A World Between (46 page)

“Why aren’t
you
at the Sirius Hotel?”

Cynda frowned. She hesitated. But something began to loosen her tongue. Of all times, all places, all people,
here
, strangely enough, was someone she could talk to beyond political or ideological restraints. “I don’t feel I belong there any more,” she ^Sid. “I...I...”

“So you wander the streets of Gotham trying to connect up to the reality of this planet and you find you can’t do that either.”

“How did you know that?” Cynda said sharply.

Maria laughed, took a sip of wine. “I’m sitting here in the same place as you now, aren’t I,
sister?”
she said. “Great suns, what a mess we’ve both made here! And what a mess we’ve made of ourselves in the process. I mean, here the two of us sit, and we can’t even work up a good healthy rage at each other. We’re committing treason to our causes at this very moment, you know.”

Cynda took a long swallow of wine. “Or vice versa,” she said. “I mean, this planet does seem to blur the hard edges. Take you. You’re a Transcendental Scientist, but you’re also a
sister.
I’ve always known intellectually that there were women on the Arkologies, but I’ve never confronted that reality before. What’s it like being... being a free woman in a faschochauvinist society?”

Maria drank a gulp of wine. “Neither as faschochauvinist as you people think, nor as free as we like to pretend,” she said bitterly. “Once more the truth lies in that ambivalent region between where only the Pacificans seem to be comfortable. I wonder how they do it.”

“So do I.”

“You
do?”

“I think I’m learning to admire them,” Cynda blurted. “Envy them, even.” She drank more wine for courage, and perhaps to wash the taste of her own words out of her mouth.

“You, too, eh?” Maria said. “You know, I think the two of us have gotten a dose of our own medicine. We came here to tell them how to live, and we end up... floating in our own limbo. Perhaps there
is
some cosmic justice in the universe after all.”

“That’s why you didn’t go back to the
Heisenberg?”
Maria grimaced. “Tell me what I'm supposed to do now, and I’ll tell you why I didn’t go back to the
Heisenberg”
she said.

“You don’t know?”

Maria shrugged and drank some more wine. “I knew I couldn’t tolerate being around Roger,” she said. “I hate what we’re doing to this planet I can’t stand being a collaborator in it any more. I wanted to be alone to think... vague, isn’t it? Hardly logical and scientific. And you, Cynda? Tell me, have you thought about defecting yet?” “
DefectingI”
Cynda snapped. “Certainly not!”

Maria laughed tipsily. “Not even just a teensy little bit?” she teased. “Isn’t that what we’re really talking about? C’mon, old enemy, we can be honest about it with each other—who’s to know? Tell me you don’t find life here the least bit seductive...”

Cynda sighed, poured more wine, and belted it down. “All right, all right, so I’ve thought about it,” she admitted. The wine, the months of hidden internal tension, the memory of Eric, the unreality of this situation must be going to my head, she thought But what the hell, what the hell, sometimes you gotta talk to
somebody
....

“As long as we’re being so honest with each other sister,” she said, “I’m gonna tell you my deep dark secret— I mean, I’ve got to tell somebody who’s nobody, and right now for me you’re as close to nobody as anybody can get. I’m a pervert, I’m attracted to men. Buckos.
Real
men, not Terran breeders. I want them on top of me, I want their piercers—” Great Mother! she thought, bringing herself up short. What am I saying?

“How shocking',” Maria said sardonically, “You’re being sarcastic!”

“Maybe,” Maria said, “but these days I’m not so sure. Just when I’m thoroughly fed up with what our own men have done, I meet a
Femocrat
who...he paused. She studied Cynda Elizabeth. “But if that’s true, why
don't
you defect?” she said. “Why torture yourself for something you no longer believe in?”

“But I
do
still believe in Femocracy!” Cynda insisted. “Earth is my planet, sisters are my people, and I’m proud of what I am!”

“
Including
your feelings for men?”

“No!” Cynda blurted. “I mean yes! I mean... look, we’re far from perfect, and so are men, but if sisters like me run away, nothing will ever change. I’m a Femocrat. I want men. It’s about time real Femocrats with these... these
feelings
stood up to the Bara Dorothys and tried to make Femocracy into something that works for everyone.
Defect?
Great Mother, the only thing I can defect from is myself.”

Mother, what a conversation this is becoming! Cynda thought in amazement. And yet, if there really was such a thing as Sisterhood, wasn’t
this
exactly it? Two women speaking their hearts across the abyss of culture, ideology, and conflict? Sisterhood is
truly
powerful, she thought. In some strange way, more powerful... more powerful than its twisted perversion of itself!

She looked across the table at Maria Falkenstein. “So
you're
going to defect?” she said.

Maria laughed bitterly. “How?” she said. “To what? If our side wins, Pacifica will just turn into what I’d be defecting from. If your side wins, it’ll become something more loathsome to me than what I left.”

“But what if the
Pacificans
win? If they succeed in expelling both Femocracy and Transcendental Science?” Maria shrugged woozily. “You really think that can happen?” she said dubiously. “And even if it did, it would be over our dead bodies. And at the cost of losing their chance to have an Institute forever. Do you seriously think they’d tolerate my presence after that?”

“Who knows?” Cynda said. “You could try. I think you should, sister, I really think you should.”

Maria Falkenstein shook her head and rose shakily from the table. “Ah. it’s just a fantasy,” she said. “Roger will win, or your people will win; these poor lovely bastards don’t have a chance. We both know that,
sister ”

She started away from the table, turned, and looked back at Cynda Elizabeth. “In fact, this whole conversation has been a fantasy, hasn’t it?** she said. “It’s not real. No one would ever believe it happened, and soon enough we won’t either. What a pity...”

“Maybe,” Cynda Elizabeth said. “But good luck anyway, sister.”

“You, too,” Maria said, shaking her head ruefully. “We sure could use it, couldn’t we?”

Then she was gone, and Cynda Elizabeth was alone once more, sitting at a table at a sidewalk cafe in a back street of an alien city. And how strange it was that of all the people in the galaxy, the one person who for at least a moment had touched her heart had been the wife of the enemy.

A closeup of Carlotta Madigan at her desk in the Parliament building, calm, plainly dressed, with only the prosaic office furnishings as backdrop.

Carlotta Madigan: “Good evening. Tomorrow I will face you once more in an electronic vote of confidence on the issues that have divided our planet for so many months. The polls show me running far behind. Every political analyst on this planet is certain that my resolution to expel the Femocrats and the Transcendental Scientists was an act of political suicide. I have been accused of everything from treason to deliberate falsehood to being the creature of Roger Falkenstein. Every voice on Pacifica seems to be screaming for my defeat. Yet thus far I have remained silent during this campaign...”

Now Carlotta smiles a confident, easy Borgia smile. Carlotta: “Why? Because I've given up? Because I have no answers to these charges?” She laughs sardonically. “No, I haven’t given up, and I don’t lack for answers. Far from it, for as I speak to you tonight, I am utterly confident of victory. Because tonight Pacifica gets its answers, in
deeds
, not words. Why have I fought to maintain the Madigan Plan, admittedly using every trick in the book? Why did I break the Thule strikes? Why did I sit still for a secret agreement with Roger Falkenstein that permitted the Institute to function with an all-male student body selected by our own Ministry of Science? Pacifica wants an answer? Pacifica demands an answer? Well, Pacifica deserves an answer—and here it is!”

Cut to establishing shot of a spacious hall inside the Ministry of Science. Royce Lindblad and Harrison Winterfelt, the Minister of Science, stand in the center of the shot behind a small podium. To their right is a large screen. To their left, a long line of Pacifican scientists with various apparatus waiting to perform like contestants at a Columbian fair. A large mass of video and sound equipment and newshounds are visible in the foreground as the camera moves in for a two-shot on Royce and Winterfelt, emphasizing Royce.

Royce: “I’m speaking to you from inside the Ministry of Science. With me is Harrison Winterfelt, our Minister of Science, and the other men you see are all former students at the Godzillaland Institute of Transcendental Science.’’

The camera pulls back for a longer shot including some of the former Institute students and their apparatus.

Royce: “As you know, when the original student body was dismissed, the Institute chose its new student body from blind lists compiled by our own Ministry of Science. But as you
don't
know, and as Dr. Falkenstein didn’t know either, many of these new students were trained Pacifican scientists acting under orders from Minister Winterfelt, myself, and Carlotta Madigan. Men capable of learning a good deal more than their ‘teachers’ may have intended.” He pauses, smiles, shrugs.

“Unkind and unfriendly souls might go so far as to call them Pacifican spies. Hari... ?”

A closeup on Winterfelt, looking somewhat nervous.

Winterfelt: “I want to emphasize that
everything
we will demonstrate tonight has been constructed by
Pacifican
scientists working for the
Pacifican
Ministry of Science using information gathered by
Pacifican
operatives inside the Institute of Transcendental Science. Once this indeed may have been
Transcendental
Science, but it is
Pacifican
Science as of now.”

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...”