"Maybe it's the same thing. I do know that, if a man acquires too much money, presently it owns him instead of his owning it. Jake, I've been to Europe at least fifty times—yet I've never been inside the Louvre, never seen them change the Guard at Buckingham Palace. All I saw were hotels and boardrooms—and those are the same all over the globe. Would you care to repair my education, dearest? Show me Rio?—you say it's the most beautiful city in the world. The Parthenon by moonlight? The Taj at dawn?"
Jake said thoughtfully. "The trimaran is the favorite craft of the dropout."
"Excuse me? I missed something. ‘Dropout'?"
"I don't mean the barefooted bums in the Abandoned Areas, Eunice, nor the ones skulking around the hills. It takes money to drop out by water. But people do. Millions have. Nobody knows how many because it has been subject to an ‘exception' for years—the government does not want attention called to it; But take those yachts below us: I'll bet that at least one out of ten has registration papers for some ‘flag of convenience' and the owner's passport is as phony as that of ‘Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie.' He has to be registered somewhere and carry some sort of passport, or the Coast Guard wherever he goes will give him a bad time, even impound his craft. But if he takes care of that minimum, he can dodge almost everything else—no income tax, no local taxes except when he buys something, nobody tries to force his kids into public schools, no real estate taxes, no politics—no violence in the streets. That last is the best part, with the cycle of riots swinging up again?'
"Then it is possible to ‘get away from it all.'"
"Mmm, not quite. No matter how much fish he eats, he has to touch land occasionally. He can't play Vanderdecken; only a ghost ship can stay at sea forever, real ones have to be put up on the ways at intervals." Jake Salomon looked thoughtful. "But it's closer to that antithetical combination of ‘peace' and ‘freedom' than is possible on land. If it suits one. But, Eunice, I know what I would do—if I were young."
"What, Jake?"
"Look up there."
"Where, dear? I don't see anything."
"There."
"The Moon?"
"Right! Eunice, that's the only place with plenty of room and not too many people. Our last frontier—but an endless one. Anyone under the cut-off age should at least try to out-migrate."
"Are you serious, Jacob? Certainly space travel is scientifically interesting but I've never seen much use in it.
Oh, some ‘fallout.' Videosatellites and so forth. New materials. But the Moon itself?—why, it doesn't even pay its own way."
"Eunice, what use is that baby in your belly?"
"I trust that you are joking, sir. I hope you are."
"Simmer down, Bulgy. Darling, a newborn baby is as useless a thing as one can imagine. It isn't even pretty—except to its doting parents. It does not pay its own way and it's unreasonably expensive. It takes twenty to thirty years for the investment to begin to pay off and in many—no, most—casesit never does pay off. Because it is much easier to support a child than it is to bring one up to amount to anything."
"Our baby will amount to something!"
"I feel sure that it will. But look around you; my generalization stands. But, Eunice, despite these shortcomings, a baby has a unique virtue. It is always the hope of our race. Its only h6pe."
She smiled. "Jacob, you're an exasperating man."
"I try to be, dear; it's good for your metabolism. Now look back up at the sky. That's a newborn baby, too. The best hope of our race; if that baby lives, the human race lives. If we let it die—and it is vulnerable for a few more years—the race dies, too. Oh, I don't mean H-bombs. We're faced with far greater dangers than H-bombs. We've reached an impasse; we can't go on the way we're headed—and we can't go back—and we're dying in our own poisons. That's why that little Lunar colony has got to survive. Because we can't. It isn't the threat of war, or crime in the streets, or corruption in high places, or pesticides, or smog, or ‘education' that doesn't teach; those things are just symptoms of the underlying cancer. It's too many people. Not too many souls, or honks, or thirds—just... too many. Seven billion people, sitting in each other's laps, trying to take in each other's washing, pick each other's pockets. Too many. Nothing wrong with the individual in most cases—but collectively we're the Kilkenny Cats, unable to do anything but starve and fight and eat each other. Too many. So anyone who can ought to go to the Moon as fast as he can manage it."
"Jacob, in all the years I've known you I've never heard you talk this way."
"Why talk about a dream that has passed one by?
Eunice—Eunice-Johann, I mean—I was born twenty-five years later than you were. I grew up believing in space travel. Perhaps you did not?"
"No, I didn't, lake. When it came along, it struck me as interesting—but slightly presposterous."
"Whereas I was born enough later that it seemed as natural to me as automobiles. The big rockets were no surprise to my generation; we cut our teeth on Buck Rogers. Nevertheless I was born too soon. When Armstrong and Aldrin landed on Luna, I was pushing forty. When out-migration started, with a cut-off age of forty, I was too old; when they eased it to forty-five, again I was too old—and when they raised it to fifty, I was much too old. I'm not kicking, dear; on a frontier every man-jack must pull his weight, and there is little use for an elderly lawyer."
He smiled down at her, and went on: "But, darling, if you wanted to out-migrate, I wouldn't try to dissuade you; I'd cheer you on."
"Jake!" (He can't get away from us that easily!) (You're darn tootin' he can't! I'll fix him.) "Jake my own and only, you can't get away from me that easily."
"Eunice, I am serious. I could die happy if I knew our baby was to be born on the Moon."
She sighed. "Jacob, I promised to obey you and I happily do so. But I can't go to the Moon—as an out-migrant. Because I'm even farther past the cut-off age than you are—the Supreme Court says so."
"That could be fixed."
"And raise an issue over my identity again? Jacob darling, I don't want to leave you. But"—she patted her belly and smiled—"if he wants to go to the Moon, we'll help, at the earliest age they'll take him. All right?"
He smiled and gently patted her slight bulge. "More than all right. Because I don't want his beautiful mother to go away for any reason. But a father should never stand in the way of his son."
"You don't. You aren't. You won't. You never would. Jacob Junior goes to the Moon when he's ready, but not this week. Let's talk about trimarans and this week. Jake, you know I want to close up our house—I'd sell it but nobody would buy it other than as land; it's a white elephant: But two things have bothered me. It has to be left garrisoned, or the Free People will break in despite all armor, and squat—then someday some judge grants them title on adverse possession."
Jake said, "Certainly. Historically, that's where all Land titles come from. Somebody standing on it, defending it, and saying, ‘This is mine!' And lately the courts have been cutting down the period of adverse possession. Especially in city cores close to Abandoned Areas—and your house is both."
"I know, dear—but I don't want to surrender it to squatters. Darn it, that house cost me more than nine million, not counting taxes and upkeep. The other worry is what to do about our in-house staff. I'm sick of being a feudal lord—erase and correct; lady, now." (Erase and correct.—'tart' now.) (Certainly, Eunice, but I haven't been too tartish since we got married.) (Not much opportunity, twin—but you're getting restless. Huh?) (Who is getting restless? Never mind, twin sister, the day will come. But we won't rub darling Jake's nose in it.) "I can't just let them go; some have been with me twenty-odd years. But if we buy a yacht—and live in it—I think I have a solution to both problems."