A World Between

by Norman Spinrad

  “Leaving me to sit here as the muck hits the exhaust…”

  Royce forced a wan smile. “At least you won’t have godzillas to contend with.”

  Carlotta sighed and managed a small grin back. “Just a planetful of people bellowing like them,” she said.

  12

  A close up of Carstairs, the Institute defector, taken from the news channel footage; angry, righteous-looking.

  Carstairs: “…chosen their students for susceptibility to brainwashing techniques, and that’s exactly what they’re doing! They don’t want the people of Pacifica to know what’s going on, and that’s putting it very mildly…”

  A hard cut to a closeup on Cynda Elizabeth. She is holding a large sheaf of documents and she waves it for emphasis as she speaks.

  Cynda Elizabeth: “It certainly is, Mr. Carstairs, and there are a few things even you don’t know either! I have here a list of one hundred and eighty verifiably Pacifican Institute students, and all of them are male. Furthermore, we’ve been able to trace connections between ninety-seven of them and Pacificans for the Institute. And Transcendental Science’s faschochauvinist treachery goes even further than that. There is the matter of the twenty so-called female Institute students. No record of their prior existence on this planet can be found. Only one conclusion can be drawn—they’re not Pacifican sisters at all, but spies off the Heisenberg itself!”

  A series of panoramic shots of Pacifican women demonstrating and marching—in downtown Gotham, the streets of Valhalla, a town on the bank of the Big Blue, a village in the Island Continent.

  Cynda Elizabeth’s voiceover: “So what we have in Godzillaland is exactly what I predicted when I opposed passage of the Madigan Plan—a Transcendental Science brainwashing academy with an all-male student body chosen for their faschochauvinist tendencies to begin with, and infiltrated by secret agents from the Heisenberg. Overt faschochauvinism, drugs, mind-molding, spies, lies, and duplicity! A total effort to subvert Pacifican society through the creation of a brainwashed male faschochauvinist elite!”

  A closeup on Cynda Elizabeth, oozing an I-told-you-so smugness.

  Cynda Elizabeth: “If there was ever any doubt in the minds of the sisters of Pacifica that this so-called Institute should be closed immediately, this certainly removes it. The sisters of Pacifica are demonstrating everywhere today, and their demand is simple and clear: close the Institute now, and banish Transcendental Science from this planet forever!”

  A panoramic shot of the public entrance to Parliament, thronged with marching people. The camera moves in closer, revealing that they are all women organized into massive, orderly picket-lines. Their placards repeat the same three phrases over and over again: “Femocratic League of Pacifica,” “Close the Institute Now!” and “Banish Faschochauvinist Fausts!”

  Cynda Elizabeth’s voiceover: “The sisters of Pacifica are on the march, and they will not rest until the last faschochauvinist Transcendental Scientist has left this solar system! We call on the government to close the Institute now!”

  Chanting pickets: “Carlotta Madigan, close the Institute now! Carlotta Madigan, CLOSE THE INSTITUTE NOW!”

  A closeup of a man’s wong and balls. A huge knife wielded by a female hand slashes across the frame and severs them from his body. Cut to a medium shot on a woman looking very much like Cynda Elizabeth as she waves a bloody knife in one hand and the male organs in the other with a demented look of triumph.

  Harsh male voiceover: “Don’t kid yourselves anymore, buckos, that’s what it’s all about”

  Cut to a panoramic shot of a large male crowd filling Seaside Park in downtown Gotham, angry, shouting, and waving placards that read “Pacificans for the Institute,” “Fuck Femocracy!” and “Bucko Power!” The camera moves in for a shot on the stage that has been set up on a green hillside in front of the crowd. Behind the stage is a huge screen. On the screen is the previous shot of the Cynda Elizabeth lookalike waving the knife and the gory male organs triumphantly. On the stage is a big angry-looking man wearing a tight black suit with a decidedly neomilitary cut.

  Man in black: “Women have always been equal on Pacifica—more than equal! They have economic power and political power and the Chairmanship itself—but now that’s not enough! Now they want…that! Our effing balls on a silver platter!”

  The crowd roars its ugly defiance.

  Man in black: “You want to see what they want to turn us into? Have a look at buckohood, Femocrat-style!”

  A huge ugly woman leads a man up on stage by a steel chain attached to a collar around his neck. The man wears a short fluffy blue skirt and pink tights. His hair is dyed a hideous pastel pink and set in high-piled ringlets. He minces across the stage to the uneasy laughter of the crowd. The woman yanks him forward by his leash.

  Woman: “Tell them how wonderful it is to be a Femocrat breeder, you ball-less bucko!”

  Man in the skirt (in a thin falsetto): “Yes mistress. We boys all love being Femocrat breeders. Our mistresses take good care of us and give us pretty dresses to wear and we don’t have to worry about anything, we don’t even have to think. All we have to do is kiss their boots, and we love licking our mistresses’ boots clean…”

  He falls to his knees and begins slobbering over the booted feet of the woman holding the leash. After a few moments of this, she kicks him across the stage, where he lies in a heap, whimpering. The crowd boos, hisses, and curses. There is very little laughter.

  Man in black: “Do we want to lick our women’s boots?”

  Crowd roar: “NO!”

  Man in black: “Do we want an Institute?”

  Crowd roar: “YES!”

  Man in black: “Are we going to take any more shit from the Femocrats and their fellow travelers?”

  Crowd roar: “NO!”

  Man in black: “Are we going to kick their fucking asses off our planet?”

  Crowd roar: “YES!”

  Man in black: “And are we going to take a good hard look at how this planet’s being run? We’ve given our women political and economic power, and what are they giving us? A kick in the balls! Who are the natural leaders and rulers of Pacifica?”

  Crowd roar: “WE ARE!”

  Man in black: “And what do we want?”

  Crowd roar: “BUCKO POWER!”

  Man in black: “And what are we going to take?”

  Crowd roar: “BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER!”

  Man in black: “Say it again! Say it loud enough to be heard in Parliament, all over this city, all over this planet!”

  The camera pulls back for a panoramic shot of the crowd, chanting, waving placards, stamping its feet in thunderous unison.

  “BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER!”

  As Eric turned the sailboat around and headed back toward the lights of Gotham, a sadness overcame Cynda Elizabeth, tinged with something utterly alien that she could not begin to fathom.

  It wasn’t just that their getting it off had been so cold and perfunctory this time, nor, she thought, was it entirely the dreadful images that had filled her mind as his body slammed hers to the cockpit deck, as his piercer plunged in and out of her like some weapon of vengeance—crowds of Pacifican breeders chanting “BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER!” to the rhythm of his piercer in her flower, as if every man on the planet were watching him pierce her to a sadistic cadence of encouragement.

  Nor, indeed, was it entirely the utter conviction that Eric, too, had the same images in his head, that he had felt his body moving to a planetary chant of “BUCKO POWER!”

  No, she thought, the horrible fact is that some sick part of me enjoyed the fantasy. There was something about this whole Bucko Power thing that both raised a bubble of nausea in her gut and sent unwholesome shivers up her spine, and the dichotomy terrified her and filled her with an unfocused self-loathing.

  “Eric?”

  He turned to face her, his expression cold and distant.

  “What were you thinking about w
hen we were getting it off?”

  He frowned and looked away over the dark waters. “You don’t want to know…”

  “But I think I do know…”

  He looked at her again, his mouth twisted into a sneer. “Oh, really?” he said sardonically.

  “Bucko Power…” Cynda Elizabeth blurted.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I can imagine what you think of bucko power…”

  “Can you?” Cynda said ingenuously. “Then maybe you’d like to tell me, because I’m feeling very confused.”

  “What is this?” Eric snapped. “Are you finally trying to trap me into an ideological argument so you can push your Femocrat jellybelly oil down my throat? I thought we agreed—”

  “But do you really believe in this…this…”

  “Faschochauvinist crap?” Eric said angrily. “Do you believe in your faschochauvinist crap?”

  I’m not so sure anymore, Cynda wanted to say. “That’s different,” she said lamely instead. “Women aren’t out in the streets yelling for flower power…”

  “Oh aren’t they?” Eric said. “Then suppose you tell me the difference between Bucko Power and Femocracy?”

  “Why…why…they’re as different as any two things can be!”

  Eric sighed. He stared out at the approaching lights of the city, mirrored now in the shimmering water. He spoke more softly.

  “Look, Cynda, Earth had a long history of male domination—okay, I admit it—so Femocracy was the natural outcome of women grabbing for power after a lousy war on a planet where they had none. But here women have always had things their own way and men have fooled themselves into believing they were equals because their wongs made them kings of the bedroom. So on Earth, it took a terrible war to get women to seize power from men who had fucked things up, and here it took you effing Femocrats to wake up the men of this planet by making our women flex their political muscles to keep us down where we’ve always been. I’m a man, so I’ve got a self-interest in Bucko Power. You’re a woman, so you’ve got a self-interest in turning buckos into effing breeders. Power against power, the rest is just jellybelly oil.”

  “The law of the jungle…” Cynda muttered. “Evolutionary warfare between the sexes that goes on forever?”

  Eric grinned at her cruelly. “Not forever,” he said. “Like the Transcendental Scientists say, there are intrinsic differences between the sexes. We’re bigger and stronger. We ruled for millions of years—even you Femocrats talk about the male will to power, don’t you? If we weren’t the natural leaders, would we have been on top for most of human history? When it’s power against power, biology determines the winner, and we both know who that will be, don’t we?”

  Cynda shivered as if an unseen wind had blown in off the sea. “You really believe that?” she said. “You really believe in…in…in male supremacy?”

  “Don’t you?” Eric said slyly. “Here you are, the leader of the effing Femocrat mission, getting it off with me, even with all that Femocrat garbage pounded into your head. Why? Because every woman wants a real man on top of her—deep down, in her body, in her effing genes, no matter what kind of jellybelly oil her head is filled with. Look at the way we’re built, Cynda: men big and strong, women small and weak. My wong, built to thrust inside your body, and you built to take it. Doesn’t your own body tell you all you really need to know about Bucko Power?”

  “But…but that’s just sex, Eric,” Cynda said uncertainly.

  Eric snorted. He looked out at the city again, the buildings, islands, and bridges now clearly outlined by their own lights. “Yeah, that’s what we used to think on Pacifica,” he said. “Democracy. Equality. All that high-sounding crap. Until you came along and convinced our women that we’re faschochauvinist beasts who have to be controlled for our own good. Well, if we have to be either breeders or faschochauvinists, there’s no real choice, is there? Now that we’ve got the name, we have to play the game—to win.”

  He looked her full in the face. He smiled. “You know,” he said, “it’s almost as if Bucko Power is what our women really wanted all along, deep down. I mean, they’ve sure gone out of their way to provoke it, haven’t they? Haven’t you?”

  Cynda shuddered as Eric steered the boat toward its quiet secluded mooring. She found that she had no easy answers anymore, that her compulsion to talk had been replaced by a welcoming of the dark quiet of the night. Could he be right? she wondered. Could there be atavistic genes in women as well as men? Could millions of years of male faschochauvinism, of macho domination, have been the result not merely of a male genetic predisposition to power, violence, and dominion, but of a genetic flaw in the human species as a whole? A female genetic predisposition to reinforce macho faschochauvinism against the best interests of Sisterhood and the race as a whole? Biological coding in both men and women that synced together to form a racial tendency toward…Bucko Power?

  How could you explain why it took millions of years for Sisterhood to finally arise without it?

  Eric tied the boat up at the dock and automatically helped her ashore. Cynda took his hand just as automatically—now, however, very much aware of the unconscious mechanical response. Can it be true? Is what we have to fight this strong and deep in all of us? In sisters, too?

  “Shall we meet again, Eric?” she asked. “Or can there be nothing but war between us now?”

  He kissed her on the lips with ironic tenderness. “Why not let the game go on a little longer?” he said. He laughed harshly. “And may the best man win.”

  Skimming low over the endless green jungle, then skirting around the southern periphery of Hollywood to avoid a massive twelve-godzilla fight scene being shot in a mock-up of ancient Venice—lumbering monsters smashing bridges, swamping elegant gondolas, crunching the Doge’s palace—Royce Lindblad brought the Davy Jones down in the midst of the cluster of environment domes at the edge of town where the whackers actually lived.

  Sweating profusely in the skin-rotting wet heat, he made his way down the bare earthen main street as quickly as possible, past rows of electronically immobilized godzillas standing like hideous statues of themselves, to the air-cooled sanctuary of Hollywood Central.

  Here, under the largest dome in Hollywood, were the editing rooms and interior soundstages, the technical facilities and the producers’ offices, an untidy jumble of makeshift huts, warehouses, and bungalows in a constant state of flux like the fungoid growths under the green canopy of the Godzillaland jungle.

  Lauren Bates, longtime number-one producer of godzilla epics and unofficial Mayor of Hollywood, met him just inside the main gate, surrounded by a gaggle of whackers, male and female, wearing only the ubiquitous Godzillaland shorts. Lauren, with his thinning gray hair and incipient paunch, was getting a little long in the tooth for this costume, Royce thought, as Bates gave him the glad hand and ushered him through the crowd of whackers to the privacy and relative sanity of his own bungalow.

  Still the same lunatic asylum, Royce thought as he sat down gingerly in a chair made from the foot of some monstrosity too gigantic to even contemplate. No sign at all of Institute influence here, or for that matter of the political storm that was raging over the rest of the planet. Godzillaland, as always, seemed a world unto itself. But still, it paid to check with Lauren before descending upon Falkenstein—Bates always knew the smallest detail of everything that went on here.

  Bates’s office was furnished with standard desks, chairs, and loungers, but also with barbaric items made of bits and pieces of the local godzillas. Hideous still-shots from a hundred godzilla epics papered the walls, and piles of scripts and shooting schedules were everywhere. Bates himself paced restlessly as he talked, fingering scripts, clipboards, bits and pieces of bric-a-brac and clutter.

  “Now, I know you’re here about this Institute flarf, Royce,” he said. “The net is full of that slok, but I’ve got something of far greater cosmic impact to talk to you about. As a matter of fact, those Institute jockos were the source of my insp
iration. Godzillas in Space! Think of it, Royce! We build a half-scale mock-up of the Heisenberg in orbit and eight—no, make it an even dozen—of the biggest godzillas we have utterly demolish it, while gonzos in Transcendental Science suits are powerless to stop them, with all their superweapons! Totally the ultimate! And maybe with this one, we even pick up the Femocrat market—”

  “Lauren, for—”

  “I know, I know,” Bates said, holding up his hand. “Cheap it won’t be, what with the boosting costs. But godzillas in zero-gee, Royce! I guarantee it’ll earn out, my word—”

  “Lauren, I didn’t come here to discuss Ministry subsidies!” Royce snapped. “Don’t you have any ideas of what’s happening outside this bonker bin? Don’t you realize there’s a political crisis going on?”

  “You mean that Pink and Blue War slok?” Lauren said. “The rest of the planet is foaming at the mouth over the most boring jellybelly oil imaginable, and they call us whackers? We make godzilla epics, we don’t star in them. We control godzillas, we don’t act like them. But of course everyone knows we’re crazy.”

  “You have a point,” Royce admitted sourly. “You mean none of it has affected the people here, even with the Institute right next door?”

  Bates shrugged. “We leave them alone, and they leave us alone,” he said. “Oh, a few of their staff people drift in once in a while to watch the shooting, but if they start whonking at us, they suddenly find themselves conversing with a sixty-meter godzilla doing a tapdance. We’ve got those gonzos conditioned to keep their yawps shut around here. Live and let live, bucko!”

  “And the Pacifican students? What do they seem like?”

  “Zilcho, jocko!” Bates said. “Never seen a one. All studious, hard-working lads, I guess. Either that, or the Transcendental gonzos have them all wired for control like godzillas. Hmmm…bet the Femocrats never thought of that one…”