Hank shrugged philosophically. “Sooner or later we’ll meet a few of them. Then they won’t seem like strangers any more.”
“Ausländers,” Carol muttered under her breath.
“You’re not jealous, are you?” her husband teased.
She started to deny it, then relented. “Yeah, I guess I am. This used to be our personal bar, if you know what I mean. Now it’s popular, for God’s sake! What happened to privacy?”
The bartender arrived. “And what can I get for you?”
“Table service, yet! What happened to just yelling for what I wanted?” Carol groused.
“I don’t mind if it’s just you guys, but if they,” he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the crowd, “started doing that, we’d be reduced to bedlam within an hour.”
Carol sighed and ordered. After he had gone for their drinks, she said, “See what I mean? This place ain’t what it used to be.”
As the bartender returned with their beer, Reg Arnold shouldered past him and slid into the booth across from Hank and Carol. “Heard the latest?” he demanded angrily.
“Which latest?” Carol asked.
“What do you want to drink, Reg?” the bartender asked.
Irritated by the interruption, Reg snapped, “Bring me a Busker’s Ale… and make sure it’s cold this time.” Ignoring the arched eyebrow of the bartender, he said to Carol. “GM’s not going to reopen the plant. Ever.”
Hank frowned. “So? You don’t work there any more. Why should it matter to you?”
Reg blinked. “But don’t you understand? That means that I’ll never get my job back.”
“It wasn’t as though you expected them to ask you to come back next week, Reg,” Hank said. “It’s been, what, a year since you worked over there. They’re not going to keep making cars when no one is buying them.”
“But the Union said—”
Wearily, Carol put in, “Reg, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the UAW can’t make people buy cars when they don’t have money, and GM isn’t going to keep open a plant that’s costing them money instead of making it.”
Reg stared at her as though she were addled. “I can’t believe you said that.”
Carol rolled her eyes and said to her husband, “You talk to him. I’ll just get frustrated.”
“I have a right to work!” Reg insisted, not even glancing at the mug that the bartender placed at his elbow.
“Reg, I don’t recall that the Bill of Rights mentions the right to a job. And I certainly don’t think that anyone has singled you out as having a lock on a job at a GM plant, particularly one that’s closed.”
Reg glared at him, muttering under his breath. He took a swallow from his mug. “But how am I supposed to pay my bills if I don’t have a job? Why doesn’t the government do something?”
Carol said, “Somebody was telling me the other day that it was the government that got us into this depression. They were pretty persuasive.”
“What?” Reg spluttered, slamming his beer down on the table. “That’s a bunch of bull. Everybody knows that it’s those assholes up on Luna who did this. They closed that stupid Holmes Door of theirs and that’s when the trouble started. Almost to the hour!”
Hank shook his head. “I’ve had a long time to think this over, Reg. At first, I was inclined to agree with you, but if you look back before Commissioner Lister closed the Door, there were already signs of trouble.”
“And the Door’s open again,” Carol added. “If that were all there were to it, then things would be starting to pick up, right? I mean, sure, it might take time, but you’d see some kind of activity. Face it, Reg, Luna just isn’t big enough to get the entire United States back on its feet, much less the rest of the world.”
Reg sat back angrily against the back of the bench.
“If you’re serious about wanting to get back to work, go up to Luna. They’ve got jobs,” Hank suggested reasonably.
“If you think that’s such a good idea, why don’t you go?” Reg shot back.
Hank shrugged. “I’ve got a job here. It may not pay as much as I’d like, but it keeps the bills paid. Besides, this is home to me.”
“Well, what if it’s home to me too, dammit?” Reg demanded. “Why can’t a man have the necessities? I want to stay on Earth. I want to be near people I know. I want—”
“But you’re subsisting on unemployment, Reg,” Carol pointed out. “Is that how you want to live the rest of your life?”
“Of course not! I want my job back! I want—” He stopped, staring at them. Suddenly, he picked up his mug, tossed back the remaining ale, and slid out of the booth. “I thought you two, of all people, understood. Clearly, you don’t have a clue.” He turned and stormed towards the door.
Carol turned to her husband. “Is he right, or are we? I thought the idea was to do the best you could with the life you were given.”
Hank sighed. “I think that for Reg, the emphasis is increasingly on the word given. And he wants it on a silver platter.”
The paint was still wet by the time the Crisium chief of police, Samuel Watts, got there. He stood looking at the wall of the corridor for some time without saying a word. He walked back and forth, examining it from different angles. He sniffed at the paint. Gently, he pressed one fingertip against the very edge of the image. “Whoever painted this did it during the night while the corridors were empty,” he said, almost to himself.
“Well?” inquired the young rookie standing a respectful distance behind him. “Shouldn’t we have it scrubbed off before it dries?”
Watts stepped back and examined the picture as a whole, head cocked to one side. “I don’t get it,” he finally said.
The rookie glanced sharply at his superior. “Obviously, it’s the Man in the Moon, and they painted in Lister’s face.”
Watts grinned lopsidedly. “No, Brady, I can see that. What I don’t see is why. This isn’t your ordinary graffiti. This is someone who’s had serious training in art. This took time.
Look at the way they shaded Mare Imbrium to give depth to Alan’s eye.”
“But the craters are all wrong,” Brady complained.
Watts shrugged, unconcerned. “Call it artistic license. Whoever did this needed to move things around a bit to make it look more like Alan. It helps get the point across.”
“It’s still graffiti.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, and so were the other two. I’m not an art critic, but it looks like it’s probably the same artist.”
“But, shouldn’t we be trying to arrest them or something?”
“On what charge? The walls belong to the city, and Crisium doesn’t have a statute against graffiti.” He turned to leave.
“Shouldn’t we remove it?” Brady asked again.
Watts glanced back over his shoulder and grinned. “Nah, leave it. I kinda like it.”
He walked away, leaving the rookie staring, baffled, at his back.
Lewis Cantner stormed into Alan Lister’s office. He glared sideways at Anne’s image hovering next to him.
“… And I didn’t get the lock thrown in time to stop him,” she was saying. Her face puckered at the sight of Cantner. “Well, I see he’s there now. I’m sure that he’ll tell you all about it.” Her image winked out.
Cantner snorted angrily at the air where Anne’s face had been. “Why can’t you have a regular secretary like everyone else? What good is talking to a projection?”
“Anne is a regular secretary. She just chooses to work from home. And except for rude people who barge in without appointments, the arrangement usually works very well,” Alan added, unable to resist the barb.
“Rude?” Cantner demanded. “You have the gall to call me rude? Have you looked in a mirror recently? Of course, I don’t suppose rude is a strong enough word to describe someone like you. You just flat out don’t care about anyone who doesn’t fit your image of some kind of high and mighty Lunarian citizen. Somebody who can—”