Angry Moon

Epilogue One

The astronauts were being interviewed on television again, Samantha saw the next morning as she awoke in the rather small Chinese hotel room. The apartment computer had sensed her stirring awake and had turned on the television for her. On it, Paul, Susan and Benny were sitting in padded couches, electrodes attached to their limbs to stimulate the recovery of their bones and muscles, while a crowd of reporters fired a barrage of questions at them. The screen was split to show another scene at the same time. Eddie, wearing shorts and a tee shirt, sitting in a cramped, tubular metal chamber. They were all hearing the same questions, it seemed, allowing all four of them to talk amongst themselves while answering. Samantha listened for a moment, in case they were saying anything interesting, then changed the channel to listen to some classical music.

Lily was still asleep in the room's other bed, but she stirred as she heard her mother in the bathroom. When Samantha emerged, teeth brushed and bodily wastes disposed of, Lily was playing with the room's MiniVirt, the helmet still looking far too large for her small head. From the sound emerging from the speakers, it was the same game she'd liked to play in their old house. The server had apparently survived the angry moon and still had all her game progress on it.

"Bathroom, Lily!" said Samantha. "Time to brush those teeth."

The little girl grumbled as she saved the game and took off the helmet. "I don't like China," she said. "The food tastes funny!"

"Well, you'll be back in England in a day or two. You can put up with it that long."

"Will we still be living with Uncle Stuart and Auntie Jessica?"

"For a little while, until we can get a house of our own again."

Now that the moon was back in its old orbit, everyone who'd fled the coast were moving back, salvaging what they could and evaluating whether their homes could still be lived in. Even where all the contents had been destroyed, it was generally thought that the basic structure of the house would still be good. Broken windows could be repaired, fences rebuilt and furniture replaced. The housing crisis that the country, and the world, had been facing was turning out to be much less severe than had been dreaded. It would take longer for farmland that had been contaminated by seawater to recover, but over several years the rain would wash the salt out of the ground, and in the meantime it turned out that there were quite a few crops that actually liked salt. Cabbage, cauliflower and beetroot were going to be on everyone's menu for a while. Along with rationing, it seemed that no-one would be starving in Britain after all, and most of the other developed countries were coping equally well. In Africa, not so much, but the usual charities and relief organisations were already rising to the challenge.

Even better for Samantha had been the discovery that the insurance company would be paying out for the loss of their house. Most people whose houses had been destroyed were not so fortunate. The companies couldn't pay them all without bankrupting themselves, but the Act of God clause meant that they were able to avoid liability for anything caused by the moon. Samantha's house had been destroyed by arson, though, which was definitely covered, and the insurance companies were keen to pay out where they could to avoid becoming the most hated institutions in the world. They would make a big noise about the claims they could pay out on, and Samantha had even been offered a sizeable bonus if they could use her in their advertising campaigns. Samantha was suddenly quite well off, therefore, and as soon as the money actually arrived in her account she'd be able to afford a very nice property in a pleasant neighbourhood.

The moon was shining in through the window, a disc of warm yellow. An expert on the television the evening before had said that it would be a hundred years before it cooled enough for a layer of solid crust to form. Samantha thought that was a pretty good estimate. Even then, though, the crust would be thin at first and constantly broken apart by currents in the underlying magma, with fragments pushed together and crumpling up to form embryonic mountain ranges. There would be volcanoes, lots of volcanoes, many of them large enough to be visible from Earth to the naked eye. Enough volcanoes for the moon to far surpass Io as the most volcanically active moon in the solar system for thousands of years to come. And then, as the moon continued to cool and shrink over the next few million years, the surface would wrinkle up to form a network of massive mountain ranges accompanied by moonquakes severe enough to make the entire world ring like a bell. All in all, the moon would be an active and exciting place for a long time to come, very likely for the entire existence of the human race.

It would make the moon useless to mankind, of course. It would be impossible for mankind to live on the surface or mine it for resources. All the ambitious plans to use it as a stepping stone to the rest of the solar system lay in ruins. There was the water vapour in the atmosphere, of course. Water was valuable in space for all kinds of reasons, maybe valuable enough to be worth extracting it from the clouds of the moon. Maybe Lily would get her cloud city after all.

When Lily emerged from the bathroom she headed straight back for the MiniVirt, but Samantha headed her off. "Not so fast, young lady. When did you last have a bath?"

"Back in Uncle Stuart's house,"

"That's right, so get your butt back in there and get undressed, or nobody's going to want to be downwind of you."

"Where are we going to live, Mummy?" she asked.

"I don't know yet. Where would you like to live?"

"Tokyo!" sang the little girl. "Where grandma lives!"

Samantha's heart sank. "Tokyo's not there any more, Sweetie," she said. "It got hit by two earthquakes and two tsunamis. There's... There's not much of Tokyo left, I'm afraid. One day there will be. They'll rebuild it and it'll be better than ever. Perhaps we can go live there then."

"What happened to Grandma?" asked Lily anxiously.

"She's fine, Sweetie! She's living with Uncle Riko in Nagano. Perhaps we could live somewhere near there, so we could go visit, or we could stay right here in England. What would you prefer?"

Lily's brow furrowed with furious thought. "Nagano!" she said, doing a little hop.

"Okay, I'll see what property prices are like over there. In the meantime, Bath!"

Lily scurried off into the bathroom and after a couple of moments Samantha heard the water running. Then a naked Lily reappeared in the doorway. "Aren't you coming, Mummy?"

Samantha hesitated. They'd always loved to bathe together, but the last time the little girl had seen her mother naked had been just after their escape from their burning house. Lily had been bound and gagged with duct tape and left to burn alive. Samantha was worried that seeing her naked again would bring back the memories of that terrible time. She'd resigned herself to never being able to share a bath with her little girl again, something else those three evil men had taken from them.

"You go ahead without me," she said therefore. "You're getting too old to share a bath with me anymore. You're getting to be a big girl now."

"No I'm not," cried Lily, trotting forward and taking her hand. "Please, Mummy! I'm not too big yet! I'm not!"

Samantha felt a great relief filling her. Lily hadn't been traumatised by her ordeal. In fact, she seemed to think it had been a great adventure! Her fears that she might have been permanently scarred by it seemed to be unfounded.

"One day you'll be too big," she said.

"I know," said Lily sadly, as if she'd been told that she would die one day. "But not yet. Not yet, Mummy. Come on! Come on!"

She pulled at Samantha's hand, dragging her towards the bathroom, and with a laugh of joy and relief Samantha gave in.