Worlds: A Novel of the Near Future Page 9

  “Math is my worst subject.”

  “But you can program?”

  “Of course. I’m not illiterate.”

  “Good. This is a fairly simple job.” He handed me a folder with two sheets of paper in it. “We’re trying to verify consensual links between various supposedly antagonistic Lobbies. We’re fairly sure the links exist, with the result that the same people stay in power no matter which way an election goes. What you’ll be doing is pairing up voting records, trying to find suspicious correlations.”

  “Sounds interesting.” It did, as a matter of fact.

  “Keep track of the computer charges; I’ll reimburse you in cash. You, too, Benny.”

  The meeting lasted another ten minutes, with Damon and Katherine getting new assignments. Benny and I left together; the others were going to follow at staggered intervals. We took the subway.

  Benny looked inside the envelope as we swayed cross-town. “I’m Lloyd Carlton,” he said. “Three-fifty Madison Avenue. Good address.”

  “What do you think?” I talked just loudly enough for him to hear. There were several others in the car.

  “About the organization? I don’t know, not yet. I’d like to know how much they didn’t tell us.”

  “You were talking pretty radical in there.”

  “Trying to kick something loose.”

  “You almost succeeded with Ray, I think. Katherine wasn’t too impressed. ‘Revolution is inevitable,’ eh?”

  “Only if they interrupt the World Series.”

  21

  Behind the scenes

  After the others had left, the blind man sat alone, reading. A door opened silently and Will stepped in. “Interesting?”

  “Except for the diagrams.”

  “Not the book, those two new ones.”

  “Ah. Yes, they were interesting. I think we’d better keep a tag on Benny for a while.”

  “No problem. How about O’Hara?”

  “I’m bothered by her necessary lack of commitment. We’d better keep her well insulated from the expediting level. Benny, too, until she leaves.”

  “True. Want to go upstairs?”

  He got up. “No harm in being early.”

  When the elevator came, Will inserted a key and pushed the button marked “Penthouse.”

  “MacGregor thing set up?”

  Will nodded. “Tonight, if everything goes smoothly.”

  They stepped out into the penthouse suite. There were five people sitting around a long table. Four of them were cleaning weapons. They saluted, right fist striking chest, and the two men returned the salute.

  Katherine looked expectantly at Will. He nodded. “Tonight.” She finished assembling the palm-sized oneshot laser, put it in her purse, and left.

  Will walked along the wall, running his fingers down the stocks of the dozens of long guns racked there: lasers as well as gunpowder and CO2 weapons. At the end of the rack, he picked up a practice rifle and aimed it at the man-shaped target across the room. The target had light-sensing devices at head and heart Will squeezed off five shots in rapid succession; a bell rang five times.

  James smiled, took a long-barreled sniper’s rifle off the rack, and sat down to disassemble it He was the best marksman in the room.

  (The next morning’s papers would report that Senator William MacGregor had died in his sleep, of a cerebral hemorrhage. They wouldn’t mention that he wasn’t sleeping alone, or that the hemorrhage was caused by a point-blank laser blast to the base of the skull, or that there was a printed manifesto pinned to the blood-soaked pillow.)

  22

  A tangled web we weave

  20 October. While I was finishing up the program for James’s group, my favorite FBI officer walked into the computing room. I told him I was working on a project for my Lobbies class, which gave me a little thrill. Marianne O’Hari, girl spy.

  Hawkings had a short program and was finished by the time I got mine printed and bound, and we went out for coffee. Keeping the conversation safe, I mentioned next quarter’s Cultural Relativism tour—and was surprised to find that he’s going on it tool He’s been saving up money and leave-time for a couple of years.

  Really mixed feelings about that. It will be nice to have somebody familiar along, and I like Hawkings well enough, for an American man. But I can imagine what he’d think about Will and James’s activities. (Actually, his reaction wouldn’t be simplistic, since he is an intelligent and politically “aware” person. But I don’t think he’d have a sense of humor about blackmailing senators.)

  After coffee, we went to the gym, found partners, and fenced for an hour. He did self-defense style, two weapons, and his partner didn’t have a chance, from the one bout I watched. I lost all four of my own bouts, and managed to lunge into a stop-thrust and get stuck in the armpit, which still hurts. I’ll never be really good at it, but it is fun and lets off steam. Afterwards, I sort of wished they didn’t have separate showers for men and women. He looks so much like Charlie—do I miss him, in spite of everything? Maybe my body misses his body. Maybe I miss looking at naked men, or showing off my resistible secondary sexual characteristics.

  I stared at that program for hours, and haven’t come up with any consistent pattern. I think the pattern does exist, but I’m just not a good enough mathematician to isolate it Maybe James will have me shot.

  I’m tempted to throw the whole business out the lock. Interfering with the politics of a foreign country. Foreign planet. They could put me in jail.

  Though I suspect they wouldn’t dare, so long as I personally don’t do anything blatantly illegal. It would be too good a news item. The U.S. claims to be a bastion of personal freedom. In fact, though, the civil disobedience laws of most states are so broad that they can arrest you for saying that the president of General Motors shits daily. And you can spend a long time waiting to come to trial. Will claims that there are tens of thousands of political activists rotting in jail.

  What I’ll do is confront James directly, and tell him that I refuse to do anything either illegal or public; for this, he has my cooperation and silence. It will be valuable, seeing American politics from the underside.

  21 October. Entertainment lab was a fascinating backstage look at a Broadway play. We went to the Uris Theatre, where they’re doing a revival of the 1998 musical Chloe. We got there at nine, and watched all the preparations for the 1:30 matinee; then watched the show from the orchestra pit—there being no orchestra, since the music was all old-fashioned electronics. It’s a supposedly funny story about suicide. I think a banjo might have pepped it up.

  Jeff Hawkings asked me out to dinner tonight Life certainly does get complicated. I told him I had to pound the books, which was true, since I have to give the class on Steinbeck Monday. I had planned on eating out, sudden craving for pasta, but to keep my conscience clear I just got eggs and toast out of the machine. How can they make eggs and toast that give you indigestion?

  Steinbeck won’t be hard, since I spent a week on him a couple of years ago in that “Tools for Social Reform” seminar. And having survived the Crane class helps.

  Grapeseed tomorrow with Benny.

  22 October. First snow of the year, of my life. I made Benny walk with me to the Grapeseed, even though it was sloppy and cold. The stuff is beautiful. Pictures don’t do anything. It’s the feel of it on your face and the crisp smell of the air. It gets on your eyelashes and doesn’t melt for a while.

  Benny brought up the idea that our “inner circle” with James may be far from the innermost circle. He described the system of interlocking cells that the Communist party used in the United States last century, where no one knew the identity of more than a few other party members. It sounds logical.

  I told Benny I didn’t think I wanted to go any deeper. There’s enough potential for trouble at James’s level. He agreed, outwardly, but was thoughtful.

  The Grapeseed was more crowded than I’d ever seen it. Bad weather is good for bars, I g
uess, especially bars that specialize in conversation. They were serving hot buttered rum, which sounds great but tastes like someone had taken a drink and stirred it with a fried chicken leg.

  Will showed up but was quieter than usual. When he was more or less alone with Benny and me, he explained that a friend of his had just died, evidently by her own hand. It was Katherine, who had been so aggressively non-violent at the meeting. She poisoned herself, with barbiturates and alcohol.

  I’ve never understood that. I guess I’ve never been depressed enough, not even after the rape (“sexual battery,” but it will always be The Rape to me). I can accept voluntary euthanasia, at least intellectually, and am glad that New New offers it as an escape hatch, in case some day I’m very old and in constant pain. But I can’t imagine existential pain so great that a person my age would take her life. A square meter of earth, Dostoevski said; if all you had was a square meter of earth to stand on, and nothing around you but impenetrable fog, living would be preferable to dying. Did Katherine know something he didn’t?

  Wish I hadn’t seen Chloe. Ghastly memory now.

  23

  Insect, repellent

  No percentage in not being friendly to a man I’ll be traveling with for ten weeks. Before the management seminar, I asked Jeff whether he’d be free for dinner Tuesday. I think he tried not to act surprised. He probably thought my refusal Saturday was a dust-off. I’ll take him to that nice Italian place in the Village.

  The seminar was interesting enough, employee selection and training. The class was going down to “our” bar afterwards, but I had to pass it up. Still haven’t really caught up in religion, after the stay in the hospital, and playing spy takes up time.

  Benny met me outside the classroom, the first time he’d ever done that. Said he’d walk me back to the dormitory.

  We didn’t say much on the way to the subway, trying to keep our footing on the icy sidewalk. When we got to the dorm, I asked Benny whether he’d like to come up for tea. He hesitated, then said yes.

  Upstairs, I started for the hotplate, but Benny caught my arm. “Let’s take a shower together.”

  I just stared at him. He stared back with a look that had to do with neither hygiene nor sex.

  He kept the same queer expression as we undressed and got towels. Walking down the hall, he held my arm in a grip that was almost painful. There was nobody else in the shower room. Benny turned one up full force and hauled me inside.

  He held me close and whispered, “We don’t dare talk in your room.”

  “Aren’t you carrying this—” He cut me off with a violent shake of his head.

  “I’m not being paranoid. This morning I couldn’t find a book, looked high and low, finally looked under the bed. I found a bug.”

  I didn’t understand. “Are you zipped? There are bugs everywhere.”

  “Not a bug bug,” he whispered harshly. “An electronic one—microphone and transmitter and battery. Size of your little fingernail.”

  “How in the world would you recognize—”

  “Christ and Buddha, don’t you ever watch the cube? You can buy them over-the-counter at Radio Shack. Somebody’s eavesdropping on me, probably you, too.”

  “You think it’s… James?”

  “Or Will. If it were the government, I wouldn’t’ve found the bug with a microscope.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “That’s only half of it. The first half is Katherine.”

  It took a second for the name to register. “The suicide.”

  “The one who died. I thought I saw her Friday night, the day before she died. You know I had to go to Washington.”

  I nodded. He was part of a show in a gallery there.

  “Thought I’d take the red-eye, save a couple of bucks. Went down to Penn to catch the two a.m. Going down the escalator to the train, she was coming up. She had a wig on, but no way you could disguise that nose.”

  “Sure it was her?”

  “I sort of half waved, then caught myself. She saw me and looked away.”

  “What are you driving at?”

  “Don’t you see? James gave her an assignment in Denver. Remember? And here she is, sneaking in from Washington at two in the morning. And the next day she’s dead.”

  “My God.”

  “You see? It’s too much of a coincidence. It’s possible, just possible, that she did commit suicide. Not likely.”

  I held him more tightly. “Somebody found out she was… working for the government.”

  “A counterspy, double agent, whatever. What probably happened was, they had somebody following me, checking me out. Saw her, reported… maybe she was under suspicion anyhow. They force-fed her some pills and washed them down with booze.”

  “The Times said there was a suicide note.”

  “Right. In her typewriter.”

  The door to the shower room slammed and I felt a chill down my back, under the hot water.

  “What are we going to do?” I whispered.

  “Right now? We—” I put my hand over his mouth. A man was using the urinal. There were only three men on this floor, and they were all closer to the other john. My heart was banging.

  “Sammy? Is that you?”

  The urinal flushed. “Maintenance,” an unfamiliar voice said. I held on to Benny with my teeth clenched and eyes squeezed shut. Then the door slammed again.

  “Was that the maintenance man?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never talked to any of them. Benny—stay with me. I’m afraid.”

  He stroked my shoulder softly. “I don’t think we’re in any danger yet. They don’t have any reason to suspect that we think they’re anything other than they said they were.”

  “You left the bug where it was?”

  “Of course. And you should do the same if you—no. Just assume there is a bug, in your room somewhere. Don’t bother to search.”

  “You will stay with me tonight?”

  He kissed me. “Sure.” If there was a bug under my bed that night, it heard nothing more erotic than two people staring at the ceiling.

  It was a good idea to keep my diary as loose sheets. After Benny left in the morning, I removed all the pages that referred to any of this spy stuff, tore them up, and flushed them away (after retyping the innocent parts). I decided I might keep a separate diary if there were some way to absolutely hide it.

  24

  Apparent and absolute magnitude

  The organization that O’Hara and Benny have made contact with is neither small nor without a name. Of the people they’ve met, only James is aware that he belongs to the Third Revolution (Katherine also knew the name, and was willing to the for it, though that happened in a way she had never foreseen).

  The FBI is aware of the 3R, and is concerned. They have dossiers on over twelve thousand members and suspect there are some fifty thousand more, protected by the tight cell system. They are wrong by an order of magnitude: the Third Revolution claims over six hundred thousand Americans and resident aliens (including one from outer space). About one out of five operates at the “expediting” level, which is mostly target practice and weapons drill. Fewer than one in five thousand is aware of the actual size and strength of the organization, which has over a million small arms stashed around the country, and tonnes upon tonnes of high explosive, made into standardized bombs, for sabotage. And two nuclear devices, one permanently sealed under the subway tracks in Washington, three blocks from the Lobbies’ Office Building.

  Of the very few people in Washington who are aware of the true danger presented by 3R, one is the FBI’s second-in-command, who is also 3R’s first-in-command.

  The 3R’s attitude toward America would have been easily understood by the soldier of the previous century who said, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

  25

  Diary of a spy

  (The following entries written in tiny script on cigarette papers, hidden between two pieces of cardboard tha
t formed the bottom of a box of tampons. She got the trick from the Marquis de Sade.)

  29 October. I gave my report to James last night, same place as the first meeting. He seemed interested and sympathetic, as were the others, and agreed that there might be a pattern, which a better mathematician could extract. Benny was too nervous. I hope they don’t suspect anything. He gave his report and was warmly congratulated. James had already seen the letters, of course. The bill comes up for “second reading” next week, and well find out then whether the letters had the desired effect. The meeting was subdued because of Katherine’s death. Damon, who shared her faith, said a short prayer in Arabic. It was grotesque. Did James kill her? Damon? I gave my “ultimatum” to James, and he accepted it without question. He said he would do the same in my position. Toward the end of the meeting I felt lulled. That’s dangerous. They seem nice people, full of concern and social consciousness. One or more of them are capable of putting a bug under Benny’s bed and, probably, killing a person for being on the wrong train. I’m frightened but also fascinated. Only seven weeks before the quarter’s over, and I can escape to Europe without arousing suspicion. But Benny?

  30 October. Benny and I discussed possible stratagems. He’s even more scared than I am, with good reason. Talked for hours and wound up where we’d started. He raised an interesting, possibly hopeful, point. The bug might easily be left over from the previous tenant Benny knows that she was a small-scale drug dealer. So either the police or her wholesaler could have been eavesdropping on her. Also, Katherine. All I really knew of her was her intensity. Alvarez, in The Savage God, says that every suicide “has its own inner logic and unrepeatable despair,” and for some reason that sounded like Katherine. Maybe she wasn’t the woman on the escalator. It’s a big city, full of unrelated twins.