“What’s the latest word from you and your fellows?” she asks. “Any prospect of compromise?”
His head, lean and dry after almost ninety years, shakes, an emphasizingly Earthlike gesture. “Nay, not in the ultimate, however much time may pass until then. While the Federation has power over us, it will never cease seeking to encroach,” on the sovereignty of the seigneurs in those demesnes they have taken for their own. “Unless Luna gain full freedom, our people must perish,” meaning his class. Not literal death; the end of their prideful ways, of the whole culture that is growing up around them, shaped by them. But Lunarians are human enough to value some things more than life. “What we spoke of was strengthening our coaction.”
Unsurprised, she does not pursue this. “Bueno, you’ve now listened in on me and Huizinga. What about his bunch? Did I propose more than yours would go along with?”
“You proposed actually nothing,” he reminds her. “But should the eventuality arrive, and Fireball stand by its pledges, yes, I deem the policy sound. Belike the Nationals will pose a thornier problem.”
“We’ll be working on that one too.”
Fingers fan outward, a Lunarian shrug. “It presupposes that Earth will let us depart, peacefully or otherwise.”
She doesn’t bother to make her image register earnestness, but concentrates on her voice and words. “That will require all of us working for the same thing, and organized to do it. Especially you Selen-archs. Unless you’ve been at it top-secretly, you have not yet given real, hard thought to how you’d deal with the Federation.”
“Peace and trade will gain it more and cost it less than any nominal military victory and aftermath.”
“Yes, yes, everybody says that, also on Earth. But the stick by itself won’t serve. You have to dangle the carrot as well. What specific offers would you be willing to make—grudgingly, no doubt, but willing?”
“You have thoughts,” he foreknew.
“I and some others have been hatching a few. Forinstance, take the helium-3 extraction works. A government monopoly, and not any national government’s, the Federation’s. The stuff is that important to fusion power, to Earth as a whole. You can’t simply expropriate it if you don’t have overwhelming force; and you won’t. That would mean war for certain.”
“Nay. They are not insane yonder. Export to Earth would continue, on terms to be negotiated.”
“You don’t grasp the psychology, Brandir. It isn’t your psychology. Any Federation government that condoned your seizure would fall. They’re in too much trouble already,” what with after-effects of the Dieback, the Avantist movement, a widening and seemingly unbridgeable gap between high-tech and low-tech societies, upheavals everywhere around the planet. “They can’t afford to look weak. Furthermore, under those circumstances they’d have Fireball’s support, at least to the extent of economic and transport sanctions against Luna. The company doesn’t want chaos on Earth.”
Brandir stiffens. “It is our regolith which they sift for atoms the solar wind laid there through billions of years. They have no more claim upon it than they do upon our freedom,”
Dagny manufactures a sigh. “I didn’t expect you’d stoop to rhetoric. Come off it, son.”
He waits, poised.
“The fact is,” she declares, “your class doesn’t figure it can pay compensation for the property and the rights.”
He goes impassive. “To buy put the miscontent Terrans will be an amply heavy lift.”
“You haven’t got the cash, you mean. Okay, consider a swap. You have ships and robots in the asteroid belt, new and fairly small investments but that should be worth a whopping lot by the time negotiations for independence begin,” if any such time is in the future. “Offer to turn over enough of that to be an acceptable exchange for the helium plants.” He comes as near showing shock as memory can recall. “My lady, that would reduce Lunarian space trade to paltriness.”
“You may find you haven’t much choice, if you want your sovereign state,” she replies. “You can build the fleet back up afterward. Or you can decide sovereignty’s too expensive. This is only a suggestion of mine, but I hope it will start you and your fellows thinking.
“Hash it over with them. This isn’t an immediate issue, after all. Between us, we might hammer out a better scheme. The point I’m making today is that you must, you must, make ready in your minds to bargain, and to give as well as get.”