Joe Haldeman - Worlds

Hawkings smiled slightly. “You can’t say that for sure until the next time you run into a hitter.”

“I’ll concede that. But I think I know myself.” I resisted the impulse to point out that he’d just been trying to convince me that that was not possible.

“You should carry one, too,” Jeff said to me. “Even if it’s just for show. And you know enough fencing to help, if you did have to use it.”

“I’ve got a can of Puke-O in my bag.” I’d had it when I was raped, though. “Can’t we talk about something more unpleasant?”

I did manage to steer the conversation to more mundane regions, and it moved into politics soon enough. Benny was very restrained, understandably, but Jeff was surprisingly critical of the government, even to the point of bitterness.

After about a half-hour we had to go on to class, leaving Benny with his wine. The freezing air was wonderful after the stuffiness in the bar, and a few flakes of snow whirled around in the traffic breeze.

“Are you always such a radical, out of uniform?”

He hunched his shoulders under the heavy cape. “Well… I was exaggerating a little. Trying to put him at ease. But the Bureau doesn’t much care about an agent’s politics so long as they’re just opinions. I can’t join any political groups, of course, not even a Lobby.”

“Not even a Lobby? How can you vote?”

“You didn’t know that?” He looked at me oddly. “We can’t. Police and soldiers don’t vote, except on local and nonpartisan referenda. Soldiers, not even those.”

“But how can they do that?”

“Well, it’s not the law, it’s the mechanics. If you don’t belong to a Lobby, you can’t register approval or disapproval. At least I’m a resident citizen of New York, so I can vote on garbage collection and so forth. A soldier can never be a permanent resident of any state or city, no matter how long he lives there. He can make his opinions known in the annual census, but that’s it. It’s unfair, but I think the logic behind it is clear.”

When I didn’t say anything, he went on. “After a revolution, the people who get into power are pretty conscious of the forces that brought them there, and if they’re smart, they’ll do something to make sure the tables don’t get turned. People’s Capitalism, before the Second Revolution, mainly appealed to the lower middle class; you know about that.”

I thought back. “Because of inflation. It gave them the same sort of safeguards that the upper classes enjoyed.”

“That’s right. And it’s the lower-middles who run the military and the police forces. The people who command may belong to the upper classes, but their orders aren’t worth anything if the sergeants and privates won’t follow them.”

We queued up for the Tenth Avenue slidewalk. “That’s why it was such a short war. All the stirring rhetoric aside, Kowalski had all the guns, long before the Fourteenth of September. When the private soldiers and noncommissioned officers joined the general labor strike, it was all over. Even though it took a month for Washington to fall.”

“So the Lobbies didn’t want the same thing to happen to them; all right, I can see that.” He took my elbow and we stepped on the ‘walk together. “And I can see that disenfranchising the military would be a kind of insurance—but how could they get away with it?”

“It takes a close reading of the history of the first few months after the Revolution to see it. Watch for ice, here.” We moved to the right and stepped off; I slid a half-meter but kept my balance, with Jeff’s help.

“That was a confusing time, anyhow. Step by step, the measures seem logical and innocuous—remember, the Lobby system didn’t spring full-born from the forehead of Kowalski; there were some months of martial law, and then about a year of hybrid chaos.

“At first, it looked as if they were protecting the general public by not allowing the soldiers to unionize, which didn’t seem so outrageous, since they hadn’t been allowed to before. And they laid down an effective smokescreen by lionizing the military and police, and giving them liberal social benefits. It’s still about the most secure job you can get.

“When the smoke cleared, though, we were a highly honored bunch of citizens who somehow couldn’t find any appropriate column on the voting machine.”

It was bright and warm inside the Russell building. We stopped alone in the foyer to brush off snow. “But you still have all the guns,” I said.

Jeff smiled and put one finger to his lips.

4 December. Too brazen. Somebody got into my locked room today and left a note on my desk: Meet us at 8:00 p.m. Tues. usual place, tell B. My nerves are about to snap. Ten days left in the quarter, papers and exams piling up, and now this. I quit.

5 December. Lunch with Benny and told him I had had enough of James’s bunch and was pulling out. He had some good suggestions. Benny is in too deep to simply walk away. Not only the letters, but another thing he says he can’t tell me about. He says that he’s tempted to turn informer, go to the FBI with what he knows. But doesn’t think he knows enough to make it worth the risk, especially if what we fear about Katherine is true (he didn’t talk like this until we were out of the restaurant, walking through the park). He says that if worse comes to worst, a friend of his has a small farm in South Carolina, where he could hide. Shave off his beard, get new papers, start over. I told him I thought he should do it now. I think they’re capable of anything.

6 December. The meeting went smoothly. I followed Benny’s advice and tried not to let my anger or fear show. Very mundane: I was nearing the end of the quarter and academic work has to take precedence; then I would be traveling for more than two months. I would use that time to “order my priorities” for the rest of the year. That I’ll be in and out of New York the third quarter, on field trips to various cities and states, didn’t discourage James. He thought that might be useful.

7 December. I have a feeling I shouldn’t leave this cigarette-paper diary in storage with the rest of my things. If they can get into my room, they can get into my locker downstairs. I certainly can’t take it with me, crossing dozens of borders. I was going to ask Benny to keep it for me, but decided he doesn’t need any more trouble. I’ll hide it in the library, back where they keep the old bound periodicals. Time magazine, 100 years before my birthday.

Surprise, Benny showed some common sense.

I turned in my last paper, comparing the evolution of Earthbound Devonites with those in orbit, and set about the serious business of enjoying New York for a few days. I met Benny at his apartment.

He’d finished up his classwork a few days earlier. When I went into his room I was surprised, and pleased, to see the drawing table unfolded, and several of his street scenes in a stack, matted and ready for display. On the board, he’d just started inking in a drawing of the old Flatiron Building, with sketches and flat photos of it pinned to the wall in front of the table.

I congratulated him on his industry and he mumbled something about taking my advice. It was hard to hold a natural conversation there, knowing that everything was being monitored by James or Will or the FBI or the landlord.

Outside, leaning into the wind as we hurried toward the subway, he explained: “If I do have to drop out of sight, I’ll need money. Can’t just buy a ticket to South Carolina and expect not to be followed. I can endure a certain amount of humiliation, to save my skin.”

“You have a plan?”