Worlds

25. Diary of a Spy

(The following entries written in tiny script on cigarette papers, hidden between two pieces of cardboard that 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.

6 November. I really don’t know. Benny and I are trying to convince each other that it’s just paranoia. The meetings are innocent enough on the surface. Nothing’s said that would raise an eyebrow at the Grapeseed. But there’s so much goatshit mystery around it. Today a stranger sat down across from me at lunch and struck up a conversation. When the other person left he said he had a request from James: would I be willing to give a speech to a small group, comparing the state of civil liberties in the Worlds with those here. I told him what I’d told James. Nothing public. He said it would be only about forty people, and very private. I agreed to do it. In fact, I’m looking forward to it. It won’t be what he expects.

12 November. It’s a good thing I had my notes together. Less than a day’s warning for the speech (Damon gave me the message, at Grapeseed). The speech was less interesting than the reactions. The old-fashioned communists didn’t like what I had to say about Tsiolkovski. The ones who leaned toward conventional People’s Capitalism were alarmed by the distribution-of-wealth system in Devon’s World, as, I suppose, were any fellow atheists. (Well, it doesn’t really alarm me, but I don’t consider myself anti-clerical. A job is a job.) ¶Will was there, but he didn’t say anything. I wonder about him and James. Who is whose boss, or are they equals? As far as I could tell, they didn’t even say hello. Benny wasn’t there (I talked the speech over with him, but he wasn’t invited) and neither was anybody else I knew but James, Will, and Damon. From the atmosphere of the crowd (it was more like sixty people than forty) I got the impression I was talking to a group of leaders. Love to know more about the structure of the group, and the actual size of it. But when I tried to bring it up last meeting, a real chill dropped.

13 November. A woman in my religion class dropped a note in my lap on the way to her seat. “Take care not to recognize me.” Well, I didn’t. She must have been at the talk last night, but I was nervous in front of a room full of strangers, and rarely looked past the first two rows.

17 November. Will came to my room tonight, and we talked for a couple of hours. He was more relaxed than I have ever seen him. ¶The main topic under discussion was the need for secrecy and his concern that I shouldn’t misinterpret the group’s motivation for it. There are conservative elements in almost every Lobby, even the labor Lobbies, that would love to have a libertarian “whipping boy.” (Which is odd in the perspective of my own reading of American history, which strongly associates libertarianism with conservatism. Terms change as attitudes evolve, I suppose. Jefferson was a libertarian but owned human slaves.) Most disturbing was his assertion that there is some group, small and highly secret, that is practicing “waster politics”—assassinations and pinpoint sabotage—which is being covered up by the government. He couldn’t reveal his source and offered no proof, other than the fact that a lot of politicians have died very young recently. He also pointed out that no competent electrical engineer would accept the authorities’ explanation for last week’s blackout in Boston (that goes along with what I heard at Worlds Club Tuesday). These assassinations have all taken place in Washington, where the government virtually owns all news media. Will believes the group must indeed be part of the government, perhaps a powerful Lobby, perhaps even a clandestine arm of the FBI or CBI. If his aim was to reassure me, he accomplished the opposite. Two nameless groups to be afraid of now, instead of one.