A World Between (21 page)

Beth Louise, the Femocrat who had started this little group, grimaced ironically. “If they don’t laugh
with
us, they have to face the fact that we’re laughing at
them,"
she said, “And they can’t admit that. Typical breed— male defensive reaction.”

“Yeah,” said Olivia, the other member of the group who tended to dominate conversation. “Even down to hedging it with that old garbage about Femocrats—meaning women —not having a sense of humor.”

“Seems to me it’s the
buckos
who’ve lost their sense of humor these days,” Suji blurted. “They’ve gotten so
serious
since these Transcendental Scientists began polluting the net.” Let me crack a joke about “Soldiers of Midnight” or laugh at “Space Opera,” and Ron freezes like the damned icecap, she thought. And the way he watches those Transcendental Science documentaries so religiously. If I want to get off with him while one of them is on, he bites my head off.

“Men have always been the humorless half of the species,” Beth Louise said. “How else could they look at ten thousand years of faschochauvinist history with a straight face?”

“What’s that old saying, ‘A stiff wong knows no conscience’? Well, come to think of it, it has no sense of humor either.”

“Yeah. Did you ever
laugh
while you were getting it off with some bucko?”

“Oh, shit! Instant wong-wilt!”

Suji joined in the general laughter, getting more into the spirit of things. Maybe there was something going on here, after all. Buckos did seem to be off on their own crazy vector these days, thanks to the un-Pacifican garbage that was being pumped into their heads by those creeps off the
Heisenberg
. Their wongs were still seeking the same familiar berths, but they seemed to be going a little mano in the head. Maybe it
is
time we women got together and straightened this mess out, Suji thought. Maybe there’s something to this Sisterhood stuff, after all.

A full shot on a very stylized laboratory. Bubbling beakers, sparking apparatus, ominous flashing lights in the background. In the foreground, a line of four men dressed as Transcendental Scientists with cavernous vampire makeup around the eyes are dancing to syncopated music. Behind them and to the right, three grotesque figures mimic their steps in a hideous robotized parody: a Frankenstein monster, a rotting male corpse, a Trilby in a diaphanous white gown with dead looking eyes. All three are wired into a gothic control console emitting intermittent sparks.

Transcendental Science chorus (singing horribly):

“Rooty-too-toot “Rooty-too-toot

We
are the boys from the
Institute
. .

Cut to a closeup on a woman who looks superficially very much like Carlotta Madigan, the towers and bridges of Gotham in the background.

Woman: “Very funny, right? No? You say what an Institute of Transcendental Science will do to Pacifica is no fit subject for humor? You say what the boys from the Institute have
already
done takes the fun out of our little musical comedy? You say your bucko’s acting strangely? You say he’s hiding leather underwear under the bed and manacles in the closet? You say he’s starting to talk like Faust, masturbate with model spaceships, and ordering you to vote for an Institute of Transcendental Science?”

The woman’s face becomes knowing, conspiratorial. She winks at the camera. “Well boys will be boys, and they love their new toys. It’s happened before, on many planets. Once the boys from the Institute set up their mad doctor labs, whole
armies
of good buckos find themselves marching off into the never-never land of superscience fiction pan-piped by their peters. But of course it can’t happen here. Or can it, sisters? Maybe it’d be wise to plug into some of those new tapes Femocracy has donated to the accessbanks and find out what Faustian faschochauvinism is going to mean to
you
. .

Roger Falkenstein picked idly at his wahfish almondine, looking across the table at Royce Lindblad, who was sneaking a glance around the crowded restaurant, watching the people who in their turn were sneaking glances at
them
. Could it be that this was Lindblad’s subtle way of making a public statement? Having a meeting had been Falken-stein’s idea, but lunch together in a public restaurant had been Lindblad’s suggestion. Falkenstein decided to venture a probe.

“You’re not afraid to be seen publicly with me, Royce?” “Afraid of what?” Lindblad said cautiously.

The Sealane was a small restaurant fronting on a small downtown side street and specializing in Pacifican seafood prepared in various ancient Terran modes. There were sidewalk tables, but Lindblad had chosen a booth at the rear of the main dining room, more or less out of sight of the lunch-hour crowds on the street. Happenstance, or a calculated compromise?

“Afraid of the conclusions that might be drawn...alkenstein said. “Afraid of Carlotta’s reaction...” Lindblad flushed. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let a simple lunch be politicized,” he said. “By you or Carlotta or the effing Femocrats or anyone else. This idiotic polarization has gone far enough, and if I’m making any statement, that’s it.”

Falkenstein nodded. “If I’d thought our presence would cause the Femocrats to go this far, I’d have withdrawn from Pacifica,” he lied.

Actually, of course, the current situation had been projected long ago, and the Arkmind predicted a favorable outcome. By syncing their psychosexual propaganda into opposition to the Institute, the Femocrats had made a ghastly mistake, for they had layed themselves wide open to the converse proposition—a vote
against
the Institute was a vote
for
Femocracy, female dominance, and the psychic castration of the Pacifican bucko.

Theoretically, that would split the planet right down the middle and make any vote too close to call, but the Femocrats had inevitably ignored the facts that most Pacifican women were heterosexual and that the buckos ruled the bedroom as dominant sex-objects. In the crunch, enough women would vote in favor of their own buckos’ manhood to provide the necessary swing vote.

Which was why Falkenstein had now moved his own base of operations from the Cords, where the mission had been successfully completed, to Gotham, where the critical lobbying would be taking place in the next two weeks. Beginning today with the pivotal Minister of Media, who now sat there studying him skeptically.

“You know something Roger,” Lindblad finally said without any real hostility, “I think you’re full of jelly-belly oil. Nothing is about to make you give up, especially when the Femocrats have played right into your hand.”

Falkenstein found himself laughing unguardedly. Lindblad had a way of suddenly reminding him that despite his surface appearance of arrested adolescence, he wasn’t the second most important political figure on the planet simply because he was the lover of Carlotta Madigan. Indeed, Madigan might be the planetary Chairman at least in part because her lover was Royce Lindblad.

“Since we understand each other, Royce, perhaps we can work together on this,” Falkenstein said. “Surely you share my distaste for what the Femocrats are doing...”

Lindblad shrugged. “I won’t try to con you about that,” he said. “What we’ve got now is the Pink and Blue War at its most loathsome.”

“Well, wouldn’t you like to get rid of the Femocrats before any permanent damage is done? You see how these people work. By the time their ship is repaired, they’ll have a sufficient political base among your women to force Parliament to vote on any move to expel them, a vote that would be a showdown between men and women. Their permanent presence here will soon be a fait accompli.
⁰

Lindblad sighed. “All right, Roger,” he said. “What are you really getting at?”

“Force such a vote now, before it’s too late,” Falken-stein said. “Introduce a resolution yourself giving the Femocrats thirty days to leave Pacifica, withdrawing their media access, and confining them to their ship in the meantime. Every man on the planet will surely support you. And at this point, surely enough buckos can carry their women’s votes to push it through, if it’s strictly a vote against Femocrat meddling.”

“Carlotta would never agree...” Lindblad said. “Hasn’t it occured to you that you could ride to the Chairmanship
yourself
on such an issue if she didn’t?” Lindblad drummed his fingers on the table. He’s tempted, Falkenstein thought. He’s really tempted. He held his breath as Lindblad pondered the proposition in silence.

“No good, Roger,” Lindblad finally said, “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re trying to do. Maybe I should resent it more than I do, but...

“Good lord, Royce!” Falkenstein snapped. “Is your loyalty to the woman
that
absolute?”

Lindblad flushed. He frowned. He shrugged. “Just maybe it is,” he said. “But on this, it’s not really being tested. My position would be the same as hers for pragmatic political reasons. If Carlotta and I split publicly on this, it would tear the planet apart. And we have no legal basis for withdrawing the Femocrats’ media access or confining them to their ship. No, it can’t be done unless...”

"Unless
....
?”

Lindblad smiled sardonically at Falkenstein. “Unless it’s a resolution to kick both you and the Femocrats off the planet,” he said.

Falkenstein paled. “You wouldn’t... you couldn’t...” Lindblad laughed wickedly. “Just playing with you, Roger,” he said. “That’d be an even bigger mess. You’d have men voting to kick you out just to get rid of the Femocrats, and women voting to kick out the Femocrats just to get rid of you. People couldn’t figure out what they were voting for or against. Parliament wouldn’t vote it up
or
down; they’d table it forever. It’d be the worst of both possible worlds.”

“Then why did you ever bring it up?” Falkenstein said shakily. “Just to watch me squirm?”

Lindblad gazed at him with an amused crooked little smile. “Call it a quid pro quo,” he said. “You people have a lot to teach us about' science and technology, and I admit that I want to learn...” He laughed. “But when it comes to the politics of democracy, Roger, let alone its philosophical essence, we’re the adults and you’re the children. Haven’t you ever thought about what you have to learn from
us?"

Lindblad laughed at Falkenstein’s bemusement. He called for the waiter with what seemed like a deliberately imperious wave of his hand. “Perhaps you’d care to discuss it over dessert,” he said.

Falkenstein sighed inwardly. I don’t think I really understand this man, he thought. I wonder if I ever will. Strange geography, a totally nonmammalian ecology, even the totally homosexual culture of the Cords had impinged upon Falkenstein’s consciousness only as so much relevant data. Only now, sitting in an ordinary restaurant with the Pacifican he had thought he had gotten closest to, did he finally feel like a stranger in an alien world. Strangest of all, he couldn’t quite figure out why.

“....nd now, back to Talk with the Falkensteins’...

A medium shot on Roger and Maria Falkenstein, dressed in white, outlined sharply against a black backdrop blazing with stars. A woman’s face, tense and strident-looking, appears in the upper right quadrant of the screen.

Woman (belligerently): “My name is Laura Winter-green, I’m a mining tech in Thule, and I want to know why you faschochauvinist bug-brains are pumping puke like ‘Soldiers of Midnight’ into the net. Seems to me the men on this planet are narcisstic enough without meddling off-worlders filling their adolescent minds with—”

Falkenstein (smiling at Maria): “Have I stopped beating you yet, my dear?”

Maria (with a false laugh, and looking rather uncom-146

fortable): “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Roger.”

Woman (angrily): “Cut the patter, Jocko, the sisters of this planet are getting a little sick of it! Why don’t you get off Pacifica if you’ve got such a whanger on for the romance of interstellar space?”

Falkenstein: “Would it be safe to assume that you’re a Femocrat sympathizer, Laura?”

Woman: “Would it be safe to assume that you’re a faschochauvinist Faust,
Roger?
You can wager your wong I’m a Femocrat sympathizer, bucko!”

Falkenstein (archly): “For a Femocrat sympathizer, you seem to have a peculiar obsession with the male genital organ.”

Woman (stammering): “Maybe... maybe that’s because you all think with your wongs!”

Falkenstein (mugging at the camera): “And as we all know, two wongs make a right!” He laughs heartily as an earnest middle-aged man’s face replaces the woman’s face in the upper right quadrant.

Man: “l’m Harry Ginzer, and I don’t think your last call was so effing funnv, Dr. Falkenstein. It’s an all-too-typical example of the kind of pathology Femocracy is creating on this planet, and as a scientist, you should take it more seriously.”

Falkenstein (deprecatingly): “Come, come, Harry, a man should have a sense of humor about such people, a reasonably thick skin.”

Man: “Easy for an off-worlder like you to say; those creatures aren’t turning
your
women into crazed ball-cutters. But a Pacifican bucko would have to have a skin like a godzilla to just laugh it off with a bad pun like that.”

Falkenstein: “Perhaps you’re right... but it’s really none of
our
business...”

Man: “Oh isn’t it? You’ve promised this planet an Institute of Transcendental Science, and a lot of us take that promise very seriously. And now these Femocrats come along and try to use the women of Pacifica to take it away from us. Don’t you have any sense of responsibility? Don’t you feel any solidarity for the Pacificans who believe in you?”

Falkenstein (pondering): “I never thought of it that way before...”

Maria (somewhat woodenly): “He’s right, Roger. As a woman, I can better see how the Femocrats are trying to poison female minds here, and as a Transcendental Scientist, I can see that if they succeed, it will cost this planet its Institute.”

Man: “Listen to your wife, Dr. Falkenstein. Femocracy is the enemy of every man and woman who wants to see this planet join the forefront of human evolution.” Falkenstein: “Thank you very much for your thought-provoking comments. Perhaps our next callers will have more to say on this topic...