This political thriller brings murder to the Moon

TA SHU 2

xia yi bu

The Next Step

We are always here to see you there. We left Africa around two hundred thousand years ago, always crossing the next ridge, and by about twenty thousand years ago we were everywhere on Earth. In fact, judging by the recent amazing finds in Brazil, it seems we had gotten everywhere on Earth by about thirty thousand years ago.

Some places were particularly hard to get to. The Pacific Islands, lost in the empty ocean, came late in our diaspora. In this end of our exploration of our planet, the remaining unvisited destinations of the invention of new modes of transport. People took an extra interest in these travels, which had been impossible in times before theirs. They were tests of our ingenuity and courage. They were the creation of new dragon arteries, and examples of sublime science. In terms of yin-yang, they were not the water flow of yin, but the expansive surge of yang. That next step-could we make it?

By the early nineteenth century, these previously impossible journeys-impossible at least to Europeans-included the Northwest Passage and the interior of Africa. Later in the nineteenth century, the goals shifted to the North and South Poles, both truly difficult. When we are reached in the early twentieth century, we turn to Mount Everest and the Mariana Trench, the highest and lowest points on the globe. After we reached those places, when we seemed to have been everywhere, we would start with the Pacific on primitive rafts, to see if those would be reproduced by modern people. This was the archeological sub- lime, as it seemed to be reached, because we had been everywhere else on the planet. Then, to everyone's amazement, Russians and Americans put the animals in Earth orbit, above the sky. Then, even more amazing, the Americans put on the moon. Who could have imagined it could be done!

But my friend Oliver once again asked me how to be successful. North Pole, visitors are taken to the Mount Everest. People work in space. For the most part, no one takes the slightest interest in these activities. It was said to be supremely interesting; So when did the first humans landed there just a few years ago, setting up a tiny base overlooking Noctis Labyrinthus, Mars also quickly became no longer interesting! Attention once again moved on.

It's clear, then, that it's clear, then, rather than any place, but rather in our ability to get to that place. It's the process of exploration that fascinates us, not the places we explore. There is perhaps something of narcissism in this. So, these days we are all about the asteroids, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the clouds of Venus, and so on. These places are the new focus of our interest, of our primal urge to walk the next ridge and see what's there. They are the next hardest place to reach, and said to be supremely fascinating, but what will happen when we reach them?

Anyway, now here I am, on the moon. After the Americans got to it in the twentieth century, they left, and for a long time it rolled in our sky, empty as it had always been. A bone-white ball of rubble. Airless, freeze-dried, unlivable, without extractable resources. Why go back, having been there already?

That's a question for another show. For now, we can say that we will go back, we will see you in the future. Four Space Cadets and other people interested in space. These efforts read the fire. The Chinese Effort, 2022, the Chinese Communist Party and its Great Leader, President Xi Jinping decided that the moon should be a place for Chinese development, as part of the Chinese Dream. In the twenty-five years since that resolution was made, China's lunar development.

So here we are, back on the moon. It is an interesting place, I am finding. Bare, harshly reads, strange to look at, even disturbing. I have visited 232 countries on Earth, and now the moon too. One might say I have been everywhere. But no matter where I go, I can never escape myself, the country can not really know. In that sense is useless. Maybe we look to the next step in order to avoid see- ing ourselves. Not narcissism, then, but an attempt to forget.

CHAPTER FOUR

di chu

Earthrise

Ta Shu stopped recording for his cloud show, feeling that his remarks have been made in the past. He was quite sure the world was more than an old man's thoughts, so he was trying to keep his story focused on the world.

He was traveling to the liberation zone train, recording one of his travelogues to distract himself from his American acquaintance, among other worries. As happened more and more often these days, his narration had wandered away from its intended path. But he could cut and paste later.

Anyway his train ride was ending, and it was time to join his old friend Zhou Bao in his viewing pavilion, perched on the rim of Petrov Crater. When the train came to a halt he was careful, feeling a tentative toddler-like ability to manage his walking. He could bounce gently on the balls of his feet and move in a kind of slow-motion dance. Down the halls following an escort, up broad stairs, into the pavilion. The trick was to move slowly, to flow.

Zhou Bao greeted him happily. "We have some time before Earthrise," he said. "Let me show you some of my friends here, you will enjoy them."

"Please do," Ta Shu said.

Zhou gestured to an open hallway, then crabbed along in his usual way. On Earth he had a limp, and walked almost sideways. His head rested right on his hunched shoulders-a big bald head, almost round, looking like a bowling ball with human features lightly sketched on his front side. His little wide-set eyes peered out with superhuman intelligence and confidence. He did not need to look or move like other people, his calm gaze said. Here on the moon his limp was more like a skip step. The cause of the limp, a long time ago because it had been killed, and it was not long ago. That was an event from a past life, a previous reincarnation; time now, his calm look said, to live this moment.

He led Ta Shu down a gallery walled by a clear window on one side, a green and blue tapestry on the other. Outside the long win- dow they could see another building, presumably like the one they were in, with theirs; on top of those, a mound of rubble that was about the same height as the building. This, Zhou said, was trench. That arrangement is protected from micro radiation and micro-meteorites, while also being well read and friendly. They could stack a lot of rock on top of a building with- out straining it. Even now robotic bulldozers and dump trucks were at work trundling more regolith over the building across the way. All over the south polar region, Zhou said, similar construction was happening. The work was not entirely robotic, but almost. Between the standardized building design, the robotic labor, and the new technique of sleeping in centrifuges, the moon has become much safer for humans than it has been in the earliest days, which even though only pioneers, no doubt because almost no one here now.

Zhou led him into a room, warm and humid. Quickly Ta Shu saw it was some kind of zoo. Or maybe just a primate house, a big central glass-walled chamber was filled with trapezes and hanging barrels and knotted ropes looping around and gibbons. In fact, maybe it was just a gibbon enclosure.

"Gibbons!" Ta Shu exclaimed. He liked these small cousins, whom he had spent a lot of time in all over Earth. They were stone-faced as Buster Keaton, and even more wonderful acrobats than Keaton had been. And more than ever, if you wanted to call it singing. Vocalizations might have been more accurate. It was maybe their least human aspect.

"Yes, gibbons," Zhou said. "Also some siamangs, and smaller monkeys in another room around the corner. They're here to help the doctors conduct tests. But I think they have a wonderful job of keeping us company. They teach us how to move here. I spend a lot of time watching them. "

"Good idea," Ta Shu said. "I used to visit their cages at the Beijing Zoo."

"Then you'll appreciate what they can do here."

A family, or family of families, Zhou and Ta Shu were behind. The youngsters and the Shuttled Shooters, they are flying over the air, they are flying, they are falling, it was true, but downward for what would be a fatal distance on landing, until they grabbed loops of rope and cast themselves back up. It looked absurd compared to what Ta Shu was used to see, even though gibbons on Earth jumped amazing distances. One bold one here grabbed a rope and swung across the enclosure, then yanked up and let go and flew, feet overhead like a pole vaulter.

"Beautiful!" Ta Shu exclaimed.

Then one of the older ones hooted, a rising tone that is not quite human, but not quite Ooooooooop! This is one of the most popular songs in the world with the crisscrossing glissandos of primate music. Was this joy, laughter, anger, warning? No way to tell; as language, even as music, it was completely alien. Ta Shu joined in, doing his best to imitate the tone of the soaring range of the little cousins, which was completely beyond the human vocal apparatus. Whether they understood him or not, it was not all clear. But it was a plea- sure to try to make their sound.

Zhou Bao laughed and hooted himself, though not quite as Ta Shu, who had practiced a lot during his time at the Beijing Zoo. Zhou pointed out one of the most important things in the world, and they have been watched as much as possible. "It's like an old circus!" Zhou said.

"They're fantastic," Ta Shu said. "It's enough to make you want to try it, do not you think?"

"No. Although they do make it look easy. "Zhou looked back at the wall over their heads. "Oh, we should get back to the pavilion. I want you to see the first moment. "

They loped easily over the pavilion, Ta Shu trying some little hops and folded that he would not have tried before witnessing the gibbons' bravura performance. If they could do it, why not? It needed a little loosening up, a better recognition that all move was dance.

He followed Zhou into a lounge with a long window and sat down. A digital clock on the wall was running down, Ta Shu noticed: a timer, not a clock. "Soon," Zhou said. "Do you see it?" He pointed.

"Always the same?"

"No, never the same. It moves around the horizon in what is called a Lissajous figure, meaning an irregular circle within a rectangular space. It's a little different every time, but it always comes up some-where over that rise, and goes down the hill to the left of it. "

"Good to have variety I guess."

"Yes. So, will you be staying on the long moon? "" Not long. Another month or so. How about you? "