“But… but…” Van Bastolaer shrugged helplessly and fell silent. How could he stand up for the civil rights of boxies: he thought they already had plenty of them.
The boxies, apparently, all 13 million of them, or at least a sizeable percentage of them, didn’t agree. They felt that being confined to a box and being paid next to nothing to perform all the dirty work on the planet was a clear violation of their basic human rights. They wanted automatic citizenship for all the boxies who had worked six months and they wanted it now.
And to get it, they had effectively shut down the Moon.
Toppling the Statue of Liberty had merely been a way of drawing attention to themselves. On a more practical level, they had shut down the world’s spaceports, taken over the electrical, water, and oxygenation plants, and closed the doors of the MedSys Centers where daily shiploads of ancient Terrans now anxiously awaited to be transformed into boxies before their feeble bodies gave out on them. But until the box peoples’ demands were met, no more boxies were being created who might then be pressed into duty as strike-breaking scabs.
They shut down the tube tunnels between the cities.
They took over the surface farms and exposed the delicate crops to the destructive fury of the naked Sun.
They stopped doing the maintenance and engineering that kept all of the Moon’s financial and commercial centers going.
They stopped the building trades.
They turned off every waste disposal and recycling station in the world. They cut the air filtration systems back to the minimum. Garbage piled up; the Moon began to stink.
They detained, or sequestered, or blockaded, as many ganics as they could.
They stopped cultivating the underground hydroponic farms that accounted for most of the population’s basic foodstuffs—and sealed their entrances shut so that no one else could get in to run them.
Human-type people with human-type stomachs began to get hungry. And thirsty, and alternately hot or cold, and terrified, as water and heating and air-conditioning and electricity were cut off at increasingly frequent intervals.
Up on the surface farms it got hotter and hotter.
And still hotter.
“Hi there, Mr. White. How you doin’?”
I looked up with what remained of my energy and rapidly fading curiosity. Hovering in the glare just outside our patch of shade was a boxie who seemed vaguely familiar. It was hard to see his features, though, so completely was his head covered by an enormous broad-brimmed hat. “Oh,” I said, finally placing his nasal whine, and feeling the stir of a faint gleam of hope, “it’s Charlie the Boxboy. Hey, Charlie, have you come to get me out of here?”
The enormous hat waggled from side to side. “ ’Fraid not, Mr. White. Just comin’ by to say hello. Sorry to see you up here with all these nogood newbies, I thought you was down below with ever’one else.”
“I wish I was,” I said with total sincerity. “And I wish you were too. How come you’re mixed up with these… these other guys here?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Mr. White. One of ’em called me the other day on my radio and asked if I’d like to help ’em out and maybe help me get a newbie of my own. So natcherly I says yes. When you spent twenty-eight years inside a box like me, whattya got to lose?”
“Twenty-eight years!”
“You better believe it.”
Tom Van Bastolaer, nervously checking his built-in wrist panel that told him how many remaining hours of nutros—and life—remained in his central reservoir, groaned softly. “And all 15 million of you boxie lunatics are floating around trying to kill people? I don’t believe it!”
Charlie the Boxboy cackled happily. “Hell, no, not by a damned sight! Just a couple thousand of us, but that’s all it takes, ain’t it?” He cackled again. “It’s so simple it makes you wonder why nobody ever thought of it before.”
“Thought of what?” demanded Van Bastolaer disgustedly. “Of seeing how many decent people you can kill by boiling them to death?”
“Ain’t nobody gonna be killed if you people who think you’re running the place do a little listening for once to the people who’re doin’ all the work, and let us share a couple of crumbs from your table.” Charlie spoke with surprising dignity. “But what I meant was, Mr. White, was that once the first couple boxies got the idea that maybe we should finally stand up for our rights, all they hadda do was run a database check to see how many of us boxies been stuck in our boxes for fifteen years or more and ain’t been able to buy our way out no matter what we do. So then they just started callin’ us one by one until they got enough of us to do what’s gotta be done. And ain’t none of you fancy newbies and ganics ever got the slightest idea what was goin’ on right under your noses!” He cackled again. “Hope you come outta this all right, Mr. White—but then, I hope I come outta this box, too! See you around.”
With a jaunty wave of the industrial laser he had politely kept hidden behind the back of his box during our conversation, he soared off into the blinding dazzle.
“So that’s who’s causing all this trouble,” muttered Tom Van Bastolaer in unbelieving tones. “Riffraff like that! They say they don’t have any rights; they’re just too damn lazy or stupid to work for them like the rest of us did! I just can’t believe it!”
I sighed. If every newbie on the Moon felt the same way Van Bastolaer did, then there was going to be very little meeting of the minds between them and the boxies.
And I was going to keep getting hotter and hotter.
“What about soldiers or the police?” I ventured tentatively. “Couldn’t they—”
“We don’t have soldiers on the Moon—what would we need them for? And most of the police are boxies themselves. Who wants to be a cop? And anyway, how do you arrest or shoot a bunch of boxies who don’t want to be shot? All they have to do is to disappear into the nearest air-conditioning duct or water main. You’d never find them all! And if you tried to shoot them, they’d start turning off the water and electricity—for good.”
I brushed more sweat away from my eyes. “Then what do you think is going to happen?”
“I think we either give in to their demands—or there are going to be an awful lot of dead humans and newbies.”
It continued to get hotter.
“Well,” I said, knowing that this might be the last conversation I’d ever have, “I guess this takes care of the tunnel bond funding. No one in the Belt is going to want to put their buckles into a place where a bunch of animated boxes can take over the tunnels and blow them all up if they aren’t given an extra helping of caviar for lunch.”
There was no reply from Tom Van Bastolaer. His eyes were closed, his mouth was open, and his breathing was ragged. He looked barely alive. Without moving my head I glanced around at the other bodies of both organic humans and newbies sprawled in the ovenlike heat. How many of them, I wondered vaguely, were already dead?
Was it worth trying to make a last desperate dash in my GEM chair for one of the airlocks or elevators that had supposedly been sealed by the boxies and trying to fight my way through?
I was still turning this over sluggishly in my numbed mind when I became aware that the blinding glare outside our darkened shelter was becoming rapidly less bright. Was it me—my body finally shutting down forever—or was it really growing darker inside the dome?
Moments later, the section of dome that I could see from where I huddled, turned a polished silver, then vanished completely in the utter darkness that suddenly engulfed us. Once again sirens howled and cool, cool water splashed against my body, first in droplets, then, in spite of the makeshift overhead shelter, in torrents. An icy wind appeared from nowhere, chilling my overheated body instantly. Moans and muffled shouts of bewilderment from my fellow prisoners could be dimly heard over the wailing sirens.