Worlds Enough and Time w-3, Page 4

I had to say the obvious. “You didn’t have anything to do with the airlock blowing out, Harry. She was killed by metal fatigue. By poor maintenance.”

  He nodded. “Partially responsible.” I hoisted myself up next to him on the edge of the table. He was a big man; my shoulder touched his bicep. I resisted the temptation to put my arm around him. We both stared at the opposite wall.

  “My doctor, who was an old friend, gave me pills for grief and advised me to continue business as usual. That was when you were in my economic theory seminar. Every time you opened your mouth, you reminded me of her. It became very hard to go to class.”

  “I’m sorry. You could have—”

  “Maybe you knew her? She called herself Margaret Haskel.”

  “Yes. We had a swimming class together the year before she… I didn’t know she was your daughter.”

  “She didn’t broadcast it.” In fact, we hardly ever spoke. We did look similar in face and freckles and red hair, but nobody in a nude swimming class would have mistaken us for one another. She had a perfect voluptuous figure. I could have held a frankfurter in front of me and passed for a boy. We didn’t seem to have much in common.

  I remembered the strange feeling when I saw her name on the list of casualties. It wasn’t sadness; I hadn’t known her that well. But I’d never known anyone before who had died. It made me feel oddly important.

  “So yes, I’ve been following your career since then. For twelve years your successes have been a constant small irritant. I always have to think of Margaret and what she might have done. Not rational.” He put his hand on mine, unexpectedly, cold. “That’s how they make pearls, though.” He squeezed. “Put an irritant into an ugly old bivalve.”

  He started pacing. “Number two. You have accumulated far too much influence and visibility for a woman your age. Not just the demographic selection work you did on Start-up, though that certainly made you ubiquitous. That book you wrote made you a kind of celebrity in New New, and celebrity has its negative side.”

  “I wasn’t exactly lusting for fame. I wanted the book to be published anonymously.”

  “I know. A pretty gesture, but pointless. Anybody who didn’t know who you were by then would have to have been asleep all the years following the war.” The book, Three Earths, was about my rather eventful school “year” on Earth, cut short by the war, and the two disaster-ridden return missions I participated in. It was just my diary with some of the stupidities and libels edited out.

  “I wouldn’t even go on the Hammond show to publicize it.”

  “I know that, too. Annoying, isn’t it?”

  “Oh no; it’s flattering. An actual O’Hara-ologist.”

  “Only Sandra and your husbands and wife know as much about you.” He left out my cybernetic sister. Prime knows a lot of things I would never tell a flesh human. “Someone who didn’t have access to your psychological profile might think that you were unfit to be a leader, because of your obvious ambitious nature.”

  “It’s not that kind of ambition. I don’t want to boss anyone around.” Like New New, ‘Home disqualified from public office people who had certain easily measurable, and potentially dangerous, psychological handicaps, such as an emotional hunger to have power over others, or to be a martyr. So no Hitlers, but no Gandhis, either.

  “Then what do you think you want?”

  “Learn the secrets of the universe. Do everything at least once. Bring peace to our time. Have more time to play the clarinet. What a question.”

  “What an answer. Of course only simple people could give a straightforward answer.” He resumed his slow pacing, which might have looked dignified down on Level 1. In this gravity there was a certain sprightliness to it.

  “A lot of people who are older than you think you have come too far, too fast. I trust I don’t have to name any.”

  “No.”

  “Among the people who will eventually be your rivals for my present job, there are very few who are not jealous of, or even afraid of, your charisma.”

  “I’ve seen that. But nobody who really knew me would ever accuse me of charisma. I’ve just had a lot of things happen to me.”

  He held up a finger. “That’s it. They are things that can never happen to anyone else. Nobody else aboard this isolated can will ever experience revolution, nuclear war, plague. Nobody will be kidnapped and flown to Las Vegas. Nobody—”

  “I understand the direction you’re headed.”

  “What you have to do is spend several years being deliberately quiet and well behaved.”

  “Oh, come on. I can behave myself.”

  “You can when you want to. You were a little angel at the meeting today—”

  “I’ll try to do better.”

  “You see? One word and you react.”

  “We’re not in public.”

  “But we are. You are. I may be the most important audience you’ll ever have.” He paused to let that sink in. He was right. Part of his legacy could be a vote of no confidence that I would drag around for a long time. “Your presentation today lasted only forty-two seconds and used the pronoun ‘I’ only once. I know you could have gone into more detail with no more substance, as Smith and Mancini did, or could have made your presentation more entertaining, more memorable. That you did neither shows a good level of political survival instinct. What I want to do is help you refine your instincts into a calculated strategy”

  “A dishonest one?”

  “Only in that it won’t be the course your ‘natural’ self would choose. You’re going to lose that self, at least as a public persona. You’re going to put your shoulders in the harness and for some years work on being a meek and helpful toiler in the political vineyard. Taking stupid orders from people you don’t respect. Learning to compromise so that stupidity appears to have been served, without sacrificing your eventual goal. Learning patience.”

  “Learning to be a political animal.”

  “You must.”

  “As you said, though, I could probably win an election just by being myself. I could probably win this one.”

  “That’s right. Which brings us to the other part of number three.”

  “The rational part, I assume.”

  “You’re paying attention, good. You hardly need that recorder.”

  “You… don’t know. You’re guessing.”

  “Not anymore.” He almost smiled. “Sandra and I disagreed on a number of things—some very basic, such as the right to accumulate wealth, to own property—”

  “I can understand that.”

  “But one thing we did agree on was you.”

  “In what sense?” Sandra liked me, I thought.

  “A general assessment of your abilities, your potential; that’s something anyone with any administrative experience would agree on. Including yourself; you can be objective. The most important thing, though, and one you’re almost certainly blind to, is that you are potentially the most dangerous individual aboard this vessel.”

  I laughed out loud. “Yeah. I was about to have myself locked up.”

  “Be serious and listen. We think of ’Home as being a kind of New New York in microcosm. It’s a heuristic convenience and a dangerous fallacy.”

  “Well, we’re no Mayflower.”

  “What flower?”

  “It was a colony ship that brought people from Puritan England to America. They didn’t have an Entertainment Director.”

  “I remember. That rock, the Ford Rock, the Plymouth. It’s not too good a comparison. They could breathe the air outside their ship, for instance; they could throw out fishing lines for food. If they didn’t like America, they could sail back home.”

  “All points well taken. Sorry to interrupt.”

  “Points salient to the problem at hand. You.

  “Think of New New York as an island, surrounded by other islands. There’s a mainland, Earth, that they can reach only with difficulty, and it’s a dangerous, uncomfortable place. But their island is p
retty self-sufficient, and nearby islands—the Moon, the Deucalian remnants, and other asteroids—can provide all their needs. They’re stable.

  “By comparison, we’re a submarine. We’re incredibly well stocked with supplies, and even a surplus of materials for the creation of new supplies. We even have an Entertainment Director. But we can’t surface until we reach our destination, by which time most of us will be dead.”

  “We talked about all this years ago, even before Start-up.”

  “We have more data now. For instance, when Morales gave his Health Care report, he neglected to mention the hundred and twenty-seven suicides we’ve had since Launch Day.”

  Sudden feeling like a ball of ice in my stomach. “More than one percent.”

  “That’s right. If this rate continued, by the time we left the Solar System more than half of us would be dead.” He shook his head. “It’s happened before, a suicide epidemic. In New New, just after the war. We juggled the statistics as best we could. If there were no witnesses to the act, the death wound up in some other classification. We’re doing that here, but it’s more difficult, since quarters are more cramped.”

  “They expected a few suicides, didn’t they? Lot of stress.”

  “Between ten and twenty, going on no data, of course. Certainly not a hundred.”

  “It’ll probably go down rapidly. The people who were most unstable in that direction are mostly gone now, I guess.”

  “Guessing is all anybody can do. And you must not tell anybody. Morales gave the number only to me and Eliot. Certainly other people in Health must know that it’s a big problem. They’ll keep quiet.”

  , “I won’t tell anybody. I’m familiar with the dynamics involved, the etiology.” I’d read about how families, communities, and whole cultures could become infected with the “meme” of suicide—once you know people who’ve done it, it becomes a possibility. A solution.

  “You still don’t see how it applies to you.”

  “Not by any stretch.”

  “This… submarine is probably the most unstable large society ever thrown together. Hand picked, of course—largely by you—and taken from a pool of people who are accustomed to living in close quarters, essentially underground. Nevertheless unstable.”

  “I see where you’re headed. The last thing these people need is a charismatic leader. To use your word.”

  “Exactly. They need managers—not totally colorless; people whose abilities they can recognize and respect. But no one too exciting, no one with wild ideas about changing things. There will be changes, but they must happen slowly, deliberately. This is a boat, so to speak, that we cannot afford to rock.”

  I had a couple of arguments there, about the danger of my supposed charisma and the paternalism of his attitude, but decided I’d save them until after I’d seen what Sandra had to say. I didn’t give any sign of agreement or disagreement. “So. When should we meet next?”

  “Not tomorrow. I’ll be suffering through pro forma condolences. Thursday sometime. I’ll call or leave a message on your queue.”

  “Okay.” I’m not often at a loss for words. You look awfully tired, I should say; why don’t you lock your door and get some rest? Or I’m sorry about all this; I wish it weren’t happening to someone I’ve actively disliked for nearly half my life. “Uh, should I bring John and Dan?”

  “No, I’m done with them. You’re my project now.” He made a shooing motion with his hand. “Go on. I have some calls to make.”

  I backed out of the room, nodding obediently, into the shelter of the corridor. I didn’t know how to feel or what to think; things had happened too fast. Even if I wanted to like him, to help him, he wasn’t going to let me, and besides, his attitude, his postures, still annoyed the hell out of me, dying or not.

  I was tired and rattled, but if I didn’t look at the slide tonight, curiosity would keep me awake. I went over to the commissary and squandered four dollars on a small box of wine to take up to the office.

  5. GRAVE IMAGE

  PRIME

  Probably out of respect for Berrigan, O’Hara never mentioned viewing the slide; not to me; not to her diary; certainly not to any flesh person other than Harry Purcell. But nothing that went on in her office was secret to me, a detail I never mentioned to her. (She never asked, I think deliberately.)

  28 September 2097 [14 Bobrovnikov 290]—O’Hara enters her cubicle and tells the door to lock, then removes the small recorder from her pocket, turns it off, and puts it away. She sets down her purse on the cot and takes out a box of wine. Selects a glass from the cabinet, inspects it, blows into it, and half-fills it with red wine. She sets the glass on her work console, then reseals the box and puts it in the cabinet. She kicks off her shoes, sits in the swivel chair, turns on the console. Out of habit, she keys the message queue, but turns it off without looking at it. She unseals her blouse halfway and blows down it, then stretches, whispers “Shit,” takes the slide out of her pocket, and studies it. She takes a sip of wine, slips the slide out of its protective jacket, and inserts it in the viewer. She swivels to watch the corner where I normally appear to her.

  Berrigan is seated, wearing a formal dark blue suit. Her hair is long, so the holo must have been recorded more than two months ago.

  IMAGE: Hello, Marianne.

  O’HARA: Hello. Do you have logic capabilities?

  IMAGE: I can respond to simple queries, though my memory is limited. My main function is to deliver a message, and then erase myself when you turn off the machine.

  O’HARA: I was told to physically destroy the slide as well.

  IMAGE: Yes.

  O’HARA: I can’t imagine being party to anything so top secret.

  IMAGE: I cannot assess your ability to imagine. Shall I begin?

  O’HARA: Go ahead.

  IMAGE: (Blurs momentarily, then relaxes) Sorry for this format, Marianne, (smiles) I guess I didn’t see any way to bring this up safely face-to-face. Not while you are who you are now, and I am who I am. (Fingers the Coordinator “C” figured into her lapel.) What I am.

  I wanted Harry to keep an eye on you, and give this to you when he thought the time was right. At least ten years. He hasn’t seen it… nobody has… but he knows what it’s about.

  I must ask your word that you will never discuss this with anyone but Harry, for the time being. And never with anyone who isn’t in the Cabinet or Coordinator pool.

  O’HARA: What if I feel I can’t do that?

  IMAGE: (blurs) I will have to erase myself.

  O’HARA: May I have some time to think over the responsibility? A hint as to what it’s about?

  IMAGE: No.

  O’HARA: Well… all right. You have my word.

  IMAGE: (blurs) This will be short and not sweet, Marianne. The government you’re participating in is not a democracy by anyone’s definition. The weekly referendum is a total hoax; the results are arrived at before the voting; and I doubt that one out of three decisions follows the will of the people.

  O’Hara is staring openmouthed.

  You’re now a member of a hand-picked meritocracy. Part of the psychological testing that we all have to put up with is to ensure that we will be able to participate in a benign conspiracy, before getting on the socalled ballot.

  This goes beyond realpolitik, and it’s not a rejection of democracy as a principle. But there are situations when democracy doesn’t work unmodified, and you’re in the middle of one of them.

  O’HARA: Ten thousand people sealed up together in a small pressure vessel.

  IMAGE: You may remember that we considered the possibility of instituting a quasi-military kind of social structure in Newhome—captain, officers, crew.

  O’HARA: In the Start-up discussion group.

  IMAGE: It was rejected because our people have lived under democracy, or at least its illusion, for too long. We would never have found ten thousand volunteers if they thought they were giving up their citizenship.

  O’HARA: Has t
his been going on from the beginning?

  IMAGE: (blurs) You mean since New New’s original charter?

  O’HARA: Whatever. How long?

  IMAGE: I have no historical data beyond Sandra Berrigan’s actual experience. The degree of interference increased dramatically after the war, but the principle was firmly in place before she took office.

  You should ask Harry Purcell.

  The image is flickering because of some sort of overload phenomenon; you can only pack so much logic into ten nanograms of circuitry. It steadies when it goes back to Berrigan’s prepared speech.

  IMAGE: The decision to manufacture and distribute the anti-plague drug to Earth, for instance. Only thirty percent of the electorate were in favor of that. The prevailing sentiment was obviously that the groundhogs had gotten what they deserved; let them go ahead and die out.

  But the chances are they wouldn’t perish; the plague would run its course. Even if the Earth’s population were reduced to a million gibbering savages, they were still sitting on a resource base a trillion times the size of ours. And a lot of the survivors thought that we were responsible for the war.

  This was the unanimous decision of the Privy Council and Coordinators: we wanted to be remembered as saviors, not as aggressors. They could have nuclear weapons again in a generation or two. The next time they might do a more thorough job.

  A second example is Newhome itself. Only thirty-nine percent were in favor of building it; a solid majority felt the money would be better spent in rebuilding the Worlds.

  The executive decision was that Newhome was necessary for several reasons. One was spiritual, or I suppose you would rather say “emotional”: we had to direct people’s aspirations outward. If we spent twenty years just licking our wounds and glaring resentfully down at the Earth, we might never regain anything like normal relations with them again. Even now, there’s a strong isolationist sentiment, as you surely know.

  O’HARA: Especially the Devonites.

  IMAGE: Another reason, as we discussed openly, is simple insurance for the human race. If there’s another war it will probably be the last one.