Worlds Enough and Time Page 6

  PURCELL:

  Get out of politics?

  O’HARA:

  There are a few other things I can do.

  PURCELL:

  That would surprise me. Surprise the Evaluation Board, too.

  O’HARA:

  The Board makes mistakes. The one in New New did, and they had ten times as many people to choose from.

  PURCELL:

  Granted.

  Is there anything I can clear up for you, then? Anything to put your mind at ease about this … unpleasant reality?

  O’HARA:

  You could satisfy my curiosity about some things.

  Purcell nods almost imperceptibly. O’Hara sits down across from him, stiff.

  O’HARA:

  Does everyone in the Cabinet know about your little … tradition?

  PURCELL:

  Not yet. As you just said, we’ve had to draw candidates from a limited pool. Some are still being evaluated.

  O’HARA:

  But my husbands do know.

  PURCELL:

  And have for some time, of course. Both of them have argued your case since well before Launch. I, among others, wanted to see how well you handled that particular stress, first.

  O’HARA:

  It’s far from being the most stressful thing that’s ever happened to me.

  PURCELL:

  Granted. But I wasn’t there for the others.

  O’Hara leans back a few degrees, which makes her look even less relaxed. She can’t hide the anger in her voice.

  O’HARA:

  Sandra’s image couldn’t tell me how long it’s been going on, in New New. It said to ask you.

  PURCELL:

  I’m not sure, either. One may assume we had rather more of a pure democracy in the beginning.

  O’HARA:

  Fewer people.

  PURCELL:

  And a select crowd. Autoselected. They all decided to live in orbit—to start life over, most of them—and most of them had a more or less passionate interest in their own governance.

  The first person born in orbit, by comparison, was an unwilling immigrant. That was five generations ago.

  O’HARA:

  So you’re saying we’ve become less competent to govern ourselves? As individuals? Or is it just greater numbers, watering down the democratic process.

  PURCELL:

  Both. Out of New New’s eighty-one-thousand potential voters, ten or fifteen thousand—conservatively!—weren’t competent to make decisions regarding even their own welfare, let alone the welfare of others—

  O’HARA:

  That seems awfully high.

  PURCELL:

  And perhaps twice that number were either uninterested or so contemptuous of government that they had no positive input into the process.

  You think that’s high, too, but it’s not. Together those percentages would say, well, more than half of New New is made up of intelligent, responsible voters. That wasn’t true before the war and it’s less true now.

  I know Sandra told you about the plague referendum.

  O’HARA:

  Yes. It’s … terrible.

  PURCELL:

  You would have said “unbelievable” if it had been I who told you. The message was Sandra’s idea. I think she knew you very well.

  O’HARA:

  She did.

  PURCELL:

  I don’t have any great love for groundhogs, either, and I understand the primitive desire to punish them. Let them stew in their own juices, die out. But I don’t vote according to what my ductless glands say. Most people do.

  O’HARA:

  So the solution is a benign dictatorship by committee?

  PURCELL:

  It’s not the solution; it’s not even a solution. It’s just a way of getting from today to tomorrow without too much excitement. Without disaster.

  There’s no safety valve anymore. No other Worlds to emigrate to; no Earth as a last resort. We’re sealed in this can together for a century.

  And it’s not a “dictatorship” just because most people are unaware of the details of the decision-making process. It’s still just management.

  O’HARA:

  Management? What a euphemism. It’s manipulation, pure and simple. Paternalistic condescension.

  PURCELL:

  You’re not the best judge of that at this time.

  O’HARA:

  What do you mean by that?

  PURCELL:

  This is a difficult situation for you. It would be for anybody, talking to me under these circumstances.

  O’HARA:

  I can manage.

  PURCELL:

  Your using the word “paternalistic,” for instance, is interesting in this context. You’ve read your profile.

  O’HARA:

  Oh, come on. Because I never knew my father—

  PURCELL:

  Now you’re the one indulging in euphemism. What you felt about him was betrayal, contempt, rage.

  O’HARA:

  Yes, felt! I’m not a child anymore. Besides, I did finally meet him when I was twenty-one, on Earth. He was just a poor sad little man.

  PURCELL:

  You never completely leave the child behind. I’m almost eighty-four, and I can remember terrible things that upset me before I was ten.

  I’m just asking that you be honest and careful about those buried feelings. Don’t let them color your assessment of my advice.

  O’HARA:

  I will try to control my “rage.” (Pauses) There is something in what you say. I’ll take care.

  PURCELL:

  I want you to have this as a reminder. And a good luck charm.

  He slides over the book. Two bold Chinese characters are stamped on the red leather jacket. O’Hara opens it and reads the title.

  O’HARA:

  The Art of War, by Sun Tzu?

  PURCELL:

  Well, it’s not just about war. It’s about using people and supplies. Management. Bluffing. The creative use and abuse of power.

  Written more than two thousand years ago, but still useful.

  O’HARA:

  Thank you. I didn’t bring any actual books. This is beautiful.

  PURCELL:

  Very little of what it says is beautiful. It’s a tough, uncompromising book. (He stares at her.)

  How many nervous breakdowns have you had?

  O’HARA:

  None.

  PURCELL:

  Your record—

  O’HARA:

  I know my record. I’ve been treated for anxiety disorders. (She holds up the Chinese book.) We live in interesting times.

  PURCELL:

  Twice these “disorders” involved physical collapse. I’d call them nervous break-downs.

  O’HARA:

  Doctors don’t. (Purcell shrugs.) In both cases, I was back to work in a day or two. If I thought it was an impediment to public service, I would let the public get along without me.

  PURCELL:

  I’m not suggesting that it is. As far as I can tell, your actual problem is quite unrelated to anxiety.

  O’HARA:

  Good. Is it treatable?

  PURCELL:

  Selfcorrecting, ultimately. It’s your god-damned superwoman complex.

  O’HARA:

  What, you think I have too much confidence to be a good leader? That’s bizarre.

  PURCELL:

  No, it’s the opposite of that, or the obverse: an inability, or unwillingness, to predict disaster.

  O’HARA:

  I went through more disaster in seven months than you have seen in eighty-four years.

  PURCELL:

  Excepting the sure prospect of one’s death, perhaps. (She starts to say something but he holds his hand up, mollifying.) That’s not fair. I’m sorry.

  He drops the hand heavily to the table.

  PURCELL:

  Most of a century involved in calculated debate. It produces refle
xes. Like any sport. I have to go.

  He gets to his feet with some effort, and at the door looks back with an almost avuncular smile. O’Hara has risen, stepped toward him.

  PURCELL:

  No. Read “Maneuver,” Statement 27.

  O’Hara watches him go, then looks it up.

  O’HARA:

  “When he pretends to flee, do not pursue.”

  BIG SISTER

  Dear Marianne,

  Things sure have been exciting around here since you left. School school and more school. And dear old Mom.

  Could you talk to her? She gave you hell for putting off menarche until you were sixteen and now she’s giving me hell because I want it now. Everybody else in my class is going at it like bunnys and they treat me like a little girl. The school nurse says I wouldn’t have any trouble with the pelvis even if I did get pregnant, which would be a cold day on Mercury. But I guess they do have cold days on Mercury, its Venus where its always hot. God, astronomy! Its just algebra with stars and planets. Chemistry’s just algebra with funny smells. I still don’t know hamster dropping about algebra altho I passed course One the second time around. Now I’m in course Two and adrift between the Galaxys, as the soap says.

  Not that I get to watch.any soaps. The only cube I can watch is educational, until my grades are up there with a normal subhuman. So last night I got to see this hourlong thing about how hermit crabs and termites and all fuck. You would of really liked it. Maybe you’ll meet creatures like that on your new planet, but big like elephants. When the elephant termite female reaches around and starts eating the elephant termite male (while his thing’s still in her!), don’t worry, its just romance. You might want to tell Uncle Dan about it, since you say he likes strange women. There might be real strange women on that planet. Tho he’ll probably slow down by age 100.

  I’m thinking that someday I might want to go to Earth, I mean move there, once they get stuff settled. I wouldn’t feel so dumb there.

  Love, Janiss

  14 October 2097

  [8 Galileo 891]

  Dear Sis,

  I like your new name. Is it for somebody?

  I’ll talk to Mother about her stubbornness, but don’t think it’ll make much difference. (The reason for the particular stubbornness is immaterial, as you know. Changing her mind is like putting your shoulder to a planet.)

  You also know that I’ll try to talk you out of this. For most of the rest of your life men are going to be whining at you to please please let them stick their precious dicks into one place or another. It can be fun but it can also be worse than algebra, believe me.

  You do need the school, and once your hormones start moaning you spend half your time and energy attending to them. You’re not a natural student like I was, and even I had a harder time of it after menarche.

  To continue in this nagging vein, you know they won’t be sending people to Earth unless they have some special ability. (I can picture myself as a school counselor, shaking my finger at you, but it’s true.) Even if it’s not an academic specialty, it’s probably going to be something they measure through tests—and, unfortunately, the only way you’ll get better at test-taking is practice.

  To get back to the point, don’t forget that when Mother was your age she was pregnant with me. I think she’s always resented losing a few precious years of childhood. (Though as you well know, this is an illusion people come up with when they get old and their memories start to go. Being a kid isn’t so much fun while you’re actually being one.)

  I’ll plead your case with her, not because I think you’re right, but because you’re old enough to make the decision.

  The work here is still interesting, though some of the people I have to deal with are walking hemorrhoids. Never a dull moment. Beeper woke me up at five-thirty this morning because a nine o’clock meeting had been moved to ten. Still trying to figure that one out.

  Yesterday we had something new. A lawsuit. A middle-aged citizen who spends all of his free time building muscles so he won’t look so middle-aged (it doesn’t work) had an accident. He was working out on the parallel bars and one of them hadn’t been properly tightened. He did some sort of impressive flip that turned into a crash. He missed the mat and hit the floor face-first; it fractured his neck.

  So we had to go down to the hospital with an arbitration team, the poor victim looking all pathetic with his plastic brace and kind of wall-eyed with pain drugs. Emily Martino didn’t help any—she’s the woman in charge of the gymnastic equipment, and technically responsible. She got all teary and wanted to give the guy everything. Well, hell. I work out on those bars, too, but I have the sense to always have someone spotting for me. If it had happened to me, I wouldn’t have gotten a broken neck. I would just have felt embarrassed at being stupid enough not to check out the goddamned equipment before I put my weight on it! But try to tell that to arbitrators. They’re always advocates for the individual, against “the system.” If this is a system, we’re all in trouble.

  So they fined the department $250 and Emily $250, to go into an escrow account that Mr. Muscles can use whenever he has a yen for chocolate cake or weird sex. It’s actually five hundred bucks from the department, with Emily kicking over half of her hourly pay for the next 167 hours. We really can’t spare it.

  But Mr. Muscles is a nice guy compared to Gwen Stevick. Back in Start-up, I asked her to volunteer for Aptitude Induction (she wanted to be aboard ’Home but didn’t have any skill we wanted). She chose Veterinary Technician and now evidently hates it, and not incidentally hates yours truly. So she spends all of her spare time making my life difficult. She studies Entertainment like a scientist, and whenever she finds anything not to her liking she files a complaint.

  The complaints go over my head, straight to Policy. They’re as tired of her as I am, but there’s not much we can legitimately do. We fix the trivial thing that she’s bitching about, and file a correction report, and even write her a little thank-you note.

  I see her nosing around all the time. She’s fat and red-faced and always looks angry. Maybe she’ll have a heart attack down here, and we’ll all tip-toe off to lunch.

  Oh well, life in the ruling class. Sure is exciting.

  Evy, John, and Dan are doing fine, settling into their various routines, and send their love along with mine.

  Marianne

  THE POWER TO SOOTHE

  Interior Civil Engineering is a cluster of offices located at 0002, the most sternward part of ’Home’s living area. I wouldn’t enjoy working there. The rear wall of each room is seamless dark gray, the spun monomolecular carbon stuff that makes up the containment vessel for the antimatter. I’d feel uncomfortable being that close to it.

  (Which is twice illogical. The actual containment is done by a powerful magnetic field. If the power failed, all that carbon would be mc2 worth of gamma rays. The civil engineers would be vaporized, ionized, about one nanosecond before yours truly, up at the other end of the ship.)

  I had an appointment there at 1330, an hour after lunch, so rather than go back to my office I took a long stroll down Level 2, spiraling around. Eighty percent of the population lives on Level 2; I hadn’t really surveyed it since they moved in.

  There was not much individuation yet, in the outside of people’s flats. A few had pictures or icons on their doors. Three in a row had Arabic sentences rendered in careful black calligraphy. Every now and then potted flowers or decorative vegetables; some, predictably, vandalized. Even though it’s not surprising, you have to wonder who would want to destroy a bunch of tomatoes. What would he stomp on if the tomatoes weren’t there?

  (Right after the tomatoes somebody had written REX SUX DIX in some corrosive compound on the deck tiles; ineradicable. Was it an insult or an advertisement?)

  I was surprised to find John down in I.C.E.; he was head of the section but, to my knowledge, had only visited there two times. It was a long way to go for the privilege of creeping around in high gravity
.

  He saw my expression. “Thought I’d shake up the troops,” he said. “I saw your name on the list … what, that storage allocation thing with Smith?”

  “That’s right.” I was a little irked; I hadn’t discussed it with him because I did want to be punctilious about going through channels, and not just to make Purcell happy. I didn’t want to present myself to I.C.E. as “the supervisor’s wife,” expecting special consideration.

  “Probably wasting your time. Sandor has a couple of hundred people in line ahead of you.”

  At the mention of his name, Sandor Seven looked up sharply; small bald black man with a long face and no eyebrows. “You’re the Cabinet woman?”

  “Marianne O’Hara.”

  He looked at John. “You know her?”

  “All too well. You might as well give in.” Thanks a lot, John.

  “Come to my desk.” I followed him across the room to a drafting table surmounted by a display screen two meters square. “I haven’t looked at the details of your proposition. I wanted to first be sure that we understand each other. That you understand exactly what you are asking.”