After that, Paulis had proven himself something of a genius in raising public interest in the project. A goodly chunk of the booster when it lifted from its pad would be paid for by public subscriptions, raised every which way from Boy Scout lemonade stalls to major corporate sponsors; in fact when it finally took off the BDB’s hide would be plastered with sponsors” logos. But Malenfant couldn’t care less about that, as long as it did ultimately take off, with him aboard.

Paulis, remarkably, was still talking, a good five minutes since Malenfant had last spoken.

“…The stack is over three hundred feet tall. You have a boat-tail of four Space Shuttle main engines here, attached to the bottom of a modified Shuttle external tank, so the lower stage is powered by liquid oxygen and hydrogen. You’ll immediately see one benefit over the standard Shuttle design, which is in-line propulsion; we have a much more robust stack here. The upper stage is built on one Shuttle main engine. Our performance to low Earth orbit—”

Malenfant touched his shoulder. “Frank. I do know what we’re building here.”

“…Yes.” Nervously, Paulis dug out a handkerchief and wiped sweat from his neck. “I apologize.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“It’s just that I’m a little over-awed.”

“Don’t be.” Malenfant was still studying the somewhat squat lines of the booster stack. “Although I feel a little awe myself. I’ve come a long way from the first rocket I ever built.”

At age seventeen, Malenfant was already building and flying model airplanes. With some high-school friends he started out trying to make a liquid-fuelled rocket, like the BDB, but failed spectacularly, and so they switched to solid fuels. They bought some gunpowder and packed it inside a cardboard tube, hoping it would burn rather than explode. “We propped it against a rock, stuck on some fins, and used a soda straw packed with powder for a fuse. We spent longer painting the damn thing than constructing it. I lit the fuse at a crouch and then ran for cover. The rocket went up fifty feet, whistling. Then it exploded with a bang—”

Paulis said, reverent, “And Emma was watching from her bedroom window, right? But she was just seven years old.”

Malenfant was aware that the girl driver, Xenia, was watching him with a hooded, judgmental gaze.

Weeks back, in the course of his campaign to build support, he’d told the story of the toy rocket to one of his PR flacks, and she had added a few homely touches — of course Emma hadn’t been watching; though she had been a neighbour at that time, at seven years old she had much more important things to do — and since then the damn anecdote had been copied around the planet.

His life story, suitably edited by the flacks, had become as well known as the Nativity story. His feelings of satisfaction at seeing the booster stack evaporated.

He really hadn’t expected this kind of attention. But just as Nemoto had predicted, and just as Vice-President Della’s political instincts had warned her, Malenfant and his brave, lunatic stunt had raised public spirits at a time when many people were suffering grievously. In the end it wouldn’t matter what he did — people seemed to understand that there was no conceivable way he was going to “solve” the problem of the Red Moon — but as long as he pursued his mission with courage and panache, he would be applauded; it was as if everybody was escaping the suffering Earth with him.

But the catch was they all wanted a piece of him.

Paulis was still talking. “That thing in the sky changed everything. It didn’t just deflect the tides. It deflected all our lives — mine included. When I woke up that first day, when I tuned my “screens to the news and saw what it was doing to us, I felt — helpless. Swapping one jerkwater Moon for another is probably a trivial event, in a Galaxy of a hundred billion suns. Who the hell knows what else goes on out there? But I’ve never felt so small. I knew at that moment that my whole life could be shaped by events I can’t control. Who knows what I might have become if not for that, knocking the world off of its axis? Who knows what I might have achieved?”

“Life is contingent,” the driver, Xenia, said unexpectedly. Her accent was vaguely east European. She reached back and covered Paulis’s hand. “All we can do is try our best for each other.”

“You’re wise,” Malenfant said.

She sat gravely, not responding.

“On our behalf, please go kick ass, sir,” Frank Paulis said.

“I have less than twelve hours before I fly back out of here, Frank. Tell me who it is I have to meet.”

The car pulled away from the viewpoint and headed towards the sprawling base. Malenfant took a last long breath of the crisp ocean air, bracing himself to be immersed in the company of people once more.

Shadow:

Shadow huddled under a tree, alone.

Claw came stalking past, panting, carrying yellow fruit in his good hand. She cowered away from him, seeking to hide in the deep brown dark of the tree’s thick trunk. He hooted and slapped her. Then he stalked on, teeth bared.

Flies clustered around her hand. The webbing between her thumb and forefinger had been split open. Her inner thighs were scratched and sore. Her belly and breasts were bruised, and a sharp pain lingered deep inside her.

Claw had used her again.

Her hands reached for food — a sucked-out fruit skin dropped by somebody high in the tree above her, a caterpillar she spotted on a leaf. But her mouth chewed without relish, and her stomach did not want the food. Agony shot upwards from her deepest belly to her throat. A thin, stinking bile spilled out of her mouth. She groaned and rolled over onto the ground, huddled over her wounded hand.

The light leaked out of the sky.

There was rustling and hooting as the people converged on the roosting site from wherever they had wandered during the day. The high-ranking women built their nests first, weaving branches together to make soft, springy beds, and settling down with their infants.

Somebody thumped Shadow’s back, or kicked it. She didn’t see who it was. She didn’t care.

She stared at the dust. She did not eat. She did not drink. She did not climb the trees to build a nest. She only nursed the scarlet pain in her belly.

Just before the last sunlight faded, she heard screeching and crashing, far above her. Big Boss was making one last show of strength for the day, leaping from nest to nest, waking the women and throwing out the men.

The noises faded, like the light.

Something smelled bad.

She held up her hand in the blue-tinged dark. Something moved in the wound between thumb and forefinger, white and purposeful. She tucked the hand away from her face, deep under her belly.

She closed her eyes again.

Daylight.

She pushed at the ground. She sat up, and slumped back against the tree root.

The people were all around her, jostling, arguing, playing, eating. They didn’t see her, here in her brown-green dark.

There was shit smeared on her fur. It was drying, but it smelled odd.

The man called Squat was trying to lead the people, to start the day. He was walking away from them, shaking a branch, stirring bright red dust that clung to his legs. He looked back at Big Boss, walked a little further, looked back again.

Big Boss followed, growling, his hair bristling all over his back. One by one the others followed, the adults feeding as they walked, the children playing with manic energy, as always.

Here was Little Boss. He squatted down on his haunches before Shadow. He was a big slab of hot, sweating muscle, bigger in height and weight than Big Boss himself. He picked up her damaged hand and turned it over. He poked at the edges of the wound, where pus oozed from broken flesh. He let go of the hand, so it fell into the dirt. He inspected her, wrinkling his nose.