Free Steel Beach by John Varley Page A

feeling he had learned all he needed to know about her in that brief look.
    “My style,” he said, “is a combination of ancient fighting techniques that never got transplanted to Luna. Some well-meaning but foolish people passed a law a long time ago banning the teaching of these oriental disciplines. That was back when the conventional wisdom was we ought to live together in peace, not ever fight each other again, certainly not ever kill each other. Which is a nice idea, I guess.
    “It even worked, partially. The murder rate is way, way down from what it was in any human society on Earth.”
    He took another long drag on his smoke. His attendants finished their work on his leg, packed up, and left us alone. I began to wonder if that was all he had to say, when he finally spoke again.
    “Opinions shift. You live as long as I have, you’ll see that over and over.”
    “I’m not as old as you, but I’ve seen it.”
    “How old are you?” he asked.
    “One hundred. Three days ago.” I saw Brenda look at me, open her mouth to say something, then close it again. Probably I’d get chewed out for not telling her so she could throw a centennial birthday party for me.
    MacDonald looked at me with even more interest than before, narrowing those disturbing eyes.
    “Feel any different?”
    “You mean because I’m a hundred years old? Why should I?”
    “Why, indeed. It’s a milestone, certainly, but it doesn’t really mean anything. Right?”
    “Right.”
    “Anyway, to get back to the question…  there were always those who felt that, with natural evolutionary processes no longer working, we should make some attempt to foster a certain amount of aggressiveness. Without sanctioning real killing, we could at least learn how to fight. So boxing was re-introduced, and that eventually led to the blood sports you see today.”
    “This is just the sort of perspective Walter wants,” I pointed out.
    “Yes. I didn’t say I didn’t have the perspective you need. I’m just curious as to why I should use it for you.”
    “I’ve been thinking that one over, too,” I said. “Just as an exercise, you understand. And you know, I can’t think of anything that’s likely to convince a man in the middle of a protracted suicide to put it off for a year and join us in writing a series of useless stories.”
    “I used to be a reporter, you know.”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “Is that what you think I’m doing? Committing suicide?”
    Brenda looked at him earnestly. I could almost feel her concern.
    “If you get killed in the ring, that’s what they’ll call it,” she said.
    He got up and went to a small bar at the side of the room. Without asking what we wanted, he poured three glasses of a pale green liqueur and brought them back to us. Brenda sniffed it, tasted, then took a longer drink.
    “You can’t imagine the sense of defeatism after the Invasion,” he said. It was apparently impossible to keep him on any subject, so I relaxed to the inevitable. As a reporter you learn to let the subject talk.
    “To call it a war is a perversion of the word. We fought, I suppose, in the sense that ants fight when the hill is kicked over. I suppose ants can fight valiantly in such a situation, but it hardly matters to the man who kicked the hill. He barely notices what he has done. He may not even have had any actual malice toward ants; it might have been an accident, or a side-effect of another project, like plowing a field. We were plowed under in a single day.
    “Those of us here in Luna were in a state of shock. In a way, that state of shock lasted many decades. In a way…  it’s still with us today.”
    He took another drag on his cheroot.
    “I’m one of those who was alarmed at the nonviolence movement. It’s great, as an ideal, but I feel it leaves us in a dead end, and vulnerable.”
    “You mean evolution?” Brenda asked.
    “Yes. We shape ourselves genetically now, but are we really wise enough to know what to