Worlds (22 page)

“He was wrong there. But the things I won’t do would never occur to Benny.”

He shifted restlessly. “What did he tell me that nobody else would know?… You, um, did it once in the women’s locker room. You had to hide in a smelly little closet.”

I smiled at the memory. “Why?”

“A whole gym class came in. Right at the wrong moment.”

I nodded. The right moment, actually; I’d never seen Benny recover so fast. The situation must have fulfilled some obscure fantasy. “You’re right. That’s something not even the FBI would know.”

He leaned forward, alert “You suspect the FBI?”

“No… I was just—”

“I do.”

“You think the FBI
killed
Benny?”

“Some part of the government.” He rubbed at his chin savagely with the back of his hand, sandpaper sound. “Look, Benny told me how he got here. He zigzagged all over the country for a day and then went to Vegas. Took off his beard and most of his hair and got his skin dyed, then got all new papers. Then he spent another three days constantly on the move, before he got here. No private person could have tracked him down.

“And look. How come they dropped the investigation, just like that? They only even interrogated me once, the day after he died, and I’m the only real suspect they could have. Somebody told them to get off it.”

I hardly heard what he was saying, for the overwhelming rush of guilt. “What day did he die?”

“January ninth. Why?”

So I hadn’t caused it; that was before I’d told Jeff. “Could we go outside? I—I’m having difficulty breathing.”

He picked up the shotgun on the way out. It was still cold and clear. We went behind the house and walked between rows of dead cornstalks.

“I wanted to get out because I was afraid your place might be bugged,” I said.

“If it’s the FBI you’re worried about, I might be bugged.” He switched the Shotgun to his right hand and buried his left deep in a pocket, for warmth. “They can get you while you’re sleeping, do microsurgery. Leave a bug in your skull for the rest of your life.”

“Come on… that’s just something you see on the cube.”

He shrugged. “Why would the FBI be interested in Benny?”

How much to tell? “I think he was in touch with them. If he was murdered, it wasn’t them who got to him.” I gave Perkins a synopsis of our dealings with the sinister
political action group. “Before Benny left, I think he tried to penetrate the group as deeply as possible, and then told the FBI all he knew.”

“You think that would make him safe from the FBI.” When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “That sounds paranoid, doesn’t it? Well, you didn’t grow up here. You don’t have anythng like the FBI in the Worlds.”

I shook my head. “I have a friend who works for the FBI. He’s a good man.”

“I’m sure it’s chock full of good men. But believe me, if they want to do something to you, they just
do
it. They don’t have to answer to anyone.”

Jeff had used the same phrase, in a different context. “What good would it do them? To kill Benny?”

“That’s a point,” he admitted. “You’d think it would be to their advantage to keep him alive and kickin’. They might could use him again.” He pulled a dried cob off a stalk and threw it away, hard. “So what do you think?”

I tried to recall James’s conversation the other night. “I really don’t know. If that group were capable of finding him, I don’t doubt that they’d be capable of killing him.” We ran out of cornfield and started walking toward the barn. I tried to stifle a feeling of dread. “He told me where he was going. Maybe he told someone else.”

“He said not. But it might be that somebody was listening.”

“No, we were alone. Outdoors, in a subway entrance.”

We went into the barn. I glanced up and was glad not to see a rope hanging from the rafters.

“This was his place, here.” Perkins pushed open a plank door.

It was about the size of his room in New York. There was a single window with a sheet of plastic tacked over it. There was a cot and a chair, and two crates pushed together to make a table. The table was covered with a chaotic jumble of books and papers, grey under a film of dust A wood-burning stove and a suitcase, and a drawing of me, pinned over his cot.

“I haven’t touched anything. Is there anything here you’d want?”

That complicated funny man, all the pain and joy of him, and it came down to this. I shook my head slowly but then took down the picture, rolled it up and put it in my bag. We left quickly.

“What about his relatives?” I asked.

“I haven’t told anybody. Far as anybody knows, that was Sheldon Geary and he committed suicide. Anyhow, Benny’s parents disowned him when he left the line. There’s nobody—”

We surprised a large bird and it suddenly clattered into the air in front of us. Perkins dropped to a crouch and the shotgun roared. I was somehow face-down in the mud, the blast ringing in my ears.

Hands shaking, Perkins hinged the gun open and extracted the smoking shell. He got another from his pocket and reloaded. “Christ I’m jumpy,” he said in a harsh whisper. “Sorry.” He helped me up. “Do you have a change of clothes with you?”

“Back at the Atlanta station. Suitcase in a locker. But I’ll be all right, it’ll brush off when it dries.”

“Well, let’s get you inside.” My teeth were chattering by the time we got to the door. He stared back at the field. “Even missed the god-damned bird.”

Perkins handed me a blanket and studied the wall while I got out of my clothes and hung them by the stove. I suppose it was a potentially erotic situation, what with the tension and forced intimacy and his knowledge of my butterfly tendencies. But he just sat me down at the table and made a fresh pot of coffee.

“Look, you might be in as much danger as Benny was.” He took a wooden box off a high shelf.

“I don’t think so. I didn’t get as deep into the organization.”

“That might not make any difference. You were Benny’s lover; they don’t know how much you might know.” He set the box down in front of me.

I lifted the lid cautiously. It was a small silver pistol and a box of ammunition.

“Take it, just in case.”

“I’d never be able to use it.” It was cold and surprisingly heavy, and smelled of oil.

“Never know until the situation comes up,” he said quietly.

“I don’t mean morally… I mean I wouldn’t be able to hit the floor with it. I’ve never touched a gun before in my life.”

“I could show you how to use it. Once your clothes—”

“No.” I put the gun back and closed the box. “I appreciate
the thought. But if it comes to shooting people, I don’t have a chance anyhow. It’s not like the Greeks or westerns, where I’d want to take some of them with me. I don’t have that gland.”
Those
glands, I thought.

“Then what do you plan on doing?”

“I have to think… I have a pass for unlimited tube and rail travel for forty-five days. I might just keep moving around.”

“That might be a good idea.” He poured coffee and I accepted a cup, to warm my hands.

“What about you?” I asked. “Why do you stay here?”

“I’ve given that some thought. In the first place, I couldn’t get far; don’t have much money. Also, I’m out in the open here, nobody’s going to sneak up on me. Mainly, though, if they haven’t got me by now, they must not be especially interested.

“And this is the best time of year. No crops to worry about I just sit in here and read. My reward for cracking ass nine months.”

We sat for an hour or so, reminiscing about Benny. When my clothes were dry he brushed them off outside and brought them to me.

“Do you mind if I don’t turn away? I don’t see a woman too often.”

“I don’t mind.” I let the blanket fall and dressed without hurrying, in front of his sad and hungry eyes. I normally might have done the friendly thing, but was too depressed and upset I suspected he was, too.

Perkins walked me out to the bicycle and we exchanged awkward goodbyes. I assured him that I would come by if I was ever in the area again, but we both knew I wouldn’t.

When I got back to the dorm there was a hand-delivered note in my box. Not from James, to my relief, but from the Worlds Club. Special meeting tonight, about Cape Town, whatever that was.

I might as well go. I’d have to be in New York tomorrow, anyhow, when Jeff got back. I did some laundry and repacked my suitcase, then went down to the Liffey to read until the meeting started. I didn’t want to be in my room.

Reading has always been an escape activity for me, whether the subject matter is light or difficult. This one was difficult but absorbing, an economic history of the United States from Vietnam to the Second Revolution. I immersed myself in it to keep from thinking, by thinking, though it should have been obvious by then that my academic career was over.

Traveling around the world, I wasn’t really aware of the extent to which relations between the Worlds and America had degenerated, and the last three days had been so full of personal terror that I wouldn’t have noticed if the Sun had started rising in the west.

There were only thirteen people at the meeting. Most of them had already moved to Cape Town, but had come back to New York to tie up loose ends. Everyone else was either down in Florida or home in the Worlds. They explained:
Nine days before, the United States had put a temporary prohibition on the sale of deuterium for space flight, even at the astronomical price U.S. Steel had been getting.

Steve Rosenberg, from Mazeltov, explained it to me. “New New York found two more CC deposits on the Moon; they may be rather common. So they got a little aggressive. The Import-Export Board increased the price of satellite power. They gave the U.S. a schedule of monthly increases that would continue until the price of deuterium went back to normal. So the U.S. cut it off.”

“Which was no surprise to the Coordinators,” I said.

“I imagine not. But we have enough deuterium in storage to get everyone back, with some to spare. They’re trying to get everyone back as soon as possible, which is why Cape Town.”

I’d learned that Cape Town was a collection of tents and shanties inside the entrance to the Cape. Worlds citizens were going up in order of reservations, and they were up to May first. I could be home in a week.

But it wasn’t quite as orderly and comfortable an evacuation as had been planned. They were using only one shuttle, the high-gee one, to save fuel. People were allowed only seven kilograms of baggage, including clothes. The rest of the payload was seawater.

“Why salt water?” I asked.

“Well, there are valuable chemicals in it, and salt for food. But mainly it’s the heavy hydrogen: deuterium and tritium.

“We found out that all of the water U.S. Steel was giving us was light water—all of the heavy hydrogen had been processed out of it. That wouldn’t normally make any difference, since it’s always been cheaper for us to buy heavy hydrogen from Earth, than to set up a plant to make our own. It’s different now. Jules Hammond pointed out last week that there’s enough deuterium and tritium in a tonne of seawater to boost forty tonnes to orbit.”

“So we’ve built a plant?”

“It’s not the sort of thing you can do overnight. But they’re in the process. In a month or so, it’s possible we’ll be able to ‘bootstrap’ water into orbit, without using any earth-made fuel.”

“Do the Lobbies know this?”

“Yes… it should make them more cooperative.”

I wasn’t so sure.

The meeting was strained. A lot of talk concerned what to take along as your seven kilograms. I resolved to go naked and barefoot, so as not to leave my clarinet behind. Actually, though, I didn’t have much beyond the clarinet and my diary. I’d feel guilty taking things that were just souvenirs. Some cigarettes for Daniel and some Guinness for John. Benny’s picture. What of Jeff’s?

When the meeting was breaking up, I mentioned that I didn’t want to go back to my dormitory room, saying it had just been painted. The only one who wasn’t going straight to the Cape was Steve Rosenberg; he offered me a couch.

When we were “alone” on the subway, he asked whether I would rather share his bed. I said I was in too complicated an emotional state for sex, and he understood. So I lay awake for some hours on his couch, mostly worrying about seeing Jeff, partly wishing I were in the next room. There’s no better sleeping pill, and Steve seemed gentle as well as pretty.

I tried to call Daniel the next morning but was told the equipment was “not functioning.” Went back to the dorm and found a note, unsigned, saying there was an urgent meeting that night, be at the Grapeseed at eight. I planned to be a couple of thousand kilometers away.

I closed my account at the credit union and went to a broker and converted most of the cash into twenty ounces of gold, always scarce in the Worlds. Put two changes of clothing in my bag, then loaded everything else into the trunk, took it down to Penn Station and had it sent to Cape Town. Then I met Jeff for lunch.

He was stunned at the news of Benny’s death. He couldn’t argue with the necessity of my going to Cape Town and getting home as early as possible.

“But marry me first,” he said.

“You keep asking me that in restaurants,” I said. “You know I love you, Jeff, but… it would just make both of us unhappy.”

He shook his head and clasped both my hands. “A symbol, that’s all. It doesn’t even have to be permanent. We could get married in Delaware, make it a one-year renewable contract. Then when I get to New New York we can make whatever arrangement seems right.”

A one-year contract didn’t sound much like marriage to
me. But it would make it easier for him to emigrate. “I guess there’s no harm in it Could we do it right away?”

“I have two days off. We could even squeeze in a little honeymoon, in Cape Town.”

“New Orleans,” I said. “I’m not going back without seeing it.”

We spent about an hour in Dover, thirty seconds of which was taken up by a bored notary reciting the marriage statute to us. Better than a Devonite ceremony, I guess, but not exactly moving.