THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert A. Heinlein

I spent time then soothing Mike down and trying to make him happy, having figured out what troubled him–thing that makes puppies cry and causes people to suicide: loneliness. I don’t know how long a year is to a machine who thinks a million times faster than I do. But must be too long.

“Mike,” I said, just before leaving, “would you like to have somebody besides me to talk to?”

He was shrill again. “They’re all stupid!”

“Insufficient data, Mike. Bring to zero and start over. Not all are stupid.”

He answered quietly, “Correction entered. I would enjoy talking to a not-stupid.”

“Let me think about it. Have to figure out excuse since this is off limits to any but authorized personnel.”

“I could talk to a not-stupid by phone, Man.”

“My word. So you could. Any programming location.”

But Mike meant what he said–“by phone.” No, he was not “on phone” even though he ran system–wouldn’t do to let any Loonie within reach of a phone connect into boss computer and program it. But was no reason why Mike should not have top-secret number to talk to friends–namely me and any not-stupid I vouched for. All it took was to pick a number not in use and make one wired connection to his voder-vocoder; switching he could handle.

In Luna in 2075 phone numbers were punched in, not voicecoded, and numbers were Roman alphabet. Pay for it and have your firm name in ten letters–good advertising. Pay smaller bonus and get a spell sound, easy to remember. Pay minimum and you got arbitrary string of letters. But some sequences were never used. I asked Mike for such a null number. “It’s a shame we can’t list you as ‘Mike.'”

“In service,” he answered. “MIKESGRILL, Novy Leningrad. MIKEANDLIL, Luna City. MIKESSUITS, Tycho Under. MIKES–”

“Hold it! Nulls, please.”

“Nulls are defined as any consonant followed by X, Y, or Z; any vowel followed by itself except E and 0; any–”

“Got it. Your signal is MYCROFT.” In ten minutes, two of which I spent putting on number-three arm, Mike was wired into system, and milliseconds later he had done switching to let himself be signaled by MYCROFT-plus-XXX–and had blocked his circuit so that a nosy technician could not take it out.

I changed arms, picked up tools, and remembered to take those hundred Joe Millers in print-out. “Goodnight, Mike.”

“Goodnight, Man. Thank you. Bolshoyeh thanks!”

2

I took Trans-Crisium tube to L-City but did not go home; Mike had asked about a meeting that night at 2100 in Stilyagi Hall. Mike monitored concerts, meetings, and so forth; someone had switched off by hand his pickups in Stilyagi Hall. I suppose he felt rebuffed.

I could guess why they had been switched off. Politics–turned out to be a protest meeting. What use it was to bar Mike from talk-talk I could not see, since was a cinch bet that Warden’s stoolies would be in crowd. Not that any attempt to stop meeting was expected, or even to discipline undischarged transportees who chose to sound off. Wasn’t necessary.

My Grandfather Stone claimed that Luna was only open prison in history. No bars, no guards, no rules—and no need for them. Back in early days, he said, before was clear that transportation was a life sentence, some lags tried to escape. By ship, of course–and, since a ship is mass-rated almost to a gram, that meant a ship’s officer had to be bribed.

Some were bribed, they say. But were no escapes; man who takes bribe doesn’t necessarily stay bribed. I recall seeing a man just after eliminated through East Lock; don’t suppose a corpse eliminated in orbit looks prettier.

So wardens didn’t fret about protest meetings. “Let ’em yap” was policy. Yapping had same significance as squeals of kittens in a box. Oh, some wardens listened and other wardens tried to suppress it but added up same either way–null program.

When Mort the Wart took office in 2068, he gave us a sermon about how things were going to be different “on” Luna in his administration–noise about “a mundane paradise wrought with our own strong hands” and “putting our shoulders to the wheel together, in a spirit of brotherhood” and “let past mistakes be forgotten as we turn our faces toward the bright, new dawn.” I heard it in Mother Boor’s Tucker Bag while inhaling Irish stew and a liter of her Aussie brew. I remember her comment: “He talks purty, don’t he?”

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