A World Between (37 page)

“Aha!” Royce said. “At last you see the ineffable wisdom of my devious mind.”

“Not quite, bucko!” Carlotta said. But pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place. “But I’m beginning to see that maybe you and I really
do
agree on the basics, and maybe the two of us sitting in this boat have the essence of a real
Pacifican
position between us.”

“We
do?"

“Look, neither of us wants a Femocratic Pacifica, and neither of us wants some elite male Transcendental Scientist caste lording it over the planet, right? Keeping Pacifica Pacifican is number one. Isn’t
that
an issue which transcends this out-worlder-fomented sexual polarization?” “Not if your idea is to kick all the off-worlders off the planet immediately,” Royce said. “I won’t support any move that will cut us off entirely from the Transcendental Sciences. I meant it, and I haven’t changed my mind.”

A slight flash of anger passed through Carlotta, but she instantly suppressed it. Her mind was cool and analytical now, reaching for compromise, not conflict Tacking against all opposing winds, even if they came from within. “All right, all right,” she said, “so let’s agree to disagree on that and see if we can’t fit even the disagreement into a Pacifican position, since it’s exactly the gap we have to bridge anyway.”

“If that’s what you’re selling now, I’m buying, babes.” “Okay, okay,” Carlotta said rapidly. “So what’s this Pacifican thing we’re trying to restore and preserve? The democratic process. Equity between men and women. A smooth psychosexual balance.”

“Liberty and justice for all,” Royce said sardonically. “Oh, so you think that’s just a tub of jellybelly oil?”

“I think it’s just words and fancy rules, Carlotta. What we had here didn’t depend on that The real Pacifican thing is—or was—a feeling, something in the soul. Community, trust, I dunno...”

After a long moment’s silence, Carlotta sighed. “Yeah, Royce, it’s just that feeling that we’ve lost,” she said softly. “Why can’t
that
be a political issue? If these off-worlders have proven anything
,
it’s that they can’t comprehend the thing that makes Pacifica Pacifica.”

“Pacifica for the Pacificans?” Royce said archly.

“Well, why not?” Carlotta answered, and suddenly everything clicked into place. “Pacifica for the Pacificans, and in the Pacifican way! Why not make that feeling the issue?”

Royce grinned. “The logic is a little fuzzy,” he said, “but I can sure see the media blitz!”

“The fuzzier the better!” Carlotta exclaimed. “Goddamn it, we’ll
go
with your plan to infiltrate the Institute, we’ll put your deal with Falkenstein into effect unilaterally, tell the planet we have done something, and demand the strikes be ended. Trust will be the issue—Pacificans must trust Pacificans, not any bunch of godzilla-brained off-worlders!”

“Amen to that,” Royce said.

“We’ll fudge the real isues!” Carlotta said. “We won’t say
anything
about infiltrating the Institute or setting one up on our own. The only issue will be Pacifica for the Pacificans, and anyone who disagrees is a traitor to the Pacifican way of life, a pawn of off-world meddlers, period!”

“Well, that sounds dirty enough to me,” Royce said. Once again, he shifted the boom and changed tacks. “The only trouble is,” he said as the sailboat headed northward, “that right now that’s precisely what nobody’s buying.”

“Then we’ll effing well
sell
it to them!” Carlotta said sharply. “And we’ll make ending the strikes the test issue. Anyone in favor of continuing the strikes is an un-Pacifican son of a bitch! We’ll introduce a resolution in Parliament and force the Delegates to stand up and be counted.”

Royce sighed. “But they’re sure to vote it down,” he said.

“Then screw Parliament!” Carlotta snapped. She smiled. She grinned. She laughed.
Of courseI
“That’s exactly what we’ll do,” she said.

Royce cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at her.

“We’ll
really
screw Parliament,” she said. “We’ll introduce a resolution to end the strikes and make damn well
certain
it’s voted down. Then we’ll have an electronic vote of confidence, and we’ll use the campaign to build a third force, a Pacifica for the Pacificans movement, good old-fashioned local nationalism. Then when I win the vote of confidence, there’ll be a new Parliament elected in which we’ll have sufficient Delegates representing our third force to block
anything
the Bucko Power creeps or the Femocratic League of Pacifica tries to do.”

Royce goggled at her in amazement. “That’s a lovely scenario,” he said, “but it can’t happen. It breaks down at the electronic vote of confidence. How in hell can you hope to win it?”

‘ By ending the strikes
after
the resolution fails but
before
the electronic vote,” Carlotta said. “The Delegates who voted down the resolution will look like perfect asses. They’ll be thrown out and replaced by our people.”

Royce shook his head numbly. “And how do you expect to accomplish this miracle of ending the strikes?”

Carlotta laughed. “When you start playing really dirty, life becomes a lot more simple,” she said. “We’ll use the campaign to cover a trip down to Valhalla. We’ll tell the male strikers that unless they end their strike, we’ll both come out for closing the Institute while permitting the Femocrats to remain on Pacifica, and we’ll tell the female strikers the exact opposite. And of course if anyone makes these threats public, we’ll deny everything and call it un-Pacifican off-worlder lies.”

“Whoo-ee!” Royce said. “That’s some game of bluff! If we get called on it...”

“We won’t,” Carlotta said confidently. “Because ‘bluff is too timorous a term for it. Why not call it what it is—
blackmail.”

Royce laughed. “You said it, I didn’t,” he said implishly. He giggled. He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. “You can be one mean lady when you have to be, peerless leader,” he said approvingly. He shook his fist at a lone boomerbird passing overhead. “Pacifica for the Pacificans, jocko!” he shouted.

“Pacifica for the Pacificans!” Carlotta yelled back. The stem of the sailboat left a foaming white wake in the water, the wind half-filled the sail, and suddenly the zigzag tacking course seemed somehow appropriate; despite the worst efforts of the countering wind, it
was
a way to safe harbor. With a tiller in one hand and a boomline in the other, you could find a way to work your will against tide and wind, outside forces, and the blind hand of fate.

Royce grinned at her. “I’ll make a sailor out of you yet, Carlotta Madigan,” he said.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” she blurted refiexively. He didn’t bother to answer, but she thought she was beginning to understand.

15

A
SERIES OF SHOTS RAPIDLY CUT IN EVER-INCREASING
tempo: the
Heisenberg
in orbit, a rape scene from “Soldiers of Midnight,” Falkenstein’s smug face, the grounded Femocrat ship surrounded by Pacifican security forces, a lesbian sex scene from the Femocrats’
Lysistrata,
Cynda Elizabeth, demonstrations, marches, rallies, striking pickets. On the soundtrack, an unintelligible babble of voices that grows ever louder, shriller, and more strident to the building rhythm of the cutting, as the sequence ends in a split-screen shot of a man and women screaming at each other with the animal voices of the mob, faces purpling with rage. Dissolve to a similar shot of two godzillas bellowing at each other with the same brainless mob voice.

Cut to a closeup of Carlotta Madigan; cool, calm, smiling her best Borgia smile.

Carlotta: “Welcome to Pacifica, the galaxy’s first real-life
human
godzilla epic. See men and women tearing at each other like jungle beasts! Watch the economy of the media hub of the human galaxy disintegrate! And finally, observe the Delegates to the most democratic Parliament known to man crawling on their bellies like reptiles!”

Cut to a panoramic shot of the Parliament chamber, emphasizing the screens above the Chairman’s seat as Carlotta calls the vote.

Carlotta: “All those in favor of declaring both strikes in Thule civil insurrections and empowering the Chairman to act accordingly to end them, aye; those opposed, nay.”

Numbers flash across the tally screen as the Delegates vote, finally resulting in 3I ayes and 72 nays. Blue and pink strings materialize, attached to the crotches of the male and female Delegates respectively. The camera slowly pans upward along the tangled skeins, through the dissolving dome of the chamber, to reveal Roger Falkenstein and Cynda Elizabeth as leering puppet-masters controlling the Delegates.

Cut back to the closeup on Carlotta Madigan.

Carlotta: “Thus has Parliament expressed the will of the Pacifican people! Or
has
it? Is this what you really want, Pacifica?”

A series of shots slowly dissolving into each other: mining equipment rusting under a pall of snow beneath a shattered environment dome; moss and vertigris covering the rotting machinery of an abandoned factory; a street in Gotham filled with gaunt^bellied, rag-clad, starving wretches; a field of wheat searing to straw under a cruel sun.

Back to the closeup on Carlotta Madigan, bristling now with righteous indignation.

Carlotta: “Well, that’s what your Delegates have voted for by refusing to support my determination to end these godzilla-brained strikes! The economy is already falling apart. Unemployment will soon reach twenty-five percent. Food production will soon begin to suffer. Everything we’ve built on this planet in three hundred years is turning to
shit!
And for what, fellow Pacificans,
for what?”

A tracking shot on an army of goose-stepping men marching across the screen from left to right. They wear skin-tight blue uniforms and brandish immense rubbery cocks. Cut to a similar shot on an army of women goose-stepping from right to left. They wear skin-tight pink uniforms and their crotches are steel traps with gleaming jagged teeth that gnash and snap to the marching rhythm. The armies meet and clash in ludicrous combat. Men batter women with their penile clubs. Toothed steel vaginal mouths snap shut on giant wongs, severing them in fountains of gore. The battle becomes an ideogram of insane sexual hostility.

Carlotta’s voiceover: “So as to continue fighting the Pink and Blue War, the most idiotic and self-defeating conflict in the entire crazed history of the human race!” Cut to a closeup on Carlotta, grimacing ironically. Carlotta: “Do you remember what a dumb joke the Pink and Blue War was to this planet a few months ago? Now
we're
the clowns doing idiotic pratfalls in a comic opera satire of ourselves, the laughingstock of the galaxy, while we tear our economy and society to pieces in the process!’*

The camera pulls back to a longer shot on Carlotta, revealing Lorien lagoon in the background, gentle waves, blue skies, a flock of passing boomerbirds.

Carlotta: “Now, as your Chairman, I face an electronic vote of confidence on the issue of ending these strikes, and I stand here on the veranda of my home wondering why I’m bothering. Why should I continue to expend my energy in the service of a planet that seems bent upon its own destruction?”

The camera moves in for a closeup as she shrugs, as her eyes seem to stare off into some distant vista, growing soft even as her expression hardens. Superimposed over this closeup of Carlotta is a series of lyrical shots slowly dissolving into each other: the Big Blue River, a sapphire ribbon winding through fields of golden grain; a cluster of emerald islands under a deep blue sky gilded by the setting sun; the shaggy green shoulders of the Sierra Cordillera capped with brilliant white snow; the ghostly sheen of the Thule icecap under a hard black sky brilliant with pinpoint stars; finally, Pacifica itself, breathtakingly organic and alive against the black velvet of space.

Carlotta’s voiceover: “Let the Transcendental Scientists call it female emotionalism; let the Femocrats call it an atavistic impulse; I’ll call it love for this planet and be done with it. So I submit myself to your vote of confidence, but make no mistake about it, this is also a matter of
my
continued confidence in
you.
And of your continued confidence in yourselves as Pacificans.”

Just Carlotta now, speaking directly into the camera. Carlotta: “These ruinous strikes must be ended, and
nowl
Regardless of your temporary allegiances to offworld ideologies, the future of your planet demands that men and women alike now vote as
Pacificans
and for
Pacifica
. If I win this vote of confidence, I kid you not, I will move with all possible speed and with all the powers that the office of Chairman commands to end these strikes at once. And I tell you just as plainly, if I lose this vote of confidence, you can all go to hell without my further assistance—I’ll never run for public office again. That’s how strongly
I
feel about this planet we all love. What about you, my fellow Pacificans? Are you willing to destroy this planet for the sake of words and slogans and alien ideologies?”

A slow dissolve to a shot of Pacifica, a vision of fragile life-quickened complexity against the hard uncompromising simplicity of perpetual galactic night.

Carlotta’s voiceover: “Or will we in this hour of decision stand together, men and women, buckos and sisters, and speak with one voice that will be heard from the streets of Gotham to the forests of the Cords, from the Island Continent to the jungles of the Horn, from the banks of the Big Blue to the icebound wastes of Thule? The voice of
Pacificans
speaking for
Pacifica!”

A medium shot on a hard, strident-looking woman standing on a small Gotham bridge, the Parliament building visible in the background across the bay.

Woman: “How the eff can any sister really trust Carlotta Madigan when she refuses to take any stand at all on the
real
issues?”