The Stars Are Also Fire

by Poul Anderson

  The blue eyes looked straight into his. “But.”

  He nodded. “But the situation is growing impossible. My duty is to get it corrected.”

  “I have a notion,” she said quietly, “that what’s growing is that new society you don’t suppose can be.”

  “Perhaps. In which case—I speak plainly, madame, because I respect you too much to, m-m, pussyfoot—”

  She smiled at him. Suddenly he understood a part of why so many men heeded her. “Gracias,” she murmured. “I think I’m going to like you.”

  He cleared his throat and hurried on. “If it is a society, it is a society in flagrant violation of the law, hostile, unruly—”

  She stopped him by raising a hand. “If you please, señor, let’s just go over this point by point. What are the Lunarians and quite a few Terran Moondwellers hostile and unruly for? Mind you, I don’t claim they are always in the right. For openers, I admit what’s obvious, that they are not a solid bloc, most especially not the Lunarians. But their grudge curve is Gaussian, so to speak. It does have a maximum.

  “Officially, or what passes for officially in the Council, I’m here to discuss with you, in a preliminary and informal way, a petition we’re drawing up to present to the World Federation and world opinion. You see, we don’t want to spring it on you as a surprise, as if we had no use for you and everything you stand for.” Surely she had taken the lead in evoking that attitude, Wahl thought. “Maybe you can convince us that such-and-such a demand is out of line. Well, no, you won’t, you can’t, on certain of them, any more than you can yield on others. But maybe between us we can work out a document that explains the Moondwellers’ position in a sensible way. Then maybe real, honest dickering can begin.”

  Wahl doubted it. The important differences were irreconcilable. The larger good required that some practices, some beliefs, be suppressed, as the Conquistadores had suppressed the human sacrifices of the Aztecs.

  Too strong a metaphor. By all means, give the Selenites—not the Selenarchs, the Selenites—whatever legitimate rights they were being denied. The problem was to find precisely what those were, and how to make the populace accept that the rest were illegitimate.

  “Pray proceed, madame.”

  Beynac sighed. “You’ve heard it before, over and over. Bear with me. I promised them I’d spell it out for you.” The tone of apology gave place to confidence. “Besides, it can’t hurt for you to hear it from across the fence. That might make it more real, bring it closer to home.”

  He felt himself stiffen at the underlying condescension.

  No. That was wrong. She was simply aware of her capabilities. “I listen,” he said.

  “Do interrupt,” she urged. “I’ve doubtless heard every argument you can raise, but I’ll be interested to know how you, Jaime Wahl y Medina, go about the job.

  “I won’t say much about the biggest issue of the lot, because it’s been talked over aplenty. I’ll just warn you that we’ve decided it is the biggest. The right to own real property. ‘Common heritage’ is an anachronism. It has to go, on the Moon and throughout the Solar System.”

  “You will not find substantial agreement to this on Earth,” Wahl said. “There most people don’t look on it as an anachronism, but as a foundation stone of a more hopeful future.”

  “I know. If individuals can own pieces of celestial bodies, that means jurisdiction gets carved up among the countries they’re citizens of, and nationalism gains a new lease on life. Look, the details can be adjusted. Federation law could be the sole law off Earth, provided it recognizes and guarantees private property rights. Besides, we’re not convinced the average Earthdweller cares about common heritage any longer. We know for a fact that a lot of them would like it abolished; and they don’t all work for Fireball, either. When will your politicians have the guts to admit it’s become a shibboleth?”

  Wahl arranged his expression as well as his words with care. “Frankly, Mrs. Beynac, the conduct of many Selenites is not helping toward that end. You speak of Federation law for the planets, satellites, asteroids. It already applies, and is being systematically flouted. That is done by everyone from the great baron or mine operator who occupies his leasehold as though it were his freehold, to the ordinary person not only evading his taxes but cooperating in a network of organized, data-falsifying evaders. How much confidence does this give those politicians you seem to consider so venal?”

  She nodded. “Well put, sir. But the taxes are another of our main grievances. They’re excessive.”

  “They are commensurate with the increasing prosperity of Luna, which is linked to the well-being of Earth.”

  “Yes, yes. Listen, por favor, I’m not personally unsympathetic to the poor, nor unwilling to help relieve them and cope with the rest of Earth’s problems. After all, I’m North American by birth and Ecuadoran by citizenship. But the Terran Moondweller who seldom sets foot there, the Lunarian who never does, they don’t feel that way and it’s not reasonable to expect they should. Where’s the quid pro quo for them?

  “Furthermore, they hate income tax, and would hate it no matter how modest it was, because it’s an invasion of privacy. We value personal privacy very highly here, Governor. It was scarce and precious in the early days. We still often have to forgo it, sometimes for long stretches like on a field trip or a space voyage. The desire for it is downright fierce in the Lunarians, I suppose because our Moon culture reinforces a predisposition that got built into their genes. What people here do about the income tax, they don’t think of as cheating, but resistance.”

  Wahl frowned. “It will be difficult to pass legislation exempting them from it. Even if the Federation waived it, the countries of their citizenship scarcely would. Income tax is essential to the modern state.”

  Beynac smiled crookedly. “Some would say that’s the best reason of all for abolishing it.”

  “Please, let us be realistic.” Wahl paused. “I daresay that privacy fetish is also the cause of widespread obstructionism toward the census and other governmental information-gathering activities?” She nodded. “And yet I hear that the Lunar magnates have quite efficient methods of their own.”

  “In Lunar eyes, that’s different. Don’t blame me, I’m only telling you. But think. You’re a Catholic, right? Well, then you tell your priest things you’d bloody anybody else’s nose for asking about.”

  He contemplated her for a while before he said low, “What you mean is that the conflict is, at bottom, not economic or political but cultural. We do not have brewing anything like the First North American Revolution. No, it is to be a rising against occupation and exploitation by foreigners, aliens.”

  “You are an intelligent man,” she replied gravely.

  His tone went grim. “The analogy I see is the First North American Civil War. My duty is to do everything I can to prevent it. If this requires aborting a distinct Lunar civilization, then that is what must be. Now do you see why I have ordered full enforcement of the Educational Standards Act?”

  “I knew that was your motive.” She sounded half regretful. “Requiring private schools, as well as public, to teach—to try and instill—ideals like democracy and the equal worth of all human beings, what decent person could object to that? Not I. But it doesn’t go down well with Lunarian children. They hear different at home. Furthermore, it’s like telling cats they ought to behave like dogs. The whole thing was quietly phased out because it was causing too many problems. Not much violence, truancy, or even insolence. Subtler. A, a contempt. I myself could feel it in the kids. And now you’re demanding the mistake be revived.”

  Wahl sighed. “You Selenites agitated year after year for home rule. You, madame, took a forefront role in that. And now you have it. How shall you maintain it, if your younger generations don’t learn the principles and procedures of civilized self-government?”

  “Pretty limited home rule, given that the governors general are charged with keeping it inside Federation and assorted natio
nal law, and that appeals from their rulings are regularly denied in court.” Beynac gazed past him—into the past? He heard a measure of sorrow in her voice. “I confess this has been the greatest disappointment in my life.” Even greater than when her children developed into … Lunarians? “Federation law is for the most part humane and rational. What parts of it are not, as far as the Moon is concerned, I thought we could get gradually changed by democratic means. On the whole, our Terran legislators are still hoping, still trying. But the Lunarians—they don’t seem to have the right stuff for politics. Those who do go in for it are apt to be their worst, corrupt, quarrelsome, egotistic, short-sighted. Our legislature is working very poorly, and I’ve come to doubt it can improve.”

  “That may not be a completely bad thing,” he risked saying, “in view of what measures it has attempted to pass.”

  “Like restoring the death penalty for criminal abandonment? Even Gambetta had to veto that one. There I agreed with her. The rest of my family did not. They aren’t monsters, Governor. They have a high standard of—honor, I suppose is the nearest English word. But they are children of a world that is not Earth.”

  “A curious kind of honor,” he rejoined. “It causes men to order the flogging or murder of offenders, without trial, and then shield the agents. Madame, that cannot be permitted to continue.”

  “Right of justice and right of granting sanctuary. That’s how they regard it. I think it goes too far, which hurts me. But unless you want to keep it underground, growing worse and worse, some compromise with it will have to be negotiated.”

  “Why? You ask me to concede to the Selenarchs powers they have taken illicitly for themselves. That can only encourage them to claim more. Already some among them deal directly, not just with companies, but with governments, those governments that are—I say between us two—less than ideal members of the World Federation. Shall they at last declare full sovereignty? Build their own nuclear weapons? Fight their own wars? No, madame, no.”

  “I can’t conceive of them wanting to. They are not insane. What they want—what ordinary, peaceful Moondwellers want—is freedom to be what they are and become what they choose to be. I’m sure that’s possible within the framework of the civilization you and I share, and in fact will enrich it in ways we can’t imagine. But that’s only if they are not compelled, confined, twisted about to the point where they see no other way than violence.”

  “They will be well advised to avoid driving the Authority and Federation to that point.”

  “Yes. You have your legitimate rights and claims. I understand them as clearly as I do theirs, I who belong to both worlds. We’re here today to search for roads to reconciliation.”

  “We will not accomplish that in a few hours.”

  “Nor in years, if ever. But if you’re willing to keep on talking a spell, I am.”

  “I’ve set this daycycle aside, madame. Er, can I offer you any refreshment?”

  She laughed aloud. “Can you! A cold beer would put me in Heaven, and a shot of akvavit to go with it would admit you to join me there.”

  The conversation did indeed become long. It didn’t stay entirely serious, nor had she intended that it do so. She asked him out about himself and his life, reminisced about hers, quipped, told jokes, introduced him to a bawdy ballad concerning a spaceman named MacCannon, and left him, at the end, thoroughly charmed.

  Since then they had come together a number of times, alone or in the presence of others, in business or sociability. He felt that the sociability was at least as important. It let him meet eminent Selenites personally, informally. It gave him her sanction—well-nigh her protection, he often thought—and thus his initiatives and efforts did not encounter automatic resistance. For Rita, above all, it lessened the loneliness a bit.

  Maybe, too, it slowed the upward ratcheting of tension and increase of ugly incidents. It did not halt them. Supposedly the Lunar Petition was under consideration in Hiroshima. It had gone to several committees. None had yet reported. Wahl gathered that they had deadlocked on various points and tabled it pending further studies. They felt no need of haste. The Moon was distant, its population was small, there were huge and urgent problems everywhere around the home globe. Meanwhile Wahl’s own deadlock seemed to him in danger of breaking apart.

  Today, when he called Dagny Beynac, her phone informed him that she was unavailable until hour noon. He guessed she was resting, old and frail as she was. He didn’t like wondering what would happen after she died.

  While he waited—hm—should he try for Anson Guthrie? Fireball had an enormous stake in keeping the peace. Besides, apparently the download had not lost normal human sympathies. But Wahl might well be unable to raise him on short notice. He might be unable or unwilling to intervene. What could he do, actually? If he took a direct part, perhaps that would worsen things. Better get Beynac’s opinion first. If she approved the idea, she could certainly put him in touch with Guthrie and probably persuade the revenant; they were close.

  Restless, Wahl left his office and stalked down the corridor. Never mind the countless other demands on him. It was too soon for a second icy swim, but he’d take a long walk through the city, maybe even fetch his spacesuit and go topside for a hike. That ought to clear his buzzing head.

  He came by Pilar’s room. The door was open. She sat at her telephone. Her slight frame shivered. Blood came and went in her cheeks. “Oh, Erann,” she breathed.

  The face in the screen was youthful, with the exotic Lunarian handsomeness. Wahl recognized it. He had met the boy once or twice when the youngsters had a party in this mansion. It had seemed good to promote friendship between the races.

  Erann. A grandson of Brandir.

  He smiled, seductive as Lucifer, and murmured something. Pilar strained forward, hands outheld, as if she could seize the image to her.

  Her father stood where he was for a thunderful minute. She didn’t notice. Almost, he broke in on her. But what to do then, what to cry out? He continued down the hall. His fists swung at his sides. Breath struggled in his throat.

  He must speak with Rita. Today. Get this thing stopped before the damage was irretrievable. Tactfully if possible. Otherwise by whatever means proved necessary. Maybe create a reason to send the girl, the innocent child, to school on Earth, where she would be entirely among humans.

  31

  The cybercosm woke Venator about midnight. “Attention,” called a speaker. “The Proserpina file is opened.”

  Instantly alert, he sprang from his cot and ordered light. Bare and narrow, the room seemed to radiate chill. “Who has done it?” he snapped. Hope flickered. He was not the sole human who knew. Another might have found cause to review those data.

  The voice stayed flat. Thus far, the mentality engaged was little more than a high-capacity automation. “The DNA pattern belongs to—” Venator’s identification followed.

  No!

  With an almost physical thrust, he denied the denial. “Location,” he demanded.

  “Prajnaloka, a community in south central North America.” A screen lit, displaying a regional map. An arrow pointed. It was redundant. He knew that place, although he had never visited in person.

  The intruder or intruders could not belong there, he thought. Soulquesters were the last people in the universe who’d challenge the system in any way. Besides, how would one of them have gotten the genetic key?

  Lilisaire’s agents, then. Fiendishly clever. Skilled, at least. They would never have come near the file unless their search strategy was so well-designed, with questions so natural and cogent, that it took them past every point at which the program might have detected a possible spy and blocked the line of investigation. Yes, this matched the picture he’d formed. Kenmuir, for spatial background; someone else, for a wide and deep knowledge of the information net, together with much past experience.

  They felt their way to the portals of the secret, and—

  “Has the nearest Peace Authority station bee
n contacted?” Venator asked. He stepped to a peg and took a robe off it. The floor was cold and hard beneath his feet.

  “Yes.” He shouldn’t have wasted time inquiring, he should have taken it for granted.

  “Get me the captain of the emergency division. Crash priority.” Venator slipped the robe over his nakedness. He needed to impress the man. Inwardly, he needed to cover himself, hiding from rage and shame. It was clear to him, now, where that DNA had come from.

  A face appeared in the screen. “James Fong, captain of emergency services, Peace Authority, Chicago Integrate,” the voice said in Anglo. Two names; old-fashioned; it suggested solid reliability.

  “Pragmatic Venator, intelligence corps.” Aside: “Verify.” The system signalled that this was true. “We have a crisis. I am a synnoiont. Verify. It’s that serious, Captain.”

  Fong sucked breath in between his teeth. “Yes, señor.”

  “Two persons—I believe they are two—are making an illicit break into a top secret, from Prajnaloka. The consequences could be disastrous. Fly a squad to capture them before they finish the job and escape. Take them back and hold them in solitary, pending further orders. Do not question them or permit them to talk with anyone, including you and your officers. With the personnel of the ashram, be courteous but discreet. Tell them they have been deceived by enemies of sanity, get them to describe those persons’ actions, and ask them to keep quiet about the whole affair.”

  “Yes, señor. We can’t suppress everything. People will see us. Rumors will fly.”

  “That ought not to matter if the operation is quick and thorough. Report directly to me by name.” The cybercosm would route the call. “Begin.”

  “At once, señor. I’ll lead the raid myself. Service!” The screen blanked.

  Good. Fong was trustworthy. That was reassuring. It was even promising. A tingle went through Venator. Within this hour, the quarry should be his. Thereafter—

  He put his feet into sandals and went out, down the corridors of shifting light-shapes and silent machines. His task required much better equipment than a phone and a terminal. He might well have to consult with the whole cybercosm.