Norman Spinrad

by A World Between

  Cut to a full shot on a display table. In a vase on the table is a single fragile blue flower. Beside it is a small cage holding a tiny red piperlizard. Between them is small metal box. At the end of the table is an even smaller box with a toggle switch. A short-haired scientist stands behind the table.

  Scientist: “The inertia-screen, a device for isolating an area of space from all outside electromagnetic, chemical, and thermal phenomena: a heat-shield, an atmospheric barrier, a radiation screen, among many other applications...”

  He throws the toggle switch. He picks up a blowtorch and envelopes the area around the flower and lizard in bright orange flame. He turns off the torch, revealing an unsinged flower and a lively chirping piperlizard. He dons a gas mask and sprays yellow vapor over the test area from a cannister. When the gas clears, the flower and the lizard are unaffected. He palms a small red sphere and flips it toward the lizard cage. There is a small loud explosion. Again the lizard and the flower are untouched.

  Cut to a full shot on three scientists standing beside a waist-high control console. In front of the console, two thin wire grids are suspended on poles. Under the left-hand grid is a pile of earth. The floor under the right-hand grid is empty.

  First scientist: “The matter transformer—a device for the instantaneous materialization of any desired object from raw atoms...

  He signals to the other scientists, who manipulate the controls. A silvery aura envelops the area under the left-hand grid.

  First scientist: “Useful in construction...

  The pile of earth dissolves and is replaced by a small model of the Pacifican Parliament building. This in turn dissolves and becomes a model of the Institute building, then an apartment tower, then a model hovercraft, then a pile of earth again.

  First scientist: “It can also be used to transmit the matrix pattern of any material object over any distance with the speed of tachyon transmission.”

  He places an oil painting of a sunset over the Cords on the empty floor under the right-hand grid. The other scientists manipulate their controls. The painting disappears and Teappears instantly atop the pile of earth to the left, perfect in every detail. The first scientist removes the painting and puts it back under the right-hand grid.

  First scientist: “One copy can be reassembled at the receiving end—or many.”

  The painting disappears again, but this time the pile of earth under the left-hand grid completely dissolves and in its place are dozens of copies of the painting, identical down to the scrollwork on the bongowood frames.

  Cut to a medium shot on Harrison Winterfelt, including a portion of the screen beside the podium.

  Winterfelt: “Two demonstrations of major items of Transcendental Science among many available here for newschannel taping after this formal presentation. But first, I’d like to show you tapes of three other demonstrations we could hardly bring into this room...

  The camera pulls back and recenters on the screen as a view of Pacifica from orbit appears on it. In the foreground of the shot is a standard Pacifican orbital liner.

  Winterfelt’s voiceover: “This liner has been equipped with an inertia-screen and a beefed-up fusion drive...” A silvery aura envelops the stubby-winged craft. A thin blue flame erupts from the stem and the liner begins to accelerate very rapidly, exponentially, faster and faster, finally accelerating at a rate that should pulp its occupants to jelly. It goes into a polar orbit around Pacifica, disappearing over the north polar icecap and reappearing almost instantly over Thule. It continues orbiting the planet at incredible speed, the exhaust flame dopplering red when it moves away from the camera.

  Winterfelt’s voiceover: “Without the inertia-screen, the pilot of this liner would now be pulling dozens of gees, and would in fact be dead. But inside the inertia-screen, gravity remains normal. This is how Transcendental Science Arkologies sustain their enormous accelerations. By flying parabolic arcs past black holes, they can accelerate to near-light speeds within days in safety...”

  Cut to another view of space, just a fiery sun floating in the star-flecked blackness. Pacifica swims into the frame behind it, a huge crescent filling most of the field of vision, and revealing that the sun is not distant and huge but tiny and orbiting no more than a few hundred kilometers from the surface of the planet.

  Winterfelt’s voiceover: “An artificial sun, a complex fusion plasma confined within an inertia-screen—and built by Pacifican scientists!”

  Cut to a full shot on a naked old man, his chest sunken, his limbs withered, his skin a parchment of decay, his face almost a skull.

  Winterfelt’s voiceover: “Finally, a male Pacifican before rejuvenation by Pacifican medicine—and after!”

  The shot dissolves into a similar shot on the same naked man. But now his hair is black, his body is sleek and wellmuscled, his penis is erect, and his face glows with youthful vigor. In fact, he is Dov Ardisman, the famous porn opera star of forty years ago, whose tapes are still well-known classics of the genre.

  Winterfelt’s voiceover (as Ardisman grins his famous grin and salutes the camera): “Dov Ardisman rides again! I understand we can look forward to seeing his first comeback pom opera in three months.”

  Cut to a closeup on Carlotta Madigan, seated behind her desk, grinning sardonically, and waving an admonishing finger at the camera.

  Carlotta Madigan: “O ye of little faith! While Femocrat supporters have been ranting about the evils of faschochauvinist Transcendental Science and Bucko Power fanatics have been demanding that we sell out our way of life for the wonders you have just seen, while the idiocy of the Pink and Blue War has tom this planet apart, a few real Pacificans have managed to keep their big mouths shut and do something about it! And so we can bid a not-so-fond farewell to Transcendental Science and Femocracy alike.”

  She pauses, and her face becomes more serious, almost stern.

  Carlotta Madigan: ‘To the supporters of the Institute, I say here is Pacifican Transcendental Science without the Transcendental Scientists, without off-worlder machinations. Look what you’ve done to your women and your own love-lives—and for nothing! To our local homegrown Femocrats, I say here is the answer to your man-hating paranoia! The Transcendental Sciences have been liberated from male faschochauvinist monopolists, not by your strident posturings and female chauvinist demands, but by Pacifican buckos, working not for Transcendental Science but for Pacifica—for Pacifican men and women alike.”

  She pauses again and assumes a calmer, more statesmanlike expression.

  Carlotta Madigan: “Following this electronic vote of confidence and the coming Parliamentary election, my first act will be to introduce a resolution calling for the establishment of a Pacifican Institute of Transcendental Science, staffed by Pacifican scientists of both sexes, with a student body equally divided between men and women. Pacifican Transcendental Science will be sold to all worlds with the galactic credits to pay for it. We have not only liberated Transcendental Science for ourselves, but for the species, for men and women everywhere.”

  A large hologram of Pacifica appears behind her now, floating triumphantly in the void.

  Carlotta Madigan: “Finally, to those Pacificans, men and women alike, who have never succumbed to the gibberings of Femocracy or Bucko Power, who have supported me throughout this long crisis, who have kept this planet foremost in their loyalties, I say thank you with all my heart And in the days to come, when your errant brothers and sisters return to the communion we have all shared, I ask you to welcome them back as Pacificans with open arms and generous souls.”

  Carlotta pauses and grins crookedly.

  Carlotta Madigan: “As for me... well, what can I say? Tomorrow you will get the chance to say it all with your votes. So all I can say for myself now, with my world-, famous modesty and humility, is... thank me, and good night”

  19

  WOODENLY, BARA DOROTHY SCANNED THE ROOMFUL OF sour, defeated faces. “Turn that damn thing off!” she snarled. A sister got up
, turned off the net console, and sat down again.

  Dozens of folding chairs crammed Bara’s office; another score of sisters were standing around the room; virtually the entire Gotham staff had gathered here, and no one dared speak a word. Even Cynda Elizabeth confined her gloating to a thin satisfied smirk. Seventy-four percent! Carlotta Madigan had pulled 74 percent of the overall vote, and the preliminary breakdown showed that she had gotten 76 percent of the female vote. Total catastrophe!

  Bara Dorothy glowered at Mary Maria, who quickly looked away. Bara started to snap something at her, thought better of it, and remained silent. It isn’t Mary’s fault, she thought. TTiis wasn’t a failure of the media blitz; after Madigan revealed how she had outfoxed the Transcendental Scientists, nothing could have defeated her. It isn’t really my fault either, Bara realized. How could I have changed the outcome? Nevertheless, Ym going to take the blame for the failure of this mission, since Cynda Elizabeth has formally dissented from the policy we followed. Damn the dirty little breeder-lover!

  As if to rub it in—as if?—it was Cynda Elizabeth who broke the deadly silence. “Perhaps this isn’t all bad,” she said loudly.

  A great collective groan.

  “No, really. The Pacificans have broken the Transcendental Science monopoly, haven’t they? They’ve promised to sell everything they have freely on the Web. Now we can buy things we never thought we’d ever get—inertia-screens, matter transformers, genetic engineering techniques, rejuvenation. Maybe we didn’t exactly win, but Great Mother, Transcendental Science is the big loser! Now we can buy what they’ve been keeping from us, from Pacifica.”

  Expressions brightened somewhat. A buzz of conversation rippled around the room.

  “With what?” Bara Dorothy sneered loudly. “Where are we going to get the galactic credits? You think Pacifica is going to give this stuff away?”

  “We’ll have to reevaluate our Web policies,” Cynda Elizabeth said. “We’ll have to take part in interstellar commerce, develop new technologies of our own that we can sell, maybe even entertainments, like Pacifica. In the long run, it’ll be good for us, it’ll force us to become more of a part of the galactic mainstream.”

  “Great Mother, what rot!” Bara snarled.

  “It’s the future whether you like it or not, Bara,” Cynda Elizabeth said. “And we’re going to have to learn how to adapt to it.”

  Murmurs of approval swept the room. As if things weren’t grim enough, Cynda Elizabeth was getting to them with this subversive talk in their defeated depression. It had to be stopped! “You know we do have an upcoming Parliamentary election now,” Bara said. “We do have one more chance to retrieve this situation before we slink back to Earth like whipped dogs!”

  “How?” Mary Maria asked glumly.

  “That’s your department, Mary, now isn’t it?” Bara snapped. “You’ve got about a day to come up with something.” She paused, looked up, and addressed the whole room. “That goes for all of you,” she said. “Enough defeatism! Back to your jobs! I’ve got work to do now, and so do you, so clear this room!”

  Slowly, sullenly, the sisters trooped out of her office, finally leaving Bara alone with her own dark thoughts. The fact of the matter was that Femocracy had no real issue left on this planet; Madigan had totally destroyed the movement’s political viability. Only some maddened reaction by Falkenstein—

  The comscreen of her net console came to life. It was Susan Willaway, local leader of the Femocratic League of Pacifica.

  “What?" Bara grunted testily.

  “I’m resigning as leader of the League,” Susan said. “I’m also resigning my membership.”

  “What?"

  “I feel like a fool!” Susan said angrily. “I feel like a dupe! I’ve been had. We’ve all been had. Carlotta Madigan has been right all along, and now she’s proven it. I’m sick of all this; it’s like awakening from a long nightmare. I’m going to run for reelection to Parliament as an independent and take my chances with my own people.”

  “You miserable cowardly traitor!”

  “Traitor?” Susan snapped. ‘To what? Great grunting godzillas, the men of this planet have proven that they’re Pacificans first and buckos second! What does that make Pacifican women if we can’t admit we were wrong? And I’m not the only one, Bara; we’re being flooded with resignations.”

  “Go suck a piercer, you dirty traitorous breeder-lover!” Bara screamed, unplugging from the circuit. “The whole stinking planetful of you atavistic chauvinist swine!”

  Then she buried her head in her hands, kicked the leg of her desk, and wondered what it would be like to let herself cry.

  A full shot on Roger Falkenstein standing on the bridge of the Heisenberg. He is flanked by two men—one tall, lean, and quite bald; the other a younger, heavier man with a full head of wavy blond hair.

  Falkenstein (bristling with anger): “Citizens of Pacifica! Once more we have been betrayed and you have been duped by the cynical perfidy of the Madigan administration. Need I point out that the espionage committed by your government is a direct violation of the agreement concluded between the Madigan administration and myself—a bald-faced theft?"

  The camera moves in for a tighter shot on Falkenstein, whose anger now takes on a somewhat sardonic edge.

  Falkenstein: “No doubt those of you who saw fit to return Carlotta Madigan to office are now congratulating yourselves and your perfidious government for having successfully nationalized Transcendental Science. But it’s not quite so simple as that, my friends. Jon Guilder, a very recent graduate of one of our Institutes...”

  Cut to a closeup on the heavyset man.

  Guilder: “It’s taken me six years of very difficult study to graduate from an Institute as a truly qualified Transcendental Scientist. The notion that men who have studied for only a few months are qualified to run an Institute of Transcendental Science is just too ludicrous to arouse anything but pity. These pathetic Pacificans don’t even know enough to know how little they know!”

  Cut to a closeup on the tall bald man.

  Falkenstein’s voiceover: “Dr. Chari David, former Provost of the Wenigo Institute of Transcendental Science, now Chief Science Analyst of the Heisenberg ....”

  David: “Pacifican scientists have produced technological artifacts from plans stolen from our higher scientific civilization much as a preatomic society might successfully construct a nuclear generator from pilfered specifications. However, such a preatomic civilization would hardly then possess a true understanding of subatomic physics! Any more than Pacifica now possesses a true understanding of the Transcendental Sciences! A child could reproduce a great painting by an ancient master using a color-by-the-numbers kit, but that would hardly make him a Michelangelo or a Miranda! Indeed, certain Terran birds can reproduce a great oration verbatim without understanding a word of what they are saying, but no one would contend that they have become Churchills or Ciceros in the process!”

  Cut to a two-shot on Falkenstein and David.

  Falkenstein: “Well, how would you evaluate the worth of this stolen knowledge to isolated Pacifican science?” David (diffidently): “Oh perhaps in fifty years they’ll have some dim understanding of what they’ve stolen, and within two centuries they might even reach our present level...

  Falkenstein: “While the rest of the galaxy under our leadership—”

  David:...ill of course have advanced to the total mastery of matter, energy, time, and mind. A two-century knowledge gap is a two-century knowledge gap I”

  Falkenstein: “And the notion of a Pacifican Institute of Transcendental Science operating on its own without our guidance—”

  David (sardonically): “....s roughly the equivalent of a Sumerian Institute of Biophysics!”

  The camera moves in for a closeup on Falkenstein.

  Falkenstein: “My Pacifican friends, you have been utterly duped by Carlotta Madigan. Test the true knowledge of your treacherous spies. Demand that your Ministry of Science p
ublicly explain the unified field theory behind the inertia-screen, the molecular physics of rejuvenation, the true knowledge behind the stolen toys they have constructed for your befuddlement. And when their answer is silence, remember that the forthcoming Parliamentary election is your last chance to retrieve what your government has thrown away. Unless you elect a Parliament that returns control of the stolen knowledge to us, authorizes a permanent Institute under our terms, expels Femocracy forever, and ousts Carlotta Madigan, we will leave this solar system to its own pathetic devices forever. This is your last chance, Pacificans. You will not get another.”

  Royce Lindblad frowned at the comscreen, drumming his fingers nervously on the arm of his lounger. On the screen, Harrison Winterfelt shrugged fatalistically. “Don’t blame me, Royce,” he said. “I told you the truth in the first place.”

  “You mean this slok Falkenstein is putting out is true?”

  “About as true as the show we put on,” Winterfelt said. “We were exaggerating for political purposes and so is he. No, our boys can’t go on the net and explain the science he’s challenged us to explain. But savages doing a monkey-see, monkey-do act we’re not either. Their timetable is grossly exaggerated for propaganda purposes, and with a little luck, we can achieve parity with them in less than a century.”

  “That’s not exactly a flasho public answer to what they’re saying, Hari,” Royce grunted.

  “Do we really need one? Is the political situation all that critical?”

  “Yes and no,” Royce said. “I’m not worried about the numbers. We’ll have maybe a two-thirds majority in the next Parliament on expelling Femocracy and the Heisenberg boys. But I don’t like the stink this is going to leave. We need a long period of healing, and if a third of the people end up feeling that a Pacifican Institute is a sham and a fraud, our politics will be poisoned by it for decades. Refighting the Pacifican Pink and Blue War will remain an obsession with a sizable minority, and if our Institute doesn’t start showing real results faster than you say it can, the whole bloody thing could start up all over again.” “I wish I could help you, Royce,” Winterfelt said. “But we’ve done all we can. And it certainly could’ve turned out much worse, couldn’t it?”