She’s trying to protect him. She’s standing between Malcolm and me.

Holly got to her feet. “I should have told you I was taking the afternoon off,” she said coldly. “It won’t happen again.”

“Good!” Morgenthau smacked her hands together loudly enough to startle Holly. “Now that that’s out of the way — I’ll be out of the office all day. You’ll be in charge.”

Surprised at her sudden change in tone, Holly asked, “Where will you be?”

Morgenthau laughed lightly and waggled a finger in the air. “No, no, it’s not necessary for me to tell you where I’m going. I’m the department chief, remember. I can come and go as I wish.”

“Oh, right. F’sure.”

“For your information, however,” Morgenthau said as she pushed herself up out of the desk chair, “I will be with Malcolm all day. We are going over several drafts of possible constitutions.”

Eberly sipped herbal tea while Vyborg and Jaansen argued with quiet passion. Kananga was obviously bored with the argument, while Morgenthau watched it in silence as she nibbled on pastries.

Kananga’s a man of action, Eberly thought. He doesn’t think very deeply, which is good. He makes a useful tool. Morgenthau, though, she’s different. She just sits there watching everything, silent as a sphinx. What’s going on inside her head? How much of this is she reporting back to Amsterdam? Everything, I suppose.

“If you allow the people all these personal freedoms,” Vyborg was saying, almost hissing, actually, “the result will be chaos. Anarchy.”

“Most of the inhabitants have come to this habitat to escape repressive regimes. If their individual liberties are not guaranteed, they’ll reject the constitution altogether.” Jaansen leaned back on the sofa, smiling as if he had won the argument.

“Individual liberties,” Vyborg spat. “That’s the kind of license that nearly caused the collapse of civilization. If it weren’t for the New Morality—”

“And the Holy Disciples,” Morgenthau interjected, then, glancing at Kananga, she added, “and the Sword of Islam.”

Jaansen frowned at her and Vyborg, both. “No matter what you think, these people will not accept a constitution that doesn’t guarantee their historical freedoms. They’re here because they got fed up with the restrictions back on Earth.”

Vyborg thought otherwise. He continued to argue.

Sitting at the end of the coffee table, Eberly thought that Vyborg, in the room’s best armchair with his skinny legs tucked under him, looked rather like a coiled snake: lean, small, dark, his eyes glittering menacingly. Jaansen was just the opposite: cool, pale, but as immovable as a glacier. And he kept that damned palmcomp in his hand, fiddling with it like some voodoo charm.

Kananga butted in. “In a closed ecology like this, we can’t tolerate fools and troublemakers. Pop them out an airlock without a suit!”

Morgenthau laughed. “My dear Colonel, how can we resort to airlock justice if each citizen is guaranteed due process of the law for any offense they might commit?”

“Exactly my point!” Vyborg exclaimed, staring straight at Jaansen. “We have no room here for legal niceties.”

Pursing her lips for a moment, Morgenthau said, “There is another possibility.”

“What?”

“I’ve heard that some scientists on Earth are experimenting with electronic probes they put inside peoples’ skulls. They attach the probes to the brain—”

“Bioelectronics,” Jaansen said.

“Yes,” agreed Morgenthau. “With these probes attached to various brain centers they can control a person’s behavior. Prevent violent criminal behavior, for example.”

Vyborg scowled. “What of it?”

“Perhaps we can use such probes to control behavior here,” said Morgenthau.

“Insert neural probes to control people’s behavior?” Jaansen shuddered.

“It could work,” said Morgenthau.

“They would have to agree to the operation,” Vyborg pointed out.

Kananga countered, “Not if they were found guilty of criminal behavior.”

“It might be a way to control the people,” Morgenthau said.

Shaking his head, Jaansen said, “The population would never agree to it. These people aren’t stupid, you know. They wouldn’t give the government that kind of power over them.”

“We wouldn’t have to tell them,” Kananga said. “Just do it.”

That started an argument that grew steadily more fervent. Eberly watched and listened, sipping his tea, while they squabbled louder and louder.

At last he asked them, “May I make a point?” He spoke softly, but all eyes immediately turned to him.

“Even in the so-called democracies back on Earth, the desperate conditions caused by the greenhouse crash have led to very authoritarian governments. Even in the United States, the New Morality rules most of the large urban centers with an iron fist.”

“Which is why most of these people joined this habitat,” Jaansen pointed out. “To find more freedom for themselves.”

“The illusion of freedom,” muttered Kananga.

“Secularists,” grumbled Morgenthau. “Troublemaking unbelievers. Agnostics and outright atheists.”

Jaansen shifted the palmcomp from one hand to another as he said, “I don’t disagree with you, really. I’m a Believer, too. I understand the need for firm control of the people. But those secularists aren’t fools. Many of them are scientists. Even more are engineers and technicians. All I’m saying is that if you try to get them to agree to a constitution that does not include the kind of individual liberties they expect, they’ll reject the constitution.”

“Not if we count the votes,” Morgenthau said with a heavy wink.

“Be serious,” Jaansen countered.

“It’s been done,” she said, snickering.

Eberly let out a long sigh. Again, they all turned to him.

“None of you understand history,” he said. “If you did, you would see that this problem has been faced before, and resolved properly.”

“Resolved?” Vyborg snapped. “How?”

Smiling with superior knowledge, Eberly said, “More than a hundred years ago Russia was part of the conglomeration called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

“I know that,” Vyborg said sourly.

“Soviet Russia had a constitution, the most liberal constitution on Earth. It guaranteed freedom and brotherhood to everyone. Yet their government was among the most repressive of them all.”

Jaansen seemed intrigued. “How did they manage that?”

“It was simple,” Eberly replied. “In the midst of all those highflown constitutional phrases about liberty and equality and the brotherhood of man there was one tiny little clause that said, in effect, that all the rest of the constitution could be suspended temporarily in case of an emergency.”

“An emergency,” repeated Kananga.

“Temporarily,” said Vyborg.

Eberly nodded. “It worked quite well. The Soviet Union was in a permanent state of siege, and the government ruled by terror and deceit. It worked for nearly three quarters of a century, until the Soviet government collapsed under pressures from the Western nations, especially the old United States.”

“We would have no outside pressures to contend with,” Vyborg said.

Eberly spread his hands. “So we give the people the sweetest, kindest, most liberal constitution they have ever seen. But we make certain that we have that emergency clause in it.”

Morgenthau laughed heartily. “Then, once the constitution is in effect, all we have to do is find an emergency.”

“Or make one,” Vyborg added.

Even Jaansen smiled. “And then, if anyone objects—”

“We stick a neural probe into his brain,” Morgenthau said, “and turn him into a model citizen.”

“A model zombie,” Jaansen muttered.

“Or better yet,” said Kananga, grinning, “out the airlock with them.”