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He sat down, looking sad. Nobody whistled but everybody wanted to talk. Next character pointed out that water can be extracted from rock--this is news? Some rock runs 6 percent--but such rock is scarcer than fossil water. Why can't people do arithmetic?
Several farmers bellyached and one wheat farmer was typical. "You heard what Fred Hauser said about ice. Fred, Authority isn't passing along that low price to farmers. I started almost as long ago as you did, with one two-kilometer tu
"We kept extending tu
They whistled for him. A fine idea, I thought, but who bells cat?
Wyoming Knott, apparently--chairman stepped back and let Shorty introduce her as a "brave little girl who's come all the way from Hong Kong Luna to tell how our Chinee comrades cope with situation"--and choice of words showed that he had never been there... not surprising; in 2075, HKL tube ended at Endsville, leaving a thousand kilometers of maria to do by rolligon bus, Serenitatis and part of Tranquillitatis--expensive and dangerous. I'd been there--but on contract, via mail rocket.
Before travel became cheap many people in Luna City and Novylen thought that Hong Kong Luna was all Chinee. But Hong Kong was as mixed as we were. Great China dumped what she didn't want there, first from Old Hong Kong and Singapore, then Aussies and Enzees and black fellows and marys and Malays and Tamil and name it. Even Old Bolshies from Vladivostok and Harbin and Ulan Bator. Wye looked Svenska and had British last name with North American first name but could have been Russki. My word, a Loonie then rarely knew who father was and, if raised in creche, might be vague about mother.
I thought Wyoming was going to be too shy to speak. She stood there, looking scared and little, with Shorty towering over her, a big, black mountain. She waited until admiring whistles died down. Luna City was two-to-one male then, that meeting ran about ten-to-one; she could have recited ABC and they would have applauded.
Then she tore into them.
"You! You're a wheat farmer--going broke. Do you know how much a Hindu housewife pays for a kilo of flour made from your wheat? How much a to
She got silence more respectful than whistles. At last a peevish voice said, "What do you expect us to do, gospazha? Throw rocks at Warden?"
Wyoh smiled. "Yes, we could throw rocks. But the solution is so simple that you all know it. Here in Luna we're rich. Three million hardworking, smart, skilled people, enough water, plenty of everything, endless power, endless cubic. But what we don't have is a free market. We must get rid of the Authority!"
"Yes--but how?"
"Solidarity. In HKL we're learning. Authority charges too much for water, don't buy. It pays too little for ice, don't sell. It holds monopoly on export, don't export. Down in Bombay they want wheat. If it doesn't arrive, the day will come when brokers come here to bid for it--at triple or more the present prices!"
"What do we do in meantime? Starve?"
Same peevish voice-- Wyoming picked him out, let her head roll in that old gesture by which a Loonie fem says, "You're too fat for me!" She said, "In your case, cobber, it wouldn't hurt."
Guffaws shut him up. Wyoh went on, "No one need starve, Fred Hauser, fetch your drill to Hong Kong; the Authority doesn't own our water and air system and we pay what ice is worth. You with the bankrupt farm--if you have the guts to admit that you're bankrupt, come to Hong Kong and start over. We have a chronic labor shortage, a hard worker doesn't starve." She looked around and added, "I've said enough. It's up to you"--left platform, sat down between Shorty and myself.
She was trembling. Shorty patted her hand; she threw him a glance of thanks, then whispered to me, "How did I do?"
"Wonderful," I assured her. "Terrific!" She seemed reassured.
But I hadn't been honest. "Wonderful" she had been, at swaying crowd. But oratory is a null program. That we were slaves I had known all my life--and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren't bought and sold--but as long as Authority held monopoly over what we had to have and what we could sell to buy it, we were slaves.
But what could we do? Warden wasn't our owner. Had he been, some way could be found to eliminate him. But Lunar Authority was not in Luna, it was on Terra--and we had not one ship, not even small hydrogen bomb. There weren't even hand guns in Luna, though what we would do with guns I did not know. Shoot each other, maybe.
Three million, unarmed and helpless--and eleven billion of them... with ships and bombs and weapons. We could be a nuisance--but how long will papa take it before baby gets spanked?
I wasn't impressed. As it says in Bible, God fights on side of heaviest artillery.
They cackled again, what to do, how to organize, and so forth, and again we heard that "shoulder to shoulder" noise. Chairman had to use gavel and I began to fidget.
But sat up when I heard familiar voice: "Mr. Chairman! May I have the indulgence of the house for five minutes?"
I looked around. Professor Bernardo de la Paz--which could have guessed from old-fashioned way of talking even if hadn't known voice. Distinguished man with wavy white hair, dimples in cheeks, and voice that smiled-- Don't know how old he was but was old when I first met him, as a boy.
He had been transported before I was born but was not a lag. He was a political exile like Warden, but a subversive and instead of fat job like "warden," Professor had been dumped, to live or starve.
No doubt he could have gone to work in any school then in L-City but he didn't. He worked a while washing dishes, I've heard, then as babysitter, expanding into a nursery school, and then into a creche. When I met him he was ru