Norman Spinrad

by A World Between

  Soft female voiceover: “Pacifica is for lovers...

  Mellow male voiceover: “And lovers are for Pacif-• . »» ica...

  A closeup on Rugo, looking dreamy and contented now. The camera pulls back for a longer shot, showing Royce, Carlotta, and Rugo ambling slowly together down Lorien beach. The camera moves in again for a two-shot on Royce and Carlotta.

  Royce (sardonically): “But men will be men ...”

  Carlotta: “....nd women will be women ”

  Cut to a closeup on Rugo.

  Rugo (in a rather cute quacking voice): “But humans will be humans if they stop whonking at each other like bumblers.”

  Cut to a full shot on a Bucko Power candidate haranguing a small streetcomer crowd of men. His mouth, his arms, the fist-shaking gesticulations of the crowd—all are in jerky fast-motion. Moving in graceful contrasting slow motion, Royce and Carlotta move into the frame and bracket the speaker.

  Speaker (in filtered mechanical voice): “Down with Femocracy! Power to the penis! We demand what we deserve.”

  Royce and Carlotta glance at each other meaningfully, shrug.

  Royce: “He asked for it. ..”

  Magically, they both produce cream pies and slam them in the speaker’s face from both sides.

  Royce and Carlotta: “Pacifica for the Pacificans!”

  Cut to a similar shot of a wild-eyed woman hectoring a female crowd. Royce and Carlotta move into the frame, flank the speaker, and look questioningly at the crowd.

  Speaker: “Sisters! Speak out for your rights! Tell these faschochauvinist dupes what you want! Let me hear it! Let me have it!”

  Carlotta grins at the crowd and raises her hand like an orchestra conductor.

  Crowd: “Pacifica for the PacificansV'

  Pies fly from both sides, creaming the speaker’s face with white goo.

  Cuf to a two-shot on Royce and Carlotta walking on Lorien beach.

  Carlotta: “Of course, this election is serious business.” Royce (fatuously): “In fact, I’ve never seen so many serious people shooting their damn fool mouths off in my life. If you believe what you hear, Carlotta’s sold out the women of Pacifica to Transcendental Science and sold out the men to Femocracy, both at the same time. How’d you manage that trick, babes?”

  Carlotta (waving her hands like a magician): “The hand is quicker than the eye!”

  Royce: “And if you believe that, you must believe in the tooth fairy, too.”

  Carlotta: “Personally, I make a practice of believing in two impossible things before breakfast. Today it was Transcendental Science and Femocracy.”

  Royce: “Well, we've had our fun, fellow Pacificans...

  A huge hand shoves a big cream pie into the foreground of the shot as if handing it to the viewer.

  Carlotta: “But come election day, it’ll be your turn to throw the pie!”

  Royce Lindblad giggled, turned away from his net console, and gave Carlotta a big grin. “They don’t know what’s hitting them!” he said. “Falkenstein’s bellowing like a wounded godzilla, and the Femocrats won’t even talk to newshounds. Their campaigns are disasters, and they can’t even figure out why.”

  Carlotta shook her head, paced around his office, glanced at the depth poll figures on the access screen, and sat down on the arm of Royce’s lounger. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure why either,” she said. “I thought this media blitz you layed out was crazy, but...”

  “But it’s working, isn’t it?” Royce said somewhat smugly.

  The depth poll figures might not be ideal, but the shape of the new Parliament was already clear. Planetwide, the projected vote now broke down as 23 percent Femocrat, 30 percent Bucko Power, 3I percent for the vague Pacifica for the Pacificans movement, and 12 percent undecided with two days of campaigning left Neither Transcendental Science nor the Femocrats had a prayer of forming a new government, and a paralyzed Parliament would mean maintaining the status quo by default—a Madigan Chairmanship and a continuation of the Madigan Plan. And a considerable portion of the population, male and female, was at least temporarily coming to see the whole Pacifican Pink and Blue War as some kind of hideous joke.

  “If there’s one thing you can count on fanatics to do when it’s escalation time, it’s lose their sense of humor,” Royce said “They’re screaming foul slok at us and each other and they just can't comprehend why we’re just coun-terpunching with cream pies. And still less why it’s working as well as it has.”

  Carlotta took another, longer look at the depth poll figures. “But I think we’ve milked the fun-and-games approach as far as we can,” she said. “Seems to me, anyone who’s still committed to Femocracy or Bucko power after all this is going to vote that way no matter what anyone does in the next two days. I’d expect the undecided to break roughly in thirds, so that’s not going to affect the outcome either...”

  “Yeah,” Royce said.

  “Which means no one will have the votes to oust me from the Chairmanship or repeal the Madigan Plan or dare to force a vote of confidence on anything for the duration of the trial period.”

  Royce nodded. “You could call it constructive paralysis,” he said.

  “But when the trial period is up, we’ve got to be in a position to get through a resolution expelling the Femocrats and Transcendental Scientists, or at least win an electronic vote of confidence and elect a new Parliament that will pass it if this one votes it down. So...”

  “So?”

  Carlotta got up and began pacing the office again. “So since the outcome of this election is already decided, we should start playing the endgame now. Get heavier and nastier so that the result of this election isn’t just a cream pie, but a ringing endorsement of Pacifica for the Pacificans. Of me. Of us. Of the Madigan Plan. Of Pacifican nationalism.” She grinned crookedly at Royce. “It’s time to change the media blitz and make us heroes, babes.”

  Royce laughed. “I suppose I can hold my nose and do it,” he said. “Carlotta Madigan and Royce Lindblad, saviors of the Pacifican way of life, champions of Pacifica for the Pacificans, the golden couple, and so forth...e grimaced wryly. “As long as we don’t start believing it ourselves.”

  Carlotta laughed. She looked down at him with what seemed like a perfectly straight face. “Why not?” she said archly. “Isn’t it the truth?”

  A medium shot on Royce Lindblad and Rugo. Royce is apparently involved in a serious conversation with the fat little bumbler, but he’s whonking and squawking like a bumbler himself. Hard cut to a tighter shot on Carlotta Madigan as she filings a pie into the face of a male speaker. Cut to a full shot on two figures made up as clowns, their faces ludicrous caricatures of Royce and Carlotta, as they grope each other obscenely, squirt the camera with seltzer bottles, and finally heave a barrage of pies at a large hologram of Pacifica in the background.

  Cut to a two-shot on Roger Falkenstein and Mike Lumly sitting in a viewing balcony at the Institute, with the Godzillaland jungle in the background.

  Falkenstein (shaking his head in bemusement): “Can you, as a native Pacifican, explain the antics of your two leading politicians? Their serious political discourse seems to consist of soft pom, pie-throwing, and ... uh, talking to dumb animals. Is this the traditional Pacifican way of choosing a government? Have our psychohistorians missed something?”

  Lumly (righteously): “They’ve got nothing serious to say, so they’re reduced to making public asses of themselves.”

  Falkenstein: “Nothing serious to say? In the face of an impending Femocrat coup? With the existence of this Institute at stake? The Chairman of Pacifica can contribute nothing more to the political debate than low humor, pretty pictures of the landscape, and xenophobic rantings about ‘Pacifica for the Pacificans’?”

  Lumly: ‘There’s only one issue in this campaign: whether or not Pacifica is going to become a Femocrat dictatorship. Any Femocrat is going to vote for her own kind, and any real bucko knows that the only alternative is to support Buck
o Power all the way. So who’s left to Vote for crypto-supporters of Madigan? Just a handful of fools who don’t take the real threat seriously. So Madigan’s campaign theme is nothing but honest: a vote for a Madigan supporter is a pie in your own face.”

  A triple split-screen shot. On the right, a long shot of the Parliament chamber, filled with female Delegates, sprinkled with armed female troops. On the left, the shot of Royce and Carlotta as clowns, heaving pies and squirting seltzer. In the center of the screen and dominating the shot, a rapidly cut montage of the wonders of Transcendental Science—buildings springing up instantly, an artificial sun transforming the icy wastes of Thule into a green garden, an ancient man blossoming forth with new youth and vigor.

  Singing male chorus to the beat of marching feet:

  “Which side are you on?

  “WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?”

  Two shots alternating with each other again and again: Nero playing his violin on a balcony while Rome bums below him and hairy barbarians pillage and rape in the flaming streets; Carlotta Madigan on a similar balcony overlooking Gotham, kissing Royce while a similar horde of barbarians—Neanderthals stuffed into black military tunics—rape women in the streets below and wave “Bucko Power” placards.

  Female voiceover (sardonically): “Pacifica for the Pacificans !”

  Ancient film footage of Nazi stormtroopers smashing windows and beating Jews with truncheons, Adolf Hitler addressing a frenzied Nuremburg rally, tanks rolling through the ruined streets of a city.

  Female voiceover: “Germany for the Germans!”

  A long shot on an altar atop a great stone pyramid. The steps are lined with bound captives, and at the pinnacle, an Indian priest rips out a beating human heart with an obsidian knife.

  Female voiceover: “Mexico for the Aztecs!”

  A rapidly cut series of shots of tremendous nuclear explosions vaporizing Paris, New York, London, Peking, Moscow.

  Female voiceover: “Earth for machismo!”

  Cut to a closeup on Susan Willaway, looking straight into the camera with righteous indignation.

  Susan Willaway: “Throughout human history, rabid ap-287

  peals to irrational nationalism have always been the last desperate resort of ideologically bankrupt demagogues. It took Femocracy to put a stop to it on Earth, sisters, and now that Pacifica is about to be liberated from fascho-chauvinism, why of course our own little tinhorn demagogue, Carlotta Madigan, dredges up this filthy jingoistic slime from the atavistic past and attempts to hide her treason behind a shit-smeared screen of nationalistic muck! # It can’t happen here... ?”

  A series of shots of Bucko Power demonstrations— marching men, waving fists, distorted shouting faces—all to the terrible music of stomping jackboots.

  Susan Willaway’s voiceover: “But it is happening here! Pacifica for the Pacificans! But what kind of Pacifica for which Pacificans is Carlotta Madigan ranting for? Who is responsible for the continued existence of an Institute metastisizing its foul poison through the body politic like a loathsome cancer! Carlotta Madigan! Who sold out her sisters to Transcendental Science? Carlotta Madigan! Who is therefore responsible for the faschochauvinist animals rioting in our streets? Carlotta Madigan, and her Machiavellian breeder, Royce Lindblad!”

  Cut to a closeup on Susan Willaway.

  Susan Willaway: “Why has Carlotta Madigan failed to answer the charge of treason against her? Because she has no answer! Instead, she gives us circuses, the Madigan Plan, an Institute, outmoded nationalistic chauvinism, and calls it Pacifica for the Pacificans! And what kind of Pacifica will that be if she succeeds? Just what we have now— a Pacifica ruled by Falkenstein through Madigan’s breeder, where Bucko Power fanatics are allowed to run riot in the streets, where democratic strikes by Sisterhood are broken by blackmail or force, where the beast reigns supreme! Pacifica for the Pacificans? Pacifica for faschochauvinist swine and their lackeys and dupes!”

  A panoramic shot of a huge and orderly Femocratic League of Pacifica rally, in which the camera first focuses on a section of the crowd, and then slowly reverse-zooms upward and outward, so that the army of women seems to expand toward the horizon in all directions, filling the field of vision to infinity as if it covered the world.

  Female voiceover: “But Sisterhood is strong, Sisterhood is united, and Sisterhood will not be fooled by meaningless slogans. Pacifica for the Pacificans... ?”

  A tremendous amplified shout from the crowd: “SIS-TERHOOD FOR PACIFICA/ PACIFICA FOR SISTERHOOD!”

  A closeup of Carlotta Madigan seated in front of a large hologram of Pacifica, looking cool, tranquil, humbly satisfied with herself.

  Carlotta Madigan: “Tomorrow you will vote, my fellow Pacificans, and thereby consign to well-earned oblivion the most vicious and un-Pacifican campaign in the history of our planet.”

  Behind her, a montage of Bucko Power demonstrations, striking workers, Femocratic League rallies, angry, animalistic, shouting male and female faces.

  Carlotta Madigan: “Where once our political differences were economic and philosophical and settled in the democratic spirit of compromise, now they seem to revolve around the nature of our genitals and are not to be compromised at all. The Femocrats accuse Transcendental Science of subversion, and Transcendental Science accuses Femocracy of plotting a coup, and they both accuse me of treason and atavistic nationalism, and I accuse them of interference in our way of life, and, my fellow Pacificans, all of us are right!”

  Behind her now, a shot of Pacifica as seen from far off in space, a luminous marble alone in the darkness.

  Carlotta Madigan: “I rue the day that these off-worlders insinuated themselves into this solar system by lies, deceit, and trickery. If what they have both done to shatter our harmony is not subversion, what is? If what they have done is not interference in our way of life, how much further must they go? Were I not a traitor to both Femocracy and Transcendental Science, could I be true to the planet I love, could I sleep at night? And with whom? If an overriding faith in our own people, in what we’ve built together, in who we are, is chauvinistic nationalism, I say let us wave that flag and wave it proudly!”

  Behind her, the camera zooms in on Pacifica till it becomes a huge globe. The planet stylizes into a circle of green, brown, white, and blue in the center of a black flag of space, waving in the breeze behind Carlotta against an azure sky.

  Carlotta Madigan: “For while the gross excesses of this campaign must fill every reasonable Pacifican with disgust and loathing, I say we have much to be proud of, too. Without our total devotion to free media access, none of this vicious propaganda would have disturbed our tranquility. Were we not first, last, and always a democratic society, the government of Pacifica would have long since crushed this off-worlder subversion with an iron hand. Did we not still believe in our democratic instincts, in our planet, and in ourselves, this putrid mess would not exist.”

  The camera moves in for an extreme closeup on Carlotta Madigan, as she shrugs and smiles ruefully.

  Carlotta Madigan: “Our apparent weakness is our greatest strength, and we all know it in our hearts. A great man said it all centuries ago: ‘Democracy is the worst of all possible political systems—excepting all the others!’ ”

  The camera pulls back for a longer shot on Carlotta as images fade into each other behind her—bustling Gotham streets, sailboats riding the breezes of the Island Continent, mano lumberjacks scampering up giant trees in their Su-perigs, men and women working together in a Valhalla machine shop, Columbians harvesting golden fields of grain*

  Carlotta Madigan: “And I believe that this too shall pass. When the votes have been counted, and the shouting has died, men and women alike will have united to preserve Pacifican democracy. I think I know my own people better than any off-worlder ideologue can. I understand. You understand. Beyond any momentary issue, beyond any bug-brained ideology, you believe that in the end, reason, sanity, love, compromise, the spirit of our democracy— these must
be preserved, and these shall prevail.”

  An extreme closeup on Carlotta Madigan as she cocks her head at the camera and grins.

  Carlotta Madigan: “Femocrats and Transcendental Scientists alike will say that my people believe this because they are stupid. I believe it, too.”

  As evening moved toward midnight and the running vote tallies swiftly firmed up into certainties, a gloomy silence descended upon the Institute’s main staff lounge. Soon no one was talking to anyone else, and least of all were any of the psychopoliticians daring to venture any opinion to Dr. Roger Falkenstein.

  Their analyses had been useless, their strategy had failed, and not even the Arkmind had predicted this. Late returns might switch a close race here or there, but the shape of the new Parliament was now a certainty: thirty-one seats for Femocratic Delegates, twenty-nine or thirty Bucko Power seats, and something over forty for the loose coalition of independents backed by Royce Lindblad and Carlotta Madigan.

  Sitting in front of the big net console, his depression and displeasure wrapped around him like a cloak of isolation, Falkenstein tried to understand what had happened, what had gone wrong, and he was in no mood to listen to any of the experts who had failed him.

  One thing, at least, was clear—trying to paint Madigan as a dupe of the Femocrats had been a dismal tactical error, a stupid reflex-action to the Femocrats’ attempt to portray her as a traitor controlled by Transcendental Science. Had we gone along with their gross error and accepted support for Madigan as support for us, he thought, the dominant Madigan faction might now be something of an ally. Instead, she’s made it clear that this victory is going to be seen as a rejection of all off-world influence, a triumph of Pacifican nationalism. We were too ambitious, Falkenstein thought. We shouldn’t have contested this election as an independent force, we should have let the Femocrats isolate themselves and quietly cooperated with Carlotta Madigan.