A World Between (9 page)

“Damn!” Falkenstein muttered. “That’s pretty drastic. Does it mean they know we’re here?”

Miranda shrugged. “Could be. We’ve scrambled all our tachyon traffic, but tachyon beams are directional. They could’ve detected scrambled transmissions moving toward Pacifica and extrapolated the correct conclusion.”

Well that’s certainly how we found out what
they
were up to, Falkenstein thought. The
Planck
had picked up scrambled transmissions from a Femocrat ship moving toward Pacifica at their maximum speed, eight years from planetfall, and it had taken a couple of rather extreme black hole flybys plus the inertia screen which the Femocrats lacked to beat them to the planet at all.

And now we find out that we only have six weeks to maneuver freely in instead of three months! *

“Does this mean that we should change our phase three scenario?” Falkenstein mused aloud.

“You mean tell the Pacificans that there’s a Femocrat mission on the way from the outset and immediately sync the establishment of an Institute into an anti-Femocrat movement?”

“Yes.”

Dalton shook his head. “It might prove useful in the long run, and if we don’t work fast enough we may have to do it anyway once they arrive,” he said. “But in the phase one and phase two timeframes, it would just sync the issue of expelling us into the issue of staying out of the ‘Pink and Blue War,’ as they call it here. The Pacificans would then be overwhelmingly in favor of throwing both us and the Femocrats off the planet. Winston...?”

“I concur absolutely,” the Historical Analyst said. “If the Pacificans found out about the Femocrat mission, they’d expel us immediately so they could treat the Femocrats the same way when they arrived. Becoming embroiled in the ideological conflict is absolute anathema to this planet.”

Falkenstein leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Then we stick to the original scenario through phase three,” he said. “Should the Femocrats arrive before we succeed in establishing an Institute, we act as surprised as the Pacificans and consider adjustments to phase four at that time. Lar, your people had better begin working out the contingencies now, though. Six weeks of a free hand is better than no time at all, I suppose.”

“So it is,” Dalton said.

“So it had better be,” Falkenstein replied. “I think this meeting is concluded. Arkmind, you may cease monitoring.”

As the staff filed out of the room, Falkenstein slumped further back in his chair, tilting his head backwards so that the huge image of Pacifica on the dome above him filled his field of vision, a vast and intimately synergizing organic complexity of geography and ecosystems, matter, energy, and process.

How hopelessly complex a living planet is, he thought This one, with its nearly circular orbit and minimal axial tilt—easy enough to predict its constant seasons, but would an Arkmind model have.ever extrapolated that mammalian life-forms would never evolve in such a context? Add a sentient human culture, and the complexities multiply exponentially, and so therefore do the uncertainties.

And this...
this...
The Pacifican culture seemed almost malevolently designed to maximize uncertainty and minimize predictability. Mass trends given instant political expression through electronic democracy. A psychosexual balance so complex and ambiguous that the Pacificans themselves don’t really understand it. Total media saturation of maximum diversity, partially government controlled, partially a total chaos of whim and fashion.

Although Pacifica sat at the psychic and economic center of the Galactic Media Web, although Pacifica in a sense held the atavistic system of separate planetary governments together in dynamic but static stability, despite the Pacificans’ unchallenged mastery of the media arts, despite the fact that Pacifica was therefore in a sense the pinnacle of the previous human evolutionary state, the Council had long since decided to leave this damnable planet alone. There were too many uncertainties to be utterly confident of success, and failure, here could turn this most aggressively neutral of planets into the most dangerous enemy conceivable.

But now, Falkenstein thought, we have no choice. By itself, Femocracy was an evolutionary dead end, a pathology that would collapse of its own internal contradictions long before the dawn of the true galactic age. But should Femocrat ideology come to dominate the planet that dominated the Galactic Media Web... Falkenstein shuddered. Through Pacifica, Femocracy could dominate the human worlds in a timeframe of decades, metastasize like a runaway carcinoma, set human evolution back a thousand years within a century...

And now Pacifica
has
become a Femocrat target. We’re
forced
to fight them here. And
l’m
the man standing at this evolutionary crossroads, with the future of the species riding on every move I make...

Falkenstein shook his head ruefully. I wouldn’t have asked for this, he thought, but truth be told, I wouldn’t want it in anyone else’s hands either.

“Having second thoughts, Roger?”

Maria had come up beside him unnoticed, and stood there with her left arm around the back of his chair. Instinctively, Falkenstein straightened his posture, composed his features, and cleared his mind of these uncertain ruminations. “About what?” he said crisply.

“About meddling in a personal relationship for political purposes,” Maria said. “After all, how would you like it if someone ran a scenario like that on us?”

Falkenstein looked up into her even, ageless features, the face he had known and loved for half a century. “They would surely fail, would they not?” he said.

Maria nodded up at the image of Pacifica looming above them. “Those people down there are not thee and me,” she said.

“Noblesse oblige?” Falkenstein said sardonically.

“You could call it that.”

Falkenstein’s features hardened. I hope my faith in your ability to function optimally on this mission isn’t misplaced, Maria, he thought. I hope pride and love haven’t clouded my vision. “We have a higher obligation,” he said. “What is the possibility of destroying one personal relationship when measured against a catastrophe like a Femocrat Pacifica?”

“What if the relationship in question were
ours,
Roger?”

Falkenstein’s eyes softened, but his face became a mask of sternness in compensation. “I know what you’d like me to say,” he said. “But we both know what the truth is, don’t we?”

Maria looked away from him, down at the floor. Tenderly, Falkenstein touched her hand. “There’s another way to look at it,” he said. “Royce Lindblad hasn’t come into his full manhood. Is it wrong to give him that? If their relationship can’t survive his equality and political independence, will anything worthwhile have really been destroyed?”

Maria looked into his eyes. Words froze on her lips. She shook her head and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“I suppose you’re right, Roger,” she said in a subdued voice. “Yours is the long view and the deep view. As always.”

—

Falkenstein patted her hand, wondering why her simple acknowledgment of the truth filled him with such annoyance.

5

W
ELL THEY CERTAINLY ARE AN IMPRESSIVE COUPLE,
C
AR
lotta Madigan thought as she, Royce, and Lauren Golding led the Falkensteins away from the newshounds on the lawn and into the lodge. The question is, a couple of
what?

Dr. Roger Falkenstein, lean, gray-haired, and almost theatrically self-assured in a midnight-blue high-collared suit tailored for authoritarian effect like an ancient military uniform, seemed ageless. He could have been fifty or a hundred and fifty, or a thousand and fifty. It would not be hard to believe that those bright unreadable eyes had seen centuries go by. His wife fitted the same mold; trim, ageless of body, ancient around the eyes, and wearing a green skirted suit cut in the same fashion, only unmatched colors pointing up the fact that neither of them were really wearing uniforms. Perhaps there was a shade less arrogance in her bearing. Although they seemed to make a point of walking side by side and treating each other as equals, he had done all of the talking to the reporters. It fitted with the male-dominant reputation of Transcendental Science, but it also appeared that they were making a somewhat fumbling effort to counter that image. Well, you’ll have to do better than that on Pacifica, Jocko, Carlotta thought, freely admitting to herself that she had taken ah instant visceral dislike to the Managing Director of the
Heisenberg.

She led the party through the lobby and up two flights of stairs to the roof garden atop Koma Lodge. As casual as the choice of this rented villa might seem, it had been the result of some careful political calculations. From the roof garden, the towers, domes, and bridges of Gotham were dimly visible to the northwest over a calm blue sea and a sprinkling of tiny uninhabited islets. Koma Lodge was close enough to Gotham so that there could be no charges of holding the Transcendental Scientists incommunicado at some isolated locale, but far enough away from metropolitan Gotham and small enough to make the restrictions on the number of newshounds seem reasonable. Royce had wanted to hold the meetings at Lorien as a gesture of personal hospitality, but that was exactly the sort of personal identification with the Transcendental Science delegation that Carlotta was determined to avoid.

Five bongowood loungers had been arranged around a table of refreshments under a potted umbrella-fera, and Carlotta poured iced floatfruit wine for everyone as they seated themselves. Golding immediately took a long swallow. Royce toyed with his glass without drinking. The Falkensteins ignored the wine, the view, the breeze, any attempt at preliminary small talk, and sat there regarding Carlotta with unreadable eyes, formally waiting to open negotiations.

“I’m not exactly sure where to begin,” Carlotta said, after what seemed like an endless staring contest. “I mean, this is a bit uncomfortable. We know what you’re here for, and you know what our government’s position is...”

“And perhaps we’re all drawing unnecessary conclusions,” Roger Falkenstein said, cracking a friendly smile that set Carlotta’s teeth on edge. “You seem to believe that an Institute of Transcendental Science would represent some kind of intrusion in your internal affairs...”

“And you’re saying that it wouldn’t?” Royce said.

Falkenstein directed his false smile at Royce. “Not through any intention of ours,” he said. “We Transcendental Scientists don’t consider ourselves a nationality or an ideology or even a political unit. We’re research scientists and teachers, nothing more. We are simply proposing to set up a kind of university on Pacifica. We’ll disseminate our knowledge to Pacifican students, train local people in the Transcendental Sciences, and eventually teach Pacificans to run the Institute by themselves and leave your planet entirely. You’ll be left with a functioning Institute able to elevate the technological and scientific level of your planet and equipped to do its own research at the frontiers of human knowledge, and run entirely by indigenous personnel.” Falkenstein shrugged ingenuously. “Why should anyone feel threatened by that?”

“Sounds harmless enough to me,” Golding said.

‘Totally altruistic,” Carlotta cracked sardonically.

Roger Falkenstein cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at her.

“I mean, what’s in it for you?” she said.

Falkenstein laughed. “Oh, I see,” he said. “You distrust apparent lack of self-interest. Rightly so. Actually, there’s a great deal in it for us, if you define ‘us’ correctly.”

“And this correct definition is... ?”

“Mankind,” Falkenstein said, with an embracing, inclusive gesture. “The species. Our common destiny. Each time we establish a new Institute we gain
colleagues.
Science is, after all, a vast collective effort. The more people working at the edges of the scientific frontier, the more rapidly the race as a whole progresses. Everyone has a self-interest in that. Our system of Institutes combines the most useful aspects of both diversity and common effort. Each Institute draws upon the unique genius of its planet, but all are bound together in a network of free and instantaneous information exchange, so that projects are not needlessly duplicated, so that the total research effort synergizes into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Spread it on bread and feed it to Rugo! Carlotta thought Melts in your mind, not on your fingers. But it was Royce who applied the grease-cutter.

“That sounds like the gift of the Magi, Dr. Falkenstein,” he said. “But if that’s really your vector, why do you withhold your knowledge from the Web? Why don’t you sell your science and technology freely like everyone else? Or if you’re really all that selfless, give it away?”

That’s my bucko! Carlotta thought, slipping Royce a sidelong glance of appreciation which he seemed to ignore.

Falkenstein’s composure cracked for an instant, but he reerected his confident, friendly mask quickly enough.

“We’d like to be able to do just that,” Falkenstein said. “It would certainly make our ultimate task that much easier. Unfortunately, that would be the height of irresponsibility.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really,” Falkenstein said earnestly. “The knowledge we possess even in the current timeframe would be disastrous in the wrong hands. For instance, we could, if we chose, reproduce ourselves entirely by cloning, and genetically tailor the clones, too. What would the Femocrats do with
that?
Eliminate the male of the species entirely, perhaps, or worse, produce a subsentient slave species. For instance, our Arkologies can traverse interstellar distances 50 percent faster than conventional starships, and some day, we hope, research in this area will lead to a faster-than-light drive that will enable men to travel from star to star in
weeks
instead of years. This will either bring about a true galactic culture, the next step in human evolution ... or the unthinkable.”