Worlds: A Novel of the Near Future Page 4

  For long minutes nothing happened. Then the curve of the Earth rolled up, stopped, rolled back out of sight, making her a little dizzy. She had seen this on the cube a dozen times and wasn’t scared at all. A high-pitched moan sat at the edge of audibility when the steering jets stopped blasting: the atmosphere slowing them down.

  O’Hara might have compared the middle part of the trip to a roller-coaster ride, had she known what a roller coaster was. The craft rolled, pitched, and yawed with controlled violence. When the sky showed, it started taking on color: inky violet brightening to cerulean. The stars faded away.

  They came in over the Florida coast to a vista of breath-stopping and, to O’Hara, thoroughly alien beauty. The sun was low in the west, almost dim enough to look at directly, illuminating a spectacular array of high cumulus, crimson and gunmetal against a deepening sky. The ocean was almost black, studded with froth that the sun tinged red. The horizon had lost its curve: for the first time in her life the Earth was not just a planet, however special. It was the world.

  From the shoreline to the horizon was a complicated maze of buildings and roads. If you could turn New New inside out and lay it down flat, it wouldn’t cover one tenth part of what was unrolling underneath her, yet this was a small city, she knew.

  It changed abruptly at the edge of the spaceport’s territory. Swampland and scrub, mangrove jungle laced with streams and lakes. A wide, bridged river with a queue of huge barges carrying dumbos to be launched and refilled.

  They were falling lower, impossibly low, and seemed to be gaining speed. An illusion, she knew, but she tightened her throat against crying out as the ground flashed by underneath and then they hit hard, bounced, and the tires were screaming protest; then braking rockets boomed, pushing her hard against the restraining straps, hard enough to hurt her hipbones and shoulders; then they were rolling, more and more slowly, to a quiet stop. Her eyes filled with tears and she started to laugh.

  13

  Three letters

  John,

  Where to start? You’ve been to the Cape, so I won’t give you a travelogue. It gave me a chill, though, the spaceport’s defenses. I counted ten of those offshore gigawatt lasers; there were probably more over the horizon. (Horizon! This damned planet bends the wrong way.) I wonder if they still work.

  We took a subway to old New York, which only took a little over an hour, even though we stopped at Atlanta, Washington, and Philadelphia. Tempted to get out and see those places, but I guess there’s time for that later.

  I called the school when we got to the station (for some reason they call it Pennsylvania Station; Pennsylvania must be over a hundred kilometers away). They sent a woman to pick me up, an older woman who had emigrated from Von Braun after the crack-up.

  A lot of New York City came down in the Second Revolution, but they must have rebuilt with a vengeance. Pictures can’t do justice, can’t convey the size and intensity of it. I almost fainted when we stepped out on the street.

  I suppose a lot of this wouldn’t affect you, since London is bigger and older than New York. Humor me, though (you’re so good at it).

  Looking up makes me dizzy anyhow. It’s the same middle-ear problem you had when you moved to New New, but in reverse. I’m used to operating in a rotating frame of reference. But there’s so much to look up at. The tallest thing I’ve ever seen was the lift tube in Devon’s World. You could stand that up on any street here and not notice it.

  We came up a long escalator and stepped out on 34th Street. I just stared (Mrs. Norris was ready for it and had me by the arm). Half the buildings are so tall their tops are above the cloud. The cloud, as Daniel warned me, is atmospheric pollution from the industries to the south. They keep it at the thousand-meter level with some sort of electrical thing, but it doesn’t work perfectly. The air is thick and has a chemical smell, not too unpleasant. I don’t even notice it anymore, after two days.

  Mrs. Norris went to a stanchion on the sidewalk and pushed a button twice, calling us a cab. Do they have those in London? They’re little yellow robot vehicles, most of them two-person size, some bigger. You get in and tell it your destination, and it computes the most efficient route for the prevailing traffic conditions. Theoretically, anyhow. Some of the students think they’re programmed to maximize fares. I don’t use them anymore unless I’m lost, which I never would be if the streets made sense.

  In the cab we went by a little park in the middle of town, a war memorial built around the ruins of the Empire building. Empire State. It really looks shocking, all bare rusty skeleton. It used to be the tallest building in the world, not even a kilometer high.

  That would interest you, for your strength-of-materials. It’s easy to tell the post-Settlement buildings from the older ones, since they could only build so high without composites. And real estate is so dear the cheapest way to go is up.

  We got to the school and my luggage wasn’t there. Turns out it went to Rome, Italy, which everybody but me thought was hilarious. Mrs. Norris said I was lucky they didn’t reshuttle it and send it back to New New. It’s happened, at least to low Earth orbit.

  My medicine was in there, though, and I broke out in hives during dinner. They cleared it up in an hour or so, but it was an ugly time. Triggered my period a week early. You can imagine how that cheered me up.

  They brought my bags in after midnight, without any detectable apology. You mudballers.

  All of us newcomers got a guided tour of the city yesterday. We got practical advice as well as tourist stuff. There are places you don’t go at night and places you don’t go, period. The crime rate here isn’t much higher than in New New, per capita, but there’s a lot of capita. And the crimes tend to be dramatic. Did they have wasters and wolf-packs in London? The wasters scare me more, because the wolf-packs don’t operate downtown. They’re people who go berserk, usually in crowded places, and start killing indiscriminately. Sometimes just with knives or whatever they can pick up; sometimes with real weapons. You can imagine what a hand laser could do in a crowded store. Last year one killed almost two hundred people at a subway stop.

  (When they told us about that I remembered hearing it on the news, but it didn’t make much of an impression at the time. I guess we expect groundhogs to do crazy things. I have a lot of prejudices to work on.)

  Most of a whole street. Broadway, is nothing but a big meat market. Sex of every description, but somehow evil. Like Devon’s World turned inside out. Yet prostitution is illegal. The guide said they tolerate Broadway because it contains it, makes it easier to control. One of the students told me it’s been that way for more than a century, but he thought they tolerated it because it made payoffs easier, for politicians and police. It’s big business.

  The police are frightening. They’re all men, big men. They look even bigger with the body armor, and you can’t see their faces for the mirrored helmets. They’re heavily armed. But I’ve talked to a couple of them, getting directions, and they seemed friendly enough.

  So much of this place is so old (yes, I know where you went to school in Dublin was even older). The oldest thing I’d ever seen before was the sputnik in the park; maybe I’m too easily impressed. I’ve been walking around at random, usually alone, stumbling over history. I found Washington Square, where the Second Revolution started. Wall Street Tiffany’s and Macy’s.

  I made the mistake of riding the subway without a native guide. I never was good at maps, and the subway map looks like a plate of sūmen. Anyhow, I crossed over when I should have crossed under, so went north instead of south, and wound up getting out at 195th Street, which is one of those places you’re not supposed to go even in daytime. I didn’t go outside the station, which is above ground, but even so it was scary. Even with a pair of policemen on each side of the platform. There were strong young men loitering all around, too well-dressed, who never took their eyes off me, but otherwise everything was filth and poverty. Horribly crippled beggars and some who seemed to be diseased, perhaps
dying—though both the city and the federal government have socialized-medicine programs. (Well, it’s no secret that the hospitals are over-crowded, and it’s hard to get a berth if you don’t belong to one of the Lobbies in power.)

  It is all so strange. I feel more alive than I ever have, but at the same time intimidated and frustrated that I only have a year here. I could spend a year in New York City—in the museums and libraries alone!—and not come close to seeing everything. Yet in a few months I’ll be running desperately around the world, for a 75-day course in “cultural relativism.” Then there’s the rest of the States to see, and the two independent states, if I can get safe entry into them (though most people seem to think that Nevada is just a bunch of thugs and anarchists, and Ketchikan nothing but a racist farming commune). All the while studying. At least I don’t have to write my dissertation until I get back to New New.

  I’ve begun a diary but it seems inadequate. It feels like so little time here, I hate to waste it keeping records. On the other hand, there’s so much input I can’t trust my memory.

  Must run. Give my love to Daniel and keep some yourself, Quasimodo.

  Daniel dear,

  Just a note to let you know I’m getting along all right. Will write in more detail after I’ve sorted out my impressions.

  It looks as if I might as well have vowed a year of chastity, for all the bright prospects here. Most of the Worlds people here are stuffy academics. (Except for two Devonites, and I’ve had my fill of that particular dish.) The New Yorkers are, well, creatures from another planet. What about you? Going out every night with that little peeler from the Light Head? (Don’t do it; that type is invariably frigid. Besides, she’d sag in high-gee.) Or did you think I never noticed the way your attention wavered when she was onstage?

  New York City is all you said it would be, and more. All the little things you must have always taken for granted. Coins! My pockets are always full of them (doing wonders for my voluptuous form) and I can’t add them up fast enough to tell whether I’ve been given the right change. Those miserable little aluminum dimes. Half the stores won’t take them, and the other half shovels them at you in change.

  But I’m loving it. Every day is a big vulgar epic. School starts tomorrow, and already I begrudge the time I’ll have to spend studying. Though it will save money—at the rate I’m going, the hundred thousand they gave me wouldn’t last four months (I could always get a good job on Broadway, with what Charlie taught me).

  I hope your work is going well, and hope you’ll eventually come around to our way of thinking as to its importance. Though I suppose this experience is going to make me less of a separatist. Or maybe more—I had a terrifying experience on the subway (went to 195th by mistake), and suppose there will be other shake-ups in store soon.

  Wish you could be here to show me around. Maybe soon. Let me know how your rotation schedule works out; I may not be in the U.S. if you come back too soon. But love will find a way, as the salmon said.

  I have a picture of you by my bed, the flying one you said you liked. Another picture when I close my eyes, that might embarrass you, but which has its uses. Love:

  Charlie,

  I just wanted to write and remind you that I’m not in New New anymore. I’ve come to Earth for a year, mostly school.

  The address on this ‘gram will be good all year, though I’ll be traveling around. Yes, I’m living in old New York, and a stranger place you’ve never seen! It’s something like Devon’s World in its decadence (look it up, lazybones), but it’s almost all buildings and streets. Do you remember the pictures we looked at? Well, they were taken on a “clear” day. You only get pictures like that after a hurricane.

  I’ve seen the sun only once since I got here, and that was because a holiday weekend (Labor Day) closed most of the factories to the south of here. I think the sun was one of the things I liked best about Devon’s World, and I wish we had it here.

  I hope you’re enjoying your line, and I’m sure they’re all nice people. Have you started your first baby yet? I might have one myself, once they find a way for the man to carry it around the first nine months.

  Your friend,

  14

  Diary entries

  4 Sept. 2084. First class day. Let me just set down my schedule for the quarter:

  The “entertainment laboratory” is intriguing. Find out about it tomorrow. I guess well be going to shows and things. Interview whores on Broadway.

  5 Sept. Last night a group of us went to a Vietnamese restaurant. Strangest food I’ve ever had: squid (aquatic mollusk) stuffed with ham and something else, with unidentifiable spices. Only the fish sauce was familiar. The ham didn’t taste anything like what John fixed for me last year, but it was all very tasty and hasn’t caused me any trouble, yet.

  They almost never eat goat or rabbit here, or anywhere else in the country. Mostly fish, pork, chicken, and beef. Dolores Brodie (who’s been here for two quarters, from Mitsubishi) says it’s the beef in their diet that gives them that rancid smell. Guess I’ll stop noticing it about the time I start to smell that way myself. Will have to try some beef tomorrow. So dark and strong. Maybe they fix it better down here, though.

  There are usually two “meatless” meals—they don’t consider fish to be meat—in the morning and midday. More starch than I’m used to. Have to watch the rice and hominy.

  The entertainment seminar doesn’t look as if it will be all that entertaining. The professor (Marlie Gwinn) has that desperately serious attitude teachers get when they have to be defensive about the academic worth of their specialty. I’ll write her a somber paper comparing sex on Earth with zerogee sex. That’s entertainment. The laboratory might be fun, most of the time. Shows and old movies, demonstrations of dances and games, concerts, who knows what. Must remember not to be entertained. This is serious business.

  I don’t know whether the dialect/creole course is going to be worth much. Mostly historical, except for a few isolated groups of antitechs and illiterates.

  I’m the only Worlds citizen in the management seminar. Also the only woman. Have decided not to be Machiavellian about it (though that’s contrary to the spirit of everything I know about management); it would be easy to twist the discussion around to Worlds administration, since everybody seems curious about it, including the professor. But I’m here to learn about Earth models. Earth mistakes.

  Don’t know much yet about the business and religion courses. They’re both big lectures, and the first day was mostly devoted to administrative details: goatshit about grades and attendance. Attendance! Are we children?

  Interestingly, the American literature seminar is led by a German, Herr Doktor Schaumann. He’s a twinkly old fellow with a dry sense of humor. The way he almost-hides his intelligence reminds me a lot of John; it looks as if the course is going to be Socratic-aggressive. Simple questions full of fishhooks. Meat and drink for someone who grew up in the New New system, naturally.

  No Worlds people in that seminar, either. But they’re an interesting hunch, predictably different from the business and management types. One of them, Benny Aarons, is a bushy poet who seems to be interested in me. I don’t know whether or not to encourage him.

  Daniel wanted me to jump right in, try to live a normal social/sexual life. But it’s so damned complicated. I would really rather think about him than lay with someone else. And there’s so much else to do. Still, I liked the way that Benny boy looked at me when he thought I couldn’t see him. Maybe it’s because I’m Worlds, though rather than my fatal charm.

  Mrs. Norris told me that Worlds women have a reputation for being easy sexual “conquests.” Strange attitude on the part of Americans (and some other countries, too), that sex is more competition, testing, than playing and loving. Women are prizes as much as partners. I don’t know yet whether to adapt to it or to be stubborn. Learn more if I adapt, I suppose, but I’ve never been much of a compromiser. Maybe look at it as being an actor instead. Learn all the
responses that an American woman makes unconsciously.

  I don’t know. It’s nice to be deferred to, even if the deference is only to your slippery plumbing, but there’s an ugly current underneath it. Rape. Ownership, selling yourself.

  Maybe it would be well to start out with a poet. Isn’t that cold-blooded?

  6 Sept. John called today, with Daniel on the extension, and we had a short but warm talk. They hadn’t gotten my letters yet—paradoxically, it’s cheaper to send letters to Florida for transmission, rather than beam them up from New York. They were probably still being sorted. Maybe they went to Rome. Crazy planet.

  Decided to put off beef until my period’s over. Feeling queasy, anyhow. Cramps no worse than usual but heavier flow than I’ve ever had before. Called the infirmary and they said it happens to everyone, whether they come from a low-gravity satellite or an Earth-normal one. Advised me to take iron, which I had already figured out. Maybe I don’t notice the cramps so much because the rest of me is such a battleground: feet, legs, back, shoulders. I wake up every morning in knots. Dolores (who lives down the hall) says it only took her a couple of weeks to get into shape, and Mitsubishi is also 0.8 gee. So I do my creaky calisthenics every morning and slump to the shower; hot as I can stand it for as long as I can stand it. The water isn’t metered, but it’s “grey” water, New York’s version of recycling. It’s not drinkable and it smells, slightly of humans and strongly of halogens and soap. No tubs. Who would want to take a bath in soup, anyhow?