Alan rocked back and forth in his seat for a few moments. Finally, he shook his head and sighed. “Anne, make a note on your calendar. As of this date, Luna no longer represents a cutting edge, frontier society. It used to be that we attracted only those who were willing to work—who were aching to work. All they wanted was an opportunity to do their jobs without having their elbows joggled every ten seconds by some busybody bureaucrat. Then came the rank and file workers who were content to earn a steady paycheck.” He eyed his wife. “Mind you, I’m not criticizing them, we need them. As long as they’re productive citizens, my hat’s off to them.”
“Not everyone can be a general,” Anne agreed, “somebody has to be a soldier.”
He nodded. “Exactly. But now it looks as though we’re getting the first of the parasites—the looters who follow your metaphorical army.” He rubbed his face vigorously with his hands, then said, “The application has a spot where they’re supposed to tell us what they intend to do when they get here. I don’t suppose this fellow just up and said he was going to be on the public dole, did he?”
Anne shook her head. “No. He said he had worked at GM, and expected to find a job in manufacturing.”
Alan steepled his fingers and resumed thinking. “Has he even tried to find a job?”
“According to his letter, yes, but he couldn’t find anything he liked. Reading between the lines, I gather that he felt that the jobs he was qualified for were beneath his dignity.”
Her husband’s expression soured. “There’s a lot of that attitude on Earth. Somehow, I find it hard to sympathize. I was raised to pay my bills, come hell or high water. If I had to wash dishes to do so, then so be it.”
“Some people don’t feel that way,” she said. “Some of them want dignity from their work.”
“They’ve got it backwards. Dignity doesn’t come from your job, dignity comes from paying your bills.”
“So what do you want to do about it? Want me to make up a form letter that we can fire off every time we get one of these?”
“Not yet. Let me go talk to him. Let’s hope it’s just a misunderstanding, although my gut tells me otherwise.”
“If we get more than one or two of these people, that will get pretty time consuming.”
“I know. I’m afraid the long term solution will be to check on whether immigrants actually have solid job prospects. Up until now, we’ve only been concerned with whether they had a job skill we could use, and left the job hunting to them.”
“We’d have to hire someone to follow up on the information on their applications,” Anne pointed out.
Grimacing, Alan nodded. “It’s not that governments automatically get bigger, it’s that people demand more services. A government’s size is a reflection of the peoples’ lack of will to do for themselves.” Sighing, he added, “And it looks as though we’re in for a growth spurt.”
Trevor York was falling endlessly, flailing at the air like a slip of paper fluttering in a strong wind. Stark, unreasoning fear brought him up from the depths of sleep. He awoke screaming.
Brigitte started bolt upright in the bed. “What is it, Trev?”
“I… I…” Now that he was awake, more rational, more in control, he saw that the truth was simply too embarrassing to tell. Of course he weighed too little, he was on Luna. “Uh… just a bad dream,” he said lamely.
She was barely able to see him in the dark. In the dim glow from the time display she thought that she saw him wipe sweat from his face. “Are you sure you’re OK?”
“Yes, I’m OK!” he snapped. “Didn’t I just say so?”
In fact, he had not, but Brigitte knew a wounded ego when she saw one. She reached out, touching him gently, tracing arcs on his skin with her fingernails.
“Don’t do that.”
“You used to like—”
“I don’t care what I used to like. Just don’t do it.”
Three times in the past two weeks he had rejected her like this; harshly, abruptly, without explanation. While tonight might be explained away as residual tension from a bad dream, she knew that the overall pattern wasn’t good.
He was getting bored with her.
Slowly withdrawing her arm, she turned her back on him. Three strikes and you’re out. It was time to start making contingency plans, as Trevor York was not renowned for keeping his women around for long, and it appeared that her time was nearly up.
Brigitte intended to hit the ground running.
Roberta Lith was caught between conflicting emotions. On one hand, she was not only gainfully employed, but she was making an obscene amount of money compared to what people were making down on Earth in the midst of the Depression. She even had her own tunnel. Small, true, but adequate.
Balanced against this was the fact that her parents disapproved… hated, actually, Luna and all that it stood for. For years, they had made their point of view known in ways great and small. Those people… they… the Lunarians, had greedily absorbed billions of dollars of Earth’s money without returning a single red cent. Meanwhile, those on Earth were left to suffer for lack of money. To them, the conclusion was inescapable: Luna had soaked up so much money that they had caused the Depression. They were a little hazy on the specifics, but the depth of their conviction was not to be doubted.
And Roberta, their only daughter, had defected to the enemy without even so much as saying good-bye.
Roberta wasn’t homesick… honestly. She just wanted to hear their voices and to let them know that she was all right. It had been almost a year since she had slipped out the front door, leaving nothing behind but dark, sliding tracks in the early morning dew.
She had meant to write or call before this, but had always found a good excuse not to follow through. This time would be different, if only she could quit wiping nervous sweat from her palms.
Biting her lip, she told the computer terminal in her tunnel to dial. It had been programmed with the number long ago, the first time she had tried to call.
The signal took one and a quarter seconds to speed to Earth. It took an additional eight seconds for the call to be answered. In that short span of time, Roberta died a thousand deaths. She nearly reached out to slap the disconnect button.
But didn’t.
It was her mother’s face. “Hello?”
“Mom?”
By the time Roberta’s hesitant reply had time to travel the distance, her mother’s face turned pale. Her eyes grew wide. “Baby?”
If her mother had replied with anything other than that one word, Roberta would have been able to keep up a brave face. She crumpled instantly, tears pooling in her eyes. “Oh, Mom, I’ve missed you.”
For almost five minutes they waged a nearly incoherent battle with each other and with their own emotions. It was a subtle battle for mastery—was Roberta an adult, or was she a wayward but still much-loved child? Roberta won, barely.
She smiled and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “So… how are things down there?”
Her mother shook her head, part wonder, part tacit acknowledgment of defeat. “We’re fine, baby. We were really worried about you, though.”
“I’m OK.”
“Did you really do it? Are you really up there?” She craned her neck, trying to see around her daughter, to catch partial glimpses of the room where she lived.
‘Yeah, Mom. I live in Crisium now. Uh… would you like my address?”
“I guess I’d better get it. Your birthday’s coming up and I’d like to send you a little something.”
“Mom… don’t. I don’t need anything. Really.”
“But—”
“Mom, I make more here than Daddy did when he had a job. Seriously, I was going to ask if I could send you some money.”