Customs on the Moon

Officer Tanaka had six minutes for each passenger. At six in the evening, when the shuttles from Earth landed three at a time, he usually needed every second. It was the year 2140, and this was the busiest hour at Lunar Port Customs. The line in front of his desk stretched back past the big window, where tired travelers could see the Earth hanging blue and small above the gray hills.

"Anything to declare?" he asked the next passenger. She was a small woman in her seventies with a heavy bag. Her papers said that her name was Oyelaran and that she was moving to the Moon for good, to live with her son. "Nothing," she said. Then the scanner beeped.

Inside the bag, wrapped in a towel, was a clay pot. In the pot was a tomato plant, and around its roots was soil: real, brown, Earth soil.

"Ma'am, you can't bring this in," Tanaka said. "Earth soil is completely forbidden here. It might contain bacteria or insects that could get into our food systems. Didn't anyone tell you?"

"They told me," she said calmly. "I thought I could keep it in my room. I won't open the window." There are no windows that open on the Moon, and they both knew it. She almost smiled.

Tanaka looked at the line behind her. Someone sighed loudly. "Why would you take a risk like that for a tomato plant?" he asked.

Mrs. Oyelaran touched one of the leaves and said, "My husband grew tomatoes for fifty years, always from the seeds of his own plants. This one comes from the seeds of his last ones. He died in March. My son says they grow plenty of tomatoes up here, in water. I'm sure they're fine. But they aren't his."

The rules were clear: anything with Earth soil went into the incinerator. Tanaka had sent hundreds of things there. But the rules said something else too, on a page that most officers never read. The only Earth plants on the Moon grew in the Common Garden, a dome in the center of the station. There, everything was tested and cleaned before it was planted.

"I can't let it into your room," he said at last, and he took a yellow form out of his drawer. "But the Common Garden accepts plants as gifts. If you give it to the garden, it'll be cleaned and tested, and if it passes, it'll grow there with everything else. You could visit it every day. You might even be allowed to pick the tomatoes."

Mrs. Oyelaran looked at the form for a long time. Then she signed it carefully and handed him the pot with both hands.