Worlds Enough and Time (16 page)

“I’ll point that out to him. But I know what he’ll say.”

“Women and children first,” Dan said. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

“Something like that.” She pointed at O’Hara. “Marianne, how many information people have you seen in the past two weeks, the past month?”

“None. None since July.”

“See? Now I personally put a high priority on reclaiming Shakespeare and Mozart and Dickens. But we do want to have an audience around to enjoy them. That means that all but a handful of the information people are sweating it out in Engineering. Once all the repair manuals are reclaimed, we can push in other directions.”

It went on like this for some time. O’Hara followed the bickering with interest, but she was more interested in the bickering—good and bad techniques—than the subject matter.’ It wasn’t especially relevant to her personally. Those cryptobiotes that had frightened her as a child, emerging from a half-century’s darkness wrinkled, wet, confused; they had made up her mind about suspended animation.

She would rather take a deep breath and step out the airlock.

15 August 99 [25 Muhammed 295]—I’m not often at a loss for words, but when Sam gave me a present today, I really didn’t know what to say. A beautiful gift.

I should note for you generations yet unborn that gift giving is necessarily rare in this pseudoeconomy, at least gifts of objects. We were allowed to bring aboard only two kilograms of personal items. Otherwise, everybody owns everything equally.

You can make things, though. The computer keeps a running list of objects scheduled for recycling; if you can find a use for something that’s broken, you can petition to intercept it. So Sam collected bits and pieces over the months and pieced together a musical instrument, a kind of harp. It’s an arched trapezoid, the sides and bottom made of shiny metal stock. The curved top is a piece of golden wood, from Earth. From New York, where in a desperate time we had been lovers.

I supposed we would be again, another thing that left me temporarily speechless. We had been working together for most of a year on the literature project, and he had never hinted at anything romantic—though I had, at least to the extent of making sure he knew I was not unavailable. He was always reticent about sex, though, even when we were doing it.

He wanted more than that. He wanted to
marry
me; join the line.

I told him I had to think about it, and then talk to him, and then ask the others. It had to be unanimous, and I wasn’t sure that Dan or even John would go along with it. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted it, as dear as Sam is to me.

He kissed me and left me alone there in the editing room. I came up here to think into the keyboard.

So much of the literature we’ve been trying to reclaim or recall has to do with love. Old-Fashioned romantic love, often, with its sinister subtexts of ownership, male superiority, female manipulation. A sexual and emotional union that not incidentally reinforced the power of the church and the state over individuals and families.

I guess my first love, with Charlie Increase Devon, involved a strong element of that. Maybe he also cured me of it. Or maybe it was like other childhood diseases, that you contract once and then become immune. Even as I wrote that down, I saw how silly it was—some people never experience romance and some never grow out of it—but I’ll leave it. I’m going to erase all this anyhow.

Could I love a third man without diminishing what I have with the other two? I wish we had more precise words for love, dozens of them, like the Eskimos supposedly had for snow. I do already love all three of them, in three distinctly different ways. Daniel needs me and I need to nurture him, protect him. John is my comforter, and still my mentor. (People who don’t know us well would probably assume that the relationships went the other way, because of John’s deformity. But I don’t even see it anymore, except as a sign of the patient strength, the calm acceptance, that drew me to the man in the first place.) And what about Sam?

On Earth, where we were working with groundhog survivors, he saw how upset I was when Daniel and John called down to ask me to allow Evelyn to join our line. I knew and liked Evy but resented the timing, the handicap of not being there to physically confront them. I would have said yes anyhow, so I gave permission as gracefully as I could. As soon as the comm link was broken, though, I started to mope and growl and bitch. Sam offered himself and I jumped his lanky bones.

We grew pretty close pretty fast. We have the same kind of intelligence, shallow but broad, and therefore many enthusiasms in common. We make each other laugh. The sex wasn’t all that great, but he had youthful enthusiasm and recuperative power.

Then the project turned into a disaster, a bloodbath and plague that we barely escaped. A grisly nightmare the reward for months of backbreaking labor. During the week of quarantine outside New New, Sam and I kept making love with frantic desperation. (There wasn’t much privacy, and some people were scandalized. They were people I didn’t mind scandalizing, though.)

I thought then of asking him to join the line. It would have made an interesting symmetry, since he was the same age as Evy, nineteen. Twelve years younger than me—and a
damn
sight younger than my lecherous husbands! Sorry, Evy. I do love you like a sister but still sometimes get angry at them. Even thoughtful hunchbacked philosophers get pulled around by their dicks sometimes.

Dramatic memories aside, how do I feel about Sam now? Admittedly, I’ve been a little annoyed that he didn’t respond to my gentle hints with instant lust. But his proposal puts that into perspective. He’s the kind of man who makes timetables and sticks to them. When he worked for me on Earth, for all his wacky humor, he was about the most dependable person I had. He was also physically brave and showed infinite patience and compassion with the Earth children, who could be real monsters.

Okay, I’m trying to talk myself into this. It didn’t help that I dropped by Creche to look at the baby this morning. Her little hand curled around my finger.

I have a bad case of softheartedness. Prime, I have to talk to you.

Prime appeared in the usual corner, leaning back comfortably in a nonexistent chair. Sometimes she was unsettlingly nude; this time she was wearing the gray labor fatigues that Sam and O’Hara had worn on Earth. Since Prime looked only six months younger than O’Hara had been at the time, the effect was as startling as she had intended.

“I thought you’d never ask,” the image said.

“So talk me out of it, Use that binary brain of yours.”

“First you ask for a favor and then you insult me. If my brain is simply binary then yours is a lump of jelly.”

“Should I do it?”

“Yes and no and maybe. Should I elaborate?”

“I’ve got time and you’ve got electricity.”

“Take ‘no’ first. Daniel is having a real uselessness problem. He has a title that makes him technically part of the ruling class, but the thing he’s in charge of doesn’t exist anymore. Your declaring interest in another man is not going to help his image of himself.”

“He gets a certain amount of solace from you, and even more from Evelyn—”

“Really?”

“The ratio is one point three to one. Now you propose to bring into the relationship a man the same age as Evelyn. He will see this as an act of sexual aggression.”

“Hold it. All these years you’ve known how often Dan has sex with me and with Evelyn?”

“And with other women, yes. Only women, in case you’re interested.”

“I think you know a lot that I would rather not know.”

“Everything the ship knows, I know. I only brought this up because it’s important to the discussion you initiated.”

“What’s the ratio with John?”

The machine paused. “That’s complicated, as you know. He has been intimate with you two point eight times more often than with Evelyn, since Launch.”

“That’s an interesting locution, ‘intimate with.’ You’re protecting my feelings.”

“It’s not my job to make you feel bad. The question you’re not asking is one you already know the answer to.”

“He’s more likely to have actual sex with her.”

“He loves you fiercely, and has since you were married. His attraction to Evelyn is obviously physical. If by ‘actual sex’ you mean a contact that includes ejaculation …”

“What else would I mean?”

“With her it seems to be always.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“You knew that.” The image sat forward. “Which brings us to the ‘yes’ part. If you bring Sam into the line, John may relax. He may see it as spreading out the responsibility for keeping you happy, and so when he does come to you, it will be with less anxiety, and he will be more likely to … complete the sexual act.”

“You know a hell of a lot about sex for somebody who’s never done it.”

“Through the ship’s sensors, I monitor the sexual function of over nine thousand people. Patterns emerge.”

“You once described to me that privacy thing in your algorithm. If I asked you how often Harry Purcell had had sex with Tania Seven, you wouldn’t be able to tell me.”

“I could if it was necessary for your welfare. These things about Evelyn and John, it hurts me to say them, in the only way that I can feel pain. But this is a context
you
established. And that context, along with my estimation of your response, determines what I am allowed to say to you.”

“Give me some more of the ‘yes’ part.”

“The one who would benefit most from the marriage would be Sam. At twenty-four, he’s under a lot of personal and social pressure to join a line. The other two women he’s involved with are only sexual partners.”

“That’s another thing I needed to know?”

“You’ve met them both.
Did
you think he played chess with them?”

“At the pool, I remember, those two. With the breasts.”

“The first time he had sex with you, before he could get up the nerve to ask, you did play chess. You played fairy chess and he spotted you a barrel queen.”

“I’d forgotten that.”

“I never forget anything. That’s one advantage you have over me.”

“You don’t think he’s really interested in either of them?”

“You are the one he asked to marry. He does love you. But you have to be clearheaded about it. He’s certainly aware that your line allows casual sex with people outside the line. It’s an important factor.”

O’Hara looked at her twin for a long moment. “Now there’s something else you’re not telling me.”

“It’s not something you need to know.”

“If it’s about Sam I need to know it.”

The image picked at nonexistent threads. “When I was hooked up to you during our initial orientation, we talked in some detail about your experiences with Charlie Devon, on Devon’s World. When I asked about one particular sex act, your fear response was instant and strong: respiration and pulse increased, you sweated profusely. Your adrenal medulla squirted norepinephrine. Your anus clamped shut like a trap.”

“The ropes.”

“That’s right.”

“Sam …
ties up
those women?”

“One of them, Lilac. Sometimes she ties him up.”

“Sam?”

“It’s a common enough practice. More common here than in New New.”

“Sam?”

“You were very young and afraid of Charlie’s hugeness and physical strength. He could have ripped your head off with one hand. One reason you fell for him was that he was so mysterious and scary. With Sam, the ropes would be different. But I don’t think he would ever ask you. He would rather continue doing it with Lilac.”

“Maybe I’ll ask
him
. Shock him out of his shorts.”

“That’s the spirit. He would never harm you.” The image crossed and uncrossed its legs, actually looking nervous. “Marianne. Be realistic. So far in this life you’ve fallen in love with two giant foreigners, two alcoholic intellectuals, and an Irish hunchbacked philosopher. So Sam is an introverted Jewish polymath who sometimes likes to combine restraints with oral sex. He’s probably the most normal person you’ll ever be interested in.”

The harp was easy to play, though of course it would take years to be able to play it well. Sam had put a daub of color at the top of each string, linking major triads, so O’Hara was able to strum simple melodies after only a few minutes’ experimentation. There were knobs on the base that gave the instrument an electronic dimension, so you could add vibrato and echo effects, but O’Hara liked it better plain, unplugged. It was just the right size for her to set the base in her lap and rest her chin on top of the vertical arm, so the chords sang inside her head, amplified by bone conduction.

She was sitting on the bed she shared with Daniel, playing a blues progression over and over, eyes closed, memorizing and didn’t hear the quiet door slide open.

“Taking up the harp?” Daniel said.

She started; almost dropped it. “Scared me!”