The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space by Pippa Goldschmidt

meetings?’
    ‘Yes, I think so. I do not think so. I do not think that I attended political meetings.’ He is taking care to speak very slowly and with a much stronger German accent than usual.
    ‘No, never mind the
political
meetings, but have you attended any
Communist
meetings in the United States?’
    ‘I do not think so, no.’
    ‘You are certain?’
    ‘I think I am certain.’ This is easier than he thought it would be. These people are idiots, why should anyone be afraid of them?
    ‘You
think
you are certain?’ The laughter is louder this time, and Stripling glares at the public gallery before continuing, ‘I would like to ask Mr Brecht whether or not he wrote a poem – a song, rather – entitled, “Forward, We’ve Not Forgotten.”
    ‘
Forward, we’ve not forgotten our strength in the fights we’ve won.
    Forward. March on to the power, through the city, the land the world;
    Forward. Advance the hour. Just whose city is the city? Just whose world is the world?
    Forward, we’ve not forgotten our union in hunger and pain, no matter what may threaten, forward, we’ve not forgotten
    We have a world to gain. We shall free the world of shadow;
    every shop and every room, every road and every meadow,
    All the world will be our own.
’
    Did you write that, Mr. Brecht?’ He is clearly embarrassed at having to read poetry aloud.
    ‘No. I wrote a German poem, but that is very different from this.’ The laughter is quite loud now, and Stripling sits down abruptly.
    The Chairman turns to the man on his left-hand side and says, ‘He is doing all right. He is doing much better than many other witnesses you have brought here.’ He then says in a much louder and slower voice, as if Brecht is a halfwit, ‘Thank you very much, Mr Brecht. You are a good example.’
    I go over to the bureau to get Hiroko. They let me into the little dusty office where she’s being kept, an office I know is used solely for such purposes, having used it myself a few times. I figure if I don’t go and get her out, she won’t ever speak to me again. She probably won’t anyway. But I need to try.
    She’s sitting on the desk, her arms wrapped around herself. She looks cold, even though the day is still hot, ‘You asshole! You were a spook all that time? You were just using me tocheck up on Mr Brecht!’
    ‘That’s not true. Anyway I don’t think you ever believed my journalist cover, did you?’
    She’s silent so I carry on, ‘You were suspicious anyway. But you went along with it.’
    ‘Because I liked you! You were gentle.’
    ‘Because you figured you could use
me
!’ I’ve had a few hours to think about this, and it seems as true as any other reason.
    ‘How dare you turn this around!
You’re
the one who’s a fully paid up stooge for the Government! You should be apologising to me!’
    ‘It’s my job, Hiroko. It’s only listening. Nothing more. It pays for gardenias and hot chocolate,’ and I try to smile but she is still furious.
    ‘You don’t know, do you. You’re so naïve. You think you give this information to your Government and it just reads it and files it away. What you do affects people! Look at Mr Brecht, having to give evidence to that stupid committee on his beliefs!’
    Aside from all the anger there is something odd about what she has just said, ‘What do you mean,
my
Government? It’s yours too.’
    ‘No it’s not.
My
Government wouldn’t spy on people.
My
Government wouldn’t pick American people who had Japanese parents and lock them away for years on end and forget about them.
My
Government wouldn’t put children into camps. My Government would act fairly for all people, regardless of their colour or race. So, no, it’s not
my
Government.’
    ‘It was a war. Lots of terrible things happened,’ I try not to think about some of those things, the bodies of my fellow soldiers twisting in the sea off Okinawa.
    ‘They didn’t have to do it. It didn’t help the war, did it? Locking up