And Man’s priorities were not the same as ours. It was more than just a city/country thing, even though it sometimes took that appearance. I called it “deliberate speciation.” About half the population of Men on the planet lived in Centrus, and most of the ones sent out to places like Paxton usually only stayed one long Year before going back. So whatever benefited Centrus benefited Man. And weakened us, out in the provinces, however indirectly.
I’d worked with Man teachers, of course, and a few times dealt with administrators. I’d long gotten over the uncanniness of them all looking and, superficially, acting the same. Always calm and reasonable, serious and gentle. With just a grain of pity for us.
We talked about the grid problem, the school problems, the phosphate mine that they wanted to build too close to Paxton (which would also bring a freight monorail that we needed), and smaller problems. Then I dropped my bombshell.
“I have a modest proposal.” Marygay looked at me and smiled. “Marygay and I think we all should help Man and our Tauran brothers out with their noble experiment.”
There was a moment of absolute silence, except for the crackling fire. The phrase “modest proposal” meant nothing to most of them, I realized, born a millennium after Swift. “Okay,” Charlie said. “What’s the punch line?”
“They want to isolate a human population as a genetic baseline. Let’s give them isolation with a vengeance. “What I propose is that we take the Time Warp from them. But we don’t just go back and forth between Mizar and Alcor. We take it out as far as it can go, and come back safely.”
“Twenty thousand light-years,” Marygay said. “Forty thousand, here and back. Give them two thousand generations for their experiment.”
“And leave us alone for two thousand generations,” I said.
“How many of us could you take?” Cat asked.
“The Time Warp’s designed for two hundred, crowded,” Marygay said. “I spent a few years on it, waiting for William, and it wasn’t too bad. We would probably want a hundred fifty, for long-term living.”
“How long?” Charlie said.
“We’d age ten years,” I said. “Real years.”
“It’s an interesting idea,” Diana said, “but I doubt you’d have to highjack the damned thing. It’s a museum piece, empty for a generation. Just ask for it.”
“We shouldn’t even have to ask for it. Man’s claim to ownership of it is a legal fiction. I paid for one three-hundred-twelfth of it, myself,” Marygay said. There were 312 vets in on the original “time shuttle” deal.
“With wealth artificially generated by relativity,” Lori said. “Your salary piling up interest, while you were out soldiering.”
“That’s true. It was still money.” Marygay turned to the others. “Nobody else here bought a piece of the shuttle?” There was a general shaking of heads, but Teresa Larson raised her hand. “They stole it from us, pure and simple,” she said. “I got billions of Earth dollars, enough to buy a mansion on the Nile. But it won’t buy a loaf of bread on Middle Finger.”
“To be devil’s advocate here,” I said, “Man offered to `assume stewardship’ of it, if the humans were going to abandon it. And most of the humans had no interest in it after it had served its purpose.”
“Including me,” Marygay said. “And I don’t deny having been a willing collaborator in the swindle. They bought back our shares with money we could only spend on Earth. It was amusing at the time, worthless money in exchange for a worthless antique.”
“It is an antique,” I said. “Marygay took me up there once to show me around. But did it ever occur to you to wonder why they keep it maintained?”
“Tell me,” Diana said. “You’re going to.”
“Not out of sentiment, that’s for sure. I suspect they’re maintaining it as a kind of lifeboat for themselves, if the situation gets difficult.”
“So let’s make it difficult,” Max said. “Stack ’em in there like cordwood and shoot ’em back to Earth. Or to their Tauran pals.”
I ignored that. “No matter what their plans are, they won’t just let us have it. It may be three Earth centuries old, but it’s still by far the largest and most powerful machine in this corner of the universe–even without weapons, a Class III cruiser is a lot of power and materiel. They don’t make anything like them anymore. It probably comprises a tenth of the actual material wealth in the system.”