Worlds (30 page)

2

O’Hara clumped into the room she shared with Daniel Anderson and sat down hard on the bed. For a minute she just stared at the floor, sagging with fatigue, maybe depression. Then she arranged both pillows and turned on the wall cube, planning to punch up the novel she was reading. But the cube was showing a pleasant modern dance performance that she’d never seen, so she eased back onto the pillows and let herself be entertained.

In a few minutes Anderson came in. “Home early?” she said.

“Going back later.” He set his bag down on the dresser and stretched. “We started some tests, color chromatography, and can’t do anything until they’re ready. Couple of hours. Eat yet?”

“Not hungry.” She turned off the dance program.

“You ought to eat something.”

“I guess.” She slid down to a horizontal position and put her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling.

“Bad day out there?”

“The usual.” She laughed suddenly. “You know what I’ve got?”

“Is it catching?”

“Penis envy. I’ve got a delayed case of penis envy.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You never studied psychology.”

Daniel shrugged. “The psychology of oil shale is pretty well established. It just sits there. You can say anything about it and it doesn’t mind.”

“Freud thought little girls had penis envy. They saw little boys pee in any direction they wanted, and they knew they’d never be able to do that, and felt uncompleted.”

“Are you serious?”

“Part way, I really am. Not in the Freudian way.” She ran her fingers through her short red hair. “Did you ever try to do anything difficult while wearing a wet diaper?”

He sat on the bed and put his hand, neutrally, on her hip. “I guess learning to walk is pretty challenging. Don’t remember that far back.”

“I tried the catheter-style suit but just couldn’t work in it. It was like…it was awful.”

Daniel nodded. “Most women can’t use them.” He was from Earth but had spent a lot of time in spacesuits.

“So I get a diaper. A wet diaper, if we’re out long enough.”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“Who’s embarrassed? It’s just distracting, uncomfortable. I’m getting a rash. I want a penis and a hose, just during working hours.”

Daniel laughed. “Those hoses aren’t all they might be.

You get cold enough, or startled, and you’ll retract out of it, but it feels like you still have it on. Nasty surprise when you start filling your boot.”

“Really?” She looked thoughtful. “What about erections?”

“Anybody who can get an erection in a spacesuit is in the wrong line of work.” They laughed together and he cautiously moved his hand; she stopped him.

“Not quite yet,” she said quietly.

“It’s all right.” They had been lovers when she went to Earth, and had planned to marry when she came back.

He stood up quickly and went to the dresser—two steps; the bed took up most of the cubicle—and pulled a comb through his hair.

“Do you want me to sleep someplace else until it gets better?” she asked.

“Of course not. I haven’t had such interesting dreams in twenty years.”

“Seriously. I feel like…such a—”

His reflection stared at her. “I can live with your grief easier than you can. And I want to be the one around when you do recover.”

“I didn’t mean I’d move in with somebody else. I could get a hot berth in the labor dormitory.”

“Sure you could. And when they found out I was living here alone, they’d assign me a dormitory space too. Crowded as things are, it might take years to get a room again.”

O’Hara turned to face the wall. “Nice to feel useful.”

He opened his mouth and closed it, and set the comb down quietly. “Anyhow, I’m meeting John for chop. Want to come along?”

“Oh.” She sat up and rubbed her face vigorously with both hands. “Might as well. See what they did to the rice this time.” She went to Daniel and hugged him, or leaned on him, from behind. “I’m sorry.”

He turned around inside her arms, gave her a solid
kiss, and eased away. “Let’s get on up there. Running a little late.”

New New, like all of the Worlds, derived its gravity artificially, by spinning. Along the axis of spin, there was no gravity; the farther “out” you went, the greater the force. Most people lived and worked close to the one-gee level, where all the parks and shops were.

There were laboratories, small factories, and some living quarters at the low-gee levels, which is what brought John Ogelby to New New. Born a hunchback with a debilitating curvature of the spine, he had lived most of his life alternating between pain pills and agony. He developed expertise in a particular corner of strength-of-materials engineering, so that he could emigrate to the Worlds and find work in a low-gravity lab, where his back would stop hurting.

He was a close friend of O’Hara’s—she had met Dan Anderson through him—and she and Dan often went up to the quarter-gee area where he lived and worked, to visit the Light Head tavern (now being used for emergency housing), or to take advantage of the short cafeteria lines there. Not many people ate in low gravity often enough to be comfortable with it. A cup of hot coffee can do amazing and painful things.

The quarter-gee cafeteria was the only room in New New that had wooden paneling on the walls. Some philanthropist had shipped it up from Earth after the low-gee hospital saved his life. A few cases of Scotch would have been more appreciated: to people who grew up surrounded by steel, the Philippine mahogany felt sinister and unnatural. (It didn’t look all that homey to people born on Earth, for that matter, since it was secured to the real walls with conspicuous bolts.)

Ogelby was already seated at a table when they came
in. He greeted them with a listless wave.

Dinner was rice covered with a gray substance, with a few molecules of cheese and a spoonful of well-aged lima beans. And a generous serving of wine; they were rationing protein but had vats of alcohol.

“Have you heard about Earth?” he said when they sat down.

“Nothing good, I suppose,” Daniel said.

“Plague. If it’s not a hoax, or a misunderstanding.” He speared one lima bean and ate it with reluctance. “Eastern Europe first, then Russia. The SSU accused America of having used a widely dispersed biological agent. But America’s got it too, it turns out.”

“What sort of plague?” O’Hara asked.

“Hard to say. The news broadcast was in very colloquial Polish, hysterical, and they’ve only been able to get a word here and there. It affects the brain, it’s fatal, and it appears to be very widespread. They’ve been trying to contact someone in the States, or at least intercept something. Not much in the way of communication going on nowadays.”

Dan checked the time. “Well, let’s eat up. Ten minutes to Jules Hammond.”

They went to the low-gee library, which was so crowded they had to stand in the rear. Dan helped John up onto a table so he could see the cube. The screen was blank except for the time. At precisely 2100, the cube filled with the avuncular and soberly dramatic features of Jules Hammond.

“This is May 5, 2085. All of you must know by now that there is a rumor of plague on Earth.” He paused. “The rumor is true. How widespread the epidemic is, we aren’t yet sure. It may be all over the planet.

“We haven’t yet gotten through to the United States, but we did intercept a broadcast in Nevada.” Nevada was an independent, rather lawless country in the middle of America.

Hammond’s face faded and was replaced by that of a young female. The picture had a bad Z-axis flicker: the image twitched between three dimensions and two, solid and flat.

The sound was clear. Her voice cracked with hysteria. “Everyone who has been to the States, or anywhere outside of Nevada, since the war started must clear out! Don’t stop to pack, just get out. Whatever this shit is, we don’t want it. The Assassins’ Guild is cooperating fully with the Public Health Syndicate…anyone who might have had contact with the plague has until midnight to be missing.

“If you know anybody who’s been outside, report his name to any assassin. They’re gonna be busy, so don’t use this to settle old business, all right? It might be life or death for all of us—it looks like this shit spreads fast and gets everybody.

“Likewise, if you see anybody with symptoms, go get an assassin. Or do the job yourself—but only if you have a flamer. Then report it to Public Health.

“Symptoms are fever and sweats, and talking nonsense. Whatever it is, it hits the brain first. But they can walk around for days before they die. Don’t take any chances.”

Jules Hammond returned in all his comforting solidity. “I have with me Coordinators Markus and Berrigan.”

The camera rolled back to show that Hammond was seated between the two Coordinators. Weislaw Markus, the Policy Coordinator, had glossy black hair but showed his age in his eyes and the deep creases that worried his face. Sandra Berrigan, Engineering Coordinator, was new to her office and young for it, forties, but her face was also a portrait of stress, slack bruises under sad eyes.

Markus shifted in his chair. “It’s virtually certain that this plague is the result of biological warfare, one side or the other. Our main concern is that it not spread to New New, of course. Anyone who was on Earth when the war
started is a potential carrier.”

Dan put his arm around O’Hara, but it was a stiff, self-conscious gesture.

“We certainly don’t have sympathy for the Draconian approach Nevada is taking. But our reaction must be equally absolute, equally swift. Your department, Sandra.”

“It may not be our problem at all,” she said. “Even if some of us were exposed to the microorganism on Earth, it’s not likely the bug would live through the prophylaxis series everyone has to complete before they come through the airlock.” O’Hara agreed; the shots were a combat assault on your body. It seemed as if everyone on the slow-boat spent half their waking hours in the john.

“However. We do have to consider the remote possibility that some of you are carrying the plague. We’re in the process of converting Module 9B into living quarters, to quarantine and examine you. If you were on Earth within the past year—because the agent could have been released long before the nuclear exchange—you must go immediately to Module 9B. Don’t pack. Don’t even pick up your toothbrush. We don’t know at what stage of incubation this disease becomes communicable.”

O’Hara squeezed John’s hand and kissed Daniel antiseptically on the cheek. As she made her way to the door, people gave her a lot of room.

They had all the tomatoes and cucumbers they could ever want; that was the crop in Module 9B. Seconds after O’Hara floated through the module airlock, she knew she’d grow to hate the tomatoes’ vinous smell.

The agricultural modules, the farms, were glassed-in bubbles that contained rigidly controlled environments, floating around New New York. They provided most of the vegetables and some of the meat for a quarter of a
million people. (Only fish and chickens grew well in zero gravity; the rabbits and goats had to live inside with everybody else.)

The module was big, since it had been built with expansion in mind, but it wasn’t big enough for 1,230 people. Besides the potential carriers, there were several dozen technicians, mostly medical, with a few engineering and agricultural workers to make sure that the people, tomatoes, and cukes all survived their period of close communion. The technicians wore spacesuits, in case somebody sneezed.

At least it wasn’t like being cooped up with a bunch of strangers. People began to form in clusters of friends, swapping stories and speculations about Earth. O’Hara found her bunch, a group of students who used to meet every Tuesday at the River Liffey in Manhattan. Seven hadn’t made it.

They were asked all to assemble at one end of the module, where a gruff medico told them they’d have to be quarantined for at least five days. There was a lot of predictable harrumphing about that. Only about one person in three hundred got a trip to Earth, in his lifetime; these were some of New New’s most important people.

Someone asked about solar flares—and got the answer, “Just hope we don’t get a bad one.” A Class 3 would kill them all in minutes, without shielding, but they were rare.

The first order of business was a thorough medical examination. Being in the middle of the alphabet, O’Hara handed in her samples and then loafed around for a couple of days. She couldn’t read, since there were only a dozen cubes in the place, each being watched by twenty or thirty people at once. She got tired of movies and plays, and wound up with a group that was laboriously filling in “the world’s largest crossword puzzle.”

Finally she spent some hours being scanned and poked and thumped and swabbed. The doctors were fast, bored,
and tired; O’Hara felt like a product on an assembly line. There was one moment that made her laugh, though, floating naked in midair behind a rack of tomato vines (for privacy), upside-down, holding on to a gynecologist’s boots so he could keep his bearings while taking smears, both of them slowly rotating in a posture that was a parody of soixante-neuf. She remembered her last conversation with Daniel and wondered what it would take to give an erection to a gynecologist, in a spacesuit or otherwise.

The examination turned up nothing beyond an allergy to cow’s milk, which was no surprise (and no problem, since the nearest cow was 36,500 kilometers away). Neither she nor anyone else had the plague. They were kept under observation for ten days, then returned to New New.

Very tired of the bland emergency rations they’d been fed in the module, O’Hara went straight to the cafeteria. The day’s lunch was centered around gazpacho, cold tomato and cucumber soup.

Charlie’s Will

Most of the weapons that roared into the sky, 16 March 2085, were antiques, fifty to a hundred years old, but one type was quite new. Experimental; inadequately tested.

The Koralatov virus was a humane sort of weapon. It was meant to induce a lengthy period of mental confusion in-the enemy population, some months of being unable to think effectively. Better dumb than dead, if it had worked, but it hadn’t worked well at all.