Norman Spinrad

by A World Between

  “Are you trying to drive something between Carlotta and me?” Royce asked testily.

  “Far from it, Royce,” Falkenstein said. “l’m merely pointing out that there are times when a man must make allowances. You were right to break up that argument between Lauren and Carlotta, for instance, but if you had understood what we’ve just talked about, perhaps you might have been more gentle about it.”

  Royce nodded. “I suppose you have a point,” he said. Falkenstein smiled. “Applied Transcendental Science,” he said. “But I’d best be going now, or my wife may start feeling neglected. Perhaps we can talk again later on.”

  “l’m sure we will,” Royce said. And he stood there for a long time after Falkenstein left, trying to sort out his feelings. He had never met a man quite like Roger Falkenstein before. Alien, yet close to some homeland he could not quite define. Cool, and sometimes obviously manipulative, yet also, he sensed, a man of great depth and authentic feeling. A bucko, and yet not a bucko. Devious, yet open in some way that Pacifican men were not. Repellent in some ways, and yet I feel drawn to him, Royce thought. Does he misunderstand women entirely, or does he possess some masculine wisdom that we buckos have lost?

  A bright point of light moved among the stars: the Arkology Heisenberg, the hand of man sweeping across the darkness. Only one thing was certain: Falkenstein, with his Faustian visions and his brotherly advice, represented the forces of change, a new constellatipn in the Pacifican sky.

  And something within Royce responded with eagerness to the radiance of that new star.

  Capped by its gleaming expanse of northern ice, the green and brown sweep of the Columbian continent dwindled rapidly in the viewport as the shuttle arced upward toward its rendezvous with the Heisenberg. The planet swiftly became a globe of unreal loveliness against the black background of space, jewellike, limpid, and deceptively serene. Beside Maria, Roger relaxed in his seat, a thin smile of self-satisfied contentment lighting up his features with his own cool sort of joy.

  But Maria Falkenstein was troubled, and she could not quite project the reason why. The scenario was well into phase two now, and rolling along smoothly. Reality had followed the projections with a satisfying nominality. Time had been bought, the foothold in the Cords had been secured, and even the invoking of the Pacifican media access laws had been done with that casual smoothness that was Roger at his best.

  He had waited until after breakfast—in fact, until they were about to board the hover back to Gotham. The media people had departed, and only Carlotta Madigan, Royce Lindblad, and Lauren Golding were there on the dock to see them off in the bright morning sunlight.

  “By the way,” Roger had said to Lindblad, “do I make the arrangements with you to broadcast that Faust tape?”

  “Unless you want to sell it to a free market channel,” Lindblad said.

  “Oh, no,” Roger said smoothly. “I’d rather have it be a gift from our people to yours. In fact, I think the best thing would be for us to purchase a full-time channel for, oh, say three months. We have many things we’d like to show your people, and we’d feel better contributing them freely rather than turning a profit.”

  Lindblad looked only mildly surprised. “Well ... ah, that would be the province of the Ministry of Media...” he muttered.

  But Carlotta Madigan flushed angrily. "What is this?” she snapped. “We haven’t negotiated anything like that!”

  Roger looked at her mildly. “Perhaps we’ve misunderstood your laws?” he said. “I was under the impression that your Constitution specifically guaranteed the right of

  anyone to purchase time on your media net. I didn’t think it was a political matter. Am I mistaken?”

  Lindblad and Madigan looked at each other. Something in Lindblad’s eyes seemed to say, “I told you so.” Had he projected just this contingency?

  “I think you’ve been less than candid with us, Dr. Falkenstein,” Madigan said in clearly hostile tones.

  “How so?” Roger answered with a total show of innocence.

  “When we agreed to let you remain in orbit pending your decision, we hardly anticipated that you’d use the time to pump propaganda into the net! If we had known—” “Well I hardly anticipated that you would violate your own Constitution by denying us media access when I agreed to give your own terms the most careful consideration,” Roger said evenly.

  “Of all the —”

  “It is his right under the Constitution, Carlotta,” Lindblad said.

  Madigan whirled on him angrily. “Are you defending this tacky little maneuver, Royce?” she asked.

  “I’m not defending anything,” Lindblad said testily. “I’m just pointing out that we have no legal choice.” He shrugged, as if to say, “I told you this would happen.”

  “Oh, don’t we?" Madigan said. “We can rescind your permission to remain in orbit if you persist in using our own Constitution against us, Dr. Falkenstein.”

  “Not without a formal vote of Parliament,” Golding said. “Not after we announced it on the net.”

  “You think I wouldn’t risk a vote of confidence on this, Lauren?”

  “On what?” Golding said. “On withdrawing permission we’ve already granted as a weapon to circumvent the media access laws because you’re afraid to let these people make their case?”

  Madigan turned to Lindblad, as if seeking guidance, reassurance for her own position—much as Roger often turns to me, Maria Falkenstein thought, sympathizing both with Lindblad’s personally awkward position and Madi-gan’s sense of frustration.

  Lindblad glanced quizzically at Roger before he spoke. “It’s a lost cause, Carlotta,” he said. “If we’ve really been snockered into this, it’s a job well done.”

  Madigan seemed to choke back an angry reply. She turned to Roger and saluted him ironically. “Congratulations, Dr. Falkenstein,” she said. “As one political animal to another.”

  “I assure you there was no trickery involved,” Roger lied ingenuously. “I’m sorry if this little misunderstanding has created that impression.”

  “Sure you are,” Madigan said. Then Roger shook hands with the three of them. Golding had shaken his hand enthusiastically, Lindblad with more reserve, but still without apparent rancor. But Madigan had touched his flesh gingerly, as if fearing the transmission of some loathsome disease.

  And so we have had our way with the political leadership of Pacifica, Maria Falkenstein thought. We’ve manipulated their laws, their psychosexual structure, their homosexual subculture, all according to a well-layed-out scenario prepared by teams of experts with the aid of the Arkmind. What chance did they really have against us? And it’s only just beginning. We’ll give these people an Institute of Transcendental Science, and the question of whether they want it or not won’t even enter the equation.

  It’s necessary that we do this, Maria thought, as the planet dwindled to an abstraction in the viewport. I really do believe that. It’s necessary, and it serves their own higher good. When that Femocrat mission headed for this planet, Pacifican independence and self-determination became an illusion.

  Yet Maria had seen something on Pacifica that clouded her certainty with empathic confusion. She had seen a woman in command and a man who served her and yet in some elusive way was her equal. It was, in a somewhat distorted way, the mirror image of her relationship with Roger. Roger, as much as any man could, treated her as an independent being and an intellectual equal. True, he commanded, but he commanded the men of the Heisenberg, too. In that way, she found herself emotionally identifying with Royce Lindblad, consort of the Pacifican Chairman.

  But Carlotta Madigan was a woman of strength and intelligence, and a woman who ruled, not in the pathological Femocrat mode, but within a complex psychosexual structure that seemed to respect the equality of men and women. She was a woman who ruled equal men and women. How could any woman who had graduated from an Institute despite the long odds fail to identify with a Carlotta Madigan?

  It seemed
to Maria that what Madigan and Lindblad had was something precious, rare, and perhaps quite fragile. Something that, at least in a private microcosmic sense, was superior to any male-female relationship she had ever seen, including, perhaps, her own.

  She knew with cold clarity that it was foolish to measure such a small thing against the political necessities of a struggle that would ultimately determine the future course of human evolution. Should she express such a notion to Roger, he would take it as proof of the inherent limitations of the female psyche.

  Still, it disturbed her beyond all reason to think that Roger—even out of the most dire political necessity— might shatter that delicate personal balance in the service of a higher good As the clean uncluttered cylinder of the Heisenberg appeared in the viewport, she hoped that somehow it would not be necessary to destroy that elusive and precious thing she had sensed among these Pacificans in order to save them.

  She glanced at her husband, his unfocused eyes pondering internal vistas that she could never be sure were totally shared. Perhaps, she thought, in their own small way, these Pacificans have something to teach us, too.

  6

  THE INTERIOR OF A FARMSTEAD LIVING ROOM, DATED AS second-generation Pacifican by the single-screen net console. The rude extruded concrete walls and ceiling meet at crazy angles; the rough-hewn furniture looks as if it has been nailed together by an astigmatic; grimy ancient Terran farm tools are scattered at random, creating an unreal cartoony effect—a Pacifican hayseed reality that never was. Mother, in a red-and-white gingham dress, sits in a rocker watching a gross pom opera on the net console—an orgy sequence involving a Terran goat, a baby godzilla, and several humans of assorted sexes. Father, wearing muck-smeared denim overalls, feeds a baby pig with a bottle. Son sits in the comer working on a model sailboat and sneaking looks at the screen. Daughter makes a grand entrance from the left, dressed in an exaggeration of a then-current Gothamite mode—skin-tight silver shorts and a monohalter exposing one breast, which has been painted around the nipple to resemble a flower.

  Daughter (world-weary): “Be it ever so humble, there’s no home like this!”

  Father: “So you finally got tired of playing a pom opera queen in Gotham, Lu-Anne?”

  Daughter (brushing hay off a chair and sitting down gingerly): “How many times must I tell you that I’m working in government, Daddy?”

  Father: “Same damn thing, ain’t it? Screwin’ people in public is screwin people in public, I always says.” He mugs at the camera, breaking himself up to canned laughter. Daughter: “Daddy, you’re incorrigible!”

  Father: “Then don’t incorrige me! Hee-hee-hee!” He throws the baby pig at her. “Why don’t you feed Horace his slop?” v Mother: “Shut up! They’re coming to the good part!” She rocks faster and faster, giggling to herself.

  Father: “See what you Islanders are doing! That pom opera channel is turning your poor old mom into a demented sex-maniac.”

  Son (rubbing the handle of his knife obscenely): “Different strokes for weirdo folks!”

  Daughter (snidely): “Still stroking yours behind the bam, Jody?”

  Father: “Them goddam net channels is turning my whole family into shit-brains!”

  Mother: “Then why you always watching them godzillas biting each others asses off, Hiram?”

  Father (indignantly): ‘That’s a native Pacifican artform. Doncha have any respect for culture, Ma? Seems to me we could do with more of that and less of the brain-rot that’s cornin’ through the net these days. I mean, l’m as much in favor of free media access as the next man, what made our planet great, and all that hog-slop, but next thing you know we’ll be watching Femocrats in brass underwear goin* at each other with carrots and telling our women-folk to wear jockstraps.” *

  Daughter: “Oh, Daddy, you’re such a fascist!”

  Father: “Well, I’d vote for any Delegate who’d clean up the net!”

  Mother: “Oh shut up, Hiram, you’d vote for your goat!” Cut to a closeup on Son, who licks his lips reflectively. Son: “Mmmm... Femocrats in brass underwear going at each other with carrots...”

  A closeup of the baby pig, who suddenly squeals and spits up his milk.

  A closeup of Daughter, who groans wearily.

  Daughter: “Everyone's a media critic these days!”

  The frame freezes, and then the farmstead scene is replaced by a tall dark man in an ancient magician’s tuxedo.

  Magician: “Yes, you never know what you’ll see on the Pacifican net next, and there’s probably some people like old Hiram right out there now who’d zap this channel if they could.. But fear not, good friends, thanks to your own enlightened media access laws, Transcendental Science will be right back with the rest of today’s installment of “Founding Father*9 after this straightforward pitch from your sponsors, namely us”

  He rolls up both his sleeves to reveal... nothing. Magician: “Now. there’s nothing up our sleeves... except a few little tricks we’d like to teach you.” He waves his hands and produces a bouquet of flowers as the camera pulls back. “Like for instance the instantaneous transmission of matter.” The bouquet disappears from his hand and reappears instantaneously, floating in the air a few feet away. He smiles feyly. “Control of gravity, too. I’d do our live-three-hundred-years trick now for you, folks, but that’d be a looong commercial, wouldn’t it?”

  As the camera moves in for a closeup, his clothes disappear, and he’s standing there naked, shrugging.

  Magician: “Of course, there’s no such thing as magic, as we all know. Only science that you don’t understand yet But you will, folks, you will, unless, of course, you’re going to listen to old Hiram. Speaking of whom, let’s see if Femocrats in brass underwear are really going to materialize via the net and give the old boy a hard-attack! Or has baby piggy really had the last word... ?”

  “Godzilla-brained sillyness,” Wenda Rentzlauf said. “We’re not like that on the Mainland, and we never have been.” Still, Rauf Rentzlauf couldn’t help noticing that she was suppressing a giggle despite herself as the splenetic Hiram slipped and went ass-over-backwards into the manure-pile.

  “Of course it’s sillyness,” he said, keeping one eye on the screen and the other on his wife. “It’s not supposed to be realistic comedy. Ancient form. Backslip, or slapstick, I think they call it.”

  “Well, I think it’s crude, Rauf.”

  “It’s supposed to be crude.”

  “Well, I also think it degrades Mainlanders and the Founders,” Wenda said. “It was Mainlander Founders who created the media access laws—they weren’t a bunch of godziUa-brained social fascists like that old shitkicker.” “Course not,” Rauf said. “That’s why it’s funny. You got to admit those Transcendental Scientists aren’t the humorless borks everyone seemed to assume they were.” “Guess not, they’re sure good at laughing at us.”

  “Ef it all, Wenda, they’re laughing at themselves, too,” Rauf said. “That scientific magician with the disappearing clothes...”

  “I suppose you’re right, but I still think it’s pretty low-level humor.”

  On the screen, Hiram staggered to his feet, tripped on a squealing pig, and fell on his face in the muck. Wenda choked back a laugh. “Low...he stammered. “Really low.”

  Rauf made a pig-face at her and squealed indignantly. “Everyone's a media critic these days!” he said.

  They both broke up laughing.

  A split-screen shot. Roger and Maria Falkenstein sit on a breezy, rough-hewn porch, sunlight filtering down through a dappled green forest in the background. They wear loose white blouses, and their hair ruffles in the breeze, very outdoorsy and informal. In the upper right quadrant of the screen is a bluff-looking man in the coveralls of a Thule mining tech.

  Miner:...ou people realty have three hundred year lifespans?”

  Roger Falkenstein (shrugging ingenuously): “Well now, we really don’t know how long these techniques will let people live, since we’ve only had them a h
undred years or so. We’re all going to have to wait to find out. You wouldn’t mind waiting three or four hundred years for an answer, would you, Jon?”

  Miner (smiling): “I guess I could stand the suspense. But how old are you?”

  Maria Falkenstein (archly): “A lady never tells.”

  Roger Falkenstein (breezily): “And a gentleman never asks. Good talking to you, Jon, and now we’ll take another plug-in from our audience.”

  The miner’s face is replaced by a young woman in a slash-cut red tunic, very up-to-date Gotham.

  Woman: “I’m Hildy Berwick, and I’m a transport designer...”

  Roger Falkenstein: “Good talking to you, Hildy...

  Woman (somewhat belligerently):...nd I’d like to know why you people have taken a whole net channel and put on all these entertainment shows. I mean, documentaries or straight propaganda, I could understand...

  Maria Falkenstein: “Why does Pacifica put all its entertainment on the Web?”

  Woman (laughing): “For money!”

  Roger Falkenstein: “But surely also because everyone is a bit of a prima at heart We all get a boost out of seeing our art, such as it is, transcend cultural boundaries. What better way for two peoples to make friends with each other?”

  Woman (somewhat skeptically): “You’re telling me you’re not trying to convince us of anything with all this stuff?”

  Roger Falkenstein: “Sure we are. We want to entertain and tell you about what we have to offer, too, but we keep the two separate, because, as we all know, propaganda is the death of art. That’s why we have shows... and commercials. Speaking of which, I do believe it’s time. Been nice talking to you, Hildy...

  Just the Falkensteins now, smiling warmly from the screen, with a smooth announcer’s voiceover: “And we’ll be back with more ‘Talk to the Falkensteins’ after this straightforward blast from Transcendental Science...