Worlds: A Novel of the Near Future Read online

  All we have to do is rake the stuff up and haul it to the mass drivers. There’s more than ten thousand tonnes of it, easily accessible.

  What this means is that we can scale up our CC decomposition factories a thousandfold, and have them running smoothly long before Deucalion comes in.

  It doesn’t mean independence from Earth; ten thousand tonnes holds about 250 tonnes of carbon and 1300 tonnes of water, and only about thirty tonnes of nitrogen. (Some people think there might be many similar gravel fields, though.) The main thing is that we’ll be able to run the factories at the same rate of materials flow as we’ll need when we start dismantling the asteroid.

  It is exciting, even for an old mudballer like me. Everybody in New New is galvanized, understandably. Lots of smiles and spontaneous laughter. You should have seen the chaos in the Light Head the day they made the announcement. I had to take my Guinness and go home (thanks for telling me about the River Liffey; it makes my stout taste flatter).

  I’m glad you decided to drop that language course. The only person around here who has any dialect, to my ear, is Dan, and you seem to understand him pretty well. Are you going to replace it with anything, or just take a lighter load?

  Well, tomorrow we go out and vote. Big surprise: it looks as if I’ll be on the Privy Council, as Representative-at-large from External Systems. As you probably know, there’s a technicality that requires two candidates for Rep-at-large. Eugene Knight has agreed to be my “stalking horse.” The sole item in his platform is that he proposes to replace all the air in New New with hydrogen cyanide, as an experiment in terminal ecology. Well, he gets my vote.

  Seriously, the Privy Council isn’t too bad, but I’m already on the Import-Export Board, so there’s two days a week out the lock. I almost hope that Goodman doesn’t win Coordinator-elect. He wants me to be in his cabinet. When would I ever get any work done?

  You’ve been gone over a month and Dan tells me you haven’t picked up any of those degenerate Earth boys yet (see, no secrets). What’s wrong with our little butterfly? Gravity got your hormones?

  Privately, listen to Uncle Ogelby, I think it would help Dan’s peace of mind if you told him you were getting your ashes hauled (bet you’ve never heard that one), even if you aren’t. Although I doubt that he’s said anything to you, I know he’s afraid you’re going to work yourself into a pressure situation and suddenly fall for some groundhog because he presents a metaphorical shoulder at the right time. Don’t tell me you’ve never done it before, daughter. Remember the parade that followed Charlie?

  Maybe I’m talking out of turn, but I don’t think so. Dan treats you too gently. As a lover should, I suppose.

  I better transmit this before I lose my nerve. Feel free to write back that my advising you about sex is like you advising me about crystalline lamination. Love—

  John

  16

  Seduction of the innocent

  30 Sept. 84

  Daniel dear,

  I know it must have been an ugly shock to you, getting my letter about the rape right after sending your letter exhorting me to go out and butterfly. I also know you’ve tried to call me at least twice. Forgive me for being “out.” I never was any good on the phone, even for something simple.

  I didn’t keep a copy of my letter, but I’m afraid it was a little hysterical. Subsequent therapy and some kind friends calmed me down.

  Let me save you the cost of a call and answer the obvious questions. One: Yes, I’m all right physically. He gave me a severe beating, but the hospitals here have a lot of experience with that sort of thing. Two: No, he didn’t make any sexual contact with me, unless you count stabbing me in the butt. He didn’t have time, even though I was pretty well unconscious; a half-dozen students grabbed him and kicked him to a pizza. He died. I’m glad. Three: Yes, I do feel uncomfortable and ambiguous about men and especially about sex. Or is it the other way around. Anyhow, Four: Yes, I’m going to take your advice. I will write you about it honestly, as we agreed.

  Tell Uncle Ogelby that crystalline lamination obviously causes senility, and that I can haul my own ashes in a pinch. Much love—

  O’Hara

  2 Oct. 84

  Daniel dear,

  I didn’t have to give too much thought to deciding who my first earthman would be. There are a few who have expressed interest (including one woman), but none of them appeals. I set my sights on a poet whom I shall call Byron.

  Byron and I have a class together, study together frequently, and have gone out occasionally, to eat or drink or sightsee (he’s a native New Yorker and enjoys playing Native Guide). He spent a lot of time with me while I was in the hospital, chatting and playing cards. He is gentle, intense, political, intellectual, and bushy. He has a sense of humor that John would describe as wonky. In all the time we’ve spent together, he’s never once made an advance, never mentioned any girlfriends or boyfriends, and seems about as close as you could get to being aggressively non-sexual. Now I know why.

  I asked him over last night to study. Dressed for action and plied him with wine. For a couple of hours he deflected all of my hints, so I finally dropped subtlety and asked him right out to spend the night, sleep with me, do the beast with two backs.

  By then he wasn’t surprised, of course, but he seemed almost resigned, then embarrassed—he blushed—and he stammered out an explanation, saying he’d never talked to anybody about it.

  He’s an old man of 25, but had had a total of only two (consummated) sexual experiences. One with a woman, which was devastating, and one with a man, which was little short of rape. His few subsequent forays into the sexual arena were absolute functional failures, and he had been celibate for the past four years.

  I have to admit I felt out of my depth. I hadn’t expected to be the therapist in this little encounter. I was ashamed with myself at having pushed him into sharing the painful confidence, and for once in my bigmouth life I was at a loss for words.

  He rescued me with a light joke, though, and wryly volunteered his services, so long as I would agree to expect absolutely nothing. We talked a long time about it, I revealing my past in all its sordid (by Earth standards) variety, and then spent a sweaty couple of hours.

  As you might imagine, it wasn’t exactly a night of a thousand delights, since Byron has all the self-control of a bunny in heat, and knows absolutely nothing about a woman’s body, and it wasn’t the time or place to begin teaching him. But I know a thing or two thousand about men (and am modest besides) and was able to surprise him with his own recuperative powers. I didn’t fake any response myself, which I felt would be too manipulative, and couldn’t fantasize myself into anything, because I was too worried about him.

  (Which from the point of view of my own needs was probably the best thing that could have happened. I never once thought about the proximate motivation for seducing the poor boy, and I think managed to solve my own problem, obliquely, by addressing his. Isn’t that a terrible cli-ch6? Things become banal by being true, though.)

  Anyhow, when I woke up this morning he had his scratchy beard on my breast, and was wearing a childlike smile in his sleep. I left him a note and had an amphetamine breakfast, to get me through the morning classes (the class we have together meets at 9:00 a.m. on Mondays, but I decided to let him sleep through it).

  So I have come to terms with it. The rape was not at all a sexual act, and wouldn’t have been even if he had entered me. It was violence, pure and simple. Not simple. We found that the man had killed and raped—in that order—five women in the past, and what he did to them was so brutal that I can’t bring myself to put it down on paper. But it doesn’t have anything to do with Byron (had to erase his real name there), except that his homosexual experience was spoiled by cruelty, and it has even less to do with you.

  Speaking of yourself, I daydreamed about you all day and so have virtually nothing in my notes about Hemingway, Eli Whitney, and Methodism. The night with Byron was somatically unsatisfying, b
ut it did reawaken an over-powering itch I’ve been scratching away at by myself for a month.

  Sorry, old groundhog, I can feel your ears getting red. But I’ve made an exhaustive study of masturbation over the past few weeks, and I would like to share with you my findings: it is quick and easy and you don’t have to clean up your room beforehand. I would do it right now but I have a late seminar and can’t afford to be more tired than I already am. If I take another ’phet I’ll be up all night, and be out of phase with the rest of the world for a week. (That’s how dull and rationalized my so-called sex life has become.)

  So I will bow to your wishes (and John’s) and stop keeping my hands to myself. Whether I’ll continue the tutelage of my pet poet, I don’t know. See if he’s still smiling, the next time I see him. Love—

  Marianne

  17

  One-sided conversation

  —Hello, no vision.

  —Oh, it’s you.

  —Two new friends, maybe. Let me call you back later.

  —Endit.

  (A half-hour later he walks into a bar he knows will be crowded and noisy at this time. He nurses a drink until 2:47. He goes to the public phone and punches the number that is appropriate for that day and hour.)

  —Will here.

  —We have a probable and a possible. Probable is the poet type I mentioned last time. He’s somewhat conspicuous, but that does have its uses. The other is a woman from New New York—

  —New New York, the satellite. She—

  —I know. Not to get deeply involved; not to find out too much. Her sympathies might be valuable some day. She seems politically disaffected with her home government and realistic about American politics.

  —Yes….

  —She’s a student at NYU. American Studies and something else.

  —I don’t know. It’s usually a year. That would be enough time for what I have in mind…. Oh, one complication. She’s a friend of the poet’s; I think they’re sleeping together. For the time being, we shouldn’t bring him in any deeper than she goes.

  —No, she was brought into the Grapeseed by one of my fourth cadre, second level. A female who lives in the same dormitory.

  —No, the poet, well, they met outside. He’s been coming down for a couple of months. It’s—

  —I know. But it doesn’t seem suspicious.

  —Trust me, I’ll fed them out a little more. The poet seems clean but it’s hard to check up on her.

  —Sure.

  —If you can do it without any fuss. Her name’s Marianne O’Hara, line name Scanlan. She mentioned living on the, uh, fourth level, which is a voting region…..

  —Presumably. But the University records could be forged.

  —Can’t see it. If she’s acting she’s too good for them to insert at this level. And why would they do an insert who was an alien and a priori a temporary resident?

  —Barely possible. Anything’s possible. If you want, I’ll hold off until you check.

  —All right.

  —No, we lost one last week. Cab accident, didn’t look suspicious. So now we stand at one seventy-eight, with fifty-four at the expediting level.

  —We do indeed. Endit.

  18

  Death and tariffs

  O’Hara went to the next Worlds Club meeting armed with the information John had passed on to her. Most of the people knew that and more.

  “They could have kept it secret,” a man from Mazeltov complained. “That’s the trouble with you Yorkers. You-stay in too-close touch with Earth.”

  “Where would you peddle your metal,” a man said, “without our marketing and shipping arrangements? Build your own slowboats and shuttles?”

  “I’m not talking about economics,” the Mazeltov man said.

  “What are they talking about?” O’Hara asked Claire. “What secret?”

  “The lunar CC material. It’s all over the papers, haven’t you heard?”

  “But I haven’t seen a thing. I’ve known about it for days!”

  “Didn’t use to be news,” Claire said, looking through her bag. “Not until the Lobbies started twitching…. Guess I left the paper at home.”

  “I’ll get one.” O’Hara went into the main restaurant section of the Liffey and put a dollar in the Times machine; punched up “Space.” It dropped twenty pages and flashed for another fifty cents. Usually you got two pages and change. O’Hara bought the rest and scanned the pages as she walked back to the meeting room.

  The Senate was in an uproar. U.S. Steel was calling for a unilateral boycott of Worlds goods and services, and they had a lot of support.

  Tomorrow night there was going to be a prime-time referendum: “Resolved: That all exports to the Worlds be halted until new agreements, guaranteeing long-term economic interdependence, can be reached between the United States and the Worlds, together and severally.”

  She sat down across from Claire and leafed through the pages. “It’s out-and-out blackmail.”

  “Not really,” Claire said. “Just good politics; better to do than be done to. Unusually farsighted.”

  “I was going to say ‘premature.’ Don’t they know that this is really just a test?”

  “But you do have to admit that we would pull our own boycott, eventually. Once we could live off Deucalion.”

  “Twenty years or more.”

  Claire shrugged. “Farsighted.”

  The man from Mazeltov sat down with them. “Claire, you’re in systems engineering, right?” She nodded. “How long can we hold out?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. It depends on what you mean by ‘we.’ Your world and mine, Von Braun, will start to feel it in a couple of months. Larger systems are more resilient to shock; Devon’s World could hold out for years. New New York could go twenty years, probably, with careful birth control. If you add selective euthanasia, they could keep the World running for centuries.”

  O’Hara looked thoughtful. “Twenty years.”

  “You see? They aren’t really being precipitate. Just cold-blooded.”

  “What about a larger ‘we’?” the man said. “New New could export food and water; they’ve done it before.”

  “They did it for Braun when I was a baby,” Claire said. “That do you think, Marianne?”

  “That was an emergency. I don’t know.” She sipped her beer. “There’s another political aspect to it, that the U.S. has to be thinking of… not just maintaining imbalance of trade. It looks as if they may be trying to push us into unity.” She glanced at the paper. “That’s why the phrase together and severally.’”

  “There are worse things,” the man said.

  “It would be a disaster.” O’Hara sighed. Old argument. “We’d be a suburb of Earth forever. Just another country.” The Worlds did have a loose organization, through the Import-Export Board and various unanimous agreements concerning immigration and noninterference. But there was nothing resembling autonomy except for a mutual orneriness toward Earth.

  There was an awkward moment of silence while everybody decided not to run around that track again. “Speaking of other countries,” O’Hara said, “what about Common Europe? Are they cooperating?”

  “Europe”—Claire nodded—“Supreme Socialist Union, and the Alexandrian Dominion. Japan has pledged to import nothing and limit its launches to bare life support for its two Worlds. The Pan-African Union is officially neutral, but their only launch facility is Zaire. They’re in bed with Germany. We do have Pacifica on our side, and Greenland, I think.”

  “Who couldn’t launch a sputnik.”

  “But it works both ways,” the man said. “What happens to all the high-tech countries’ economies? They need our energy and materials.”

  “Maybe not so much as we’d like to believe,” Claire said. “At any rate, they have plenty of food and water.”

  For once, all of the Worlds Club waited for Jules Hammond’s newscast with anticipation.

  Both Coordinators were guests on the program,
and they outlined a course of action (nobody considered seriously the possibility that U.S. Steel’s referendum would fail). They were going to offer a horse trade: rather than a mutually absolute embargo, New New and Devon’s World would continue to export electricity—not a small thing, since the satellites supplied about ten percent of the Eastern Seaboard’s power—if the Lobbies would agree to supply the Worlds with enough hydrogen to offset normal daily loss, which would be about one shuttle flight per week.

  It was an interesting move, especially so for having been done in public, prior to the referendum. A half billion cube-staring groundhogs knew that, if the Worlds did embargo energy, that missing ten percent was going to come off the top: their own comfort and leisure. Just for hydrogen enough to make a swimming pool’s worth of water.

  Various things weren’t said. For instance, the amount of ‘hydrogen requested was the amount lost in a normal week, but most of that loss was due to industrial processes that would largely stay dormant during a boycott. So the Worlds would actually be storing a surplus of water, in case of siege.

  Leaving the solar power stations on would not be particularly altruistic, either; they are totally automated and require only sunlight as a raw material. It would be more trouble to turn them off than to leave them running.

  One thing that would not be broadcast for a while was that a hastily gathered committee of experts in nutrition and agriculture had been able to assure the Coordinators that there would be no. starvation, so long as there was an excess of water. People would have to revise their diets. But if it came down to fish sauce and rice, New New alone could feed practically everybody in the Worlds.