia possess terrible weapons of far greater magnitude and power. Do you think if it came down to their own destruction, their leaders would not hesitate to use them? They would. They would destroy the world out of simple spite. It is perfectly human behavior.
“My husband said that people come here because they seek adventure. And this is, indeed, the reason they think they find their way to us. But there is another, far more important reason people are willing to endure these conditions. It is because they have hope. Do you have hope, Marcellus Hawkeye?” Nyx clasped her husband and smiled at me warmly.
I wondered if I had hope. It seemed, in the presence of this alluring woman and all she had to say, that I ought to be ashamed if I could not find it in my own heart.
I think the confusion was easy enough to glean from my face, because at that moment Nyx gestured to someone who was standing outside in the passageway. I turned and looked. Standing there was a dark-haired woman with brown skin wearing a plain robe similar to the others I had seen. Cradled in one arm she held an infant, and the other was holding the tiny hand of a little girl perhaps six years old. The infant had Oriental features and if we had been on earth I would have expected the little girl to come from Bali.
“P'an Ku.” Nyx gestured again encouragingly. “Don't be afraid.”
But P'an Ku shook her head resolutely. The little girl at her side, though, withdrew her hand and approached.
I knelt down so that we were almost face-to-face. “What is your name?”
“I don't have a name yet.”
“Of course you do,” I replied. “Everyone has a name. What is yours?”
“For now, we call her Tangaroa,” Nyx answered from behind.
“But that's not my real name. I will choose my name when I become a big girl. Isn't that so, P'an Ku?” she asked, turning to look at her guardian.
P'an Ku nodded slowly. She had been studying me intently but as soon as she saw me follow the little girl's gaze she looked away.
“See,” Tangaroa said proudly, turning back to me and twisting rhythmically from side to side.
“And do you know what name you will choose?” I asked.
“Noooo,” she answered and smiled as if we were playing a game. “I'm not old enough!”
“Tangaroa, come.” It was P'an Ku. She held out a worried hand.
“Yes, mama.” Tangaroa ran out into the passageway. “Bye!” she called out as she was led away.
I sat back down on the rock bench. “She will choose her own name?”
“It is our custom,” Nyx responded. “Just as Eros and myself did when we arrived. But those children you saw there, they are even more special than we are. For they were born here. They are among the first generation of human beings who are likely to grow up and live their entire lives without ever having anything to do with gaia.” She smiled again. Her eyes lit up like stars. “Don't you agree that makes them special?”
“But you can't really believe you will create a separate civilization right here on the moon. For now you are hidden, but it's only a matter of time before you are discovered. You are too close.”
Both Nyx and Eros studied me gravely. “Yes,” she finally agreed. “We must eventually branch off from here. We will eventually make for Mars and Venus, perhaps even some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Then we will be too far away. Just like the original settlers of North America were too far away from England.”
“But we need time,” Eros added.
“And that is why we need you.” Nyx smiled once again.
I thought I was beginning to understand. “You want protection.”
“We want more than that,” Eros countered and leaned slightly forward. “We want your good will.”
“You are a young man, Hawkeye,” Nyx observed. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Yes, and you will live long. In that time we can accomplish much.”
Perhaps there was hope in me yet. I smiled at my hosts as if to reassure them. “Then you will have it.”
A yelp of excitement escaped Nyx's lips as she clasped onto her husband's hands. “You see, Eros! I told you!”
Eros eyed me carefully as if trying to assess the value of my promise.
“But perhaps you expect too little,” I added quickly. “Maybe as you say I'll become President, and maybe I can set things right. Maybe I can even dismantle freemocracy. The earth doesn't have to blow itself up.”
Nyx's wild glee subsided. “You are but a single man, Hawkeye.” She spoke carefully. “You may shut down the camps and loosen restrictions on public assembly and grant Congress the freedom to legislate. You may even receive wide acclamation and respect. It is what everyone wants. And maybe even some of your immediate successors will find it expedient to maintain the status quo. But rest assured the camps will eventually be reopened, and this time on a far grander scale. Congress will not only be muzzled, but disbanded. For you see, all these boons which you would grant to your people would never be more than gifts. Their enjoyment of them would depend entirely upon your personal sentiment. For even you cannot arrest the cancer that is growing at the heart of civilization. And civilization in this day and age is global. There is only one of its kind.”
I was profoundly disappointed. The hope I had felt within me was dampened. “Well then, what's the point?” I asked moodily, almost sulking. “You sit there and pretend to me that you are embarking on some grand cosmic destiny, but what is to prevent your civilization from suffering the same fate? After all, you are human, too. The same faults that haunt us down there must haunt you as well. What's the difference?”
Nyx was about to answer, but this time her husband broke in. “The difference,” he told me icily, “is that we are going our own way. We are human beings now, just like you, but over time we will change. We will evolve. We will adapt. And we will do so in a way that we intend to.”
“What your saying is that you will fix yourselves.”
Eros nodded his head slowly, but the passion still lit up his eyes.
“We have the benefit of knowledge of our flaws,” Nyx added softly. “We have studied them extensively. And we will collectively correct them.”
“Merely by intending to?”
Nyx nodded. “Yes, and a bit more.” She smiled at me, her eyes sparkling.
“Magic.”
“If that is the word you choose,” Eros replied. “But there is really nothing magical about it. How else do you think on gaia and elsewhere lifeforms have evolved? The number of genetic mutations required to create a new species can run into the millions. Do you think that happens by chance?”
I did not. “I wish I could go with you,” I whispered.
For the first time, Eros looked upon me kindly. “You wouldn't like it here,” he told me, and it was the truth.
Nyx, too, was pleased. “Marcellus Hawkeye, at this moment, you stand at the very center of human destiny, not we. It is not a coincidence that you found the ring, nor is it a coincidence that you have found your way here, and it is most certainly not a coincidence that you will become President of the United States. We want it, but they want it as well. The ordinaries, the specials – even the mods, for they are partly human as well – all yearn for a break in this orderly breakdown of their society. They want to believe that life is comfortable and wholesome again, at least until the strains of their decay become so great that the breakdown must resume. And all this, merely to grant us time and opportunity. I believe this is your purpose in life. Does the knowledge comfort you?”
“No, why?”
“Perhaps one day it will. Most people go their whole lives without knowing why they are here.”
I could sense that my time with them was drawing to an end. We had said what needed to be said. But I was not yet finished. Sheepishly, almost childishly, I addressed Eros. “You are a lucky man, Eros, that you have such a wife.”
Eros drew closer to Nyx and beamed. “Have you ever been in love, Hawkeye?” he asked.
“Not like you.”
“Everyone, even the world's ugliest and lowliest human being, is capable of true love. Just create a space for it, and the Universe will fill it.”
Nyx, too, had something to say. “There are people down there who claim that romantic love is not true love. They call themselves people of faith. I don't know what kind of faith they subscribe to. These people seem to have something against personal attachment. They attack romance because – and in some cases rightly so – they are indirectly attacking an addiction to sexual intercourse. Sex can be like a drug. But do these same people ever attack the attachment between father and daughter, mother and son? Never. They wouldn't dare. Because they have confused love – which describes the feelings between people – and devotion to God, for which in English there is no adequate verb. And usually they do so for their own purposes – which is, in fact, contrary to devotion to God. I love my husband. And if he should perish before me, I would take my own life without hesitation, because it would be more pain than I could bear to try and carry on in this lifetime without him.”
“How is it,” I asked of a sudden, “that you can both be so beautiful living under these conditions?”
Nyx and Eros both smiled at me. “The light burns from the inside, Hawkeye.”
At that, Nyx disentangled herself from her husband and stood up. I, too, climbed to my feet. “All be well with you, Marcellus Hawkeye,” she said as she stopped in front of me. Leaning forwards, she clasped me by the shoulders and kissed me soundly on the lips. “We will not meet again in this lifetime.”
This site and all its contents are the result of the tumultuous workings of the mind of one Adam Wasserman.