A World Between

by Norman Spinrad

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

  “Then screw Parliament!” Carlotta snapped. She smiled. She grinned. She laughed. Of course! “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 impishly. 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 stern 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 reflexively. 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 31 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 verdigris 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 ca
ll 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 now! Regardless of your temporary allegiances to off-world 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?”

  Female interviewer’s voiceover: “But you say you are going to vote for her anyway?”

  Woman (shrugging at the Parliament building): “What’s the choice, those gutless wonders? They’ve got their cowardly fingers stuck up their asses. At least Madigan’s willing to put her career on the line to end the strikes.”

  Female interviewer’s voiceover: “You mean you’re in favor of closing the Institute but against the Femocratic League’s strike?”

  Woman (smiling ironically): “Babe, I’ve been a lady-lover all my life, I’m as lesbo as any of these effing Femocrats. But that doesn’t make me any less of a Pacifican. Show me what their stupid strike has accomplished except to give the Bucko Power fanatics an excuse for a strike of their own and make every lesbo Pacifican’s patriotism seem suspect…(somewhat sheepishly) Besides, I’ve just been layed off…”

  Cut a closeup of a tall, long-haired mano type, leaning against a bongo tree.

  Mano: “I haven’t decided whether to vote for Madigan or not I’m all for Pacifica for the Pacificans, and the damn Femocrats started this mess; remember, the buckos are only striking to stop their power-trip against the Institute. So if Madigan tells me how she’s going to end both strikes without caving in to the Femocrats, she’s got this boy’s vote. Otherwise…” He shrugs.

  Cut to a full shot on two huge bipedal godzillas, immobilized by del gado boxes. A male whacker is mounted on one, a female on the other.

  Male whacker: “You bet your wong we’re voting for Carlotta Madigan, boyo! The Institute’s our next-door neighbor, and it’s not bothering us a bit. As for Femocracy…” He sticks out his tongue and makes a ripe raspberry noise.

  Female whacker: “We don’t need lames telling us who to get it off with; we don’t need fancy scientific toys; and we sure don’t need a bunch of shit-brained fanatics shutting down the whole damn Pacifican economy! Only thing I’ve got against Carlotta Madigan is she doesn’t go far enough…”

  Male whacker: “Yeah, what we should do is ship about thirty godzillas down to Valhalla and let the effing strikers try shouting their slogans at them! Same intellectual level, right, and it’d make a flash epic. Pacifica for Pacificans, boyo! But then the rest of the planet thinks we’re crazy!”

  They manipulate their controls and the two huge godzillas rear up suddenly, bellow, and salute with their tiny forearms.

  Both whackers in chorus: “Pacifica for the Pacificans!” They break up into roaring laughter. “Godzilla Power!”

  Cut to a two-shot on Carlotta Madigan and Royce Lindblad sitting side by side in Carlotta’s office. They’re both smiling slightly, their arms are touching, they radiate an aura of togetherness, and they seem to be speaking to each other, rather than to the camera.

  Carlotta: “Well, babes, in the past few days, a lot of people seem to be coming to their senses. We’ve had our disagreements, too, in the past few weeks, but…”

  Royce: “Who wouldn’t, with the crap that’s being shoved down our throats? But I think that all Pacificans—faschochauvinist macho Fausts and ball-cutting crypto-Femocrats alike—are beginning to see that these strikes are hurting everyone except for a few fanatic off-worlders who couldn’t care less about the Pacifican economy anyway.”

  Carlotta (looking at the camera now): “And we’ve come up with an equitable formula for stopping them.”

  Royce: “That’s right While Parliament has been sitting on its hands, we’ve been doing some hard negotiating with Roger Falkenstein and we’ve forced him to accept the following modifications to the Madigan Plan…”

  Carlotta: “The present student body of the Institute will be dismissed. The new student body will be chosen not by the Transcendental Scientists but by the Pacifican Ministry of Science. Their names will not even be revealed to the Transcendental Scientists, so there will be no possibility of political screening on their part. No drugs may be given to the students without prior Ministry of Science approval. I am implementing this agreement as of today on my personal authority as Chairman of Pacifica. As far as I’m concerned, this puts the Institute under effective Pacifican control, and removes any further excuse for the Thule strikes.”

  Royce: “I’ve been convinced that Pacifica must have an Institute of Transcendental Science all along, and as far as I’m concerned, this is the Pacifican way of doing it!”

  The camera moves in for a closeup on Carlotta.

  Carlotta: “I’ve based my campaign on a promise to end these strikes if I win, but with this agreement now in hand, I’ve decided that action speaks louder than words. There are now two days till the electronic vote. Royce and I are going to Thule immediately and we won’t come back until we’ve ended these strikes. If we haven’t accomplished this by election day, I say vote me out of office forever! But when we end these strikes—and we effing well will—I say that anyone who votes against me then is voting against sanity, against reason, and against Pacifica itself.”

  The camera pulls back for a two-shot on Royce and Carlotta.

  Royce: “We negotiated this agreement as a team, we’re going to end these strikes as a team, and we hope you’ll think of us as a team when it’s time to vote. Not for a woman or a man but for two Pacificans who love each other, who respect each other, and who are working to make this planet what it is meant to be once more—Pacifica for the Pacificans!”

  Royce and Carlotta put their arms around each other, smile at the camera, and kiss briefly.

  Carlotta: “If that be treason to my sex, I say let’s make the most of it!”

  Her mind honed to keen-edged clarity by the forces converging on this pivotal moment of personal and planetary destiny, Carlotta Madigan strode into the cavernous silent machine shop where the strike committee awaited her. Five tough-looking women in gray jumpsuits sat on chairs around an empty workbench, their arms folded sullenly across their breasts, their hostile eyes tracking her as she walked deliberately across the echoing concrete floor past the rows of paralyzed engine lathes.

  Well, you brought this on yourself, she thought as she stood before them. Despite the success of the last net appearance, the vote was still going agains
t her, even as Royce had predicted. Howls of rage were still echoing, not only from the Femocrats and their supporters, but from the overwhelming majority of Delegates, who felt that she had exceeded her authority. The 40 percent support that the polls now showed—hard-core Pacificans for Pacifica and people with enough sanity left to vote their bank balances—was a hopeful sign, but the only real chance of winning the vote of confidence lay right here and now, in stunning the 60 percent against her by ending the strikes forthwith. This was the moment of truth, and no fucking strike committee was going to be allowed to stand in her way.

  “Well, what’s your proposal?” said a hard-faced, sandy-haired woman who Carlotta recognized as Susan Willaway, both the strike leader and a heavy in the Femocratic League of Pacifica.

  Screw diplomacy! Carlotta thought. She remained standing, assumed a belligerent hands-on-hips posture. “No proposal, sister,” she said. “I’m here as the head of government to order you to end your strike.”

  “Don’t sister us, you effing breeder-lover!” Susan Will-away snapped. “And don’t think you can order us around either. You think you and that faschochauvinist Lindblad can—”

  “Shut your fucking face!” Carlotta roared. She perched on the edge of the workbench and stared the strike committee down. “You are going to obey my order, and now I’m going to tell you why.”

  “Oh, really?” Susan Willaway sneered to the nervous laughter of the rest of the strike committee.

  “For sure,” Carlotta said coldly. “Because you’d find the alternative totally unacceptable. If I don’t leave here with your agreement to bring this strike to an immediate end, I will come out immediately for the expulsion of the Femocrats and the retention of the Institute.”

  All five women laughed, and the tension seemed to go out of them. “Some threat!” a lanky redhead said. “The lame duck Chairman is going to take a position against us. We’re just terrified, sister.”