Worlds (11 page)

“And look what it accomplished,” Katherine said. “You men. How can you even think of… doing that again?”

The fourth man, Damon, had been sitting silently, alert He was tall and black. “Katherine. We all would prefer reform to revolution. But we can’t proscribe violence as a possible final resort. It is the State’s last resort against us.”

“Which they will only use if we provoke it,” she said.

“Please,” James said, “this is all familiar ground. Shall we get on with the week’s business?”

Katherine reported on a rally and petition drive, which she had organized but didn’t take part in physically. Ray had been in Washington for the past couple of days, where he had cultivated the friendship of the man who took care of the Senate’s steam room. He’d learned nothing beyond the level of idle gossip, but the man obviously could be an important contact some day. Damon had just come back from two weeks in Ketchikan, where he had tried to make contact with a group of non-Separatists, without any success.

Finally, James asked whether Benny and I might be willing to do some work for the organization.

“What happens if we say no?” Benny asked.

“Nothing drastic. We would ask that you not tell anyone about us, and of course we would watch you for a while. Or you may just want some time to think about it; that’s all right, too.”

“Tell me what it is you want.”

“Well, we want to take advantage of your writing skill.” He opened a briefcase and handed Benny a thick envelope. “This is stationery with the letterhead of the ‘Committee of Concerned Citizens,’ which has no members other than yourself. Be careful to handle it in such a way as not to add fingerprints to it. The fingerprints on it belong to the Swedish printer who made up the stationery, and the paper itself would be difficult to trace: it was made by an Italian firm that’s been out of business for twenty years.”

“Sounds like you want a ransom note.”

He smiled. “Not quite…. Write on a Praktika or Xerox machine; they print with stabilized burners that don’t vary from machine to machine.”

“There’s one in the Drama library.”

“Good. We need seven letters, to senators whose votes are crucial to S2876, a bill having to do with public disclosure of corporate income taxes. There’s a shit-sheet on each senator, with at least one fact that would be embarrassing if it were given to the media.”

“Blackmail?”

“Not if you word the letters correctly. Willing to try?”

Benny shrugged. “Okay.”

“Good. Send me copies at the address on the envelope.

You’ll find the senators’ home addresses inside; it would be well if you mailed from Grand Central or the main P.O.” He turned to me. “Marianne, how’s your statistics?”

“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.”

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.)

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 guess, 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.

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.”