Worlds Enough and Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

my mind for a while. “Number one, I’m an idealist. I’ll accept that. Is there a number two?”
    He nodded but didn’t answer immediately. Then he said, “Have you ever wondered why you were appointed to the least significant Cabinet post?”
    “I’ve wondered.” He waited. “All right. To be completely honest, if less than humble, I’ve always believed the position was created for me. That Sandra pushed it through so that I could have some Cabinet-level experience without too much visibility. It does seem odd to have Entertainment at the Cabinet rather than the committee level.”
    “You’re ninetenths right. But it was my idea, not Sandra’s.”
    That was reasonably shocking. “That’s … interesting.”
    “Or unbelievable?” He scratched his head and grimaced. “I had planned to have this conversation with you when you were rather more experienced.”
    “More experienced,” I said. “I have four degrees, two husbands, and a wife—not counting the hundred or so lovers before I was married. I’ve been to Earth three times. I was there for the end of the world. I can juggle three objects of different sizes and play the clarinet, though not at the same time. I even have some political experience. Not enough, I take it.”
    “Are you through?”
    “No. You’ve condescended to me for a good sixteen years. Now I’m supposed to believe you have enough respect for my abilities to create a position that sets me up to take over your job. You’re right; it’s unbelievable. It’s fantastic. I could use some explanation.”
    “That’s number three.”
    “Does the order matter?”
    “Perhaps not.” He levered himself up to perch on the edge of the table, a slow balletic move in low gravity. “I will give you half of my reason. The irrational half.”
    “Go on.”
    “I had a daughter born about two years before you were born. She was very much like you. We argued for many years, but argument to me is a sport. I challenged her in the spirit that another man might play ball with his daughter, or chess, or go to movies.”
    “I can understand that.”
    “She never did. When she was eighteen she stopped speaking to me. When she was nineteen she emigrated to Tsiolkovski, of all places. Ostensibly because I was so contemptuous of their politics and economics. She left a note.”
    “And she died there during the war?”
    “She never got there. The ’81 shuttle disaster.”
    That was the year I was in his class. He’d never mentioned it. “My God. That’s terrible.”
    “I’m not sure that I loved her. I suspect that I’ve never loved anybody. Of course I feel partially responsible for her death.”
    I had to say the obvious. “You didn’t have anything to do with the airlock blowing out, Harry. She was killed by metal fatigue. By poor maintenance.”
    He nodded. “Partially responsible.” I hoisted myself up next to him on the edge of the table. He was a big man; my shoulder touched his bicep. I resisted the temptation to put my arm around him. We both stared at the opposite wall.
    “My doctor, who was an old friend, gave me pills for grief and advised me to continue business as usual. That was when you were in my economic theory seminar. Every time you opened your mouth, you reminded me of her. It became very hard to go to class.”
    “I’m sorry. You could have—”
    “Maybe you knew her? She called herself Margaret Haskel.”
    “Yes. We had a swimming class together the year before she … I didn’t know she was your daughter.”
    “She didn’t broadcast it.” In fact, we hardly ever spoke. We did look similar in face and freckles and red hair, but nobody in a nude swimming class would have mistaken us for one another. She had a perfect voluptuous figure. I could have held a frankfurter in front of me and passed for a boy. We didn’t seem to have much in common.
    I remembered the strange feeling when I saw her name on the list of casualties. It wasn’t sadness; I hadn’t