A World Between (24 page)

A closeup of a blond young woman, with a busy Gotham street in the background.

Woman: “....ever seen anything like it. Men screaming like animals for something they call
science?
Falkenstein’s got them thinking with their wongs...”

A closeup of an older gray-haired woman sitting behind a desk.

Woman (somberly): “There’s never been anything like this on Pacifica before. Men and women have always gotten along in a civilized manner here until the
Heisenberg
showed up. I’ve never placed much credence in Femo-cratic theories before, but after seeing what Transcendental Science has provoked in our men in a few short weeks, I’m beginning to wonder whether there might not be something to the notion of an inherent male urge to dominance through violence...

Closeup on a grimy, plain-looking woman standing by some gray machinery.

Woman: “It’s getting hard to work with the buckos now. They get surly when they’re given directives by female supervisors. TTiey tend to stick to themselves. They use the slightest excuse to launch into tirades against Femocracy. They’re not behaving normally. It’s time the government put a stop to this...

Closeup of a ravishing black-haired woman leaning against the side of a sailboat.

Woman: “It’s thoroughly ridiculous. I can’t get off with a bucko anymore without getting into some insane political argument. I’m beginning to wish I
was
lesbo so I could get off with someone who would treat me like a human being. Why is Carlotta Madigan stalling? Why don’t we vote to kick these faschochauvinist troublemakers off the planet already?”

A medium shot on Cynda Elizabeth. She shrugs.

Cynda Elizabeth: “We’re not here to tell the sisters of this planet what to do. We’re here by fortunate accident, and we wouldn’t have even gotten involved if we hadn’t seen the vicious hand of off-world faschochauvinism at work. But as long as this alien presence remains to bring out the atavistic macho beast that lives in even the most civilized man, as long as Transcendental Science manipulates this faschochauvinist monster for its own ends, we’ll stay on Pacifica to fight it, as long as the women of this planet will allow!”

Carlotta Madigan rolled away from Royce and lay there by his side in the darkened Lorien bedroom, breathing raggedly, filmed with sweat, her loins aching from the sorriest bout of lovemaking she had ever experienced with him.

Her head pounded with frustration and her mind swam with loathsome images. Royce puffing and groaning atop her like some fucking machine. Ugly shouting men’s faces. Her legs clamped like pincers around his waist as she ground her pelvis against him, trying to get herself off and to hell with everything else, Carla Winkler calling her a traitor to her sex. Horrid flashed fragments from Transcendental Science pom operas—women screaming in terror, men in hard black leather, angry thrusting cocks, flesh violating flesh, chrome violating rubber.

Royce touched a gentle hand to her thigh. “Sorry,” he said lamely.

“Sorry?”
Carlotta snapped. “What do you have to be sorry about?
You
got off, didn’t you, bucko?”

Royce jerked his hand away. “Up yours, tool” he said. “You weren’t exactly synced into pleasing me either, you know!”

“I wanted you to eat my honey.”

“Well, that just didn’t happen to be what—wait a minute!
Eat your honey?
What in the fucking hell is that? That’s straight out of some effing Femocrat dictionary!” Bowb a bumbler! Carlotta thought. So it is. So it bloody well is. She turned on a soft yellow light and they lay there on the bed glaring at each other.

“What the hell is going on, Royce?” Carlotta said, trying to control the tone of her voice, reaching for sanity.

Royce grimaced. The angry lines on his face softened somewhat. “Speaking as your bucko, I’d say that you’re becoming a narcissistic selfish bitch who can’t get it off because you can’t sync your body behind any real feeling for me...”

“What!
You egotistical effing—”

Royce held up his hand for peace and smiled ruefully at her. “But speaking professionally,” he said, “I think we’re both suffering from the same strange new brand of media cafard that’s infected the whole planet.”

“Media cafard?” Carlotta said. “What do you mean, media cafard?”
Media cafard
was a sardonic pseudo-medical term for plug-in overload, a condition where someone had been plugged into the net for so long that they stopped relating to ground-level reality. What the hell did
media cafard
have to do with this crummy lay?

“Well, call it reverse media cafard with a moebius twist,” Royce said. “Tell me, Carlotta, what was going through your head while we were trying to make love, if you can call it that?”

“Great grunting godzillas!” Carlotta muttered. “Were you reading my mind?”

Royce shrugged. “Just my own,” he said.

“You, too?”

“Uh-huh”

“But this is ridiculous!” Carlotta said. “We love each other. We’ve been together for years. We’re
Pacificans
, we’re the masters of the media. And you’re telling me that a lot of stupid, primitive off-worlder slok is capable of getting inside our heads and screwing up our love life?”

“I have to
tell
you? Quality of the product has nothing to do with it; what we’re dealing with here is white-out media overload. The Femocrats have been pounding the idea that men are primitive selfish beasts into every woman’s head. It may not get to you on an intellectual level, but the images get graven into the subconscious by sheer force of repetition. Some ancient Terran dictator called it the theory of the Big Lie. Shout a lie into people’s ears long enough and loud enough and they’ll eventually start acting on it, no matter how outrageous it is. And
he
didn’t even have primitive television to work with!”

It’s true, Carlotta thought. And the Transcendental Scientists are doing the same damned thing. Femocrat-fomented women are trying to cut your balls off by denying you an Institute, buckos! Your wong is your weapon, so use it, boys, Goddamn, it’s even come between Royce and me!

Carlotta bounced off the bed and began pacing the bedroom in small circles. “We’ve got to stop this, Royce!” she said. “We’ve got to stop it
now,
before the whole planet ends up in the psycho ward, you and me included.”

Royce got up and started pacing with her. “But how?” he said.

“I don’t know,” Carlotta said, “but we’ve got to think of
something.
Let’s go get some air.”

But
what?
she wondered as they walked down the hall to the veranda. Both sides have gone beyond subtle media blitzes into straightforward political campaigning. It’s the Pink and Blue War with no holds barred, and emotionally it’s a real war between the sexes already. She grimaced. The only way to make things
worse
would be to force immediate votes on the issues, which would be so close that the losing party just might not accept it in a democratic spirit, and then constitutional government itself might start to crumble...

Outside on the deck, the air was warm and moist on her bare skin. Traceries of cloud fleeced across the starry sky. Waves lapped the shore, painting the waterline with ephemeral translucent foam. TTie whole bloody business seemed so ridiculous out here in the tranquil world of sea and sky. Royce’s naked body gleamed silver in the starlight. Just me and my bucko, Carlotta thought, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Why can’t they leave us alone? Why can’t we
make
them leave us alone?

“You know, the Femocrat ship is almost repaired,” Royce said, sinking down in a bongowood chair and looking out to sea. “We
could
try to squeeze an expulsion vote through, and if you made it a vote of confidence in yourself...”

“Leaving what?” Carlotta said, sitting down beside him. ‘Ten million women convinced they’d been power-tripped by men and howling for my blood? Look at the reverse—if we squeezed through a vote to expel Transcendental Science, ten million men would be convinced that Pacifican women had bitten off their balls.”

Royce nodded. “I
did
playfully threaten Falkenstein with the third alternative,” he said.

“Third alternative?”

“Kick both their asses out.”

“But I thought you were convinced we had to have Transcendental Science... ?”

Royce shrugged. “I was ... I am ... I was only torturing him a little. Besides, if we combined the issues, we’d never even get it to the floor. Still...”

“Still
what?”

“Still it did manage to terrify him . .

Suddenly something began to tease at the edge of Carlotta’s consciousness. The Femocrats wanted one thing, the Transcendental Scientists another, and one good definition of political compromise was something that displeased both sides in equal measure...

“They’re both pushing hard for quick conclusive votes, aren’t they?” she said slowly.

Royce nodded. “I’d give it two weeks at the outside before you’re handed a Parliamentary petition demanding votes,” he said.

“Coitus intemiptus...arlotta muttered.

Royce looked at her narrowly. “Is something percolating in that Machiavellian brain of yours?”

“Maybe...” Carlotta said. “I mean, what we’re faced with is two media blitzes and political campaigns building to a quick showdown...

“So?”

“So what if we screw up the timetable?”

Royce fingered his lower lip. “What are you getting at?” “Try a sexual metaphor,” Carlotta said. “Men and women fucking madly, harder and harder, the energy building to an orgasm... well, what happens to that energy level if orgasm is delayed by, oh, say six months?” “Oh-ho!” Royce exclaimed. “Either it drops to a lower sustainable level or they fuck themselves into exhaustion before anything conclusive happens.”

“Right,” Carlotta said. “The Femocrats and the Transcendental Scientists simply couldn’t keep up this level of hysteria if everyone knew that the conclusive votes were six months off. If they tried, everyone on both sides would see that they were gibbering maniacs in a month or two.” Royce stood up and began pacing the veranda. “Very sharp,” he said. “We could call it the Madigan Plan. Postpone the final vote on the Institute for six months. Let the Femocrats do their damndest in the meantime. Yeah, they’d have to tone it down for the long haul.”

“Do you think we could get it through Parliament?” Royce stood by her chair and touched a hand to her shoulder. He grinned. “Are you kidding, babe?” he said. “The Delegates would fall all over themselves to vote for anything that would prevent a showdown at this point. Oh, they’d buy it all right. There’s just one thing...

“What’s that?” Carlotta asked uneasily.

“I think we should let an Institute of Transcendental Science function in the meantime.”

“What?*
⁹
Carlotta shouted, bolting to her feet. “No way! They’d just use it to build a bigger political base, what they’ve done in the Cords writ large.”

“But it
would
make it a matter of put up or shut up,” Royce insisted. “Right now, they’re promising us the universe on a golden platter. Let an Institute function for six months, and we’ll
know
how much of it is real and how much is so much jellybelly oil.”

He sat back down again and stared up at the stars. Carlotta knew what was running through his mind. Despite everything, he was still hooked on the Faustian grandeur of Transcendental Science; he still refused to give that fantasy up.

“We
do
have our own scientists,” she said. “Someday we’ll be able to develop everything Transcendental Science has on our own.”

“Sure,” Royce said. “A century from now. Two centuries... three... Even if it were true, imagine what a boost we’d get from just six months of an Institute here...”

“It’d be political suicide,” Carlotta said coldly. “Let them set it up in the Cords, and we’ll end up with a chauvinistic mano elite. Put it in Gotham, and it’d be a center of political troublemaking. Stick it in Thule, where the natural student body is, and we’d have a cancer at the heart of our economy.”

“If we
don't
allow an Institute to function during the trial period, the men of this planet won’t buy any Madigan Plan,” Royce said. “The Femocrats would be allowed total freedom to do their thing, but the Transcendental Scientists wouldn’t. It’d never get through Parliament.”

“Meaning
you
won’t support it wholeheartedly!” Carlotta snapped, slamming her bottom down into the chair beside him.

Royce looked at her belligerently. “If you insist on putting it on that level—
yes!"

They sat there in stony silence, Royce looking up at the damnable stars, his jaw set in a hard line of resolution, Carlotta not deigning to look at him, her eyes mesmerized by the wavelets nibbling at the sandy shoreline.

Rugo waddled out onto the veranda, whonking a happy greeting that they both ignored. The bumbler stood between their chairs. He nuzzled Carlotta’s thigh with his beak. “I’m not in the mood, Rugo,” she grunted, pulling away. The bumbler reached up and rubbed his feathery head against Royce’s shoulder. “Cut it out, Jocko,” Royce snapped irritably.

Rugo looked at Carlotta, then at Royce, then at Carlotta again. If he had had hips and hands, he would have put his hands on his hips indignantly as he squawked his wounded outrage. “Whonk-ka-whonk ka-whonkity whonk!”

“Shut up, will you, Rugo!” Royce snapped.

“Whonk, whonk, ka-whonk, whonk, whonk!” The bumbler’s feathers ruffled angrily as he harangued them.

“Will you stop yelling at us like a goddamn godzilla!” Carlotta shouted.

Chastened, Rugo finally subsided. But Rcyce’s face broke into a great grin. “Godzillas!” he said, rubbing Rugo’s head. “Jocko, you’re a genius!”

“Huh?”

Royce broke into wild whooping laughter. “Godzilla-land!” he finally managed to say. “Let them set up their goddamn Institute in efiing
Godzillaland!
Can you see it?” Now Carlotta started laughing. Festering jungle where the temperature never fell below 110 degrees. Giant godzillas rampaging through the trees, bellowing their endless threats day and night. And the crazy whackers who actually
liked
living there! Oh, it was delicious! Let Falkenstein try to build himself a political base among those maniacs! Two thousand kilometers from anywhere! It’ll turn the whole thing into a planetary joke.