“Have you been here long?” Anna asked.
“Not long,” Valerie said. “And you?”
“Almost a year. I go home soon.”
“Are you looking forward to that?”
“No. I like it here.”
“What’s your job up here?”
“Spy.” Anna then laughed at Valerie’s expression. “Not really! I say that to see if you are spy. Which I see you are. Actually I do radio astronomy, over on the back side.”
“Is that a Russian observatory?”
“International. Mostly EU, in terms of who built it. But now it’s run by the IAU. You should come to visit.”
“Is it interesting?”
“No. But it’s always good to get to far side of moon, if you’re an astronomer anyway.”
Valerie thought it over. “Are there Chinese bases on the far side?”
“I don’t know. I’m neither sinologist nor selenologist.”
“Just an astronomer.”
“Right. If you want to learn more about selenology, the political kind, you should talk to Ginger Ellis, who runs the greenhouse in your building.”
“Really?”
“If she’ll talk, you will learn.”
So she really was a spy.
Women on the moon were a minority. Among the Americans they were said to constitute thirty-five percent of the population. On the moon, as elsewhere, that gender balance could feel somewhat like parity, and certainly normal for a situation like this one, with its strong element of construction and engineering. Using your hands to build things outdoors usually meant you were male. Make it an exotic outdoors and the percentage of women usually rose, true here as elsewhere. But it was still not fifty-fifty. That meant there was a certain solidarity among the women on hand, or so it seemed to Valerie. Everyone said hi and exchanged a little conversation in the course of doing business. People usually explained what they did on the moon, especially if they were meeting for the first time.
So now Valerie went looking for Ginger Ellis, and found her in the base’s greenhouse. This was again a big glass-walled round room with a 360-degree view, as tight-horizoned and monotonous as those one saw from the Chinese greenhouses at the south pole. Valerie introduced herself as a presidential assistant, and Ginger nodded and said she knew that.
“Do the plants grow taller here?” Valerie asked, looking around.
“Taller and spindlier. We put the least happy crops in a centrifuge, but mostly we harvest early, or just plant low plants. It’s not a good place for corn.”
“I can see how that would be.”
Now Ginger Ellis was staring at her. “And what is it that you can’t see?”
“I can’t see why people in the other stations think you’re the person who runs this one.”
Ginger laughed. “I grow their food.”
“But most of the food is shipped up, right? Even freshies?”
“My tomatoes rule,” Ginger said. “Anyone will tell you that. Heirlooms, never refrigerated. People beg me for them. I don’t even wash them.”
“Is that good?”
“Of course. Vine-ripe organics? What, aren’t you a foodie?”
“I am. But I do wash my veggies.”
“Don’t. Especially here. It’s already too sterile here, people get sick from being too clean.”
“So I should eat some dirt from time to time?”
“I do that, yes. Just a little, but sure.”
Valerie made a face. “Maybe in a pill.”
Ginger shook her head. “Just eat dirt.”
“Okay,” Valerie said. “Farm to fork, dirt included. But tell me what the hell is going on up here.”
Ginger stared at her, unfazed. “What? We’re here. We’re doing the moon.”
“But why?”
“Because it’s there. As they say.”
“Because the Chinese are there, you mean.”
“Well, sure. They’ve got the south pole, we’ve got the north pole.”
“Lots of countries have got the north pole.”
“Which means we have friends and they don’t.”
“Which means they don’t have to share.”
“Share what? There’s nothing to share.”
“I’ve heard that, but I was wondering if you thought it was true. Aren’t there things up here that are getting scarce on Earth? Like from those mines I saw on the way here?”
“No.” Ginger laughed. “The moon isn’t good for anything. Except as a launchpad. That’s what I think the Chinese are really focused on.”
“But a launchpad to where?”
“To anywhere. It’s cheaper to launch stuff from here than from Earth, which makes it easier to go farther out.”
“Are the Chinese already going farther out?”
“Sure. Everyone is. The Chinese are focused on Venus and the asteroids.”
“Isn’t Venus useless?”
“Yes, but they’re building a floating station in its atmosphere, like a city inside a blimp. And they’re sending big chunks of aluminum from here to Venus orbit. Looks like they’re thinking of building a sunshade at Venus’s L2 point to shade Venus completely, to cool it down. It’s a very Chinese project, some kind of thousand-year plan or whatever. It’s crazy, but if you don’t include Venus in your thinking, you can’t really understand the Chinese presence here.”
“So the Chinese are going to be the first ones to yet another place?”
“Yes. But the solar system is big. We don’t have to worry about every crazy idea the Chinese choose to pursue.”
“Don’t we?”
“I don’t think so. It’s not a zero-sum game.”
“But what if there are people in Washington who think it is—wouldn’t they come up here and try to do something about it?”
“Like what?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“I don’t know. People may be doing that, trying to mess with them, but it would be stupid. I don’t think there’s anything we can or should do about other governments’ activities in space.”
“You’re very unconcerned!”
“It’s true. Maybe that’s because I grow such fine tomatoes.”
“Can I have one?”
“Let’s slice a couple and have a caprese salad. I grow the basil too.”
She sliced the tomatoes on a big cutting block right next to her potting station. Ingredients were indeed unwashed. Valerie ate a delicious forkful or two and said, “Wow, they are good. The basil too.”
“I grow ten kinds of basil, it’s wonderful.”
“Where do you get the mozzarella?”
“From Italy. Lots of food is shipped up, like you said. It’s like any other local food movement. If the local stuff reaches thirty percent, you’re totally eating off the land.”
“So, but don’t you think there are some American agencies trying to mess with the Chinese up here?”
“No doubt. And vice versa too. This cryptocurrency called virtual US Dollars, for instance. That’s turning out to be really destabilizing. Combine that with the householder protests, it’s crashing the economy pretty bad. But that hurts the Chinese too, so it’s hard to understand who’s doing it. Here on the moon, neither side is doing much that I can see.”
“And you can see a lot.”
Ginger Ellis stopped chewing, stared at her; swallowed. “Everyone can see a lot. It’s a very small town, the moon. There’s not a lot of places to hide, and people talk.”
“Seems to me there’s tons of places to hide. I’m looking for an American citizen who went missing, for instance, and I’m having no luck finding him. I’m hearing about secret lava tubes and such where they might have hidden him.”