Harvest of Stars (20 page)

“Why?”

“You must know what it’s like in the States these days. Though probably a person has to experience it directly to realize how bonkers the country is going. Canada too. I admit—well, I came back from years in South America, the money I spoke of caterwauling to be used, and it was like wading into a swamp of glue.”

“I know the Renewal movement is on the upswing.”

“Yeah, that’s a large part of it. Environmentalism run amuck.”

She frowned a little. “The planet is in a bad way.”

“Sure. No argument. I’ve been a conservationist since I graduated from diapers. Cloth diapers. But if anybody
calls me an environmentalist he’d better be quick on the draw. Hell, Ju—Beg pardon. Miss Trevorrow, from what you tell me, you and your dad are doing some of the things that’ll repair the damage and prevent more. What won’t do it is, for instance, closing down nuclear powerplants so people have to shiver in winter and breathe the garbage spewed out by coal-fired generators—not just carbon dioxide and carcinogens, but more radioactivity than nuclear accidents ever released. Or paying jewelry prices for solar units that might on a clear day furnish the juice for one light bulb per square yard of ecology they cover up. Or banning plastics that could perfectly well be made recyclable, in favor of paper that demands we turn the last of our forests into monoculture plantations. Or saddling business with such a load of taxes, regulations, and paperwork that it breaks the backs of all but the fatcat giant corporations. Or—”

He must pause for air. “Yes, I’m aware of that, and more,” she said. “We’re getting it in Australia too.”

“Not as bad, I gather.” Guthrie’s smile was rueful. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to rant at you. Actually, I think eco-fascism is just one side of the evil. It’s fascism generally, or puritanism if you like. H. L. Mencken once defined a puritan as a man who wakes during the night in a cold sweat at the thought that somebody, somewhere, may be having a good time. So let’s protect the poor, ignorant consumer from himself. Tax alcohol, tobacco, and junk food out of reach and propagandize against them with the aim of eventual prohibition. Indoctrinate and train the school kids, draft them into teams for the proper sports,
Kraft durch Freude
. Tax fuel a thousandfold; joyriding is wicked, and keeping your house at a comfortable temperature is antisocial. Make sure every medicine bottle needs a hacksaw to open, or a charge of nitroglycerine.

“Meanwhile, of course, onward with uplift. Require employing the right proportion of men, women, in-betweens, ethnics, and ‘disadvantaged.’ Have strict quotas in the colleges for the bright and literate and those who work at their studies, to make room for the ‘mentally
special.’ Keep books with insensitive remarks in them off library shelves and out of stores. Better yet, don’t let them be published. Keep ears stretched for wrong talk, reprove the offender publicly, haul him into court and fine him if you can. Or beat him up. No charges will be brought—

“Rats! There I went again. What a waste of a beautiful sunset. I do apologize.”

“You needn’t,” she said gently. “I may not entirely agree, but I like people who have strong feelings and aren’t afraid to express them, at least if the feelings are basically decent. Is this why you’ve come Down Under?”

“Not quite,” he admitted. “I could’ve gone back to South America. Lots of opportunities there, what with democratic institutions taking firm root. But … Australia has a live space program these days. Ours is hopelessly bogged down in bureaucracy and corporate lardheadedness. Too many entrepreneurs have broken their hearts trying to lift off on their own. One way or another, the calcified giant has squashed them flat. The Europeans and Japanese have settled down into contentment with what they’ve got, which isn’t bad but isn’t much interested in getting better, either. Besides, they don’t welcome foreigners.

“You people, you’ve finally decided to build a spaceport for yourselves. You talk about developing improved launch systems. I want to be a part of that, in however small a way. I want it very much.”

Her look was steady upon him. “Why?”

“Why, that’s where the future is, if we have any. I said I’m a conservationist. It’s true we can’t go on a lot longer taking everything out of the hide of Mother Earth. If we don’t start using the resources yonder, and soon, industrial civilization is done for, and several billion people with it, maybe all of ’em. For any who somehow survive the crash, it’s back to the Dark Ages, permanently. I want a better prospect for my children.”

“How many have you?”

“None so far. I’m single.” Never mind, at this moment, the long-ago accident. Nor did he see any immediate
reason to mention Bernice. She’d tried, and he had, in what he now knew was a clumsy fashion, and the divorce was outwardly amicable but the pain of it had helped drive him overseas.

“You’re right about the need for space,” Trevorrow said. “At any rate, I’ve similar ideas.” She hesitated. “Except for my father, I haven’t discussed them with anyone else before.”

“Nor I, much.” He grinned. “To tell the truth, I hope to make my fortune in the cause. An obscenely big fortune. Doing well by doing good.”

“Yes, we should talk more,” she said, almost shyly.

His pulse thudded, but neither of them had immediate words. They turned their faces west. The sun had slipped away and the sea ran darkling, a-glimmer with the brightness that faded overhead. The breeze gathered force, fresh against brow and cheeks. It rustled in the shrouds. A boom creaked. The ship heeled slightly and the waves ran louder. Every sound remained muted, though, beneath the enormous hush in heaven.

Venus gleamed like a beacon.

Impulse burst from Guthrie: “By God, space is elbow room as well! Newness. Freedom.”

He barely heard Trevorrow: “I’ve carried that thought about in myself.”

He laid a hand over hers. She didn’t seem to mind.

H
AVING LOOSE TIME
on the Moon between missions, Kyra Davis took the monorail from Port Bowen to Tychopolis. That was where she’d likeliest catch some action. Astrebourg on Farside was staid, mainly devoted to research, and other communities had gone purely Lunarian since independence. Foreigners weren’t forbidden entry, but it wasn’t encouraged and those who went found themselves so isolated that they were happy to leave.

Tychopolis continued to be Luna’s commercial and cultural interlink with the rest of the Solar System.

The ride was spectacular as always, over ashen maria and up into the highlands. Earth in night heaven sank lower as the train sped south; the shadows that its blue-and-white brilliance cast lengthened, bringing countless little pockmarks clear into sight. It did the same for jumbled regolith beneath which power cables lay buried. Transmission dishes loomed skeletal against the stars. You couldn’t sense the beams they hurled at the mother world, but sometimes when she saw one it was as if a sound throbbed in Kyra’s marrow, a song of energy clean and well-nigh limitless, a song of triumph.

The train climbed Tycho’s ringwall, swooped down again, whizzed across the crater floor, and plunged underground near Skyview Tower. Kyra lockered her suitcase in the terminal. Later she’d bring it to the hotel where she had reserved a room. Tomorrow, universal time, she might revisit the standard attractions. She was especially fond of the gardens and zoo, the unique life forms they harbored. But sightseeing, or whatever adventures developed, went best in company. She’d begin by looking for a friend, which in turn began with having a drink.

The ornate old murals in the station behind her, she bounded upstairs to corridor level. Motion was a joy, strides long and airy-light, kangaroo leaps where space permitted, birdlike flight in Avis Park. The absence of civilian vehicles added to the pleasure. There was no call to fret about low
-g
effects. She’d only be here a short while; hours per day in a centrifuge weren’t necessary.

When she reached Tsiolkovsky Prospect she had to slow down because of the crowds. In these surroundings she didn’t care. The passage ran straight and broad, sides paved for skaters, duramoss green and yielding on the midstrip. Three levels of arcades rose on feathery pillars, shops, cafés, inns, amusement dens, enterprises more exotic. Overhead, the ceiling was a single glowpanel. Illusions drifted along it like clouds, a dragon, a jewel-burst, an undulant abstraction, trailing their umbras beneath them.

Odors of food, drink, perfume, and curious smoke mingled with music that trilled, wailed, beat, rippled from here and there in the arcades, never loud, never fully comprehensible to her. Voices overrode it, ceaseless chatter. More than half the people who thronged the corridor were visitors, tourists, businessfolk, journalists, spacers, vacationers from Astrebourg or L-5. The tumble-about of races, garbs, manners made her remember kaleidoscopes.

The Lunarians were less conspicuous among them than you might have expected. True, all were fine-boned and most were very tall, two meters or more; but the stature wasn’t invariable, nor was everybody as thin as the stereotype. Many wore the typical somberly rich, Renaissance-like clothes, but some were in workaday unisuits or blouse and slacks. Men did lack beards and hair on their arms, women were small-bosomed and slim-hipped, but locks did not necessarily flow long, eyes were not necessarily big and oblique nor skins pale. The genetic transformation had not wiped out every trace of varied ancestry. What set them apart more than anything else was style. They moved through the swarm deftly, avoiding contact, as though the outsiders were an inanimate stream. They went singly or paired and talked low, in the euphonious language they had created for themselves.

Shopkeepers, tour guides, and such were more outgoing. Kyra suspected that that was generally a show. Certainly most of them, aloofly polite, gave the impression that when they took your money they were conferring an honor on you. It didn’t bother her. The more variety in the cosmos, the better, and this was their world. She did wonder whether those commentators were right who declared that the Lunarians were basically different in mind as well as in body. Could you make human DNA over so radically that its bearers could spend their lives and have children here, without also getting a soul alien to Earth?

A troupe of musicians and mimes passed in flamboyant motley. They capered, they gesticulated, they played their sonors and tabors and crescent-flaring huntress horns; but
each face stayed hidden behind a fanciful animal mask. They weren’t performing for handouts. This was a traditional part of the scene, endowed by the local seigneurs. (Traditional? Fifty years at most. But evidently when you changed the organism, it found its own modes fast.)

The Prospect debouched on Hydra Square. Now transparent paving was under Kyra’s feet, roof for an aquarium in whose deeps fish shimmered multi-hued among sinuous algae. The fountain at the center sprang nearly to the ceiling, a rush of whiteness and clear noise. Subsonics pulsed its cascades into evanescent forms suggestive of serpents. One side of the plaza housed service bases, constabulary, maintenance, hospital, rescue squads. The other three held museums. The historical museum was especially interesting, Kyra recalled. Among its exhibits were representations of Tychopolis before independence, back when anybody could enter the residential sections.

From the square she took Oberth Passage. Traffic was much less. Behind these closed doors, computers cerebrated and nanoworks bred their products. The district was worth walking through because of the emblems identifying each property. It was strange art, not quite reminiscent either of European heraldry or Chinese calligraphy, governed somehow by the curves of analytical geometry.

Ellipse Lane went off from Oberth. Fifty meters down its arc she spied what she sought. A light-sign flashed THE LAUNCH PAD. She entered.

“Kyra!” A short form pressed close. Arms embraced her.

She blinked and peered, vision adjusting to the dimness of the bar. For an instant she was astounded.
Eiko?
Then she made out the features and recognized Consuelo Ponce. A luminous L-5 shoulder patch had helped fool her. Twice foolish, she thought; Eiko would never go in for display like that, if ever she left home.

The young woman stepped back and beamed up at Kyra. “What a pleasant surprise,” she said. Her English kept a slight, winsome Tagalog accent; she wasn’t born in
the space habitat where she lived. “The last I heard, you were bringing ice to Mars.”

“Bueno, helping nudge it back onto the right trajectory, after it got perturbed,” Kyra replied. “How in MacCannon’s name did you hear about that?” Their acquaintance was casual, Consuelo being a cytomedic.

“Oh, I follow the news about all you space pilots avidly. Not many of you left, are there?” In haste, having seen Kyra’s lips tighten a bit: “I’ve come for a conference in Astrebourg, on radiation damage therapy, but first wanted to see what consortes were here. Can we have some time together later?”

Kyra hesitated. Consuelo was a sweet person but almighty voluble. Besides, after her cruise Kyra wasn’t hunting for female companionship. However—“Why not now? I’ll just fetch me a beer.”

The other clouded over, leaned close on tiptoe, and whispered under the buzz and rumble of talk, “I can’t well leave that poor man yonder. I was bound back to him from a trip to the lavabo. Let me disengage gently.”

Kyra’s gaze followed Consuelo’s furtive gesture. He seemed fairly young, sporting a mustache, a turban on his dark head, a white tunic patched with the trademark of Maharashtra Dynamics. Shoulders slumped, he stared into the tumbler before him. “A stranger to me,” Kyra said.

“To me too when I arrived, but he was so sad that—It’s a serious matter when a Parsee gets drunk. He needs a sympathetic ear.”

“What’s his trouble?”

“He was an engineering mineralogist, working with meteoroid ores. His company has cybered his job out from under him. Oh, he has a new position, but he knows it’s makework. The pride, the meaning, they are gone.”

Kyra winced for the second time. How much longer could old Guthrie hold out on behalf of her kind? She kept telling herself that no software yet written was entirely her match against the unending astonishments in space—regardless of what capabilities modern hardware might
have—and you must also take capital costs into account—Nevertheless—