It was the one topic which she had never mentioned since the day when they had flown up to the Far Realm . “You are still intent on going down to Earth, then?”
“Aye, I am. Though in my heart I fear what awaits me there, I will not shirk from the task I have found for my new body. Quinn must be thwarted.”
“He’s probably there already. Goodness, by the time we reach the O’Neill Halo all of Earth could be possessed.”
“Even if I knew that beyond all doubt, I would still not allow myself to turn back. I am truly sorry, Lady Louise, but my course is set. But do not worry yourself unduly, I will stay with you until you have found passage to Tranquillity. And I will make sure that there are no possessed on your vessel before it casts off.”
“I wasn’t trying to stop you, Fletcher. I think I’m a little fearful of your integrity. People in this age always seem to put themselves first. I do.”
“You put your baby first, dearest Louise. Of that resolution, I am in awe. It is my one regret that by embarking on my own reckless venture that I will in all likelihood never now meet your beau, this Joshua of whom you speak. I would dearly like to see the man worthy of your love, he must be a prince among men.”
“Joshua isn’t a prince. I know now he is nowhere near perfect. But . . . he does have a few good points.” Her hands touched her belly. “He’ll be a good father.”
Their eyes met. Louise didn’t think she had ever seen so much loneliness before. In all the history texts they’d reviewed, he had always taken care to avoid any which might have told him what became of the family he’d left behind on Pitcairn Island.
It would have been so very easy for her to sit beside him and put her arms around him. Surely a person so alone deserved some comfort? What made her emotions worse was that she knew he could see her uncertainty.
The door processor announced that Endron was waiting. Louise made light of the moment with a chirpy smile and went to fetch Genevieve from her room.
“Do we all have to go?” a reticent Genevieve asked Endron. “I’d reached the third strata in Skycastles. The winged horses were coming to rescue the princess.”
“She’ll still be there when we get back,” Louise said. “You can play it on the ship.”
“He needs you there for a full image scan,” Endron said. “No way out of it, I’m afraid.”
Genevieve looked thoroughly disgusted. “All right.”
Endron led them along one of the public halls. Louise was slowly mastering the art of walking in the asteroid’s effete gravity field. Nothing you could do to stop yourself leaving the ground at each step; so push strongly with your toes, angling them to project you along a flat trajectory. She knew she’d never be as fluid as the Martians no matter how much practise she had.
“I wanted to ask you,” Louise said as they slid into a lift. “If you’re all Communists, how can the Far Realm ’s crew sell Norfolk Tears here?”
“Why shouldn’t we? It’s one of the perks of being a crew member. The only thing we don’t like about bringing it in is paying import duty. And so far we haven’t actually done that.”
“But doesn’t everybody own everything anyway? Why should they pay for it?”
“You’re thinking of super-orthodox communism. People here retain their own property and money. No society could survive without that concept; you have to have something to show for your work at the end of the day. That’s human nature.”
“So you have landowners on Mars as well?”
Endron chuckled. “I don’t mean that sort of property. We only retain personal items. Things like apartments are the property of the state; after all, the state pays for them. Farming collectives are allocated their land.”
“And you accept that?”
“Yes. Because it works. The state has enormous power and wealth, but we vote on how it’s used. We’re dependent on it, and control it at the same time. We’re also very proud of it. No other culture or ideology would ever have been able to terraform a planet. Mars has absorbed our nation’s total wealth for five centuries. Offworlders have no idea of the level of commitment that requires.”
“That’s because I don’t understand why you did it.”
“We were trapped by history. Our ancestors modified their bodies to live in a Lunar gravity field before the ZTT drive was built. They could have sent their children to settle countless terracompatible worlds, but then those children would have needed geneering to adapt them back to the human ‘norm.’ Parent and child would have been parted at birth; they wouldn’t have been descendants, just fosterlings in an alien environment. So we decided to make ourselves a world of our own.”
“If I have followed this discourse correctly,” Fletcher said. “You have spent five centuries turning Mars from a desert to a garden?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you really so powerful that you can rival Our Lord’s handiwork?”
“I believe He only took seven days. We’ve got a long way to go yet before we equal that. Not that we’ll ever do it again.”
“Is the whole Lunar nation emigrating here now?” Louise asked, anxious to halt Fletcher’s queries. She had caught Endron giving him puzzled glances at odd times during the voyage. It was something to watch out for; she was used to his naivete, thinking little of it. Others were not so generous.
“That was the idea. But now it’s happened, the majority of those living in the Lunar cities are reluctant to leave. Those who do come here to settle are mostly the younger generation. So the shift is very gradual.”
“Will you live on Mars once you’ve finished flying starships?”
“I was born in Phobos; I find skies unnatural. Two of my children live in Thoth city. I visit when I can, but I don’t think I would fit in down there anyway. After all this time, our nation is finally beginning to change. Not very swiftly, but it’s there, it’s happening.”
“How? How can communism change?”
“Money, of course. Now the terraforming project no longer absorbs every single fuseodollar earned by our state industries, there is more cash starting to seep into the economy. The younger generation adore their imported AV blocks and MF albums and clothes, they are placing so much value on these status symbols, ignoring our own nation’s products purely for the sake of difference, which they see as originality. And they have a whole planet to range over; some of us actually worry that they might walk off into the countryside and reject us totally. Who knows? Not that I’d mind if they do discard our tenets. After all, it is their world. We built it so they could know its freedom. Trying to impose the old restrictions on them would be the purest folly. Social evolution is vital if any ethnic-nationhood is to survive; and five centuries is a long time to remain static.”
“So if people did claim land for themselves, you wouldn’t try to confiscate it back?”
“Confiscate? You say that with some malice. Is that what the Communists on your world say they’re going to do?”
“Yes, they want to redistribute Norfolk’s wealth fairly.”
“Well, tell them from me, it won’t work. All they’ll ever do is cause more strife if they try and change things now. You cannot impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly. The Lunar nation functions because it was planned that way from the moment the cities gained independence from the companies. It’s the same concept as Norfolk, the difference being your founders chose to write a pastoral constitution. Communism works here because everybody supports it, and the net allowed us to eliminate most forms of corruption within the civil service and local governing councils that plagued most earlier attempts. If people don’t like it, they leave rather than try and wreck it for everyone else. Isn’t that what happens on Norfolk?”
Louise thought back to what Carmitha had said. “It’s difficult for the Land Union people. Starflight is expensive.”
“I suppose so. We’re lucky here, the O’Neill Halo takes all our malcontents, some asteroids have entire low-gee levels populated by Lunar émigrés. Our government will even pay your ticket for you. Perhaps you should try that on Norfolk. The whole point of the Confederation’s diversity is that it provides every kind of ethnic culture possible. There’s no real need for internal conflict.”
“That’s a nice idea. I ought to mention it to Daddy when I get back. I’m sure a one-way starship ticket would be cheaper than keeping someone at the arctic work camps.”
“Why tell your father? Why not campaign for it yourself?”
“Nobody would listen to me.”
“You won’t be your age forever.”
“I meant, because I’m a girl.”
Endron gave her a mystified frown. “I see. Perhaps that would be a better issue to campaign about. You’d have half of the population on your side from day one.”
Louise managed an uncomfortable smile. She didn’t like having to defend her homeworld from sarcasm, people should show more courtesy. The trouble was, she found it hard to defend some of Norfolk’s customs.
Endron took them to one of the lowest habitation levels, a broad service corridor which led away from the biosphere cavern, deep into the asteroid’s interior. It was bare rock, with one wall made up from stacked layers of cable and piping. The floor was slightly concave, and very smooth. Louise wondered how old it must be for people’s feet to have worn it down.