A World Between (12 page)

But Carlotta Madigan was a woman of strength and intelligence, and a woman who ruled, not in the pathological Femocrat mode, but within a complex psychosexual structure that seemed to respect the equality of men and women. She was a woman who ruled equal men and women. How could any woman who had graduated from an Institute despite the long odds fail to identify with a Carlotta Madigan?

It seemed to Maria that what Madigan and Lindblad had was something precious, rare, and perhaps quite fragile. Something that, at least in a private microcosmic sense, was superior to any male-female relationship she had ever seen, including, perhaps, her own.

She knew with cold clarity that it was foolish to measure such a small thing against the political necessities of a struggle that would ultimately determine the future course of human evolution. Should she express such a notion to Roger, he would take it as proof of the inherent limitations of the female psyche.

Still, it disturbed her beyond all reason to think that Roger—even out of the most dire political necessity— might shatter that delicate personal balance in the service of a higher good As the clean uncluttered cylinder of the
Heisenberg
appeared in the viewport, she hoped that somehow it would not be necessary to destroy that elusive and precious thing she had sensed among these Pacificans in order to save them.

She glanced at her husband, his unfocused eyes pondering internal vistas that she could never be sure were totally shared. Perhaps, she thought, in their own small way, these Pacificans have something to teach us, too.

6

T
HE INTERIOR OF A FARMSTEAD LIVING ROOM, DATED AS
second-generation Pacifican by the single-screen net console. The rude extruded concrete walls and ceiling meet at crazy angles; the rough-hewn furniture looks as if it has been nailed together by an astigmatic; grimy ancient Terran farm tools are scattered at random, creating an unreal cartoony effect—a Pacifican hayseed reality that never was. Mother, in a red-and-white gingham dress, sits in a rocker watching a gross pom opera on the net console—an orgy sequence involving a Terran goat, a baby godzilla, and several humans of assorted sexes. Father, wearing muck-smeared denim overalls, feeds a baby pig with a bottle. Son sits in the comer working on a model sailboat and sneaking looks at the screen. Daughter makes a grand entrance from the left, dressed in an exaggeration of a then-current Gothamite mode—skin-tight silver shorts and a monohalter exposing one breast, which has been painted around the nipple to resemble a flower.

Daughter (world-weary): “Be it ever so humble, there’s no home like
this!”

Father: “So you finally got tired of playing a pom opera queen in Gotham, Lu-Anne?”

Daughter (brushing hay off a chair and sitting down gingerly): “How many times must I tell you that I’m working in
government
, Daddy?”

Father: “Same damn thing, ain’t it? Screwin’ people in public is screwin people in public, I always says.” He mugs at the camera, breaking himself up to canned laughter. Daughter: “Daddy, you’re incorrigible!”

Father: “Then don’t incorrige me! Hee-hee-hee!” He throws the baby pig at her. “Why don’t you feed Horace his slop?” v Mother: “Shut up! They’re coming to the good part!” She rocks faster and faster, giggling to herself.

Father: “See what you Islanders are doing! That pom opera channel is turning your poor old mom into a demented sex-maniac.”

Son (rubbing the handle of his knife obscenely): “Different strokes for weirdo folks!”

Daughter (snidely): “Still stroking
yours
behind the bam, Jody?”

Father: “Them goddam net channels is turning my whole family into shit-brains!”

Mother: “Then why you always watching them godzillas biting each others asses off, Hiram?”

Father (indignantly): ‘That’s a native Pacifican artform. Doncha have any respect for
culture,
Ma? Seems to me we could do with more of that and less of the brain-rot that’s cornin’ through the net these days. I mean, l’m as much in favor of free media access as the next man, what made our planet great, and all that hog-slop, but next thing you know we’ll be watching Femocrats in brass underwear goin* at each other with carrots and telling our women-folk to wear jockstraps.” *

Daughter: “Oh, Daddy, you’re such a fascist!”

Father: “Well, I’d vote for any Delegate who’d clean up the net!”

Mother: “Oh shut up, Hiram, you’d vote for your goat!” Cut to a closeup on Son, who licks his lips reflectively. Son: “Mmmm... Femocrats in brass underwear going at each other with carrots...”

A closeup of the baby pig, who suddenly squeals and spits up his milk.

A closeup of Daughter, who groans wearily.

Daughter: “
Everyone's
a media critic these days!”

The frame freezes, and then the farmstead scene is replaced by a tall dark man in an ancient magician’s tuxedo.

Magician: “Yes, you never know
what
you’ll see on the Pacifican net next, and there’s probably some people like old Hiram right out there now who’d zap
this
channel if they could.. But fear not, good friends, thanks to your own enlightened media access laws, Transcendental Science will be right back with the rest of today’s installment of
“Founding Father*
⁹
after this straightforward pitch from your sponsors, namely
us”

He rolls up both his sleeves to reveal... nothing. Magician: “Now. there’s nothing up our sleeves... except a few little tricks we’d like to teach you.” He waves his hands and produces a bouquet of flowers as the camera pulls back. “Like for instance the instantaneous transmission of matter.” The bouquet disappears from his hand and reappears instantaneously, floating in the air a few feet away. He smiles feyly. “Control of gravity, too. I’d do our live-three-hundred-years trick now for you, folks, but that’d be a
looong
commercial, wouldn’t it?”

As the camera moves in for a closeup, his clothes disappear, and he’s standing there naked, shrugging.

Magician: “Of course, there’s no such thing as magic, as we all know. Only science that you don’t understand yet But you will, folks, you will, unless, of course, you’re going to listen to old Hiram. Speaking of whom, let’s see if Femocrats in brass underwear are really going to materialize via the net and give the old boy a hard-attack! Or has baby piggy
really
had the last word... ?”

“Godzilla-brained sillyness,” Wenda Rentzlauf said. “We’re not like that on the Mainland, and we never have been.” Still, Rauf Rentzlauf couldn’t help noticing that she was suppressing a giggle despite herself as the splenetic Hiram slipped and went ass-over-backwards into the manure-pile.

“Of course it’s sillyness,” he said, keeping one eye on the screen and the other on his wife. “It’s not supposed to be realistic comedy. Ancient form. Backslip, or slapstick, I think they call it.”

“Well, I think it’s
crude,
Rauf.”

“It’s
supposed
to be crude.”

“Well, I also think it degrades Mainlanders and the Founders,” Wenda said. “It was Mainlander Founders who
created
the media access laws—they weren’t a bunch of godziUa-brained social fascists like that old shitkicker.” “Course not,” Rauf said. “That’s why it’s funny. You got to admit those Transcendental Scientists aren’t the humorless borks everyone seemed to assume they were.” “Guess not, they’re sure good at laughing at
us.”

“Ef it all, Wenda, they’re laughing at themselves, too,” Rauf said. “That scientific magician with the disappearing clothes...”

“I suppose you’re right, but I still think it’s pretty low-level humor.”

On the screen, Hiram staggered to his feet, tripped on a squealing pig, and fell on his face in the muck. Wenda choked back a laugh. “Low...he stammered. “Really low.”

Rauf made a pig-face at her and squealed indignantly.
“Everyone's
a media critic these days!” he said.

They both broke up laughing.

A split-screen shot. Roger and Maria Falkenstein sit on a breezy, rough-hewn porch, sunlight filtering down through a dappled green forest in the background. They wear loose white blouses, and their hair ruffles in the breeze, very outdoorsy and informal. In the upper right quadrant of the screen is a bluff-looking man in the coveralls of a Thule mining tech.

Miner:...ou people
realty
have three hundred year lifespans?”

Roger Falkenstein (shrugging ingenuously): “Well now, we really don’t know
how
long these techniques will let people live, since we’ve only had them a hundred years or so. We’re all going to have to wait to find out. You wouldn’t mind waiting three or four hundred years for an answer, would you, Jon?”

Miner (smiling): “I guess I could stand the suspense. But how old
are
you?”

Maria Falkenstein (archly): “A lady never tells.”

Roger Falkenstein (breezily): “And a gentleman never asks. Good talking to you, Jon, and now we’ll take another plug-in from our audience.”

The miner’s face is replaced by a young woman in a slash-cut red tunic, very up-to-date Gotham.

Woman: “I’m Hildy Berwick, and I’m a transport designer...”

Roger Falkenstein: “Good talking to you, Hildy...

Woman (somewhat belligerently):...nd I’d like to know why you people have taken a whole net channel and put on all these entertainment shows. I mean, documentaries or straight propaganda, I could understand...

Maria Falkenstein: “Why does Pacifica put all
its
entertainment on the Web?”

Woman (laughing): “For money!”

Roger Falkenstein: “But surely also because everyone is a bit of a prima at heart We all get a boost out of seeing our art, such as it is, transcend cultural boundaries. What better way for two peoples to make friends with each other?”

Woman (somewhat skeptically): “You’re telling me you’re not trying to convince us of anything with all this stuff?”

Roger Falkenstein: “Sure we are. We want to entertain and tell you about what we have to offer, too, but we keep the two separate, because, as we all know, propaganda is the death of art. That’s why we have shows... and commercials. Speaking of which, I do believe it’s time. Been nice talking to you, Hildy...

Just the Falkensteins now, smiling warmly from the screen, with a smooth announcer’s voiceover: “And we’ll be back with more
‘Talk to the Falkensteins’
after this straightforward blast from Transcendental Science...

“They do seem like real human beings, don’t they?” Carver Brown said, as something about organ regeneration ran on the screen.

His brother Bob laughed. “What did you expect, pointy-eared demons with filed teeth?”

Carver shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Somehow I had the impression that these people were.... colder, less open. I mean, I didn’t expect them to be this much like
us.”

“Maybe they didn’t expect
us
to be this much like
them,”
Bob said.
“If
they really are just what they seem.”

“What do you mean by that?” Carver said uneasily. Bob, who had sold one godzilla epic script, fancied himself something of a media sophisticate, a behind-the-scenes cynic.

“Well the
rest
of the stuff on this Transcendental Science channel is for sure slick as jellybelly oil,” Bob said. “And nothing appears so artless as really sophisticated art.”

“My brother, the godziUa-artist!” Carver said. He made a pig-face.
“Everyone*s
a media critic these days!”

Bob’s face puckered in distaste. “That’s
exactly
what I mean,” he said enigmatically.

A closeup of a weary red-eyed man hunched over a programming console pecking desolately at the keys. The lighting is dim and bleak.

Announcers’ voiceover: “....es, we all have those days when the creative faculty just refuses to function. But Transcendental Science has proven that creativity need not be at the mercy of metabolism or some mysterious muse. Individually tailored eptifier formulas will enable all of you to function at your creative peak
when you choose
....”

The man gobbles a few pills. The lighting brightens, bis eyes clear, he perks up and begins manipulating the keys with speed and assurance.

Announcer’s voiceover: “....nd this technology will be available to all Pacificans as soon as the Institute has trained enough people to dispense it. And now ... back to
*Space Operct!”

A panoramic view of a fleet of Arkologies against a brilliant starfield, the starships festooned with unlikely brass ornamentation in a florid neobaroque style. Heavy, fully orchestrated fugal music plays a paean to glory.

Cut to the interior of a spaceship, a bridge ornamented in the same overripe style. The captain, in a midnight-blue uniform trimmed with gold braid and jewels, sings an aria to his crew:

“Now in a twinkling Ere our glorious star be sinking We traverse the starry fen...”

Cut back to the panoramic view of the fleet of spaceships as the stars blur out of existence, and a beautiful planet, all emerald green and loamy brown under a fleecing of lavender clouds, fades in below them.

Captain’s baritone over:

“Beyond all human ken To a world both fair and living...”

Cut to a ground-level view of a faerie city, crystal spires under purple clouds, dazzling with multicolored reflections, golden-winged bipedal creatures soaring like birds on high.

Captain’s baritone over, with an orchestral tremolo shimmering to a crescendo:

“A people wise and giving Far from the lands of men.”

Dressed only in white briefs, Royce Lindblad sat on the edge of his lounger staring at the three live screens of his net console. Outside the glass netshop doors, a thunder-squall roiled the dark waters of Lorien lagoon, partially obscuring the stars with angry black clouds, one of nature’s grander displays on Pacifica.