Worlds by Joe Haldeman Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    Maybe it would be well to start out with a poet. Isn’t that cold-blooded?
    6 Sept.    John called today, with Daniel on the extension, and we had a short but warm talk. They hadn’t gotten my letters yet—paradoxically, it’s cheaper to send letters to Florida for transmission, rather than beam them up from New York. They were probably still being sorted. Maybe they went to Rome. Crazy planet.
    Decided to put off beef until my period’s over. Feeling queasy, anyhow. Cramps no worse than usual but heavier flow than I’ve ever had before. Called the infirmary and they said it happens to everyone, whether they come from a low-gravity satellite or an Earth-normal one. Advised me to take iron, which I had already figured out. Maybe I don’t notice the cramps so much because the rest of me is such a battleground: feet, legs, back, shoulders. I wake up every morning in knots. Dolores (who lives down the hall)says it only took her a couple of weeks to get into shape, and Mitsubishi is also 0.8 gee. So I do my creaky calisthenics every morning and slump to the shower; hot as I can stand it for as long as I can stand it. The water isn’t metered, but it’s “grey” water, New York’s version of recycling. It’s not drinkable and it smells, slightly of humans and strongly of halogens and soap. No tubs. Who would want to take a bath in soup, anyhow?
    Reading Hawthorne and Poe for the seminar. Poe is easy and entertaining but Hawthorne (maybe a better stylist) is dense with religious mystery, hard to unravel. I’ll have an easier time of it when we get to the 20th century. (And well probably spend a lot of time there, since it’s Schaumann’s specialty.)
    The business, and religion courses are NBA (National Education Association) packages, as are most beginning graduate surveys. It sounds good in principle: a different lecturer, in holo, for each topic. The lecturer is one of the world’s authorities on the topic, chosen for teaching ability as well as expertise (they say it’s the best job insurance an academic can get, to be an NEA designee). There’s a live proctor—supposedly live, in the case of the religion class—who is supposed to use the last ten minutes to tie the lecture in with the general run of the course, and answer questions. You can also ask questions of the NEA network via the keyboards in the libraries and dormitories, but that costs money.
    Problem is that the only way you can stop a holo lecturer is to throw a brick at the cube (or at the proctor, maybe). It looked as if about a quarter of the business audience this morning was totally lost after the first ten minutes. It was a very rapid review of precolonial European mercantilism, and I suppose it would be very hard to follow if you had never had European history.
    I’d better read the Hawthorne over. Want to make a good showing for Dr. Schaumann (or is it for Bushy Benny?).
    7 Sept.    I went to a Worlds Club luncheon today, between dialects and entertainment, and it was interesting. Think I’ll join, if only to help keep my perspective. I didn’t get to really talk to anybody, since there was a speaker, welcoming all of us new people. How many were interestedbeyond