The Moon is Green Read online

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  _THE MOON IS GREEN_

  By FRITZ LEIBER

  Illustrated by DAVID STONE

  _Anybody who wanted to escape death could, by paying a very simple price--denial of life!_

  "Effie! What the devil are you up to?"

  Her husband's voice, chopping through her mood of terrified rapture,made her heart jump like a startled cat, yet by some miracle of feminineself-control her body did not show a tremor.

  _Dear God_, she thought, _he mustn't see it. It's so beautiful, and healways kills beauty._

  "I'm just looking at the Moon," she said listlessly. "It's green."

  _Mustn't, mustn't see it._ And now, with luck, he wouldn't. For theface, as if it also heard and sensed the menace in the voice, wasmoving back from the window's glow into the outside dark, but slowly,reluctantly, and still faunlike, pleading, cajoling, tempting, andincredibly beautiful.

  "Close the shutters at once, you little fool, and come away from thewindow!"

  "Green as a beer bottle," she went on dreamily, "green as emeralds,green as leaves with sunshine striking through them and green grass tolie on." She couldn't help saying those last words. They were her tokento the face, even though it couldn't hear.

  "Effie!"

  She knew what that last tone meant. Wearily she swung shut the ponderouslead inner shutters and drove home the heavy bolts. That hurt herfingers; it always did, but he mustn't know that.

  "You know that those shutters are not to be touched! Not for five moreyears at least!"

  "I only wanted to look at the Moon," she said, turning around, and thenit was all gone--the face, the night, the Moon, the magic--and she wasback in the grubby, stale little hole, facing an angry, stale littleman. It was then that the eternal thud of the air-conditioning fans andthe crackle of the electrostatic precipitators that sieved out the dustreached her consciousness again like the bite of a dentist's drill.

  "Only wanted to look at the Moon!" he mimicked her in falsetto. "Onlywanted to die like a little fool and make me that much more ashamed ofyou!" Then his voice went gruff and professional. "Here, countyourself."

  She silently took the Geiger counter he held at arm's length, waiteduntil it settled down to a steady ticking slower than a clock--due onlyto cosmic rays and indicating nothing dangerous--and then began to combher body with the instrument. First her head and shoulders, then outalong her arms and back along their under side. There was somethingoddly voluptuous about her movements, although her features were grayand sagging.

  The ticking did not change its tempo until she came to her waist. Thenit suddenly spurted, clicking faster and faster. Her husband gave anexcited grunt, took a quick step forward, froze. She goggled for amoment in fear, then grinned foolishly, dug in the pocket of her grimyapron and guiltily pulled out a wristwatch.

  He grabbed it as it dangled from her fingers, saw that it had a radiumdial, cursed, heaved it up as if to smash it on the floor, but insteadput it carefully on the table.

  "You imbecile, you incredible imbecile," he softly chanted to himselfthrough clenched teeth, with eyes half closed.

  She shrugged faintly, put the Geiger counter on the table, and stoodthere slumped.

  He waited until the chanting had soothed his anger, before speakingagain. He said quietly, "I do suppose you still realize the sort ofworld you're living in?"

  * * * * *

  She nodded slowly, staring at nothingness. Oh, she realized, all right,realized only too well. It was the world that hadn't realized. The worldthat had gone on stockpiling hydrogen bombs. The world that had putthose bombs in cobalt shells, although it had promised it wouldn't,because the cobalt made them much more terrible and cost no more. Theworld that had started throwing those bombs, always telling itself thatit hadn't thrown enough of them yet to make the air really dangerouswith the deadly radioactive dust that came from the cobalt. Thrown themand kept on throwing until the danger point, where air and ground wouldbecome fatal to all human life, was approached.

  Then, for about a month, the two great enemy groups had hesitated. Andthen each, unknown to the other, had decided it could risk one lastgigantic and decisive attack without exceeding the danger point. It hadbeen planned to strip off the cobalt cases, but someone forgot and thenthere wasn't time. Besides, the military scientists of each group wereconfident that the lands of the other had got the most dust. The twoattacks came within an hour of each other.

  After that, the Fury. The Fury of doomed men who think only of takingwith them as many as possible of the enemy, and in this case--theyhoped--all. The Fury of suicides who know they have botched up life forgood. The Fury of cocksure men who realize they have been outsmarted byfate, the enemy, and themselves, and know that they will never be ableto improvise a defense when arraigned before the high court ofhistory--and whose unadmitted hope is that there will be no high courtof history left to arraign them. More cobalt bombs were dropped duringthe Fury than in all the preceding years of the war.

  After the Fury, the Terror. Men and women with death sifting into theirbones through their nostrils and skin, fighting for bare survival undera dust-hazed sky that played fantastic tricks with the light of Sun andMoon, like the dust from Krakatoa that drifted around the world foryears. Cities, countryside, and air were alike poisoned, alive withdeadly radiation.

  The only realistic chance for continued existence was to retire, for thefive or ten years the radiation would remain deadly, to some well-sealedand radiation-shielded place that must also be copiously supplied withfood, water, power, and a means of air-conditioning.

  Such places were prepared by the far-seeing, seized by the stronger,defended by them in turn against the desperate hordes of the dying ...until there were no more of those.

  After that, only the waiting, the enduring. A mole's existence, withoutbeauty or tenderness, but with fear and guilt as constant companions.Never to see the Sun, to walk among the trees--or even know if therewere still trees.

  Oh, yes, she realized what the world was like.

  * * * * *

  "You understand, too, I suppose, that we were allowed to reclaim thisground-level apartment only because the Committee believed us to beresponsible people, and because I've been making a damn good showinglately?"

  "Yes, Hank."

  "I thought you were eager for privacy. You want to go back to thebasement tenements?"

  _God, no! Anything rather than that fetid huddling, that shamelesscommunal sprawl. And yet, was this so much better? The nearness to thesurface was meaningless; it only tantalized. And the privacy magnifiedHank._

  She shook her head dutifully and said, "No, Hank."

  "Then why aren't you careful? I've told you a million times, Effie, thatglass is no protection against the dust that's outside that window. Thelead shutter must never be touched! If you make one single slip likethat and it gets around, the Committee will send us back to the lowerlevels without blinking an eye. And they'll think twice before trustingme with any important jobs."

  "I'm sorry, Hank."

  "Sorry? What's the good of being sorry? The only thing that counts isnever to make a slip! Why the devil do you do such things, Effie? Whatdrives you to it?"

  She swallowed. "It's just that it's so dreadful being cooped up likethis," she said hesitatingly, "shut away from the sky and the Sun. I'mjust hungry for a little beauty."

  "And do you suppose I'm not?" he demanded. "Don't you suppose I want toget outside, too, and be carefree and have a good time? But I'm not sodamn selfish about it. I want my children to enjoy the Sun, and mychildren's children. Don't you see that that's
the all-important thingand that we have to behave like mature adults and make sacrifices forit?"

  "Yes, Hank."

  He surveyed her slumped figure, her lined and listless face. "You're afine one to talk about hunger for beauty," he told her. Then his voicegrew softer, more deliberate. "You haven't forgotten, have you, Effie,that until last month the Committee was so concerned about yoursterility? That they were about to enter my name on the list of thosewaiting to be allotted a free woman? Very high on the list, too!"

  She could nod even at that one, but not while looking at him. She turnedaway. She knew very well that the Committee was justified in worryingabout the birth rate. When the community finally moved back to thesurface again, each additional healthy