Worlds

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?

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.

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 slow 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.

Well, that reinforces a cliché about groundhogs, that they sit around all day zipped, staring at the cube. But then who are all those people on the street? How do they manage to maintain a complex, technology-intensive society? Somebody must have some sense!

I think she’s a bit myopic. No government works perfectly; any system attracts its share of crooks. In America and New New, at least they have realtime polling. Look at England, look at the Supreme Socialist Union. By the time the will of the people has percolated to the top, the situation may have changed radically.

But I like her. She has real fire, and asks hard questions. So many of my classmates are just hard-working drudges, in the business of getting their degrees.

She wanted to take me down to a little wine-house on Eastriver, but I have to do the class on Crane Monday (talk about drudges) and had better read some criticism or Schaumann will nail me up to dry. I told her we’d do it some time next week; she said there are always a lot of interesting people there, political types.

It occurs to me that I’m too consciously “observing” people, like an entomologist (Keyes, Joanna; 150 cm. X 40 kg., swarthy, short black hair, burning black eyes, aquiline nose, boyish figure, styleless clothes, radical, cynic, witty, intelligent—and possibly interested in me for reasons other than politics. Which side should I wear the earring on?). Do the people notice?

16 Sept. Spent all day in the library, after the entertainment lab, which was more folk music. The banjo is a queer instrument; I’d only heard it Dixieland-style, strummed. The man who played for us picked the strings individually, and very fast, though repetitive. He seemed to be day-dreaming, not paying much attention to his fingers. The other soloist played the fiddle, and he was exactly the opposite. He stared down at the instrument with a fixed expression of amazement—am I doing that? He was a big fat man, with a white beard, and his fingers were so huge you would think he couldn’t play anything smaller than a bass. He made sweet music with it, though.

Most of the management seminar was in the library’s journal room, since our assignment was to analyze a couple of dozen papers on personnel selection, and they didn’t come in until Saturday noon. The ones who could afford copyright just made copies and took them home. Hawkings and I were there all afternoon, scribbling away. So he has a saving grace: at least he’s not rich.

17 Sept. Waded through Crane and Crane criticism all day. He’s a good writer but I have to keep looking up archaic expressions, especially the dialect: “Dere was a mug come in d’ place d’ odder day wid an idear he was goin’ t’ own d’ place. Hully gee!” (It took me a long stare to figure out that last one was a euphemism for “Holy God!”)

18 Sept. I was a little nervous, but the Crane class went pretty well. Schaumann assigns each author to a student, in rotation (so I won’t have to do it again for a month). The student gives a half-hour talk about the work and the author; then Schaumann takes over. You aren’t graded on the talk. Schaumann says he teaches that way because he’s lazy, but the real reason is to give himself insurance, providing both a dialectic base for his questions and one sur victim.

After religion I went down to Eastriver to meet Keyes. Eastriver is a small city in itself, built over the East River about twenty years ago by a group of real estate developers. The developers went bankrupt and the courts still haven’t sorted out the mess. So the place has a temporary, unfinished quality to it. No big buildings; whole blocks of empty space. Some places the foamsteel construction of the bridge itself is only covered by safety gratings. You can watch the river traffic toiling by under your feet.

I met Keyes at a place called the Grapeseed Revenge. It sits in one corner of a building that evidently will someday be a warehouse, taking up maybe one-twentieth of the shell’s volume. The acoustics are incredible.

No revolutionary cabal would dare meet in a place like this; it looks too much the part. The only light comes from a candle on each table. The chairs and tables are random mismatched castoffs. Huddled groups talk in low tones. I expected to see pictures of Kowalski and Lenin on the walls.

Keyes found me while I was still groping blindly through the darkness, before my eyes adjusted to the candlelight. She led me to a table (an old door on legs, actually) and introduced me to three friends.

One of them did look like a revolutionary. His name was Will, no last name or line name offered. His face looked small, framed by an unruly cloud of hair and beard; he was slight, bony, quick-moving. He was wearing laborer’s overalls (but when I asked what he did he said “sit and think”). The other two were students, Lillian Sterne and Mohammed Twelve. They treated one another with casual affection, like long-time lovers. Lillian is small, blond, and pale as a Yorker; Mohammed is big and black. He was surprised, and pleased, that I knew how important the name Twelve was in African history. His great-grand-father’s brother. That was a bloody time.

I went through the same sort of quizzing that Keyes had done, mostly from Will. He was didactic and hostile, but intelligent. When he talked, all the others listened carefully. He was obviously used to leading.

I’m afraid I was guilty of coloring my responses—not really lying, but feeding him what he wanted to hear, pushing him. For instance:

Will: Suppose one or both of the Coordinators were dishonest—

Me: They’re politicians.

Will: Right. What stops them from making vast personal fortunes from import and export?

Me: Ten billion dollars a week goes through their hands.

Will: And they have the final say as to suppliers and customers, on Earth.

Me: They oversee the Import-Export Board.

Will: I wonder how much someone would pay for, say, the franchise on oxygen.

Me: Hydrogen; we make our own oxygen. They’d pay plenty, I’m sure.

And so forth. What I didn’t say was, for instance, no actual money changes hands for hydrogen; it’s a straight barter with U.S. Steel. There’s no doubt a Coordinator could skim off millions—but what could you do with it? Count it? You’d have to go to Earth or Devon’s World to spend it, and people would probably find out, since ex-Coordinators automatically join the Privy Council. They’d miss your vote.

(The idea of personal wealth certainly distorts Earth politics—what an understatement—but I don’t suppose our system would work with billions of people.)

It was interesting, though. You don’t meet many real political dissidents in the Worlds; too easy to go someplace else if you don’t like it at home (it strikes me suddenly that there is more political variety in the Worlds than the Earth has had for a century). The Grapeseed Revenge is the quietest bar I’ve found in New York, by far, and the cheapest Large glass of drinkable wine for three dollars. I’ll take Benny next time.

19 Sept. The new politics course is interesting. The stodgy old Lobbies evolved from a bunch of real pirates—I knew that from University, but it’s fun to go into the actual details of blackmail and bribery. American history is so rich with nasty treasures!

Watched Jules Hammond at the Worlds Club meeting again. Checked my pulse; still not thrilled. Meeting shifted to Wednesday next week, for the elections.

Claire Oswald told me I should be careful about the company I keep. She’s on Keyes’s floor, and Keyes is not the most adored person there. Dolores added that the Grapeseed might be watched, and I am after all an alien.

Maybe I should take Hawkings there instead of Benny. See if he says hello to anyone.

20 Sept. Small world, as they say on this big world. Benny goes to the Grapeseed all the time. Has met Will, doesn’t like him. Was going to ask me to go there, once he was sure I’d be “comfortable.”

I kidded him about being a poet and political at the same time; he said he was an unacknowledged legislator of his times. That must be a quote I’m supposed to know.

We had dinner at the dormitory machines and went on down to the Grapeseed. It’s pretty crowded at night. Will wasn’t there, for which I was doubly glad, but Lillian and Mohammed were; we sat and talked for a couple of hours.

They’re a beautiful couple, not only because they look so arresting together. They’ve only known each other seven months but fit like gears meshing.

They talked about emigrating to Tsiolkovski. I tried to talk them out of it. It’s such a joyless, hard place. They keep expanding without ever consolidating, trying to make life comfortable. Maybe I just lack pioneer spirit.

It’s unlikely they’d be acceptable, anyhow. I don’t think they’ll pay your way up unless both of you have a skill they need. Mohammed is in philosophy, ethics. Lillian’s a double E, electrical engineering, but she’s also Jewish. Not a believer, she says, but it would still be a mark against her. They don’t like conflicting loyalties.

I did tell them about the Mutual Immigration Pact. If they could get up to New New, or any other World, and become bona fide citizens, then Tsiolkovski would have to take them. Not with open arms, though. Every World needs somebody to shovel shit, and that’s exactly what they’d do for the rest of their lives.

I didn’t convince them, but maybe I planted a seed. I’d love to see them in the Worlds, but not Tsiolkovski. Not smothered under the blanket of a grey old revolution.

I got the feeling that there’s something going on that I don’t know about. Maybe Dolores’s warning made me a bit paranoid. But there was something in the way that Lillian and Mohammed and Benny looked at each other. Maybe it’s because Benny was so serious. Just a feeling.

One of Poe’s stories, “The Purloined Letter,” claims that the best place to hide something is to leave it in plain sight Maybe the Grapeseed Revenge is full of revolutionaries.

It was after two when we left, so Benny and his conspicuous knife accompanied me home. We had a cup of tea in my room; talked about the James and Fitzgerald readings. He was his old self, witty and animated. I was sort of expecting a sexual overture—inviting one, maybe—but nothing happened. Maybe Benny’s homosexual, or celibate. Maybe I’m not the most ravishing creature in the World, I mean world. (Have to go reread Daniel’s last letter, for confidence.)

21 Sept. Didn’t mention that before I met Benny yesterday I talked to Hawkings and Lou, at the seminar, and they suggested that I try out some sport that doesn’t involve trajectories—if I learn how to play handball or volleyball here, I’ll just have to start all over again when I get home.

Hawkings suggested fencing. (He was appalled to find out that I didn’t know how to handle any kind of weapon; I’m afraid I laughed out loud.) There’s a beginners’ group that meets every Thursday morning, so I went down there today.

They do two kinds, sport fencing and self-defense. I’m sure Hawkings had the latter in mind, but it looks too rough to be fun. I bruise too easily.

It’s awkward at first. The postures and steps seem artificial, clumsy. But it is exciting—I’ve never played a competitive sport more physical than chess—and the more advanced beginners look as graceful as dancers. It’s a real workout, too, which is what I’m interested in. Hard on the ankles, though.

We moved into the twentieth century in entertainment seminar today, still doing music. Listened to a couple of hours of jazz, rock, blues, and so forth. Never mentioned Dixieland.

26 Sept. Haven’t written for several days because I’ve been in the hospital. Hard to write now.

Thursday night a man attacked me in front of the dorm, as I was coming home from dinner. Right in front of the stairs.

He came up behind me and squeezed a hand over my mouth, and put a knife to my throat. He told me to drop my bag, and he kicked it away.

He cut the waistband of my slacks and pulled them down, then pulled down my underclothes, and I bit him, hard. When he pulled his hand away I screamed. I didn’t feel him stab me in the buttock. He wrestled me to the ground and I kept screaming. He banged my head against the sidewalk, twice, forehead and face, then grabbed a handful of hair and jerked up. I was still screaming when he tried to cut my throat; both dormitory doors burst open and six or seven people came charging down the stairs. They tore the man off me and I just lay there slowly fading, while they scuffled with him. A woman turned me over and put my head in her lap, and I vaguely heard a siren over the ringing in my ears.

The next couple of days are a blur of anesthetics and tranquilizers. Inventory: broken nose, slight concussion, three broken teeth, dislocated shoulder, superficial (!) knife wound below the chin, deep puncture wound in the left buttock, bruises and scrapes all over.

He really wanted to kill me. I think he wanted to kill me first, and then rape what was left. I can’t imagine such an animal. Whenever I think of him my heart wants to explode with rage. And fear. They say he’s in “grave” condition, from the beating he got from my rescuers. I hope he dies. I really hope he dies. I want to go home.

27 Sept. Feeling better. They closed all the wounds and put in new teeth the first day, but have been holding me for observation and therapy. I guess the therapy’s working; I haven’t cried all day. For a while it was hours at a time. Maybe I’ve lost the knack.

I don’t know much about the therapy because most of it’s under hypnosis. A doctor talks to me every morning, checking me. He admitted this morning that there’s a drug involved in the interview (one of my wake-up shots). I knew there was; it makes me babble.

Benny came by a couple of days ago with my books. I sent him away too abruptly. I didn’t want him there when I started crying, and I didn’t especially want the company of any male. That’s over now.

Lots of visitors today. Keyes came over and we commiserated about the shortcomings of the male race. We changed the subject when Benny showed up (they know each other, not surprisingly), and we played cards for a while, before they had to go to class. Lou and Hawkings showed up together, on their way to the seminar (Lou left me a tape of Monday’s session, and said he’d make another one tonight). Hawkings had checked with a friend in the New York Police Department, who said the man was probably responsible for five rape-murders over the past two years. They wouldn’t know for sure unless he regained consciousness, to be questioned.

Dr. Schaumann came in after dinner (Benny had told him why I wasn’t in class) and probably did me more good than the therapist ever would. He was all grandfatherly and comforting, but at the same time he was armed with ruthlessly pragmatic philosophy. You were lucky enough to survive, but now you have to realize that it’s within the man’s power, living or not, to keep hurting you for the rest of your life, unless you vigorously deny him access. It’s like being struck by lightning (something I’d never thought to worry about); you’re not responsible for it happening, but you are responsible if afterward you’re afraid to go outdoors. No amount of rationalization or sympathy from others can alter the fact of your responsibility. He even kissed me. His mustache smells of pipe tobacco.

They let me stay up to watch the elections. Markus was reelected as Policy Coordinator and announced that he planned to step down after five years. Good thing; fifteen years is plenty. Wouldn’t do to have his coordinator-elect the of old age, in office.

The new Engineering Coordinator-elect is a woman named Berrigan, a park service engineer. I vaguely remember her name. Didn’t study the candidates this time, since I knew I’d be on Earth. My new floor rep to the Privy Council is Theodore Campbell, whom I had for a disastrous course in algebra some ten years ago.

Yesterday I wrote that I wanted to go home. I guess Schaumann talked me out of it, obliquely. I won’t let this planet beat me.

28 Sept. Back at the dormitory. Everyone is so solicitous, I feel like getting a disguise.

The rapist is dead. By judicial order. The police traced down his address and searched his flat. They found five vials containing five scraps of dried flesh which matched the parts excised from the victims of “Jack the Raper,” as he was called by one subliterate journal. The DNA matched the victims’. Since he had once been convicted of a sex crime, and was under indictment for attacking me, the police were able to get a court order reducing his MedicAid status to Class C. So they pulled the plug on his life support system, saving the State electricity, twice. I feel confused about it. Could he have been cured? If he were, would I want him walking free? If they had given me the plug, would I have pulled it? I suppose I would.

Maybe it’s the State disposing of him as casually as swatting a fly. Maybe it’s just that he never knew he was being punished for hurting me.

There were long and interesting letters from Daniel and John waiting for me. The discovery of CC material on the Moon might be one of the pivotal events in Worlds history. Mudball news never mentioned it.