THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert A. Heinlein

Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws–always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: “Please pass this so that I won’t be able to do something I know I should stop.” Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them “for their own good”–not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.

Listening to that session I was almost sorry we got rid of Mort the Wart. He stayed holed up with his women and didn’t tell us how to run private lives.

But Prof didn’t get excited; he went on smiling. “Manuel, do you really think that mob of retarded children can pass any laws?”

“You told them to. Urged them to.”

“My dear Manuel, I was simply putting all my nuts in one basket. I know those nuts; I’ve listened to them for years. I was very careful in selecting their committees; they all have built-in confusion, they will quarrel. The chairman I forced on them while letting them elect him is a ditherer who could not unravel a piece of string–thinks every subject needs ‘more study.’ I almost needn’t have bothered; more than six people cannot agree on anything, three is better–and one is perfect for a job that one can do. This is why parliamentary bodies all through history, when they accomplished anything, owed it to a few strong men who dominated the rest. Never fear, son, this Ad-Hoc Congress will do nothing. . . or if they pass something through sheer fatigue, it will be so loaded with contradictions that it will have to be thrown out. In the meantime they are out of our hair. Besides, there is something we need them for, later.”

“Thought you said they could do nothing.”

“They won’t do this. One man will write it–a dead man–and late at night when they are very tired, they’ll pass it by acclamation.”

“Who’s this dead man? You don’t mean Mike?”

“No, no! Mike is far more alive than those yammerheads. The dead man is Thomas Jefferson–first of the rational anarchists, my boy, and one who once almost managed to slip over his non-system through the most beautiful rhetoric ever written. But they caught him at it, which I hope to avoid. I cannot improve on his phrasing; I shall merely adapt it to Luna and the twenty-first century.”

“Heard of him, Freed slaves, nyet?”

“One might say he tried but failed. Never mind. How are the defenses progressing? I don’t see how we can keep up the pretense past the arrival date of this next ship.”

“Can’t be ready then.”

“Mike says we must be.”

We weren’t but ship never arrived. Those scientists outsmarted me and Loonies I had told to watch them. Was a rig at focal point of biggest reflector and Loonie assistants believed doubletalk about astronomical purpose–a new wrinkle in radiotelescopes.

I suppose it was. Was ultramicrowave and stuff was bounced at reflector by a wave guide and thus left scope lined up nicely by mirror. Remarkably like early radar. And metal latticework and foil heat shield of barrel stopped stray radiation, thus “ears” I had staked out heard nothing.

They put message across, their version and in detail. First we heard was demand from Authority to Warden to deny this hoax, find hoaxer, put stop to it.

So instead we gave them a Declaration of Independence.

“In Congress assembled, July Fourth, Twenty-Seventy-Six–”

Was beautiful.

15

Signing of Declaration of Independence went as Prof said it would. He sprang it on them at end of long day, announced a special session after dinner at which Adam Selene would speak. Adam read aloud, discussing each sentence, then read it without stopping, making music of sonorous phrases. People wept. Wyoh, seated by me, was one, and I felt like it even though had read it earlier.

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