A World Between
Page 26
Yet she felt her body bending closer to his, as if caught in his magnetic field. She found herself putting her arm around his waist and slipping her hand around to the inside of his thighs. And it was not lust that moved her. Somehow, in some unfathomable way, the respect that he was demanding flowed freely from her heart. Confronted, shouted down, stalemated, she had never quite felt this proud. It was as if the child she had never had had suddenly revealed himself as an adult, an equal entity. Loss there was, but it was a thing of the ego, and what replaced it came from the heart, a kind of love for him that she had never felt before.
“So be it, then,” she said. “If you think this is the price of your manhood, I can fight you politically if I have to, and still love you, you obstinate, wrong-headed, faschochauvinist son of a bitch!”
Royce laughed and moved his body against hers. The boomerbirds soared off toward the west, and Rugo leaped into the sea with an ungainly splash. Everything was as screwed up as it could be, and yet two warm tears flowed down her cheeks in the bright sunlight, and in this moment of all incongruous moments, she felt a oneness with him beyond all understanding, a unity in conflict that surpassed anything she had known before.
“How about a tender loving grudge-fuck?” Royce whispered in her ear. They laughed, and they kissed, and they clung to each other even as a lone white cloud passed across the golden disc of the sun.
For two days political and domestic life had hung in limbo for Royce Lindblad while Carlotta tried to sort things out and reach a position of her own. He had announced the public portion of his agreement with Falkenstein to a good deal less effect than he had projected. The Femocrats could not possibly have become more rabid, and the Bucko Power movement was now not to be mollified by anything less than the expulsion of Femocracy. Royce half-believed Falkenstein’s claim that it now had an indigenous life of its own.
So he had spent most of the time monitoring the net, searching for political movement that was not forthcoming, and setting up the crash course in media psychodynamics for the corps of infiltrators, while Carlotta tried to count nonexistent noses in favor of a showdown vote to close the Institute.
Their hours together since his return from Godzillaland had had a certain unreality. If anything, their lovemaking had been more frequent, more prolonged, more intense, more tender, as if to fill the long silences and bridge the gap between them via the only remaining effective medium. It seemed to Royce that Carlotta was both trying to humor him out of a brittle sense of noblesse oblige and trying to transcend political differences with a very real, if exaggerated, personal tenderness. As a result, even their genuinely loving sex did not entirely escape having political overtones.
So they had spent their off-duty hours making love, and during working hours Carlotta had kept to her office in the Parliament building while Royce closeted himself in his office at the Ministry plugged into the net, as they went their separate political ways. The tension was becoming unbearable; something had to break soon.
Royce was listening to a progress report from the Minister of Science when all the screens on his net console began strobing red and all audio channels began shouting, “PRIORITY OVERRIDE! PRIORITY OVERRIDE!”
What now? Royce wondered bleakly. “We’ll continue this later,” he told Harrison Winterfelt, unplugging him from the circuit and plugging his comscreen into the priority channel. The strobing and shouting ceased immediately and Bill Munroe from news monitoring appeared on comscreen, harried and excited.
“What?” Royce asked curtly.
“Strike in Thule,” Munroe said. “It’s on all the news channels. Plug into any of them.”
Royce shrugged. “That’s for the Ministry of Labor, not me.”
“Not this,” Munroe said. “Maybe I’d better play it back for you from the beginning. Gov channel okay? No differences in any of the coverages.”
“Okay,” Royce said. “But what’s this all about?”
“Effing Femocrats!” Munroe grunted. “Look!”
On the newsscreen, a panoramic shot of a big pit mine under a medium-sized permaglaze dome. Outside the dome, the whirling whiteness of a full-bore Thule blizzard. Inside the dome, the great shovelers and conveyors stand idle and abandoned like frozen godzillas of steel. Lines of female pickets wearing the workclothes of Thule techs cordon off the machinery and the lip of the mining pit. Picket signs read “Ban Faschochauvinist Fausts Now!” “Close the Institute!” and “Femocratic League of Pacifica.”
Announcer’s voiceover: “A general strike called today by an ad hoc committee of female workers in Valhalla has effectively paralyzed most mining and industrial activity in Thule.”
A series of shots: female pickets outside another pit mine, a deep-mining complex, half a dozen factories under Thule environment domes. In two of the shots, a few male workers appear to be counterpicketing, unorganized, without signs.
Announcer’s voiceover: “Male workers appear to be avoiding confrontations and are not attempting to cross the picket lines. No incidents of violence have been reported. Susan Willaway, spokesman for the striking female workers, explained the purpose of the strike at a rally held in Valhalla three hours ago…”
A medium shot on a sandy-haired woman addressing a large female crowd from a makeshift podium.
Susan Willaway: “…no woman will go to her job here in Thule until the faschochauvinist Institute of Transcendental Science is closed and the Heisenberg is sent back to wherever it came from! Let’s see how Bucko Power can keep the mining and industrial heartland of Pacifica producing with half a work force! Thule sisters, unite against the Institute! Work is power! No work while the Institute remains open!”
A panoramic shot on the wildly cheering crowd of women, without local audio.
Announcer’s voiceover: “The Ministry of Labor estimates that the strike has the support of at least seventy-five percent of the female Thule work force…”
Royce’s auxiliary comscreen came alive. It was Carlotta. “Have you—”
“Yeah, yeah, just a minute…” Royce said. He turned off the news channel audio. “Unplug from this circuit, Bill,” he told Munroe. “And thanks.” He turned his full attention back to Carlotta.
“Well, that changes things, doesn’t it, Royce?” she said, her agitation undertoned with a certain smug satisfaction, or so he thought.
“Does it?” Royce said dubiously.
“Good lord, Royce, all our heavy industry and most of our mining operations are in Thule!” Carlotta said. “A few days of this, and the whole planetary economy will start to shut down. Everything else aside, we’ve got to close the Institute now or we’ll have mass unemployment and a crunching depression.”
“Give in to a bunch of Femocrat-fomented strikers?” Royce said angrily. “You should get in touch with Cynda Elizabeth and demand that they call this thing off or else!”
“Or else what!”
“Or else we’ll kick their asses off the planet forthwith!”
Carlotta grimaced. “That would only egg the strikers on. We’ve got to give in now, and I have the authority to do it on my own if I have to. I’ll declare a state of—”
“It’d solve nothing, Carlotta, wait and see,” Royce said, Roger Falkenstein’s face appeared on the main comscreen. Oh-oh, he thought, it looks like we won’t have to wait very long! “Falkenstein’s calling me,” he told Carlotta, “and he does not look happy.”
“Well, that’s something anyway,” Carlotta said sardonically. “Patch me in, monitoring only.”
“Right,” Royce said. He cleared a monitoring channel from his net console to Carlotta’s, so that she was plugged into Falkenstein’s call but he wasn’t plugged into her. Carlotta’s tensely pensive face remained on his auxiliary comscreen as he plugged in Falkenstein’s audio.
“What’s the meaning of this strike in Thule, Royce?” Falkenstein said angrily. “I thought we had reached an agreement.”
“We have, Roger, and it still stands.”
“There’s nothing I can do,” Royce said. “The right to strike is protected by the Constitution.” Although, he mused, a strike for a non-work-related political goal might skirt perilously close to insurrection…might pay to check it out with the Ministry of Justice…
“Is it?” Falkenstein said slowly. “You mean you have no legal means of bringing this strike to an end?”
“Looks that way to me, Roger,” Royce said, knowing what the inevitable response would be, and half-welcoming it. There could be only one viable political counterweight to this Femocrat strike, and Falkenstein was certainly smart enough to perceive the obvious. It would escalate the situation further, but it would certainly remove knuckling under to the Femocrats as a real alternative.
“Well then, Royce, I trust you understand how…how the buckos of Thule are likely to react to this vicious tactic…”
“I have some vague idea,” Royce said sardonically.
“Not that I myself or any of my people would interfere in your domestic politics, of course…”
“Oh, of course not, Roger. No more than the Femocrats would. No more than they already have.”
“And under the present circumstances, no less,” Falkenstein said. “After all, I cannot in all conscience attempt to restrain our independent Pacifican supporters from…taking congruent action. That in itself could be construed as interfering in local politics, couldn’t it?”
“For sure,” Royce grunted.
“None of this need affect our agreement, though,” Falkenstein said. “You understand my position?”
“All too well, Roger, all too well.”
“I’m very sorry it’s come to this…”
“So am I,” Royce said, unplugging from the circuit…I think.
“You two boys seem to understand each other very well,” Carlotta said, frowning. “Would you mind letting me in on the inner meaning of your cryptic conversation?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Royce said. “Now the male workers will ‘spontaneously’ counterstrike for retention of the Institute and expulsion of the Femocrats.”
“Oh, fuck,” Carlotta groaned. “Of course.”
“That’s what I meant when I said that knuckling under to the female strikers would solve nothing,” Royce said. “In a few hours, we’ll have the female and male workers on strike together for mutually exclusive goals. Give in to one side, and you just guarantee that the other strike will continue.”
“Great grunting godzillas, what do we do now?” Carlotta said. She looked at Royce pensively, uncertainly. “It is ‘we’ on this one, isn’t it, Royce? We are together on this?”
“On the need to stop both strikes without giving in to either side?” Royce asked carefully.
“On the need to stop both strikes quickly, whatever it takes,” Carlotta said. She sighed. “I suppose under the circumstances, it amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, babes,” Royce said. “Keeping the economy from being chewed to bits has to be number one. I’m with you on that, boss-lady.”
Carlotta smiled at him, pantomimed a kiss. Royce laughed and blew a kiss back. Awful as this situation is, it does have its personal compensations, he thought. At least we’re synced together again in the face of adversity. But what adversity!
“Well, any brilliant ideas, bucko?” Carlotta asked grimly.
Royce shrugged. “You could call Cynda Elizabeth and tell her there’s going to be a counterstrike,” he suggested. “Tell her that I can get Falkenstein to call off his if she’ll end hers.”
“Fat chance,” Carlotta said. “Cynda Elizabeth must have known there’d be a counterstrike before this started. I have a feeling that both Transcendental Science and the Femocrats will not be unhappy to have this situation continue to some awful showdown. Shit…” She fingered her mouth reflectively.
“There is one possibility,” she said. “We have no legal means of ending these strikes, but if we could get away with construing them as civil insurrections…”
“You’ve been reading my mind again, babes,” Royce said.
Carlotta smiled at him. “Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?” she said. “As good as anything can feel under these circumstances.”
Royce laughed. Despite the gravity of the crisis, he felt an enormous release of tension. For now, at least, the stress was coming from without, not within. Now they were really working in sync again, at least for the moment, for whatever it might be worth politically.
“You get onto Cynda Elizabeth, I’ll check with the Ministry of Justice,” he said.
“Right babes,” Carlotta said. “Good to have you aboard again.”
“Likewise,” Royce said. “Now all we have to do is figure out some way to keep the boat from sinking.”
A tracking shot on Roger Falkenstein and a squat, dark-haired man in a pseudo-military black tunic as the camera follows them down a long hall in the Institute.
Falkenstein: “…in keeping with our policy of noninterference, we take no position for or against the men striking in Thule…”
Man in black: “You won’t even take a position on the Femocrat strike?”
Falkenstein: “That’s different, Mike. The female strike is openly backed by the Femocratic League of Pacifica, an obvious Femocrat front, and they’ve declared open warfare on us. Their strike may be legal, but it is certainly directed against the Institute, and therefore we have no compunction against calling for its swift termination by any means necessary.”
Man in black: “But you still won’t officially support the strike organized by Pacificans for the Institute?”
Falkenstein (somewhat impishly): “That would be illegal, Mike. Of course, we totally support your goals. But we believe that the buckos of Pacifica are men enough to determine their own destiny without our advice or endorsement. However…we do think it appropriate to show the people of Pacifica what this planet stands to lose if the Femocratic League of Pacifica succeeds in using economic blackmail to drive us from this planet…”
Cut to an exterior shot just outside the Institute building. Six male Pacificans are operating a control console connected to a mesh of thin wire fifty meters in diameter on thin wooden poles over a large heap of earth.
Falkenstein’s voiceover: “A form of matter-transformer used in instantaneous construction. Matrix patterns of various constructs are stored in a computer memory. The desired construct is chosen and the transformer assembles it electronically out of an equivalent mass of raw matter…”
A silvery field of force envelops the area under the mesh. When it clears a moment later, a replica of the Institute building, forty meters in diameter, has appeared, seemingly from nowhere.
Falkenstein’s voiceover: “…a building…or a hover…”
The field of force appears again, and when it clears this time, the model building has been replaced by a sleek blue hovercraft.
Falkenstein’s voiceover: “…or even a piece of heroic statuary…”
The force field transforms the hovercraft into a piece of monumental sculpture: four Pacifican buckos in realistic full color looking upward as a stylized Transcendental Scientist hewn in black obsidian raises an open palm toward a hologram of the galactic starstream which floats magically overhead.
Falkenstein’s voiceover: “I rather like that, don’t you? I think we’ll keep it.”
Cut to an interior shot in a small infirmary. An old man lies in a bed surrounded by life-support machinery. Three Pacificans in white smocks hover over him, reading his life-signs, administering injections.
Falkenstein’s voiceover: “Here Pacifican students are learning the many complex techniques involved in rejuvenation. T
he result might justly be called an indefinite lifespan and perpetual youthful vigor. However, for all Pacificans to benefit from these techniques, we will not only have to train people in all the necessary sciences, but we will have to train teachers in all these areas in a permanent Institute, so that your planet can eventually develop the corps of thousands of Transcendental Scientists that will be needed.”
Cut to a small darkened room where a Pacifican student lies on a couch under the watchful eye of a Transcendental Scientist. An electrode band around his brow is wired to a small console. In the middle of the room is a small-scale and quite fuzzy holoprojection of a Gotham street scene: ethereal buildings, vague crowds, tiny dots that might be hovercraft or hydrofoils skimming over the nearby shimmering waters.
Falkenstein’s voiceover: “This is frontier technology, even for us. The subject’s brain is synced into a computer which operates a holoprojector, thereby transforming thoughts into visible images. The technology is not quite perfected, and the training necessary to operate the device successfully is quite arduous. But the possibilities are staggering—new forms of psychotherapy, new artforms and media technologies, ultimately perhaps an electronically augmented form of direct mind-to-mind communication.”
Cut back to the tracking shot on Falkenstein and the man in black as they walk down the seemingly endless corridor, past a long series of open doorways through which a myriad arcane activities are briefly visible.
Falkenstein: “One of the charges against us is that we’re creating a scientific elite, and to that I must plead emphatically guilty. What, after all, is an elite but an ever-growing community of enlightened, idealistic, and dedicated men leading their people onward toward infinity?”
Cut to an exterior shot of the statue grouping outside—the stylized Transcendental Scientist leading the Pacifican buckos onward to the stars—from a low angle, emphasizing the upward thrust of the piece’s lines.