“Uh, truthfully, Colonel Davis, I was surprised at your youthfulness–for this mission, I mean. You appear to be about twenty-two. Are you older? Not much, I fancy.”
“Madam, I regret that your local gravitation makes it impossible for me to bow. Thank you. I’ve been married longer than that.”
“What? Oh, you’re jesting!”
“Madam, I would never venture to guess a lady’s age but, if you will emigrate to Luna, you will keep your present youthful loveliness much longer and add at least twenty years to your life.” I looked at list. “I’ll lump the rest of this together by saying we don’t have any of it in Luna, so I can’t see any reason to pay taxes for it. On that other point, sir, surely you know that the initial cost of the colonies has long since been repaid several times over through grain shipments alone? We are being bled white of our most essential resources. . .and not even being paid an open-market price. That’s why the Lunar Authority is being stubborn; they intend to go on bleeding us. The idea that Luna has been an expense to Terra and the investment must be recovered is a lie invented by the Authority to excuse their treating us as slaves. The truth is that Luna has not cost Terra one dime this century–and the original investment has long since been paid back.”
He tried to rally. “Oh, surely you’re not claiming that the Lunar colonies have paid all the billions of dollars it took to develop space flight?”
“I could present a good case. However there is no excuse to charge that against us. You have space flight, you people of Terra. We do not. Luna has not one ship. So why should we pay for what we never received? It’s like the rest of this list. We don’t get it, why should we pay for it?”
Had been stalling, waiting for a claim that Prof had told me I was sure to hear. . . and got it at last.
“Just a moment, please!” came a confident voice. “You ignored the two most important items on that list. Police protection and armed forces. You boasted that you were willing to pay for what you get. . . so how about paying almost a century of back taxes for those two? It should be quite a bill, quite a bill!” He smiled smugly.
Wanted to thank him!–thought Prof was going to chide me for failing to yank it out. People looked at each other and nodded, pleased I had been scored on. Did best to look innocent. “Please? Don’t understand. Luna has neither police nor armed forces.”
“You know what I mean. You enjoy the protection of the Peace Forces of the Federated Nations. And you do have police. Paid for by the Lunar Authority! I know, to my certain knowledge, that two phalanges were sent to the Moon less than a year ago to serve as policemen.”
“Oh.” I sighed. “Can you tell me how F.N. peace forces protect Luna? I did not know that any of your nations wanted to attack us. We are far away and have nothing anyone envies. Or did you mean we should pay them to leave us alone? If so, there is an old saying that once you pay Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane. Sir, we will fight F.N. armed forces if we must. . . we shall never pay them.
“Now about those so-called ‘policemen.’ They were not sent to protect us. Our Declaration of Independence told the true story about those hoodlums–did your newspapers print it?” (Some had, some hadn’t–depended on country.) “They went mad and started raping and murdering! And now they are dead! So don’t send us any more troops!”
Was suddenly “tired” and had to leave. Really was tired; not much of an actor and making that talk-talk come out way Prof thought it should was strain.
18
Was not told till later that I had received an assist in that interview; lead about “police” and “armed forces” had been fed by a stooge; Stu LaJoie took no chances. But by time I knew, I had had experience in handling interviews; we had them endlessly.