Fantasy & Science Fiction, JanuaryFebruary 2021 by Spilogale Inc

Author:Spilogale Inc. [Spilogale Inc.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spilogale Inc.
Published: 2020-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

Captured

Wima explained how she had infiltrated the corps of Moon Maidens. She told of the many indignities she had suffered in the process.

Her dark eyes were hard with righteous anger, but Leon perceived her sensitive soul beneath the rage. His heart went out to her.

The Brotherhood of Lunar Workers asked Geron to acclimate Leon to life among the rebels, and Geron, with the help of his sister, took Leon under his wing. Like a brother, Geron accepted Leon's peculiar Earth ways without judgment.

During his weeks among the rebel humans, Leon learned much about the social structure of the Moon. Spying with Wima and Geron, he observed the myriad types of Selenites. They ranged in size from as small as terriers to as large as bison. He saw the dim-witted, nimble herders who, during the two-week lunar day, led the great mooncalves to feed on the phantasmagoria of strange plants that sprouted in the sunlit craters pocking the surface. He saw the Grand Lunar's attendants, ones with overdeveloped eyes and ears and brains, those suited to memory and those suited to action. He saw the burrowing miners with their dim eyes, sharp claws, and blunt faces.

"In the Moon," Geron explained to him, "every citizen knows his place. He is born to that place, and the elaborate discipline of training, education, and surgery he undergoes fits him at last so completely to it that he has neither ideas, nor mental capacity, nor physical ability, for any purpose beyond it."

"This is horrifying," Leon said. "But how have you in the Lunar Brotherhood escaped this cruel fate?"

"Our fate is more subtly cruel," said Wima. "The Grand Lunar knows that if he wishes to conquer the Earth he must have humans to serve as go-betweens, so, at the risk of having us rebel, some of us—the ones he allows you earthlings to see—are left to grow naturally to adulthood. Even capitalists might balk at making common cause with an insect race that enslaves all humans."

"Though our capitalists also make slaves of the working class," Leon said. "And like the Selenites, they would prefer servants so accustomed to their place that they could not imagine any other."

Wima touched his arm. "You understand us completely," she said.

"But how are you able to recruit others to your cause? You must not be allowed to publish newspapers, to speak in public."

"We recruit from the unemployed."

"The unemployed! Do you have unemployment here?"

"I do not know how your world works," Wima said, "but here there are times when the need for machine tenders is less. During those times when there is no work for humans to do, rather than spend resources on feeding and housing them, the Selenites administer powerful drugs to the workers that put them to sleep. Asleep, they may be stashed in crowded galleries and empty caverns, and so long as they are awakened before they starve, they do not need to be fed.

"Then, when some industrial accident kills a few thousand workers—and typically more than twenty thousand die every year—they simply waken an equivalent number to replace them.

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