Worlds

18. Death and Tariffs

O’Hara went to the next Worlds Club meeting armed with the information John had passed on to her. Most of the people knew that and more.

“They could have kept it secret,” a man from Mazeltov complained. “That’s the trouble with you Yorkers. You-stay in too-close touch with Earth.”

“Where would you peddle your metal,” a man said, “without our marketing and shipping arrangements? Build your own slowboats and shuttles?”

“I’m not talking about economics,” the Mazeltov man said.

“What are they talking about?” O’Hara asked Claire. “What secret?”

“The lunar CC material. It’s all over the papers, haven’t you heard?”

“But I haven’t seen a thing. I’ve known about it for days!”

“Didn’t use to be news,” Claire said, looking through her bag. “Not until the Lobbies started twitching…. Guess I left the paper at home.”

“I’ll get one.” O’Hara went into the main restaurant section of the Liffey and put a dollar in the Times machine; punched up “Space.” It dropped twenty pages and flashed for another fifty cents. Usually you got two pages and change. O’Hara bought the rest and scanned the pages as she walked back to the meeting room.

The Senate was in an uproar. U.S. Steel was calling for a unilateral boycott of Worlds goods and services, and they had a lot of support.

Tomorrow night there was going to be a prime-time referendum: “Resolved: That all exports to the Worlds be halted until new agreements, guaranteeing long-term economic interdependence, can be reached between the United States and the Worlds, together and severally.”

She sat down across from Claire and leafed through the pages. “It’s out-and-out blackmail.”

“Not really,” Claire said. “Just good politics; better to do than be done to. Unusually farsighted.”

“I was going to say ‘premature.’ Don’t they know that this is really just a test?”

“But you do have to admit that we would pull our own boycott, eventually. Once we could live off Deucalion.”

“Twenty years or more.”

Claire shrugged. “Farsighted.”

The man from Mazeltov sat down with them. “Claire, you’re in systems engineering, right?” She nodded. “How long can we hold out?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. It depends on what you mean by ‘we.’ Your world and mine, Von Braun, will start to feel it in a couple of months. Larger systems are more resilient to shock; Devon’s World could hold out for years. New New York could go twenty years, probably, with careful birth control. If you add selective euthanasia, they could keep the World running for centuries.”

O’Hara looked thoughtful. “Twenty years.”

“You see? They aren’t really being precipitate. Just cold-blooded.”

“What about a larger ‘we’?” the man said. “New New could export food and water; they’ve done it before.”

“They did it for Braun when I was a baby,” Claire said. “That do you think, Marianne?”

“That was an emergency. I don’t know.” She sipped her beer. “There’s another political aspect to it, that the U.S. has to be thinking of… not just maintaining imbalance of trade. It looks as if they may be trying to push us into unity.” She glanced at the paper. “That’s why the phrase together and severally.’”

“There are worse things,” the man said.

“It would be a disaster.” O’Hara sighed. Old argument. “We’d be a suburb of Earth forever. Just another country.” The Worlds did have a loose organization, through the Import-Export Board and various unanimous agreements concerning immigration and noninterference. But there was nothing resembling autonomy except for a mutual orneriness toward Earth.

There was an awkward moment of silence while everybody decided not to run around that track again. “Speaking of other countries,” O’Hara said, “what about Common Europe? Are they cooperating?”

“Europe”—Claire nodded—“Supreme Socialist Union, and the Alexandrian Dominion. Japan has pledged to import nothing and limit its launches to bare life support for its two Worlds. The Pan-African Union is officially neutral, but their only launch facility is Zaire. They’re in bed with Germany. We do have Pacifica on our side, and Greenland, I think.”

“Who couldn’t launch a sputnik.”

“But it works both ways,” the man said. “What happens to all the high-tech countries’ economies? They need our energy and materials.”

“Maybe not so much as we’d like to believe,” Claire said. “At any rate, they have plenty of food and water.”

For once, all of the Worlds Club waited for Jules Hammond’s newscast with anticipation.

Both Coordinators were guests on the program, and they outlined a course of action (nobody considered seriously the possibility that U.S. Steel’s referendum would fail). They were going to offer a horse trade: rather than a mutually absolute embargo, New New and Devon’s World would continue to export electricity—not a small thing, since the satellites supplied about ten percent of the Eastern Seaboard’s power—if the Lobbies would agree to supply the Worlds with enough hydrogen to offset normal daily loss, which would be about one shuttle flight per week.

It was an interesting move, especially so for having been done in public, prior to the referendum. A half billion cube-staring groundhogs knew that, if the Worlds did embargo energy, that missing ten percent was going to come off the top: their own comfort and leisure. Just for hydrogen enough to make a swimming pool’s worth of water.

Various things weren’t said. For instance, the amount of ‘hydrogen requested was the amount lost in a normal week, but most of that loss was due to industrial processes that would largely stay dormant during a boycott. So the Worlds would actually be storing a surplus of water, in case of siege.

Leaving the solar power stations on would not be particularly altruistic, either; they are totally automated and require only sunlight as a raw material. It would be more trouble to turn them off than to leave them running.

One thing that would not be broadcast for a while was that a hastily gathered committee of experts in nutrition and agriculture had been able to assure the Coordinators that there would be no. starvation, so long as there was an excess of water. People would have to revise their diets. But if it came down to fish sauce and rice, New New alone could feed practically everybody in the Worlds.

The Club stayed on until closing time, arguing, wondering, worrying. When O’Hara got back to the dormitory, there was a message light blinking for her. Daniel had called six hours before, urgent, and left a prepaid return guarantee. She punched up his number and eventually heard his sleepy voice.

“Anderson here, no vision.”

“Daniel, it’s me!”

The screen lit up to show Dan in his absurd pajamas. “Jesus, sweetheart, where have you been? I called till mid-night.”

“Worlds Club meeting; lots to talk about.”

“Shit. I should have called you at the restaurant Look, I’ve got to make a decision fast.”

She nodded at his image. Four dollars a second, he nodded back at her. As often happens because of the time lag in transmission, they both spoke simultaneously: “Well—” and “Well?” That was good for an eight-dollar chuckle.

“Cyanamid has closed up shop here completely; they’re calling all of us back, tomorrow. Today.”

Her voice broke with excitement. “Then you’ll be home in… a week or so?”

“That’s the decision.” Another expensive pause. “I may be home right now.”

She frowned slightly. “You mean—”

“John says he can get me citizenship in five minutes. I, I want to do it. But … I also want you, and now.”

“So come on down with Cyanamid and then go back to New New next year, with me. I’m sure they’ll pay your way; even if they didn’t—”

“That’s just it, Marianne! I’m the only specialist in oil-shale chemistry here. They need me now more than ever. And with the embargo they won’t be able to get anyone to replace me. You’ve always told me how important this work was; now I feel it, too, maybe even stronger than you can.”

“Wait… what are you saying? You want me to help you make this decision? Or just approve of a decision you’ve already made?”

He looked almost ill. “I don’t know.”

“Not fair.” She was thinking furiously. “Look. The embargo can’t go on that long….”

“Don’t bet on it. From here it looks like it may be years—” Dan’s image disappeared in a swirl of rainbow static. It coalesced into that of a man wearing a Bellcom operator’s uniform.

“I’m sorry; we’re having some transmission difficulty, apparently because of solar activity. Please try again later. Your money will be refunded.”

“That was a collect call.”

“Then your caller will have his money refunded.”

“How do you know it was a man?” she said sweetly, and thumbed it off. Then, on impulse, she punched up ten digits.

A bald woman in a Bellcom uniform appeared on the screen. “Directory assistance, Devon’s World. May I help you?”

“Sorry. Wrong number.” Solar activity, in a pig’s ass.

Daniel dear—

I’m sorry I was such a bitch on the phone last night. It was a confusing, difficult day and I was bone-tired.

You are obviously right. Doubly right, in view of the political situation. But even without the current troubles, it would be ultimately best for us for you to stay in New New and become a citizen. It’s where we both belong.

In fencing, they keep telling us “Fence with your head, not with your heart.” I should apply that more generally.

Love,

Marianne