Most folks like to think of themselves as sitting on the pinnacle of evolution. Participating in it as an ongoing process is a lot less comfortable!
Trevor York strode into the New York terminus of the Holmes Door as though he owned it. Self-confident to the point of arrogance, he paused, eyeing the bare rock of the Crisium terminus, visible through the Door itself.
He turned to his cameraman. “Get some shots from here. I doubt we’ll use more than a few seconds, but you never know—we might need some fill.”
The cameraman slowly panned the room, pausing on the Door, the freight desk, and the ticket counter. He then nodded to York. “Got it.”
Three other people had come in behind them, fanning out to either side. One man and two attractive women, one blonde, one brunette. York checked to make sure that his entourage was intact before proceeding across the tiled floor towards the Door.
So far, the Door personnel had ignored them. After all, the Crisium to New York Door had only reopened six weeks ago and there were still occasional news crews reporting on it.
It was only when the man with the carefully coiffed hair angled across the floor as though to cross over into Crisium that they began to pay attention to him. One of the freight handlers was the first to reach him.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t go to Crisium without paying.” He pointed towards the ticket counter. “You can buy tickets over there.”
York glanced at his cameraman. “Bob,” was all he said.
The cameraman was already recording. “Ready.”
York drew himself up to his full height. “I’m Trevor York. I’m here to do a special about the Holmes Door.” The handler’s eyes narrowed as he looked over the man carefully. “You look a little like him… but I thought York was taller.”
Lips thinning, York stared at the young man. “Are you saying I can’t go to Crisium?”
“Not without paying.”
“But I’m Trevor York.”
The handler grinned insolently. “Yeah… well, the way I see it, there are two possibilities. One is that you’re not Trevor York, in which case you’re a mortal human being, and you and your friends can damn well buy tickets like everyone else. The other possibility, of course, is that you
“Oh, I’m Trevor York, all right—”
“—In which case I clearly remember the hatchet job your show did on Alan Lister a couple of months ago. This may come as a rude spark, but not everyone thinks you’re the Second Coming.” He turned and walked away, not waiting for York’s reply.
York forced a tight smile. “Bob.”
“Don’t worry. I switched off after the first few seconds. We don’t need clips like that.”
“Thank you.” He turned to the other man with the air of a man whose patience is being tested. “Jake, will you kindly pay these annoying people so we can proceed?”
“Yes, sir.” Jake headed for the ticket counter at a fast walk.
“OK, folks. We’ve got a show to do. Sue, how do I look?”
The blonde eyed him critically. “Not too bad. Hang on a second.” She reached into the voluminous bag hanging from her shoulder and pulled out the smallest and finest of the three brushes she carried. Working swiftly, delicately, she barely skimmed the surface of his hair. “OK, you’re tops.”
He winked at her. “Thanks.” He half-turned. “Bob.”
“Ready.”
He took six steps and turned to face the camera. “This is Trevor York, coming to you from the New York side of the Holmes Door linking Earth to Luna. We’re here to see just what the Lunarians have done with the cities that you paid for with your tax dollars. Is it true that the least paid person in Crisium makes nearly twice what an average banker does here in New York? Why has Crisium rejected the applications of over 97 percent of the people who have tried to emigrate there? Is Luna at the root of our current economic crisis here on Earth? We’ll find the answers to these questions and more. After all… you have a right to know.”
Bob, knowing his cue, switched off his camera after York’s oft-repeated tag line. “Got it.”
“Good work. What’s taking Jake so long?”
“He’s coming,” Sue said. “They wouldn’t let him go to the head of the line.”
York shook his head sadly. “It looks as though the people here in New York have a touch of this arrogance we’ve been hearing about in Luna.” “Isn’t the guy you were just talking to the fellow who got caught on the Lunar side when they closed the Door?” Sue asked. “Mike… I forgot his last name.”
York shrugged. “So?”
“If so, he lives on Luna now. He’s not from Earth any more.”
Nodding slowly, York thought this over. “That might be an interesting slant. They’re keeping jobs for their own people. Jobs that we desperately need here on Earth. His taxes get paid to Crisium, instead of Washington… our government runs ever deeper in the hole…” He smiled warmly at her. “Thanks, Sue.”
Jake arrived, clutching five tickets. “They’re already punched. We can go”
At the threshold of the Door, York paused. “Bob, go ahead. Get a shot of me coming across. Brigitte, Sue, Jake, stay clear.”
“What if we just go on over?” Sue asked.
York nodded. “You be the guinea pigs. I’ll bring up the rear.”
Sue, Bob, and Jake crossed under their own power. Brigitte, as befitted her status as York’s current paramour, was handed over with exaggerated care. They were all careful stepping into Luna’s lower gravity; none fell.
Bob took several quick paces back, then turned to catch Trevor York as he majestically swept over the diagonal red and yellow lines demarcating the Door singularity, with its attendant six to one gravity ratio.
York fell.
Instantly, all four of his followers were at his side, helping him to his feet. Without a change in expression, he said, “Bob, I’d like to try that again.”
“Ready.” His cameraman’s expression was neutral.
Careful not to appear afraid, York cautiously recrossed the threshold of the Door, turned, and crossed back. The second crossing was successful. He looked like a pro.
“See? Nothing to it.”
No one mentioned that they had crossed the first time without problems.
The handler stood watching this from the freight desk on the New York side of the Door. The man behind the counter asked, “You didn’t offer him a mat?” He gestured at the stack of thick blue foam mats they spread across the threshold so pedestrians would not hurt themselves if they fell.
“He wouldn’t have used one,” Mike Ordner said, shaking his head. “It wouldn’t fit his image. Besides, his ego’s so puffed up I’m surprised he ever touched the floor. I’d have thought it would work like a crash bag.”
The man behind the counter chuckled. “I’ve always heard that those things inflate pretty easily.”
Ordner smiled appreciatively, still watching York and his entourage. “I know my ego would be pretty inflated if I had either one of those women with me. That dark-haired one is something else.”
“Wanna see her up close?”
Ordner raised an eyebrow.
“They’ve got some luggage that needs to be carried across.”
“Consider it done. Maybe they’ll want it taken to their rooms. Maybe the brunette will—”
“Dream on, bud. If you don’t get your ass in motion, they’re going to take off without you.”
Without taking his eyes off of the woman, Ordner groped for the leather gloves lying next to his elbow on the counter. “If I’m not back in ten minutes,
Anne Lister’s face popped magically into being across the desk from her husband’s. He did not notice, being engrossed in pawing through a drawer, trying to find something, obviously unsuccessfully.
She watched him silently for a few moments, then said softly, “Other side, middle drawer.”
Startled, he straightened so quickly that he overbalanced and nearly fell backwards. “Heavens, woman! I thought I told you not to do that! You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
She grinned. “It’s one of the few perks to being married to a famous man. I get to see the human side of him from time to time.”
“Famous!”
“Being Commissioner of Crisium has made your name a household word on two planets. That’s fame enough for most.”
“Infamy is more like it. Don’t think for a moment that I’m not aware that they hang me in effigy twenty times a day down on Earth.”
She see-sawed a hand. “Fame… infamy, two sides of the same coin.”
“Maybe so, but it’s a coin that tarnishes easily,” he grumbled.
She pretended to pout. “Since you’re in such a good mood, I think I’ll just save my news for later.”
“OK, OK… with head properly bowed in abject humility, I stand corrected. What, lovely wife, is it that you wished to tell me?”
She brightened immediately. “Do you want the good news first or the bad news?”
Alan shuddered. “Not that again. Somehow, the bad news always seems to outweigh the good.”
Her image grinned at him. “Maybe not this time,” she teased.
Curiosity piqued, he raised one eyebrow. “Really, now? Well, let’s dispense with the bad news first, rather than poison the good news.”
“Trevor York has singled you out for his attentions. He wants an exclusive interview.”
“Trevor
“You have a right to know….” she intoned, managing to catch a small hint of the man’s self-important air.
Alan frowned. “Wait a minute.
He… wasn’t he…” He snapped his fingers. “Got it! He was the guy down on Earth who ran a thing saying that I was a—”
“Shrewd political manipulator, who cold-bloodedly, and with malice aforethought, did single-handedly cause the collapse and ruin of the economy of the entire United States, along with Canada, Mexico, and by implication, the entire world. Yup, that’s him.”
“All without ever bothering to talk to me.”
“Well, the Door was closed at the time. Because of you. Something that he was quick to remind everyone. He claimed that he would have talked to you if he could.”
“Huh! Radio waves still work. He could have called.”
His wife clucked and wagged a finger. “Naughty, naughty. Mustn’t wreck the nice man’s image as the defender of the downtrodden.”
Alan spat a carefully chosen Anglo-Saxon monosyllable.
“Shall I tell him that your schedule is full?”
Lister pursed his lips and thought. “It’s tempting. No, let me face this guy down. Tell you what. We’ll trip him at his own game. While I’m talking to him, let’s make our own recording of the interview. It might prove interesting to compare his edited version with ours.”
“I take it that you want our recording made on the sly?”
Alan bit his lip and looked thoughtful. “I may tell him about it, or I may not. It all depends on his attitude. That other piece was rather uncalled for.”
She grinned maliciously at him. “The hard copy report on utility installation in the new level is in the middle drawer on your left, not the right.”
Confused by the non sequitur, Alan involuntarily glanced down at the drawer in question. His head popped back up.
He broke off when he found that her image had dwindled to the size of his palm. Like the Cheshire Cat, all that remained was her smile.
“Anne?” he began.
“I’m pregnant,” she said. And her smile winked out of existence, leaving him gaping at empty air.
The worse things got, the better, as far as Conner’s Corner was concerned. A small bar in Detroit, it had prospered as out of work people began to congregate there to drown their sorrows in a mug of beer.
Hank and Carol Willis arrived early, the better to stake out their traditional booth near the end of the bar. They smiled and nodded at the bartender as they passed, slipping between stools and tables already occupied by people they did not know.
Carol frowned as she looked around. “Jeez, I’m not so sure but what this isn’t too much of a good thing. I mean, look at all these people.”
Hank shrugged philosophically. “Sooner or later we’ll meet a few of them. Then they won’t seem like strangers any more.”
“You’re not jealous, are you?” her husband teased.
She started to deny it, then relented. “Yeah, I guess I am. This used to be our personal bar, if you know what I mean. Now it’s
The bartender arrived. “And what can I get for you?”
“Table service, yet! What happened to just yelling for what I wanted?” Carol groused.
“I don’t mind if it’s just you guys, but if they,” he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the crowd, “started doing that, we’d be reduced to bedlam within an hour.”
Carol sighed and ordered. After he had gone for their drinks, she said, “See what I mean? This place ain’t what it used to be.”
As the bartender returned with their beer, Reg Arnold shouldered past him and slid into the booth across from Hank and Carol. “Heard the latest?” he demanded angrily.
“Which latest?” Carol asked.
“What do you want to drink, Reg?” the bartender asked.
Irritated by the interruption, Reg snapped, “Bring me a Busker’s Ale… and make sure it’s cold this time.” Ignoring the arched eyebrow of the bartender, he said to Carol. “GM’s not going to reopen the plant. Ever.”
Hank frowned. “So? You don’t work there any more. Why should it matter to you?”
Reg blinked. “But don’t you understand? That means that I’ll never get my job back.”
“It wasn’t as though you expected them to ask you to come back next week, Reg,” Hank said. “It’s been, what, a year since you worked over there. They’re not going to keep making cars when no one is buying them.”
“But the Union said—”
Wearily, Carol put in, “Reg, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the UAW can’t
Reg stared at her as though she were addled. “I can’t believe you said that.”
Carol rolled her eyes and said to her husband, “You talk to him. I’ll just get frustrated.”
“I have a
“Reg, I don’t recall that the Bill of Rights mentions the right to a job. And I certainly don’t think that anyone has singled you out as having a lock on a job at a GM plant, particularly one that’s closed.”
Reg glared at him, muttering under his breath. He took a swallow from his mug. “But how am I supposed to pay my bills if I don’t have a job? Why doesn’t the government do something?”
Carol said, “Somebody was telling me the other day that it was the government that got us into this depression. They were pretty persuasive.”
Hank shook his head. “I’ve had a long time to think this over, Reg. At first, I was inclined to agree with you, but if you look back before Commissioner Lister closed the Door, there were already signs of trouble.”
“And the Door’s open again,” Carol added. “If that were all there were to it, then things would be starting to pick up, right? I mean, sure, it might take time, but you’d see some kind of activity. Face it, Reg, Luna just isn’t
Reg sat back angrily against the back of the bench.
“If you’re serious about wanting to get back to work, go up to Luna. They’ve got jobs,” Hank suggested reasonably.
“If you think that’s such a good idea, why don’t you go?” Reg shot back.
Hank shrugged. “I’ve got a job here. It may not pay as much as I’d like, but it keeps the bills paid. Besides, this is home to me.”
“Well, what if it’s home to me too, dammit?” Reg demanded. “Why can’t a man have the necessities? I want to stay on Earth. I want to be near people I know. I want—”
“But you’re subsisting on unemployment, Reg,” Carol pointed out. “Is that how you want to live the rest of your life?”
“Of course not! I want my job back! I want—” He stopped, staring at them. Suddenly, he picked up his mug, tossed back the remaining ale, and slid out of the booth. “I thought you two, of all people, understood. Clearly, you don’t have a clue.” He turned and stormed towards the door.
Carol turned to her husband. “Is he right, or are we? I thought the idea was to do the best you could with the life you were given.”
Hank sighed. “I think that for Reg, the emphasis is increasingly on the word given. And he wants it on a silver platter.”
The paint was still wet by the time the Crisium chief of police, Samuel Watts, got there. He stood looking at the wall of the corridor for some time without saying a word. He walked back and forth, examining it from different angles. He sniffed at the paint. Gently, he pressed one fingertip against the very edge of the image. “Whoever painted this did it during the night while the corridors were empty,” he said, almost to himself.
“Well?” inquired the young rookie standing a respectful distance behind him. “Shouldn’t we have it scrubbed off before it dries?”
Watts stepped back and examined the picture as a whole, head cocked to one side. “I don’t get it,” he finally said.
The rookie glanced sharply at his superior. “Obviously, it’s the Man in the Moon, and they painted in Lister’s face.”
Watts grinned lopsidedly. “No, Brady, I can see that. What I don’t see is why. This isn’t your ordinary graffiti. This is someone who’s had serious training in art. This took time.
Look at the way they shaded Mare Imbrium to give depth to Alan’s eye.”
“But the craters are all wrong,” Brady complained.
Watts shrugged, unconcerned. “Call it artistic license. Whoever did this needed to move things around a bit to make it look more like Alan. It helps get the point across.”
“It’s still graffiti.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, and so were the other two. I’m not an art critic, but it looks like it’s probably the same artist.”
“But, shouldn’t we be trying to arrest them or something?”
“On what charge? The walls belong to the city, and Crisium doesn’t have a statute against graffiti.” He turned to leave.
“Shouldn’t we remove it?” Brady asked again.
Watts glanced back over his shoulder and grinned. “Nah, leave it. I kinda like it.”
He walked away, leaving the rookie staring, baffled, at his back.
Lewis Cantner stormed into Alan Lister’s office. He glared sideways at Anne’s image hovering next to him.
“… And I didn’t get the lock thrown in time to stop him,” she was saying. Her face puckered at the sight of Cantner. “Well, I see he’s there now. I’m sure that he’ll tell you all about it.” Her image winked out.
Cantner snorted angrily at the air where Anne’s face had been. “Why can’t you have a regular secretary like everyone else? What good is talking to a projection?”
“Anne
Anne’s image popped back into existence. “Alan, should I have Lewis removed?”
Cantner’s head swiveled. “Get out of here, you meddlesome bitch!” he bellowed.
Anne’s eyes narrowed. Her voice became dangerously quiet and controlled. “Lewis, I’ve never liked you, but I was always willing to tolerate you. But I’ve got news, fella. You just made yourself an enemy.” She vanished.
Cantner snarled. “Jesus! You think you’re the greatest, don’t you? Sit here in your little office and run peoples’ lives for them. Well, maybe some people don’t mind, but I’m here to tell you
Alan pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to maintain his mental balance. “Lewis, should I assume that you came here to tell me something? Can you do so in plain English? You’re yelling so loud I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
“Smartass,” Cantner grumbled, but he moderated his tone somewhat. “I just came from closing the doors to my restaurant. I’m out of business and it’s your fault.”
Alan nodded slowly. “I see. And, of course, that means you’ll have to resign as president of the Crisium Business Group, since they don’t have members who aren’t active businessmen or women. Especially the president.”
Cantner glared at him in silence.
“So you’re hurt and angry because you’re losing a position of power, and you’re here to take it out on me.” Alan leaned back in his seat, and gazed at Cantner contemplatively. “Seems to me I recall predicting that you’d have trouble along these lines, Lewis. Your restaurant never was as good as your competitors’. If everyone else felt that way, then you were bound to go out of business sooner or later. Frankly, I’m surprised that you’ve lasted this long.”
“Well, of
“Says who? Your opinion doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.”
Alan gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Tell you what. We don’t live in the twenty-first century for nothing. Have you got the guts to put it to a vote? We’ll put it out on the city network for discussion. Question—was the food good or not? I’ll stand back. We’ll let someone else write it up and supervise the tally.”
“Wouldn’t prove a thing,” Cantner grumped, arms folded.
Alan looked surprised. “The citizens of Crisium, whether individually or in groups, were the people who decided whether or not to eat at your restaurant, Lewis. If they’ve got something to say about the situation, let them.” His eyes narrowed. “Tell you what, I’ll go you one better. If you get, let’s make it, 75 percent of the vote in favor, I will spot you the money to reopen out of my own pocket.”
“It’s too late, Lister. You closed the Holmes Door, and things haven’t been the same since.”
Alan blinked in surprise. “That’s the first true thing you’ve said since you entered this office. Although, as usual, you’ve got it backwards.”
“I mean it. There’s no traffic.”
Suddenly weary, Alan rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “This couldn’t possibly be related to the fact that there’s a full-fledged Depression down on Earth, could it? Lewis, we’ve been over this before. People can’t spend what they don’t have.”
“Some have money!” Cantner insisted.
“If you’re so all-fired certain that there are crowds of people on Earth with fists full of money, then I’ll give you some free business advice… have you thought about advertising on Earth?”
“I already have.”
Alan couldn’t help himself. He laughed. The patent foolishness of advertising to people who were in no position to respond was just too choice. The look of outrage on Cantner’s face was so comical that he laughed even harder.
“What’s so damned funny?” Cantner demanded angrily.
“You! I told you once that the forces of evolution would take you out, and you just proved it conclusively. Now, rather than take the blame, you’re pointing fingers at everyone else. Lewis, no one made you spend your advertising dollars on Earth. You thought it over, came to a conclusion which any child could have told you was erroneous, and wasted your money utterly. You couldn’t have squandered your advertising budget any more efficiently if you had burned it.” Alan shook his head. “Lewis, you’re a fool. You’ve done yourself a favor by going out of business.”
Cantner surged to his feet, glaring down at Alan. ‘You haven’t heard the last of me!”
“I believe you. The offer to spot you the money to reopen stands until seventeen tomorrow afternoon. The challenge to put it to a vote on the city network is good indefinitely. Now, get out of here. I have work to do.”
Cantner stalked towards the door. It opened just before he got to it. Samuel Watts was standing on the other side.
Watts looked over Cantner’s shoulder to Alan. “Everything OK?”
Cantner stared at him. “I was just leaving.” He pushed past Watts.
Watts grunted, watching Cantner’s retreat, then turned back to Lister and said, “Anne called and asked if I would drop by and show our friend Cantner the way out. Looks as though you did OK without me.”
Alan took a deep breath. It was less steady than he would have liked. “He’s promised me that I haven’t heard the last of him. For the time being, though, I think he’s run out of steam.”
“Lousy coffee that man served,” Watts observed, as he entered the office. He lowered himself into the chair across from Alan. “As long as I’m here, what do you want to do about these paintings in the corridors?”
“Honestly, I haven’t had time to think about it. What do you recommend?”
Watts grinned. “I know this sounds crazy, but I think we ought to leave them. They’re good, and they brighten up the corridors.”
Alan chuckled. “I hear there’s one of me, now.”
Watts nodded. “It’s cleverly done. You’ll like it, I think.”
“If you think they won’t hurt anything, let it go for a while. If nothing else, it sounds like it will be good comic relief.”
Watts nodded and left.
Seconds later, Anne’s face faded in slowly, on Alan’s side of the desk, for a change.
“Are they gone yet?”
He glanced at her. “Who? Cantner and Watts?”
She nodded. “I thought it might be a good idea to send for reinforcements.”
“Fortunately, I didn’t need Sam, but I appreciate the thought. It could easily have gone the other way.”
She grimaced. “If I miscarry, it’ll be Cantner’s fault,” she said, and disappeared.
Reg Arnold ran through the rain with his coat pulled over his head. On reaching the door to Conner’s Corner, he skidded on the wet sidewalk, caught himself on the jamb, and hurriedly slipped inside. He barely grunted at the bartender as he passed, and slid into the empty booth at the back. There were few patrons on such a wet night.
“What’ll it be, Reg?” the bartender asked.
“Gimme a Busker’s, I guess,” he said morosely.
Moments later, the ale arrived. Nursing it slowly but steadily, he looked around. None of the traditional crew were in; if they had been, he would have found them already seated in the booth. He didn’t recognize anyone else.
It was almost an hour and four Buskers’s later before Sheila Haskel came in. She stopped and shook off her umbrella outside, then leaned it next to the door. She spoke to the bartender for a minute and came to the booth.
“Hey, Reg, how are you? Seems like you and I’ve missed each other the last week or two. You were here when I wasn’t, and vice versa.”
He looked blearily at her. “I’m going up to Luna,” he said without preamble.
She glanced at Reg’s nearly empty mug, then over at the bartender, who gave her a carefully expressionless look in response. “Um, Reg, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“You mean, have I thought it over and all that?”
She nodded.
He tipped his mug up on one side and swiveled it back and forth. “Yeah.”
“When did you decide this?”
“Today. This morning.”
“But why? I thought you hated Luna.”
“It’s…” He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it, OK? It just looks like the only thing left for me to do.”
“When are you going? Have you decided yet?”
“I’m going to apply tomorrow. Supposedly, they’re able to reply pretty quickly. I just came in tonight to say good-bye to all you guys. I think you’re all assholes and idiots, but I’m going to miss you. Funny, the way you get hooked on people, isn’t it?”
Touched by his bumbling, crude attempt to show his feelings, she reached out and covered his hand with hers. “It’s OK, I know what you’re saying.”
He looked at her, then his eyes fell to where her hand rested on his. “You wouldn’t want to… uh…” He gave up. “Never mind.”
She waited until his eyes came back up. She smiled slightly and shrugged. “Just might. You never know. Besides, someone’s going to have to drive you home. You’re obviously in no condition to do so yourself.”
Reg took a deep breath, slid to the end of the booth, then pivoted and sat heavily on her side. “Sheila, did you know that you’re an angel?”
An elaborate graphics terminal sat unused while Roberta Lith sketched by hand an intricate web of lines on a pad of paper next to her elbow. Small blocks, neatly labeled with part numbers, reached out geometric tendrils towards other blocks. Occasional clusters of discrete UV optical transistors appeared when no commercially available integrated circuits would do.
“Roberta?” came the voice from behind her.
“Hmmm?” She continued to trace in parts of the circuit.
Jennifer Holmes, inventor of the Holmes Door, bent to look over Roberta’s shoulder at the schematic. “I’ve never been able to decide whether you use a pad and pencil because you’re from Earth or because you have this innate need to be an anachronism.”
Roberta laughed. “Neither. I get a better intuitive feel for the circuit when I do it by hand. That thing,” she gestured at the terminal, “has no soul.”
“Is that the feedback loop for the secondary sampler?”
“I finished that hours ago.” She made a long reach and grasped the corner of a piece of paper, which she turned and handed to Jenny. “I changed my mind at the last minute. You know how we had talked about running the time base up another couple of meg? I thought of another way to do it. If you look over towards the clock for the logic circuits, you’ll see that I’ve pulled the pulse from there, instead. That way we can dispense with the phase check, they’ll already be in sync.”
Jenny studied the schematic for a moment. “Cute. Kills two birds with one stone.”
Roberta shrugged. “If it doesn’t work, we can always go back to doing it the way we discussed, but this looked like a more elegant solution.”
“I’m not sure it matters how we get the job done, just as long as we get there. Alan asked me again the other day about the Mars Door.”
“He really wants to go, doesn’t he?” Roberta asked.
Jenny nodded. “He first asked me about this the night of the vote for independence. I don’t think a week has passed since then that he hasn’t checked in, just to see how things are getting along. Mark my words—we’re going to Mars.”
“But… I mean, we work for Lunar Magnetics. How did he get them to spring for the project?”
Jenny laughed. “I’ve known Alan for years, and I’ve never known him to
Roberta frowned. “That doesn’t sound like the Alan
“Oh, don’t get me wrong—just between you and me, I’ve carried a bit of a crush on the man ever since I first met him, but I’ve seen him be tough as steel when the mood strikes him.” A distant look came into her eyes. “Sometimes he scares me.”
“Alan, scary? Oh, come on, now! He’s just a teddy bear.”
Jenny smiled, still distant. “Never forget, Roberta. Even cuddly bears have teeth and claws…”
Edgar Rice was beginning to take an interest in the graffiti that was popping up in random corridors around town. Part of it was the story value—after all, he was a newsman at heart, and
The latest one showed an asteroid. The pockmarks and scars of millennia in space had been cleverly combined to make a recognizable face. Trevor York. Somehow, the artist had contrived the impersonal stone surface of the asteroid into something ugly and frightening, a clever mockery of Trevor York’s well known fascination with his own looks.
Just to see what reaction it would provoke, Rice had made certain that a reproduction of the painting had made it onto the first screen of the
So far, York had made no public response. Rice, however, was sure that it was going to have a place in whatever show York was concocting about Crisium.
There was one other thing about the picture in the corridor. The asteroid was clearly on a collision course with a much larger body in the background: Luna.
Anne Lister sat behind the expansive semicircular desk she used in her secretarial duties for her husband. It was, in feet, considerably larger than her husband’s desk, something that had been fodder for much joking back when she had set up her office in their home. Now, it was simply accepted as a fact of life that she needed multiple terminals to keep her finger on the pulse of the city.
Right now, she was reading through something that the city computer had kicked up to her for resolution. Brows furrowed, she pondered it, then, since it would involve setting a precedent, decided to present the situation to Alan.
She had the computer inquire as to whether he was busy at the moment. He wasn’t. “Alan,” she began, as her image materialized in his office, “I’ve got a problem.”
“What is it, babe?”
“We’ve got a guy who has immigrated from Earth. He applied—well, wrote a letter, since we don’t have a form for it—asking for unemployment compensation.”
Alan rocked back and forth in his seat for a few moments. Finally, he shook his head and sighed. “Anne, make a note on your calendar. As of this date, Luna no longer represents a cutting edge, frontier society. It used to be that we attracted only those who were willing to work—who were
“Not everyone can be a general,” Anne agreed, “somebody has to be a soldier.”
He nodded. “Exactly. But now it looks as though we’re getting the first of the parasites—the looters who follow your metaphorical army.” He rubbed his face vigorously with his hands, then said, “The application has a spot where they’re supposed to tell us what they intend to do when they get here. I don’t suppose this fellow just up and said he was going to be on the public dole, did he?”
Anne shook her head. “No. He said he had worked at GM, and expected to find a job in manufacturing.”
Alan steepled his fingers and resumed thinking. “Has he even tried to find a job?”
“According to his letter, yes, but he couldn’t find anything he liked. Reading between the lines, I gather that he felt that the jobs he was qualified for were beneath his dignity.”
Her husband’s expression soured. “There’s a lot of that attitude on Earth. Somehow, I find it hard to sympathize. I was raised to pay my bills, come hell or high water. If I had to wash dishes to do so, then so be it.”
“Some people don’t feel that way,” she said. “Some of them want dignity from their work.”
“They’ve got it backwards. Dignity doesn’t come from your job, dignity comes from paying your bills.”
“So what do you want to do about it? Want me to make up a form letter that we can fire off every time we get one of these?”
“Not yet. Let me go talk to him. Let’s hope it’s just a misunderstanding, although my gut tells me otherwise.”
“If we get more than one or two of these people, that will get pretty time consuming.”
“I know. I’m afraid the long term solution will be to check on whether immigrants actually have solid job prospects. Up until now, we’ve only been concerned with whether they had a job skill we could use, and left the job hunting to them.”
“We’d have to hire someone to follow up on the information on their applications,” Anne pointed out.
Grimacing, Alan nodded. “It’s not that governments automatically get bigger, it’s that people demand more services. A government’s size is a reflection of the peoples’ lack of will to do for themselves.” Sighing, he added, “And it looks as though we’re in for a growth spurt.”
Trevor York was falling endlessly, flailing at the air like a slip of paper fluttering in a strong wind. Stark, unreasoning fear brought him up from the depths of sleep. He awoke screaming.
Brigitte started bolt upright in the bed. “What is it, Trev?”
“I… I…” Now that he was awake, more rational, more in control, he saw that the truth was simply too embarrassing to tell. Of
She was barely able to see him in the dark. In the dim glow from the time display she thought that she saw him wipe sweat from his face. “Are you sure you’re OK?”
“Yes, I’m OK!” he snapped. “Didn’t I just say so?”
In fact, he had not, but Brigitte knew a wounded ego when she saw one. She reached out, touching him gently, tracing arcs on his skin with her fingernails.
“Don’t do that.”
“You used to like—”
“I don’t care what I used to like. Just don’t do it.”
Three times in the past two weeks he had rejected her like this; harshly, abruptly, without explanation. While tonight might be explained away as residual tension from a bad dream, she knew that the overall pattern wasn’t good.
He was getting bored with her.
Slowly withdrawing her arm, she turned her back on him. Three strikes and you’re out. It was time to start making contingency plans, as Trevor York was not renowned for keeping his women around for long, and it appeared that her time was nearly up.
Brigitte intended to hit the ground running.
Roberta Lith was caught between conflicting emotions. On one hand, she was not only gainfully employed, but she was making an obscene amount of money compared to what people were making down on Earth in the midst of the Depression. She even had her own tunnel. Small, true, but adequate.
Balanced against this was the fact that her parents disapproved… hated, actually, Luna and all that it stood for. For years, they had made their point of view known in ways great and small. Those people…
And Roberta, their only daughter, had defected to the enemy without even so much as saying good-bye.
Roberta wasn’t homesick… honestly. She just wanted to hear their voices and to let them know that she was all right. It had been almost a year since she had slipped out the front door, leaving nothing behind but dark, sliding tracks in the early morning dew.
She had meant to write or call before this, but had always found a good excuse not to follow through. This time would be different, if only she could quit wiping nervous sweat from her palms.
Biting her lip, she told the computer terminal in her tunnel to dial. It had been programmed with the number long ago, the first time she had tried to call.
The signal took one and a quarter seconds to speed to Earth. It took an additional eight seconds for the call to be answered. In that short span of time, Roberta died a thousand deaths. She nearly reached out to slap the disconnect button.
But didn’t.
It was her mother’s face. “Hello?”
“Mom?”
By the time Roberta’s hesitant reply had time to travel the distance, her mother’s face turned pale. Her eyes grew wide.
If her mother had replied with anything other than that one word, Roberta would have been able to keep up a brave face. She crumpled instantly, tears pooling in her eyes. “Oh, Mom, I’ve missed you.”
For almost five minutes they waged a nearly incoherent battle with each other and with their own emotions. It was a subtle battle for mastery—was Roberta an adult, or was she a wayward but still much-loved child? Roberta won, barely.
She smiled and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “So… how are things down there?”
Her mother shook her head, part wonder, part tacit acknowledgment of defeat. “We’re fine, baby. We were really worried about you, though.”
“I’m OK.”
“Did you really do it? Are you really up there?” She craned her neck, trying to see around her daughter, to catch partial glimpses of the room where she lived.
‘Yeah, Mom. I live in Crisium now. Uh… would you like my address?”
“I guess I’d better get it. Your birthday’s coming up and I’d like to send you a little something.”
“Mom… don’t. I don’t need anything. Really.”
“But—”
“Mom, I make more here than Daddy did when he had a job. Seriously, I was going to ask if I could send
Her mother looked scandalized. “Darling! You can’t be serious. We’re doing just fine.”
“Look, I’m not kidding. I make plenty and spend almost nothing. I’ve even got money saved.” She paused, unsure as to whether she should, then told her mother how much she was making.
Her mother’s involuntary gasp was completely satisfactory.
“Please? I want to send you two something. Running off the way I did probably wasn’t the right way to handle things, but I want to show you that everything turned out all right in the end.”
“Baby, I don’t want your money. You’ve given me the best present you possibly could just by calling and—”
Roberta played her trump card. “I love you, Mom.” Then she added, “This is something I want to do.”
Complete capitulation. Her mother just slowly shook her head and cried, unable to respond. Behind her, Roberta’s father entered the picture.
His face cascaded through four or five distinct emotions before he was able to choke out, “Roberta?”
After dealing with her mother, her father was a piece of cake. In seconds he had accepted the inevitable—his little girl was a grown woman.
“Listen, I want the two of you to come up here and see me. I want to show you my tunnel and take you shopping and we’ll go out to eat and—”
Her father shook his head gently. “Honey, we can’t afford that.”
Roberta smiled. “But
Her mother looked up at her father, her expression pleading with him to set his pride aside and take the offer.
“Besides, Mom, I need help figuring out how to decorate this tunnel so that it looks just right.” It was a traditional ploy, but, as it had for so many other young women, it worked.
Without even waiting for her husband to reply, Roberta’s mother said, “Of course, darling. When do you want me to come up?”
Her father, seeing the inevitable, gave in gracefully. “I guess I’d better come, too. You might need the furniture moved, or something.”
Roberta decided not to mention that, in Lunar gravity, she could pick her father up with one arm. “Just as soon as you can get here. Yesterday, if possible.”
Her mother sighed. “I’ll get there if I have to walk.”
A few minutes later, they concluded their call. Roberta sat back and took a deep breath.
Had her parents
Mike Ordner aimed his pocket laser scanner at the bill of lading on the side of the crate he had just brought across from New York. It beeped, registering the crate as having been delivered to Luna, from New York, via the Holmes Door, with the date, time, and his name.
“Excuse me, do you work here?”
“Yeah.” He turned—and froze, unable to say more. A young woman was standing next to him. She was attractive, but not beautiful. More like… interesting. Something about her eyes.
“My name is Roberta Lith, and I was expecting something from Earth. I was wondering whether it had arrived yet.”
Ordner nodded. In an abstract way, he noted that his knees were getting weak.
“It has? Good.”
“Uh, no. I mean, I don’t know, but I’ll be glad to check.” His face flushed. He felt like an idiot.
It was almost as though she hadn’t noticed. “Great! What do we do?”
He wasn’t breathing right, and his mind kept trying to break free and gallop in a thousand directions at once. What was she
He nodded towards the freight desk on the Crisium side. “Let’s go see what we can find out.”
Motion helped. Like a bicycle, by moving forward he discovered that he could retain his balance.
She caught him looking at her and grinned. “You’re Mike Ordner, aren’t you?”
Two years before, simply through being in the right place at the right time, he had managed to save Alan Lister’s life. Ever since then, people would come up to him and call him by name. It had never meant anything to him before. Now, suddenly, he was obscurely pleased that this stranger named Roberta Lith knew his name.
He nodded. “I—”
“It’s a box my parents are sending me. It was supposed to get here today. They’re coming, too, but they won’t be here until the end of the week.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but decided that, since he would only say something inane, it was probably wiser to let her carry the conversation. She continued to chatter gaily as they approached the counter, telling him about how her mother wanted to help her decorate her tunnel. While he queried the computer about her package, she told him that she had come up during the period that the Door had been closed. That sparked his interest.
“Are you the one who camped out next to a junkyard, waiting for the Door to open?” he asked.
Her eyes sparkled. “It wasn’t much fun at the time, but now that I look back at it, it was pretty neat.”
“So you were born on Earth.”
She nodded. “Just like you.”
Suddenly serious, he turned and faced her. “Can I ask you something?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
“Do you ever feel like you don’t belong? I’ve always felt like I don’t quite fit in.”
She looked at him as though he were demented. “Are you kidding? I’ve waited my whole life to be up here! I love it.”
He shook his head. “I wish I could feel that way. I mean, I live here now, and even though the Door’s open again, I won’t move back to Earth. I just don’t feel like I belong on either side of the Door.”
Her eyes softened. “Have you ever given Luna a chance? I mean really tried to get to know people and everything?”
“I don’t know anybody other than the people I work with.”
What might have been the ghost of a smile flitted over her face, but it was gone before he could be sure. “Maybe we could go look around sometime. I’ve been pretty busy since I got here, but I’ve had time to find a few things. Would you like to?”
He felt like he was falling—out of control—
“How about tonight? After you get off work.”
He had to remind himself to breathe. “I… yeah, that sounds good.”
The rest of the afternoon was hazy to him. Unable to concentrate, his mind was fogged by a curious mixture of elation and an odd sense of not being quite as alive, now that she wasn’t where he could see and talk to her. The rest of his shift lasted nearly forever.
Alan Lister’s grimace spoke volumes. “It’s the same old problem. Either the Door is open, or it’s closed. There’s no middle ground.”
“And both extremes present problems,” Hammond Kent acknowledged. As the Commissioner of New London, the largest city on Luna, he was only too aware of the problems that Lister faced. He saw them daily.
“It’s the old saw about can’t live with them, can’t live without them. We need the Door open so we can tap into Earth’s industrial base and schools. On the other hand, if it
Kent nodded. “We’ve had a few of them over here. They come up under false pretenses, but it’s hard to prove. So far, we’ve seen two kinds—one claims to have a way to support himself, but doesn’t—the other comes up on vacation, then stays. We’ve just begun trying to track them down. When we find them, we’re going to throw them out.”
“Great!” Lister said sarcastically. “That means they’ll be coming back through
Kent took the facetious question seriously. “Two reasons. One, it’s hard enough to keep track of the people coming in the Door we have over to Crisium. Another Door would only make it worse. Two, it wouldn’t produce enough revenue to justify keeping the Door open. If New London and Crisium were to split the existing traffic, both links would end up losing money hand over fist.”
“Well, supposedly we’re a nation now,” Lister said. “We’re going to have to deal with this on our own. It’s not like we can ask Earth to solve it for us. Unfortunately, it seems to me that it’s going to be one of those long running battles that nobody wins.”
“We could deny all non-commercial traffic,” Kent suggested. “Or, as a variation, anybody who comes across to Luna has to be out by the end of the day.”
Lister shook his head. “That’s too much like a police state, Hammond. It would also be a monumental logistical headache.”
“I guess you’re right. If nothing else, we’ll need
“The best I’ve been able to come up with is to raise the non-commercial rates to exorbitant levels. Then we could subsidize the ones we want to come up from a fund fueled by the rate increase itself.”
“Call it a surcharge? A tax?”
Lister nodded. “Something like that. I hate it. It’s not a free market pricing system, and as soon as the government gets involved in anything, it goes to hell in a handbasket. We’ll have to have rules and regulations. Then those will breed exemptions and exceptions. In a couple of years, we will have created a whole new class of lawyers who specialize in getting people through the Door.”
“Which will, in turn, make it even more costly to go through the Door,” Kent added, eyes twinkling.
Lister shook his head sadly. “I’ve spent my entire term in office trying to keep the government here in Crisium out of things. Now that I’m near the end of my term, I’d hate to betray people by doing the exact opposite.”
“Get Lunar Magnetics to do it. After all, it’s their Door. Jenny designed it for them, not the city of Crisium.”
“I’d rather do my own dirty work, Hammond.”
“If Lunar Magnetics does it, it’s a rate increase. If you do it, it’s either a tax or a surcharge. Seems to me that it would be more palatable if it comes from them instead of you.”
Grudgingly, Lister agreed.
“Alan, the way I see it, the Holmes Door will either make or break Luna. It’s all going to boil down to the details of how it’s managed.”
Lister mused aloud, “I think I’m beginning to understand how Jenny feels about this Door—so far, it’s created more problems than it’s solved.”
Black hair.
The hair color, of course, came from a bottle. There were no highlights; it was flat black, like velvet, and no light reflected whatsoever. It was styled carefully in a wave just short of a pompadour. Only continuous care could maintain such perfection for more than an hour at a time.
It took a full five seconds before Alan Lister could force his eyes down to meet those of Trevor York. Amused with himself, he wondered if that was the reason that York wore his hair in such an unnecessarily dramatic style. If people were staring at the top of his head, they would not notice the predator behind the eyes.
“Good morning, Commissioner Lister,” York said, his hand outstretched.
Lister paused briefly to admire the smoothly modulated voice. He could see why people followed York—he had presence, a sort of oily charisma.
“Good morning, Trevor.” He made no attempt to match the other’s projection of bonhomie.
“I’d like to thank you for taking the time to see me. I realize that you have a busy schedule and that interviews are not productive time for you.”
Lister belatedly realized that there was a cameraman silently sweeping in an arc to the right, his palmcam staying steadily focused on the conversation. An attractive woman was moving with him, staying an arm’s length away so as not to interfere with his field of view. She carried an enormous bag slung over her shoulder.
Tight, polished, professional. Lister made a mental note not to underestimate York. The man certainly had not achieved his current popularity by accident.
York noticed his attention and smiled. “I hope you don’t mind my crew. Naturally, we need to have shots for the show.”
“It’s no problem at all.”
“Do you mind if we begin?”
“Certainly not.”
“Commissioner Lister, as I’m sure you’re aware, there are those on Earth who feel that Luna took unfair advantage of their generosity. They are concerned about the amount of money that was spent, your attitude towards the recent economic problems on Earth, and, in particular, your handling of the Emily Starnes crisis. How would you defend your actions against those accusations?”
Lister gave him a faint smile. “I don’t intend to.”
York blinked in surprise. “You have nothing to say?”
“I have plenty to say. It’s just that I have no intention of
“Turning your back on the people of Earth isn’t wrong? Those people put you where you are today.”
“This may come as a shock to some of your viewers, Trevor, but there is no contract between the citizens of Luna and the people of Earth. Earth spent the money to start the Lunar colonies of its own free will. It’s a little late in the game to start demanding payback. I’d also like to point out an important fact that often slips through the cracks in discussions like this—the overwhelming majority of the money that Earth spent was spent
Something indefinable crossed York’s face. “So you’re denying that you owe Earth anything?”
“Listen carefully, Trevor. If I buy you a beer of my own free will, are you under any obligation to buy me one in return?”
“But it’s not the same! We spent billions—”
Lister’s eyebrows raised. “So the amount of money is the variable? At what point does the switch occur? One billion? Ten? The cost of the second beer? We
York stared, then switched tactics. “Simple human decency would have dictated that you help Emily Starnes. The poor woman
“I don’t have to. It’s not as though we locked her in a room and denied her food. As you and every other mortal being in Luna and on Earth are aware by now, Emily Starnes crossed through the Holmes Door of her own free will and hid in a side tunnel down in an unfinished level. We have the death penalty here in Crisium, but we certainly didn’t apply it to her. She killed herself. You can call it accidental death, or you can call it suicide, but either way, she chose the course of actions that led to her death. I feel no more guilt over her death than I would if someone died of explosive decompression on the surface after choosing not to check their surface suit before going out. People make choices every day. Some are fatal. Life is dangerous.”
“You’re a monster!” York roared in outrage.
“That depends on your definition. Perhaps I am,” Lister admitted calmly. “On the other hand, I happen to think that you, or rather, the current society on Earth, is the monster. You created Emily Starnes—the product of a sick society. Then you blamed her fate on us. We simply chose not to accept the guilt. It’s that simple.”
“But it’s so unfair! You have so much, and she had so little. Surely, it wouldn’t hurt so much to provide for one person.”
“One person? No, of course not. The problem is that it’s never
“But all she needed was a little food, and you can produce it easily.”
“ ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,’ ” Lister quoted. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well… yes.”
“Do you know who said that?”
“No.”
“Karl Marx, although he lifted the thought from someone else. Communism, they called it. The last country that practiced it failed over fifty years ago. Unfortunately, it’s an insidious disease, and a great many people continue to urge some fragment of that philosophy on you with the best of intentions. You see, Trevor, the trouble arises in determining ability and need. Nearly every person alive can give you a thousand reasons why they
“But food is a
“So is shelter. So is transportation, at least in today’s world. The question is, where does it end? At a bare subsistence level? Or do you add an arbitrary 10 percent to improve the quality of life? While we’re at it, why don’t we make it 20 or 30 percent? Soon, the poor are living better than the people who are footing the bill through taxes… after all, the money has to come from somewhere. At that point, unless they’re fools, the taxpayers see that they would be better off
“But it’s not like that. Of course, there are people on unemployment, but America hasn’t collapsed.”
“A major Depression isn’t enough to convince you that something’s wrong? How about the food riots? You had a big one in Sacramento just a month ago. If I recall correctly, the National Guard killed six people. If American society hasn’t collapsed, it’s certainly one sick patient.”
York, clearly disturbed, tried to regain control of the interview. “Commissioner Lister, are you saying that you don’t care about what happens on Earth?”
Lister smiled sadly. “On the contrary, I happen to care very, very much. I simply believe that people should be responsible for their own actions—that they should be willing to bear the consequences of those actions with a minimum of fuss. Earth, North America in particular, chose the course they are on. Now the bill has come due, but no one seems to want to pay. That, to me, seems irresponsible.”
“Who are you to judge the people of North America? Do you have a god complex?”
Lister laughed easily. “No, just common sense.”
York shook his head slightly as though dazed. He turned, “Bob, switch off.”
“Off.”
The woman began to move towards York, reaching into her bag. York waved her back. “Not now, Sue.”
He turned back to Lister. “The camera is off Whatever we say now will be off the record.” He exhaled heavily. “Look, Commissioner Lister, let’s be serious for a moment. I think you know that I don’t approve of you—”
“Somehow, I got that impression,” Lister said dryly.
“—But my personal opinion of you isn’t really all
“Perhaps it’s what I happen to believe.”
“It’s political death!”
“Since you’re from Earth, you may not be aware, but I only intend to serve one term in office—about another eight months to go, now. Since I don’t care to be reelected, I can say anything I damn well please. As it happens, the people of Crisium seem to approve of the way I’ve run their government for them, but I can’t say that it really matters to me one way or another.”
“Are you really as cold as that?”
Almost distractedly, Lister smiled. “I’d rather reserve my warmth for those who matter most to me. If you choose to interpret that as being cold, be my guest.”
“You honestly don’t care what others think of you?”
Lister looked puzzled. “Other than the ones I care for, no. Why should I?”
York shook his head in wonder. “I’m going to slay you with this segment.” He said over his shoulder, “Sue.”
As she moved forward, already reaching for a brush with which to touch up York’s hair, Lister gestured towards her. “That’s the purest essence of the matter right there, Trevor. You have people whose only job is to keep up your appearance. I’m more interested in the core of an issue than with appearance. Tell me honestly, do you really care a whit about what happened to Emily Starnes?”
“No. I never met her. It’s just good story material.”
“So your attitude is just a pose, a front. It’s inherently false. The vast majority of your audience don’t really care either, they’ve just been told since they were children that they
York made a face as though he wondered why Lister was wasting breath on something so intrinsically obvious. “Of course.”
“So drop the pose.”
“But people expect it.”
“It’s a lie.”
“Of course it’s a lie.”
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to tell lies?”
York shrugged indifferently. “So people are caught in a dilemma. Either they disobey by not caring, or they disobey by lying. Big deal.”
Lister’s eyes twinkled. “I submit that your attitude is a great deal colder and more cynical than mine.”
York gave him a grimace that might have been a smile. “Perhaps so, but mine is more profitable.”
Lister raised one eyebrow. “I’d rather keep my self-respect.”
For the second time in a week, Roberta Lith found herself wishing desperately that she had something to dry her palms on. She paced nervously back and forth on the Crisium side of the Door, waiting for her parents to arrive.
Across the way, Mike Ordner was keeping one eye on her as he worked. Although they had spoken only a few words when she arrived, Roberta was very much aware of his presence. Mike had a curious mixture of strength and vulnerability that she found hard to resist. From hints he had dropped, she thought that he cared for her too, but she wasn’t sure yet. For the moment she found her attention equally divided between Mike and the impending arrival of her parents.
She wasn’t certain whether she dreaded or welcomed her parents’ arrival. She wanted desperately to seem the adult, but a persistent part of her wanted nothing more than to crawl into the bosom of her family, seeking approval. She hated herself for her weakness.
It was her mother’s voice that caught her attention. “Roberta!” she had called, from over on the New York side.
Her mother had caught her daydreaming—watching Mike. Her head snapped around. “Mom!” She began to run towards her.
Halfway there, she collapsed suddenly, sprawling on the floor.
Mike dropped the box he had just picked up. He was at her side in an instant, sliding an arm underneath her shoulders to prop her up. “You idiot! You could have hurt yourself running over the threshold like that!” The obvious concern in his voice robbed the words of any offense.
She grinned sheepishly at him. “I guess that old saying about how gravity never sleeps is true, huh?”
“Are you OK?”
“My dignity is pretty badly bruised, but the rest of me will live.”
He shook his head. “Sweetheart, you’ve got to be more careful than that. There’s a lot more gravity on this side of the Door. You can’t just waltz across, you know.”
Ruefully, she rubbed her left elbow. “I remembered that as I was going down.” Glancing past him, she said, “Help me up. My parents are coming.”
“Oh, baby!” her mother exclaimed as she scurried up. “We saw you fall. Are you all right?”
“Right as rain,” she said, dusting at her jumpsuit. “I just got careless, that’s all.”
Her mother looked dubiously at the diagonal red and yellow stripes that mapped out the threshold of the Holmes Door. “Are you sure that thing’s safe?”
“Of course it’s safe. Mike does it all the time.”
“Mike?” Her gaze traveled to Ordner. “Oh.” She offered him her hand. “Hello, I’m Mrs. Lith, Roberta’s mother. This is her father, Joseph.”
Ordner gravely shook hands with the grim man standing by her side. “Mike Ordner.”
“Aren’t you…?” Something closed in Lith’s face. His expression became faintly disapproving. “Glad to meet you,” he said formally.
Roberta looked at Mike, then at her parents, noting the look on her father’s face. “Urn, have you two already got your tickets?”
“Oh, yes,” her mother answered, holding up two pieces of scrip.
“Then let’s go on over to the Crisium side.”
“But what about our bags?”
“Mi… uh, they’ll be taken care of.”
“Oh, honey, I’ve been meaning to ask, did you get your drafting and art supplies? You told me what you wanted, but I never learned the names of all that stuff. I just gathered up everything I could find.”
Roberta nodded. “They came in the other day. Thanks.”
Her mother’s worried look persisted. “Was everything you wanted in there?”
“It’s OK, Mom. Promise. I just wanted a few things that are hard to find here on Luna.” They paused at the threshold. Roberta said, “OK, now be careful when you step across. It’s easy to fall.”
“So I gathered,” her father said sarcastically.
Roberta rolled her eyes and stepped across. She reached back over and took her mother’s left hand to help her keep her balance in the sudden gravity change.
“Well, now you’re on Luna!” Roberta said unnecessarily. “How do you like it?”
Her father grunted. “I haven’t been here quite long enough to decide. Give me a few seconds longer, if you don’t mind.”
Roberta’s mother took her hand and patted it. “Don’t pay any attention to him, dear. Just give him time to get used to it.”
Roberta wished she could stop herself. She knew she was trying too hard; that she was overanxious. It was hard to feel as confident as she had when she’d been talking to them on the phone. This was the moment of truth, and she felt her courage deserting her.
The slidewalks out in the corridor gave her parents some trouble. Just by looking, it was easy to understand that stepping onto one of the moving belts would allow a person to move from one point to another in the city. Putting the idea into practice, however, required reflexes they did not have. Her mother stepped unsteadily onto the slowest belt, swayed, wind-milled her arms, then caught herself. Her father stayed stiff and immediately went down in a tangled heap.
Roberta expertly danced across the slow lane to a faster one, caught up with her parents, then stepped back over to the slower one. She took her father’s arm to help him up.
Angrily, he shook her off. “Damned Loonies,” he cursed under his breath.
When it became necessary to change slidewalks to get to her tunnel, Roberta had them walk the rest of the way. At the portal to her tunnel, she had to stifle the impulse to make a grand gesture. Matter-of-factly, she let them in. Although she already knew it intellectually, having her parents visit reminded her forcibly how small her tunnel really was.
Her mother peered into the tiny bedroom, then looked at the combination living and dining area. “Well,” she said diplomatically, “there’s not much to clean.”
“Mom, I know it’s small, but that’s the way things are here on Luna.”
Her mother took a deep breath before accepting the situation. “When you think about it, it’s not all that much smaller than the apartment where your father and I lived after we were married. It’ll do for a start.”
“I was thinking that maybe mirrors would help make it look bigger—” Roberta began.
“Oh heavens, child! Before we try mirrors, we need to lighten up the color of these walls. This place is as dark as a tomb…”
After half an hour, Roberta was able to coax her father out of his ill humor by asking him which software interface he thought she should use on her tunnel’s terminal. When he began to volunteer suggestions on his own she knew she had won the most important battle of her life. Her parents had accepted her as an adult with her own life to lead.
Like all cities, Crisium had neighborhoods which were deemed more desirable than others. A single principle governed the price of the individual tunnels that led off of the corridors: Age, or the aura of it, was everything.
In absolute terms, no man-made artifact on Luna could be much over a century old. Nothing habitable was more than about sixty or seventy years old, and even the oldest parts of the underground settlements were much younger than that.
The most valuable real estate in Crisium was that which had been dug when the city began its first wave of underground expansion. Originally called the core by the first settlers, the word had, by degrees, become capitalized. Now, tunnels in the Core went for prices as much as four or five times higher than equivalent tunnels elsewhere in the city.
There was also a distinct gradient from the top levels to the bottom, tunnels near the surface being more expensive than the deepest ones. This in spite of the fact that tunnels nearer the surface were more vulnerable to decompression in the event of a major municipal structural failure. Being near the surface carried the implication of having an older tunnel, even if it was not born out in fact.
Furthermore, the more distant a tunnel was from the geometric center of the city, the less it was worth. This, too, was based on the idea that older tunnels were more desirable, since the city had, over time, spread outwards from the Core.
When Alan Lister found himself seeking a small tunnel on the outskirts of the second lowest level, he knew without asking that it was about as inexpensive a place to live as Crisium had to offer. He pressed the annunciator button next to the portal and waited.
Just as he was considering leaving, the portal opened. The man revealed was disheveled. “Yeah?” he asked.
“My name is Alan Lister. Are you Reginald Arnold?”
“Yeah.”
“May I come in?”
The man glanced behind himself into the tunnel. “Uh, yeah. I guess so.” He turned and shuffled back into the tunnel, leaving the portal open.
Lister took a deep breath before entering. “I’ve come to talk with you about your request for unemployment benefits.”
Arnold stopped and turned to stare at Lister. “Is this an interview or something?”
“Well, no. Not exactly.”
Arnold nodded and shuffled over to a couch. He gestured. “Have a seat.”
Lister chose to sit at the kitchen table, rather than on the couch. He looked around. The tunnel was untidy but clean, in that there was a pile of unsorted clothing on the floor in the kitchen, but it appeared to have been freshly washed. Dishes, also clean, sat in a neat pile next to the sink.
“Today’s Tuesday. Tidy-up day. You woke me up. I was going to put things away after breakfast,” Arnold explained, noting the direction of Lister’s gaze.
Lister shrugged. “No business of mine. As long as you don’t endanger other people you can run your life pretty much any way you like.”
“So what about the unemployment?”
“There is no such thing. Not here on Luna, anyway.”
Arnold frowned. “Um… so what do people do when they can’t find work?”
“We encourage people to save for rainy days. As a matter of fact, we require it. Ten percent of everyone’s paycheck is taken off the top and put into an individual, interest-bearing account. The government doesn’t touch the money. It belongs to the individual, but it can’t be withdrawn except at retirement or in an emergency.”
“So what about people coming up from Earth, like me?”
“You filled out an application that asked what you intended to do when you got here. If you lied about having a position lined up, then the consequences are on your own head.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Lister agreed.
“I get the feeling there’s a message here.”
“If you want money, get a job. We don’t have any to give out.”
“No other choice?”
“Sure, you’ve got choices.” Lister ticked off on his fingers. “If you’ve got savings, you can coast for as long as your money holds out—the rest of your life, if you’ve got enough. You can get a job. You can go back to Earth.”
“Or I can starve like Emily Starnes.”
Lister shook his head sadly. “For obvious reasons, we’d rather people didn’t do that.”
“Do you have to be so cold-hearted about it?”
“We happen to believe that people should pull their own weight. Communism and socialism are dirty words around here.”
“Commu-what?”
“My God, what do they teach in the history courses down on Earth?” Lister asked, rolling his eyes. “Never mind, the point is that we don’t have an unemployment system and have no intention of starting one.”
“But I can’t find a job!” Arnold protested.
Lister frowned. Without speaking, he stood and walked over to the tunnel’s computer terminal. In seconds, he had pulled up the job listings for Crisium. He turned to Arnold, his eyes questioning.
“There’s nothing there. I’ve already checked.”
Lister considered this for a moment, lips pursed, then turned and brought up the master listings, including New London, Besselton, and the smaller outlying communities. “Nothing on all of Luna?” He tapped a key. “According to the database, there are over twelve hundred jobs listed in here. That’s an awful lot of nothing.”
“But not what I was doing on Earth.”
Lister snorted. “I should say not. According to your immigration application, you worked for GM. Since we don’t have any use for cars up here, I suggest you find something else to do.”
“But what?”
“That’s up to you.”
“You don’t care?”
Lister shrugged. “Not particularly. Why should I? I’m not here to save you from yourself. If you make a bad decision, why should everyone else have to pay for it?”
“I’m not asking for anyone else to pay for anything, dammit!” Arnold flared. “I just think your stinking government should give people a hand when they need it.”
A puzzled frown crossed Lister’s face. “Where do you think governments get their money? It comes from taxes. Where do you think taxes come from? From people. So why should the city government take money from others and give it to you? What have you done to earn it?”
“Why do I have to earn it? I
Lister finally lost his patience. He stalked to the portal. He turned before leaving, eyes narrowed. “So do the people who earned it,” he snapped. “Try it. Earn a little, then see if you don’t agree.”
When Trevor York came through the portal, he saw packed luggage. “Brigitte?” he called, not seeing her at first. “You screwed up, sweetheart. We’re not leaving until tomorrow.”
She stepped out of the bathroom, zipping the small makeup pouch she carried. Without haste, she crossed to the bags and slipped it into one of them. Then she turned to face him, smiling sweetly. “No, darling, I’m afraid that it’s you who’ve made the mistake. Screwed up, as you so elegantly put it. You may not be leaving until tomorrow, but
York caught the undertone of mutiny in her voice, but chose to ignore it. “Brigitte, what are you talking about?”
“Find yourself another sex toy, Trev. This one doesn’t like the way she’s being treated.”
He frowned. “Sex toy? You’re not just—”
She patted him gently on the cheek. “Don’t get yourself in a dither, darling,” she said patronizingly. “I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding someone to keep your bed warm—or has Sue thrown you over, too?”
He flinched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Brigitte only smiled in return. “Sue, my darling, invariably wears a fragrance called Serenity. And though she is close to you throughout the day, there are certain parts of you she has no right to be near… yet she leaves her calling card.”
“Brigitte—”
“Good-bye, Trev.”
“Where are you going?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve been accepted here in Crisium. I’ve already found a job.”
“A job!” he huffed, as though that were ample evidence of how low she would fall without him.
“Modeling. Amongst other things, I’ll be wearing the Second Skin fall line next Tuesday night.”
He reached out for her. “Listen, Brigitte, I’m sure we can work things out.”
“I already have,” she said evenly, then picked up her bags and left, leaving him staring after her.
Had anyone suggested to Roberta Lith a month ago that she would be feeling this way about a man, she would have told them they were crazy. The Lunarian men she had met so far were OK, but there always seemed to be something lacking. Within seconds of meeting Mike Ordner her life turned upside down. Colors were brighter. Food tasted better. She could swear that the very air had more oxygen in it. Strange that it should take a man from Earth to make her feel this way. After all, Earth was what she had come to Luna to escape.
She glanced at the signs and skipped over to the slowest lane of the slidewalk, then onto the fixed sidewalk almost directly in front of the side corridor where Mike lived. His directions had said that he lived in the third tunnel on the right.
When he answered the portal, she smiled, just at the sight of him. He had that effect on her. On the way over, she had felt a little nervous; suddenly it was gone.
“Ready to go?” she asked.
“Hang on a second.” He turned and reached for his wallet, which was on the table right behind him. The tunnel was that small.
She glanced in. It was not much more than a closet in the rock. Tiny to the point of inducing claustrophobia. And her mother thought
From the sudden defensive look on his face, she knew she had made a mistake.
“It keeps the rain off my head,” he said gruffly, then quickly stepped out into the corridor, closing the portal behind. Heavy silence surrounded him like armor plating.
As they made their way across town to the Door to New London, she did her futile best to get him to come out of his shell. Finally, when she could bear the weight of his silence no longer, she reached out and touched his arm gently. “Look, Mike, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like I was criticizing your tunnel.”
He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “It’s OK. I’ve been meaning to look into getting something bigger, anyway.”
Better, but not quite the Mike she knew he could be. “No, really, I mean it. I was teasing you, but it fell flat. I’m sorry.”
He glanced at her sideways. “It’s all I’ve needed up to now. A small room is all you need to hold a small life. Suddenly my life is growing, and I’m struggling to catch up.”
It was the little things he said that made her heart jump. “Maybe we could…” no, too soon to bring
“We’re already supposed to, remember?”
Damn… caught. The twinkle in his eye told her that he had guessed what she had been about to say. He was so cute when he looked at her that way. “OK, OK. Just let me stew in my own juices.”
He cocked one eyebrow. “Surely, you aren’t the main course at dinner?”
She grinned saucily at him. “Nope. Dessert.”
His eyes widened. “I think I’m looking forward to this meal.”
Anne Lister threw herself back from her desk, kicked free of her chair, and was nearly to the portal when the computer chimed to announce an incoming call. She stared at the icon in an agony of indecision. What if it was the doctor? She pointed at the icon and the computer brought up the call.
It was Edgar Rice. He took one look at her blanched face and said, “My God, Anne! Are you all right?”
“It’s Alan. He’s hurt. I’m on my way there.”
“The office?”
She nodded jerkily. “Yes.”
“I’ll meet you there in ten minutes. Go!”
There were five eastbound lanes on the slidewalk, each going at a progressively higher speed. Anne skipped hard and landed on the middle lane, legs braced for the jolt of acceleration when she hit. She bounced across the fourth in one stride, catching the fifth.
It wasn’t going fast enough to suit her. Without thinking, she began to sprint, in open defiance of the city ordinance against doing so. Across town she sped, scattering other pedestrians in her haste.
One man had the misfortune to be changing onto the fifth lane ahead of her. She knocked him sprawling with a sweep of her arm. He came to rest across the third and fourth lanes, tripping six other people as he went down. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. Most others were able to get out of her way. Anne never once looked back.
She hurled herself into the side corridor where Alan’s office was located, only to crash headlong into the broad chest of Samuel Watts.
He caught her by the upper arms to steady her. “Whoa, Anne!”
“Arrest me later, goddamit! I’ve got to see Alan!”
“There’s nothing you can do, Anne. The doctor is with him now.”
“Why’d you call if you didn’t want me here? Think I’d sit at home and wait?”
“Anne…” he began.
“Damn you, get out of my
What she saw there brought her to a sudden stop. “Oh, God…” she whispered.
Watts took her gently by the shoulders and tried to draw her back out into the corridor. Dazed, she pulled loose and walked ahead, slowly, uncertainly, towards where her husband lay sprawled on the floor behind his desk. Irregular stains of blood covered the wall behind him.
She. knelt, gently reaching out to push the hair off of Alan’s forehead. Her hand seemed to belong to someone else. At least for the moment, that other person was obeying her will.
The doctor turned to her. She met his eyes. “He’s alive… barely. An ambulance is on the way.”
She looked up at Watts, standing across from her. “Who did this?”
Watts took a deep breath. “Alan managed to hit the panic button as he went down. The recorder caught two of the shots.”
“Lewis Cantner.”
“Find the son of a bitch,” she hissed. “Bring him to me. I’m going to rip his lungs out.”
“We’ve sealed the Doors and the surface locks. He’s somewhere in Crisium. We’ll get him.”
A wet coughing sound brought her eyes back down. “Alan? I’m here.”
His eyes opened—fluttered, focused. Breathing raggedly, he rasped, “Honey… I… I had a bad day at the office.” A thin line of red ran from the corner of his mouth.
Tears sprang to her eyes. “I
“Do what needs doing, babe,” he whispered. “Take care of the kid.”
“Save your strength. I’m here now.”
The ambulance arrived. Anne backed away to give the medical technicians room to work. She spoke briefly with Watts and the doctor in the corner of the room, eyes carefully averted from the gore. Within minutes, they had Alan strapped securely to the back of the flat-bed electric cart. She then followed them out into the corridor.
Edgar Rice ran up just as they were pulling away. “Anne?”
She turned from watching the ambulance. Face drawn and pale, she drew herself to her full height. “Edgar, turn on your microphone,” she ordered. “I have an official press release for you from the Commissioner’s office.”
“Uh, right.” He fumbled at his collar to unfold the tiny gooseneck, swiveling it towards her. “Ready.”
“At 2:55 this afternoon, Lewis Cantner, former president of the Crisium Business Group, entered the office of Commissioner Alan Lister. He shot Commissioner Lister three times in the chest at close range with a high-velocity, small caliber weapon. He is presently at large in the city of Crisium, presumed to be armed and dangerous.”
She swallowed hard as tears began to trickle down her cheeks. “Commissioner Lister is not expected to live.”
Twenty-four hours. That’s all she asked. Twenty-four hours. Turn back the clock. Give her time to say all the things that she had thought she’d had a lifetime to say. Time to apologize for burning the steak she’d cooked for his birthday two weeks after they’d met. Time to hold him just once more. Time to laugh about the look on her face when he’d asked her to marry him. Time to tell him how much she loved him. Time for another cup of coffee together. Time to tell one more joke. Time to choose a name for the child. Time to tell him how much she’d miss him.
Time for her to tell him not to go to the office that day.
When it comes to love, there’s never enough time.
The downside to having a small, efficient government is that there’s no redundancy. There’s no one to take up the slack.
With clench-jawed determination, Anne took the helm of the Crisium government. She didn’t want the job. She didn’t have the intuitive feel that Alan had brought to the position. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into a cave and lick her wounds.
But it was better than staying at home.
The very place that should have been a comfort to her had betrayed her. Every wall, every pillow, every chair screamed Alan’s name. She was being deafened by her memories.
So she had come to work—to escape.
Things that Alan had done instinctively, effortlessly, required conscious thought on her part. Things she had taken for granted now pressed in on her relentlessly. She had been too close to her husband to see what a talented administrator he had been. Only by facing the problems he had faced on a day-to-day basis did she learn that she was not cut from the same cloth as he. Others had told her for years that he was a great man, possibly that rarest of political species, a statesman. Editorials had always respected him, even when they disagreed. To her, he had always been just… Alan.
It took his death for Anne to learn that he had been something more than a man with a habit of leaving socks on the floor and a weakness for tapioca. She had been too close to the trees to see the forest.
A persistent psychologist kept calling, unasked, unwanted, telling her that she was not allowing herself time to grieve; that she needed to take time to grieve; take time to be by herself. The last time he had called, she had exploded, telling him that if he was so blasted sensitive and caring, that he could damn well do her grieving for her. She had not heard from him since.
She would have the rest of her life to grieve on the installment plan. She knew. She cried herself to sleep every night.
Two weeks after she had assumed the reins of power, she allowed herself a rest, if only for ten minutes. She had the computer call Jennifer Holmes.
“So when are we going to Mars?” she asked as soon as Jenny’s face appeared over her desk.
Jenny froze when she saw who was calling.
Anne waved her hand as though to wipe the slate. “I set the computer to refuse all calls. When are we going to Mars?”
Jenny sighed. If Anne wanted to be brusque, then that was her option. “We’re doing well. Ramping up the power to increase the range was a simple engineering problem. It’s the control circuits that are giving us fits. We’re working on our third prototype now. We expect to have it ready for testing in another two weeks or so.”
“Jenny, you don’t work for me, and I can’t claim that I have a lot of clout with the brass at Lunar Magnetics, but I
“A change of scenery?”
“Call it that.” She shook her head. “I just… Alan’s last words were for me to do what needed doing, and to take care of the kid. I’m going to have the baby here, but as soon as things settle down, I want out.”
“Is that safe? I mean, for the baby?”
Anne laughed humorlessly. “Children seem to survive being born into Earth’s gravity. If anything, the gravity on Mars, being a little over twice what it is here, ought to be closer to what we were designed for.”
“But won’t it be rough on you?”
Anne snorted. “So? Pioneer women survived worse. If we’ve got a Door, I’ll be within minutes of good medical care here in Luna. It won’t be
Jenny was quiet for a moment. “Anne, are you sure you’re not just running away?” she asked gently.
“Of
“Wait a minute. I don’t understand. How did losing Alan translate into hating Earth?”
“Lewis Cantner may have pulled the trigger, but it was Earth that created Cantner—his attitudes, his entire personality. He didn’t have what it took to succeed on Earth, or, as it turned out, on Luna. When the inevitable failure came, he took it out on my husband, instead of on the person at fault… namely, himself. Earth is full of people who are convinced that they’re victims—that it’s all someone else’s fault. I cannot forgive Earth for that.”
Jenny frowned thoughtfully. “But that can be fixed, can’t it?”
“Alan always said that it’s not the strong that you have to fear, it’s the weak.”
“What? I don’t see—”
“Let’s say that you have one really evil man—someone who’s intent on taking over the world. To stop him, all you have to do is find him and either reason with him or kill him. Without him, the organization falls apart—all that’s left is some mopping up. But true terror is a mob. You can’t reason with them. Killing just one won’t stop them, because the rest keep coming. They will overwhelm you by the sheer weight of their numbers even though individually they’re weak.”
“I still don’t see what this has to do with Earth, though.”
“No matter what we do to Lewis Cantner, it won’t matter a whit to the rest of them on Earth. They’ll keep messing up their lives and blaming it on Luna, or their next door neighbor’s cat, or sunspots. They’ll never take responsibility for their own lives, especially for their own mistakes.”
“So Lewis Cantner was only the beginning. I think I see what you’re saying now,” Jenny said.
“This is the inefficient side of evolution, Jenny. There’s no guarantee that any given individual will survive, even if they’re better adapted. It’s a matter of odds.
Jenny nodded slowly. “All because Lewis Cantner was a problem looking for a place to happen.”
“Earth actively interferes with evolution in every way they can. They artificially prop up those who can’t cope. They won’t allow the second raters to fail—to face the consequences of their own actions. Instead, they cripple those who
“But what can we do?”
“Nothing. You can’t stop it. It’s the rabble mentality. You cannot reason with a mob. By their very existence, they destroy what they touch. Eventually, some new evolutionary mechanism may stop them, but for now, we aren’t strong enough to fight them.”
“What about closing the Door? If we isolate ourselves from them, we—”
“Once we get to Mars, we will close the Door, but we’ll need to be more self-contained than we were here.”
Jenny looked thoughtful. “I’d better start making some changes in the design of the Door, then.”
Anne blinked. “Why?”
“I’ll need to make it portable. Once we go through, we’ll pull it through after us, then close it from the Mars end. That way, we retain control.”
“But what’s that accomplish?”
“Closing the Door is one thing. But from what you’re saying, we’re not only going to need to close the Door, we’re going to need to raise the drawbridge behind us.”
Samuel Watts stood outside the cell where they were keeping Lewis Cantner. He looked at the officer standing before him. “All I want you to do is make certain that Cantner doesn’t escape. I don’t expect him to be any trouble, but you never know. He’s surprised us once. He might just do it again.”
“Yes, sir.”
Watts shook his head sadly. “This is at least partly my fault, you know. Alan was an easy target. He was unguarded. Cantner just walked right in.”
“Are you doing anything to protect his wife?”
“Anne? Yeah, we’re working some stuff out. It’ll just be temporary, though. Eventually, we’ll have to build an official commissioner’s office, just like they have governors’ mansions or the White House on Earth. Some place that has built-in security systems. God, Alan would have hated that. He didn’t want anything special or expensive because it would increase the cost of the government.”
“From what you’re saying, that attitude cost him his life.”
“Don’t remind me,” Watts said bitterly. He slapped the button to open the portal into Cantner’s cell and stepped inside.
Cantner looked up from where he sat on the side of his cot. “Leave me alone.”
Watts raised an eyebrow. “Now, that’s a curious attitude to take. You murder a man in cold blood, then have the gall to tell me to leave you alone. There’s an unborn child who’ll never know his father because of you.”
Something ugly flashed across Cantner’s face. “The bitch is pregnant?”
Watts gritted his teeth. “Don’t make me hate you more than I already do. You aren’t fit to dust the soles of that woman’s shoes.”
“But they—” Cantner began.
Watts raised his hand. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care what you think they did to you. It didn’t justify killing Alan.”
“Save it for the trial, huh?”
Watts looked surprised. “Trial? What makes you think you’re going to get a trial?”
“But there has to be a trial! I—”
“Do you deny killing Alan Lister?” Watts demanded.
“No, of course not! He deserved—”
“So you’ve confessed to the crime. Add to that the fact that the computer recorded you firing two of the shots. Why waste the taxpayers’ money with a trial? Trials are to determine guilt. There’s no question of guilt, so there’s no need for a trial.”
“But the judge might see that there were extenuating circumstances. He might—”
“Planning on pleading insanity, Lewis? Sorry, Lunar law doesn’t allow for that. An insane murderer is just as much a threat to society as a sane one, perhaps more so. Either people are treated equally under the law or they aren’t. We aren’t going to have twenty-eight sets of law here on Luna. One for the sane adults, one for the insane, another for sane children, still another for insane children, plus variations for sex, race, age, and whatever their favorite color might be. That’s one thing that Earth did wrong. We aren’t going to do it that way. One set of laws for everybody… period. Keeps the lawyers from taking over society, you see.” Watts stared hard at Cantner. “You can’t plead self-defense, since you went after Alan. You can’t plead insanity, since Lunar law doesn’t allow that loophole. You can’t escape it. You’re guilty of murder, Lewis. And sentencing is trivial because there’s only one penalty for murder on Luna.”
“And what’s that?”
“Death.”
“But my life is worth something! I deserve a second chance!”
“If you’re going to advance that argument, take a minute to reflect on the fact that the same criterion could just as easily have been applied to Alan’s life. Yet you killed him. Interesting bit of hypocrisy, there. The murderer’s life is worth more than the victim’s? Explain that to me, if you can.”
Cantner just stared at him sullenly.
“That’s what I thought.” Watts said, and walked out.
The painting included the by-now standard representation of Alan Lister as the Man in the Moon. It had become an accepted shorthand; an understood cartoon caricature, in much the same way that political cartoons on Earth might focus on the smile, the eyebrows, or the ears of a public figure. There were three fresh craters, still glowing angry red. The eyes were closed.
And the paint was still wet.
“I was wondering how long it would take for you to get around to dealing with Alan’s death,” the man murmured from just behind the artist’s ear.
The young woman started so badly that she dropped her airbrush. It hit on the trigger, spitting once as it rolled onto its side—a reddish cloud that stained the floor.
“Oh, God!” she cried.
Samuel Watts held up his hands, palms out. “It’s OK I’m not going to hurt you.”
“But…” she began, not knowing how to finish.
“I’m Sam. I’m the police chief.”
She glanced wildly at the still unfinished painting on the wall, then back at him. She saw that his facial expression was one of amusement. “I… I know who you are. Am I… are you?”
He shook his head. “You’re not in trouble, and I’m not going to arrest you.”
She tried to relax, but the jolt of adrenaline still had her on the cusp of a fight or flight reflex. “You scared me.”
He nodded. “I know. You probably thought that your infrared beams would let you know that someone was coming.” He held up a small monocle. “I expected something like that, so I’ve been carrying this with me. I saw the beams and stepped around them. Nothing to it.”
Her shoulders slumped in defeat. She glanced at the wall. “Want me to clean it up?”
He shook his head. “Heavens, no! I happen to think your work is something that we’ve needed for a long time. We just didn’t know it yet. As a matter of fact, I was one of your earliest supporters.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He smiled reassuringly. “Can you tell me your name now? Are you over your fright?”
She took a deep breath. “Roberta Lith.”
Watts’s eyes narrowed. “Lith. I remember you. Weren’t you the one who camped—”
“I’m the one,” she said, nodding. “I’ve always admired Luna. Somehow, I’ve always known that this is where I belonged. Once I got here, I discovered that Lunarians don’t laugh often enough. It’s not that they don’t have a sense of humor, they just don’t have time to indulge it. Since I was relatively late getting here, I thought that I might be able to step outside the rush more easily and show them themselves. God knows, I’m not objective—I love this place too much—I just wanted to make people smile once in a while. The commentary angle just sort of happened.”
“Where’d you learn to paint like that?”
She laughed, still nervous. “Oh, that. That’s nothing. I was doing a lot of drafting in school, schematics and things like that, but my lines were always sloppy. I thought that it might help if I took some art classes to develop my hand. I discovered that I enjoyed it. I’ve doodled a bit here and there, but this is the first time I’ve ever actually put it to use.”
Watts shook his head. “Well, I, for one, appreciate what you’re doing. I know it’s a helluva note for a policeman to be endorsing anarchy, but what you’re doing has a place in our society. We need a court jester to keep us honest.”
Roberta looked back at the wall. “This isn’t funny, though. Alan’s gone and no one’s laughing.”
Watts shrugged. “You can’t help that.”
She glanced past him down the corridor. “This is the last one I’m going to do. I don’t feel safe any more. Being out alone like this, late at night.” She shook her head. “I wanted to do one more, though. I had to say good-bye to Alan in my own way.”
“What if I offered to stand guard? I don’t want you to quit doing this if you feel that you have more to say.”
“But—”
He pursed his lips, thinking. “Tell you what. Just call me at work when you want to do something. If you don’t get me, just leave a message that I’m to call the Court Jester. People will look at me funny, but that’s my problem, not yours.”
“Are you sure that’s all right?”
He nodded. “I’m going to stand back over here against the wall. You go right ahead and finish.”
As the painting took shape, Watts noted that she added a small body circling Luna. The face she gave it was unmistakably his own, scowling fiercely outwards as though to say that Alan’s death would never be repeated.
Hank and Carol Willis sat on one side of the booth. Sheila Haskel, arriving later in the evening, sat across from them. “I heard from Reg this afternoon,” Sheila said.
Hank’s eyebrows rose. “So how is he?”
Sheila shook her head in wonder. “He’s got a job. After all that bitching he did the last time that he called, he just up and took the next thing that came along.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Something small, it sounds like. He’s working for Lunar Magnetics there in Crisium. He said he’s working in their machine shop. Something about building prototypes.”
Hank nodded approvingly. “OK. I can see how he might fit into something like that.”
“He’s… changed. You know how he used to be so much fun? Then he lost his job and turned into a major grump. You’re not going to believe this, but he almost sounds like he used to—the old Reg. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s happy again, but he certainly isn’t anywhere near as gloomy as he was six months ago. He was even telling jokes.”
Carol looked surprised. “It’s been a
“Maybe he got religion,” Hank suggested.
“He said that Commissioner Lister came and saw him just before he was shot. Reg acted funny about it. Almost as though he was ashamed to talk about it.”
“Wonder what Lister said,” Carol said.
“I don’t know, but whatever it was, it seems to have made a big impression on Reg.”
“And he hated Luna so badly.” Carol mused.
Hank huffed. “He didn’t hate Luna. He was just jealous. They had jobs and he didn’t. If he’s got a job now, then he doesn’t have to feel that way any more. His pride is coming back.”
“He’s asked me to come up,” Sheila said quietly, almost as an afterthought.
“To Luna?” Carol cried incredulously. She and her husband exchanged looks. They had suspected a last minute liaison between Reg and Sheila, but nothing had led them to anticipate this.
Hank was teasingly skeptical. “Are you sure this call wasn’t a wrong number? This doesn’t sound like the Reg I remember. This guy’s an imposter, although I’ll be damned if I can see any reason someone would want to palm himself off as Reg. After all that complaining he—”
Carol clapped a hand over his mouth to shut him up. “Let’s get to the important part. What did you say?”
Sheila looked sheepish. “I told him I’d think about it.”
“Don’t pull that crap on me, Sheila! Are you going up there or not?”
She nodded. “If they’ll let me.”
“First Frank, then Reg, and now you,” Carol said. She punched Hank in the ribs with her elbow. “So when are we going, you big ox? Everybody else has up and gone. Are we going to let them leave us behind?”
He affected a surprised look. “You mean I can speak now? Golly!”
“You not only are permitted to, but it’s expected of you. Answer the question.”
“Do you mind if I think about it a bit first?”
“Of course not. As long as you don’t take over sixty seconds and the answer is yes.”
He rolled his eyes heavenwards. “Reg, just wait until I get my hands on you!”
Ron Abner examined his best friend with a critical eye. “Something’s up.”
Mike Ordner looked at him quizzically. “Was that a question or a statement?”
“Both. You’re grinning like an idiot and I want to know why.”
Ellen, Ron’s wife, said, “There’s a woman involved. See the smug, self-satisfied look, Ron? I’ll bet he got—”
“How about it, Mike? What happened?” she demanded, pointedly ignoring her husband.
Chuckling and shaking his head, Ordner said, “Well…”
Ellen nodded approval. “Good. Now you can forget all about Susan. She wasn’t good enough for you, anyway.”
“OK, I confess—” Ordner began.
Ellen pounced. “I
“Roberta Lith.”
He nodded.
“Ye gods, now we’re in for it. We’ve got two celebrities going head to head.” Ellen beamed and rubbed her hands together. “This is going to be good.”
Ron had been watching this exchange, his head swiveling back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match. “Um, Ellen, Mike might not need you as a back seat driver.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Back seat driver? What’s that?”
“Oh, uh… crap. It’s an expression I picked up from Mike. It’s someone who sits in the back seat and tells the driver what to do.”
“The back seat of what?”
Helplessly, Ron shrugged. “Never mind. Just don’t try to run his life for him, OK?”
Ellen looked exasperated. She sat back, crossed her arms, and glared at them. “Men are
“When are you leaving?” Edgar Rice asked.
Anne Lister had circles under her eyes from driving herself ruthlessly, but she was beginning to laugh once in a great while. She was slowly beginning to find joy in life again, in part due to the sleeping child in her arms. “Not yet, Edgar, not yet, but soon. You can count on that. I want my son to grow up in Mars’s gravity field, not Luna’s.”
“We’re going to miss you, Anne.”
“Come with us,” she countered.
He shook his head sadly. “I can’t. At my age, I don’t care to face a gravity double what I’m used to here. Going from this gravity to a lesser one I could handle, but not an increase, not of that magnitude.”
She smiled kindly. “Aren’t you just being lazy?”
He took it without offense. “Probably. Coming to Luna from Earth cured my wanderlust. With luck, I’ll control the
“Don’t. If that’s your goal, stick to it.” Her mouth twisted into a sly grin. “Besides, you’ll need the experience before you start
His eyes widened. “Why, you impertinent imp! I do believe you’re trying to put ideas into my head.”
“Oh? You noticed?” she teased.
“All right, all right. I’ll think about it.”
“The place just won’t feel right until you get there.”
“Anne, that’s the thing that you’ve yet to fully realize about the Door. If distance is reduced to nothing, then who cares where we live? I’ll be able to visit you on Mars almost as easily as I do now. There are no barriers where there are Doors.”
“Don’t wait too long, Edgar. We’ll be closing the Door once we’re self-sufficient.”
“Forever?”
She shook her head. “No. We’re going to bring people across from time to time. We’re going to Mars with the intent to form a permanent colony. If nothing else, it will take quite a few people to have a stable breeding population.”
“Have you decided where you’re going to touch down, yet?”
“Oddly enough, no. It doesn’t really matter that much, since we’re going underground as soon as we get there. Surface conditions just won’t make that much difference to us.”
Rice frowned. “But, Anne, it will take ages for you to tunnel out the first level. What are you going to do in the meantime? Live in surface shelters?”
Anne smiled smugly, obviously relishing the moment. “Actually, we intend to be underground within the first week.”
“It turns out that the Door singularity is a tunneling device par excellence. All you have to do is choose the diameter you want, then guide the Door through solid rock. The perimeter of the singularity will slice through the rock like butter. On the other side of the Door, there will be a huge rod of solid rock sticking out. We plan to set up a Door on the surface. That way we can just let the rock coming out of the Door fall to the ground. We’ll leave long cylindrical cores of rock side by side on the surface, like a bunch of pencils.”
“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” Rice breathed. “Instant tunnels.”
“Nearly so. By the end of the first week, we’ll have pressure locks installed. In theory, we’ll be able to excavate an entire city for less than what it costs Crisium to do a single level, using conventional blast and laser techniques.”
“Then the same technique can be used here?”
Anne nodded. “Easily… and will be. Someday, Luna will be honeycombed with tunnels. Nothing but three-dimensional living space.”
Rice looked dazed. “Who needs Mars? Luna will be enough to keep us all busy for the rest of our lives, and on down through our great-grandchildrens’ lives.”
Her face split in a slow, dreamy smile. “Ah, but Edgar… where’s the adventure in that?”
EDITOR’S NOTE: “