A World Between

by Norman Spinrad

  Carlotta: “Listen to more than the claims and charges of Transcendental Science and Femocracy. We are a great people, blessed by our planet, ennobled by our history, made whole by our love, and today, if only for a moment, we have shown each other that we can be that again. I ask you only to listen with your hearts, to that clear inner voice, to Pacificans speaking as Pacificans for Pacifica, in the fullest confidence that if you do, the torch we have rekindled together today can never die. Thank you all, and goodnight.”

  16

  In her element now, commanding the kind of struggle she was trained to wage, Bara Dorothy sat behind her desk, evaluating the district-by-district demographic data, filling in the names of Femocratic Delegate candidates on her master list as field operatives called them in, and watching the total picture rapidly taking shape on the new map of Pacifica that had been set up on the wall behind her.

  The planet had been divided up into Delegate districts, color-keyed to the demographic balance. The overwhelmingly male Cords districts were a deep blue. Scattered about Gotham, the Island Continent, and Thule were light sprinklings of deep red districts, where sisters outnumbered breeders by decisive margins, and there were similar sprinklings of deep blue in Godzillaland, the Wastes, Gotham, the Island Continent, and the Big Blue Valley, where the breeders had what seemed like prohibitive margins. Perhaps another 20 percent of the districts were evenly divided between pale blue and pink—here breeders and sisters respectively held slight demographic edges, though not enough to be really decisive. The bulk of the planet was neutral white—in the majority of districts, the statistical margin for error was greater than the deviation from an even 50-50 split.

  Silver pins marked those districts in which the Femocratic League was already fielding candidates, and new pins were being added rapidly. Black pins marked districts with declared Bucko Power candidates, and Falkenstein’s strategy was also swiftly taking shape. He was fielding candidates in all the deep and pale blue districts and most of the white, while avoiding the red and even the pink. But Bara Dorothy planned to run candidates in every district that wasn’t solidly in the male column, including even the pale blue.

  For the imponderables just might give us enough of the marginally male districts to control a slim Parliamentary majority, she thought. Every district has at least one wildcard candidate representing neither the League nor Bucko Power. If we can hold a solid female vote, these uncommitted candidates could siphon off enough breeder votes to give our people pluralities even in some of the marginally male districts. If you’re not for us, you’re against us, she thought, Bucko Power candidates and so-called “neutrals” alike…That just might confuse enough stupid breeders who might otherwise vote Bucko Power into voting for the wild cards…

  As she had ordered, Mary Maria entered the command center to finalize the media blitz. As she had definitely not ordered, Cynda Elizabeth entered a few steps behind her. Cynda had been acting even more regressively than usual lately, if that were possible—arguing sullenly with every little decision, frequently in front of subordinates, almost taking a perverse public pleasure in pointing out that Bara’s strike stratagem had been a dismal failure, as if determined to emphasize her titular position as Leader, even as her real authority faded swiftly away. But since she was the titular Leader and had not yet committed an overtly regressive act, there was little that Bara could do about it. She couldn’t even exclude her from this meeting, though she longed to. But some day soon, you’ll make a real slip, you dirty little breeder-lover, and when you do…

  “Well Mary, do you have a finalized media scenario?” Bara said as the two of them sat down in front of her desk, pointedly ignoring Cynda Elizabeth.

  “I think so,” Mary Maria said. “But the conditions of this election aren’t exactly ideal. Seven days from beginning to end pretty well neutralizes our superior organization on a local level.”

  Bara Dorothy scowled “Are you giving me excuses in advance? I would think that the exact opposite is true. We’ve got cells everywhere, whereas Falkenstein has to build a party organization almost from scratch.”

  Mary Maria fidgeted nervously. “Oh, Falkenstein’s got worse problems than we do,” she said. “On a party-to-party basis, we’ve got him beat. It’s all these independent candidates that neither of us control. These damn Pacifican elections just aren’t set up for party-to-party confrontations. Every candidate for Delegate gets a full-time local net channel, and the independents are people who have spent years becoming well-known locally. The Pacificans vote for local personalities, not political parties. They’ve never even had planetary political parties. Great Mother, even Madigan doesn’t have a coherent political party behind her!”

  “Well, they’ve got a planetary party now, don’t they?” Bara snapped. “Us. Two parties, counting Falkenstein’s Bucko Power front. Where’s the problem? We’ve got a superior organization and an ideological position with a mass following—that should only help us smash both Falkenstein and this anarchic collection of so-called ‘local personalities.’ We’re introducing sophisticated party politics into a primitive political matrix. How can we possibly not prevail?”

  Mary Maria nodded, though somewhat more sycophantically than Bara would have liked. “That’s essentially my analysis, Bara,” she said. “I’m not saying we can’t win, I’m saying that our media campaign has to emphasize our planetary platform. Forget about centrally produced campaign material for each local candidate and concentrate on selling Femocracy itself with a planetary media blitz.”

  Bara shook her head in agreement. “Vote for Sisterhood, not for a sister,” she said. “That’s essentially it, isn’t it?”

  “Very good!” Mary Maria exclaimed, with what seemed like real enthusiasm this time. “Maybe we can use that! And we should stick to three essential points and hammer them home: a vote for us is a vote against faschochauvinism, a Bucko Power vote is a vote for faschochauvinism; and most critically, a vote for an independent candidate is a vote for Carlotta Madigan, a traitor to her sex. That’s the essence of what I’ve layed out.”

  “Leave your detailed plans for me to study,” Bara said, “but it sounds good.” Better than you realize, she thought. It would be a mistake to become obsessed with the numerical outcome of this or any other election. Femocracy could never decisively win an election on a planet where breeders had equal rights. Every election should be seen as merely a means for strengthening the unity and numbers of Sisterhood and raising the consciousness of the local sisters to the point where the will to power overrode any residual squeamishness about electoral processes or constitutional niceties. Final victory could only come via some sort of coup, and Mary Maria’s scenario for this election would serve to move Pacifican Sisterhood in that direction, if nothing else.

  Mary Maria sat a fat folder on Bara’s desk and began to rise. “Just a minute!” Cynda Elizabeth said. “I’ve got something to say, and you’d better listen!”

  What now? Bara Dorothy thought. Mary Maria glanced uncertainly at Bara, at Cynda, at Bara again.

  “You can go now, Mary,” Bara said.

  “No!” Cynda snapped. “This is for the record, and I want a neutral witness.”

  Bara studied Cynda for a moment. The little breeder-lover’s face was pink with anger and tight with tension. Perhaps this is the moment, Bara thought. Perhaps now she’s ready to go too far at last. A witness might not be such a bad idea. “Very well,” she said, “Mary stays. Deliver your pronouncement…Leader.”

  Mary Maria sank back into her chair with a bemused expression. Cynda Elizabeth seemed to calm herself somewhat, and when she spoke, her tone was cold and mechanically official.

  “As Leader of this mission, I hereby express my official disagreement with the policy you have decided to follow in this election. It is my considered opinion that it will result in a Parliament once more controlled by Carlotta Madigan, in the eventual alienation of a majority of the Pacifican population, in our eventual expulsion from
this planet, and therefore in the failure of our mission. If you go ahead with it, I want my dissent in the official record.”

  Bara gaped. She chuckled. She could hardly believe Cynda’s stupidity or her own good fortune. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You’re forcing me to declare this a doctrinal matter and formally overrule you?”

  “That’s right,” Cynda said firmly. “The responsibility for the failure of the mission is now yours.”

  “And for the success as well,” Bara said. “You do realize what that will mean, Cynda Elizabeth? You’ll be officially on record as opposing my doctrinal interpretation, and you will be charged with impeding the implementation of a successful policy. The penalties—”

  “—are the same as you will face for overruling me if this mission fails,” Cynda snapped. “One of us will be vindicated, and the other will be disgraced, demoted, anathematized—”

  “Or worse!”

  “Or worse!”

  This was just too easy! Bara Dorothy stared across the desk at Cynda Elizabeth, failing to fathom what was going on in that warped mind. She could not believe that Cynda had handed her the weapon of her own destruction. Did she seriously believe that the mission could fail? Was she planning to defect? Or had this atavistic Pacifican society finally snapped her sanity?

  “I’m happy to stake my chances on success if you’re stupid enough to stake yours on failure,” Bara said. That in itself might be construed as an overt regressive act that would permit Cynda’s arrest and detention, she thought. But if the Pacifican media found out about it…It was tempting, but not worth the risk. “Would you care to enlighten me with your brilliant analysis?”

  The backbone seemed to go out of Cynda Elizabeth. She slumped backward in her chair, shook her head, and regarded Bara Dorothy woodenly. “I can tell you, Bara,” she said, “but I’m afraid enlightening you is far beyond my meager capacity. Only events can do that, and even then…”

  She shrugged. “For what it’s worth, and for the record, Carlotta Madigan is a heroine to this planet now, and Lindblad is a hero. She staked her career on ending the strikes, and she won. Falkenstein has no real issue to fight her on for the moment, but he’ll try because we’re forcing him to contest this election. He’ll split the bucko vote with her and—”

  “Precisely!” Bara said. “They’ll split the breeder vote between them and we’ll capture the sisters!”

  “Not if you run against Madigan, too,” Cynda said. “The Institute fanatics will vote for Bucko Power candidates and the committed Femocrats will vote for ours, but the people between—”

  “What people between, you little idiot!” Bara snorted.

  Cynda sighed. She stared at Bara quizzically. “You really don’t understand, do you?” she said. “To you, they’re invisible. The Pacificans. The women who love men. The men who love women. People who care more about each other and their own planet than Femocracy or an Institute.” She laughed. “That’s who’s going to defeat you, Bara—invisible people. Millions of them.”

  “A handful of atavistic pseudonationalistic reactionary primitives!”

  Cynda smiled softly. “That’s right,” she said. “But not just a handful. A planetful.”

  Bara shook her head ruefully. There was no point in reasoning with Cynda Elizabeth now; the little wretch was clearly imbalanced, totally subverted by this outmoded Pacifican romanticism. Her doom was sealed, but she was so pathetically deranged that Bara now found herself taking little pleasure in the certainty of her destruction.

  “I suppose you want that in the record, too,” she said. Cynda nodded quietly, with an idiotic show of calm confidence.

  Bara sighed. “You may not believe this, Cynda,” she said, “but I really do feel sorry for you. What you’re doing to yourself is beyond my comprehension.”

  Cynda smiled ironically. “I told you that you were beyond my poor powers of enlightenment,” she said.

  A panoramic shot of a large crowd of female strikers picketing a factory in Valhalla. Bright sunlight streaming down through the environment dome paints the scene in vivid hues and bathes the strikers in an aura of cheerful and positive energy. Cut to a tighter shot of a small group of sullen male pickets around a pit mine, shot through a blue filter which leaches color and energy from the scene and creates an atmosphere of brooding, ugly tension. Superimposed over this is a closeup of a leeringly triumphant Roger Falkenstein. This superimposition dissolves into one of Royce Lindblad, his expression an unwholesome blend of glee and craven subservience, which in turn dissolves into a closeup of a slump-shouldered, deenergized Carlotta Madigan.

  Belligerent female voiceover: “What happened in Thule, sisters?”

  The male picketers wave their fists and chant as if in answer: “Bucko Power! Bucko Power!”

  Cut to a medium shot on Susan Willaway sitting on a workbench in a machine shop, her features contorted with righteous indignation.

  Susan Willaway: “This is where Carlotta Madigan sold out her sisters to Transcendental Science’s Bucko Power front! I was there! I saw the Chairman of Pacifica mouthing the orders of Royce Lindblad, who in turn was relaying them from Roger Falkenstein. And they admitted it to the whole planet on the net, remember?”

  Cut to a two-shot on Royce and Carlotta.

  Royce: “…we’ve been doing some hard negotiating with Roger Falkenstein and we’ve forced him into accepting the following modifications to the Madigan Plan…”

  Carlotta: “…I am implementing this agreement as of today on my personal authority as Chairman…”

  Royce: “…this is the Pacifican way of doing it…”

  Carlotta: “…with this agreement now in hand, Royce and I are going down to Thule immediately and we won’t come back until we’ve ended these strikes…”

  Royce: “…the two of us have negotiated this agreement as a team, and we’re going to end the strikes as a team…”

  Royce and Carlotta smile at the camera and kiss.

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

  Cut to a closeup on a shrugging Susan Willaway.

  Susan Willaway: “She said it herself, didn’t she, and she certainly did make the most of it! The Madigan administration secretly capitulated to Falkenstein, in return for which he called off the Bucko Power strike, leaving us no choice but to go along or be branded the sole destroyers of the Pacifican economy. And we all know the results—the Institute stays open, the Madigan Plan remains in force, and Carlotta Madigan wins her vote of confidence—all courtesy of Roger Falkenstein and Transcendental Science! Pacifica for the Pacificans indeed!”

  Cut to the previous two-shot of Royce and Carlotta kissing.

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

  A rapidly cut series of shots: the Institute building, a Bucko Power march, a cut from “Soldiers of Midnight” in which two men in black bugger helpless women, a two-shot on Royce and Carlotta in which Royce seems dominant and supreme.

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

  A very rapidly cut montage of local Femocratic League of Pacifica candidates addressing crowds, talking to women in the streets, speaking into cameras. Superimposed over this is a still shot of Carlotta Madigan tinted a bilious blue-green.

  Female voiceover, mimicking Carlotta with heavy irony: “…I’m not telling you how to vote, my fellow Pacificans…”

  Susan Willaway’s voiceover: “If that be treason to our sex, I say let us make the most of it!”

  “Bucko Power on the march!”

  A full shot of orderly ranks of men marching across the screen from left to right Hard cut to similar phalanxes marching in the opposite direction, then back to the first shot. Back and forth, left, right, left, the rhythm of the cutting moving to the martial beat of the stamping feet.

  Male voiceover: “Fresh from their victory over the repressive Femocratic for
ces in Thule, the buckos of Pacifica are now uniting to preserve Pacifican democracy from the impending Femocratic coup…”

  Cut to an establishing shot of the interior of the Parliament chamber; Most of the Delegate seats are occupied by belligerent-looking women. The few male Delegates are effete types wearing lacy blue tunics. Armed female guards surround the floor of the chamber and stand among the Delegates. A squat, muscular, short-haired woman in a military uniform occupies the Chairman’s seat and addresses Parliament.

  Chairman: “Resolved that the media access laws, the right of assembly, the male franchise, and further elections be suspended until further notice in order to preserve the internal security of Femocratic Pacifica. In favor?”

  A loud chorus of “Ayes.”

  “Opposed?”

  A pregnant silence broken only by a series of ominous clicks as the female guards cock their guns.

  Chairman: “I declare the resolution passed—unanimously.”

  Cut to a medium shot of a graying, wise-looking Transcendental Scientist sitting by a very impressive-looking computer.

  Transcendental Scientist: “Their record on other planets makes the strategy of the Femocrats in this election quite transparent. Since men are roughly half of any planetary population, Femocracy participates in democratic processes only to destroy them. Once they achieve even a temporary controlling majority in any government, they always act swiftly and ruthlessly to establish a permanent Femocratic dictatorship.”

  Cut to a two-shot of two men having a heavy political discussion at a Gotham sidewalk café.

  First man: “Well, Carlotta Madigan doesn’t want that! The effing Femocrats themselves are calling her a traitor!”

  Second man: “Aw, that’s the oldest trick in the book! They attack poor old Carlotta so enough saps like you will vote for fence-sitting nerds to split the bucko vote and elect a Femocrat Parliament. After all, what allows the effing Femocrats to stay here and subvert this election in the first place?”