His tone went grim. “The analogy I see is the First North American Civil War. My duty is to do everything I can to prevent it. If this requires aborting a distinct Lunar civilization, then that is what must be. Now do you see why I have ordered full enforcement of the Educational Standards Act?”
“I knew that was your motive.” She sounded half regretful. “Requiring private schools, as well as public, to teach—to try and instill—ideals, like democracy and the equal worth of all human beings, what decent person could object to that? Not I. But it doesn’t go down well with Lunarian children. They hear different at home. Furthermore, it’s like telling cats they ought to behave like dogs. The whole thing was quietly phased out because it was causing too many problems. Not much violence, truancy, or even insolence. Subtler. A, a contempt. I myself could feel it in the kids. And now you’re demanding the mistake be revived.”
Wahl sighed. “You Selenites agitated year after year for home rule. You, madame, took a forefront role in that. And now you have it. How shall you maintain it, if your younger generations don’t learn the principles and procedures of civilized self-government?”
“Pretty limited home rule, given that the governors general are charged with keeping it inside Federation and assorted national law, and that appeals from their rulings are regularly denied in court.” Beynac gazed past him—into the past? He heard a measure of sorrow in her voice. “I confess this has been the greatest disappointment in my life.” Even greater than when her children developed into … Lunarians? “Federation law is for the most part humane and rational. What parts of it are not, as far as the Moon is concerned, I thought we could get gradually changed by democratic means. On the whole, our Terran legislators are still hoping, still trying. But the Lunarians—they don’t seem to have the right stuff for politics. Those who do go in for it are apt to be their worst, corrupt, quarrelsome, egotistic, short-sighted. Our legislature is working very poorly, and I’ve come to doubt it can improve.”
“That may not be a completely bad thing,” he risked saying, “in view of what measures it has attempted to pass.”
“Like restoring the death penalty for criminal abandonment? Even Gambetta had to veto that one. There I agreed with her. The rest of my family did not. They aren’t monsters, Governor. They have a high standard of—honor, I suppose is the nearest English word. But they are children of a world that is not Earth.”
“A curious kind of honor,” he rejoined. “It causes men to order the flogging or murder of offenders, without trial, and then shield the agents. Madame, that cannot be permitted to continue.”
“Right of justice and right of granting sanctuary. That’s how they regard it. I think it goes too far, which hurts me. But unless you want to keep it underground, growing worse and worse, some compromise with it will have to be negotiated.”
“Why? You ask me to concede to the Selenarchs powers they have taken illicitly for themselves. That can only encourage them to claim more. Already some among them deal directly, not just with companies, but with governments, those governments that are—I say between us two—less than ideal members of theWorld Federation. Shall they at last declare full sovereignty? Build their own nuclear weapons? Fight their own wars? No, madame, no.”
“I can’t conceive of them wanting to. They are not insane. What they want—what ordinary, peaceful Moondwellers want—is freedom to be what they are and become what they choose to be. I’m sure that’s possible within the framework of the civilization “you and I share, and in fact will enrich it in ways we can’t imagine. But that’s only if they are not compelled, confined, twisted about to the point where they see no other way than violence.”
“They will be well advised to avoid driving the Authority and Federation to that point.”
“Yes. You have your legitimate rights and claims. I understand them as clearly as I do theirs, I who belong to both worlds. We’re here today to search for roads to reconciliation.”