Flatlander - Larry Niven [112]
“But you said—”
“Never mind what I said!” Suddenly she was enraged. I turned her over and went back to work till I had her relaxed again.
We made love, or I did. She couldn’t concentrate. I didn’t try again. I told her stories from my time in the Belt. She talked about her days in college. She asked about my life as an ARM and cut me off when I spoke the word organlegger. And she kept glancing at the clock.
“What time is it?”
“Oh-eight-ten,” Taffy said.
“Time to go to the conference.”
“You’re a basket case. I’ll call them and tell them you’ll make the afternoon session.”
“Oh, no. Let me make that call. My reputation.” I got up. “Chir—”
“Then put some clothes on, too,” she said sharply.
I got Bertha Carmody, worse luck, and told her the situation. I sat down on the bed, and flopped back, and found my head in Taffy’s lap.
I half woke when a pillow was substituted for the lap.
Then Taffy’s phone was saying, “Time to wake up, Ms. Grimes. It’s twelve hundred. Time to wake up.”
I called it off, but it wouldn’t obey my voice. I swore and rolled off the bed. I should have smashed the phone instead. Or else I should have made the morning session …
8. THE OTHER CRIME
The morning session that fourth day of the conference was when they started getting specific about lunar laws. Naomi or no Naomi, I should have been there. By the time Carmody called the afternoon session to order, all I could do was listen and learn what the fighting was about.
Item: Death penalties on the moon included murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, rape, armed theft, theft involving betrayal of trust, and assault. A similar ARM list would have included far more minor crimes, but—
What constituted assault? We ran that around for a good hour. Armed theft and rape were covered by other laws. What about a simple brawl? To Belters, a barroom brawl classed as recreation. Corey Metchikov from Mare Moscoviense explained that lunies were more fragile than Belters or flatlanders, and their longer reach gave a fighter extra leverage. A brawl among lunies was likely to be lethal, he claimed.
Marion Shaeffer expressed doubt that a lunie had the muscle to hurt even a lunie. Bertha Carmody offered to Indian wrestle. Marion accepted. We moved some chairs. They looked ridiculous: Marion wasn’t even shoulder high to Bertha. Bertha turned Marion in a complete cartwheel, and it was done purely by leverage.
Stone repeated an earlier demand for a legal definition of rape. That started an uproar. There were statutory penalties to protect minors and the marriage bond, and four outnumbered lunies looked ready for murder or war to preserve them. To Budrys and Shaeffer and Quifting, such laws added up to murder plus invasion of privacy.
I could see their point, but we were not here to start a war. I was glad when we got off that subject.
Manslaughter. On the moon that covered a variety of sins: sabotage, criminal carelessness, arson. “Any act which, by damaging a local life support system,” said Marion Shaeffer, “could have caused deaths or injuries. Is that right?”
“Essentially correct,” Ward said.
“That goes a little far,” Marion said. “We’d execute someone who botched repairs on an air recycler if someone died from it. But if nobody actually gets hurt, why not just assess him for damages?”
Ward was on his feet by now, towering over the seated goldskin. “You go a little far yourself,” he told her. “Twenty years ago the moon became the execution grounds for every planet, moon, and rock in the solar system, barring Earth itself. We allowed that. It was a needed source of income. But we will tolerate only limited meddling in our affairs. Beyond that, you may kill your own or ship them to Earth.”
Bertha Carmody broke the angry silence. “We’re all here to make that step unnecessary. The last conference left us with a considerable