Susan Willaway: “If Falkenstein’s stupid macho arrogance hadn’t led him to close the Institute as a blackmail threat, we might never have learned of this perfidy on the part of Carlotta Madigan until a faschochauvinist scientific elite, brainwashed and controlled by Transcendental Science, was unleashed to rule our planet by superior military force!”
A series of shots of Femocratic League of Pacifica demonstrations and rallies and newschannel footage of the Femocratic Thule strikers.
Susan Willaway’s voiceover: “But let’s not give Falkenstein or Madigan too much credit for their stupidity. For it was the strength of Sisterhood which forced Falkenstein to take his desperate gamble and reveal the true treasonous nature of the Madigan Flan. And it will be Sisterhood which finally puts an end to the career of this traitor to her sex and her planet! Remember this treason on election day! Remember that only Sisterhood has saved Pacifica from becoming a Transcendental Science puppet-state! Down with faschochauvinism! Down with treason! Down with Carlotta Madigan!
Wearing a short yellow dress bought in a large Gotham boutique, Cynda Elizabeth wandered incognito through the tense and sullen streets of the city. Ever since her confrontation with Bara Dorothy, she had spent much of her time aimlessly walking the streets of the capital, as much to fill her empty days as anything else.
Refusing to front for a policy with which she had registered her official opposition, she had been barred from all strategy sessions and command decisions, and her sisters, fearing ideological contamination, avoided her like a plague-carrier. She had taken her stand, and now she was very much alone, both at the Sirius Hotel and out here among the Pacificans.
At first, she had fantasized about meeting another Eric, satisfying her perverted desires one more time before the mission failed and was expelled to an Earth where the only men were pallid breeders, pale shadows of Pacifican buckohood. At times, she toyed with the idea of defecting, of finding her own destiny here among men and women who openly shared in ease and pride what she must hide forever within her soul.
But this notion always evaporated like morning mist in the clear hard light of day. She was what she was, and though these Pacificans might be a happier breed, Eric had taught her that she could never be truly one of them. And truth be told, what she now saw in the streets made her wonder whether what she had perceived as the harmonious Pacifican psychosexual balance had ever really existed outside her own perverted wish-fulfillment fantasies.
Every park seemed to have its own impromptu orator hectoring a sexually polarized audience, condemning either Femocracy or Bucko Power, but always, so it seemed, Carlotta Madigan. In most cafes and restaurants, women sat with women and men with men, and the occasional mixed couple stood out like some atavistic anomaly. Every day, there was at least one Femocratic and one Bucko Power rally somewhere in the city. On the streets, men and women eyed each other in passing with suspicion and hostility. The Pacifica that had been now seemed like a thin veneer of harmony that once had masked this bottomless reservoir of contending faschochauvinisms. Perhaps it had only maintained itself by self-consciously ignoring the genetic flaw in the human species itself.
Which we and the Transcendental Scientists have now brought bubbling up from the racial tarpits of the past, Cynda thought as she turned off onto a little side street lined with small sidewalk cafes. And that alone gave direction and a strangely altered sense of duty to the newborn confusion of her life.
For what she had seen on Pacifica had taught her that the true enemy was faschochauvinism itself, both the male half of the equation which Femocracy had vanquished on Earth and the female half which had destroyed the manhood of the Terran breeders and made love between men and women a perverted and impossible dream. If this mission failed, it would fail because the Pacificans, for all that had been directed against them, clung successfully to that narrow and fragile path between.
And when that happened, Bara and her ilk would be tarnished by that failure, her own position would be vindicated, and the sisters of Earth might be ready for some small voice of change. So she couldn’t risk throwing that possibility away by destroying her credibility by being caught in a liaison with a Pacifican man. She had been lucky with Eric, but she dared not trust to such luck again. It was her duty—to herself, to her species, and in some elusive way to Sisterhood itself. Even, ironically, to those secret sisters who might long to dare what she had done.
If only Carlotta Madigan hadn’t ruined everything by her incomprehensible blunder, Cynda thought more wanly. Men and women had been coming together again here until that disastrous Parliamentary vote. Now things were flying apart again and no conceivable outcome seemed inevitable or even possible...
Yet somehow, walking down this back street, Cynda once more had the illogical conviction that these people would in the end manage to preserve their own complex identity. Here, in these small cafes secluded from the clamor of the main boulevards, she saw that men and women still gathered together in couples, and above the cafes were three and four floors of apartments, where surely much private life must go on as it always did.
In the end, were not the Madigans and the Parliaments, the demonstrations, the propaganda, and the politics, only the quicksilver surface of a people’s reality? Was not the real Pacifica right here on this quiet back street, multiplied by a thousand, by a million—the millions of interlocking private lives and personal realities that were the true essence of any society, basically unchanging, like the subconscious underpinnings of surface human thought itself?
Like this tall, gray-haired older woman wandering up the street toward her. How could any off-worlder really know what was going on behind those haunted-looking eyes? A Bara Dorothy or even a Carlotta Madigan might take that expression as symbolic of the deep political conflict enveloping the planet, but couldn’t she just as well be pining for a lost lover or worrying about a sickly daughter or even her job? Who knew what—
The woman paused as their paths intersected. Her eyes lit up with an ironic flicker, and as they did, Cynda Elizabeth recognized that face. She had seen it on the net dozens of times; only this strange context had masked the woman’s identity.
“You’re Maria Falkenstein!”
“And you’re Cynda Elizabeth!”
They stood there in awkward silence for a moment. What does she see? Cynda wondered. The face of the enemy? What do I see, a Transcendental Scientist? How strange! she thought. We’ve beeg_,jfighting each other for months, and yet there’s been no human contact. And here we are, suddenly face to face in a back street in an alien city, and it’s the human reality that seems unreal.
“I... I thought you people had all gone back to the Heisenberg ” Cynda finally stammered.
“Everyone but me,” Maria Falkenstein said. She shrugged with a strange diffidence. “I suppose my little secret will be all over the net by morning...”
“No...” something made Cynda say. “I’m... I’m out of all that now ... I ... if you can understand...
Maria Falkenstein smiled a strange little smile at her. “I’m probably the only person on this planet who could,” she said.
“You, too, eh?” Cynda blurted. You, too, what? she wondered. Unexpectedly, incomprehensibly, she suddenly felt a strange bond to this enemy of all she had believed in, a communion that went beyond words or understanding. For some unfathomable reason, there seemed to be an instant spark of sisterhood between them that had nothing to do with either shared ideology or sexual attraction.
“This is peculiar, isn’t it?” Maria Falkenstein said. “We should be at each other’s throats, shouldn’t we?” She laughed. “What would your people say if they saw us standing here like this? What would Roger say?”
“I hardly know what to say myself...
“Well, then may I make a highly improper suggestion, one enemy to another, Cynda?” Maria Falkenstein said. “Let’s sit down and have some wine together. This is too outre an opportunity to miss, don’t you think?”
“All right,” Cynda said woodenly. “Why not?” They found an outside table at the nearest cafe. Maria ordered a bottle of floatfruit wine, poured two glasses, and then they sat there staring silently at each other for long moments. “Well...?”
“Well...
“Why aren’t you on the Heisenberg?” Cynda finally said.
“Why aren’t you at the Sirius Hotel?”
Cynda frowned. She hesitated. But something began to loosen her tongue. Of all times, all places, all people, here, strangely enough, was someone she could talk to beyond political or ideological restraints. “I don’t feel I belong there any more,” she ^Sid. “I...I...”
“So you wander the streets of Gotham trying to connect up to the reality of this planet and you find you can’t do that either.”
“How did you know that?” Cynda said sharply.
Maria laughed, took a sip of wine. “I’m sitting here in the same place as you now, aren’t I, sister?” she said. “Great suns, what a mess we’ve both made here! And what a mess we’ve made of ourselves in the process. I mean, here the two of us sit, and we can’t even work up a good healthy rage at each other. We’re committing treason to our causes at this very moment, you know.”
Cynda took a long swallow of wine. “Or vice versa,” she said. “I mean, this planet does seem to blur the hard edges. Take you. You’re a Transcendental Scientist, but you’re also a sister. I’ve always known intellectually that there were women on the Arkologies, but I’ve never confronted that reality before. What’s it like being... being a free woman in a faschochauvinist society?”
Maria drank a gulp of wine. “Neither as faschochauvinist as you people think, nor as free as we like to pretend,” she said bitterly. “Once more the truth lies in that ambivalent region between where only the Pacificans seem to be comfortable. I wonder how they do it.”
“So do I.”
“You do?”
“I think I’m learning to admire them,” Cynda blurted. “Envy them, even.” She drank more wine for courage, and perhaps to wash the taste of her own words out of her mouth.
“You, too, eh?” Maria said. “You know, I think the two of us have gotten a dose of our own medicine. We came here to tell them how to live, and we end up... floating in our own limbo. Perhaps there is some cosmic justice in the universe after all.”
“That’s why you didn’t go back to the Heisenberg?” Maria grimaced. “Tell me what I'm supposed to do now, and I’ll tell you why I didn’t go back to the Heisenberg” she said.
“You don’t know?”
Maria shrugged and drank some more wine. “I knew I couldn’t tolerate being around Roger,” she said. “I hate what we’re doing to this planet I can’t stand being a collaborator in it any more. I wanted to be alone to think... vague, isn’t it? Hardly logical and scientific. And you, Cynda? Tell me, have you thought about defecting yet?” “DefectingI” Cynda snapped. “Certainly not!”
Maria laughed tipsily. “Not even just a teensy little bit?” she teased. “Isn’t that what we’re really talking about? C’mon, old enemy, we can be honest about it with each other—who’s to know? Tell me you don’t find life here the least bit seductive...”
Cynda sighed, poured more wine, and belted it down. “All right, all right, so I’ve thought about it,” she admitted. The wine, the months of hidden internal tension, the memory of Eric, the unreality of this situation must be going to my head, she thought But what the hell, what the hell, sometimes you gotta talk to somebody ....
“As long as we’re being so honest with each other sister,” she said, “I’m gonna tell you my deep dark secret— I mean, I’ve got to tell somebody who’s nobody, and right now for me you’re as close to nobody as anybody can get. I’m a pervert, I’m attracted to men. Buckos. Real men, not Terran breeders. I want them on top of me, I want their piercers—” Great Mother! she thought, bringing herself up short. What am I saying?
“How shocking',” Maria said sardonically, “You’re being sarcastic!”
“Maybe,” Maria said, “but these days I’m not so sure. Just when I’m thoroughly fed up with what our own men have done, I meet a Femocrat who...he paused. She studied Cynda Elizabeth. “But if that’s true, why don't you defect?” she said. “Why torture yourself for something you no longer believe in?”
“But I do still believe in Femocracy!” Cynda insisted. “Earth is my planet, sisters are my people, and I’m proud of what I am!”
“Including your feelings for men?”
“No!” Cynda blurted. “I mean yes! I mean... look, we’re far from perfect, and so are men, but if sisters like me run away, nothing will ever change. I’m a Femocrat. I want men. It’s about time real Femocrats with these... these feelings stood up to the Bara Dorothys and tried to make Femocracy into something that works for everyone. Defect? Great Mother, the only thing I can defect from is myself.”
Mother, what a conversation this is becoming! Cynda thought in amazement. And yet, if there really was such a thing as Sisterhood, wasn’t this exactly it? Two women speaking their hearts across the abyss of culture, ideology, and conflict? Sisterhood is truly powerful, she thought. In some strange way, more powerful... more powerful than its twisted perversion of itself!
She looked across the table at Maria Falkenstein. “So you're going to defect?” she said.
Maria laughed bitterly. “How?” she said. “To what? If our side wins, Pacifica will just turn into what I’d be defecting from. If your side wins, it’ll become something more loathsome to me than what I left.”
“But what if the Pacificans win? If they succeed in expelling both Femocracy and Transcendental Science?” Maria shrugged woozily. “You really think that can happen?” she said dubiously. “And even if it did, it would be over our dead bodies. And at the cost of losing their chance to have an Institute forever. Do you seriously think they’d tolerate my presence after that?”
“Who knows?” Cynda said. “You could try. I think you should, sister, I really think you should.”
Maria Falkenstein shook her head and rose shakily from the table. “Ah. it’s just a fantasy,” she said. “Roger will win, or your people will win; these poor lovely bastards don’t have a chance. We both know that, sister ”
She started away from the table, turned, and looked back at Cynda Elizabeth. “In fact, this whole conversation has been a fantasy, hasn’t it?** she said. “It’s not real. No one would ever believe it happened, and soon enough we won’t either. What a pity...”
“Maybe,” Cynda Elizabeth said. “But good luck anyway, sister.”
“You, too,” Maria said, shaking her head ruefully. “We sure could use it, couldn’t we?”
Then she was gone, and Cynda Elizabeth was alone once more, sitting at a table at a sidewalk cafe in a back street of an alien city. And how strange it was that of all the people in the galaxy, the one person who for at least a moment had touched her heart had been the wife of the enemy.
A closeup of Carlotta Madigan at her desk in the Parliament building, calm, plainly dressed, with only the prosaic office furnishings as backdrop.
Carlotta Madigan: “Good evening. Tomorrow I will face you once more in an electronic vote of confidence on the issues that have divided our planet for so many months. The polls show me running far behind. Every political analyst on this planet is certain that my resolution to expel the Femocrats and the Transcendental Scientists was an act of political suicide. I have been accused of everything from treason to deliberate falsehood to being the creature of Roger Falkenstein. Every voice on Pacifica seems to be screaming for my defeat. Yet thus far I have remained silent during this campaign...”
Now Carlotta smiles a confident, easy Borgia smile. Carlotta: “Why? Because I've given up? Because I have no answers to these charges?” She laughs sardonically. “No, I haven’t given up, and I don’t lack for answers. Far from it, for as I speak to you tonight, I am utterly confident of victory. Because tonight Pacifica gets its answers, i
n deeds, not words. Why have I fought to maintain the Madigan Plan, admittedly using every trick in the book? Why did I break the Thule strikes? Why did I sit still for a secret agreement with Roger Falkenstein that permitted the Institute to function with an all-male student body selected by our own Ministry of Science? Pacifica wants an answer? Pacifica demands an answer? Well, Pacifica deserves an answer—and here it is!”
Cut to establishing shot of a spacious hall inside the Ministry of Science. Royce Lindblad and Harrison Winterfelt, the Minister of Science, stand in the center of the shot behind a small podium. To their right is a large screen. To their left, a long line of Pacifican scientists with various apparatus waiting to perform like contestants at a Columbian fair. A large mass of video and sound equipment and newshounds are visible in the foreground as the camera moves in for a two-shot on Royce and Winterfelt, emphasizing Royce.
Royce: “I’m speaking to you from inside the Ministry of Science. With me is Harrison Winterfelt, our Minister of Science, and the other men you see are all former students at the Godzillaland Institute of Transcendental Science.’’
The camera pulls back for a longer shot including some of the former Institute students and their apparatus.
Royce: “As you know, when the original student body was dismissed, the Institute chose its new student body from blind lists compiled by our own Ministry of Science. But as you don't know, and as Dr. Falkenstein didn’t know either, many of these new students were trained Pacifican scientists acting under orders from Minister Winterfelt, myself, and Carlotta Madigan. Men capable of learning a good deal more than their ‘teachers’ may have intended.” He pauses, smiles, shrugs.
“Unkind and unfriendly souls might go so far as to call them Pacifican spies. Hari... ?”
A closeup on Winterfelt, looking somewhat nervous.
Winterfelt: “I want to emphasize that everything we will demonstrate tonight has been constructed by Pacifican scientists working for the Pacifican Ministry of Science using information gathered by Pacifican operatives inside the Institute of Transcendental Science. Once this indeed may have been Transcendental Science, but it is Pacifican Science as of now.”
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