The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Read Online Free Page A

Luna dollars swapped even for Authority dollars—Now it takes
three Authority dollars to match one HKL dollar. I don’t know what to do
… but I know it takes ice to keep warrens and farms going.”
    He
sat down, looking sad. Nobody whistled but everybody wanted to talk. Next
character pointed out that water can be extracted from rock—this is news?
Some rock runs 6 percent—but such rock is scarcer than fossil water. Why
can’t people do arithmetic?
    Several
farmers bellyached and one wheat farmer was typical. “You heard what Fred
Hauser said about ice. Fred, Authority isn’t passing along that low price
to farmers. I started almost as long ago as you did, with one two-kilometer
tunnel leased from Authority. My oldest son and I sealed and pressured it and
we had a pocket of ice and made our first crop simply on a bank loan to cover
power and lighting fixtures, seed and chemicals.
    “We
kept extending tunnels and buying lights and planting better seed and now we
get nine times as much per hectare as the best open-air farming down Earthside.
What does that make us? Rich? Fred, we owe more now than we did the day we went
private! If I sold out—if anybody was fool enough to buy—I’d
be bankrupt. Why? Because I have to buy water from Authority—and have to
sell my wheat to Authority—and never close gap. Twenty years ago I bought
city sewage from the Authority, sterilized and processed it myself and made a
profit on a crop. But today when I buy sewage, I’m charged
distilled-water price and on top of that for the solids. Yet price of a tonne
of wheat at catapult head is just what it was twenty years ago. Fred, you said
you didn’t know what to do. I can tell you! Get rid of Authority!”
    They
whistled for him. A fine idea, I thought, but who bells cat?
    Wyoming
Knott, apparently—chairman stepped back and let Shorty introduce her as a
“brave little girl who’s come all the way from Hong Kong Luna to
tell how our Chinee comrades cope with situation”—and choice of
words showed that he had never been there … not surprising; in 2075, HKL
tube ended at Endsville, leaving a thousand kilometers of maria to do by
rolligon bus, Serenitatis and part of Tranquillitatis—expensive and
dangerous. I’d been there—but on contract, via mail rocket.
    Before
travel became cheap many people in Luna City and Novylen thought that Hong Kong
Luna was all Chinee. But Hong Kong was as mixed as we were. Great China dumped
what she didn’t want there, first from Old Hong Kong and Singapore, then
Aussies and Enzees and black fellows and marys and Malays and Tamil and name
it. Even Old Bolshies from Vladivostok and Harbin and Ulan Bator. Wye looked
Svenska and had British last name with North American first name but could have
been Russki. My word, a Loonie then rarely knew who father was and, if raised
in crèche, might be vague about mother.
    I
thought Wyoming was going to be too shy to speak. She stood there, looking
scared and little, with Shorty towering over her, a big, black mountain. She
waited until admiring whistles died down. Luna City was two-to-one male then,
that meeting ran about ten-to-one; she could have recited ABC and they would
have applauded.
    Then
she tore into them.      
    “You!
You’re a wheat farmer—going broke. Do you know how much a Hindu
housewife pays for a kilo of flour made from your wheat? How much a tonne of
your wheat fetches in Bombay? How little it costs the Authority to get it from
catapult head to Indian Ocean? Downhill all the way! Just solid-fuel retros to
brake it—and where do those come from? Right here! And what do you get in
return? A few shiploads of fancy goods, owned by the Authority and priced high
because it’s importado. Importado,
importado
!—I never
touch importado! If we don’t make it in Hong Kong, I don’t use it.
What else do you get for wheat? The privilege of selling Lunar ice to Lunar
Authority, buying it back as washing water, then giving it to