‘Tm glad you agree,” Cynda said, smiling at Lindblad. “We’re not asking for official hospitality. We’ll pay our own way and we’ll stay in ordinary facilities and take care of our own.”
Bara Dorothy shook her head subliminally. Now that’s why using a Leader like Cynda Elizabeth is a stroke of genius! she thought. True, she’s loaded with atavistic breeder-loving tendencies and he’s ideologically unreliable, but what other kind of sister could adapt to dealing with the locals this smoothly, even to the point of smiling at this arrogant breeder and treating him like an equal? Certainly not me!
“All well and good,” Lindblad snapped with incredible macho insolence. “But what are you doing here in the first place?”
“I told you,” Cynda said benignly, “we were struck by a meteor and—”
“Yeah, but what right did you think you had to come to Pacifica without prior clearance in the first place?”
Bara could tolerate this insolence no longer. “We weren’t on our way to Pacifica,” she snapped. “We were on our way to Alcheron, on a technical assistance mission, when our ship was disabled. This was the nearest solar system and—”
“Alcheron’s a Femocrat planet, isn’t it?” Lindblad said harshly.
“So?” But Bara saw that this damnable breeder had guessed the truth. If they checked with Alcheron, Alcheron would back up the cover story that had been worked out long in advance, before the damage to the ship had been faked. This creature was saying that confirmation from Alcheron would be credible proof of nothing.
Madigan glanced at Lindblad, as if they were confirming some unstated psychic agreement, as if she were consulting him. Lindblad shrugged, and only then did Madigan speak. She had actually looked to him for guidance!
“I suppose we have to take your explanation at face value, then,” Madigan said. “Since we have no charge to hold your people on.”
“I’m sorry you feel you must put it on such a legalistic basis,” Cynda said with amazing glacial calm, still playing the unruffled diplomat.
“We’re a democratic society,” Lindblad said. “We have laws and a Constitution and we abide by them—even when our instincts tell us to do otherwise.”
“Is that why you’ve allowed the Transcendental Scientists to spew their faschochauvinist filth into your media net?” Bara said. Cynda Elizabeth shot her a disapproving look. Couldn’t the little fool see that the breeder had just given them the opening they were waiting for? For a mad moment, Bara almost envied the way Madigan and her breeder seemed to be able to coordinate wordlessly, to speak and think as one.
“That’s precisely why,” Lindblad said, staring her down. Cynda Elizabeth finally picked up on the situation. '‘Then I suppose you won’t mind if we do something similar?” she said rhetorically. “True, we’re here by accident, but we feel it our duty to counteract such faschochauvinist propaganda whenever we encounter it. A free exchange of ideas is the essence of democracy, isn’t it?”
The breeder laughed sardonically.
“I said something funny?”
Madigan smiled ruefully. “Your request wasn’t exactly unanticipated,” she said ironically. “What are you asking for, a full-time net channel?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Cynda said. “We’ll buy time on the regular free market channels as we need it. In return for your cooperation, we’ll be glad to make a donation.”
“A donation?”
“We have a large library of tapes on our ship,” Cynda said. “History, philosophy, cultural material, and so forth. We’d be happy to read them all into your public access-banks—free of charge.”
“Most magnanimous,” Lindblad said.
“We don’t believe in making a profit off knowledge,” Cynda said. “We don’t have a capitalistic economy. Do you agree to these arrangements?”
“As you no doubt know, we have no legal alternative,” Madigan said.
“I’d hoped we could interact in a spirit of friendship,” Cynda said. “Not on the narrow basis of legality.”
“You’ve gotten what you wanted, so spare us any further jellybelly oil!” Lindblad snapped. “We’re not idiots. We know why you’re here, we know you’ve trapped us in our own Constitution, we don’t really believe your ship was forced down by accident, and we don’t like any of it. You’ve been allowed to remain because of our humanitarian instincts, you’ve been granted media access because on Pacifica the rule of law supercedes political expediency and sometimes even plain common sense, though I wouldn’t expect you to understand the reasons why.”
Bara Dorothy bolted to her feet, hands balled into fists, and glared at Madigan. “This is intolerable!” she shouted. “Are you going to allow a breeder to speak to a fellow sister like that in your presence?”
Madigan looked back at her with eyes of frozen ice. “Royce is the Pacifican Minister of Media,” she said coldly. “He has every right to speak his own mind. Moreover, in this case, he is speaking for my administration.”
“You mean to say that this—”
“Shut up, Bara!” Cynda Elizabeth snapped unexpectedly. She shrugged at Madigan; she actually forced a smile. “You’ll have to excuse my colleague,” she said. “Our ways are not your ways, and she’s experiencing a bit of culture shock.” .
Lindblad smiled a glacial smile. “On Pacifica, even she has the right to mouth off as she pleases,” he said. “Perhaps some day you’ll come to see the wisdom of that.”
“Perhaps...” Cynda said in a most peculiar tone of voice. Slowly, Bara’s anger subsided. The little breeder-lover is a diplomat, she thought, and I certainly am not. From each according to her abilities...
Madigan rose. “You’ve been granted freedom of the planet and free media access under Pacifican law,” she said formally. “I believe we have nothing further to discuss at this time. This meeting is therefore ended.”
The curt dismissal left Bara Dorothy with highly ambiguous feelings about the outcome. Legally speaking, they had gotten everything they sought to obtain.
But although Bara had expected unyielding hostility from the Pacifican breeders, Carlotta Madigan’s hostility had surprised, disturbed, and confused her. Here was a woman who ruled a whole planet, a paradigm of the sisterly virtues, and she seemed almost as hostile to Femocracy as some macho breeder! A natural Femocrat herself, she had allowed this breeder to control the tone of this meeting like some pre-Holocaust wisp. It didn’t add up, it didn’t make sense, and worst of all, Cynda Elizabeth seemed to sync right into this alien situation.
Whatever the flaw in Cynda that made this possible, it was clearly necessary and useful, at least for the moment, as long as the psychological tendency did not translate itself into loathsome deed. With the deliberate exception of Cynda Elizabeth, the entire staff of this mission had had unusually rigorous depth-screening to weed out sisters with potential deviant tendencies. Nevertheless, Bara realized that on Pacifica, ideological discipline was going to have to be even more tightly maintained than she had supposed. The planet reeked of perversion, and of a peculiarly subtle and insidious kind. The place seemed almost deliberately designed to bring about the worst in the best of sisters.
In a strange and sinister way, the example of a Carlotta Madigan, sexually perverted, but politically potent, was more dangerous than any male faschochauvinist could be.
9
THE MISSION HAD RENTED THE THIRD FLOOR OF THE SIRIUS, a modest hotel on one of the bigger islands in the heart of downtown Gotham. Most of the rooms had been converted into dormitories for the staff who remained in Gotham by the simple process of jamming them with cots, and the others were converted into office space by installing the necessary net consoles, files, desks, and computers among the original furnishings of the suites. Bara Dorothy had insisted upon doing it this way—not only were Fem-ocracy’s galactic credit reserves slimmer than it was politic to reveal, but it made good sense to keep the central operation as inconspicuous as possible, at least during the current phase.
>
While Cynda made the grand tour of Pacifica, Bara remained in Gotham, coordinating the campaign and planning the media blitz with Mary Maria, the psywar expert, who dealt with the local Pacifican production companies and the Ministry of Media.
The opening phase of the campaign was two-pronged. Cynda traveled from place to place in a rented liner with an entourage of about twenty Tutors. At each stop, she was met by a few other Tutors who traveled singly on public transportation. When Cynda’s party traveled on, a local cell was left to function; with such complex comings and goings it would be difficult for the Pacifican authorities to realize that a planetwide network was being set up.
Meanwhile, the media campaign was run from Gotham Central, the local Tutors set up cells within the city, some subtle lobbying of female Delegates was begun, and Bara Dorothy coordinated the total effort from her office in the Sirius, avoiding all contact with the locals. She had enough insight to realize that she simply couldn’t interact diplomatically with the Pacificans, nor did she have the stomach to try.
So here I sit, she thought, isolated in this office almost as if I were back on the B-31, functioning entirely through subordinates. Her office had been the largest and perhaps most garishly furnished suite on the floor—burgundy walls, a tented white ceiling, a huge gilded oval bed, a large holo-mural of a mountain scene that cycled from sunrise to sunset to a surreally bright night to sunrise again in sync with local Gotham time, ornate bongowood tables, a brown velvet couch, and a magnifying mirror over the bed. The original Pacifican furnishings were still in place—she even slept in the obscene bed—but the boudoir effect had been mercifully destroyed by the functional additions: a plain gray net console, a small computer, a cheap no-nonsense desk, three tape-files, and a big demographic map of Pacifica.
Bara studied the map with growing satisfaction. Areas of densest female population—Gotham, the Island Continent, the antarctic city of Valhalla—were in pale red. The eastern third of Columbia was an intermediate yellow, the Wastes and the jungles of the barely habitable Horn were neutral white except for the small yellow dot of Hollywood, and the Cords were a sinister deep blue. Silver pins indicated Tutor cells already in place and green pins indicated planned locations. The pins were clustered heavily around Gotham, throughout the towns of the Island Continent and Valhalla, and sprinkled along the length of the Big Blue River. There was one pin at Hollywood and none at all in the cords. About two-thirds of the pins were already silver.
Wanda Claudine entered the office through the permanently open door, a slim little blond who had gotten off twice with Bara since they had landed on Pacifica. She smiled at Bara, twitching her trim little backside as she went to the map, took out a green pin along the northeastern shore, and replaced it with a silver one. Bara felt a twinge of desire.
“Eat a little honey tonight, Wanda?” she asked.
Wanda beamed at her—perhaps, Bara thought, a little falsely. “Always a pleasure and an honor, Bara,” she said. “After dinner?”
Bara nodded. “Nothing like a little sweetness for dessert,” she said pleasantly. But she wondered, as always, how many of her lovers responded to her superbly honed body and subtle mouth, and how many simply got off with the mission’s Mentor to maintain her good will. Well, she thought philosophically, just as plenty of willing lovers are an inevitable prerogative of power, so uncertainty of their sincerity is an inevitable byproduct. “Would you send Mary Maria in?” she said.
While she waited for the psywar expert, Bara Dorothy punched up the current cell stats on the computer. Each cell was a team of three: one overt Tutor and two coverts. The overt Tutor set up a Femocracy study group as quietly as possible, and all three team members tried to persuade locals to attend the biweekly meetings on an individual basis, with the coverts posing as Pacificans who were already attendees.
This insured that even if only one Pacifican sister attended initial meetings, she would see that at least two of her fellow citizens shared her interest, and it also provided “instant converts” as role-models for the locals. When a cell reached an attendance level of about twenty, the coverts would fission off and start new cells, masquerading as Pacificans who had been entrusted with the assignment by their cell sisters. In the next stage, real Pacifican sisters would be allowed to start new cells, so that by the third stage, further growth was already indigenous and could not be easily traced back to off-worlders. Thus would Femocracy spread in an ever-widening geometric progression, swiftly becoming a truly Pacifican mass movement independent of the off-worlder mission, except for coordination, ideological education, and the supporting media blitz.
The figures that the computer displayed were excellent for this early phase. A third of the functioning cells had fissioned off two secondary cells, and there were already seven tertiary all-Pacifican cells in operation. All of which meant that there were now nearly two thousand sisters at least tentatively interested in the cause. I think we’re ready to begin the media blitz now, Bara Dorothy thought as Mary Maria entered her office.
Mary was a tall, bosomy, red-haired sister, and since she interacted directly with the Pacificans most of the time, she had taken to dressing in Pacifican modes, in this instance,. a billowy green-skirted tunic that bared one brown-nippled breast. It was a style that disturbed Bara on an ideological level, appealing as it did to the atavistic breeder breast-fixation. Mary Maria would have to be watched closely. It was necessary for her to sync into the Pacifican matrix, to some extent, but care must be taken that she didn’t become infected by the role she was called upon to play.
“I think we’re ready to begin our media blitz, Mary,’* Bara said. “What do we have ready for the net channels?” “Quite a bit,” Mary said briskly. “In addition to all the prepared tapes we brought with us, we’ve completed about ten hours of stuff with local actors——including breeders, who seem to be willing to act in anything for money.” She grinned. “And a flash of tit.”
Bara scowled. “You’re not to encourage that,” she snapped. “I don’t want any of our sisters perceived as potential sex-objects by these local breeders.”
“It does make dealing with them easier,” Mary Maria said. “It’s amazing how muddled their thinking can become with a bare breast staring them in the face. Pathetic, really.”
“I don’t care!” Bara growled. “Sisters are not to allow themselves to become fantasy sex-objects for breeders, whether it make your job any easier or not—”
Mary Maria flushed. “Surely you’re not suggesting that I would—”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Mary,” Bara said more calmly. “I’m merely assuring that no such possibility can arise. From now on, all sisters dealing with the local breeders must wear sexually neutral dress. That’s official doctrine, as of now. While I understand that this may deprive you of a certain useful psychological advantage, we must never forget that pragmatism is no justification for arousing atavistic tendencies, either in the local breeders, or in ourselves. Do you understand what I’m saying?” “Yes, Bara,” Mary Maria said, properly chastened. “But surely you don’t think—”
“No reflection on you at all, Mary,” Bara said sincerely. “You’re not.. .” She paused. You’re not Cynda Elizabeth, she had been about to say. But there was no point in surfacing that problem with someone who was subordinate to them both.
She shrugged, and smiled at Mary Maria, brushing the unsavory business aside. “Now then,” she said in a more businesslike tone, “I believe we should open our blitz with the standard sort of anti-faschochauvinist material. ..” “We’d better stick with more subtle stuff at first, though,” Mary Maria said. “Faschochauvinism is very subtle here, what with women almost dominating the political and economic structure.”
Bara frowned. “I wouldn’t exactly call the posturings of these Pacifican buckos, as they call themselves, subtle,” she said.
Mary laughed. “They certainly have no low opinion of themselves as desirable sex-objects,” she agr
eed. “Unfortunately, neither do Pacifican women.”
“Well, that’s what we’ll work on initially,” Bara Dorothy said. “Forget economics and politics and concentrate on male sexual dominance.” She allowed herself a small smile. “Our friends from the Heisenberg have done an excellent job of pushing these buckos into even more sexually arrogant attitudes than they possess naturally. They’ve synced male faschochauvinism into support for their bloody Institute. Very well. Let’s rub the Pacifican sisters’ noses in it. Falkenstein is polarizing the breeders in support of his own cause, and it’s already tending to polarize the sisters against him, though they have no positive focus. Let’s give it to them. Let’s make Femocracy the leader of the opposition to the Institute on this planet”
Mary Maria pondered that a moment. “Excellent,” she finally said. “The Transcendental Scientists have given us a perfect local issue to polarize the sisters around. We’ll build our campaign around that. Til get right to it”
As Mary Maria left, Bara Dorothy swiveled her chair around and regarded the large map of Pacifica. What a prize this planet is! she thought. The center of the Galactic Media Web! Feminize Pacifica, and the ultimate goal of a Femocratic galactic civilization will become achievable in decades, not centuries.
And the situation is perfect—a woman is already head of government, and women already have a superficially dominant economic status, so the change will be very subtle when Sisterhood controls the Pacifican Web product. We’ll maintain “News of the Galaxy” and the entertainment exports with the tremendous pool of local talent, only the underlying mythic substructure will change. And the beauty of it is that the Pacifican sisters are so much better at that kind of thing than we are. What a contribution they’ll make to the cause of Sisterhood after liberation!
And that, she thought, is perhaps the greatest strength of Femocracy. The only change we seek is the awakening of full consciousness in sisters everywhere. No imposed political hegemony from outside—just fully conscious sisters on every human planet exercising their rightful dominion in their own ways, liberated from the animalistic breeder faschochauvinism that nearly destroyed the Earth.
Norman Spinrad Page 15
