The Stars Are Also Fire

by Poul Anderson

  Also, Dagny thought, her coming to him was a symbol, an act of submission. Did he expect it to quell her, however subtly? When she called Anson Guthrie about the demand, the jefe had grinned and said, “The lamb requires the she-wolf to visit him.” But that was a jape. Behind the Confucian façade, this was no sheep whom she faced.

  “Can we do that?” she asked. “You realize I no longer have any official standing of any kind.”

  Zhao lifted a palm. “Please, Madame Beynac. We are in privacy. You know full well that in some respects you have more power on Luna than I do.”

  Draw him out. “How? I was the Tycho Region delegate to the Coordinating Committee. That’s all.”

  “You were elected its chairman—” Zhao inclined his head “—by which it did itself honor.” He pulled hard on his cigarette. “Let us not continue the public charade. Time is as valuable to you as to me. The Committee lives on in the hearts of the colonists. It is what saw them through the anarchic years. Most of its former members have close ties to Fireball Enterprises, which has become unhealthily dominant in space.” Dagny bridled inwardly but let that pass. “The Lunar Authority is new, unwelcomed by many, often perceived as irrelevant to their real concerns, or as a burden. My duty is to improve this situation.”

  Surprised despite herself, Dagny murmured, “Your Excellency is very frank.”

  Zhao smiled. “Entre nous, madame.”

  Since hearing from him, she had prepared her thoughts and words as best she was able. “But may I then say you exaggerate? The Committee was never more than ad hoc, formed because we were getting one emergency after another and somebody had to take charge.” Her mind completed the sentence: Take charge, when the Grand Jihad erupted across Earth, an interwoven economy collapsed in country after country, revolutions and lawlessness ripped whole societies asunder, the brittle old United Nations broke into shards, nobody on the planet had serious attention to spare for a few tens of thousands on the Moon. “Fireball helped, yes. You might even say it saved us. But it didn’t take over government. It couldn’t have.”

  “At any rate,” said Zhao dryly, “it chose not to. Perhaps that was because M. Guthrie foresaw that you Selenites would perforce set aside the conflicting fragments of national authority and establish your own.”

  “Señor, you know we never meant the Committee to be permanent. Didn’t we cooperate in full with you and your people after you arrived?”

  “You did not resist.”

  “We’re as glad to have a single law here as we are to have a World Federation and a Peace Authority on Earth.” In principle, Dagny thought. In practice, it depended on how that law read. “Anyway, to get back to the subject, you’ve dissolved the Committee.”

  “I am not certain it was wise to do that so soon.” Zhao lifted his teacup. “However, such was the decision in Hiroshima.”

  Dagny sipped likewise. The fluid went hot and flowery over her tongue. “I can understand their reasons. It’s hard enough settling what national autonomy is going to amount to, without adding the germ of a whole new nation.”

  “And thus we come to the present exigency,” Zhao said. “You Selenites are scarcely in a position to threaten anyone else—not that I accuse you of wishing to. But if you set an example of defiance, a successful example, which virulent nationalists on Earth can make into a precedent, that could open the gates to new horror. Consider, for example, how many people will perish miserably if the African Protectorate is overthrown.” He sighed. “The Federation needs time to gain strength, to take firm root, before it is severely tested.”

  Temptation beckoned. “Meanwhile,” Dagny snapped, “Luna’s a nice, small, comfortably distant laboratory for trying out this or that theory of international governance.”

  At once she regretted her outburst. Relief brought warmth when he said merely, mildly, “Pray do not be bitter.”

  “Oh, I’m not,” she made haste to answer. “Some among us are, true, but I do believe—yes, I am glad you wanted a meeting in person—I believe you mean well, señor.” She spoke sincerely, within limits. His good intentions were not necessarily identical with hers.

  “Thank you. Gracias.” Zhao dropped his cigarette down the disposer in his table and reached for a replacement. “Then please help me.’

  “How? I’m nothing but a private citizen, these daycycles.”

  He measured out his sentences. “Your influence is global. The colonists respect you, they listen to you, as they do not my officials or me. Furthermore, you know what they want and, more important, what they need. After three years, I continue to be an outsider. Advise me. Support me—” he inhaled twice “—to the maximum extent your conscience permits. For my part, I promise that when you disagree with me, I will listen.”

  “Advise?” Dagny asked in astonishment. “Señor, anything I can tell you, you’ve heard a thousand times before.”

  Her mind leaped. She was here on account of her sons. If he offered her an opening, jump through it! “What do we on Luna want and need?” she said. “Why, it’s simple, obvious. For openers, removal of a lot of rules and restrictions left over from the former regimes. We thought we’d gotten rid of them, but then your Lunar Authority came in and declared nearly all were back in force.”

  “Those that have justification.”

  Boldness, short of insolence, might well be the safest course. “Such as?”

  “Taxes paid to the respective governments on Earth. Yes, you Selenites complain that you do not receive commensurate services. Perhaps adjustments should be made. Nevertheless, the fact abides that without viable nations on Earth you would have no markets and indeed would not long survive. Consider that a service.”

  “We’re self-sufficient by now in air, water, food, energy. We managed during the Jihad. We’re looking spaceward.”

  Zhao stayed by his argument. “Furthermore, you have an obligation to humankind at large, the civilization from which you sprang and that is still your spiritual home.”

  “I don’t dispute that myself,” Dagny said with care.

  “Certain people do. Above all—pardon me, I intend no offense—above all, in the younger generation, the metamorphs.”

  Dagny nodded. “They’d feel less alien if—less alienated if the educational requirements laid on them were better fitted to … their natures.”

  “Again, adjustments are possible,” Zhao said. Sharply: “In fact, they are made. My office is not ignorant of what goes on in colonial households. More and more, that is where children learn their major lessons, from programs written at home and from their elders and their peers. True?”

  “Yes. It’s only right and natural.”

  Zhao frowned, drew on his cigarette, made a stabbing gesture with it. “Up to a point, madame. That alienation to which you admit must not evolve much further. It is taking an ugly, yes, dangerous turn.”

  Dagny had known the talk would come to this. Let her play for time, though, keep him among generalities a few minutes more while she marshalled her wits and will. “Not just the young are protesting,” she said. “Many of us were doing it for years before the Jihad. The grievances are genuine, your Excellency.”

  He went along with her tactics. She wondered whether that was because it suited his. “I take it you refer principally to the regulation of Lunar industry?”

  “Well, that’s one thing. Enterprise feels stifled.”

  He raised his brows. “You colonists do not unanimously claim that this unique, scientifically and culturally priceless environment deserves no protection.”

  “Of course not.” She thought of Edmond’s rage at what might happen to various geological sites. She thought of what their son Temerir had to say about the astronomy he was newly entering; those few glacial words struck deeper than all his father’s pyrotechnic profanity. “Just the same, it’s time for some tradeoffs,” she said.

  “We are not discussing a slight pollution of pristine near-vacuum, nor the damage mining can do to areas of interes
t, nor any other inevitabilities. What we touch on is whether they shall be kept within bounds.” Zhao’s gaze drilled at her. She forced herself to meet it. “Beyond this, we have the fundamental principle that the Solar System is the common heritage of humankind.”

  It was a shopworn retort, but she could find no better “And therefore nobody outside of Earth may own any part of space.”

  “On the contrary, the concessions are generous. Perhaps too generous. Fireball has grown monstrously off much more than space transport. Many other companies and individuals have too.”

  “Yes.” In her reluctant political career, Dagny had often needed to speak with more sonorousness than directness. The skill came back. “But no one among us may stand on a piece of land, even a piece of orbiting rock, and say, ‘This is mine. I made it what it is. I bequeath it to my children and to their children.’”

  “Strange,” he murmured, “that so primitive a wish has been reborn in space.”

  “Primitive, or human? We’re still the old CrôMagnon.” Edmond stood suddenly forth in her, waiting at home for her, hunter of the unknown, he whose folk had left their bones in the caves and valleys and up the steeps of his Dordogne since ice cliffs barred the North and mammoths walked the tundra. It was as if he spoke from her throat. “We still bear an instinct to possess our territories.”

  Quietly seated, soft in his voice, Zhao lashed out: “We, madame? Is the desire of the new generation, the generation created for Luna, that simple and straightforward? Can you tell me what they in their inmost beings want? Can they themselves?”

  For a hundred heartbeats there was again silence in the room. Dagny’s look strayed to the viewscreen. In the image a bird sailed past, a wisp of cloud blew across a rounded peak. It was beautiful. She wished it were of surf and sand and driftwood.

  Returning her heed to Zhao, she said: “Muy bien. Let’s get serious. You did not call me in because I’m a fairly big frog in this little dry puddle the Moon. No, I’m the mother of Brandir and Kaino.”

  “Of Anson and Sigurd Beynac, technically,” he answered with the same restraint. “And of Gabrielle Beynac, who is perhaps more to be feared. I have studied Verdea’s writings.” Yes, Dagny thought, he did his homework. “They are not overtly subversive, no. Nothing so resistible. What they nourish is a new and foreign spirit.”

  “Is that bad?”

  Was it? Did not every small and dear person grow at last into a stranger? And yet it was Lars Rydberg, when he visited, who set aside the bleak face he turned on the world, to give her and, yes, ’Mond something of himself, the warmth that came from feeling you were wanted. Not her Lunarian children.

  “Well, but this is not time for philosophical musings,” Zhao said. “The fact on hand is that your two older sons and their associates are in grave violation of the law. My hope is that you can bring them to their senses before something irrevocable happens. You and your husband, of course. I did not invite him here today because he has avoided politics, and because, hm, a man of his temperament might have been uncomfortable.”

  Might well have exploded, Dagny understood.

  “Invite” was another cute word. “What exactly have they done?” she demanded.

  “Madame, you know. Everyone does.”

  “We’ve been in touch with them, their father and I, briefly. We did not argue rights or wrongs.” They never did any longer. “And we’ve followed the newscasts.” She must not go passive, she must keep the initiative, make Zhao respond to her. “Por favor, though, brief me on what you see the issues to be. We can’t talk sense before we’ve straightened out what each of us is talking about.”

  He nodded. “As you wish. I am anxious to make peace.”

  “Peace hasn’t been breached, has i ?”

  “Not yet—openly—not quite. I cannot help speculating whether their aim is to force the Authority to take the first unretraceable step.” Zhao made an understated production of drinking more tea. “Let me show you a recorded presentation. I have not permitted its release thus far, because it could prove inflammatory.”

  “Good of you, your Excellency. Look, I don’t want trouble either. Nobody in their right mind does.”

  His glance hinted that that might not include the young, the true Lunarians. What he said was, “Stipulated. This sequence was meant for transmission to Peace Authority headquarters on Earth, as a threedimensional account of what happened. It was prepared by order of Chief of Constabulary Levine, under the direction of the officer who had been in command of the mission. Anticipating difficulties, he had had a continuous record kept. For purposes of clarity this has been edited and commentary added, but it remains objective and unbiased.”

  “Does any such thing exist where people are concerned?”

  His smile flickered wry. “True, they would not interpret it in Hiroshima as your Selenites would. Therefore I have sequestered it. I have not decided whether to release it. Please try to see my dilemma.”

  He rose and went to the console. Dagny got up too and took a bounding low-g turn around the room. It darkened. The scene from China went out of the viewscreen. They moved their chairs to face that way and sat down again. She breathed deep and made her muscles ease, like undoing a row of knots.

  A man’s image appeared, uniformed, standing in a Spartanly functional studio. Lip movements showed he was not speaking the English that a translator program furnished: “Mohandas V. Sundaram, colonel, Peace Authority of the World Federation, reporting on an incident—” He went on to give date, hour, precise location, and then, in the same clipped voice, background.

  “During the Grand Jihad and the chaotic period afterward, the effective government on Luna was a self-created Coordinating Committee.” Unfair, Dagny thought. Colonial officers had agreed on the necessity, but the delegates were elected. Admittedly, several Earthside governments denounced the action, though they’d been in no position to do anything about it. “This confined itself to matters of public safety and essential services.” What else could or should it have done? “Numerous colonists and associations of colonists took advantage of the situation to commence operations hitherto illegal, notably in extractive and manufacturing industries. Indeed, the Committee turned a number of facilities over to them.” Somebody had to operate the plants. “They used these not only to produce needed goods, but to make new capabilities for themselves.” The multiplier effect, thrice powerful when you started with robotic and molecular technology.

  The reflection flashed through Dagny: The Renewal had simply been an extremist faction on an Earth gone generally ideological. People everywhere had been apt to regard productivity the way the medieval Church regarded sex, as inherently sinful, destructive, to be engaged in no more than was required for the survival of the race. Anyway, such was the ideal, and ideals could also constrain the thinking of the majority who didn’t really live by them. Wherefore people on the Moon must conform. And Fireball folk, who did not accept this, grew closer, more loyal, to each other than to an unfriendly society around them … like medieval Jews?

  Her attention had wandered. She snatched it back:—claims to ‘administration’ of large tracts were routinely franchised by the Committee. These franchises gave exclusive rights to exploitation, forbade trespass, and could be bought and sold. To all intents and purposes, they were the property rights in extraterrestrial real estate that the United Nations had enjoined. The World Federation has affirmed the prohibition. The Lunar Authority must enforce it.”

  Again Dagny’s focus drifted. Her Lunarian children were not altogether sundered from her. Anson/ Brandir told of mighty works to be wrought, and for Sigurd/Kaino shipyards were among them, spaceships for him and his kind. …

  “—most notorious case, in the Cordillera range. Pursuant to the governor general’s declared policy, every effort was made to reach agreement.” At least Sundaram did not cite those back-and forth, multiply connecting calls and faxes, the pussyfooting, the bluster, the queries, the evasions, the temporizing,
the thunderheads piling high with lightning in their caverns—but no, that was a wrong figure for these lands which had never known a wind. … “—at last ordered a mission to the area in dispute.”

  Abruptly the scene was there, pockmarked bare hills rising toward mountains dappled and gashed by shadows. The camera, inside one of two large vans, swung about until it looked back east. Earth stood at the waning quarter just above yonder horizon. The sun blazed at mid-morning. A road, little more than regolith smoothed and roughly graded, wound up over the kilometers toward this halting place. The camera swept through a half circle and came to rest, scanning out the front of its vehicle. The road went on until lost to sight amidst ruggedness. Here, though, an arch made of native rock bestrode it, filled by a gate of steel bars, shut. Dagny well remembered that portal. Brandir had taken her and Edmond through it when he showed them his realm and what he was building there.

  That was four years ago. Since then the newscasts had now and then replayed satellite pictures. Like others on Luna, the complex grew swiftly and greatly. Its inhabitants and workers said very little about their doings within. Brandir’s parents had learned not to ask him.

  Four spacesuited forms stood before the gate. Slung at their shoulders, jutting above the lifepacks, were things with tubes. Behind the bars waited the car that had brought them, a moondodger, fast and agile.

  The camera zoomed in on their helmeted heads. Three were unknown to Dagny. One was a man of her kind, bald, stocky, tough. Two were young, male and female, unmistakable metamorphs—Lunarians. The fourth, the leader, was her Kaino. His unruly red hair shouted against the dun rockscape.

  “Greeting,” came Sundaram’s voice, machinerendered into English. He identified himself. “I am in command of the inspection team you have been notified to expect.”

  “You were detected afar.” Kaino’s own English did not ordinarily bear this strong an infonation of the language his breed used among themselves. “Greeting, and may your homefaring go well.”