Worlds: A Novel of the Near Future Page 5

  Reading Hawthorne and Poe for the seminar. Poe is easy and entertaining but Hawthorne (maybe a better stylist) is dense with religious mystery, hard to unravel. I’ll have an easier time of it when we get to the 20th century. (And well probably spend a lot of time there, since it’s Schaumann’s specialty.)

  The business, and religion courses are NBA (National Education Association) packages, as are most beginning graduate surveys. It sounds good in principle: a different lecturer, in holo, for each topic. The lecturer is one of the world’s authorities on the topic, chosen for teaching ability as well as expertise (they say it’s the best job insurance an academic can get, to be an NEA designee). There’s a live proctor—supposedly live, in the case of the religion class—who is supposed to use the last ten minutes to tie the lecture in with the general run of the course, and answer questions. You can also ask questions of the NEA network via the keyboards in the libraries and dormitories, but that costs money.

  Problem is that the only way you can stop a holo lecturer is to throw a brick at the cube (or at the proctor, maybe). It looked as if about a quarter of the business audience this morning was totally lost after the first ten minutes. It was a very rapid review of precolonial European mercantilism, and I suppose it would be very hard to follow if you had never had European history.

  I’d better read the Hawthorne over. Want to make a good showing for Dr. Schaumann (or is it for Bushy Benny?).

  7 Sept. I went to a Worlds Club luncheon today, between dialects and entertainment, and it was interesting. Think I’ll join, if only to help keep my perspective. I didn’t get to really talk to anybody, since there was a speaker, welcoming all of us new people. How many were interested beyond the free lunch—good old familiar rabbit—it’s hard to say. Find out at the meeting Tuesday night.

  The courses keep slapping me with double-vision déjà vu. First there was Scarlet Letter followed by a religion lecture on Puritanism. Then the dialects class was about the myth of survival of Elizabethan English in Appalachian enclaves, and the entertainment class covered folk music of that area—including a slightly dreadful half-hour cube of an old woman torturing a guitar and droning incomprehensibly through her nose—with a fascinating explanation about how Elizabethan English survived, etc. etc. It’s a conspiracy; they set up this whole university to convince me that I’m going mad.

  8 Sept. Miserable day. Last night I was ready for beef, and joined a group that was going to an improbable place called Sam & Pedro’s Tex-Mex Saloon. It was quaint. The decor and costumes were bogus 19th-century Western, straight out of the classic 20th-century movies. The only beef on the menu that I recognized was chili. It was good; the spices masked the beef flavor and weren’t as hot as the curries I’m used to. Different, though. I started to regret it about 6:00 a.m.

  I divided the morning between bed and toilet, with occasional forays to the phone. The infirmary told me to sit it out, very funny, and come down if it didn’t clear up soon. Drink water. Called Dr. Schaumann and got the assignment for Monday (Billy Budd and Tom Sawyer, both of which I’ve read). Called the library and got the business and religion lectures piped in to my cube.

  I tried to get the next couple of lectures in those courses, but they were “only available under special circumstances.” Infuriating. They’re afraid you’ll sit down for eighteen hours and take a whole course. Never show up at the auditorium. What’s wrong with that? On New New you pass or fail depending on your final exam or paper, even in most precertificate courses. Why do they treat us like this?

  By afternoon my digestive system evidently decided it had successfully repelled all invaders, but I didn’t feel up to going out with the rest of the floor to celebrate the Friday-ness of it all. I studied for a while, and wrote to John and Daniel. Watched half of an idiotic sex farce on the cube.

  The one nice thing that happened today was that Benny Aarons called. He offered to bring over his seminar notes, wondered if I bad plans for dinner. I explained my position, horizontal, and we made a tentative date to have lunch at the zoo tomorrow.

  On paper that looks rather aggressive, but he was actually sort of diffident and shy about it I think I do like him.

  Went down to the music room and did some scales and intervals, then was suddenly starving. Walked to the Vietnamese restaurant and had some rice with nuoc mam, as they call their fish sauce, and a couple of glasses of cold rice wine, and wrote this diary entry. Now bed.

  9 Sept. The zoo was fun but somewhat unsettling. It’s in the Bronx, one of those areas where you only go in the daytime. When Benny showed up to escort me, he was wearing a long knife on his belt; at the zoo, most of the men and some of the women were similarly armed. The zoo was safe enough, Benny explained, but anything could happen in the subway station or on the street. I wasn’t sure what good a knife would do against a waster of a wolf-pack, but it did make me feel a little safer to have even symbolic protection. The subway stop was amost as bad as 195th Street.

  (It’s against the law to go armed, technically, but the law’s only enforced after the fact, unless a policeman thinks you’re up to no good. Benny said he’d never used the knife for anything but woodcarving, and never planned to. But a couple of years ago a robber gave him a bad skull fracture, and he’d carried it ever since, outside Manhattan. He suggested I get one, but I’d feel ridiculous. I’d rather run.)

  There were so many different kinds of animals I couldn’t begin to record them all. Most of them were from other countries, exotic biomes like jungles and deserts. Some I’d never even seen pictures of, like anteaters and fruit bats (much too big!). What was really interesting, though, was the “farm zoo,” where they have everyday agricultural animals. I petted a cow, big oafish maudlin animal, which hardened my resolve to learn to eat beef. Never let sentiment interfere with diet. Bunnies are cute, too.

  Their goats were much bigger than ours. I’d expected them to be smaller, with the gravity. Efficiencies of scale, I guess, as John would say. Their rabbits and chickens looked like ours. Benny was surprised I knew so much about them (groundhogs think the Worlds are just big cities in the sky). I told him he should spend ten years of Thursday afternoons scraping up after the creatures. Builds character.

  (I saw a real groundhog. Benny asked why it made me laugh; I said it reminded me of a friend.)

  He’s not like most of the Earth men. He’s polite but not deferential or condescending. Except for a funny observation at the monkey house, he never mentioned sex, even though we went back to his apartment after the zoo, to look over the seminar notes. It could be a diversionary tactic, of course, but I don’t think so. He seems too open and simple. He reminds me a little of Damien (who also wrote poetry, I recall), and of New New men in general. I feel comfortable with him.

  He lives in a tiny flat down by Washington Square, even smaller than my dormitory room; about the size of my room in New New. It was cluttered with stacks of books and files; he had a phone but no cube. When he let the bed down from the wall, it took up most of the clear floor space. (I clenched my knees at that, but it was the only place to sit besides his desk chair; he gave me my choice.)

  After we’d gone over the notes, I asked whether I could see some of his poetry, and he said he’d rather wait until we knew each other better. He’d had a few of them published, but didn’t like those anymore, and he politely refused to talk about what he was doing now that was different. He said that words you used up on air could never live on paper. Fair enough, I guess. He did show me some of his artwork, which looked more like an engineer’s work than a poet’s: meticulously detailed street scenes done in rigid pen-and-ink, with carefully graded washes. He said he only did it to relax, and occasionally pick up some tourist money.

  He’s lived in New York all his life; in this same flat since he was sixteen. He obviously has spent a lot of his money on books. Many of them weren’t library printouts, but were actually hard-printed and bound. One whole shelf was taken up by antique books, bound in leather.<
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  Besides selling his art, he picked up a little money tutoring and baby-sitting (lots of small children in his apartment complex), and he had a small scholarship from the city.

  I haven’t mentioned that he has a weird sense of humor and can juggle, four coins at once. He makes figures out of string, like cat’s-cradles but more complicated. He’s tall and skinny and always wears a hat, and never opens his mouth when he smiles, which is often.

  I’m glad he didn’t complicate my feelings by making any overtures. I would probably say yes and regret it, or no and regret it, or later maybe and worry about it.

  10 Sept. Reread the Twain and the Melville and went to the library to listen to exaggerated dialect samples, practicing the phonetic alphabet. I should have asserted myself when the advisor recommended this course. It can’t possibly help me back home.

  Ate a hamburger, beef, for lunch and waited for it to explode. Nothing happened. Though I’ll probably dream about that damned cow tonight.

  While at the library I made a copy of Brant’s Clarinet Concerto, though my schedule hasn’t settled down enough yet to plan regular practice hours. Played for a couple of hours before dinner. Two weeks on the shuttle didn’t help my lip. (Dropped by a music store and bought a bamboo reed—ten dollars! It tastes bitter but has a more mellow sound than plastic.)

  11 Sept. The man who sits next to me in the management seminar is a federal policeman (FBI); he showed up in uniform tonight. It was a “field” uniform, light armor, and he was carrying one of those mirror helmets.

  He explained that he had to go straight from class to an FBI class in night maneuvers. He’s training for a field commission but also wants to get his M.M., so he can switch over to management eventually.

  I sort of liked him before; now I don’t know. He’s a quiet man, but with the uniform his quiet has a dangerous, smoldering quality. Oh, he explained about the mirrored helmets: they protect your eyes against laser fire, beyond a certain range. I’d assumed the reason was psychological. The invisible man, machine-like, invulnerable.

  His name is Jeff Hawkings and he sort of reminds me of Charlie. Same slope-shouldered hugeness, and with his close-cropped blond hair, he almost looks bald. Even bigger than Charlie, and more articulate, of course, and better educated. But I have a feeling their basic drives are parallel.

  It does annoy me. Nobody’s responsible for where he was born, all right; nobody has control over his early environment But I get this definite radiation from Hawkings that he’s totally in control, that I should be just quivering to slip between some sheets with him, that when he gets around to it he’ll give me the signal….

  Get ahold of yourself, O’Hara. Three weeks of abstinence and every man is a penis. Projecting your own need—no, it’s not that simple. Earth men are different.

  Well, there’s always the Worlds Club meeting tomorrow. Latch on to a Devonite, for old times’ sake.

  12 Sept. The club meeting was informal and comfortable. We met in the back room of the River Liffey, an old Irish-style pub (black stout on draught; John will be so envious). After a short and raucous business meeting, we fell naturally into small groups from each World.

  There were ten others from New New. Being the most recent addition, I was quizzed for information and gossip. Even though they can’t vote, they were interested in the upcoming elections. (I think Markus will be reelected; there are so many candidates for Engineering Coordinator-elect that it’s anybody’s game, though John thinks Good-man will at least get the engineers’ votes, for his CC work. That’s only one or two percent, though.)

  The club meets on Tuesday nights because that’s the night of the weekly Worlds news broadcast. A half-hour of watching Jules Hammond drone on about balance of payments. Will I ever be nostalgic enough to look forward to that?

  One of the men I slightly knew from highschool; he was in the form ahead of me, and we both played in the orchestra. He was percussion, though, on the other side of the room. I couldn’t think of his name and, after having recognized him, didn’t have any graceful way to ask him (being new, I was wearing a nametag).

  I have a feeling that many of these people have no social life outside of the club. Must not fall into that trap; it is so comfortable, being with your own kind. I have to learn all I can about Earth people, especially Americans. The transition to separation and independence will come in my lifetime, and I will be involved, in administration if not politics per se. It won’t be a smooth transition.

  (Suddenly I’m reminded of Benjamin Franklin, who spent twenty years trying to avert a revolutionary war, living in England most of that time, eloquently explaining the Colonies in England and vice versa. He was a glib and charming genius, and he failed. What am I? What will I have to do? Sometimes—now, in the dark morning—I have an almost mystical certainty that I will be some sort of a pivot, and the more I learn of history the less I want to be caught in the middle of it.)

  I drank a little too much and so walked back to the dormitory-about three kilometers-with two other women, one from New New (Sheryl Markham Devon) and one from Von Braun (Claire Oswald). The walk cleared my head and woke me up. So deliciously cool now. I think New New’s planners made a mistake by choosing a constant subtropical climate. Too late to change, though, without importing a whole new ecology for the park.

  New York’s streets are spooky after midnight. Most of the cabs are garaged and there’s almost no truck traffic, or buses. The slidewalks are all turned off. Half the people we met were police, and the other half were strange. A male prostitute made us a remarkable offer. Sheryl’s reply left Claire and me helpless with laughing; the whore just stood there open-mouthed. She was only half-joking, I suspect.

  All of the pedestrians were men, most of them drunk or zipped. A couple of them made me nervous, but Claire was armed and we were rarely out of sight of a police officer. (Sheryl wasn’t armed but carried a spray can of Puke-O in her bag. She says it’s a fine rape deterrent unless the wind shifts. Even then, if you have a fastidious rapist.)

  Back at the dormitory I met Dolores (she was at the meeting but took the subway home) in the hall, coming back from the shower with her damp sleepmate Georges. I think it’s a mistake to take up with someone from your own dorm, let alone your own floor. Convenient, though.

  13 Sept. I had it out with my advisor this morning and managed to drop the dialects class, substituting AmHist 507: “The Role of Sub-official Politics in American History.” It should be interesting, mostly a history of the Lobbies before the People’s Revolution. Spent the afternoon in the library, looking at last week’s lectures and catching up on the reading assignments.

  Becoming a real social animal. Had lunch with Benny and he asked me to go to a movie tonight, part of a free series of antique classics they’re showing at the Student Activity Center. Unfortunately it conflicted with the management seminar. At the seminar I got to talking to Lou Feiffer and we discovered a mutual interest in handball, so we’re going to meet at the gym tomorrow for a couple of rounds (he’s smaller than I am and has a hard time finding partners). Big old Hawkings also plays handball, and said he might come watch. I can feel those blue eyes on my backside already.

  Well, it should help get the kinks out, if I don’t break my neck.

  14 Sept. My hand hurts so I can hardly hold the pen. I’ll be a mass of bruises tomorrow.

  I could almost cry. I’m good at handball—but not here! In the first place, the ball won’t go where it’s supposed to. I can compensate for the extra drop for heavier gravity, but the damned thing doesn’t drift. No rotating frame of reference, no Coriolis drift. You can’t unlearn a lifetime of instinct overnight. I misjudged every damned ball, finally had to quit.

  In the second place, they play handball as a competitive sport. The idea is to make the other person miss it, not to see how long you can volley. Really bizarre.

  Lou was sympathetic to my frustration, after I explained about compensating for drift, and he tried serving slo
w ones to me. That was even worse, of course, and that’s how I got the bruises.

  I was glad they have separate dressing rooms for men and women. I didn’t feel like making small talk.

  Jeff Hawkings was waiting with Lou when I came out; they asked if I wanted to go find a beer. Told them I had to study. I suppose they’re both nice people, but I didn’t feel like going through the strain of being polite. Feel like a broken bone.

  15 Sept. Mother wrote saying she was pregnant again. What will it be like, having a little sister or brother (she didn’t say which) who’s twenty-one years younger? Glad I’m not living at home anymore.

  I wonder if she’s just doing it for the allowance? Seems more trouble than it’s worth.

  Joanna Keyes, who lives down on the 36th floor, came up and visited for a few hours this afternoon. She’s an undergraduate in politics and government, and an odd person but likeable. So intense. Very bright; she took the business course I’m in, last quarter (it’s not normally open to undergrads).

  She wanted to know everything about how New New is run—not just the formal business of overlapping cells and so forth, but also what goes on behind the scenes. Who runs whom, what should be voted on and isn’t, where does the real power lie. I asked her similar questions about America and got some ferocious answers.

  I’ve always thought the pre-Revolutionary system was more elegant, but it did concentrate too much power in the hands of one person. Keyes says that at least you knew who the man was then. The person who represents a Lobby in Congress is never the one who makes the real decisions; the real leaders are rarely identifiable and are never held responsible for their actions. If a puppet gets in trouble they sacrifice him and haul out another.

  I don’t doubt that that’s true, at least some of the time, but it’s certainly not the whole story. If a Lobby consistently acts against the public interest, its voting power dwindles away. Keyes says that’s a cynical illusion: all the polls reflect is how much money a Lobby has put into advertising.