The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form

by J. Neil Schulman

  SYMBOLISM: (N) The lasegraphic period following the CHALDEAN and preceding the IMPRESSIONIST PERIOD, wherein lasegraphy attempted to portray explicit symbols, rather than merely suggest them. It was so heavy-handed that it almost led directly to an ACHROMATIC Period, and would have if Wolfgang Jaeger hadn't single-handedly won the artistic battle for Impressionism with his Rainbow Vistata.

  TACTATA-AND-GENITATA: (I) Joan Darris's attempt to invent a form for sexual activity, which she correctly apprehends is a potential art form, since it relies on tension-and-release DIALECTICs.

  TAILOR'S CLOSET: (I) A cabinet which, by low-powered LASER graphing, takes body measurements then given to a robot that tailors garments, to create a perfect fit.

  TEAPOT DOME, THE: (N) A MOCHA HOUSE in Los Angeles, at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Doheny Drive, and aptly named because a) it has a dome for ROGA performances; b) it serves COCA MOCHA, which looks a lot like crude oil; and C) Doheny was the man charged with bribing U.S. Interior Secretary Fall in the Teapot Dome "oil leasing" scandal of the 1920's, the biggest scandal in American politics before Watergate.

  TELEVISION MUSEUM, THE: (I) The Metropolitan Television Museum of NEWER YORK, the largest repository of television kinescopes, films, and videotapes in the Federation. The reproduction rights of this are equivalent in value to the Louvre's art collection.

  TENOR FORTISSIMO: (I) See FORTISSIMO.

  THERMOCRAYONS: (I) Heat pens which, when applied to RAINBOW PAPER cause them to change color. A child's toy.

  THIRTY-SIX-COLOR SCALE: (I) In LASEGRAPHY, the DICHROIC SCALE as projected by a chromatic laser in a dome. It is divided into thirty-five colors, plus an ultraviolet used for phosphorescent SCANNING and LUMIA. The division into thirty-six colors is to project the scale in a color circle corresponding to thirty-six deca-degrees in the circular perimeter of a dome. If it had not been necessary to include the ultraviolet, it would have been simpler to divide the scale into six colors of six hues each, instead of the seven colors of five hues plus ultraviolet which is standard usage in lasegraphy.

  THROW OUT: (A) In the habitats, slang for vomiting in zero-gee. The logic is that in free-fall there is no "up" or "down" so one can't throw "up"--one can only throw out.

  TIGER PIT: (N) The pit in the center of a CATHEDRAL floor where the CHROMATIC LASER is placed and from where the LASEGRAPHER performs. It was named thus by Wolfgang Jaeger, who decided that lasegraphy, in its worst moments, was like stories he'd read of people being tortured and killed in a "tiger pit" during the American-Vietnam War.

  TIGER, THE: (N) The artistic trauma found in the TIGER PIT and, by extension, any trauma. Compare with WOLF, THE.

  TIGHT: (A) ROGA slang derived from current popular music: professional, rehearsed.

  TOKE: (A) To inhale marijuana smoke.

  TOLKIEN VALLEY: (I) In Cair Paravel, ST. CLIVE, a valley named for J.R.R. Tolkien (1892 - 1973), a friend of SAINT CLIVE.

  TORCHSHIP: (A) See ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, THE

  TOUCHABLE: (I) From reverse of "Untouchable" among Hindu castes in India. However, in the Federation, a Touchable is not born into a caste, but a person who, convicted of certain non-capital felonies, is given a life sentence to be state property hunted by MARNIEs as legal game and--when caught--"touchable for sexual satisfaction between sunset and sunrise, consent granted by the Federation." The most common of the felonies in the Federation for which one can be sentenced to touchability are first-offense rape (compounded by additional punishment if the offender is male; see PEOTOMY), willful non-compliance with the Universal Service Act, and desertion from the Peace Corps. Capital felonies such as homicide, kidnapping, terrorism, and treason are sentenced to death in the MICROWAVE OVENs, as are all further crimes by Touchables, and all offenses less serious than these, including crimes against property, are considered misdemeanors, punishable by restitution, fine, and/or compulsory community service. Touchables are forbidden to work in a profession or at a fixed location, to own property, or to appear in public not wearing their officially mandated garment: a RED cloak worn as a Scarlet Letter. The Sixth Amendment to the ARTICLES OF FEDERATION forbids Bills of Attainder, so Touchable status is not heriditary: the children of Touchables are not Touchable. But if a Touchable parent has nowhere else to raise their children, the child might as well be. Female Touchables with small children are allowed to raise them in designated ghettos--the VAGINATOWN Ghetto in RAINBOROUGH being one--and such Touchables may retire into their ghetto at night, secure against hunting or rape. The Touchable punishment is considered "efficient justice" by Federation economists, inasmuch as Federation taxpayers no longer have to support felons in prisons, but instead get the "reparation" due to "society" for the felony, by having a convict available for sexual sport. Also, it is considered "punishment to fit the crime" for rapists, as well as draft-evaders and Peace Corps deserters unwilling to serve the cause of preserving the peace gladly--and a formidable deterrent to rape, draft-evasion, and desertion. All jurisdiction for Touchables falls to LEGOS, LIMITED, with final appeal to the FIRST LADY. It is customary, once a year at the YULE SOLSTICE, for the First Lady to grant conditional pardons to all female Touchables who, the previous year, have entered menopause.

  TRANSPONDER: (N) IDENTITY TRANSPONDER. See also SCANNING.

  TROOP: (N) In the Peace Corps, 1/2 of a DICTERIAT, comprising 225 women, segmented into five SORORITIES. The designation is used primarily for drilling and parades.

  TSIOLKOVSKIIGRAD: (I) City-cylinder in the LENIN habitats, named for Konstantin Tsiolkovskii (1857 - 1935), Russian rocket experimenter who called Earth "the cradle of Mankind" and predicted that someday human beings would move into cities built in space itself.

  TWIN: (N) In Federation usage, a female child identical to her mother, produced by PARTHENOGENESIS. Compare also with CLONE.

  UNIVERSITY OF AD ASTRA AT NOVA PAULUS, THE, UAANP: (I) the main campus of a private university having campuses in each of Ad Astra's cities, with which the DRYER SCHOOL OF LASEGRAPHY is affiliated. Students of the Dryer School fulfill all Liberal Arts requirements at the UAANP, and the UAANP issues a Bachelor of Lasegraphy degree to Dryer students who fulfill the course requirements of both institutions.

  U.H.I.: (I) United Holovision International: an all-news HOLOVISION service in the Federation.

  UHURU: (N) From the Swahili word for "freedom." The FREE-SPACE HABITATS built by black African separatists after apartheid was ended in Africa.

  UNIVERSAL SERVICE: (N) In the Federation, the draft. See CONSCRIPTION and MINISTRY OF UNIVERSAL SERVICE.

  UPPER HUDSON: (N) The northern part of HUDSON PARISH.

  UPPER MANOR: (N) The upper house in the Federation's bicameral legislature, the HOUSE OF GENTRY.

  VAGINATOWN: (I) From assonance with "Chinatown," slang designation originating with MARNIEs for a TOUCHABLE ghetto where female Touchables with small children are allowed to live unmolested. The official name is the Rainborough Park Children's Reservation.

  VALLE DE SOL: (N) Literally, "Sun Valley" in Spanish, a valley in NOVA PAULUS. See SUNDALE and SUNNY GLEN. I told you there are a lot of sun-worshippers there.

  VELLEITY: (A) The lowest level of volition, wish, or inclination, and--by extension--psychokinesis (or precognition) in the game of VELLETROM.

  VELLETROM: (I) Combination of vellity + trombone. A game played in a casino--either of gambling or betting, depending whether one believes in either psychokinesis or precognition--whereby players make bets on the probable hits of subatomic quanta shot out of a trombone-shaped particle accelerator at a numbered target. Since the house percentage is small, even the most minor psychic ability to influence or predict quantum-mechanical outcomes should produce consistent winning. However, the probabilities of a player actually having the ability to influence quantum probabilities is already figured into the house averages, so one would need to be a true psychic indeed in order to beat the probabilities and win consistently. In essence, velletrom is betting on one's ability to beat the
house percentage through sheer willpower, a proposition on which gambling houses through history have always made a profit. Forget about bending spoons: if Uri Geller could consistently win at velletrom, Randi would have to pay up as well.

  VENERY: (A) In the Federation, TOUCHABLE hunting. Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary gives two separate definitions of venery: "the art, act, or practice of hunting," derived from venari, the Latin word for venison; and "the pursuit of indulgence in sexual pleasure," derived from the Latin root "vener-" from Venus, the Goddess of Love. These diverging Latin roots are combined in the Middle English venerie: to hunt. Makes one ponder what the tension of hunting and the release of killing animals is a substitute for, doesn't it? See DIALECTIC.

  VETERAN: (N) A woman after she has completed her term of service in the Peace Corps.

  VIDEO: (N) In the Federation, a videophone.

  VIRGINIA STATION: (I) A habitat-sized, HOOP-DOG-shaped space city containing commercial areas and hotels, a military base of the FEDERATION SPACE CORPS, passenger, freight, and private torchship and shuttle docking facilities, and zero-gee manufacturing facilities, in a geosynchronous orbit above Earth's equator at the longitude of NEWER YORK--a longitude convenient from SOLERI and CANAVERAL SKYPORTs. The only space habitat under the jurisdiction of the Federation since the Colonial War, and the only source in the Federation of zero-gee manufacturing goods during the long trade embargo. Because of economies of scale and costs of lifting raw materials from Earth, zero-gee manufacturing here is not competitively priced with comparible goods from the habitats, which obtain their raw materials from the asteroid belt.

  VISTATA: (I) A "visual sonata." A misnomer, actually, since--in Italian--sonata is the past participle of sonare: to sound. The correct past participle of the Italian vedere--to see--is vista. However, since the word "vista" had already made its way into English with a more commonplace meaning, early lasegraphers-- wishing a discrete name for the form in which they were composing--used the three-syllable word "vistata" as a sound- alike to "sonata." The term was accepted by common usage. The seven-movement standard form evolved largely in the IMPRESSIONIST PERIOD, following on Wolfgang Jaeger's use of COLORATURA in his Rainbow Vistata.

  VIVARIUM: (N) Literally, House of Life or Quickening. In original usage, a terrarium or greenhouse used for raising plants or animals, the term evolved to refer to a hospice where cryonically-preserved persons could be stored and reanimated, as well as a facility for growing surrogate bodies for brains whose original bodies are damaged beyond repair. See CRYONIC SUSPENSION.

  WARD: (N) The adopted mate of an ANDRO husband: direct counterpart to wife. The husband is considered the senior partner, the ward junior.

  WAR, THE: (N) In the scarred memory of anyone who lived through it, the WAR OF COLONIAL SECESSION.

  WAR OF COLONIAL SECESSION: (I) The Revolutionary War of Independence whereby the FREE-SPACE HABITATS severed political and economic dependency on Earth. After several ultimata back and forth, the O'NEILL habitat was destroyed by an off-course nuclear missile fired as a "warning shot" by the NORTH AMERICAN CONCORD, which unfortunately matched up with a malfunctioning laser-defense system in O'Neill; this was the first of the two major encounters in the War. The destroyed habitat's ally, AD ASTRA, was able to avoid further Federation attack by using the earth's moon as a sheild and placing warning stations at strategic orbits, giving ample advance warning of any incoming attack. Using a strategy engineered by Robert A. Heinlein in his novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Ad Astra used mass-drivers to launch a retaliatory attack of asteroids thrown as meteors against several Earth cities: the resulting "rains of terror" were about as devastating as nuclear attacks. Since the habitats could have laid waste to the entire planet this way, having no shortage of asteroids, the belligerent Earth nations, led by the North American Concord whose cities were destroyed, sued for a cease fire, agreed to by the habitats: the secession was successful. But Earth soon after formed the WORLD FEDERATION, originally a defense pact and an attempt to enforce a trade embargo against the habitats. This attempt succeeded, but the habitats' counter-embargo of Earth was for more damaging to Earth's economy than Earth's embargo was to the habitats. Two decades after the destruction of O'Neill and the RAIN OF TERROR, the RAINBOW COMPACT (the name taken from God's sign for agreeing never to destroy the Earth again) was signed in RAINBOROUGH PARK formally ending the War and ending the mutual embargoes.

  WEST SIDEREAL STORY: (I) A later production of West Side Story, set in the habitats: an updating much as West Side Story was to Romeo and Juliet.

  WHORE: (N) In the Peace Corps, a word honoring a CORPORAL. The connotation to prostitution has been lost.

  WICCE, WICCEN: (A) The roots for "woman," "wisdom," " wicked," and "witch," all refer to the Old Religion--alternatively called the Craft--of which the three-fold GODDESS of MAIDEN, LADY, AND CRONE is worshipped in almost precisely the same way that the Christian Trinity is worshipped. There is some evidence that it is indeed the Old Religion, preceding even Judaism by quite a bit. For some reason, worshippers of God and worshippers of Goddess have been persecuting each other for all recorded history. God/dess only knows who started it. Because of its honor of female symbols above male symbols, and because it does not have the monogamous sexual code of the Judeo-Christian tradition, Wicce grew to be more popular than Christianity on Earth when sociological changes made monogamy an institution only for a chosen few. It became a politically powerful religion on Earth by the time of the Federation, and provides ritualistic support for the World Federation in exchange for having its feast days made legal holidays. Nevertheless, Wicce is not an official religion in the Federation, since the Third Amendment to the ARTICLES OF FEDERATION mandates separation of church and state. (Neither, by the way, is Christianity proscribed by law: the anti-Christian attitude on Earth is social, not legal.) Nevertheless, by the time of the Federation, Witches hunt Christian Touchables and burn them--when permitted--in MICROWAVE OVENs. An old Arabic saying is, "Revenge is a dish best eaten cold." The Wiccens in the Federation think it's best warmed in a microwave oven.

  WICCENSTED: (I) New name, in the Federation for Christiansted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands. The name was changed to remove the reference to Christianity. See also ISLE OF ARTEMIS.

  WIDDERSHINS: (A) Counterclockwise.

  WINDFIELD: (I) An adjustable electrostatic field surrounding a FLYING BELT to reduce drag and prevent windburn.

  WOLF: (A) In music, an imperfection in a musical instrument resulting in an unpleasant sound. Later in LASEGRAPHY an imperfect spectral line in a CHROMATIC LASER. The infrared "wolf" in the lowest red fire gem in Joan's LCAA MARK 800B laser is only deadly at ABSOLUTE POWER, which was never intended to be used in rehearsal or performance, so was not considered a reason for rejecting an otherwise acceptable FIRE GEM, considering how rare and valuable they are.

  WOLF, THE: (N) In lasegrapher's jargon, the wolf-at-the-door--all the mundane problems that interfere with the artistic life and-- by extension--external problems to be contrasted with the artistic ones in the TIGER PIT. See also TIGER, THE.

  WOMEN: (A) One of three socio-political designations in the Federation, along with ANDROMEN and COMMEN. Women are the only one of the three subject to UNIVERSAL SERVICE, and may stand for office--or vote for--the PINK Seat in the HOUSE OF GENTRY. A woman--the FIRST LADY--is Head of State of the Federation, Chief Justice, and Commander in Chief of the Federation Peace Corps.

  WORLD FEDERATION, THE: (I) Successor to the League of Nations and the United Nations, the long-sought World Republic--population circa 2,000,000,000--in which former independent nation-states are provinces. The Federation was enacted soon after--and as a direct result of--the hostilities of the Colonial War, the point at which nations on the planet had an external enemy to unite against. The Articles of Federation call for a bicameral legislature--called Congress or Parliament--consisting of a HOUSE OF GENTRY and a HOUSE OF COMMEN, to distribute power equally into three branches among the three
official genders: WOMEN, ANDROMEN, and COMMEN. Legislation must pass both houses to become law, the Head of State and Chief Justice of the Federation is a woman called the FIRST LADY, the PRESIDENT (Chief Executive) and Provincial Governors (Gaylords) are andromen, and the Chairman of the Governing Cabinet (PRIME MINISTER) is a comman. The Federation is divided into PROVINCEs often consisting of the old nation-states which are administered by a GAYLORD (the provincial governor who's also the junior senator in the House of Gentry) with absolute free and open borders between provinces for Federation citizens and trade goods mandated by the Bill of Rights in the Articles of Federation. The Bill of Rights also mandates privacy protection, right of habeas corpus, protection of property rights, a republican form of governnent for each Province, freedom of expression and religion, hard money, separation of state and economics, emigration rights to outer space, and other civil liberties. In theory, the Articles of Federation promise--on a global scale--the liberty that the United States Constitution promises--and it is a debatable question which delivers more.

  WORLD FEDERATION PEACE CORPS, THE: (I) The pseudo-military "sexual service" of the World Federation comprising 4,500,000 "CORPORALs" at any given time, women drafted into active duty for three years. It is under the jurisdiction of the HOUSE OF GENTRY its Commander-in-Chief is the FIRST LADY of the Federation, and it operates the DICTERIA providing sexual services to COMMEN. Not only are corporals in the Peace Corps not regarded as lowly or immoral, they are considered the bravest and most moral members of society--not only by the commen who directly benefit from their service, but by the powerful women veterans of the Peace Corps, and their ANDROMEN political allies, who indirectly benefit from it. Being drafted to duty in the Peace Corps is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a woman in the Federation: a prize which is given to a woman for being young and politically powerless.