Date: 19 Sept 2013
From: Director, Special Equipment Development Center, American Sector Luna
To: Secretary of Internal Security, New Washington, 20013
Subject: Resignation.
Dear Mr. Secretary: Hail the First Citizen.
I have received your directive of the 15th, ordering the rapid application of SEDO's recently developed TLCHI-PSI scan and interaction sensor to the production of a subconscious aura-triggered anti-subversive-personnel device.
Under my direction, SEDC developed this sensor to enable self-guided infantry robots to discriminate quickly between enemy and noncombatants, thus enhancing their effectiveness and reducing attrition of civilians. Given the trend of Party policies in the last few years, I suspect that the primary purpose of employing the circuit as you direct would be the suppression of internal American dissent.
After due consideration, I have concluded that I cannot in good conscience participate in the development of such a device. I therefore tender my resignation herewith, effective immediately.
I realize that this attitude may have the gravest personal consequences . . . .
Dr. Michael S. Terhune
Director, SEDC
The overhead boomed hollowly, at regular intervals, as Dr. M.S. Terhune showed the drab-overalled man to a chair opposite his desk.
"A rather noisy office for the director," Derein said quietly, glancing upward, but leaving his large pale hands flat on the arms of the chair.
Michael Terhune paused, half-bent, and looked at his visitor sideways. Terhune was a tall man, too tall for the low overheads of the Center. Too thin, really, for the Moon, where a stockier body shape had more than once saved a man or woman caught out in Shadow. He might have looked like Lincoln, if he had had a beard and a wen.
"It's the exerciser," he said.
"Exerciser?"
"It's important to stay in shape here. Retards calcium loss. The gym is the next level up."
"I see." Derein settled himself and reached for a briefcase. "Please be seated, Doctor Terhune."
Terhune paused for a moment, looking out the port. At the far edge of sight stars gleamed diamond-hard, then were occulted suddenly by the jagged edge of crater. He knew that edge. He had almost died on it once. Night came suddenly on the Moon. And lasted.
Silently, he dropped into his chair and swiveled toward Derein, concentrating on the situation at hand.
The Party Member had come in on the Station-Luna shuttle early that diurn. He sat now shuffling through his briefcase, a sallow, worn-looking man of medium height who looked as if a few hours a week on an exerciser would do him good. He wore, Terhune noted absently, the Party Cross, the Vow of Silence, and decorations (old ones) from the Jamaican War, two Internal Actions, Manhattan and Chicago, and the first two Mexican Interventions. The blue-drab coveralls were the plainest cotton, not new, but clean. There was a small tear near the knee, which looked as if the Party Member had mended it himself.
Terhune knew then that he faced a dangerous opponent.
"Very good," said Derein suddenly. "Your record, I mean. MIT. What was that?"
"Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
"That was a secular university, as I recall?"
"Most colleges were then."
"Of course. We'll skip the rest of this, it looks dull . . . Director of the Special Equipment Development facility for three years now. Commendations for work on dust solidification, battle laser postoptical collimation, and a theoretical paper on the inhibition of certain types of heavy metal chain reactions. Very good. You've come a long way since your . . . hospitalization."
"Thank you, Party Member."
"Of course I won't pretend to know what all those mean."
Terhune looked deep into clear, direct, fanatical eyes. It could be true. The Party selected for belief, not knowledge. But it could also be a trap.
Michael Terhune had been told all his life he was brilliant. He had also, all his life, suspected those around him. He had learned that most of his fears were imaginary, paranoid, and he had learned to distrust his own distrust.
But in this case suspicion, he thought, was justified. He was walking, not a tightrope, but the edge of a knifesharp ridge, with a drop on either side far more than enough, even under lunar gravity, to kill. He thought for a moment of the Happy dispenser above his head. There was one in every room of the Center, in every room in America. One needed only to reach one's hand up and touch the trigger for a jolt of the psychentropic drug, removing anxiety and doubt—
"I'll be happy to explain them," Terhune said, not moving in his chair.
The Party Member waved his hand in dismissal. The overhead thumped twice, then began to drum rapidly. Both men glanced up, the shorter with a scowl, the taller with the trace of a smile.
That must be Kathryn, he was thinking.
"Not necessary now." Derein said speaking above the sound of the exerciser. "It's enough to know that you're a valuable scientist, valuable to the Party, to America, and of course to your family."
Terhune nodded slightly, more to himself than to Derein. By his desk clock he saw that it had taken the Party Member less than three minutes to mention his family, back on Earth.
"Do you understand what I mean?"
"I understand perfectly, Party Member."
"Then explain this trash to me!" shouted Derein, thrusting a piece of paper at him. Meant to be threatening, the motion miscarried. In the slight gravity the letter left his hand rapidly, lost its forward momentum in an earth-normal deceleration—but under a fraction that in the vertical plane, it hovered for a long time before gliding at last to the surface of the desk. Terhune picked it up, glanced at it, then looked at Derein. His face darkened.
"This was addressed to the Secretary. Personally! Not to a—not to you, Brother Derein."
"We don't bother the Leader's deputies with trash. And a refusal of a direct order, an order related to internal security work, in days like these—no, the Party settles matters like that on a lower level. On our level, Doctor. Yours and mine."
"You refuse to forward my correspondence?"
"Oh, on the contrary, Doctor." The Party man leaned back, not smiling. "I'm quite willing to forward an insulting letter from a narrow-minded technician to a man concerned with the highest matters of state, responsible only to the First Citizen! I'm quite willing to let you commit professional suicide, go to the front line in the Yucatan as a private, and see your family split up into Party Age-Group camps! I'm willing enough, you see! But first I would like to make sure, quite certain, that you know what you're doing."
"I believe I do."
"You're making a stupid and futile gesture."
"I think otherwise. Stupid, perhaps. Not futile."
"You have a high opinion of yourself. You think your resignation will stop work on the project?"
"Yes."
"Because your discoveries are so subtle. Because no one else can understand them."
Terhune didn't answer. He swiveled and faced the shadowed corner of Mare Serentatis.
"You're wrong about that, Doctor. You are important, yes; your talents are useful to us, and because of them we have overlooked certain personal shortcomings, certain unwise remarks of yours in the past. But—"
"What remarks? I deny any."
"Deny a digital recording."
"You've bugged me?"
"The Leader has said it: 'Not a sparrow shall fall.' And we have personal reports as well."
"I don't believe that."
"You have dangerous delusions, Doctor. You believe yourself persecuted. You're not; we've put up with your irrationalities, we've honored you. You believe yourself irreplaceable. You are valuable, we all admit that. But no one is irreplaceable in America United."
The two men fell silent. From somewhere outside the room Terhune heard a rocket exhaust. The shuttle? No, he reminded himself; it would not rise till the next diurn. And he would hear it as a rumble
in the ground, not as a sound through vacuum. It must be Hernandez, working on his charged engine throats. Hernandez! Could it be he who—
He caught himself and stilled his mind. That was exactly what this man wanted: to sow distrust, suspicion. He trusted all of them implicitly. He always would. Hernandez as well as Hong, Levinson, Kathryn Leah Hogue, every one of the two-hundred-person complement of the Center.
"I will not produce such a device," he stated to the darkened surface of the Moon.
"We'll discuss it tomorrow."
"You're leaving tomorrow."
"I have all the time I need," said Derein. "That shuttle is at my command. I may leave tomorrow, true. But if I do, you're coming with me. In handcuffs."
When Terhune turned around, livid with anger, the chair pivoted idly. The office was empty.
"I dunno what she said, when she left me;
"I dunno what she wrote.
"But the stable was empty, her saddle was missin,
"And I couldn't quite make out her note."
The Saddletramp Saloon was dark, the smell of beer and leather, electricity and whiskey and filtered oxygen-enriched air mingling in a strange blend. He stopped just inside the door, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom.
"Mike?"
She was at the far end of the bar, alone, nursing a beer.
He felt his way toward her past the wooden tables. Or almost wood. They looked like oak, as if they had been made by hand and varnished and shipped west and darkened and scarred by time and cigar smoke and spilled whisky and brawling men.
But made, like everything else in the Center, from the soil and rock and dust of the Moon.
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
"Sit down, stranger. Buy a girl a drink?"
Spike came up to them as he hitched himself up on the stool next to her, fixed the heels of his Texas boots in the rungs where they belonged.
"Whiskey," said Terhune to the bartender.
"What'll you have, pard?"
"Whiskey."
"What'll you have, pard?"
"He said, bourbon," said Kathryn. As Spike wheeled away, its casters grating on mooncrete, she said, "He needs tuning. Aural recognition circuits off."
"Ought to shut the damned thing down. Just get your own."
"Oh," she said, turning to her beer. "Is that how it is?"
"I'm sorry. Had a bad time with a boy."
"That Party bozo who oozed off the shuttle today?"
"The same."
"My condolences," said Dr. Kathryn Hogue, slugging back the remains of a full liter mug. From the rings in front of her it was not her first. Terhune studied her from the side as she whistled loud enough at the robot barkeep to wake echoes in the dome.
Kathryn Hogue was the slinger engineer. With four technicians and one outmoded handling robot she had built the first magnetic accelerator tube on the Moon. She was built strong. Under the Levis and plaid Western shirt her hips and shoulders were solid with muscle. He had once seen her pick up a three-hundred-kilo-mass slinger ring and hold it in position for bolting, a feat made even more difficult by a spacesuit. She could take any man in the Center arm-wrestling, and had. Except him. And he half-suspected that she had let him win.
He remembered the first time he had seen her nude.
"No kisses for a working girl?"
"In front of the help?"
"Spike doesn't mind. Do you, Spike?"
"What'll you have, babe?"
"Same again."
"What'll you have, babe?"
"Coors! Switch to receive, you deaf vacuum-sucker!"
Terhune tossed back his bourbon, a slightly but not significantly slower process in lunar gravity than on Earth, and pulled her to him.
They lay nestled like shadow against dust. He traced the outside of her leg, feeling the roughness of a shave a week old. Was she asleep? His hand moved down the outside of her thigh, caressed the hollow of a well-muscled back. He stroked her for a long time.
"Want 'ta tell me about it?" she muttered, her face to the smooth plastron of her cubicle.
He thrust himself up and groped above them. A switch clicked and the unctuous voice of the Leader surrounded them. The Midnight Party Program from Earth. The Station kept the same time as New Washington, though by treaty Standard Lunar Time was Greenwich Mean.
He pulled back his renegade thoughts as her head rose, close, her eyes focusing sleepily. He examined them at a distance of ten centimeters. Green eyes, a brush-touch of hazel, her cheeks slack and crow-tracked below them. He had painted once, during the revolution, when physics was impossible. A watercolor he had done of Enchanted Mesa hung at home next to his print of The Howl of the Weather. The hair that lay curled against his shoulder was brown, rich with veins of silver, but still soft and full and deep with her scent. She was not a girl. She was a woman, full-breasted full-hipped, taking on her forties the way she took on a new welding setup. With determination, guts, and style.
Bug? her lips shaped the word.
"Could be," he whispered. "That's one of the things he said."
"Slimy bastards."
He groped again and the volume increased. "I think that will mask it," he muttered.
She sat up, half against him, and examined his face. He pulled his attention away from the slope of her belly, her thighs. "Okay," she said. "Now that the built-up charge in the circuit's been dissipated, let's talk."
"They returned my resignation."
She tasted the air, waiting.
"They want the thing built. No matter what. They'll degrade me to the Yucatan. Ship up a replacement. But they'll get it built."
She was silent for a moment. "Your family?"
"Splitup and Party camps."
"Slimy bastards," she said again.
"You sound like Spike."
"He's got more heart than they do. Are you going to do it for them?"
"I don't know." His whisper broke. "I've been trying to think of a choice—any other choice. But they have the power to do it. They have before. I'd like to tell him where to go with this mindsearching tyranny. Like to High Noon it, pack him on the shuttle."
"This is the frontier, baby."
He smiled as he saw what she meant. "Yeah. The outpost of civilization. Funny, how different it is. In those days a man meant something, even alone. If he had right on his side he had power to back it. Now there aren't any sixguns."
"Or at least the Party has them all."
His voice hissed in her ear, then resumed. "The only alternative I have—realistically—is suicide."
"Don't say that."
"No. I won't. Not because of Gwen. She's Party now anyway. Because of you. If I didn't have you, Kath, I'd do it. They'd get it built anyway. They need it bad, from the way he talked. There must be more internal unrest down there than we find out about from the broadcasts. I was bluffing him. There are two guys at Bell Labs downside who could do it and maybe a team at Carnegie-Mellon—I mean, Eternal Praise—but it would take time for them to reverse-engineer Hong's work. And at least I wouldn't have it on my conscience. But as long as I'm alive, I've got to do as Derein directs, or we all lose."
He waited for her to say something, his heart loud in his ears. What she said was important, He had decided that: whatever she would say, he would do.
"I guess . . . that's all you can do, then."
He sighed, not knowing, yet, whether he was relieved or destroyed; Lucifer, or Faust. Suddenly he felt very tired, and very old.
"Have you got family, Wide Load? Downside?"
"Funny you never asked me that before."
"You're not a real communicative type, Kath. Besides, I never cared before."
"No. I don't."
"That's good."
"Maybe," she muttered.
It was as if she went away from him, though neither of them moved. Then she came back. "Maybe, The way things are."
"It can't last forever. Dictatorships can't last forever."
"That
's what they said about the Bolsheviks, cowboy. And they're coming up on a century."
"No family, they can't use them to pressure you. It's better not to be attached to anyone."
"I wouldn't say that's my status right now."
He looked at her in the dim light. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth had a strange shape. He looked for tears, but there were none.
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