“Splendid!” Cavan pronounced. “Good for you, Landen. Make it a real party.”
“You’ve earned it, Lan,” Vicki said.
“Hell, we all have,” Keene muttered. “Who’d like one now?” Everyone did. Keene opened the closet where the glasses were kept, while Alicia put the rest of the provisions away. Vicki and Cavan resumed talking about the Vedic Mars encounters.
“You know, I’m still not sure I understand how this works here,” Alicia said to Keene as she opened the bottle. “You just walk in the store and you take this. You know no one is going to say anything or stop you. But still you have a hard time deciding if you should. It happens to me too. Can you explain it?”
Keene set down four glasses. “I’m not sure I can. I was talking to Imel yesterday—he’s the guy in the store. He told me he used to be a skimmer once.”
“Oh, really?”
“I never knew that,” Vicki threw in from across the room.
“And I’m just arrived here. You should get to know your neighbors,” Keene said. “Skimmer” was the Kronian term for one who took and gave nothing back. “But he said it doesn’t last long. Nobody judges or says anything. But something inside gets to them. They need to find a way to pay. So now he works on one of the city repair crews, does a day a week in a shoemaking shop, and helps mind the store up there.”
“Careful, Lan. You might start restoring my faith in human nature,” Cavan said.
“Restore? How could I, Leo? You never had any.”
“Weren’t there supposed to have been societies back on Earth at times, where nobody locked their doors or bothered safeguarding their possessions because stealing was unknown?” Vicki asked distantly. “Do you really think it’s possible for something like that to work here—even when Kronia gets bigger? I was talking with Sariena about it.”
“I think we might soon be finding out,” Cavan answered. “There are people here now who’d be the last to let it work if they get their way.”
“Because the only power they understand comes from controlling what others create,” Alicia said.
“You mean steal,” Vicki corrected.
“Ah, now, you can’t say that,” Cavan told them. “Of course it would be legalized first.”
“The really big criminals never break laws,” Alicia agreed. “They make them.”
Keene came around the kitchen worktop and handed a glass each to Vicki and Cavan. “But you can’t run that as a platform to get elected on,” Cavan said. “You have to have a front that sounds reasonable.”
They were talking about the motives behind the Pragmatist movement. Its stated position was that at this juncture Kronia couldn’t afford to expend resources on nonproductive scientific issues far from home that they dismissed as “quasi-religious.” Necessity dictated concentrating on the industrial development and construction, here and now, that would mean long-term security for everyone. It was the line that Keene had heard from Grasse and Valcroix when he met with them. The real issue, of course, was who would decide the allocations of those resources, and by what means.
“It’s a familiar-enough pattern to any of us,” Vicki said. “But how many Kronians will be able to see through it? Look at what happened in Washington.” The Pragmatists were striving to recruit numbers beyond the Terran contingent by exploiting discontent and resentments among the Kronians wherever possible—and in some instances, by fomenting it. And there were those among the Kronian population who felt that the limited-resource argument perhaps had some merit.
“Yes, I’ll grant you that,” Cavan said. “The recognizable face of old-style political unrest so beloved to us all is showing itself again.” He shook his head. “But they won’t win here. I can’t see it. The fertile ground they need to grow in doesn’t exist.”
“That’s pretty much what Sariena says too,” Vicki said, nodding.
“Well, she should know.” Cavan showed his palms, indicating nothing more to add. Vicki still seemed to need more convincing. Cavan looked up at Keene as he tilted his glass. “But things could still come to a fight before we’re through. Would you be up to it, Landen?”
“What? Are you trying to drag me into your sordid underworld schemes again, Leo?” Keene said.