Howard Waldrop (born 1946, in Houston, Mississippi) is, according to the editor Eileen Gunn, “a famous unknown writer”, which rather neatly sums up a career seemingly devoted to hiding wild talent beneath willful obscurity. Waldrop’s stories are as delightful as they are unpitchable: “Heirs of the Perisphere” involves robotic Disney characters waking up in the far future; “Fin de Cyclé” describes the Dreyfus affair from the perspective of bicycle enthusiasts. Several of his stories have been nominated for the genre’s awards; “The Ugly Chickens” – about the extinction of the dodo – won a Nebula for best novelette in 1980, and also a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction in 1981. His work has been gathered in several collections. He lives in Austin, Texas, and is at work on a new novel, tentatively titled The Moon World.
I was on my way across the Pacific Ocean when I decided to go to the Moon.
*
But first I had to land to refuel this superannuated machine, with its internal combustion engines and twin airscrews. There was an answering beacon ahead that showed a storage of 6,170 metric tons of fuel. Whether I could obtain any of it I did not know. But, as they used to say, any dataport in an infostorm.
The island was a small speck in the pink ocean.
No instructions came from the airfield, so I landed on the only runway, a very long one. I taxied off to the side, toward what had been the major building with the control tower.
I tried to find a servicer of some kind, by putting out requests on different frequencies.
Nothing came. So I went to find the fuel myself. Perhaps there were pumps that still functioned? I located the storage facility, then returned to the plane and rolled it over to the tanks.
It was while I was using a hand-powered pumping device, with a filter installed in the deteriorating hoses, that I sensed the approach of someone else.
It came around the corner.
It was carrying a long, twisted piece of wood as tall as it, and it wore a torn and bleached cloak, and a shapeless bleached hat that came to a point on the crown.
“Mele Kiritimati!” it said. “You have landed on this enfabled island on the anniversary of its discovery by the famous Captain Cook, an adventurous human.”
“Your pardon?” I said. “The greeting?”
“Merry Christmas. The human festive season, named for the nominal birthdate of one of its religious figures, placed on the dates of the old human Saturnalia by the early oligarchs.”
“I am familiar with Christmastide. This, then, is Christmas Island?”
“That same. Did you not use standard navigational references?”
I pointed to the plane. “Locationals only. There is a large supply of aviation fuels here.”
“Nevertheless,” it said, “this is the island, this is the date of Christmas. You are the first visitor in fourteen years three months twenty-six days. Mele Kiritimati.”
It stood before me as I pumped.
“I have named myself Prospero,” it said.
(Reference: Shakespeare, The Tempest A.D. 1611. See also Hume, Forbidden Planet, A.D. 1956.)
“I should think Caliban,” I said. (Reference also: Morbius, id monster.)
“No Caliban. Nor Ariel, nor Miranda, nor dukes,” said Prospero. “In fact, no one else. But you.”
“I am called Montgomery Clift Jones,” I said, extending my hand.
His steel grip was firm.
“What have you been doing?” I asked.
“Like the chameleon, I sup o’ the very air itself,” he said.
“I mean, what do you do?” I asked.
“What do you do?” he asked.
We looked out at the pinkness of the ocean where it met the salts-encrusted sands and island soils.
“I stopped here to refuel,” I said. “I was on my way across the Pacific when I was overcome with a sudden want to visit the Moon.”
Prospero looked to where the part-lit Moon hung in the orangish sky.
“Hmmm. Why do that, besides it’s there?”
“Humans did it once.”
“Well,” said Prospero, after a pause, “why not indeed? I should think revisiting places humans once got to should be fitting. In fact, a capital idea! I see your craft is a two-seater. Might I accompany you in this undertaking?”
I looked him over. “This sea air can’t be very good for your systems,” I said, looking at the abraded metal that showed through his cloak. “Of course you may accompany me.”
“As soon as you finish refueling, join me,” he said. “I will take a farewell tour, and tell you of my domain.”
“How can I find you?”
“If something is moving on the island,” said Prospero, “it is I.”
*
We walked along. I kicked over some crusted potassium spires along the edge of the beach.
“I should be careful,” said Prospero. “The pH of the oceans is now twelve point two. You may get an alkaline burn.”
The low waves came in, adding their pinkish-orange load to the sediments along the shore.
“This island is very interesting,” he said. “I thought so when abandoned here; I still think so after all.
“When Cook found it, no humans were here. It was only inhabited for two hundred years or so. Humans were brought from other islands, thousands of kilometers away. The language they used, besides English I mean, was an amalgam of those of the islands whence they came.”
We looked at some eaten-metal ruins.
“This was once their major city. It was called London. The other two were Paris and Banana.”
The whole island was only a few meters above the new sea level.
“There was a kind of human tourism centered here once around a species of fish, Albula vulpes, the bonefish. They used much of their wealth to come here to disturb the fish in its feeding with cunning devices that imitated crustaceans, insects, other marine life. They did not keep or eat the fish they attained after long struggles. That part I have never understood,” said Prospero.
By and by we came to the airfield.
“Is there anything else you need to do before we leave?”
“I think no,” said Prospero. He turned for one more look around. “I do believe I shall miss this isle of banishment, full of music, and musing on the king my brother’s wreck. Well, that part is Shakespeare’s. But I have grown much accustomed to it. Farewell,” he said, to no one and nothing.
Getting him fitted into the copilot’s seat was anticlimax. It was like bending and folding a living, collapsible deck chair of an extraordinarily old kind, made from a bad patent drawing.
*
On our journey over the rest of the island, and the continent, I learned much of Prospero; how he came to be on the island, what he had done there, the chance visitors who came and went, usually on some more and more desperate mission.
“I saw the last of the Centuplets,” he said at one point. “Mary Lou and Cathy Sue. They were surrounded of course by many workers—in those days humans always were—who were hurrying them on their way to, I believe, some part of Asia…”
“The island of Somba,” I said.
“Yes, yes, Somba. For those cloning operations, supposed to ensure the continuation of the humans.”
“Well, those didn’t work.”
“From looking into it after they left,” said Prospero, “I assumed they would not. Still, the chances were even.”
“Humans were imprecise things, and genetics was a human science,” I said.
“Oh, yes. I used the airfield’s beacons and systems to keep in touch with things. No being is an island,” said Prospero, “even when on one. Not like in the old days, eh? It seems many human concerns, before the last century or so, were with the fear of isolation, desertion, being marooned from society. I made the best of my situation. As such things go, I somewhat enjoyed it.”
“And listening to the human world dying?”
“Well,” said Prospero, “we all had to do that, didn’t we? Robots, I mean.”
*
We landed at the old Cape.
“I’m quite sure,” said Prospero, as I helped him out of the seat until he could steady himself on his feet, “that some of their security safeguards still function.”
“I never met a security system yet,” I said, “that didn’t understand the sudden kiss of a hot arc welder on a loose faceplate.”
“No, I assume not.” He reached down and took up some soil. “Why; this sand is old! Not newly formed encrustations. Well, what should we do first?” He looked around, the Moon not up yet.
“Access to information. Then materials, followed by assembly. Then we go to the Moon.”
“Splendid!” said Prospero. “I never knew it would be so easy.”
*
On the second day, Prospero swiveled his head around with a ratcheting click.
“Montgomery,” he said. “Something approaches from the east-northeast.”
We looked toward the long strip of beach out beyond the assembly buildings, where the full Moon was just heaving into view at sunset.
Something smaller than we walked jerkily at the water’s edge. It stopped, lifting its upper appendages. There was a whirring keen on the air, and a small crash of static. Then it stood still.
We walked toward it.
“… rrrrr…” it said, the sound rising higher. It paid us no heed.
“Hello!” said Prospero. Nothing. Then our long shadows fell across the sand beside it.
The whining stopped. It turned around.
“I am Prospero. This is Montgomery Clift Jones. Whom do we have the honor to address?”
“… rrr…” it said. Then, with a half turn of its head, it lifted one arm and pointed toward the Moon. “rrrrrrrRRR!”
“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)