Solaris Rising 1.5 (21 page)

To the Moon, and What Awaited

T
HE UNFORESEEN NULLITY
of gravity once Earth had been left behind proved merely distracting and awkward for the Duke and Frank. Luckily, they had brought along extensive coils of stout rope of varying gauges. Using some of the lesser-strength stuff, Frank was able to arrange a spider’s web of lines that allowed one to maneuver about the loggia with ease, and to anchor oneself at a desired spot. (Of the embarrassingly messy and counter-intuitive chamberpot arrangements, conducted behind a floating folding screen, the less said the better). Thus Duke Fossombrone could handle the propulsion controls of the flying palazzo without fear of drifting away at a crucial moment, and Frank could tether himself before the windows in order to fulfill his mandate to sketch their voyage.

Not that he needed any lure of wages to make him hasten to fill his pad, penciling madly and furiously enhancing with pastel colors for hours at a stretch, till he had to be coerced to sleep or eat. What an opportunity this was, one for which any artist would have gladly given his non-facile arm! Had any painter ever been presented with such magnificent vistas before? These incredible and colorful pastures of the heavens, strewn with stars and planets and planetesimals and polychromatic nebulae as thick as daisies, made the subject matter of the vaunted Hudson River School look like a ditch full of rainwater. Not even Thomas Cole had ever achieved such grandeur. If only John and Bill had been able to come along—

But they hadn’t, and when Frank returned to Earth it was his name alone that would be made. All uncertainty about his future, all world-weariness had vanished amidst these celestial splendors.

But if the lack of weight had proven simply a bit of ‘weather’ for Fossombrone and Duveneck, an irksome aspect of the foreign environment, for Ludovico and Restituta the new condition had proven, respectively, inebriating and estranging.

For Ludovico, the lack of weight endowed him with perfect freedom of movement for the first time since he had sustained his wounds and loss. As if granted wings, he soared about the loggia, laughing and shouting.

“Sister, look at me! I fly like an eagle! Already your perfect faith has blessed me! Even if our mission does not secure me new legs, I will always have had these hours of bliss!”

Thus addressed, Restituta, huddling miserably in a floating chair that threatened to dislodge her with every stray breeze, looking like a scared rabbit in a corner of its warren, and clutching a needlepoint cushion to her bosom, tried to make a suitably positive reply.

“I am so glad, brother. You deserve such release.”

Her smile was wan and forced, as if she were trying to manufacture cheer despite some internal upheaval that commanded her true attentions.

Frank had not initially given much concern to Restituta’s grim mien, chalking it up simply to natural female timidity and anxiety. But as the trip proceeded with no cause for alarm, and she still refused to brighten up despite all cajoling, he became alarmed for her. Catching her alone in a far corner of the loggia, he spoke frankly to the
jolie laide
, for whom he still retained the largest of affections and hopes.

“Restituta,
cara mio
, what ails you? Aren’t you happy that things are going so swimmingly? Thanks to your father’s foresight and inventiveness, we are as safe as bugs in a rug while we journey where no man has gone before.”

Restituta’s large eyes brimmed with tears, but did not quite overspill. Frank thought she had never looked lovelier.

“Yes, Frank, I am proud of father. And of you too. You have both exerted yourself beyond compare in fulfillment of my implausible dreams. But it is those dreams themselves that trouble me.
Le voci degli angeli
—the voices of the angels, which I heard only as a murmur on Earth, have become a swelling chorus in my brain. There is not a minute now when they do not chatter to me. And some of the things they say are—disturbing.”

Frank sought to minimize Restituta’s worries. In truth, he only half-believed in her angels, placing his faith more in the Duke’s natural philosophy. Granting credence to this tale of supernatural beings living on the Moon and able to confer new limbs on Ludovico had been, he was certain, merely a necessary pretext to motivate a more practical and rational venture.

“Don’t worry, my darling. I’m sure the angels are just excited finally to have a chance to meet you. If they are indeed angels, then their intentions must be only for our good.”

Restituta spoke haltingly. “Yes... yes, I continue to believe that. But it is only that what angels deem good is so much larger and more complex than what mortals understand of that realm. And that infinitude frightens me.”

Frank spontaneously clutched the young woman to him in an embrace that sent them both pinwheeling away across the loggia. Ludovico looked up from his cranking of the Gramme Dynamos to smile. The Duke was napping, sending gentle elderly snores into the room.

Frank stole a kiss and whispered, “Have faith, Restituta. This will be a bold tale to tell our children once we are safely home, doddering elders in our seats by the hearthside.”

“I would like to believe that, Frank. Truly, I would.”

Over subsequent days, Frank continued to hover for most of his waking hours near the windows. The swelling bulk of the Moon provided endless inspiration—to the Duke as well, who employed a telescope upon its silvery face. The limiting factor on Frank’s sketching was the intense cold radiating inward from the glass. Despite positioning one of Shaw’s electrical heating mechanisms close to him and wrapping himself in a blanket, his hand would often chill and cramp.

The Duke acknowledged Frank’s stamina, saying, “What a blessing you hit upon those heaters, son! And to think I was going to put our water supply outside the loggia to save room, and pipe it in. It would have frozen solid, and then where would we have been?”

Frank pictured the rest of the rooms of the Ca’ d’Oro, outside their tiny, fragile nest of warmth and air. The ghostly mansion must be a dark and frigid and spectral domain, like Dante’s lowest Hell, or some spell-locked castle from a Gothic novel. He shivered at the forceful image.

The Duke had regularly to make steady adjustments in their course, puffing hydrogen this way and that, always seeking to catch up with the Moon not where it currently appeared, but where it would be in its orbit upon their arrival in that region. He relied more on dead reckoning than mathematics. Luckily their supply of hydrogen gas seemed equal to the task.

At last came the day when just a tiny slice of the satellite filled their view, and they hung motionless with respect to the orb.

“Daughter, where shall I land us?”

Restituta was supine, if such a term could apply in the absence of up and down, with her eyes closed and a cold wet cloth laid across her brow and held in place with a limp forearm. Her voice, when she spoke, was haunted, of a timbre unheard before.

“Move the palazzo slowly around the lunar globe, and I will direct you.”

Before too long, Restituta signalled that they hovered over the exact landing spot preferred by the angels. The Duke changed the orientation of the flying mansion, and suddenly for the first time the Moon seemed
below
rather than
ahead
. They began their controlled descent.

The return of some small fraction of their terrestrial weight was accompanied by a soft
crump
of the palazzo settling to the lunar soil. Outside the windows, a cloud of fine argent dust from their landing arose in eerie slow motion unlike any such event on Earth. Light spilling forth from the mansion illuminated a small wedge of pockmarked ground.

Duke Fossombrone uttered the first words of mankind upon another world. “All praise to Isaac Newton, Garibaldi, and the Pope.”

Frank swore. “Holy Christ! What I’d give to be outside so I could sketch the sight of a Venetian palace smack dab in the middle of all this starkness. It’s more fabulous than anything out of Lane’s
One Thousand and One Nights
.”

Restituta had joined them mechanically. Dragging himself forward easily along the ropes with leg stubs trailing, Ludovico arrived at the windows also, completing the quartet. “Lift me up, please, Frank, so I may better see.” Frank turned a fallen chair upright and hoisted the cripple into it.

“Your angels, sister! The ones who will help me. Where are they?”

Restituta’s voice sounded resigned. “Right before us, brother. Can you not see them?”

Frank said, “But there is nothing—”

And then an unearthly city appeared, as if a painted curtain of false lunar scenery had been instantly whisked away.

Needle-shaped crystal spires of all sizes, warty with random excrescenses, thrust toward the black, star-riddled sky. Portions of the structures seemed to spin, and wink into and out of existence. Twinkling pinlights of all hues glimmered from within the towers, as if signaling a convocation of fairies. And outside among the spires the angels cavorted, looking just as Frank had drawn them, employing their big bat wings to dip and curvet, swoop and glide, in whatever strange Selenic atmosphere existed. Their emaciated equine muzzles opened and closed in silent exaltation.

“The angels want to see me,” said Restituta mournfully. “I need to go to them.”

The Duke began, “But my dear, please consider—”

Frank said, “Forget it!”

Ludovico said, “Is that truly necessary, sister?”

Ignoring the men, Restituta moved toward one of the capped exit doors. Frank raised a hand to halt her—

—and found himself frozen! Straining with all his might, he still could not budge.

Restituta opened the inner door of the little ‘mudroom,’ as full of air as the loggia. She entered the chamber, then closed the door. She must have unlatched the outer door leading into the cold, dark precincts of the palazzo, for an audible
whoosh
of air reverberated through the panels of the mudroom.

Unable even to vent his rage and impotence, Frank felt himself going mad. Then, just at the nadir of his frustration, he lurched forward, released. He took a step or two after Restituta, then was brought up short by the Duke’s exclamation of “Look!”

Outside the window, Restituta walked serenely across the lunar soil, the hem of her long skirts stirring up the dust. A transparent nimbus seemed to cloak her. She moved steadily toward the angelic city, and then disappeared within its precincts.

“I’m going after her,” said Frank.

“No, my son! You do not know if you could even survive the lunar conditions.”

“She did!”

“But,” Ludovico said with a mixture of sorrow and fraternal pride, “my sister was always favored of the celestials.”

Frank felt he had to do something. “I can’t just stand here!”

“Let me pump some air into the portal, then.”

The Duke did so, and Frank hurried to the exit chamber. He entered, and latched the inner door. Then he opened the outer one.

The air gusting instantly out into the vacuum swept Frank off his feet and carried him willy-nilly to bang his head against the wooden arm of a sofa. He felt hot and cold at once, and struggled to rise. His eyeballs seemed as dry as the dust in an Egyptian tomb. Impossible to think—

Frank awoke lying on a pallet of blankets. He opened his eyes and saw the Duke and Ludovico bending solicitously over him. He tried to speak, but his throat was so raw he could only croak. The Duke gave him a drink of fiery grappa.

“What—what happened?”

“Ludovico was just a second or so behind you. The air pressure inside the loggia, acting against the chamber door with naught but vacuum on the far side, made it incredibly hard to open. But together, we did so. My son was sucked through, and I let the door slam. Apparently, he was able to retain his sensibilities long enough to crawl to you and drag you back. Thank the Lord you had not fallen even further away! Then he even managed to pull the outer door shut before losing his own consciousness, whereupon I could introduce fresh air into the portal. Then I hauled both of you unfortunates inside.”

Frank regarded Ludovico, and saw that the young man’s face was a map of vacuum-blistered blood vessels. He supposed his own mug looked the same. He gripped Ludovico’s mighty bicep with one hand and said, “I owe you my life, brother.”

“I learned in battle that one’s comrades are as dear as one’s self.”

Frank got painfully to his feet. “What of Restituta and the angels?”

“Nothing. And yet I—”

Without warning, silent speech filled every niche of Frank’s mind. He could tell the others were undergoing identical communications. This must have been what Restituta had experienced unrelentingly throughout the voyage.

“You may leave now,” said the majestic voice of an angel. “The one you call Restituta is safe with us, back once more where she belongs.”

“No!” shouted Frank. “Duke, pick this place up and drop it on them! We’ll rescue her somehow!”

Restituta spoke now in their minds, in a relaxed and gentle tone. “No, Frank, there is no return for me. You can only do yourself harm to cling to what I was. Please, go back to Earth safely now, while you still can. Just remember me in your heart.”

Frank lunged toward the controls that would send them aloft and hurtling suicidally into the crystal towers—

The Moon was suddenly below them, and then in the next eyeblink had shrunk to where it filled only a single pane in the array of loggia windows.

The angels had hurled them at least halfway back to Earth.

Frank howled, then started batting the floating objects around him. But all his massless punches could not assuage his grief.

By the time the Earth loomed large, the three men had all reached an emotional and spiritual accommodation, one way or another, with what had happened. Frank had even found it within himself somehow to do a number of sketches of the angelic lunar city, several of which featured Restituta striding toward it like some numinous pilgrim.

But all joy and pride in his drawings had evaporated with the loss of the woman he had loved. (And could he ever love that intensely again?) He knew he would never display his artwork from this incredible voyage, or otherwise advertise his trip. And he suspected the Duke and Ludovico felt the same. The Ca’ d’Oro would settle down onto its former foundations and be reintegrated with the city. The scaffolding would come down, the inert cavourite be warehoused, and people would soon forget the day a palazzo had taken off for the stars.