Joe Haldeman: Worlds

I’ve begun a diary but it seems inadequate. It feels like so little time here, I hate to waste it keeping records. On the other hand, there’s so much input I can’t trust my memory.

Must run. Give my love to Daniel and keep some yourself, Quasimodo.

Daniel dear,

Just a note to let you know I’m getting along all right. Will write in more detail after I’ve sorted out my impressions.

It looks as if I might as well have vowed a year of chastity, for all the bright prospects here. Most of the Worlds people here are stuffy academics. (Except for two Devonites, and I’ve had my fill of that particular dish.) The New Yorkers are, well, creatures from another planet. What about you? Going out every night with that little peeler from the Light Head? (Don’t do it; that type is invariably frigid. Besides, she’d sag in high-gee.) Or did you think I never noticed the way your attention wavered when she was onstage?

New York City is all you said it would be, and more. All the little things you must have always taken for granted. Coins! My pockets are always full of them (doing wonders for my voluptuous form) and I can’t add them up fast enough to tell whether I’ve been given the right change. Those miserable little aluminum dimes. Half the stores won’t take them, and the other half shovels them at you in change.

But I’m loving it. Every day is a big vulgar epic. School starts tomorrow, and already I begrudge the time I’ll have to spend studying. Though it will save money—at the rate I’m going, the hundred thousand they gave me wouldn’t last four months (I could always get a good job on Broadway, with what Charlie taught me).

I hope your work is going well, and hope you’ll eventually come around to our way of thinking as to its importance. Though I suppose this experience is going to make me less of a separatist. Or maybe more—I had a terrifying experience on the subway (went to 195th by mistake), and suppose there will be other shake-ups in store soon.

Wish you could be here to show me around. Maybe soon. Let me know how your rotation schedule works out; I may not be in the U.S. if you come back too soon. But love will find a way, as the salmon said.

I have a picture of you by my bed, the flying one you said you liked. Another picture when I close my eyes, that might embarrass you, but which has its uses. Love:

Charlie,

I just wanted to write and remind you that I’m not in New New anymore. I’ve come to Earth for a year, mostly school.

The address on this ‘gram will be good all year, though I’ll be traveling around. Yes, I’m living in old New York, and a stranger place you’ve never seen! It’s something like Devon’s World in its decadence (look it up, lazybones), but it’s almost all buildings and streets. Do you remember the pictures we looked at? Well, they were taken on a “clear” day. You only get pictures like that after a hurricane.

I’ve seen the sun only once since I got here, and that was because a holiday weekend (Labor Day) closed most of the factories to the south of here. I think the sun was one of the things I liked best about Devon’s World, and I wish we had it here.

I hope you’re enjoying your line, and I’m sure they’re all nice people. Have you started your first baby yet? I might have one myself, once they find a way for the man to carry it around the first nine months.

Your friend,

4 Sept. 2084. First class day. Let me just set down my schedule for the quarter:

The “entertainment laboratory” is intriguing. Find out about it tomorrow. I guess well be going to shows and things. Interview whores on Broadway.

5 Sept. Last night a group of us went to a Vietnamese restaurant. Strangest food I’ve ever had: squid (aquatic mollusk) stuffed with ham and something else, with unidentifiable spices. Only the fish sauce was familiar. The ham didn’t taste anything like what John fixed for me last year, but it was all very tasty and hasn’t caused me any trouble, yet.

They almost never eat goat or rabbit here, or anywhere else in the country. Mostly fish, pork, chicken, and beef. Dolores Brodie (who’s been here for two quarters, from Mitsubishi) says it’s the beef in their diet that gives them that rancid smell. Guess I’ll stop noticing it about the time I start to smell that way myself. Will have to try some beef tomorrow. So dark and strong. Maybe they fix it better down here, though.

There are usually two “meatless” meals—they don’t consider fish to be meat—in the morning and midday. More starch than I’m used to. Have to watch the rice and hominy.

The entertainment seminar doesn’t look as if it will be all that entertaining. The professor (Marlie Gwinn) has that desperately serious attitude teachers get when they have to be defensive about the academic worth of their specialty. I’ll write her a somber paper comparing sex on Earth with zerogee sex. That’s entertainment. The laboratory might be fun, most of the time. Shows and old movies, demonstrations of dances and games, concerts, who knows what. Must remember not to be entertained . This is serious business.

I don’t know whether the dialect/creole course is going to be worth much. Mostly historical, except for a few isolated groups of antitechs and illiterates.

I’m the only Worlds citizen in the management seminar. Also the only woman. Have decided not to be Machiavellian about it (though that’s contrary to the spirit of everything I know about management); it would be easy to twist the discussion around to Worlds administration, since everybody seems curious about it, including the professor. But I’m here to learn about Earth models. Earth mistakes.

Don’t know much yet about the business and religion courses. They’re both big lectures, and the first day was mostly devoted to administrative details: goatshit about grades and attendance. Attendance! Are we children?

Interestingly, the American literature seminar is led by a German, Herr Doktor Schaumann. He’s a twinkly old fellow with a dry sense of humor. The way he almost-hides his intelligence reminds me a lot of John; it looks as if the course is going to be Socratic-aggressive. Simple questions full of fishhooks. Meat and drink for someone who grew up in the New New system, naturally.

No Worlds people in that seminar, either. But they’re an interesting hunch, predictably different from the business and management types. One of them, Benny Aarons, is a bushy poet who seems to be interested in me. I don’t know whether or not to encourage him.

Daniel wanted me to jump right in, try to live a normal social/sexual life. But it’s so damned complicated. I would really rather think about him than lay with someone else. And there’s so much else to do. Still, I liked the way that Benny boy looked at me when he thought I couldn’t see him. Maybe it’s because I’m Worlds, though rather than my fatal charm.

Mrs. Norris told me that Worlds women have a reputation for being easy sexual “conquests.” Strange attitude on the part of Americans (and some other countries, too), that sex is more competition, testing, than playing and loving. Women are prizes as much as partners. I don’t know yet whether to adapt to it or to be stubborn. Learn more if I adapt, I suppose, but I’ve never been much of a compromiser. Maybe look at it as being an actor instead. Learn all the responses that an American woman makes unconsciously.

I don’t know. It’s nice to be deferred to, even if the deference is only to your slippery plumbing, but there’s an ugly current underneath it. Rape. Ownership, selling yourself.