The Fountains of Youth - Brian Stableford [114]
“Emily Marchant,” he said, bluntly.
My memory of recent events was much sharper than time-worn indelible impressions. I could still replay the words within my mind, hearing them spoken in her own voice. There isn’t going to be any Hardinist Cabal on Titan. We figure that the highkickers are mature enough not to fall prey to the tragedy of the commons. Forget the Gaean Libs, Morty—we’re the next and last Revolution.
“What about Emily Marchant?” I said, frostily.
“Don’t be like that,” he said, still grinning. “I’m not about to ask you to betray any intimate secrets. It’s just that the walls on the moon don’t have nearly as many ears and eyes as the walls on Earth—and the ice palaces of Titan might as well be on another world for all the worthwhile intelligence we get from them”
I didn’t laugh at the incredibly weak joke. “So what?” I said. “Didn’t the Sauls and their cozy circle make a Faustian bargain five hundred years ago that allowed them to keep ownership of Earth in exchange for their assistance in giving everyone with ambition a slice of the cosmic pie? Isn’t it a little late to decide that you want to own the entire solar system?”
“It’s not as simple as that,” he said. “You’re a historian, Mortimer. The next section of your masterwork will deal with the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, so you must be acquainted with the elementary principles of Hardinism.”
“The institution of private property is good because it motivates owners to protect their resources from the ruinous depredations of greed,” I said. “It sounds fine in theory, but if there’s one thing intensive study of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries makes clear, it’s that owners can be every bit as greedy and destructive as competitors fighting to maximize their own returns from a common resource.”
“Hardinism is all about good ownership,” Ngomi informed me, perfectly straight-faced for once. “The Hardinist creed equates good ownership ship with responsible stewardship. What did Emily Marchant tell you about Jupiter?”
I honestly thought that it was a trick question. “Last time she was there,” I told him, “Titan was still in orbit around Saturn.”
“Don’t be disingenuous, Mortimer,” he retorted. “We aren’t interested in the petty Utopia that she and her friends are designing for her pretty glass houses, any more than we’re interested in the fabers’ plans to convert the entire asteroid belt into a fleet of starships to facilitate the Diaspora of the many-handed. Jupiter is different. There could be a real conflict of interest over Jupiter. You might think that it’s all a long way off, but if you and I expect to live forever and a day, we have to settle potential conflicts as early as possible, in case they fester and infect the whole Oikumene. As you’re so fond of saying, there’ll always be Earth-bound humans, and their long-term interests have to be protected. If that means staking a claim to Jupiter, so be it.”
I stared at him for a full half-minute, wishing that my head—the only part of me that wasn’t benefiting from the buoyancy of the water—didn’t seem quite so heavy. “I honestly don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Mister Ngomi,” I said. “I will admit that I wouldn’t tell you anything that Emily said to me in confidence, but I wouldn’t lie to you about it either. If Emily and the other rich folk in the outer system have any plans for the development of the Jovian satellites, she certainly didn’t mention them to me. I assume that all the good reasons the outward bounders had for letting Europa and Ganymede alone still hold.”
“It’s not the Jovian satellites we’re concerned about,” Ngomi said. “It’s the planet itself.”
I jumped to what seemed to me to be the natural conclusion. “Are you talking about the Type-2 movement?” I asked, uncertainly.
There had been a lot more talk about the Type-2 crusade of late, even among people who believed that the third millennium was far too soon to start planning for the day when the Oikumene would want to exploit the