I do find the chapel kind of restful. But I get a lot more comfort from going out on a toot with Monica Chaum over at the Outpost. She has quite a capacity for a woman Catholic priest. I make no excuses; I’d been through a lot.’ He eyed her. ‘As have you.’
‘Yes.’ Her face, never beautiful, was empty of expression. ‘As is well known.’
Nemoto had been aboard the International Space Station, in low Earth orbit, when the Red Moon had made its dramatic entrance. Nemoto had been forced to watch from orbit as the first great tides battered at Japan.
‘I returned to Earth as soon as I could. I and my colleague used our Japanese Hope shuttle. You may know that our landing facility was at Karitimati Island in the South Pacific –’
‘Where? Oh, yeah, Christmas Island.’
‘There is little left of Karitimati. We were forced to come down here, at KSC.’
He said carefully, ‘Where was your home?’
‘I have no home now,’ was all she would reply.
He nodded. ‘Nor do I.’ It was true. He had an empty house in Clear Lake, but the hell with that. His home was with Emma – wherever she was.
Nemoto paused and looked into the sky. Although the first liquid glimmer of sun was resting on the horizon, the Red Moon still shone bright in the sky. ‘If you have abandoned your attempts to acquire faith, you do not believe that God is responsible for that?’
He grinned, rubbing his hand over his bare scalp, feeling a time of salt there. ‘Not God, no. But I think somebody is.’
‘And you would like to find out who.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘Do you believe that the bodies which fell through the African portal were human?’
He frowned, taken aback by the question. ‘Nobody can make much of the mashed-up remains that they scraped out of the savannah.’
‘But they appear to be human, or a human variant. You saw them, Malenfant. I’ve read your testimony. They share our DNA – much of it, though the recovered sequences show a large diversity from our own genome. There is speculation that they are more like one of our ancestors, a primitive hominid species.’
‘Yeah. So there are ape-men running all over our new Moon up there, right? I read the tabloids too.’
‘Malenfant, what do you believe?’
He said fiercely, ‘I believe that the Wheel was some kind of portal. I believe it linked Earth to its new Moon. And I believe it transported those poor unevolved saps, here from there. What I don’t know is what the hell it all means.’
‘And you believe your wife made the return journey. That she is still alive up there on the Red Moon, breathing its air, drinking its water, perhaps eating its vegetation.’
‘Where else could she be?… I’m sorry. It’s what I want to believe, I guess. It’s what I have to believe.’
‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘Everybody knows this, Malenfant. Your longing to reach her is tangible. I can see it, now, in your eyes, the set of your body.’
‘You think I’m an asshole,’ he said brutally. ‘You think I should let go.’
‘No. I think you are fully human. This is to be admired.’
He felt awkward again. He’d only just met this girl, yet somehow she’d already seen him naked every which way a person could be naked.
They reached the Beachhouse. They sat on its porch, facing the ocean. Malenfant sipped water from a plastic bottle. ‘So how come you’ve been pursuing me around NASA? What do you want, Nemoto?’
‘I believe we can help each other. You want to set up a mission to reach the Red Moon. So do I. I believe we should. I believe we must. I can get you there.’
Suddenly his heart was pumping. ‘How?’
Rapidly, with the aid of a pocket softscreen, she sketched out a cut-down mission profile, using a simplified version of Malenfant’s Shuttle-based Big Dumb Booster design, topped by a Space Station evacuation lander, adapted for the Moon’s conditions. ‘It will not be safe,’ she said. ‘But it will work. And it could be done, we believe, in a couple of months, at a cost of a few billion dollars.’
It was fast and dirty, even by the standards of the proposals he had been touting himself. But it could work … ‘If we could get anybody to fund it.’
‘There are many refugee Japanese who would support this,’ Nemoto said gravely. ‘Of all the major nations it is perhaps the Japanese who have suffered most in this present disaster. Among the refugees, there is a strong desire at least to know, to understand what has caused the deaths of so many. Thus there are significant resources to call on. But we would need to work with NASA, who have the necessary facilities for ground support.’
‘Which is where I come in.’ He drank his water. ‘Nemoto, maybe you’re speaking to the wrong guy. I’ve already tried, remember. And I got nowhere. I come up against brick walls like Joe Bridges the whole time.’
‘We must learn to work with Mr Bridges, not against him.’
‘How?’
She touched his hand. Her skin was cold. He was shocked by the sudden, unexpected contact. ‘By telling the truth, Malenfant. You care nothing for geology or planetology or the mystery of the Red Moon, or even the Tide, do you? You want to find Emma.’ She withdrew her hand. ‘It is a motive that will awaken people’s hearts.’
‘Ah. I get it. You want me to be a fundraiser. To blub on live TV.’
‘You will provide a focus for the project – a human reason to pursue it. At a time when the waters are lapping over the grain fields, nobody cares about science. But they always care about family. We need a story, Malenfant. A hero.’
‘Even if that hero is a Quixote.’
She looked puzzled. ‘Quixote’s was a good story. And so will yours be.’
She didn’t seem in much doubt that he’d ultimately fall into line. And, looking into his heart, neither did he.
Irritated by her effortless command, he snapped, ‘So why are you so keen to go exploring the new Moon, Nemoto? Just to figure why Japan got trashed?… I’m sorry.’
She shrugged. ‘There is more. I have read of your speeches on the Fermi Paradox.’
‘I wouldn’t call them speeches. Bullshit for goodwill tours …’
‘As a child, your eyes were raised to the stars. You wondered who was looking back. You wondered why you couldn’t see them. Just as I did, half a world away.’
He gestured at the Moon. ‘Is that what you think this is? We were listening for a whisper of
