Seating himself at the counter, Ragle began to read his biography in _Time_.
fourteen
In his hands the pages of the magazine opened, spread out, presented him with the world of reality. Names, faces, experiences drifted up at him and resumed their existences. And no men in overalls came slipping in at him from the outside darkness; no one disturbed him. This time he was allowed to sit by himself, gripping the magazine, bent over it and absorbed in it.
_More with Moraga_, he thought. The old campaign, the 1987 presidential elections. And, he thought, _win with Wolfe_. The winning team. In front of him the lean, bumbling shape of the Harvard law professor, and then his Vice President. What a contrast, he thought. Disparity responsible for a civil war. And on the same ticket, too. Try to capture everybody's vote. Wrap it all up... but can it be done? Law professor from Harvard and ex-railroad foreman. Roman and English law, and then a man who jotted down the weight of sacks of salt.
"Remember John Moraga?" he asked Vic.
Confusion stirred on Vic's face. "Naturally," he muttered.
"Funny that an educated man could turn out to be so gullible," Ragle said. "Cat's paw for the economic interests. Too naïve, probably. Too cloistered." Too much theory and too little experience, he thought.
"I don't agree with you," Vic said in a voice that grew abruptly hard with conviction. "A man dedicated to seeing his principles carried out in practice, despite all odds."
Ragle glanced up at him in astonishment. The tight expression of certitude. Partisanship, he thought. Debates in the bars at night: I wouldn't be caught dead using a salad bowl made out of Lunar Ore. Don't buy Lunar. The boycott. And all in the name of principles.
Ragle said, "Buy Ant-Ore."
"Buy at home," Vic agreed, without hesitation.
"Why?" Ragle said. "What's the difference? Do you think of the Antarctic continent as home?" He was puzzled. "Lun-Ore or Ant-Ore. Ore is ore." The great foreign policy debate. The Moon will never be worth anything to us economically, he thought to himself. Forget about it. But suppose it is worth something? What then?
In 1993 President Moraga signed into law the bill that terminated American economic development on Luna. Hurray! Zeeeeep! Zeeeeep!
Fifth Avenue ticker-tape parade.
And then the insurrection. The wolves, he thought.
"'Win with Wolfe'," he said aloud.
Vic said fiercely, "In my opinion a bunch of traitors."
Standing apart from the two of them, Mrs. Keitelbein listened and watched.
"The law clearly states that in case of presidential disability the Vice President becomes full and acting President," Ragle said. "So how can you start talking about traitors?"
"Acting President isn't the same as President. He was just supposed to see that the real President's wishes were carried out. He wasn't supposed to distort and destroy the President's foreign policies. He took advantage of the President's illness. Restoring funds to the Lunar projects to please a bunch of California liberals with a lot of starry-eyed dreamy notions and no practical sense--" Vic gasped with indignation. "Mentality of teen-agers yearning to drive fast and far in souped-up cars. See beyond the next range of mountains."
Ragle said, "You got that from some newspaper column. Those aren't your ideas."
"Freudian explanation, something to do with vague sexual promptings. Why else go to the Moon? All that talk about 'ultimate goal of life.' Phony nonsense." Vic jabbed his finger at him. "And it isn't legal."
"If it isn't legal," Ragle said, "it doesn't matter if it's vague sexual promptings or not." You're getting your logic muddled, he thought. Having it both ways. It's immature and it's against the law. Say anything against it, whatever comes to your mind. Why are you so set against Lunar exploration? Smell of the alien? Contamination? The unfamiliar seeping in through the chinks in the walls...
The radio shouted, "...desperately ill with a kidney disorder, President John Moraga at his villa in South Carolina declares that only with painstaking scrutiny and the most solemn attention to the best interests of the nation will he consider--"
Painstaking, Ragle thought. Kidney disorders always painstaking, or rather painsgiving. The poor man.
"He was a hell of a fine President," Vic said.
Ragle said, "He was an idiot."
Mrs. Keitelbein nodded.
The group of Lunar colonists declared that they would not return funds they had received and which the Federal agencies had begun billing them for. Accordingly, the FBI arrested them qua group for violation of statutes dealing with misuse of Federal funds, and, where machinery rather than funds were involved, for unauthorized possession of Federal property et cetera.
Pretext, Ragle Gumm thought.
_In the dim evening the lights of the car radio illuminated the dashboard, his knee, the knee of the girl beside him as both he and she lay back together, intwined, warm, perspiring, reaching now and then into a bag of potato chips resting on the folds of her skirt. He leaned forward once to sip beer._
_"Why would people want to live on the Moon?" the girl murmured._
_"Chronic malcontents," he said, sleepily. "Normal people don't need to. Normal people would be satisfied with life as it is." He closed his eyes and listened to the dance music on the radio._
_"Is it pretty on the Moon?" the girl asked._
_"Oh Christ, it's awful," he said. "Nothing but rock and dust."_
_The girl said, "When we get married I'd rather live down around Mexico City. Prices are high, but it's very cosmopolitan."_
On the magazine pages between Ragle Gumm's hands, the article reminded him that he was now forty-six years old. It had been a long time since he had lounged with the girl in the car, listening to dance music on the radio. That was a very sweet girl, he thought. Why isn't there a picture of her here in the article? Maybe they don't know about her. Part of my life that didn't count. Didn't affect mankind....
In February of 1994 a battle broke out at Base One, the nominal capital of the Lunar colonies. Soldiers from the nearby missile base were set upon by colonists, and a five-hour pitched encounter was fought. That night, special troop-transporting ships left Earth for Luna.
Hurray, he thought. Zeeeeep! Zeeeeep!
Within a month a full-scale war was under way.
"I see," Ragle Gumm said. He closed the magazine.
Mrs. Keitelbein said, "A civil war is the worst kind possible. Family against family. Father against son."
"The expansionists--" With difficulty, he said, "The lunatics on Earth didn't do very well."
"They fought a while, in California and New York and in a few large inland cities. But by the end of the first year the One Happy Worlders had control here on Earth." Mrs. Keitelbein smiled at him with her fixed, professional smile; she leaned back against a counter, her arms folded. "Now and then at night, lunatic partisans cut phone lines and blow up bridges. But most of those who survived are getting a dose of e.c. Concentration camps, in Nevada and Arizona."
Ragle said, "But you have the Moon."
"Oh yes," she said. "And now we're fairly self-sufficient. We have the resources, the equipment. The trained men."
"Don't they bomb you?"
She said, "Well, you see, Luna keeps one side away from the Earth."