A World Between (11 page)

“I guess maybe l’m just trying to figure you out,” Royce said, turning to face Falkenstein. “Carlotta really dislikes you, you know.”

Falkenstein smiled ruefully. “I’m not a machine,” he said. “I can sense that as easily as the next man. And you, Royce ... ?”

“I don’t know enough about you to decide. In fact, when you come right down to it, I don’t know a damn thing about you at all.”

Falkenstein walked over to the railing beside him. “Well, that’s one of the differences between men and women, isn’t it?” he said.

“Is it?” Royce asked. What in hell was this jocko talking about now?

“Carlotta has no more data than you do,” Falkenstein said. “Yet she’s frozen into an emotional stance while you reserve judgment. Call it a differential attitude toward logical uncertainty.”

Roger laughed. “I’m beginning to see why the Femocrats call you people faschochauvinist Fausts,” he said.

Falkenstein turned to face the sea, but his eyes gazed upwards at the stars. “Half-guilty,” he said. “We’re proud to identify ourselves with Faust. What was the man after, after all? Knowledge. Mastery of the universe. Transcen-dance of the naturally evolved order. The supremacy of man over matter, mind over unreason. Look up there, Royce. It goes on and on forever in space and time, and here we are, confined to a handful of stars, a few paltry years, a rulebook of physical parameters written without our consent and hardly for our benefit. Faust wasn’t satisfied with that, and neither are we. Look up there and think about it, Royce, and then try to tell me that Faust was no hero.”

Royce looked up into the interstellar abyss for a long moment, time without end, stars without number, worlds that had not yet felt the tread of man stretching away to infinity. This, he felt, was real, this was from the heart.

Falkenstein had taken him to the mountaintop of his own vision and tried to show him the view. Whether he had entirely succeeded or not, he had at least made the effort. Still .. .

Royce lowered his eyes from the brilliant hardness of the sky to the softly rolling sea, where boomerbirds slept peacefully on the waves awaiting the sunrise’s call to the air, where birds, fish, reptiles, and yes, men, might trust themselves to the embrace of a world they called home.

“And are you willing to sell your soul for it, too, Roger?” he asked.

Falkenstein laughed. “That part of the story is just the backbrain speaking,” he said. “Devils and demons, and gods and commandments, and things men were not meant to know. We’ve evolved past that, Royce. Now we know that all there is is ourselves, an empty infinity, and what we choose to make of both.”

He lowered his gaze, smiled at Royce, and now he seemed like some kind of older brother, a man that one day might be his friend. “You know, one of our people once wrote a play about Faust, and the tape is still popular. Faust as hero, with no heaven, no hell, no God, and no Mephistopheles. Perhaps we might run it on one of your net channels. It would explain us to your people better than a lot of dry rhetoric, and if nothing else, it’d be entertaining.”

“Why not?” Royce said. “I’d like to see it myself.” He laughed. “Do you have an apologia for your fascho-chauvinism on tape too?”

Falkenstein grinned and wagged a mocking finger at Royce. “I pled
half-guilty,
if you remember,” he said. “Men and women have absolute equality of opportunity in our culture—legally, economically, educationally, professionally. We simply allow the natural evolutionary divergences to shape our psychosexual balance instead of bending reality to conform to some ideological concept of mental asexuality.”

“But isn’t it true that few of your women are Institute graduates?”

Falkenstein shrugged. “True,” he said. “I suppose a Femocrat would say that that proves we’re a male chauvinist society. Actually, all it proves is that there
are
in fact characteristic mental divergences between men and women.”

“But your own wife is an Institute graduate, isn’t she?” Falkenstein nodded. “We’re lucky enough to have a personal relationship that transcends the norms of our culture. Like you and Carlotta, I think.”

“Like us?”

“Maria and I are equals. That’s rare in our culture. You and Carlotta are equals, and that’s rare in yours.”

“It is?”

“Isn’t it? Don’t most Pacifican men have relationships, frequently transient, with older, more powerful women?” “Well yes,” Royce said uncertainly. “But....ut a real bucko is master in the bedroom, where it counts... and we’re not exactly second-class citizens, you know. Many men wield power on Pacifica. The sexes are truly equal here.” But somehow, Falkenstein was making him feel defensive, a bit less the real bucko.

“A re
they?” Falkenstein said. “Then why is Carlotta reacting so defensively to us?”

Royce shrugged. “Go figure why a woman—” He caught himself short. Falkenstein grinned at him sardonically.

“Yes, indeed,” Falkenstein said. “They
do
tend to act more on their emotional reactions than we do, don’t they, bucko? Ideology aside, that’s a scientifically verifiable fact. And in this case, from a purely female viewpoint, perhaps her instincts are right.”

“They are?”

“She senses that our cultures are alien to each other,” Falkenstein said. “Maybe the woman behind the politician feels threatened by a society where men... well, lead by a process of natural selection. Maybe she fears that Pacifican men will become more....hall we say, assertive, if they have too much contact with us. Why else would she become so upset at Lauren’s simple invitation? Do you really think that the fact that the invitation came from a
male
subculture had nothing to do with it? All this on a subconscious level, of course...”

“Carlotta’s not like that,” Royce insisted somewhat wanly. Then, more positively: “And I’m no woman’s pet bumbler, either!”

Falkenstein clapped his arm around Royce’s shoulder.

“Of course not,” he said. “You’re the Minister of Media, aren’t you? The second most powerful human on Pacifica. The fact that Carlotta is the first... well, that’s just a happy coincidence, isn’t it? Some day, no doubt,
yoxill
be Chairman, eh?”

Royce eyed Falkenstein narrowly. “Just what are you trying to do to me, Roger?” he said Falkenstein shrugged “Just bucko talk,” he said. “And as a fellow bucko, I’d just like you to be aware of things you probably know already. In case you should become puzzled by certain things your woman may do. They
are
a mystery to us, aren’t they? And no matter what the psychosexual nature of the culture, there are times when a woman needs... guidance from her man, right?”

“Are you trying to drive something between Carlotta and me?” Royce asked testily.

“Far from it, Royce,” Falkenstein said. “l’m merely pointing out that there are times when a man must make allowances. You were right to break up that argument between Lauren and Carlotta, for instance, but if you had understood what we’ve just talked about, perhaps you might have been more gentle about it.”

Royce nodded. “I suppose you have a point,” he said. Falkenstein smiled. “Applied Transcendental Science,” he said. “But I’d best be going now, or my wife may start feeling neglected. Perhaps we can talk again later on.”

“l’m sure we will,” Royce said. And he stood there for a long time after Falkenstein left, trying to sort out his feelings. He had never met a man quite like Roger Falkenstein before. Alien, yet close to some homeland he could not quite define. Cool, and sometimes obviously manipulative, yet also, he sensed, a man of great depth and authentic feeling. A bucko, and yet not a bucko. Devious, yet open in some way that Pacifican men were not. Repellent in some ways, and yet I feel drawn to him, Royce thought. Does he misunderstand women entirely, or does he possess some masculine wisdom that we buckos have lost?

A bright point of light moved among the stars: the Arkology
Heisenberg
, the hand of man sweeping across the darkness. Only one thing was certain: Falkenstein, with his Faustian visions and his brotherly advice, represented the forces of change, a new constellatipn in the Pacifican sky.

And something within Royce responded with eagerness to the radiance of that new star.

Capped by its gleaming expanse of northern ice, the green and brown sweep of the Columbian continent dwindled rapidly in the viewport as the shuttle arced upward toward its rendezvous with the
Heisenberg
. The planet swiftly became a globe of unreal loveliness against the black background of space, jewellike, limpid, and deceptively serene. Beside Maria, Roger relaxed in his seat, a thin smile of self-satisfied contentment lighting up his features with his own cool sort of joy.

But Maria Falkenstein was troubled, and she could not quite project the reason why. The scenario was well into phase two now, and rolling along smoothly. Reality had followed the projections with a satisfying nominality. Time had been bought, the foothold in the Cords had been secured, and even the invoking of the Pacifican media access laws had been done with that casual smoothness that was Roger at his best.

He had waited until after breakfast—in fact, until they were about to board the hover back to Gotham. The media people had departed, and only Carlotta Madigan, Royce Lindblad, and Lauren Golding were there on the dock to see them off in the bright morning sunlight.

“By the way,” Roger had said to Lindblad, “do I make the arrangements with you to broadcast that Faust tape?”

“Unless you want to sell it to a free market channel,” Lindblad said.

“Oh, no,” Roger said smoothly. “I’d rather have it be a gift from our people to yours. In fact, I think the best thing would be for us to purchase a full-time channel for, oh, say three months. We have many things we’d like to show your people, and we’d feel better contributing them freely rather than turning a profit.”

Lindblad looked only mildly surprised. “Well ... ah, that
would
be the province of the Ministry of Media...” he muttered.

But Carlotta Madigan flushed angrily.
"
What is this?” she snapped. “We haven’t negotiated anything like that!”

Roger looked at her mildly. “Perhaps we’ve misunderstood your laws?” he said. “I was under the impression that your Constitution specifically guaranteed the right of

anyone
to purchase time on your media net. I didn’t think it was a political matter. Am I mistaken?”

Lindblad and Madigan looked at each other. Something in Lindblad’s eyes seemed to say, “I told you so.” Had he projected just this contingency?

“I think you’ve been less than candid with us, Dr. Falkenstein,” Madigan said in clearly hostile tones.

“How so?” Roger answered with a total show of innocence.

“When we agreed to let you remain in orbit pending your decision, we hardly anticipated that you’d use the time to pump propaganda into the net! If we had known—” “Well
I
hardly anticipated that you would violate your own Constitution by denying us media access when I agreed to give your own terms the most careful consideration,” Roger said evenly.

“Of all the —”

“It
is
his right under the Constitution, Carlotta,” Lindblad said.

Madigan whirled on him angrily. “Are you
defending
this tacky little maneuver, Royce?” she asked.

“I’m not defending anything,” Lindblad said testily. “I’m just pointing out that we have no legal choice.” He shrugged, as if to say, “I told you this would happen.”

“Oh, don’t we?"
Madigan said. “We can rescind your permission to remain in orbit if you persist in using our own Constitution against us, Dr. Falkenstein.”

“Not without a formal vote of Parliament,” Golding said. “Not after we announced it on the net.”

“You think I wouldn’t risk a vote of confidence on this, Lauren?”

“On
what?”
Golding said. “On withdrawing permission we’ve already granted as a weapon to circumvent the media access laws because
you’re
afraid to let these people make their case?”

Madigan turned to Lindblad, as if seeking guidance, reassurance for her own position—much as Roger often turns to me, Maria Falkenstein thought, sympathizing both with Lindblad’s personally awkward position and Madi-gan’s sense of frustration.

Lindblad glanced quizzically at Roger before he spoke. “It’s a lost cause, Carlotta,” he said. “If we’ve really been snockered into this, it’s a job well done.”

Madigan seemed to choke back an angry reply. She turned to Roger and saluted him ironically. “Congratulations, Dr. Falkenstein,” she said. “As one political animal to another.”

“I assure you there was no trickery involved,” Roger lied ingenuously. “I’m sorry if this little misunderstanding has created that impression.”

“Sure you are,” Madigan said. Then Roger shook hands with the three of them. Golding had shaken his hand enthusiastically, Lindblad with more reserve, but still without apparent rancor. But Madigan had touched his flesh gingerly, as if fearing the transmission of some loathsome disease.

And so we have had our way with the political leadership of Pacifica, Maria Falkenstein thought. We’ve manipulated their laws, their psychosexual structure, their homosexual subculture, all according to a well-layed-out scenario prepared by teams of experts with the aid of the Arkmind. What chance did they really have against us? And it’s only just beginning. We’ll give these people an Institute of Transcendental Science, and the question of whether they want it or not won’t even enter the equation.

It’s necessary that we do this, Maria thought, as the planet dwindled to an abstraction in the viewport. I really do believe that. It’s necessary, and it serves their own higher good. When that Femocrat mission headed for this planet, Pacifican independence and self-determination became an illusion.

Yet Maria had seen something on Pacifica that clouded her certainty with empathic confusion. She had seen a woman in command and a man who served her and yet in some elusive way was her equal. It was, in a somewhat distorted way, the mirror image of her relationship with Roger. Roger, as much as any man could, treated her as an independent being and an intellectual equal. True, he commanded, but he commanded the men of the
Heisenberg,
too. In that way, she found herself emotionally identifying with Royce Lindblad, consort of the Pacifican Chairman.