Finally, still laughing, the water fight ebbed. Even Bobby hollered enough. Then we soaped up slowly, one more time. Our skins were red with heat, shiny with water, and slippery with lather. And for a moment, we just stood and grinned and caught our breaths. We were safe on Luna, Douglas and Bobby and me. And Mickey. It was a truly happy moment for each of us.

"We must have used a lot of water," I said, just to have something to say.

"We didn't use it up," said Mickey. "It just goes round and round."

Douglas was soaping his head. He said thoughtfully, "This shaft looks like it makes a lot of water, doesn't it, Mickey? I can't see why the corporation would abandon it as not cost-effective."

Mickey shrugged. "They would if they were deliberately trying to set up a cover operation for funneling money without paying taxes."

"Do you think that's what they did?"

"I've heard speculations. More likely, Alexei was telling the truth. This site is too far away to make shipping water cost-effective. Gagarin is pulling enough water out of the crust, they don't need to worry about sites like this for a long time. Maybe someday the price of water will be high enough, or there'll be a settlement close by, or Alexei will go into farming and start growing his own catfish or cactus or whatever."

It sounded convincing, the way Mickey said it, but the same way I was wondering about Alexei, I was starting to wonder about Mickey too. And I was thinking about speaking up—doing the annoying brother thing—until Douglas interrupted.

"Chigger?"

"Yeah?"

"Remember that question that Judge Griffith asked you?"

"Which one—?"

"About telling your left from your right? How do you tell someone else which is which?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"You gave Judge Griffith the wrong answer."

"No, I didn't. The question isn't answerable."

"Oh, yes it is." He pointed at me. "The left one always hangs lower."

"Huh?" And then I got it. A quick look at Bobby, Mickey, and Douglas confirmed it.

I blushed and laughed at the same time. And then I splashed him, because what else could I do, so he splashed me back, and then Bobby joined in, aiming his shower spray with both hands, and then Mickey tco, and then everyone was shrieking as the water fight began again—

COUSINS

When we got out of the showers, Alexei had already left. That wasn't a surprise, he had told us he would be gone; he had a water-meeting to go to. Actually, it wasn't just about water, it was also about nitrogen. "Water is gold, but nitrogen is silver. We are building new ammonia plant," he explained. "This means electricity. We will have to put up more solar panels. But we cannot build our own panels unless we build solar-cell plant. But solar-cell manufacturing plant uses as much power as small city. So we cannot make enough panels to make enough electricity to make panels because we cannot make enough panels. Is circular dilemma, da.Is hard to be invisible—we cannot buy enough electricity off the lines without someone wondering where electricity is going. So we have to use invisible electricity, of which there is not enough."

He waggled his finger at Mickey and Douglas. "You think everything on Luna arrives by magic? No, it does not. Everything is connected to everything else. Everything is built on top of everything else. Is not enough electricity to make more electricity, so is not enough electricity to make ammonia or nitrogen, so we cannot make enough gas to fill all the spaces we can make. And we can make lots of space on Luna, but even if we do, without nitrogen, we cannot make soil to grow things or gas to breathe. And problem is much more complex than I can explain here. I give you word of advice. If anyone asks you to be cousin, say no. You already have cousin in Krislov and he is crazy cousin enough for you. I go now. You take shower, I be gone when you are done. Do not go crazy from silence." He gave us all enthusiastic Russian kisses on both cheeks and pushed us toward the water. "Take as long as you want. Shower is free here, it goes round and round and never goes anywhere. More than enough. Enjoy. Least I can do is show you real Loonie household. Dos vedanya."

I didn't understand half of what he'd said. But Douglas and Mickey seemed to think it made sense. We talked about it, after our shower, while we were drying off under the heat lamps. It was that place where economics and science collided—and if you had either bad economics or bad science, you usually ended up with a disaster. Like a rebellion, a coup, a war, a collapse—

"Is that what's happening now?"

"You heard him talking about cousins, didn't you?"

I thought back. "Only a couple of times."

Mickey said, "How do you think Luna got built? Especially invisible Luna?"

I shrugged. I hadn't given it any thought.

"People do favors for each other. They form tribes. Membership in a tribe makes you a cousin. You help your cousins, they help you. Families with cousins survive better than families without. Invisible Luna has fifteen major tribes and a couple hundred minor ones. The tribes would like to see Luna independent."

"But Luna isindependent. Isn't it?"

"On paper."

"I don't understand."

"Most people don't. Follow the money. When you do that, you see that the Lunar Authority is still controlled by Earth-based corporations."

"Oh."

"And invisible Luna wants to revoke that charter."

"So they really aresubversives."

Mickey shrugged. "I think they're playing at being subversive. They don't have the power to make a difference. Not the political power, not the electrical power, not the processing power—but they're having a great time talking about what they would do if they had the power. Just like all dreamers—"

"Processing power?" I asked, probably with a little too much innocence.

"Like an intelligence engine."

"What do they need that for?"

"Do you know how an intelligence engine works?"

"Yeah, sort of. It's like a computer with a 'do-what-I-mean' button. You tell it what you want. It tells you how to make it happen."

"Right. That's close enough. Well, if invisible Luna had a lethetic intelligence engine, it could tell them six ways how to get the electricity they need and a dozen more ways to get the political power. Intelligence engines are great equalizers. That's why some people think they're destabilizing influences and others think they should be mass-produced."

Now Douglas jumped into the discussion. "Some people think that the latest generation of lethetic engines have demonstrated true self-awareness. And that raises a whole bunch of questions about everything—what's the nature of sentience? Can machines have souls? Do they come from God? Or some other source of soulness?And if they are truly self-aware, then you can't buy and sell them, can you? And you can't mass-produce them either, because that's … I don't know, what? Do they get to vote? Will they outthink us? Outvote us? If they're smarter than us, are they going to steal our world out from under us? Or what?"

"Yep," agreed Mickey, "And that complicates the issue even more. If they are self-aware, what do the intelligence engines think about this? Where do they want to be?"

There was something about the way he said it. I looked up, and he was looking straight at me. Did he know? Did he suspect? How could he not?