A World Between (2 page)

When Carlotta plugged into the electronic universe of the Pacifican media network, the immediate ground-level world outside faded almost at once from the surface of her mind as her sensorium went multiplex and electronic. Through cameras, microphones, and screens, her sight and hearing became not only planetwide but multiplex and compounded like the vision of an insect. The face and voice of virtually everyone on Pacifica—and indeed on worlds beyond—could be called before her with a quick verbal command. All of human history since the invention, of videotape might march before her eyes at whim. Computers would advise her on anything from simple arithmetic computations to the long-term trends in the balance of payments between Pacifica and fifty other human worlds. Anyone on the planet with an ax to grind or a philosophy to expound would harangue her directly if she chose to hear. Ninety channels of entertainment vied for her idle attention, and if nothing in realtime piqued her fancy, there was half a millennium of taped programming in the accessbanks. Current news was available from the points of view of the government, the administration, the oppositions, Marxists, Free Libertarians, Transformational Syndicalists, Sardonic Fatalists, and Platonic Absolutists, among a whole zoo of others. If Pacifica was not world enough, the Galactic Web brought in shrill Femocrat propaganda from Earth, travelogues from thirty worlds, Transcendental Science musings, the latest vicious gossip from Thunderball, a tachyon-bome smorgasbord from the scattered planets of men.

All this was the electronic universe of every Pacifican, except those who unplugged from time to time with severe cases of media cafard. But as incumbent Chairman of Pacifica and a Parliamentary Delegate for nearly sixteen years, Carlotta Madigan had an even more complex and intimate feedback relationship with the media net.

For on Pacifica, media was politics, and politics was media, and had been from the days of the Founders. Geographically isolated farmsteaders could only cohere into a political whole through the media network and the instantaneous plebiscites of electronic democracy. In the beginning there had been no Parliament and hardly any real politicians—just a computer complex in the little town of Gotham to record and tally the electronic votes and a small staff of bureaucrats to implement the directly expressed will of the people. Now, however, that initial simplicity had evolved, along with Pacifican society, into a complexity that nevertheless still cohered through the net at electronic speed.

Now there was a Parliament, and Delegates, and administrations, and elections, and electronic votes of confidence, and government corporations both temporary and permanent, and export industries, and currency controls, and economic planning, and full-time politics and fulltime politicians with a vengeance—all of it in perpetual flux and most of it transpiring electronically via the net As Carlotta Madigan sat alone on Lorien, tens of kilometers from the nearest human and further still from the capital at Gotham, it all flowed through her via screens, microphones, speakers, controls, satellites, laserpipes, and computers.

Lean and bodily youthful in her mid-forties, Carlotta was graced with a face that on the comscreens of subordinates, colleagues, and political adversaries was an ageless image of authority that flowed not so much from her office as from who she was. Though her fair skin was barely lined at all under flowing black hair, her blue eyes were old steel, and her proud nose and full expressive lips might have been those of an ancient Doge of Venice. With Royce Lindblad as her helpmate, she was the best damn Chairman Pacifica had had in two generations, and no one knew it better than she did.

Carter Berman, the current Minister of Industries, a gray-haired man in his seventies who had shuffled in and out of that office more often than probably even he cared to remember, was on the comscreen now, in something of a defensive dither, trying to persuade her to establish a Pacifican Skyliner Corporation to bring down the fares on the routes between Gotham and the Cords, and Carlotta was getting that familiar sphinxlike look which should have told him that it was a lost cause.

“....s things stand now, there are only two lines operating between Gotham and the Cords, and the competition is virtually nil, Carlotta...

As he spoke, Caroltta punched up the traffic figures on her access screen. “So is the traffic,” she said. “The two lines operating now are averaging only 6I percent of capacity.” .

“But check the fare structures.”

Carlotta punched up the figures. TransColumbia was charging 180 valuns for coach and 230VN for first class. Zipline was charging 167VN and 240VN. “So?” she said testily. “There’s absolutely no evidence of price-fixing.” “Look at the charge per passenger-kilometer and compare it to routes of similar length.”

When Carlotta punched up the figures, she saw that the charge per kilometer was nearly 30 percent higher than Gotham-Valhalla or Valhalla-Lombard and even 17 percent higher than Gotham-Godzillaland. But on the other hand, the profit margins didn't really seem excessive.

“Look at the figures yourself, Carter,” she said. “The profits aren’t out of line.”

“They’re 25 percent above what they should be. A government corporation could cut the fares 20 percent and still show a respectable profiit.”

“At the same capacity figure?”

“Of course,” Berman said, squinting quizzically.

“Well hell, Carter, what makes you think we could run that line at 6I percent?” Carlotta snapped. “Demand’s inelastic. Compete with TransColumbia and Zipline, and
all
the liners will be running less than half-full, and the gov-corp will run at a loss along with the freecorps. Then they’ll drop their routes and we’ll be stuck with them.” “Have you modeled that or are you just winging?” Berman asked, beetling his brows in annoyance.

“Winging it,” Carlotta said. “And so are you, right? You don’t have a computer projection on that, do you?” “No,” Berman admitted.

“Well, when you come up with one, plug me in again,” Carlotta said, unplugging herself from the circuit. She sighed. For all his Technocrat pretensions, Berman was an Interventionist at heart. If he had things his way, there’d be a new govcorp every time someone’s profit margin went half a point above 10 percent. For her part, Carlotta preferred to leave the free market alone until something got really flagrant.

The Constitution gave the government monopolies in energy production and mining, which was more than enough to let the government run at a profit, pay a decent dividend on citizen’s stock, and keep the total economy on an even keel by manipulating energy and metals prices. Within those parameters, the free market could pretty well run by itself.

The govcorp business had started only a century ago, when the freight-booster companies had been caught fixing prices. Profit margins of 40 percent had been excessive by anyone’s standards, but regulating the free market went against everyone’s grain. Instead, Parliament had set up a government freight-booster corporation to drive down prices by competing in the free market. It worked so well that the gov was able to dispose of its stock in the corporation within five years at a nice capital gain for the citizenry.

But what had begun as an emergency program inevitably became institutionalized. Now there was pressure to set up a competing govcorp every time the profit margin in an industry exceeded about 10 percent and pressure to sell it out to free-market interests the moment the profit margins dropped below that arbitrary figure, whether it made sense in current stock exchange terms or not.

As far as Carlotta was concerned, it was a visionless, rigid way to run a planetary economy, and she had been willing to lose the Chairmanship over just such issues several times. Not without a vote of confidence you don’t, Carter! she decided. She smiled her Mona Lisa smile. And we both know the votes aren’t there, she thought, calling up a status report on agricultural prices and production.

Now here’s an area where the free market doesn’t work at all without constant finagling, she thought. The five million Columbian farmsteaders could grow enough food to feed quadruple the planetary population if they had any incentive to do so. But most of them could grow all their own food and take care of their other economic needs out of their citizen’s dividends. As a result, the free market in foodstuffs would heterodyne wildly without continual government intervention. Shortages when overproduction dropped prices so low that the farmsteaders stopped producing surpluses for the money economy, followed by sudden rises in prices, followed by more overproduction, another price drop, another shortage, ad nauseum. An agricultural govcorp would have made the most sense, but the Mainlanders had too much political clout for any such proposal to get through Parliament. So the Ministry of Agriculture was forced to buy and sell commodities in huge amounts in order to keep prices relatively stable.

According to the current figures, wheat production was down, and soybeans were going into a glut situation. Carlotta plugged in to Cynthia Ramirez, the Minister of Agriculture.

“Buy a hundred million bushels of wheat futures at 12VN,” she ordered. “Sell soybean stocks at 6 until the price drops to 9.”

“We’re going to have to release wheat soon at 9,” Cynthia pointed out. “And we bought those soybeans at 8. We’ll take a beating all the way around.”

Carlotta shrugged. It was virtually impossible to run the Ministry of Agriculture at anything but a loss. “Do it,” she said. “We can always boost the price of iron to make up the loss.” *

If that’s not too inflationary, she thought as she unplugged. The job of Chairman was essentially a juggling act. The gov as a whole had to run at a healthy profit or the voters would swiftly boot out the administration that reduced their citizens’ dividends. But the gov also had to keep the total economy and the currency in balance, which often meant doing things that were totally counterproductive in profit-and-loss terms. The Chairman had to walk this fine line continuously while juggling the entire economy, which was why any Chairmanship that lasted a full fiscal year was cause for smug self-congratulation.

Carlotta had already been in office for two quarters this time around, but her smugness about it was tempered by the knowledge that Royce was at least half-responsible. There had never been a Minister of Media better than Royce, and never a team like the two of them in the top two offices...

Idly thinking of Royce out there in the
Davy Jones,
Carlotta programmed a general weather review from the planetary observation system. The obscreen split vertically. On the left, temperature, humidity, and barometric readings; on the right, realtime images from standard observation cameras scattered around the planet.

A heavy windless rain fell on the western slopes of the central Sierra Cordillera mountains, soaking down through the laden branches of the towering trees and turning the loamy forest floor to chocolate-colored muck sprinkled with brilliantly colored fungi....

Rain always reminded Carlotta of that party at her Gotham tower apartment where she had first met Royce. It had been pouring that night, great driving sheets obscuring the lights of the city below and drumming against the windows. It was supposed to be one of those political gatherings put on by a rising hopeful—a great stew of power with just a flavoring of sex. And then she saw him, barechested in the then-current bucko fashion, skin-tight white pants, high black boots, a short red cloak flung casually over his bare shoulders, long brown hair, and that silly, endearing droopy mustache—a transparent attempt to look older that only made him seem even younger, even more desirable. For a moment, politics suddenly seemed so unimportant—

A merciless sun fried the perpetually cloudless sky over the Wastes. Heat waves shimmering above the dun-gray sands caused the far-off slate-colored mountains to waver like a mirage of themselves...

—They had spoken only once during the party, and that only briefly. Carlotta had been holding court with a small group of older Delegates, impressing them with her grasp of the issues, whatever they had been at the time, with her momentum, her easy disdain of their temporarily higher status. She turned to get a drink, and saw him, leaning up against a wall, pelvis arched forward, looking at her.

“Like what you see, do you?” she said with as much imperiousness as she could muster.

“You’re a winner,” he said. “I’m at your mercy, lady. You can have me if you want me.” He laughed—boyishly, ironically. “You might even persuade me to vote for you.” “You certainly consider yourself a hot little bucko, don’t you?” Carlotta said.

Royce laughed, arching himself languorously toward her. “Don’t
you?”
he said, looking into her eyes.

Carlotta moved closer, piqued by his classic bucko narcissism, leavened as it was with a saving self-irony. “I might be interested if your bark’s not better than your bite.” “Oh, I never bite,” Royce said. “Do you?”

Carlotta laughed and flicked a finger at the V of his pants. “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said, snapping her teeth together—

A sprinkling of snow drifted down from the leaden skies over Thule, lightly powdering the eternal glare ice of the frozen antarctic continent. Only the far-off domes of Valhalla fractured the endless flat white monotony of the polar cap like carefully placed dots of contrasting pigment on some minimalist abstract painting...

—Two moments at a party like hundreds of others. A good-looking woman turning thirty and climbing up the power curve had endless young buckos offering themselves up to her, some just for the night’s pleasure, but just as many angling to make orbit around a rising star, and Carlotta had supposed that this was just another handsome and available young body in the crowd. She had thought little of it, and had gone back to politicking, perhaps with a slightly enhanced sense of her own personal charisma, certainly not thinking of that young bucko as anything more than a tasty possibility for some idle evening—

A strange howling windstorm roared through the dense verdant jungle of Godzillaland, rainless, whipping showers of brightly colored blossoms through the tangled undergrowth. Flitbats bounced from tree limb to tree limb in skittish panic, and something huge crunched through the jungle near the edge of the obscreen...