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anyway, we’d move the Corps’ central
office to Sanatis or one of the other Mer cities and that we’d take the fleet
and the everyone who knows anything about spaceport management with us.”
    “Smart!” Park nodded. “I doubt
they would have trouble restaffing the spaceport, but if the Corps and all our
departments moved out of Van Winkle, this place would not be as important to
the rest of the world.”
    “It would be a ghost town in five
years, Park,” Iris told him smugly. “We would take the Atackack and over half
the Mer with us wherever we went and that means the University would probably
close their campus here as well. There would be few spaceships landing here and
of course Ronnie’s Fun Factory would have to move as well.”
    “She wouldn’t like that,” Park
commented. “She might just refuse to move, in fact.”
    “The councilors don’t know that,”
Iris laughed. “In any case, they found the safest thing to do was to leave the
Exploration Corps alone and let us go on as we had been.”
    “That probably wouldn’t have
stopped professional politicians,” Park noted. “Maybe it is good these guys are
new to the game. I really wouldn’t have wanted to move to the coast.”
    “Neither would I,” Iris agreed. I
like our home here. Besides where   would
we have really moved?”
    “Atackack territory, maybe?” Park
suggested, “No, then our scholars wouldn’t be completely safe from the natives.
You were right, it would have to be a Mer city unless we built a new one of our
own. I wouldn’t want to do that either. Good thing the bluff worked.”
    “It wouldn’t have been a bluff if
you meant to carry through with your threat,” Marisea told them both as she hop-stepped
into the room.
    “I didn’t realize you were home
tonight,” Iris commented. “Didn’t you have some sort of gathering at the
University campus?”
    “That was three hours ago,”
Marisea replied, sitting down next to Park as she so often did, “then I went out
to dinner with several faculty members. I just got back and heard you talking
about the new government here. It sounds silly to me.” Cousin poked her head
through the door way and then walked straight to Iris and crawled up into her
lap.
    “That’s because you grew up with
the Mer system,” Park told her. “I think most foreign   systems look silly at least at first. Hmm,
this official autonomy for the Corps may cause us some problems. I may not
understand Mer economics and the lack of money…”
    “We have money,” Marisea
interrupted, “but it’s really only used to balance accounts between cities and
it’s all digital. No coins or those funny paper markers like you showed me. I’m
glad you showed me the coins, though. I’d have been lost on Owatino trying to
buy food from a street vender otherwise.”
    “Just the first time,” Park
smiled. “regardless of how it works, I can’t deny it works, but from what I can
see the new council is trying to adopt the monetary system of the Alliance.”
    “I don’t see why they should,”
Marisea told him. “You’ve been getting along just fine for years without
money.”
    “It’s been a sort of socialistic
system, I guess,” Park shrugged. “Everyone just did their jobs and got what
they needed when they wanted it, but we came from a society with a currency-based
economy. It’s what we are used to. The question is, if we go back to a
capitalist system, where’s the money going to come from to fund the Corp if we
are autonomous from the new government?”
    “All parties will need to
contribute,” Marisea suggested.
    “Actually, nearly all the
Alliance money on Earth belongs to the Corps,” Iris pointed out. “I don’t know
if they realize that yet.”
    “Probably not,” Park replied.
“It’s going to come as a shock to them, I’m sure, and we may end up having to
fund the new government if they insist on capitalism in what is essentially a
non-capitalist world. It’s funny, as I