Her mother peered into the tiny bedroom, then looked at the combination living and dining area. “Well,” she said diplomatically, “there’s not much to clean.”
“Mom, I know it’s small, but that’s the way things are here on Luna.”
Her mother took a deep breath before accepting the situation. “When you think about it, it’s not all that much smaller than the apartment where your father and I lived after we were married. It’ll do for a start.”
“I was thinking that maybe mirrors would help make it look bigger—” Roberta began.
“Oh heavens, child! Before we try mirrors, we need to lighten up the color of these walls. This place is as dark as a tomb…”
After half an hour, Roberta was able to coax her father out of his ill humor by asking him which software interface he thought she should use on her tunnel’s terminal. When he began to volunteer suggestions on his own she knew she had won the most important battle of her life. Her parents had accepted her as an adult with her own life to lead.
Like all cities, Crisium had neighborhoods which were deemed more desirable than others. A single principle governed the price of the individual tunnels that led off of the corridors: Age, or the aura of it, was everything.
In absolute terms, no man-made artifact on Luna could be much over a century old. Nothing habitable was more than about sixty or seventy years old, and even the oldest parts of the underground settlements were much younger than that.
The most valuable real estate in Crisium was that which had been dug when the city began its first wave of underground expansion. Originally called the core by the first settlers, the word had, by degrees, become capitalized. Now, tunnels in the Core went for prices as much as four or five times higher than equivalent tunnels elsewhere in the city.
There was also a distinct gradient from the top levels to the bottom, tunnels near the surface being more expensive than the deepest ones. This in spite of the fact that tunnels nearer the surface were more vulnerable to decompression in the event of a major municipal structural failure. Being near the surface carried the implication of having an older tunnel, even if it was not born out in fact.
Furthermore, the more distant a tunnel was from the geometric center of the city, the less it was worth. This, too, was based on the idea that older tunnels were more desirable, since the city had, over time, spread outwards from the Core.
When Alan Lister found himself seeking a small tunnel on the outskirts of the second lowest level, he knew without asking that it was about as inexpensive a place to live as Crisium had to offer. He pressed the annunciator button next to the portal and waited.
Just as he was considering leaving, the portal opened. The man revealed was disheveled. “Yeah?” he asked.
“My name is Alan Lister. Are you Reginald Arnold?”
“Yeah.”
“May I come in?”
The man glanced behind himself into the tunnel. “Uh, yeah. I guess so.” He turned and shuffled back into the tunnel, leaving the portal open.
Lister took a deep breath before entering. “I’ve come to talk with you about your request for unemployment benefits.”
Arnold stopped and turned to stare at Lister. “Is this an interview or something?”
“Well, no. Not exactly.”
Arnold nodded and shuffled over to a couch. He gestured. “Have a seat.”
Lister chose to sit at the kitchen table, rather than on the couch. He looked around. The tunnel was untidy but clean, in that there was a pile of unsorted clothing on the floor in the kitchen, but it appeared to have been freshly washed. Dishes, also clean, sat in a neat pile next to the sink.
“Today’s Tuesday. Tidy-up day. You woke me up. I was going to put things away after breakfast,” Arnold explained, noting the direction of Lister’s gaze.
Lister shrugged. “No business of mine. As long as you don’t endanger other people you can run your life pretty much any way you like.”
“So what about the unemployment?”
“There is no such thing. Not here on Luna, anyway.”
Arnold frowned. “Um… so what do people do when they can’t find work?”
“We encourage people to save for rainy days. As a matter of fact, we require it. Ten percent of everyone’s paycheck is taken off the top and put into an individual, interest-bearing account. The government doesn’t touch the money. It belongs to the individual, but it can’t be withdrawn except at retirement or in an emergency.”
“So what about people coming up from Earth, like me?”
“You filled out an application that asked what you intended to do when you got here. If you lied about having a position lined up, then the consequences are on your own head.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Lister agreed.
“I get the feeling there’s a message here.”
“If you want money, get a job. We don’t have any to give out.”
“No other choice?”
“Sure, you’ve got choices.” Lister ticked off on his fingers. “If you’ve got savings, you can coast for as long as your money holds out—the rest of your life, if you’ve got enough. You can get a job. You can go back to Earth.”
“Or I can starve like Emily Starnes.”
Lister shook his head sadly. “For obvious reasons, we’d rather people didn’t do that.”
“Do you have to be so cold-hearted about it?”
“We happen to believe that people should pull their own weight. Communism and socialism are dirty words around here.”
“Commu-what?”
“My God, what do they teach in the history courses down on Earth?” Lister asked, rolling his eyes. “Never mind, the point is that we don’t have an unemployment system and have no intention of starting one.”
“But I can’t find a job!” Arnold protested.
Lister frowned. Without speaking, he stood and walked over to the tunnel’s computer terminal. In seconds, he had pulled up the job listings for Crisium. He turned to Arnold, his eyes questioning.
“There’s nothing there. I’ve already checked.”
Lister considered this for a moment, lips pursed, then turned and brought up the master listings, including New London, Besselton, and the smaller outlying communities. “Nothing on all of Luna?” He tapped a key. “According to the database, there are over twelve hundred jobs listed in here. That’s an awful lot of nothing.”
“But not what I was doing on Earth.”
Lister snorted. “I should say not. According to your immigration application, you worked for GM. Since we don’t have any use for cars up here, I suggest you find something else to do.”
“But what?”
“That’s up to you.”
“You don’t care?”
Lister shrugged. “Not particularly. Why should I? I’m not here to save you from yourself. If you make a bad decision, why should everyone else have to pay for it?”
“I’m not asking for anyone else to pay for anything, dammit!” Arnold flared. “I just think your stinking government should give people a hand when they need it.”
A puzzled frown crossed Lister’s face. “Where do you think governments get their money? It comes from taxes. Where do you think taxes come from? From people. So why should the city government take money from others and give it to you? What have you done to earn it?”
“Why do I have to earn it? I need it!”
Lister finally lost his patience. He stalked to the portal. He turned before leaving, eyes narrowed. “So do the people who earned it,” he snapped. “Try it. Earn a little, then see if you don’t agree.”