Which, in a fashion, they also guarded, Kenmuir thought. They were integral to the technology and, yes, the social system that kept all this in being. It hadn’t been enough that population decline, plantations genetically engineered for efficiency, and direct synthesis had, between them, emptied many old agricultural regions. To restore a sound ecology—oftener, to create a new one—and then maintain it, that took more than a wish and an economic surplus. It demanded an analysis, a comprehension of the totality, beyond the scope of unaided human brains.
Yes, he thought, the cybercosm was doing a better job of ruling the biosphere than man had. As long as governments heeded its counsel, Earth would stay green.
Counsel? Or command? Was there a difference? You accepted a policy recommendation because it made sense, and presently you found there was no going back, because it had become a basis of too much on which people depended; and so you accepted the next recommendation. But hadn’t that always been the case? And purely human politics, short-sighted, ignorant, superstitious, animally impassioned, forever repeated the same ghastly mistakes. Kenmuir had once read a remark of Anson Guthrie’s: “Is it freedom when you’re in a cage bigger than you want to fly across?”
He shook off his reverie and glanced about him. Three volants were visible afar, and a suborbital went as a rapid spark through heaven. Below him he spied other gleams, machines on their business of ground transport, inspection, tending the country. Trees shaded a small town. How white and peaceful it looked. He supposed the dwellers were all folk who enjoyed surroundings like these. Those who didn’t simply live on their credit probably worked through telepresence, except for local service enterprises. And they had their hobbies, sports, tours, civic affairs, maybe some special ceremonies and observances; and surely, beneath the placid surface, private lives now and then got as tangled and stormy as ever. So, in its own manner, was the community where he grew up.
But on clear nights he would walk out of it and from a hilltop yearn toward the stars. How many were they who still did? By what right would Lilisaire deny them a meaning to their lives?
“Damn!” Kenmuir muttered. “You’ve a real gift for fribbling away time, haven’t you, lad?” He’d brooded enough in the Drylander camp after Aleka left and before her flyer arrived for him. If he meant to honor his commitment, and he did, then indecisiveness amounted to betrayal.
After all, the purpose was only to recover information that might well be illegally secreted. If it was important, and if the Federation Council and Assembly possessed it, then everybody who cared to inquire would soon have known too. But nobody did. And democracy, rationality itself weren’t possible without adequate data.
He could complain to his legislators or ombud; or he could issue a public statement calling for disclosure, and be shrugged off as a crank. . If the matter came out into the open—As vague as Lilisaire’s hopes were, she must be desperate. Certainly she didn’t expect it would by itself cause the Habitat project to be cancelled, did she? No, she dreamed of somehow gaining the power to force a termination. But how? An old weapon she could commandeer? Monstrous absurdity.
True, the Lunarians in space, few and scattered though they were, had a rather terrifying military potential. Anybody with ships did. But to rouse them, rally them, get them together in resolution and discipline, before the Peace Authority could stop it—what imaginable revelation might do that? They were never crusaders. To see Luna overrun by Terrans would sharpen the embitterment of Lunarian spacers, asterites, Martians, satellite colonists, but it wouldn’t provoke them to a war they’d almost surely lose. Not even the Lunarians in the Moon would rebel.
Kenmuir had already decided that Lilisaire’s quest for the truth had brought her to hints of it that she wasn’t sharing. Alone in the desert, he had cursed his bond with her. He had sworn to himself that it would not lead him to do anything really harmful. He’d rather live without her than that. By now he might well have resigned, were it not for Aleka. While he scarcely knew the girl, she didn’t strike him as a criminal, a fanatic, or a dupe. She had her own cause, whatever it was, but he couldn’t believe she’d link it to one she saw as bad. Therefore let him go along at least a little further, through this haze of unknowns.