Worlds

  I have to admit I was a little repelled by the obvious accumulation of wealth and power in the House of Lords. It seemed to me to epitomize the philosophical gulf between Earth governments and the administration of New New. No one needs that kind of wealth. No one who loves power should be allowed to administer to the will of the people.

  But at least it’s displayed openly here. The people who rule the United States do it behind the closed doors of boardrooms.

  Jeff is a changed man. Well, not changed, really; it’s just that he wasn’t truly himself all last quarter. He was grinding hard at school and working overtime every week, to accumulate leave. Also, he had been in love with a woman, proposed marriage and was rejected, about a week before I first met him. When he kissed me Christmas Eve it was the first physical contact he’d had with a woman since August.

  We had a long and earnest talk in a Westminster pub. I told him all about Daniel, and how I felt about sex and affection. It looks safe. Right now he also needs a friend rather than a lover.

  We went back to the hotel and sealed our bargain. I asked him about the circumcision, and he said it was a line tradition. A man’s first son is circumcised; only first sons are eligible for membership in the elders’ council—if they stay in the line long enough to be an elder. I told him I wouldn’t stay in any line that chopped off a piece of my body when I was too young to have a say in the matter. He shrugged that off, and pointed out (speaking of barbarism) that at least he had never undergone voluntary mutilation, such as having his ears pierced.

  I didn’t pursue the argument, since I’ve never had a foreskin that didn’t belong to someone else, and also didn’t mention what I thought about a line that only allowed men to be leaders, though I suppose he knows me well enough to know what I’d say about that.

  There is the obvious problem, that I’m not going to write down. I’ll be careful.

  (27 December-30 December: Stratford-on-Avon, Scotland, Wales, York and the Yorkshire Moors, Killarney, Limerick)

  30 December…. that it’s easy to understand why John was so impressed by the Irish countryside. Even in mid-winter it’s beautiful; I’d love to see it in the spring.

  We haven’t seen much of Dublin except for the zoo, which is unforgettable. The regular part of it is impressive, more variety than the Bronx one, with the animals in environments that resemble their native habitats. But it’s the O’Connor Laboratory exhibit that draws people from all over the world.

  Research in genetic manipulation is legal in Ireland (though not on humans), and the O’Connor people have set up a display in the zoo to help finance their work. The ticket was fifty pounds, with student discount.

  The ant is the thing that stays with me the most. It was the size of a dog, nearly a meter long. Swimming around mysteriously in a tank of pale blue fluid (it had to float, they explained, because its legs would not support its weight in gravity). There was a goat with two heads, with her two-headed kid. A hairless chimpanzee that looked like a grotesquely malformed old man. Dwarf bats like ugly little moths. There was a shrew that seemed normal but had been alive for fifteen years, ten times its normal life span…..

  31 December. If London is the place to spend Christmas, there’s no place like Dublin for New Year’s Eve. Oops, I should have labeled that January 1st It’s 2:30 a.m., and I am trying to control my handwriting here, after ten or twelve pints of good Guinness and one glass of champagne, writing in a brightly lit hotel room with Mr. Jeffrey Hawkings slung sideways over the only bed, snoring like a dragon.

  John never told me about writing your initials. You can take your finger and write your initials on the top of the foam on a glass of Guinness, and the letters just stay there all the while. While you drink it down. Real Guinness, that is to say, that you can only get here. Good thing I don’t live here, I’d weigh 100 kg. by now. Jeff was a little silly about all the stout I consumed. In America, heroic beer consumption is a male preserve. Ha! Who’s awake, Jeffrey? Score one for the slits.

  Must watch the language. These Irish are wonderful friendly people but they expect ladies, lie-dees, to be sort of polite and nice. Maybe I shouldn’t have sung the one about the jolly tinker. Most of them knew it, though.

  Girl, you are drunk. Will take a hangover pill and leave the bottle in easy reach. Push Jeff on the floor. No, just lie crossways over him. I could sleep on a fence.

  2 January…. after the basic tour, Jeff went off to visit the headquarters of Interpol, the European equivalent of the FBI (combined with the CIB, I guess). Violet speaks some French, so I stuck with her.

  Going from Dublin to Paris is almost as big a jolt as going from the Worlds to the Earth. Not even considering the language difference. Ireland is much like New New, as John had said, in its pace of life, the automatically expected friendliness and sharing. France, or at least Paris, seems even more tense and fast-moving than New York City. (I understand this quality is a modern one, of which old folks disapprove.)

  One thing was like Dublin, though. Violet has a hypertrophied sense of the macabre: just as she had to drag us to St. Michan’s there, here we had to go to the Catacombs. It was good theatre; there’s no lighting in the underground tombs, and they give you a candle with your ticket. The bones of six million people, ugh. Death is such an insult…

  French cooking is delicious but the restaurants are so expensive. As advised, well be snacking on bread, cheese, and wine in our rooms in the morning and evening, with just one meal out (if it were warmer we could take our bread, etc., out to one of the parks, which would be a homey touch-the parks are beautiful anyhow, in the snow).

  The wine here isn’t as good as American, not at the prices we can afford, but the bread and cheese are mavelous. I guess a girl who grew up on good goat cheese couldn’t be expected to like the bland rubbery insult that passes for cheese in America. Here even the cow cheeses are good, and there are hundreds of different kinds. …

  Jeff is totally romanced by the city, and I have to admit I wouldn’t mind staying longer myself. A month or two would be nice.

  (I wish he wouldn’t let the romance go directly to his groin. He dragged me away from a perfectly good conversation tonight. Well, I could have said no. I like the attention. I like not having to be a therapist. It makes me feel like a girl again, with Charlie, all free and atavistic.

  Is he still making up for lost time, I wonder? I swear he was born with an extra bone in his body, retractable.)

  Picked up mail at AmEx. Several letters from John and Daniel and an incomprehensible poem from Benny. Not particularly good. No letter with it.

  (3-4 January: Paris, Lyon, Nice)

  5 January…. I can’t stop staring at the mountains. They loom on all sides, bigger than Paphos. Paphos would get lost in the snowdrifts between them.

  The city itself is fascinating, though. The original Grenoble was completely destroyed in a “meltdown,” back in the fission days. They didn’t start rebuilding until twelve years ago, so the city is thoroughly modern, and preplanned down to the last centimeter. John would love it, all foam-steel and composites, graceful the way most Worlds architecture is. I think it’s the first time since we came to Europe that I’ve been out of sight of some big grey cathedral.

  Sad monument to the east, though. A perfectly round lake of black glass, still slightly radioactive. Over a hundred thousand dead.

  Jeff took Violet skiing this afternoon. I might have gone along to give it a try, but they said there was no real provision for beginners here, and I don’t want to finish seeing the world bound up in a body cast. The Klonexine wouldn’t make it any safer, either.

  So I wandered around town until the cold got to me, then set up camp in this coffeehouse to write letters. Daniel, John, Benny, and even a note to Mother.

  I didn’t mention Jeff to either John or Daniel. It was easy to talk to Daniel about Benny, since I knew he wouldn’t feel threatened. Jeff might arouse some primal groundhog instinct in him. As if I could fall in love with a mudb
all cop.

  6 January. Last day in France, good to be back in Paris. It was a slightly cold day but no wind and lots of sun; too nice to stay indoors. Violet and Manny spent all day in the Louvre, but Jeff and I walked until dark, from Montmartre to the heliport and back down the Seine to the pension. Then rubbed each other’s feet for a while. His are big and ugly and mine are getting there.

  (Seriously, all of this walking is changing my shape. My slacks are getting looser around the middle and tighter around the thighs. Will have to take care that it doesn’t turn to fat when I get back to 0.8 gee. Maybe give up handball for track.) (Back to 50 kg. tonight)

  Jeff and I split the cost of a European-language translator. It’s a four-language box that has a large vocabulary but no grammar other than the sequence of words spoken, which can lead to accidental humor on both sides. But they’re in common enough use that nobody has trouble understanding them. We got it for less than half price, from an English tourist at the heliport; presumably, we’ll pass it on when we leave Europe.

  We saw so much today. Better go find the map before I try to write it all down. …

  33

  Coda (code)

  Once On It

  At rest from thinking every day of you

  (The rearmost poet of this weary age),

  Regretting words I never can undo:

  Aye! Never can undo this only page.

  I don’t miss you more than I’d miss breath

  (Since breath’s a ware that doesn’t keep so well),

  I’d rather conjure love to you than death:

  Skin, though live, is covered with dead cells.

  Since skin keeps coming back to stalk my mind

  (I’ll think of other organs by and by),

  Please forgive the way this poem’s designed:

  The poet’s got a skinny word supply.

  Keep this letter as you travel on

  (Crafting second letter after dawn),

  —Benny

  34

  Try calling on the World for peace of mind

  Nothing in Madrid prepared us for Nerja. Madrid was cold and just had normal city bustle; not many tourists this time of year. Nerja was sunwarmed and paved with tourists. (And the tour took us here because it was far less crowded than Málaga or Torremolinos.)

  Not too many Spaniards, it seemed. Most of the chatter sounded Scandinavian when it wasn’t English. Our language machine made interesting noises when we tried to eavesdrop.

  I was impatient to get into the ocean, since it had been too cold for swimming at Nice. But first I had to rent a “bathing suit,” contradiction in terms. A couple of bright scraps of cloth that barely hide nipples and genitals. I never felt so naked bathing at home. But it is erotic, in an adolescent, peekaboo way.

  The water was rather cold but it was all right once you got numb. Jeff gamely stayed out with me for a few minutes, but when his teeth started audibly clattering I sent him back to the beach.

  Salt water tastes interesting and its density makes you feel buoyant. But it’s hard to swim well when you’re trussed up like something out of a Devonite fantasy. I tired pretty rapidly and joined Jeff on the beach. He toweled me dry and we lay down on the sand, wedged between two parties of Germans. You could have walked from one horizon to the other without stepping off human flesh.

  “You look good in that,” he said. “Especially wet.”

  I’d noticed the difference. “Feel like an ad for a Broadway parlor. I’ll be scraping off eyetracks all night.”

  “Wish I could help.” The hostel we were staying at was divided into male and female dormitories.

  The wind shifted and we got a whiff of the Mediterranean, beyond the pollution boundary. That was some electromagnetic barrier a kilometer or so out. Our translator renders the Spanish term as “wall of shit,” which is sort of an awesome image. I buried my nose in the towel.

  We fell asleep and got toasted pretty well. Jeff woke me and we took a quick splash. The damned bathing suit had sand in it; there was no way I could get it all out without taking it off, which I was tempted to do in spite of all the signs saying you would be arrested.

  It was a longish walk back to where we’d rented the suits. By the time we got there, between the sun, salt, and sand, I was burned everywhere my skin had been exposed and rubbed raw everywhere else. People pay good money for this.

  Madrid AmEx had been closed Sunday, the mail part, but the tour director had had our mail forwarded today. I had letters from John and Benny.

  John’s letter was disturbing. Guarded language. He is not sure the Lobbies are acting in their own best interests. He is not sure of what the true sentiments of the American people are. (If they have any opinion one way or another. The Worlds can buy cube time to explain their problems, but the Lobbies can schedule dozens of sex and thrill shows in competition.) The situation is reasonably stable. He thinks. Our only useful threat is shutting down the power, and we’ve made the threat, and they’ve weighed it, and haven’t yet closed the Cape. Negotiations, if you can give that word to it, continue. But it’s hard to separate the information from the noise.

  Benny sent another poem:

  Deuce On It

  Crafting second letter after dawn

  (Recall the last, I hope; it means a lot),

  And hope you’ll keep this letter when I’m gone:

  I’d rather not be buried in a plot.

  Beware the ides of any month of Spring

  (Try calling on the World for peace of mind),

  Lay low. There’s no use in bartering:

  All men who hold the goods are too unkind.

  Please be careful what you think and say

  (Stay within the bounds of common sense),

  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May:

  Of May, the darling buds have accidents.

  I be afraid. Don’t think that I’m untrue

  (Since no more letters fly from me to you),

  —Benny

  It was posted in Denver. So he’d started running.

  This poem was more straightforward, if a little scary. But the words didn’t sound like Benny in either of them. Which could have been the form, of course. Every poem of his I’d found was traditionally minimalist; his using sonnets made me think there must be a code.

  I hadn’t found it in the first one. I’d finally given up, deciding he’d used too subtle a code. I’m no poet, after all; I haven’t even studied that much poetry.

  “Letter from Benny?” Jeff had come up behind me.

  I jumped, and held the sheet against my chest. “He wouldn’t want anyone else to see it Personal.”

  He shook his head. “All I saw was that it’s a poem. Wish I could do that.” He sat down across from me. “Dinner?”

  “If it’s late enough. I want to lie down for a while.” We agreed to meet here in the common room at eight.

  I found the code in a few minutes this time. The repeated line, “Crafting second letter after dawn,” was the key. Reading the second letter of each word didn’t work, beyond “reef.” But reading down, taking the second letter of each line, gave RENDER ALL TO FBI. I went upstairs and got the first poem, which translated to THEY DID KILL HER.

  So we had been right. But what did he mean by “render all”? Had he gone to the FBI, or was he asking me to do it?

  And what about the content of the poems? The first one didn’t make much sense, beyond the coded message, but the second had some real information. “I’m gone: I’d rather not be buried in a plot” was clear, but the rest wasn’t, other than a general sense of danger, foreboding. I suppose “I be afraid” meant “FBI raid.” God knows what else was hidden in metaphor and rebus, though I should probably be careful on the ides of May. The fifteenth?

  I took my pill early, and tried to get some sleep. Dreams kept waking me up, and the sunburn made it hard to find a comfortable position. I finally went down to the common room with a book.

  Jeff was on time. We worked o
ur way toward the beach in approved Spanish barhopping style. They have tapa bars, where small snacks are served with beer and wine. You have a drink and a snack and then move on to another bar. Some of the snacks were seafood; I tried not to think of what they’d been swimming in.

  Most of the bars were crowded and noisy, standing-room-only places. It wasn’t until we got to a relatively quiet one that he noticed I hadn’t been very talkative.

  “Is something bothering you?”

  “Can’t figure out which parts of this thing are edible.” I’d gotten something that might have been a pickled fig.

  “Is it Benny?”

  I guess that was when I made the decision. I nodded.

  “You know he doesn’t have anything to worry about,” Jeff said. “I’m quite—”

  “That’s not what I mean. Benny’s the same kind of friend as you are.” I bit through the rind. It was fibrous and sour. How to say it? “Benny’s in serious trouble. His life’s in danger.”

  He set the wineglass down without drinking. “Is he sick?”

  “No… or if he is, it’s the least of his worries.” I drank the rest of my wine all at once and signaled the bartender. He looked at his feet; men order here. “Why don’t you drink that up and get us another?”

  He did. “Who’s he in trouble with?”

  “We don’t know a name.” The bartender brought over a tray of food. Jeff, brave soul, took a shrimp; I stuck to the vegetable kingdom and selected a wedge of avocado. “A few months ago, Benny and I joined a… well, a political action group. Slightly underground, but as far as we could tell not mixed up in anything really illegal.”