Joe Haldeman: Worlds Enough and Time

“It’s an impediment.” He leaned back, professorial. “Go ahead. Give me an example.”

“Jefferson.” I thought of him because I’d just seen his picture; one of the paintings reproduced in the hall outside of the meeting room.

“Thomas Jefferson. I don’t know American history that well.” He brightened. “But I know American economics. Jefferson owned slaves, didn’t he? Doesn’t sound too enlightened, even for that period.”

“He freed them.”

“He bought them first. Sounds like political expedience.”

“Mahatma Gandhi.”

“Religious leaders don’t count. Without at least the appearance of idealism, they would have no following.” He waved a hand to keep me from trying Adolf Hitler or someone. “It’s not that you can’t have ideals. Even I have one or two left. But I don’t let them dictate policy. I’d wind up with a few dedicated partisans on my side and a guaranteed majority trying to impede me, on general principles.”

“I understand what you’re saying. I would have to be subtle—”

“That’s not in your repertoire. Might as well say ‘I would have to be a giraffe.’ Unless you’ve changed profoundly in the last few months.”

“But it’s not as if I’m a bomb-throwing radical. Most of the people in ’Home have about the same notions of right and wrong—”

“You would say ‘right and wrong.’ That’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m saying is that you’re inflexible. You wouldn’t act against principle, even when it was clearly necessary.”

“You seem to know a lot about me.”

“I do.” He unzipped a front pocket and handed me a holo slide. “This is a message to you from Sandra Berrigan.”

“What did you have to do with Sandra?”

“We were strange bedfellows together.” For a weird moment I thought he meant sex, and tried to picture it. “I was supposed to wait until we were a lot farther out to give that to you. You are to play it once, alone, and then destroy it, and never discuss it with anyone but me.”

“Not even Sandra?”

“Especially not her. She has her own problems.”

I put the slide in my breast pocket, next to the button bug that was recording our conversation. It was confusing. Sandra had been my political mentor; she knew exactly how I felt about Purcell.

“Sandra entrusted that to me for reasons that will become apparent. I couldn’t pass on that trust. And I wanted you to read it while I was still… able to discuss it with you.”

“I’ll look at it tonight.”

“It’s about principle, ideals. About complexity.”

“Okay.” Sandra and Purcell? I put it out of my mind for a while. “Number one, I’m an idealist. I’ll accept that. Is there a number two?”

He nodded but didn’t answer immediately. Then he said, “Have you ever wondered why you were appointed to the least significant Cabinet post?”

“I’ve wondered.” He waited. “All right. To be completely honest, if less than humble, I’ve always believed the position was created for me. That Sandra pushed it through so that I could have some Cabinet-level experience without too much visibility. It does seem odd to have Entertainment at the Cabinet rather than the committee level.”

“You’re ninetenths right. But it was my idea, not Sandra’s.”

That was reasonably shocking. “That’s… interesting.”

“Or unbelievable?” He scratched his head and grimaced. “I had planned to have this conversation with you when you were rather more experienced.”

“More experienced,” I said. “I have four degrees, two husbands, and a wife—not counting the hundred or so lovers before I was married. I’ve been to Earth three times. I was there for the end of the world. I can juggle three objects of different sizes and play the clarinet, though not at the same time. I even have some political experience. Not enough, I take it.”

“Are you through?”

“No. You’ve condescended to me for a good sixteen years. Now I’m supposed to believe you have enough respect for my abilities to create a position that sets me up to take over your job. You’re right; it’s unbelievable. It’s fantastic. I could use some explanation.”

“That’s number three.”

“Does the order matter?”

“Perhaps not.” He levered himself up to perch on the edge of the table, a slow balletic move in low gravity. “I will give you half of my reason. The irrational half.”

“Go on.”

“I had a daughter born about two years before you were born. She was very much like you. We argued for many years, but argument to me is a sport. I challenged her in the spirit that another man might play ball with his daughter, or chess, or go to movies.”

“I can understand that.”

“She never did. When she was eighteen she stopped speaking to me. When she was nineteen she emigrated to Tsiolkovski, of all places. Ostensibly because I was so contemptuous of their politics and economics. She left a note.”

“And she died there during the war?”

“She never got there. The ’81 shuttle disaster.”

That was the year I was in his class. He’d never mentioned it. “My God. That’s terrible.”

“I’m not sure that I loved her. I suspect that I’ve never loved anybody. Of course I feel partially responsible for her death.”

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.