“They wouldn’t be giving it to me,” Umber corrected. “They’d be giving it to themselves. To each other. They’d be winning back control of this habitat.”
“You expect them to allow themselves to be beaten to a pulp?”
“Yes,” said Umber. “And I’ll be the first one in line.”
“I don’t think it would work,” Alicia said. “They’d break and run as soon as the police started hitting them.”
Umber sighed. “Perhaps they would.”
“I would,” said Alicia.
“Umber’s been in there for a long time,” said Sergeant Jacobi.
The viewscreen in Evan Waxman’s living room showed the passageway outside Raven Marchesi’s apartment. Occasionally someone walked past. But what was going on inside the apartment?
Feeling frustrated, Waxman wondered, “What’s he doing in there with the two women?”
“Getting laid.”
Waxman looked sharply at the sergeant. “Not him. I think he’s impotent.”
“H’mmph.”
Waxman got up from his desk chair. “We should have bugged that woman’s apartment.”
“Now you think of it.”
Shaking his head disconsolately, Waxman said, “Umber wouldn’t let me. He said that people’s private quarters should remain private.”
“Great humanitarian thinker,” Jacobi sneered.
“Well, it’s too late—”
“Hey! Here he comes.” Jacobi pointed to the wall screen, which showed Kyle Umber leaving Raven’s apartment.
Waxman studied the reverend’s face as he started up the passageway. “He looks very serious. Very somber.”
Jacobi huffed. “He didn’t get laid.”
PLANNING
“Let them hit me?”
Raven nodded.
“But that’s crazy.”
“It’s passive resistance,” she said. “It’s worked in the past, back on Earth.”
Raven was sitting on the sofa in the living room of her quarters, Alicia beside her. Sitting on the sling chair facing them was Syon Shekhar, head of the habitat’s plumbers guild. Small, thin almost to the point of emaciation, dark of skin, hair and eyes, his face was set in an expression of dismayed disbelief.
“You want me to tell my people to go out and sit on the lawn in front of the Chemlab Building and allow the security guards to beat them?”
Raven nodded, tight-lipped.
“Get real,” Shekhar snapped. “That’s crazy.”
Alicia repeated, “It’s called passive resistance.”
“It’s called lunacy,” said Shekhar.
“It originated in your country,” Raven coaxed. “Gandhi used it—”
“My country is South Africa,” Shekhar interrupted. “For the past eleven generations.”
“Whatever,” said Raven, undeterred. “Passive resistance can work. It’s worked in the past.”
Shaking his head, Shekhar objected, “So you expect my people to go out and sit in front of the Chemlab Building and let the security goons split their skulls?”
“I’ll let them split my skull,” said Raven.
“And mine,” Alicia added.
“You’re both crazy.”
With a slow smile creeping across her face, Alicia coaxed, “You mean you wouldn’t be willing to do what the two of us intend to do? You’d let us show more guts than you would?”
“You’ll show more guts, all right,” Shekhar countered, getting to his feet. “And brains. And blood.”
Raven stood up too, barely as tall as Shekhar’s thin shoulders. “Will you at least tell your people about it? Will you do that much?”
With a resigned shrug, Shekhar answered, “Sure, I’ll tell them. But they’re not going to go for it, I can tell you that right now.”
“Maybe,” Raven admitted.
“So how many do we have?” Kyle Umber asked the two women.
The minister was in his own private quarters, sitting in front of the viewscreen that took up most of the far wall of his living room. Raven and Alicia sat huddled together on the sofa of Raven’s living room.
“Not many,” answered Alicia.
“Most of the group leaders were surprised when we told them about it.”
“Shocked.”
Umber bit his lower lip. “This will only work if we have a big turnout.”
“I know,” Raven replied. “But the idea seems to shock them.”
“It’s too new. Too different,” said Alicia.
“Maybe if I tried to explain it to them,” said Umber. “Show them what we’re trying to accomplish.…”
Raven shook her head. “We can’t have you meeting with all the habitat’s group leaders. Waxman would catch on to what we’re trying to do.”
Alicia nodded minimally. “Benjamin Franklin said three people can keep a secret—if two of them are dead.”
Umber nodded back at her. “I just hope Waxman’s not tapping into our communications with each other.”
“No,” said Alicia. “I asked the leader of the communications group and he told me no one has asked to read private messages.”
“Not yet,” breathed Raven.
“Evan would have to bring any such request to the Council for a vote,” Umber said. But his voice did not sound certain about the idea.
“Why couldn’t you record a speech, Reverend Umber,” asked Raven, “so we could give copies of it to the various group leaders.”
Umber’s expression changed from doubt to a glimmering hint of possibility. “A speech,” he said, savoring the idea. “A short, strong speech.”
The next morning, Umber sat at the desk in his living room, staring at the viewscreen on the wall opposite his sofa. The screen was broken into half a dozen scripts, quotations from brilliant, successful speeches of the past.
“When you decide to steal,” Umber muttered to himself, “steal from the best.”
Leaning back in his comfortable desk chair, Umber began reading. These are the times that try men’s souls. He paused momentarily, then went on. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
He stopped and stared at the words of Thomas Paine that he had just quoted. They were good enough to rally the upstart American colonists against the world-girdling British Empire, he thought. Maybe they’ll help to raise the residents of this habitat against Waxman’s tyranny.
He fervently hoped so.
DISCUSSION
When in doubt about what to say, Gordon Abbott always unconsciously tugged at his moustache. He was pulling it now hard enough to make himself wince.
Reverend Umber’s image filled his office’s wall screen, looking uncertain, worried, almost fearful.
Abbott jerked his hand away from his face and asked, “You want me to contact the Interplanetary Council and ask them to give you a hearing?”
Nodding slightly, Umber replied, “So that we can apply for membership to the Council.”
Blinking anxiously at the reverend, Abbott asked, “Why don’t you call them yourself?”
His round face showing obvious distress, Umber admitted, “Because my calls are blocked.”
“Blocked? By whom?”
“Evan Waxman.”
“Your own chief administrator?”
With a lugubrious nod, Umber explained, “Evan has taken control of the habitat’s council. He’s running Haven, not me. He won’t let me contact Earth under any circumstances.”
Abbott pondered that admission for several long, silent moments, consciously keeping his hands folded tightly on his desktop.