A World Between (25 page)

She got up and hugged Royce. “Godzillaland it is!” she giggled. “The Transcendental Institute of Godzillaland!” “Then we’ve got ourselves a Madigan Plan?”

“We sure do!” Carlotta said. “Godzilla-brained faschochauvinist Fausts!” she laughed. She broke up entirely. She began stomping crazily around the veranda, grunting and bellowing like a godzilla. After a moment, Royce joined her, and they stood there, rolling their eyes, bellowing, and flailing their forearms at each other, until they collapsed into laughter into each other’s arms.

“Whonk-ka-whonk? Whonkity whonkity whonk?” Rugo stood there cocking his head from one side to the other, quite certain that they had both gone insane.

“Good, perfect, we’ll run it as is tonight,” Royce Lindblad said, turning off the comscreen and punching up the latest depth-poll figures from the Parliamentary computer. Forty percent of the population were now against the Institute, overwhelmingly female; 42 percent were in favor of expelling the Femocrats, almost all male; 87 percent wanted an immediate vote on both issues. Logically, the figures were all bad, and seemed to predict a disastrous and crushing defeat for the Madigan Plan.

But Royce’s gut-feeling went against the logic of the polls. For now at last the Ministry of Media was about to take an active political role in the conflict. For too long these effing off-worlders had used the net for their own purposes, while the Ministry of Media itself was hamstrung by the Constitution into serving as their unwitting allies, acting as the guardian of free media access while unable to function politically.

But now these bastards were going to get a lesson in how
Pacificans
could use the net for
Pacifican
political purposes. Which was why the current depth-poll figures didn’t mean a damned thing. Starting tonight, the very media blitz techniques that had worked so well for Transcendental Science and the Femocrats would be used as weapons against them.

The tape that Larry Cristensen had produced to announce the Madigan Plan was a minor masterpiece. Open with choice cuts from the most rabid straight propaganda that the Femocrats and Transcendental Scientists had pumped out lately, edited into a building montage of total craziness, while slowly building up the sound level of dubbed-in mob noises to an animal roar. Then bits of their silliest entertainment tapes flash across the straight propaganda cuts as a laugh-track begins to white-out the mob-roar with gross guffaws and giggling hysteria.
Then,
a hard cut to just Carlotta, explaining the Madigan Plan as the voice of sweet reason. Finally a quick series of endorsements of the Madigan Plan from already-committed Delegates, carefully balanced between male and female.

Royce grinned. He got up and walked to the window of his Ministry office. He wondered how the Femocrats and the Transcendental Scientists would react to the Madigan Plan. If / were either of them, I’d keep my big mouth shut, he thought. If both sides lie low, the Madigan Plan will sail through without affecting the political balance. But if either side opposes it, we and the other side will come down on them like a sixty-ton godzilla. Of course, the best of all possible worlds would have the Femocrats alone oppose the Madigan Plan. Then it passes over their dead political bodies, but the vote would be close enough so that Falkenstein might be willing to offer some real concessions for our support.

And that’s what you really want, isn’t it? he thought.

An Institute without the Pink and Blue Wax, under effective Pacifican control, Transcendental Science without the Transcendental Scientists. And who knows? What might we do with a six-month trial period? How would they select their student body? How long would it really take for trained Pacifican scientists to acquire enough knowledge of the Transcendental Sciences to function independently?

Royce returned to his net console. Might not a small bending of mortality solve the whole problem once the Madigan Plan was passed? A little espionage? Isn’t Falkenstein really asking for it... ?

He plugged into Harrison Winterfelt, the Minister of Science, on a secure scrambled comcircuit. “I want you to prepare a little list for me, Hari,” he said. “Physicists, biologists, pharmacologists, electronics experts, the whole scientific spectrum. Good competent people in every scientific area.”

Winterfelt’s craggy, wrinkled face screwed up in owlish confusion. “You want twenty volumes of
Who’s Who in Pacifican Science,
Royce? What for?”

“Use the Parliamentary computer to narrow it down through a set of parameters,” Royce said.

“What parameters?”

“No senior people,” Royce said. “No previous or present gov connections. None of them politically active in Pacificans for the Institute. Eidetic memories would be nice but not essential. And when you’ve got a list, run psych checks on them. I want only strong, apolitical, technically oriented personalities—in other words, people who would be most resistant to all forms of mind control.”

Winterfelt cocked an inquisitive eyebrow. “What the hell is this for, Royce?” he asked.

“I’m not sure yet," Royce said. “Call it a contingency plan. I’m not telling you any more than you need to know because I want the tightest possible security maintained on this. You do likewise. Involve only enough people to get the job done, break it down so no one knows what the total project is but you and me, and don’t talk to anyone but me about it.”

“Not even Carlotta?”

Royce paused, sensing that he was about to cross some vaguely defined personal Rubicon. “Not even Carlotta,” he finally said. “Because it would be political suicide for her to have known should word of this ever leak. Because there’s one more parameter...

“What now?” Winterfelt asked uneasily.

“The final list must be all male,” Royce said.

Winterfelt whistled. Comprehension began to dawn in his large eyes.
“Now
I see what you’re getting at,” he said.

“Well, don’t even tell
me,
Hari,” Royce said, unplugging from the circuit. He leaned back in his lounger and gazed out the window at the setting sun.

Pacifica is going to retain control of its own destiny, and the off-worlders had just better watch their own asses, he thought. The Madigan Plan was going to pass, and that was part of it, exiling the Institute to Godzillaland would be another part, and the active intervention of the Ministry of Media yet another. Espionage might very well enter the equation, too, before all this was over.

At this moment in time, the situation was full of imponderables. How would the Femocrats and Falkenstein react to the Madigan Plan? How would Institute students be chosen? How much could Carlotta be told, and when?

But somehow, at least within Royce’s own psyche, the situation had been altered. Now he was acting instead of reacting. Now something
Pacifican
was going to emerge between the opposing off-worlder forces. Now the lines of power were beginning to form a new geometry, with the Ministry of Media as one of the major foci. I’ve got the tiller in one hand and the boomline in the other, he thought. I’m getting the feel of the wind and the current, and I’m going to sail us through this storm. I’m going to do what I know best.

“Leave us alone,” Bara Dorothy said curtly. When the junior staff members had left the office, she glared across her desk at Cynda Elizabeth. Mary Maria sat on the edge of the rumpled gilded bed as far away from them as possible, trying to look inconspicuous, though Cynda sensed that, as the sister who worked closest with the Pacificans, both male and female, she might be both a pragmatic and psychic ally. But for that very reason, she might be reluctant to disagree openly with the mentor.

“I say again, Bara, we’ll be making a big mistake,” Cynda said. “This Madigan Plan is going to pass no matter what we do. Why do you insist on fighting a losing battle?”

“The purpose of this mission is to win the
war ”
Bara Dorothy said coldly. She nodded at the map of Pacifica, a forest of silver pins in all the right places. “Everything has been going according to plan, we have the momentum —and now this Madigan Plan throws the whole timetable off!”

“
But we can't do anything about it!”
Cynda insisted.

Bara steepled her fingers. “What would you have us do then, Cynda Elizabeth?” she said testily. ......

“Support the Madigan Plan or at least remain neutraL That way we’re guaranteed six months of free operation, and we don’t alienate Pacifican public opinion.”

Bara looked sharply at Mary Maria. “Do you agree with this?” she asked “The... the public relations analysis seems accurate...ary hedged nervously.

Bara slammed a fist down on the desk. “Great Mother, how can you two be so dense!” she shouted. “
What
public?
What
Pacificans? Are the
sisters
of Pacifica in favor of a six-month trial period for the Institute? No! Of course not!”

“But. .. but they
are
in favor of the Madigan Plan...ary Maria said.

“Because that traitor to her sex Carlotta Madigan has linked permission for us to remain with permission for an Institute!” Bara snapped. “Just as she’s trapped the breeders into voting to let us remain.”

“Then you’re
admitting
that we can’t afford to have the Madigan Plan lose?” Cynda said “Because it’d mean
we'd
be thrown off the planet, too.”

“And
you've
just told me that the Madigan Plan is going to pass no matter what we do,” Bara Dorothy said slowly.

“I don’t understand...

“
That ”
said Bara Dorothy, “is painfully obvious. The point is that the Madigan Plan is a fait accompli, and we must therefore act
now
in ways that will maximize our future position under it. The goal of this mission is to have the sisters of Pacifica take control of the planet, and when that time comes, the breeders will be a hundred percent against us anyway.”

“But what does that have to do with opposing the Madigan Plan?” Cynda said confusedly.

“Face reality, damn itl” Bara said. “We’re going to have a functioning Institute here for six months. Our campaign has been built up for an immediate showdown that isn’t going to happen. We’re forced to slow our pace while holding the support of the sisters for the long haul. The Madigan Plan is a compromise, and a
compromise
is something we can’t support. Now more than ever we must take an ideologically pure stance against the faschochauvinist Institute
—because the damn thing is going to exist
. From here on in, our whole campaign must be based on fighting the faschochauvinist evil of the Institute. We have to be able to say, ‘we told you so’ every step of the way. How better to establish our future credibility than by opposing a trial period for the Institute from the outset, even at the supposed cost of exiling ourselves from the planet? Great Mother, we might even pick up some
breeder
support if Falkenstein is heavy-handed enough! Can’t you see that?”

Cynda Elizabeth sighed. It was a flawless analysis; the only trouble with it was that it was wrong. And it was wrong for reasons that Cynda dared not mention to Bara Dorothy or anyone else.

It was wrong because Bara Dorothy had never gotten it off with a Pacifican man. She still thought of Pacifican men as local versions of Terran breeders or worse—atavistic machos for the moment, easily convertible to tame mano breeders once the Pacifican sisters fully seized power. And even Cynda’s three secret assignations with Eric had shown her how simplistic that view was, how circumscribed by a strange sort of historical chauvinism.

Oh, all the macho tendencies were there in the nakedness of the night; that was graven in the male genes here as elsewhere. How could a creature whose greatest pleasure came from thrusting a hard piercer into a soft receptive flower fail to sync into a posture of sexual dominance when flesh met flesh, unless he had been conditioned against the natural geometric congruencies for generations? But this same Pacifican male as often as not could work under a female superior, vote for a female Delegate or even Chairman, and form a stable relationship with a socially and economically superior sister without resentment. An atavistic macho when piercer met flower, he was something else again when mind met mind. And this was the natural order that Pacifican women enjoyed.

And though Cynda trembled when she thought about it, it was not hard to think of this arrangement as something beyond faschochauvinism or Femocrat doctrine when her own body flowed so easily into the Pacifican mode. I like having his piercer plunging deep inside me, she thought. I even like sucking it—even though I’ve been conditioned to think of it as perverted and politically regressive.

How much stronger, then, was the sexual bond that linked
Pacifican
sisters to their men? Didn’t they have all the pleasure of the macho piercer without the pain? Weren’t Pacifican men and women linked by something beyond mere faschochauvinist dominance patterns?

Wasn’t this “Madigan Plan” really a “Madigan-Lind-blad Plan?” Eric was quite an ordinary man—what must it be like for Carlotta Madigan and a man like
Royce Lindblad?
Bodies linked piercer to flower as in the atavistic past, but minds linked together as near-equals.
Almost as sister-to-sisterJ

“Well, Cynda?” Bara Dorothy said coldly. “Do you want to register any further objections?” ,

“I’ve got to admit that your logic is irrefutable, Bara,” Cynda said wanly. How could you ever understand, Bara? she thought. Never having felt a man atop you, his piercer plunging into your depths? How could you ever understand that the sisters of this planet want that even while they’re demonstrating for Femocracy? Without having felt it yourself, how could you ever understand that a piercer in your flower, the way it’s supposed to be, is as strong as ever Sisterhood was? That what Pacifican women want most is precisely what they had before we or the
Heisenberg
ever came to this planet
—their men the way they were!