Wil McCarthy - To Crush the Moon

“King Toji never existed, Madam.”

“Towaji, then.”

“Still. The creatures of fable bear little resemblance to the human beings of actual memory. His name was Bruno, and he once taught university. The rest is mere happenstance.”

Which was neither completely true nor completely fair, and would have been a perfect opening for Spiraldi Truich, the oldest of the Furies, to further demolish Radmer’s pretenses. But Spiraldi was among the casualties of the siege; she’d died on the walls with a rifle in her hands, protecting her people as a good ruler ought.

So instead, Radmer took the opportunity to change the subject. “When will new elections be held, Madams Regents? And in their wake, will it still be you who address me here in this chamber?”

“Likely not,” answered Danella Mota. She lifted a Luner globe from its rack and turned it idly in her hands. “With the southern hemisphere in such disarray, Imbria and Viense are the only real nations remaining. And we’re wounded, both. We can’t leave the south to its fate, and neither can we help them—or each other—through separate efforts. We must work together—truly together—to clean the mess and build this world anew.”

“A global government?” Radmer asks, impressed with the audacity of such a scheme, at such a time as this.

“A global monarchy,” says Pine Chadwir. “And then a Solar one, to rival the glories of old. And now we come to the deeper purpose of your summons here, General, for no living person remembers the glories of old more fully or more truthfully than you.”

Oh. Crap. Radmer doesn’t like the sound of that .

“No one has fought longer or harder than you, for the peace and justice of Lune.”

Worse!

“No one knows this world better than you, who built it.”

“Stop right there,” Radmer says. “I am out of the leader business, and I mean forever. Once we’re done with our little chat here, I’m going to hightail it under the veils of Echo Valley and never come out. I’ll rot my brain. I’ll walk a groove in the soil with the endless reptition of my steps.”

“A selfish gesture,” says Danella Mota.

“Not at all,” says Radmer. “This isn’t my world. We speak different languages, Lune and I. If I’m as wise as you suggest, then listen to me now: choose your leaders from among yourselves. The past is dead because it killed itself . Through better management than mine.”

“There is renewed interest in the Old Tongue,” says Pine Chadwir. “In the old ways. In yourself.”

“I said no.”

More words would certainly have been exchanged on the subject, had a page not chosen that moment to run in screaming, “A ship! Madams Regents, a ship has landed!”

“Inform the port master,” said Danella. “All cargoes are welcome, but we’re in session here, boy.”

“Madams, please, it’s a space ship!”

And so it was that C. “Rad” Mursk came face-to-face with Ambassador Tilly Nichols of the Biarchy of Wolf and Lalande.

“You look just like your pictures,” she said, shaking his hand out there on the cement of the Timoch International Airport. Her gleaming starship hulked in the background like the end of a world, appearing less like something out of history than something out of its most fanciful stories—a Platonic dream of starshipitude.

“And you look… familiar,” he said, trying to place the woman’s face.

“You knew my birth mother. Bethany.”

“Ah! And how is the Queen of Lalande?”

“Retired,” said the ambassador, “and thrice reincarnated. When I left Gammon she was a little girl on a solar farm, way out on the western coast. But she remembered you a little. And my father, King Eddie; she said she was going to find him someday and marry him all over again. But she asked me to give you her best. Poor dear; it never occurred to her that you might be dead.”

“I certainly might. Everyone else seems to be.”

“Well,” said Tilly, “I’m sorry for your people’s suffering, and I want you to know, we’re here to help. We tried remote activation of your inert systems, and when that didn’t work we tried synching to the remains of your collapsiter grid. And when that didn’t work, we decided to show up in person. We’re installing a wormhole gate now, so you should be up and running in a few days. Then we can start in on educational travel and the real-time transfer of materiel. This place looks like a long, long shortage of just about everything.”

Conrad gawked. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken to him like that! “What and what? You’re… Young lady, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Did it ever occur to you to ask permission? To await an invitation for your help?”

“Fallen colonies are often too proud,” she said. “We understand, having been there several times ourselves. Only with great determination and patience have we elevated ourselves to what you see.” She nodded back at her ship, from which strangely attired workmen were already unloading crates and tubes of… something. “And it must be particularly galling, for the very seat of humanity to fall…”

“Fall where?” he demanded. “Enlightened lives are played out here all the time, as always.”

“ Short lives.”

“Oh, so. Does quantity suddenly matter more than quality?” That sounded lame to him. What he really meant was something grander, but he lacked the words. He had always lacked the words.

“If there isn’t time to achieve personal fulfillment,” said Tilly, “then yes, I would say quantity matters. In the Biarchy, we strive for milestones and then reinvent ourselves upon their achievement. Before we grow stale. We join the Exploration Corps, which will soon be visiting a hundred new stars. Or the Diplomatic Corps, which visits the old ones and invites them into the wormhole network, which we call the Muswog. Five systems and counting! The point is, we have these choices, and we make them freely.”

“Hmm. Well. I believe I understand your offer; you’ve clawed your way up from the ashes of your parents’ great blunders, and it has made you strong and clever and smug. And now, in your boundless generosity, you seek to deny the same privilege to the people of Lune. The only thing wrong with this place, kiddo, is people like me who never cleaned up our toys. But that’s all finished now. Help? What do you expect to help us with? What is it you think we need?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out,” she said reasonably. “I asked to speak with someone in charge, and you’re the one they sent. Has there been… some error?”

“Definitely,” he answered, turning his back on her and everything she stood for. “Like your mother, I’m just some farmer who used to be somebody.”

Conrad would have cause to regret those words, for as a king he’d’ve been entitled to throw these smug missionaries out on their collective ear. As it was, they dealt with the Furies instead, and with the Grand Kabinet of Viense, and in short order they had conspired together to launch the largest restoration project in history.

Murdered Earth was, apparently, an affront to all humanity, for the Biarchists promised, at their own expense and under their own supervision, to place a shell around it which closely mimicked the original surface to a depth of fifty kilometers. Following this, they contemplated the resurrection of Mars, and possibly Venus as well. And resurrection was the proper word, for they planned to populate these worlds with simulacra of their departed residents—most especially the famous ones.