He went along with her tactics. She wondered whether that was because it suited his. “I take it you refer principally to the regulation of Lunar industry?”
“Well, that’s one thing. Enterprise feels stifled.”
He raised his brows. “You colonists do not unanimously claim that this unique, scientifically and culturally priceless environment deserves no protection.”
“Of course not.” She thought of Edmond’s rage at what might happen to various geological sites. She thought of what their son Temerir had to say about the astronomy he was newly entering; those few glacial words struck deeper than all his father’s pyrotechnic profanity. “Just the same, it’s time for some tradeoffs,” she said.
“We are not discussing a slight pollution of pristine near-vacuum, nor the damage mining can do to areas of interest, nor any other inevitabilities. What we touch on is whether they shall be kept within bounds.” Zhao’s gaze drilled at her. She forced herself to meet it. “Beyond this, we have the fundamental principle that the Solar System is the common heritage of humankind.”
It was a shopworn retort, but she could find no better: “And therefore nobody outside of Earth may own any part of space.”
“On the contrary, the concessions are generous. Perhaps too generous. Fireball has grown monstrously off much more than space transport. Many other companies and individuals have too.”
“Yes.” In her reluctant political career, Dagny had often needed to speak with more sonorousness than directness. The skill came back. “But no one among us may stand on a piece of land, even a piece of orbiting rock, and say, ‘This is mine. I made it what it is. 1 bequeath it to my children and to their children.’“
“Strange,” he murmured, “that so primitive a wish has been reborn in space.”
“Primitive, or human? We’re still the old Cr6-Magnon.” Edmond stood suddenly forth in her, waiting at home for her, hunter of the unknown, he whose folk had left their bones in the caves and valleys and up the steeps of his Dordogne since ice cliffs barred the North and mammoths walked the tundra. It was as if he spoke from her throat. “We still bear an instinct to possess our territories.”
Quietly seated, soft in his voice, Zhao lashed out: “We, madame? Is the desire of the new generation, the generation created for Luna, that simple and straightforward? Can you tell me what they in their inmost beings want? Can they themselves?”
For a hundred heartbeats there was again silence in the room. Dagny’s look strayed to the viewscreen. In the image a bird sailed past, a wisp of cloud blew across a rounded peak. It was beautiful. She wished it .were of surf and sand and driftwood.
Returning her heed to Zhao, she said: “Muy bien. Let’s get serious. You did not call me in because I’m a fairly big frog in this little dry puddle the Moon. No, I’m the mother of Brandir and Kaino.”
“Of Anson and Sigurd Beynac, technically,” he answered with the same restraint. “And of Gabrielle Beynac, who is perhaps more to be feared. I have studied Verdea’s writings.” Yes, Dagny thought, he did his homework. “They are not overtly subversive, no. Nothing so resistible. What they nourish is a new and foreign spirit.”
“Is that bad?”
Was it? Did not every small and dear person grow at last into a stranger? And yet it was Lars Rydberg, when he visited, who set aside the bleak face he turnedon the world, to give her and, yes, ‘Mond something of himself, the warmth that came from feeling you were wanted. Not her Lunarian children.
“Well, but this is not time for philosophical mus-ings,” Zhao said. “The fact on hand is that your two older sons and their associates are in grave violation of the law. My hope is that you can bring them to their senses before something irrevocable happens. You and your husband, of course. I did not invite him here today because he has avoided politics, and because, hm, a man of his temperament might have been uncomfortable.”
Might well have exploded, Dagny understood.
“Invite” was another cute word. “What exactly have they done?” she demanded.
“Madame, you know. Everyone does.”