"Barry N. Malzberg - Terminus Est" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

TERMINUS EST
by Barry N. Malzberg

We have photographed it, dropped rockets onto it, and flown around it. And now we have
landed on it. After exploration we will surely have to establish the Lunar settlements so dear to
the hearts of the science fiction writers. This is a classic theme of SF, and it has not been ignored
by the newer writers—of which Malzberg is one of the absolute best. Most of his work has been
done under a pen name, so it is pleasant to welcome the author out of the shadows of anonymity
with this nice, though more than a little gruesome story of our airless satellite.




There's nothing really doing on the Moon. Hasn't been for some time, you know; the resort business
was good for a while and there was a certain novelty appeal to the whole gig—expanding the frontiers of
the universe, and all that—but it faded away rapidly. Nowadays, the city itself is practically vacant,
except for the hundred or so (it's a pretty stable population) who hang on for their subsidized make-it
and the outlaw colonies who are rumored to be in the craters. Me, I can't stand the place; I haven't even
been off the ship to see it for the last six months, due to certain events. This may be unusual, considering
the fact that we make the jaunt three times a week, back and forth, with a two-hour layover time. The
Moon might have been something in the old days: it has the look. Some of the cabins and villas under the
Dome have a rococo elegance and, even through the masks, one can smell the residue of old litter
through the surrounding spaces. It has the aspect—the whole thing—of Coney Island late on a July
Sunday after a particularly crowded weekend, and although I'm hardly an expert on the Moon—just the
motorman on the shuttle, that's me—I sure as hell know about Coney Island. I went there often, years
ago, and I still try to get out once a month or so when it's in season. There's more action there on a bad
Friday than there has ever been in the whole history of the Moon, and I'm not averse to action. Of most
kinds.
The trouble with the Moon is that it was a fad and like most crazes it ran out quickly past a point of
diminishing return. A lot of people who I know personally got sunk in real estate and various lands of
speculation, which surrounded the nonsense of 2080—the Moon as the New Frontier, the Moon as the
next barrier for tourism and so on. The whole campaign was, of course, cooked up by no more than
twelve clever people in a total of maybe four offices and after they cleaned out, there was very little left.
Certainly, little enough left on the Moon. The entire experience of commutation is depressing, and
although I tell my wife I'm lucky to have it—I'm thirty-five and that means I'm washed up in the airlines;
it's either this or some kind of control job at Kennedy—the fact is that I do look forward, very much, to
mandatory retirement at the end of the year. I won't quit because it might blow the pension, but I'm not
going to ask for any extensions. The retirement pay will be pretty fair and what I actually want to do is to
retire to the country and raise pigs.
Pigs as companions would compare favorably with the bohemian colonies which are the last outpost
of human energy on the Moon. As I say, there are about a hundred of these people-loosely organized
into ten of what they call "clans"—living under the Dome in all kinds of peculiar relationships, and with
little references to the realities which left them there in the first place. Generally speaking, these are the
children of the resort people who went broke; they hang on because they had been raised there and
staying was easier than going back to Earth and making something of themselves. Despite the huge costs
of maintenance tinder the Dome, the Government is largely willing to foot the expense because, for
whatever reason, the bohemians keep us short of total evacuation, and it's not in human nature to admit
to a disaster as total as the Moon boondoggle was. Congress some years ago cheerfully voted the
massive appropriations that keep my little crew, my ship and myself trundling in the darkness to drop off
supplies and good news at their end, and to bring home an occasional corpse and a lot of bad news from