Among Others

from under all the library books and handed it over. He held it for a moment before putting it in his coat pocket. It looked very purple against his blue jumper. “Did you know, there’s a new Heinlein? The Number of the Beast . And he’s borrowed the idea of that education system, where you study all those different things and sign up and graduate when you have enough credits in everything, and you can keep taking courses forever if you want, but he doesn’t acknowledge Zelazny anywhere.”
    Wim laughed. “That’s what they really do in America,” he said.
    “Really?” My mouth was full, but I didn’t care. I felt embarrassed that I’d been so stupid, but also thrilled it was true. “They do? They really do? I want to go to university there!”
    “You can’t afford it. Well, maybe you can, but I never could. It costs thousands every term, every semester . You have to be rich. That’s the downside. You can get scholarships if you’re brilliant, but otherwise it’s all loans. Who’d give me a loan?”
    “Anyone,” I said. “Or if it’s real, maybe they have universities here that do it where you could go for free.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Imagine studying a little bit of everything you wanted to,” I said.
    We just sat there for a moment, imagining it. “How come you’re reading Heinlein?” Wim asked. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d like him. He’s such a fascist.”
    I sputtered. “A fascist? Heinlein? What are you talking about?”
    “His books are so authoritarian. Oh, his kids’ books are all right, but look at Starship Troopers .”
    “Well, look at The Moon is a Harsh Mistress ,” I countered. “That’s about a revolution against authority. Look at Citizen of the Galaxy . He’s not a fascist! He’s in favour of human dignity and taking care of yourself, and old-fashioned things like loyalty and duty, that’s not being a fascist!”
    Wim help up a hand. “Hold it,” he said. “I didn’t mean to stir up a hornet’s nest. I just wouldn’t have thought you’d be the type to like him, with liking Delany and Zelazny and Le Guin.”
    “I like them all,” I said, disappointed in him. “It isn’t exclusive, so far as I know.”
    “You’re really weird,” he said, putting down his coffee spoon and looking intently at me. “You care more about Heinlein than about the Ruthie thing.”
    “Well of course I do,” I said, and then felt awful. “What I mean is, whatever it was with Ruthie, nobody says you did anything to deliberately hurt her. You were both stupid, and she was even stupider, from the best I can tell. That matters in one way, but good grief, Wim, surely in a universal sense Robert A. Heinlein matters a lot more however you look at it.”
    “I suppose so,” he said. He laughed. I could see the woman behind the counter looking at us in a curious way. “I hadn’t thought about it exactly like that.”
    I laughed too. The woman behind the counter and what she thought didn’t matter at all. “From the distance of Alpha Centauri, from the perspective of posterity?”
    “It could have been posterity,” he said, more soberly. “If Ruthie had been pregnant.”
    “Did you really dump her because you thought she was?” I asked. I put the last bite of my bun into my mouth.
    “No! I dumped her because she told everyone before she told me, so it was all over everywhere and I heard it second hand. She walked into Boots and bought a pregnancy testing kit. She told her mother. She told her friends. She might as well have bought a megaphone and stood in the market square. And then she wasn’t even pregnant after all. I dumped her because of what you said, because she was stupid. Stupid . What a moron.” He shook his head. “And then the shunning started. I might have been poison. They seemed to think that because I’d slept with her I ought to marry her and tie myself to her forever even though there wasn’t even a baby.”
    “Why didn’t you tell people that?”
    “Tell who? The whole town? Janine? I don’t think so. They won’t listen to me anyway. They think they know something about me. They don’t.” His face was hard.
    “But you have a girlfriend now,” I said, encouragingly.
    He rolled his eyes. “Shirley? Actually I’ve dumped her too. She’s another moron, not quite as bad as Ruthie, but close. She’s working in the laundry at the school, and she’s quite happy to keep on doing that until she gets married. She was making