Douglas frowned, but wrote. He stopped, looked across at Mickey. "You're trying to make a point, aren't you?"
"Uh‑huh."
"Go on."
"I think we should limit ourselves to signatories to the Covenant of Rights."
Douglas didn't say anything to that. I could tell he was thinking it over. He didn't like the idea, I knew that much, but he could see the point.
It wasn't that we disagreed with the U.N. Covenant of Rights. Not in principle, at least. But back home, there were a lot of people who said the Covenant was a recipe for anarchy or totalitarianism–or both at the same time. So we had never ratified it.
The Covenant recognized the basic rights of all people–that every human being was entitled to equal access to opportunity and equal protection under the law. That all people were entitled to freedom of belief, freedom of expression, freedom of spirit. That all people were entitled to access to food and water and air, access to education, access to justice. And most important, that all people were entitled to equal representation in their government. And that no government had the right, authority, or power to restrict or infringe or deny those freedoms. And so on. It was pretty dangerous stuff.
Some of the folks back in tube‑town said that the only way all those freedoms could be guaranteed equally would be to establish a totalitarian dictatorship. Then no one would have any freedom, but we would all be equal. Other people said that if we signed the Covenant, it would mean we'd have to repeal half our laws, and our civilization would break down. They said that men and women would have to share the same toilets and that rich people would have to sleep under bridges with poor people and everybody would have to share all their property so nobody had more than anybody else. And besides, only the One‑Worlders wanted us to sign it because that would be another step toward ceding our independence to the U.N. And once there was a world government in place, the rest of the world would loot our economy. And so on.
But the way it looked now, it didn't really matter after all. The last news we'd heard, nobodyhad an economy anymore.
Douglas said, "I know you mean well, Mickey, but I'm not comfortable with the Covenant of Rights. It sounds like collectivism."
Mickey looked at him expectantly. So did Alexei.
"I mean, you can't just let people have rights without controls. You get a breakdown of society. You get corruption and immorality and fraud. The system breaks down, a little bit at a time. You get multi‑generation welfare families, and parasites feeding at the public trough. You get teener‑gangs and disaffected subcultures and dysfunctionals of all kinds. You get riots and crime and … and immorality. All kinds of degeneracy. You have to have some limits on what people can do; otherwise, it all erodes away and eventually falls apart." He gestured vaguely behind himself. "I mean, all you have to do is look at what's happening back there on Earth."
Mickey replied, "I could just as easily argue the opposite side of it, Doug–that the meltdown is a result of too many oppressive controls."
"I don't think so–"
"Well, then let me put it to you another way. Do you want a place where you and I can stay together? Only a Covenant world will guarantee that. None of the others. If they haven't signed the Covenant, there's no evidence that they're committed to anyone's rights."
Douglas sighed in exasperation. "Y'know, back in Texas, that kind of talk would be subversive."
There was a long uncomfortable silence at that. Mickey and Alexei exchanged a glance, waiting.
Douglas looked from one to the other. I could see he was struggling with it, trying to wrap his head around a whole new idea. Finally, he said, "Things reallyare different out here, aren't they?"
"Yeah," said Mickey. "They are."
Douglas sighed. He hated losing arguments. "All right." He scribbled something on his clipboard. "Mickey wants a Covenant world. Very important."
MONKEYS
There was a lot more than that too. I never realized there was so much stuff to consider.
Like language, f'rinstance. What if the perfect colony was one where no one spoke Spanglish? We'd have to spend six months just learning to speak French or some other weird tongue, before we could begin to function like real people.
And skin color. We didn't think of ourselves as racist, or anything like that, but we all wanted to go to a place where we looked pretty much like everybody else, because we wanted to fit in.
And food. That one was realimportant–especially after eating a few of those damn MREs. On some worlds, they grew their protein in big vats of slime. On others, they farmed insects. By comparison, even pickled mongoose sounded appetizing.
Both Douglas and Mickey had a lot of information in their clipboards about all the different colony worlds, so we spent a lot of time talking about each one and scoring it on all the different things that were important to us. We crossed off some colonies immediately, with almost no discussion at all. Others, we talked about for an hour or more. I hadn't realized there were so many different kindsof colony worlds.
Other than that, we napped and crapped–and got slapped into the aft bulkhead every time there was a course change. I can't say I ever got used to them; they were all uncomfortable; but at least I got smart enough to take a lot of deep breaths whenever Alexei's PITA beeped.
Every so often, we'd climb around to one side or the other, to peek out one of the little windows, hoping to catch sight of either the Earth or the moon. We never did get a real good look at the moon; we were angled wrong, coming around behind the dark side, trying to catch up to it; but once we got a spectacular view of the crescent Earth. It was the size of a basketball held at arm's length–and it looked so big and so small, both at the same time, it was scary. And it was so bright it made my eyes water. It gave me a funny feeling inside to know that we would never go back.
We'd never see Mom or Dad again either. And that felt strange too. Because I didn't feel anything for them, just gray inside. Like I didn't know what to feel. Maybe I'd feel it later. I just didn't know. I wondered if Douglas felt the same way–or if he was still so confused about his feelings for Mickey that he didn't have room for any other kind of feelings.
But with so much other stuff happening, I didn't get a chance to talk to him about it. I also had to take care of Stinky.
Stinky thought free fall was fun. He wanted to go bouncing and careening around the cargo pod, except there really wasn't much room for that, except for the little bit of open space at each end. I'd started thinking of our nest at the aft end as the top. The bottom was the space we used as the bathroom, although a couple of times, Mickey and Douglas went up there when they wanted some privacy.
Alexei busied himself with eavesdropping on the various news channels. I could see his fingers twitching when he did. He said he wanted to get on the phone and start calling. He could make a lot of money with just a few phone calls–but any unusual traffic from this pod would certainly alert whoever was watching that this was the occupied one, so he resisted the temptation. He said he was part of a web of money‑surfers who took care of each other's business when any one of them was in transit or had to go underground for a while. That way, the money was never where anyone might be looking for it. Just the same, he worried about the opportunities passing by.
So it was left for me to entertain Stinky whenever he got bored, which was almost constantly. Fortunately, we had the monkey to play with, so the two of us started teaching it things and making up games. The monkey was pretty smart–smarter than I would have guessed for a kid's toy. Smart enough not to draw to an inside straight.Smart enough to play an aggressive game of chess. Even smart enough to hold its nose whenever Stinky farted.