Joe Haldeman - Worlds

Benny sent another poem: Deuce On It

Crafting second letter after dawn(Recall the last, I hope; it means a lot),And hope you’ll keep this letter when I’m gone:I’d rather not be buried in a plot.

Beware the ides of any month of Spring(Try calling on the World for peace of mind),Lay low. There’s no use in bartering:All men who hold the goods are too unkind.

Please be careful what you think and say(Stay within the bounds of common sense),Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May:Of May, the darling buds have accidents.

I be afraid. Don’t think that I’m untrue(Since no more letters fly from me to you), —Benny

It was posted in Denver. So he’d started running.

This poem was more straightforward, if a little scary. But the words didn’t sound like Benny in either of them. Which could have been the form, of course. Every poem of his I’d found was traditionally minimalist; his using sonnets made me think there must be a code.

I hadn’t found it in the first one. I’d finally given up, deciding he’d used too subtle a code. I’m no poet, after all; I haven’t even studied that much poetry.

“Letter from Benny?” Jeff had come up behind me.

I jumped, and held the sheet against my chest. “He wouldn’t want anyone else to see it Personal.”

He shook his head. “All I saw was that it’s a poem. Wish I could do that.” He sat down across from me. “Dinner?”

“If it’s late enough. I want to lie down for a while.” We agreed to meet here in the common room at eight.

I found the code in a few minutes this time. The repeated line, “Crafting second letter after dawn,” was the key. Reading the second letter of each word didn’t work, beyond “reef.” But reading down, taking the second letter of each line, gave RENDER ALL TO FBI. I went upstairs and got the first poem, which translated to THEY DID KILL HER.

So we had been right. But what did he mean by “render all”? Had he gone to the FBI, or was he asking me to do it?

And what about the content of the poems? The first one didn’t make much sense, beyond the coded message, but the second had some real information. “I’m gone: I’d rather not be buried in a plot” was clear, but the rest wasn’t, other than a general sense of danger, foreboding. I suppose “I be afraid” meant “FBI raid.” God knows what else was hidden in metaphor and rebus, though I should probably be careful on the ides of May. The fifteenth?

I took my pill early, and tried to get some sleep. Dreams kept waking me up, and the sunburn made it hard to find a comfortable position. I finally went down to the common room with a book.

Jeff was on time. We worked our way toward the beach in approved Spanish barhopping style. They have tapa bars, where small snacks are served with beer and wine. You have a drink and a snack and then move on to another bar. Some of the snacks were seafood; I tried not to think of what they’d been swimming in.

Most of the bars were crowded and noisy, standing-room-only places. It wasn’t until we got to a relatively quiet one that he noticed I hadn’t been very talkative.

“Is something bothering you?”

“Can’t figure out which parts of this thing are edible.” I’d gotten something that might have been a pickled fig.

“Is it Benny?”

I guess that was when I made the decision. I nodded.

“You know he doesn’t have anything to worry about,” Jeff said. “I’m quite—”

“That’s not what I mean. Benny’s the same kind of friend as you are.” I bit through the rind. It was fibrous and sour. How to say it? “Benny’s in serious trouble. His life’s in danger.”

He set the wineglass down without drinking. “Is he sick?”

“No… or if he is, it’s the least of his worries.” I drank the rest of my wine all at once and signaled the bartender. He looked at his feet; men order here. “Why don’t you drink that up and get us another?”

He did. “Who’s he in trouble with?”

“We don’t know a name.” The bartender brought over a tray of food. Jeff, brave soul, took a shrimp; I stuck to the vegetable kingdom and selected a wedge of avocado. “A few months ago, Benny and I joined a… well, a political action group. Slightly underground, but as far as we could tell not mixed up in anything really illegal.”

“Communists?”

“Nothing so formal. Sort of radical antiestablishment, was all the people seemed to have in common. Some were communists, some plain anarchists, some even sounded like right-wing libertarians. Just people dissatisfied with your form of government” Jeff concentrated on peeling the shrimp. “No name?”

“No, they used various ‘front’ names, but they were emphatic about not having a permanent name. Benny said that probably meant they did have a name, but we weren’t deep enough to be told.”

“Sounds possible.”

“You know something about them?”

“No. Nothing from Washington. But you hear rumors.” He squeezed some lime over the shrimp. “A lot of politicians have died young lately. Conservative Lobbies, all of them.” He looked at me. “Why the hell did you get mixed up with them? I can see Benny.”

“Research… I was curious.”

“Dangerous kind of research.”

“It didn’t seem so at first—more like a debating society with delusions of grandeur. But then there was a really suspicious coincidence.” I told him about Benny meeting Katherine on the way back from Washington, and her “suicide.” Then I showed him Benny’s coded messages.

“You think Benny was more deeply involved than you were?”

“I know he was. At least, he was doing something he couldn’t tell me about.”

“Yet he went to the FBI. Or wants you to.”

I nodded. “Can you check?”

“I’m not sure you really want me to… did you ever do anything illegal for them, yourself?”

“No, just some statistical analysis.”

“Still, there might be trouble.” He looked thoughtful. “I think I can get around it; there’s no need to implicate you directly. Better wait till we get to Geneva, though. I can use the Interpol scrambler there.”

“Scrambler?”

“Safe telephone system.” He studied the two poems. “Speaking of that, have you called New New York lately?”

“No. It’s terribly expensive.”

“He might be telling you to. Why else would he capitalize ‘world’ here? Try calling on the World for peace of mind.’”

“Worth doing.”

“You don’t know this Katherine’s line name or last name?”

“Nobody’s. We went by first names only.”

“What about the day she died? Can you remember the date?”

“I can get it from my diary.” It was the day after we’d seen Chloe .

“The city might have done an autopsy. There will be a death certificate in any case, which could be useful. Is there anything else that might help identify one of them?”

I told him about James’s bugeye prosthesis, and the address of the place we usually met. He made some notes while I tried to remember everything I could. It felt good to tell him. Benny had relieved me of a large burden. Maybe I would get into trouble with the FBI. I doubted that they would hold me down and poison me.

When I’d. finished, he zipped the notebook shut and didn’t say anything.

“You think I’ve been foolish.”

“Not really. Naive, yes… you and Benny, too. What this sounds like is a handful of penny-ante thugs, fanatics with, as you say, delusions of grandeur. That doesn’t make them less dangerous than a large organization, not to you and Benny. It makes them more dangerous. They don’t have to answer to anybody.”