“Hoo-ha, lass!” he exclaimed. “Jesus Christ couldn’t live up to that kind of billing. You know better. You could name as well as me plenty who haven’t let power short circuit their wits.”
“Yes, they keep progress alive, at least in science and technology,” Edmond said. “Foremost, those of the super-rich who are enlightened, like you. The ‘Savant Barons.’“
“And a few in government, much though I hate to admit it.”
“But what of the populace? What of the vast majority, in every land, who can find no real place in this high-technology universe you have created?”
“Yeah. The High World versus the Low World. It’s more than a journalistic duck-billed platitude. Count yourselves lucky. Everybody in space is High World. Not as a pun. Necessarily.”
Dagny felt her brows draw together. “That may be why we have trouble making sense of what’s going on on Earth,” she ventured.
“Sense there is mighty thin on the ground, honey. Day by day, scarcer and scarcer, in spite of the best efforts of us whom you want to canonize.”
“Newscasts, analyses, books, personal communications—here on the Moon, it all seems … abstract? Surreal?” Dagny forced herself: “Is there really going to be a war?”
“Wars are popping already, around the planet,” Guthrie replied somberly. “We call ‘em disorders or revolutions or whatever, but wars is what they amount to. And, yes, I’m afraid the big one is on the way.”
“The Jihad?” Edmond’s tone went hoarse. “Those preachers—But it is not Islam against the infidels, not truly, is it? Nothing so simple.”
“No, sure not. I’d call it the last full-scale revolt of the Low World against an order of things it doesn’t understand and reels forever left put of. The High World will have its share of Muslim allies, and the Mahdis will have theirs of every creed and none.”
“What will come of it?” Dagny whispered,
“Not a general blowup,” Guthrie assured her. “I expect nukes will get fired in anger, but not many nor high-yield. The whole hooraw is too complicated, changeable, scrambled geographically and ethnically and economically and you-name-it—too much for any clear-cut showdown. My guess is we’ll see years of fighting, minor in some areas, a blood tsunami in others. The High World countries will end on top, but they’ll be so shaken that things can’t go back to the same for them either.” He paused, then finished: “I doubt there ever was or ever will be a war that was worth what it cost, when you figure in the costs to everybody concerned, including generations unborn. But what comes out of this might be better in a few respects than what we’ve got now. For instance, I don’t see how that rattlebone, patchgut Renewal can survive the strain.
“On the whole, though, be glad you’re on the Moon, you and yours, with nothing worse to worry about than vacuum, radiation, meteoroids, life-support failure, and bureaucrats.”
“Most glad for our children,” Dagny said.
“Of course.”
Now they all wanted to change the subject. “Where are the youngsters, anyway?” Guthrie inquired.
Dagny seized on the relief, the lightness. “That question has more answers than kids.”
Edmond nodded. “They scamper about, when they do not—vont a la derobee—go very quietly, like the cat. And they have their private things we know little about.” He sighed. “Less and less, the more they grow.”
“Yes, I’ve gotten that from Dagny,” Guthrie said. Once, after she thus confided in him, his return message spoke of a mother hen he’d seen when he was a boy, given duck eggs to brood and the hatchlings to raise, helplessly watching them swim off across a pond. “But where are they at the moment?”
“Well, Brandir’s in Port Bowen,” she told him. “He aims to be a structural engineer, you may remember, and I arranged for h.im to work a few weeks on a new cargo launch catapult they’re building, hands-on experience. He’s eager to meet you, but unless you can stay longer than you said, or seek him out, it’ll have to be by phone. Verdea’s at a friend’s, probably trying out a composition on her. Kaino’s wingflight stunt team—”
“Hold on, por favor. Brandir, Verdea, Kaino? You’ve described this fad among the Lunarian youngsters for taking invented names and insisting onthem—so have the journalists—but I can’t recall which of yours is which.”