Is mixed-up place another way; they care about skin color–by making point of how they don’t care. First trip I was always too light or too dark, and somehow blamed either way, or was always being expected to take stand on things I have no opinions on. Bog knows I don’t know what genes I have. One grandmother came from a part of Asia where invaders passed as regularly as locusts, raping as they went–why not ask her?
Learned to handle it by my second makee-learnee but it left a sour taste. Think I prefer a place as openly racist as India, where if you aren’t Hindu, you’re nobody–except that Parsees look down on Hindus and vice versa. However I never really had to cope with North America’s reverse-racism when being “Colonel O’Kelly Davis, Hero of Lunar Freedom.”
We had swarms of bleeding hearts around us, anxious to help. I let them do two things for me, things I had never had time, money, or energy for as a student: I saw Yankees play and i visited Salem.
Should have kept my illusions. Baseball is better over video, you can really see it and aren’t pushed in by two hundred thousand other people. Besides, somebody should have shot that outfield. I spent most of that game dreading moment when they would have to get my chair out through crowd–that and assuring host that I was having a wonderful time.
Salem was just a place, no worse (and no better) than rest of Boston. After seeing it I suspected they had hanged wrong witches. But day wasn’t wasted; I was filmed laying a wreath on a place where a bridge had been in another part of Boston, Concord, and made a memorized speech–bridge is still there, actually; you can see it, down through glass. Not much of a bridge.
Prof enjoyed it all, rough as it was on him: Prof had great capacity for enjoying. He always had something new to tell about great future of Luna. In New York he gave managing director of a hotel chain, one with rabbit trade mark, a sketch of what could be done with resorts in Luna–once excursion rates were within reach of more people–visits too short to hurt anyone, escort service included, exotic side trips, gambling–no taxes.
Last point grabbed attention, so Prof expanded it into “longer old age” theme–a chain of retirement hostels where an earthworm could live on Terran old-age pension and go on living, twenty, thirty, forty years longer than on Terra. As an exile–but which was better? A live old age in Luna? Or a funeral crypt on Terra? His descendants could pay visits and fill those resort hotels. Prof embellished with pictures of “nightclubs” with acts impossible in Terra’s horrible gravity, sports to fit our decent level of gravitation–even talked about swimming pools and ice skating and possibility of flying! (Thought he had tripped his safeties.) He finished by hinting that Swiss cartel had tied it up.
Next day he was telling foreign-divisions manager of Chase International Panagra that a Luna City branch should be staffed with paraplegics, paralytics, heart cases, amputees, others who found high gravity a handicap. Manager was a fat man who wheezed, he may have been thinking of it personally–but his ears pricked up at “no taxes.”
We didn’t have it all our own way. News was often against us and were always hecklers. Whenever I had to take them on without Prof’s help I was likely to get tripped. One man tackled me on Prof’s statement to committee that we “owned” grain grown in Luna: he seemed to take it for granted that we did not. Told him I did not understand question.
He answered, “Isn’t it true, Colonel, that your provisional government has asked for membership in Federated Nations?”
Should have answered, “No comment.” But fell for it and agreed. “Very well,” he said, “the impediment seems to be the counterclaim that the Moon belongs to the Federated Nations–as it always has—under supervision of the Lunar Authority. Either way, by your own admission, that grain belongs to the Federated Nations, in trust.”
I asked how he reached that conclusion? He answered, ‘Colonel, you style yourself ‘Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs.’ Surely you are familiar with the charter of the Federated Nations.”