"Hmmm," said Prospero.
"RRRR," said the machine. Then it turned once more toward the Moon in its lavender-red glory, and raised all its arms. "RRRRR! RRRRR!" it said, then went back to its high whining.
"This will take some definite study and trouble," said Prospero.
We found one of the shuttle vehicles, still on its support structure, after I had gone through all the informational materials. Then we had to go several kilometers to one of their museums to find a lunar excursion module, and bring that to the shuttle vehicle. Then I had to modify, with Prospero’s help, the bay of the shuttle to accommodate the module, and build and install an additional fuel tank there, since the original vehicle had been used only for low-orbit missions and returns.
When not assisting me, Prospero was out with the other machine, whom he had named Elkanah, from the author of an opera about the Moon from the year A.D. 1697. (In the course of their conversations, Prospero found his real name to be, like most, a series of numbers.) Elkanah communicated by writing in the sand with a stick, a long series of sentences covering hectares of beach at a time.
That is, while the Moon was not in the sky. While that happened, Elkanah stood as if transfixed on the beach, staring at it, whining, even at the new Moon in the daylit red sky. Like some moonflower, his attitude followed it across the heavens from rise to set, emitting the small whining series of Rs, the only sound his damaged voice box could make.
The Moon had just come up the second night we were there. Prospero came back into the giant hangar, humming the old song "R.U.R.R.R.U.0. My Baby?" I was deciding which controls and systems we needed, and which not.
"He was built to work on the Moon, of course," said Prospero. "During one of those spasms of intelligence when humans thought they should like to go back. Things turning out like they did, they never did."
"And so his longing," I said.
"It’s deep in his wiring. First he was neglected, after the plans were canceled. Then most of the humans went away. Then his voice and some memory were destroyed in some sort of colossal explosion here that included lots of collateral electromagnetic damage, as they used to say. But not his need to be on our lunar satellite. That’s the one thing Elkanah is sure of."
"What was he to do there?"
"Didn’t ask, but will," said Prospero. "By his looks—solid head, independent eyes, multiuse appendages, upright posture—I assume some kind of maintenance function. A Caliban/Ariel-of-all-work, as ’twere."
"A janitor for the Moon," I said.
"Janus. Janitor. Opener of gates and doors," mused Prospero. "Forward- and backward-looking, two-headed. The deity of beginnings and endings, comings and goings. Appropriate for our undertaking."
When we tried to tell him we were taking him with us, Elkanah did not at first understand.
"Yes," said Prospero, gesturing. "Come with us to the Moon."
"R-R." Elkanah swiveled his head and pointed to the Moon.
"Yes," said Prospero. He pointed to himself, to me, and to Elkanah. Then he made his fingers into a curve, swung them in an arc, and pointed to the sky. He made a circle with his other hand. "To the Moon!" he said.
Elkanah looked at Prospero’s hands.
"R-R," he said.
"He can’t hear sound or radio, you know?" said Prospero. "He has to see information, or read it."
Prospero bent and began writing in the sand with his staff.
YOU COME WITH MONTGOMERY AND ME TO THE MOON.
Elkanah bent to watch, then straightened and looked at Prospero.
"RRRR?" he said.
"Yes, yes!" said Prospero, gesturing. "RRR! The RRRR!"
The sound started low, then went higher and higher, off the scale:
"RRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"
"Why didn’t you write it in the first place?" I asked Prospero.
"My mistake," he said.
From then on, Elkanah pitched in like some metallic demon, any time the Moon was not in the sky, acid rain or shine, alkali storm or fair.
We sat in the shuttle cabin, atop the craft with its solid-fuel boosters, its main tank, and the extra one in the bay with the lander module.
"All ready?" I asked, and held up the written card for Elkanah.
"Certes," said Prospero.
"R," said Elkanah.
Liquid oxygen fog wafted by the windshield. It had been, by elapsed time counter, eleven years, four months, three days, two minutes, and eleven seconds since we had landed at the Cape. You can accomplish much when you need no food, rest, or sleep and allow no distractions. The hardest part had been moving the vehicle to the launch pad with the giant tractor, which Elkanah had started but Prospero had to finish, as the Moon had come up, more than a week ago.
I pushed the button. We took off, shedding boosters and the main tank, and flew to the Moon.
The Sea of Tranquility hove into view.
After we made the lunar insertion burn, and the orbit, we climbed into the excursion module and headed down for the lunar surface.
Elkanah had changed since we left Earth, when the Moon was always in view somewhere. He had brought implements with him on the trip. He stared at the Moon often, but no longer whined or whirred.
At touchdown I turned things off, and we went down the ladder to the ground.
There was the flag, stiffly faking a breeze, some litter, old lander legs (ours we’d welded in one piece to the module), footprints, and the plaque, which of course we read.
"This is as far as they ever came," said Prospero.
"Yes," I said. "We’re the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth intelligent beings to be here."
Elkanah picked up some of the litter, took it to a small crater, and dropped it in.
Prospero and I played in the one-sixth gravity. Elkanah watched us bounce around for a while, then went back to what he was doing.
"They probably should have tried to come back, no matter what," said Prospero. "Although it doesn’t seem there would be much for them to do here, after a while. Of course, at the end, there wasn’t much for them to do on Earth, either."
We were to go. Prospero wrote in the dust, WE ARE READY TO GO NOW.
Elkanah bent to read. Then he pointed up to the full Earth in the dark Moon sky (we were using infrared) and moved his hand in a dismissing motion.
"R," he obviously said, but there was no sound.
He looked at us, came to attention, then brought his broom to shoulder-arms and saluted us with his other three hands.
We climbed up onto the module. "I think I’ll ride back up out here," said Prospero, "I should like an unobstructed view."
"Make sure you hang on," I said.
Prospero stood on the platform, where the skull-shape of the crew compartment turned into the base and ladders and legs.
"I’m braced," he said, then continued:
"My Ariel, chick, that is thy charge; then to the elements be free, and fare thou well.
Now my charms are all o’erthrown
And what strength I have’s mine own.
Our revels now are ended."
There was a flash and a small feeling of motion, a scattering of moondust and rock under us, and we moved up away from the surface.
The last time I saw Elkanah, he was sweeping over footprints and tidying up the Moon.
We were on our way back to Earth when we decided to go to Mars.
(2000)
LOST MEMORY
Peter Phillips
Active as a writer for less than a decade, Peter Phillips (1920–2012) wrote around twenty short stories, blurring science fiction with fantasy in the oddest ways. For example "Manna" (1949) tells the story of the ghosts of two medieval monks trapped in the ruins of an old monastery – a situation which Phillips explains "scientifically" by means of time travel and super-foods. In "Dreams are Sacred" (1948), one of the genre’s first forays into virtual reality, a man enters the mind of a writer in a coma in order to combat his mental demons. Adapted as "Get Off My Cloud" (1969), the story appeared as an episode of the BBC television series Out of the Unknown.