“A vast volcanic event? But surely that would not be sufficiently violent—”
“A collision. A rogue planetesimal, a giant, or even a planet. Such a collision might cause a splash of ejecta which could accrete into this Moon…”
Within seconds, then, they had unravelled the mystery of the Moon’s origin, a deduction that had taken humans two centuries of geological science.
All around the Earth, other witnesses must be coming to a similar conclusion, and Manekato imagined a growing consensus of understanding whispering in Babo’s ear.
“But,” Manekato said, “if this Red Moon was born from Earth, it was not our Earth.”
“No,” Babo said sombrely. “For our Earth never suffered a catastrophic collision of that magnitude. We would see the results today, for example in the composition of the planet’s core. And if our world had enjoyed the company of such a Moon everything would have been different in its evolution: much of the primordial atmosphere would have been stripped off in the collision, leaving thinner air less rich in carbon dioxide; there would have been many subtle effects on tides and the world’s spin…”
“On such a world,” Manekato said, “one would not need a Mapping to see the stars. And in such a sky a Moon like this would ride. But such is not our world.”
“Not our universe,” said Without-Name bluntly. “Tell me then, Babo: what do your Astrologers have to say of a power which can Map a Moon, not merely from planet to planet, but between universes?”
“They have little to say,” he said evenly. “That is why we must go there… There is something more.” He uttered a soft command to his Workers.
A new Mapping was made, showing them a vision from a large Farm that straddled the equator of the planet.
A giant blue circle, hovering above the ground, was sweeping over the Farm’s cultivated ground, upright and improbably tall. People stood and watched as it passed. Workers backed away before it. Children ran alongside it, laughing, levering themselves forward on their knuckles in their excitement.
And there were people falling out of the circle’s empty disc.
No, not people, Manekato saw: like people, naked hominids, some tall and hairless, some short and squat and covered in fine black hair. They flopped and gasped for breath like stranded fish, and their flimsy bodies were buffeted this way and that by the Wind.
“What does it mean, Babo?”
“One can predict the broad outline of events. But chaos is in the detail…” He waved his hand, banishing the image.
A gust of Wind howled across the bare, eroded plateau, powerful enough to make Manekato stagger.
Babo stepped forward. “It is time.”
Manekato and Without-Name took his hands and each other’s so the three of them were locked together in a ring.
At the last moment Manekato asked, “Must it be so?”
Babo shrugged regretfully. “The predictions are exact, Mane. The focusing effect of the shoreline’s shape here, the gradient of the ocean floor, the precise positioning of the new Moon in the sky: all of these have conspired to doom our Farm, and the Poka line with it.”
Without-Name tipped back her head and laughed, the spikes that covered her body bristling and twisting. “And for all our vaunted power we can do nothing about it. This is a moment that separates past from future. It is a little death. My friends, welcome the cleansing!”
Manekato uttered a soft command.
The three of them rose into the air, through a body’s height. The Mapping had begun.
Mane…
Surprised to hear her name called, Manekato looked down. One of the Workers, a battered old gadget from a long-forgotten crop, was peering up at her with a glinting lens. It was clinging to the ground with long stabilizing suckers, but the Wind battered at it, and its purple-black hide glistened with rain.
Memory stirred. There had been a Worker like this when she had clambered from her mother’s womb, chattering excitedly, full of energy and curiosity. In those first days and weeks that Worker had fed her, instructed her, kept her from harm, and comforted her when she was afraid. She had not seen the old gadget for years, and had thought little of it. Could this be the same Worker? Why should it seek her now, as it was about to be destroyed?
A wall of rain swept over the mountain-top. The three of them were immediately soaked, and Manekato laboured to breathe the harshly gusting air.
When the rain gust passed, the mountain-top had been swept bare; all the Workers were gone, surely destroyed. Manekato felt an odd, distracting pang — regret, perhaps?
But this was no time to dwell on the past; the nameless one was right about that.
The three of them ascended without effort.
She was still clothed in her body, her legs dangling, her hair soaked. But of course this body was a mere symmorph: differing from her original self in form, but representing the same idea. (And in fact, as she had been through hundreds of previous Mappings, that “original” body had itself been nothing but a symmorph, a copy of a copy reworked to suit temporary needs, though one tailored to remain as close to her primary biological form as possible.)
But such a morphology was no longer appropriate. With a soundless word, she discarded the symmorph, and accepted another form.
Now she was smeared around Earth, immersing it in her awareness, as if it were a speck that floated in her eyeball.
The great Farms glittered over the planet: from pole to pole, around the equator, even on the floor and surface of the oceans, and in the clouds. It was as if the planet were encrusted with jewels of light and life and order. There were no barren red deserts, no frozen ice caps here.
But already, as the Red Moon began its subtle gravitational work, the first changes were visible. Huge ocean storms were unravelling the delicate ocean floor and water-borne Farms. A vast line of earthquakes and ugly volcanism was unstitching an eastern continent. And, from an ocean which was sloshing like water in a disturbed bath, a train of immense tsunamis marched towards the land.
Soon the Poka Farm was covered — extinguished, scoured clear, even the bedrock shattered, the bone dust of her ancestors scattered and lost, beyond memory.
The jewel-like lights were failing, all over the world. There was nothing for her here.
She gazed at her destination, the new, wandering Moon.
Reid Malenfant:
Malenfant’s world was stratified into layers of varying incomprehensibility.
At the base of it all was the stockade, the familiar sturdy fence and the huts of mud and wood: the physical infrastructure of the world, solid, imperturbable.
And then there were the people.
Hugh McCann was standing alone at the centre of the colony’s little street, hands dangling at his sides, gazing up at a corner of the sky. His mouth was open, and his cheeks glistening, as if he was weeping. Nemoto was shielding her eyes, so that she couldn’t so much as glimpse the sky above.
He saw Julia and Thomas, close together near the gate. The Hams didn’t seem disturbed by the fiery sky. They were stripping off their neat, sewn-together garments, revealing bodies that were ungainly slabs of corded muscle. They pulled on much cruder skin wraps, of the kind Malenfant had seen Thomas wear out in the bush, tying them up with thongs. More Hams were coming in through the open gate (the gate is open, Malenfant!), and they picked up the discarded English-type clothing and started to pull it on.
A shift change, he thought, wondering. As if the settlement was a factory maintained by a pool of labour beyond the stockade walls.
And in the sky…
You can’t put off thinking about it any longer, Malenfant.
Start with the basics. There is the white sun, the yellow Earth (yellow?). There are the clouds, stringy cirrus today, littered over the sky’s dome. And beyond the clouds, in the spaces between sun and Earth -