Dead Land
Malachi and Sebastian: man in the moon
By Kalju Lee
Copyright ©2011 Kalju Lee
Smashwords Edition
- Malachi and Sebastian -
Man on the Moon
Sebastian sat on the hood of his car, looking up into the black sky at a pristine Earth, a ball of blue and white and green and violet, filling the sky, whorling slowly through the darkness. He sighed and lay back against his car's windshield. It was peaceful. From where he sat atop the small crater rim, he could see the dim lights of Turbine City West, and the dark strips of the abandoned airfield beyond that. Scattered ruins of buildings formed in lunar cement told of early Moon history: A proud moment still for Moonlings. Sometimes I wonder why we want to leave all this, he thought to himself.
One of the more immediate reasons, though, had just parked behind him. “Hey!” The greeting came loud and angry over the speaker in his helmet. “Hey, motherfucker! Where’s my money?”
Sebastian turned in EVA suit and saw someone getting out of an open-top buggy: Frank, his bookie; a solid man with broad shoulders, an emerging paunch and a jet-black receding hairline, so high it was nearly cut out of his helmet’s face panel. Like Sebastian (and a majority of Moonlings), Frank was mostly of Chinese descent, though several generations on the moon had already muddied his cultural ancestry and, in turn, his old earth-bound identity.
“Hi! Frank! You must be looking for my brother, Sebastian. I bet he owes you money again, eh?” Sebastian slid off the car hood to the far side, placing an obstacle between himself and the angry man. He wasn’t good with confrontation; in fact, aside from lies and jackassery, Sebastian didn’t have a knack for much else than getting himself into gambling debts with the wrong kind of people.
“Let me guess, you’re not Sebastian?”
“Heh, nope. I understand how you might get us mixed up. Happens as much as you might think.”
“Funny how half the time I run into you, you don’t remember the other half.”
“Well, you know, I’ve got a lot going on, and I am the weaker-minded of the two of us. They tell me I ate a lot of moon dust as a kid.”
“Or maybe you think I can’t tell you apart, and you can keep giving me the run-around, pretending to be someone else!”
They started a delicate dance, as Sebastian tried to keep his distance without incriminating himself, and Frank tried to get close without over-exerting and popping a suit-hose.
“I’m offended that you would say such a thing! I’m an upstanding citizen, I’ll have you know, and would never mix myself up in this business. Now if you want me to take a message to Sebastian, I’d be glad to.”
“How about you come with me and we go see him together?”
“Ah, I don’t know about that. He’s got some bad mine-lung going on, and I wouldn’t want you to get infected. See? Would Sebastian care about your health like that?”
Sebastian had maneuvered over to the driver’s side door of his car, and could clearly see Frank’s angry visage glaring at him through the passenger side.
“I don’t care which one you are, I’m taking you both and I’m getting this sorted out and I’m getting my money.”
“Maybe I’ve got some money in here,” Sebastian replied as he unlatched the car door.
“Unless you’ve got six thousand in there, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Six? What happened to five and a half? I mean, what my brother said was—”
“That’s it! Get over here!”
Sebastian’s car was a black-market ‘74 Chevy Nova Redux series, converted to moon-use with an electric engine and solar panel, and it had no chance of outrunning a moon buggy, at least not under normal circumstances. Sebastian reached inside and fetched the crossbow out of the back seat and quickly shot out a front tire on Frank’s buggy.
“What are you doing?” Frank screamed. While he dashed back to his vehicle, Sebastian got into his own car, started it up and started moving.
“Sorry, don’t know what happened, I’ll go get help!”
Sebastian sped away. Frank’s profanity-riddled threats came steadily over the comm. for a minute or so, before slowly fading into constant static.
It was a quick fifteen-minute drive back to the city. Sebastian felt a certain sense of relief when he entered under the shadow of the huge metal half-pipe that dominated the urban skyline. Turbine City West, and her sister city, Turbine City East, were the result of short-sighted planning by the reigning lunar warlord, General Maynard Kong, who took control during the brief Lunar War that followed the initial catastrophes that came to be known as the End Of The World back on Earth. These unfortunate events had been enough to instill a strong sense of paranoia concerning the Earthlings and there was little resistance when General Kong installed himself as their interim President: so long as he kept the Moon protected.
The cornerstone of his Lunar Defense Program had been Operation Rotary. Operation Rotary involved building twin giant engines on the Moon’s surface, that, when activated, would rotate the massive natural satellite, bringing about giant artillery guns built on the far side (the result of another, earlier era of paranoia) to face planet Earth. During the planning stages, some of Kong’s cabinet expressed concern over whether such a wild feat was conceivable even in theory. His dissenting advisers were consequently discovered dead, all under mysterious circumstances, and Operation Rotary was begun in earnest.
While the project had been a total failure, and resulted only in two city-sized turbine-engine substructures, before it effectively bankrupted the Moon of both money and materials, contemporary Moonlings generally agreed that, while it was doubtful Operation Rotary would have been successful, it was for the best that the project ran out of money before it was completed, just in case it had. Without resupply from or regular trade with Earth, however, Operation Rotary had sounded the death knell for general lunar quality-of-life.
Fortunately, what was truly horrible martial planning turned out to be only mildly substandard civic planning. Dome 6, the main residential construct on the Moon, was fast becoming an overpopulated slum, and the engine substructures were easily converted into modest, if rural (as the Moonlings understood the term), housing. The residents of Turbine Cities East and West were formally considered squatters, as Operation Rotary was supposedly ongoing. Officially the People’s Democratic Lunar Republic was still at work on Operation Rotary, still at war with Earth, still under martial law, and still recounting the ballots of its first free election.
When Sebastian arrived home and stepped through the inner door of their improvised airlock, he took off his helmet and flipped the light switch. The hovel remained dark. Sebastian frowned in confusion. A low arrhythmic thumping sounded from the next room over.
“Home already?”
Sebastian squinted and saw his brother, Malachi, sitting on the couch, casually holding a section of lead pipe. After a brief assessment, Sebastian judged there was no immediate danger the weapon would be used on him, and, as his eyes adjusted, he began to take in the room in more detail. The place had been trashed.
Sebastian and Malachi were identical twins, moon miners from a family of moon miners. They had moved to TCW after their house in Dome 6 was commandeered by PDLR National Guard, and now lived in a broken-down compressor. The compressor itself afforded decent living space, divided into four different rooms by broad ply-board planks cutting—more or less—evenly across the steel-alloy cavity. The place was completely underground, accessible through a single porthole, facing the sky, the brothers’ lone modification to the superstructure. The setup saved on insulation from solar radiation and made burglary less likely; or at least it was believed to do these things.
“What happened?” Sebastian asked, as he started picking up the living room.
“One of your friend Frank’s buddies came over demanding money. I tried to explain to him that I wasn’t you, but apparently they get that a lot.”
“Really? Well, it can be confusing for people, I imagine.”
“He did a good job turning the place upside down.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t take anything.”
“He tried. I stunned him with this,” Malachi held up the pipe.
“Where is he now?”
“In your foot locker.”
“Ah. So that’s what that noise is.”
“He’s your problem now. I’m going into town.”
“Why?”
“To get drunk. And a new light bulb. I expect you to have this place cleaned up by the time I get back.”
“Maybe.”
Malachi gave him what—in the gloom—appeared to be a hard look, got up off the couch, and went over to grab his EVA suit off the hook. He pulled it on and sealed up his helmet. Sebastian rearranged the junk on the floor into neater piles. The knocking from Sebastian’s room became briefly louder, and then stopped at once. Malachi cocked his head to one side, as though unsure over his choice of the old footlocker, but soon shook it off. He tossed the lead pipe down on the couch for Sebastian’s use, stepped into the airlock, and out in the cold vacuum of space.