Norman Spinrad

by A World Between

  “We’ll announce the end of both strikes simultaneously,” Carlotta said. “You can all come up smelling like patriots.”

  “You guarantee a simultaneous end to the Bucko Power strike?”

  Carlotta nibbled at her lower lip. Well what do I have to lose? she thought. “I told you that already,” she said.

  The committee members began muttering among themselves. After a few moments, Susan Willaway cut them off with a peremptory wave of the hand. No doubt as to who was really running this show! She glowered at Carlotta. She bit her lip. “On that basis, it seems we have no choice,” she said quietly.

  “None whatever,” Carlotta said, fighting back a triumphant grin and extending her hand instead. Susan Willaway drew back with a disgusted snort. “Up yours, you traitor!” she snarled.

  “Likewise, I’m sure,” Carlotta said blithely. She turned her back and walked slowly out of the silent machine shop, knowing that the morning would see it humming with life, knowing that the vote of confidence was now won, knowing that she had once more steered the ship of state on a Pacifican course between the hard rocks of competing off-worlder ideologies. That is, she thought a shade more uncertainly, if Royce has had the same luck I have!

  The glacial ice outside the environment dome marched on to infinity, a brilliant sheet of bluish sheen under a cloudless sky. Inside the dome, Royce Lindblad hunkered down with the three-man strike committee on the tread of a huge digger parked at the lip of an enormous pit mine, terraced with spiral roadways, littered with idle earth-moving behemoths. From the ice outside, to the crater of the pit mine, to the machinery itself, the scale of everything was surreally enormous, and the sense of isolation from the rest of the planet was thereby heightened. Yet this cruel and inhuman landscape was the industrial heartland of Pacifica. Here were the sooty mines, ugly factories, fumes, gases, and effluents that allowed the rest of the planet to function as an esthetic blend of natural and urban ecology.

  And here were three tough gritty men who represented a work force that spent half the year in this grimy and frozen workshop of the world. The slavies of Pacifica, yet also its laboring aristocrats, making more money in half a year here than most Pacificans made working full-time. Enough to spend the other half of their lives as vacationers in the warm sun of the Island Continent Maybe that's why the strikes came here, Royce thought, and maybe that’s why the Thule workers seem so indifferent to the mass unemployment afflicting the rest of the planet. When this is over, all it will cost them to catch up economically is the sacrifice of a month or two’s vacation. They can afford a long ideological strike; their whole way of life is geared to it.

  “Well buckos,” Royce said easily, “I’m here to tell you that you’ve made your point. The Institute stays open at least through the trial period, so it’s time to call off your strike.”

  ‘"That’s not quite the way we see it,” Mike Lumly said. A squat, powerfully built man, he was one of the leaders of the Bucko Power movement, perhaps with a direct link to Falkenstein himself. Berliner and Como, the other two members of the strike committee, were his nominal equals, but seemed less politically oriented, local window-dressing for a movement that was probably directed by Falkenstein through Lumly. Royce wondered just how much leeway even Lumly had.

  “Well then how do you see it?” Royce asked genially. He expected little trouble ending the male strike; it was Carlotta who had the heavy work cut out for her.

  “We’re all for what you and Madigan have done,” Lumly said, “and we’re even willing to swallow letting the effing Femocrats remain on Pacifica a while if that’s what it takes to keep the Institute open. But the way we read it, Madigan implemented the agreement with Falkenstein without a Parliamentary majority, so if she loses the vote of confidence, we’re no better than right back where we started from, maybe worse. We end our strike now and the unilateral Femocrat strike will force the new Parliament to close the Institute to save the economy.”

  “So,” said Berliner, “we’ve decided to stand pat at least through the vote of confidence and see what happens.” “Yeah,” said Como. “There’s no percentage in relaxing the pressure now.”

  “But there is,” Royce said. “If these strikes aren’t ended before the vote, Carlotta will lose. But if they are, she wins for sure, and we can guarantee you that the Institute will stay open.”

  “Talk to the Femocrat strikers, not us,” Lumly said skeptically. “They end their strike, we’ll end ours. Otherwise—”

  “Carlotta’s doing that right now,” Royce said. “And I can guarantee you that the women here will be back to work tomorrow.”

  "What?”

  “Doesn’t make sense. How do you expect to pull that off?”

  Royce favored them with a we’re-all-buckos-together smile. “Simple,” he said. “Carlotta’s told them that you’ve already agreed to end your strike, implying she’s going to win the vote of confidence no matter what they do. So if they continue their strike, they’re the heavies, and Carlotta wins over their dead bodies. We’ve got the little ladies tied up in knots, buckos!”

  “We?” Lumly said harshly. “Where do you and Madigan come off announcing that we’re going to end our strike? It’s a lie, Lindblad, and you know it”

  “Is it, Mike?” Royce said. “If that little lie ends the Femocrat strike, doesn’t it become the truth? You going to throw away a political victory like that just because Carlotta had her fingers crossed?”

  “I don’t like being used this way,” Lumly said stubbornly.

  “Aw, come off it, Mike,” Como said. “We’re getting what we wanted, aren’t we? So what if it takes a little fancy footwork?”

  “Yeah,” Berliner said. “I think it’s kind of cute.”

  “Quid pro quo,” Royce said. “Carlotta wins the vote of confidence, and you get what you were striking for in the first place. Or have you forgotten just what that was?”

  “I still don’t like it,” Lumly said. “It means ending our strike without really settling anything. The Institute’s still temporary, the Femocrats are still here, and the only clear winner is Carlotta Madigan.”

  “Aw, for shit’s sake, Mike!” Como said irritably. “What is this, your own personal ego-trip? Royce here delivers what he promises, and we’ve got no reason to keep striking.”

  “Yeah. And if we do, guess whose dead bodies Madigan wins over then? If the women go back to work and the Institute stays open, what the fuck do we claim we’re striking for?”

  “To kick the Femocrats off the planet! To make the Institute permanent. For Bucko Power!”

  “Effing jellybelly oil, and you know it!”

  Royce just sat there letting the two Thule techs go at Lumly and do his own work for him. It seemed to him that Lumly was parroting some line layed down by Falkenstein —that now Falkenstein, like the Femocrats, wanted this crisis to continue to a conclusion. That Bucko Power, once a means, had become an end for men like Lumly and perhaps for the Transcendental Scientists themselves. But it also seemed that plenty of men who supported the Institute, even Bucko Power types like Como and Berliner, still had the pragmatic detachment to know the difference between tactical means and open-ended godzilla-brained ideological demands. And that gave him a hope beyond winning this essentially inevitable tactical victory.

  “Look Mike, we both agree to go along with Royce here and end the strike,” Berliner finally said. “This is a democratic committee, and we outvote you, if you want to have it that way.”

  Como nodded in agreement Lumly looked at Berliner, at Como, at Royce, meeting unsympathetic eyes at every station of the way. He frowned. He shrugged. “Okay,” he said without any enthusiasm, “I guess I might as well make it unanimous.”

  “You won’t be sorry,” Royce said. He reached out his hand. Como and Berliner shook it with enthusiasm. Lumly handled it as if it were a moribund discray which might still have some sting left “I hope you’re right bucko,” he said. “I only wish I knew where you and Madigan
really stand.”

  “I thought we had made that pretty damn clear,” Royce said.

  “I’m not talking about these strikes, Lindblad, I’m talking about the big picture, the real issues. Ever since the Heisenberg came to Pacifica, you and Madigan have zigged and zagged, bought time and equivocated, and nobody really knows which side you’re on. Bucko-to-bucko, Lindblad, where do you really stand?”

  “Do I look like a Femocrat bucko?” Royce said archly. Como and Berliner laughed. “No, but your lady does, and she’s the boss,” Lumly said.

  “She’s the Chairman, Mike, and I’m the Minister of Media. We work together, we’re a team, and believe me, Carlotta Madigan’s no crypto-Femocratl You really think I’d be getting it off with someone who was?”

  “You telling me that the administration’s going to come out on our side when the trial period’s over and it’s time to really decide?”

  “Our side?” Royce said evasively. “Whose side?”

  “The Institute. Your brothers. Bucko Power.”

  Royce paused, pondering how much he could afford to reveal. But anything said to Lumly would no doubt get back to Falkenstein, so while his heart longed to tell these buckos the whole truth, his mind told him that he dared not “When this trial period is over, we intend to move to expel the Femocrats,” he said. “And I’m personally convinced that there must be a Pacifican Institute of Transcendental Science.”

  “Then you are on our side!”

  “Maybe more than you can understand right now, bucko,” Royce said. “We’re on Pacifica's side. And I think that’s where your heart is, too. We’ve been trying to steer a Pacifican course, a middle way. And I hope that by the time this is over, we’ll all be on the same side again. Not as men and women but as Pacificans together. The way it was. The way that worked. The way it was meant to be. You thinlc about that, buckos, and see if I’m not right.”

  Lumly snorted contemptuously, but the other two men were silent and thoughtful, and Royce thought he could sense a certain longing in them for the way things were, for the time when men and women were Pacificans together, when the ballet of the sexes was a dance of love, not war. How could a man not want that in his heart of hearts? What were men without the love of their women? What were women without buckos beside them?

  The shrill and frustrated creatures so many of us have become.

  Royce looked out over the gleaming white wastes of Thule, where cold hard glaciers ground implacably against each other, warring in sterile mindless stalemate like Femocracy and Bucko Power, and the shape of the Parliamentary campaign to come appeared to him like a contrasting vision of green, organic fecundity.

  Let them grind each other to bits with their own fanaticism, he thought; let them rant and scream at the mind and the crotch. While we speak softly and to the heart, for the fields of Columbia, and the forests of the Cords, and the green islands of home, for what this planet has been for us and what we have been for each other. In the end, with patience, and love, and grace, they’ll spend their energy against each other, and only the Pacifica of our hearts will remain.

  A medium closeup on Carlotta Madigan. Triumph shows on her face, but it is tempered by a softness, a modesty, even a humility. Behind her is a holo of a chain of green islands floating in a sun-shimmered sea.

  Carlotta: “My fellow Pacificans... tradition would have me thank you for the enormous vote of confidence you have just given me, but truth be told, the victory is yours, not mine. The confidence you have expressed is in yourself as Pacificans. In Thule, the most ardent supporters of both Femocracy and Bucko Power have ended their strikes to preserve the economy of the planet we all love. Even they have come together as Pacificans for Pacifica, and in this moment we are all brothers and sisters again...

  The hologram behind her dissolves into a panorama of the white Thule icecap under a curtain of fat, lazy falling snowflakes.

  Carlotta: “Now there will be a new Parliamentary election, a bitterly fought campaign between candidates totally convinced that their way is right The issues that divide us, men from women, lover from lover, will once more inflame our passions and divide us once more in political conflict. This is right, this is just, this is what democracy is meant to be...

  Behind her, the scene changes again: the wooded mountains of the eastern Cords rise above the sere brown desert of the Wastes like the eternal promise of spring.

  Carlotta: “But democracy is also the middle path, the way between, the only means by which a divided people may find a new collective center and heal the wounds of its collective soul. And so I ask you in this coming time of strife to stand back and consider not only that which divides us but that which binds us together as well.”

  In the background, the Big Blue River winds between golden fields of ripening grain, and the thin white wake of a hydrofoil draws a calligraphic line between the lush banks.

  Carlotta: “Amidst the shout and fury of Bucko Power and Femocracy, there will surely also be still clear voices calling for sanity, for the triumph of neither extreme. Men and women who remember what we had and who we are and what we must once again regain...”

  Behind her, just the cold black star-speckled blackness of interplanetary space.

  Carlotta: “I’m not telling you how to vote, my fellow Pacificans, I’m just asking you to remember what you have achieved today and to listen...”

  A pinpoint of light grows in the center of the void, becomes a blue disc, then a bright mottled marble of blue, white, green, and brown, then the living planet of Pacifica challenging the darkness—fair, luminous, revolving with a stately grace, a huge and lovely orb backlighting Carlotta Madigan’s pleading face.

  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 a
t 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 strategem 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!”