“Trouble with your parents? A man?”
“Partly. I guess that’s it.” No, actually, I’m afraid a group of wild-eyed revolutionaries is going to tie me down and force-feed me sleeping pills and booze. Then they’ll kill Benny. Then the FBI will throw both our bodies in jail. Then the United States will blast the Worlds out of the sky. So what’s new with you?
She rattled a bottle of pills that she had been holding out to me. I took it from her. “That tranquilizer you got will last a few hours. Take one of these before each meal, for the next month.”
“Klonexine?” I read.
“It’s a drug that inhibits the release of norepinephrine. Do you know what that is?”
“I was never strong in science.”
“It’s a hormone that, among other things, causes what happened to you, after a long period of stress. The pills will keep it from happening for a month. Do you fly?”
“No.”
“Good. You shouldn’t operate any vehicle, or participate in any dangerous sport, while you’re taking Klonexine. Your body won’t release adrenaline in case of danger. Otherwise, there are no side effects.”
“Afterwards, when I stop taking it, will it come back again?”
“Usually not. If it does, I’ll give you some more, schedule you for some—”
“But I’ll be in Europe. Yugoslavia, I think.”
She looked at me for a second and got another bottle out of a drawer. “Well, continue if you have to. But then we’ll schedule some therapy when you get back, if you’re still sick.
“Ultimately, you have to either adjust your personality so it will cope with the stress, or remove the sources of stress. Make up with your parents, ditch the boyfriend, whatever it is. If you take these pills for too long, a year or so, you’ll never be able to function without them.”
“I understand.”
“Is there someone waiting for you?”
“Yes.” She nodded and hurried out the door.
Benny and I went back to my room and lay together for a few hours, talking quietly. I think the episode upset him almost as much as it did me. Not as deeply, though. Would I ever be able to trust my mind and my body again?
In the afternoon we walked aimlessly, down to the Village and back again. Benny tried to convince me not to worry—not because the troubles weren’t worrisome, but because there was nothing to be gained by it—and he succeeded in some measure. We wound up in a flamenco club, watching the dancers and drinking brandy and coffee. That was probably a pharmaceutical mistake, since I’m not used to either, and I guess I was the most wide-awake drunk in the dorm that night But it did bury the blues. Benny and I talked until early morning, mainly about the tour.
When I woke up he was dressed and putting on his coat. He said he hadn’t wanted to wake me; he didn’t like good-byes. I hugged him close and whispered, “Route Five, Lancaster Mills, Perkins.” He squeezed my arm and left without a word.
30. 1,156 Leagues Under the Sea
The transatlantic tunnel is older than the U.S. system by some twenty years: slower, bumpier, noisier. It takes four hours to get from New York to Dover, and you learn not to let your tongue get between your teeth. I took the seat next to Jeff, but we gave up trying to talk after a few minutes. I was never so glad for hangover pills.
The train had a newspaper machine; I splurged on a complete (five-dollar) New York Times. Four hours was not enough time to read it all, even skipping sports.
Yesterday, while I was walking around in a numb haze with Benny, stocks worth ten billion dollars changed hands on Wall Street. Twenty people died in crimes of violence. The residents of Gramercy Park defeated a local referendum that would limit the size of personal pets. The Emir of Qatar and his entourage were scheduled to arrive on a state visit, coming by sea in a yacht that comprised half of the emirate’s navy. Last-minute Christmas shoppers “thronged” the city (it was crowded enough unthronged; the population of Manhattan tripled every workday with commuters from all over the country). The “Entertainment” section listed 480 Stars in 48 different categories, ranked according to Gallup’s daily poll. There was a birthday party for Major Tobias Klass, who at 142 was the oldest living veteran of the Vietnam war. Thirteen pages of referenda to be voted on in various localities. Advertisements covered exactly half of each page, and they were interesting, sometimes for their subtlety. They sponsored the only comic strips in the paper.
There was an interview with a broker who commuted daily between London and New York. She left her London residence at 8:45, caught the 9:00 tube at Dover, got into New York at 8:00, worked until 5:00, caught the 6:00 to Dover, which arrived at 3:00 a.m., allowing her five and a half solitary hours in London before starting over. She said she slept better on the tube than anywhere else, and it was cheaper than maintaining a separate residence in New York, appropriate to her social status. She couldn’t find a decent flat for forty thousand a month?
The “Space” section had no mention of the upcoming referendum in New New. Maybe that had been covered in yesterday’s edition. No editorials, either, which seemed strange. The Times was the most Worlds-aware paper in the city, maybe in the country. They did note that there was a face-to-face meeting between New New’s Coordinators and the Church Council of Devon’s World, the first such meeting in over a decade.
Every establishment on Broadway had a display ad in the “Classified” section. They were marvels of euphemism and double entendre. The individual “personals” were interesting, too: will psychoanalyze your cat, trade boxing gloves & equipment for books, seek male or female for Legendre triune, must be under twenty-five and broad-minded; secrets of the universe revealed, fifty dollars, satisfaction guaranteed; make big money on your phone/ stuffing envelopes/ in your spare time/and save your fellow men from themselves.
I had to admit that New York was a world more complex and exciting than all the Worlds rolled together. In the three months since I stepped out of Penn Station I hadn’t gone more than twenty kilometers in any direction, but I’d done more and had more done to me than in twenty-one years in New New. (Actually, it may have been more than twenty kilometers when Benny and I took the floater up above the city. It looked so peaceful, a medieval vision of the Heavenly City, with all of the graceful post-Worlds sky-scrapers seeming to float on the top of the cloud. What does it do to a person’s outlook to live or work surrounded by that scene?) It occurred to me that this whirlwind tour might actually be a relaxing change, if I kept the right attitude.
It didn’t start out relaxing. The Dover terminus was as big and crowded as Penn Station, with the same sort of determined mindless bustle, like a hive of frenzied insects each bent on his own mysterious assignment. We stood in a stationary knot around our luggage while the tour director went off to find somebody.
“Almost makes you homesick,” Jeff said. Depends on where home is. The population density of New New is higher than any Earth city’s, but you never see so many in one place. I’d gotten used to it in New York, and was ready for it in London, but wanted the rest of England to be slow-paced and, well, dignified.
The director came back and led us down a long slide-walk to the Bank of England, where we made credit arrangements and were issued Temporary Alien blinker cards. At least that was a touch of home; Britain had advanced beyond currency and coins.
Since our passports and luggage had been stamped and inspected aboard the train, we were free to be herded away. We went up three long escalators and stepped out into the night. (It was two in the afternoon, New York time; seven here.) It was very still, not too cold, and a light snow was falling. We filed down a dry raised sidewalk to where a bus, omnibus, was waiting. It was an eight-wheeled double-deck vehicle with a disconcerting number of dents, but brightly polished.