A World Between (7 page)

“.... planet that refuses to ride the leading edge of scientific advance must inevitably become a backwater of inbred nostalgic...”

On and on went the debate, to no purpose that Royce could comprehend. Thus far, Carlotta had confined herself to chairing the session, and hadn’t spoken out on the issue at all, when a strong statement from the Chairman would probably have swung the vote her way, and almost certainly would have done the trick if she made it a vote of confidence in herself. Was she simply letting them wear themselves down
—or did she want to avoid taking a per
-
sonal stand entirely?

Could that be it? Royce wondered. Does she want to conceal her own position so as to strengthen her hand in the forthcoming negotiations?

Royce caught Carlotta’s eye and cocked his head slightly in a subtle gesture that only she would recognize. Carlotta returned the same signal, glanced down at her Delegate board, then looked directly into his eyes for a long moment.

So that’s it, he thought. She wants me to do it. Uneasily, Royce pressed his request button, asking for the floor. It wouldn’t be the first time he had fronted for Carlotta this way, nor would it be the first time he had supported a policy of hers with which he was not in total agreement. But he wondered if what he was going to say would be quite the words she wanted to put into his mouth...

“The Chair recognizes the Minister of Media...

Royce felt the attention of the Delegates focus on him with greater-than-usual intensity. The Minister of Media was ordinarily the second most influential figure in the gov, even when he was not the intimate of the Chairman. Royce, as Carlotta’s closest political ally and her lover, usually but not always spoke for the Madigan administration as well as the Media Ministry. It was the most powerful possible combination in Pacifican politics.

“Speaking as a Pacifican,” Royce said slowly, “I must agree with those who want our planets to have the full benefits of Transcendental Science. Only a fool would not want to triple his lifespan, enhance his consciousness, and attain the max mastery of his total environment. Pacifica should have this knowledge.”

He paused to let a low murmur whisper through the chamber, to let the Delegates glance at Carlotta, who was trying rather unsuccessfully to conceal her displeasure. Royce laughed to himself—it was the oldest rhetorical trick in the book.

“Speaking as a man,” he continued, “I must agree with those who want to avoid embroilment in the idiocy of the Pink and Blue War
at all costs."
There was a scattering of applause and much confusion at this apparent reversal; only Carlotta seemed to have caught on to what he was doing. “Speaking as a Delegate, I must agree with those who fear the subversion of Pacifican society by an Institute of Transcendental Science, Femocrats or no Femocrats.”

Audible rumblings of confusion now. Even Carlotta was looking at him peculiarly, as if trying to figure out where he might be going. Perfect, Royce thought. I’ve summed up all three positions and managed to support them all. “If that sounds confusing, well, it is,” he said. “It’s like wanting rain for our crops but not wanting to get wet. We’re all caught in the middle of the same paradox. Our disagreements aren’t with each other but within our own selves.”

He paused again, sensing that he had bled the conflict out of the debate now, tied them together in an emotional community by uniting the divergent viewpoints within himself, Now they were waiting hopefully for him to resolve the paradox; even Carlotta seemed to be hanging on his

next words, as if she were no longer merely counting on him to serve her tactical purpose but to resolve a real confusion of her own.

“However,” he said, hardening his voice,
“as Minister of Media
, I see the position this Parliament must take with crystal clarity. Pacifica’s Web exports are the key to our continued prosperity. ‘News of the Galaxy,’ our entertainments, and our unique transport designs give us an overwhelmingly favorable balance of interstellar payments and provide jobs, directly and indirectly, for perhaps a quarter of our adult population. Other planets can afford to buy our Web products and keep us in the style to which we are accustomed only by exporting science and technology. Without free interstellar trade in science and technology, the interstellar economy based on the Web will eventually collapse, and if that happens,
we
will be the biggest losers.”

Royce rose deliberately to his feet and began using his hands for dramatic emphasis. “Transcendental Science withholds its knowledge from the free Web market,” he said sharply. “Transcendental Science uses its advanced knowledge not as an item of trade but as a
political weapon
with which to build a monopoly at the leading edge of science and technology. The price of their knowledge is measured not in interstellar credits but in loss of political autonomy. If Transcendental Science succeeds in its ultimate goals, interstellar free trade will be destroyed and Pacifica will pay a heavy price in economic depression and mass unemployment.”

Royce sat down slowly to a guttural rumble of angry approval. There could hardly be a Delegate in the chamber who disagreed with
that!
Carlotta's face was unreadable as she studied him with a somewhat bemused expression. She now knew that he was giving her what she wanted tactically, but only by deflecting the Delegates from what she considered a matter of principle onto a bread-and-butter issue which would make them vote her way, and Royce wondered whether she might not be resenting that somehow.

“Therefore, as Minister of Media, I say that even if there were no such thing as the Pink and Blue War and no such ideology as Femocracy, Pacifica should do
nothing
that in
any way
furthers the monopolistic practices of Transcendental Science. Therefore, I hereby move that our delegation be instructed to tell Falkenstein and his people that, while we are eager to buy any knowledge he may have to sell at a fair price, any such knowledge will then become a free item of interstellar trade, and that any Pacifican Institute of Transcendental Science must be run under Pacifican law—most specifically including the media access laws. And if they choose not to abide by these conditions, they are to remove themselves from this solar system forthwith!”

Decorous but spontaneous cheering broke out. “Second the motion! Second the motion!” Dozens of Delegates were calling for the vote. Royce smiled at Carlotta smugly, knowing that he had cunningly recrafted the issue at hand into a resolution that no one could seriously argue against and hope to remain in office. Closed session or not, he thought, that was one hell of a speech, and I’m going to release the tape to the news channels—it’s perfect for our purposes.

Carlotta’s face was utterly sphinxlike as she gaveled the Delegates to order. “If there are no objections, I call for a vote on the Minister’s motion,” she said evenly.

Of course there were none, and the motion sailed through, 80 to 23. And in a move that surprised even Royce, he himself was voted onto the delegation as the majority opinion member, along with Carlotta, and Lauren Golding from the Cords for the small minority, even though he was usually considered Carlotta’s shadow.

It filled Royce with a rare sense of totally private pride to think that the Delegates had recognized his independent existence to such an extent. But on the other hand, Carlotta had been able to avoid taking any strong position at all, so as things stood now, it was
he
who publicly represented
her
position as if it were his own, and
she
who appeared to remain above it all, the obedient servant of a Parliamentary consensus that he had marshaled behind her. It was hard to figure out who was the puppet and who the puppeteer.

The disc of the setting-sun behind them was cleanly bisected by the razor-sharp western horizon, and the surface of the sea was a glaze of deepening gold as Carlotta Madigan sat thoughtfully in the open cockpit of the

Golden Goose
watching Royce sail the boat back to Lorien. Dozing boomerbirds rode the light swell, their heads tucked peacefully into their bright yellow breast feathers. Far away to port, the translucent hump of a big jellybelly glowed eerily in the twilight.

The world seemed at peace as it edged into night, and Royce was like a little boy, thoroughly absorbed in the delicate task of extracting the maximum speed from the light following wind. Carlotta had secured the mandate she wanted from Parliament, and the unforeseen election of Royce to the delegation had even given her a welcome but unexpected effective control. The ship of state seemed to be making its way through its troubled waters almost as smoothly as the
Golden Goose
gliding along the surface of this tranquil sea. Yet something disturbed the peace of this moment on a deep level that she could not quite plug her conscious mind into, and the elusiveness of it made it doubly annoying.

And somehow it was focused on Royce. He had been so damned pleased with himself, so much the triumphant bucko, that there had been no way to deny him this slow, crawling surface sail back to Lorien. Surely this isn’t too much for me to endure for the sake of my bright young bucko, Carlotta thought. Especially when he’s served me as well as he has today.

But that
is
what’s bothering me, she suddenly realized. Not the sail, but the
way
Royce steered that resolution through today. And the way he built the press release around his own speech afterward. He maneuvered Parliament the way he sails a boat, tacking with the wind, gliding frictionlessly through the storm, without ever facing the real issue head-on and powering through it.

What if this Falkenstein is a political sailor like Royce? What if he fools us all and
accepts
the conditions Royce assumed would be unacceptable? If he says yes—no matter what it really means—how can we say no—especially with Royce so publicly identified with the line we’re taking? Wouldn’t it have been better to have gotten a loud no vote on principle up front, even though the margin of victory would’ve been much smaller than this overwhelming but ambiguous consensus?

But Royce had made the decision for her. He had acted unilaterally, and now he at least appeared publicly to be the pilot of a policy he had created. This was something new in their political relationship, and she didn’t like it. And truth be told, she didn’t much like herself for not liking it. Are you some kind of crypto-Femocrat at heart, Carlotta Madigan? she asked herself half-seriously. Does your bucko
always
have to walk two steps behind you?

“Do you really believe everything you said today, Royce?” she asked.

Royce glanced at her peculiarly.

“I mean, what if Falkenstein
accepts
the conditions in the resolution? How do we say no to an Institute of Transcendental Science then?”

Royce laughed. “First of all, I think the chances of that happening are zip,” he said. “Secondly, if he
should
accept our conditions, what would be wrong with having an Institute anyway?”

“What?”

“What do you mean,
what?”
Royce snapped. “I meant what I said. If we can have Transcendental Science without political strings, without interference in our way of life, and without helping to maintain their monopoly, then why not? Give me one good reason!”

“Why ... ah ... I guess it’s just a gut-feeling, Royce,” Carlotta said lamely, unable to explain it even to herself. “I mean, who wants the Pink and Blue War... ?”

“But if Falkenstein accepts our terms—which he won’t anyway—how does that involve us in the Pink and Blue War? If anything, it’ll help
end
the damned thing. Without the Transcendental Science monopoly, the dynamic for the war no longer exists. Truth be told, that’s what I’d like to see happen. Wouldn’t you?”

“Ah... er, I suppose so,” Carlotta said distantly. “I guess I’m just a little edgy... Something about that Falkenstein bothers me on an irrational level, is all...” “Hmmmm...oyce muttered, and turned his attention back to the set of the sails and the sea before him. As the first stars of night began to dust the darkening sky, the two of them sat apart, brooding on their own private thoughts.

That in itself disturbed Carlotta as she gazed up at the night sky. For truth be told, Carlotta hated the thing that was moving toward them with a passion beyond all rational political logic. It seemed that the shadow of the Arkology
Heisenberg
had already darkened their own intimate landscape.

4

D
R.
R
OGER
F
ALKENSTEIN FELT THAT HE STOOD AT THE
brink of a mission that might be a major inflection point in the upward curve of human history. Or a break-point in the steady hyperbolic rise should he fail.

Rising through the liftube at the long axis of the
Heisenberg
from his quarters on 12-deck to the main briefing room on 2-deck, Falkenstein passed through nine typical decks of the Arkology, which he thought of as neither vehicle of transit nor home.

Three of the decks through which he passed were nothing more than human warehouses: tier upon tier of Deep Sleep chambers in which, at any given time, the majority of the Arkology’s inhabitants spent the years between meaningful activities in suspended animation, editing their long lifespans into continuous dramas of peak experiences by removing all periods of boredom and waiting.

Partially as a result of this instant access to Deep Sleep, where both body metabolism and memory track could be frozen into a timeless moment while objective years or even centuries flowed by unnoticed, the residential decks of the Arkology were for the most part starkly functional. Circles of spacious apartments surrounded the central drop and lift tubes with only a token formal garden here and there. Color schemes varied, but generally ran to bright primaries, golds, whites, and metallics—colors well calculated to energize the mind and brighten the spirit, but equally well calculated to avoid the earth-tones that would psychologically simulate growing things or the surfaces of planets. Even the paintings in the apartments, the murals in the public areas of the Arkology, and the motifs of the artificial “skies” above each deck tended almost entirely to the astronomical—star fields, great banded gas giants, complex multiple-star systems, stylized black holes, blazing novas. Growing things were for the most part confined to the hydroponic decks, where the vats were arranged in neat rows and the plants provided food, animal fodder, and oxygen; fuel for the human metabolism, not a narcotic for the soul.