All we have to do is rake the stuff up and haul it to the mass drivers. There’s more than ten thousand tonnes of it, easily accessible.
What this means is that we can scale up our CC decomposition factories a thousandfold, and have them running smoothly long before Deucalion comes in.
It doesn’t mean independence from Earth; ten thousand tonnes holds about 250 tonnes of carbon and 1300 tonnes of water, and only about thirty tonnes of nitrogen. (Some people think there might be many similar gravel fields, though.) The main thing is that we’ll be able to run the factories at the same rate of materials flow as we’ll need when we start dismantling the asteroid.
It is exciting, even for an old mudballer like me. Everybody in New New is galvanized, understandably. Lots of smiles and spontaneous laughter. You should have seen the chaos in the Light Head the day they made the announcement. I had to take my Guinness and go home (thanks for telling me about the River Liffey; it makes my stout taste flatter).
I’m glad you decided to drop that language course. The only person around here who has any dialect, to my ear, is Dan, and you seem to understand him pretty well. Are you going to replace it with anything, or just take a lighter load?
Well, tomorrow we go out and vote. Big surprise: it looks as if I’ll be on the Privy Council, as Representative-at-large from External Systems. As you probably know, there’s a technicality that requires two candidates for Rep-at-large. Eugene Knight has agreed to be my “stalking horse.” The sole item in his platform is that he proposes to replace all the air in New New with hydrogen cyanide, as an experiment in terminal ecology. Well, he gets my vote.
Seriously, the Privy Council isn’t too bad, but I’m already on the Import-Export Board, so there’s two days a week out the lock. I almost hope that Goodman doesn’t win Coordinator-elect. He wants me to be in his cabinet. When would I ever get any work done?
You’ve been gone over a month and Dan tells me you haven’t picked up any of those degenerate Earth boys yet (see, no secrets). What’s wrong with our little butterfly? Gravity got your hormones?
Privately, listen to Uncle Ogelby, I think it would help Dan’s peace of mind if you told him you were getting your ashes hauled (bet you’ve never heard that one), even if you aren’t. Although I doubt that he’s said anything to you, I know he’s afraid you’re going to work yourself into a pressure situation and suddenly fall for some groundhog because he presents a metaphorical shoulder at the right time. Don’t tell me you’ve never done it before, daughter. Remember the parade that followed Charlie?
Maybe I’m talking out of turn, but I don’t think so. Dan treats you too gently. As a lover should, I suppose.
I better transmit this before I lose my nerve. Feel free to write back that my advising you about sex is like you advising me about crystalline lamination. Love—
John
16. Seduction of the Innocent
30 Sept. 84
Daniel dear,
I know it must have been an ugly shock to you, getting my letter about the rape right after sending your letter exhorting me to go out and butterfly. I also know you’ve tried to call me at least twice. Forgive me for being “out.” I never was any good on the phone, even for something simple.
I didn’t keep a copy of my letter, but I’m afraid it was a little hysterical. Subsequent therapy and some kind friends calmed me down.
Let me save you the cost of a call and answer the obvious questions. One: Yes, I’m all right physically. He gave me a severe beating, but the hospitals here have a lot of experience with that sort of thing. Two: No, he didn’t make any sexual contact with me, unless you count stabbing me in the butt. He didn’t have time, even though I was pretty well unconscious; a half-dozen students grabbed him and kicked him to a pizza. He died. I’m glad. Three: Yes, I do feel uncomfortable and ambiguous about men and especially about sex. Or is it the other way around. Anyhow, Four: Yes, I’m going to take your advice. I will write you about it honestly, as we agreed.
Tell Uncle Ogelby that crystalline lamination obviously causes senility, and that I can haul my own ashes in a pinch. Much love—
O’Hara
2 Oct. 84
Daniel dear,
I didn’t have to give too much thought to deciding who my first earthman would be. There are a few who have expressed interest (including one woman), but none of them appeals. I set my sights on a poet whom I shall call Byron.
Byron and I have a class together, study together frequently, and have gone out occasionally, to eat or drink or sightsee (he’s a native New Yorker and enjoys playing Native Guide). He spent a lot of time with me while I was in the hospital, chatting and playing cards. He is gentle, intense, political, intellectual, and bushy. He has a sense of humor that John would describe as wonky. In all the time we’ve spent together, he’s never once made an advance, never mentioned any girlfriends or boyfriends, and seems about as close as you could get to being aggressively non-sexual. Now I know why.
I asked him over last night to study. Dressed for action and plied him with wine. For a couple of hours he deflected all of my hints, so I finally dropped subtlety and asked him right out to spend the night, sleep with me, do the beast with two backs.
By then he wasn’t surprised, of course, but he seemed almost resigned, then embarrassed—he blushed—and he stammered out an explanation, saying he’d never talked to anybody about it.
He’s an old man of 25, but had had a total of only two (consummated) sexual experiences. One with a woman, which was devastating, and one with a man, which was little short of rape. His few subsequent forays into the sexual arena were absolute functional failures, and he had been celibate for the past four years.
I have to admit I felt out of my depth. I hadn’t expected to be the therapist in this little encounter. I was ashamed with myself at having pushed him into sharing the painful confidence, and for once in my bigmouth life I was at a loss for words.
He rescued me with a light joke, though, and wryly volunteered his services, so long as I would agree to expect absolutely nothing. We talked a long time about it, I revealing my past in all its sordid (by Earth standards) variety, and then spent a sweaty couple of hours.
As you might imagine, it wasn’t exactly a night of a thousand delights, since Byron has all the self-control of a bunny in heat, and knows absolutely nothing about a woman’s body, and it wasn’t the time or place to begin teaching him. But I know a thing or two thousand about men (and am modest besides) and was able to surprise him with his own recuperative powers. I didn’t fake any response myself, which I felt would be too manipulative, and couldn’t fantasize myself into anything, because I was too worried about him.
(Which from the point of view of my own needs was probably the best thing that could have happened. I never once thought about the proximate motivation for seducing the poor boy, and I think managed to solve my own problem, obliquely, by addressing his. Isn’t that a terrible cli-ch6? Things become banal by being true, though.)
Anyhow, when I woke up this morning he had his scratchy beard on my breast, and was wearing a childlike smile in his sleep. I left him a note and had an amphetamine breakfast, to get me through the morning classes (the class we have together meets at 9:00 a.m. on Mondays, but I decided to let him sleep through it).
So I have come to terms with it. The rape was not at all a sexual act, and wouldn’t have been even if he had entered me. It was violence, pure and simple. Not simple. We found that the man had killed and raped—in that order—five women in the past, and what he did to them was so brutal that I can’t bring myself to put it down on paper. But it doesn’t have anything to do with Byron (had to erase his real name there), except that his homosexual experience was spoiled by cruelty, and it has even less to do with you.