A World Between (18 page)

“Oh, shit!” Carlotta muttered. “And there’s really nothing we can do about it. The Femocrats are sure to demand media access, and we can’t deny it to them as long as they’re on the planet.” And since their ship is “disabled,” we can’t expel them either, she realized. “Welcome to the Pink and Blue War,” she said bitterly.

But Royce seemed less somber. “We’ve
already
done something about it by omission, thanks to my ineffable wisdom,” he said. “You still haven’t taken a public position on the Institute, and until you do, Falkenstein and the Femocrats can beat each other over the head, but they can’t catch you in the middle.”

Carlotta smiled wanly. “You’re right, bucko!” she said. And maybe it’s not all bad either, she thought. The Femocrats will certainly fight the Institute and help mobilize women against Falkenstein. If we lay low until their ship is repaired and we can get rid of them, maybe we can add enough male votes by expelling the Femocrats to defeat the Institute in Parliament. “It looks like procrastination is the better part of valor in this case,” she said.

Royce nodded. “The best thing for you to do now is nothing,” he said, climbing out of bed. “I’ll prepare a press release on the Femocrats and an executive order cancelling the Parliamentary vote.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek. “You might as well go back to sleep, babe.”

Carlotta smiled at his bare retreating ass and snuggled back under the covers. Maybe this isn’t so bad at all, she thought, turning off the light. For suddenly it seemed that she and Royce were back in sync again, just like the old days of a few weeks ago. Sometimes, she thought, strange politics could make for more familiar bedfellows.

The B-3I lay like the bleaching bulk of an immense beached whale in a verdant green field on the bank of a swiftly flowing river about twenty kilometers northeast of the Pacifican capital. The weeks of waking time she had spent aboard it were already beginning to seem like a distant purgatory to Cynda Elizabeth as she waited to board the Pacifican hydrofoil under the warm sun, her nostrils filled with the subtle perfume of the lawnmoss meadow and the shoreline aromas of the gurgling river. This planet hit the senses with an immediacy that the briefing tapes had not quite prepared her for. Verdant, empty, untouched by the radiation scars of war or the millennia of human effluvia that made even the renascent Femocrat Earth seem like a half-moribund cinder, Pacifica seemed like a lost Eden, bursting with the germinating seeds of a better future.

Look at all those
men**
Bara Dorothy said, gesturing toward the Pacifican security force that had cordoned off the ship. “Not a sister among them.”

Cynda suppressed a scowl—partly to avoid ideological conflict with the mission’s Mentor, partly to keep from being brought down, the victim of another of Bara Dorothy’s formidable negative abilities. “I’d handle it the same way if I were them,” she said.

Bara Dorothy looked down at her suspiciously, hands on her strong wide hips. A full head taller than Cynda, with dark black skin, a blunt prow of a nose, piercing brown eyes, and the heavily muscled body of a woman who fanatically exercised for an hour every morning before breakfast, the Mentor had a way of striking such superior poses at the slightest provocation. “What are you doing now?” she said humorlessly. “Advocating Pacifican fascho-chauvinism?”

Oh, Mother, I’ve done it again! Cynda thought. As Team Leader, she was titular head of the mission, at least for diplomatic purposes, but Bara Dorothy spent most of her time making it clear that not even she
—especially
not even she—was immune from the Mentor’s interpretation of Femocratic doctrine.

“I’m not advocating anything,” Cynda said, donning her official persona. “I’m analyzing the local social pattern, doing my duty. We’ve
forced
them to- allow us to land, so naturally they’re somewhat suspicious and hostile. All the official studies indicate that Pacifica is
not
an overtly faschochauvinist planet; in fact, the head of government is a sister. Therefore, it’s
her
policy to keep sisters away from our ship for now because she knows they’d be fertile soil for Femocracy. Whereas men... are
men
.”

“You may have a point,” Bara Dorothy admitted grudgingly. “But bear in mind that a woman head of government does not a Femocratic society make,” she added, unable not to have the last word. “As witness the way she allows these men to dress themselves up in uniforms and even to bear arms.”

Cynda nodded noncommittally. There
was
something unsettling about these strong, confident-looking Pacifican men in their tight-fitting blue pants and tunics. These were male animals totally unlike the breeders back home; swaggering, self-contained, like the faschochauvinist machos of the history tapes, utterly undomesticated. Fear she did feel, but the approved contempt was tempered by something she could not quite grasp, something queasily unsettling.

A Pacifican male approached them: tanned, blond, longhaired, and half a head taller than even Bara Dorothy. “Ready to board now,” he said, without a hint of deference. .‘The ambulance ’foils will be here in another few minutes.” He stepped closer and insolently looked the two of them up and down. “This way, ladies,” he said with an ironic little bow.

“Watch your manners, breeder!” Bara Dorothy snapped. The Pacifican grinned strangely. “
Breeder
, is it?” he said. He laughed. “Well, that’s certainly the quickest invitation I’ve gotten yet!”

Bara Dorothy’s hands balled into fists. She took a menacing step forward. But the Pacifican just laughed again. “Want to wrestle, eh?” he said.. He winked at Bara Dorothy. “Can’t it wait till we’re alone? I’ve got a nice little boat, we could have dinner in Gotham at the Windhaven, and then take a nice slow sail—”

“I think we misunderstand your customs and you misunderstand ours,” Cynda said quickly. “I’m sorry if there’s—”

“No need to apologize,” the Pacifican said airily. “You ladies have been confined in that can without any buckos for a long time; it’s only natural that you’d be a little less than subtle about your needs.” He smiled at Bara Dorothy. “But
really
he said, “out here in front of everyone while I’m
on duty...?”

For the first time in memory, Bara Dorothy was left without a word to say. Cynda thought she might just attack the Pacifican, and as amusing as that might be to watch, it would be an awful way to begin a diplomatic mission. “I think we’d better board now,” she said loudly.

“Yeah, I guess so,” the Pacifican said, glancing at Bara Dorothy, chuckling to himself, and turning his broad back to both of them.

I do believe that breeder knew exactly what was going on, Cynda Elizabeth decided as they followed him on board the hydrofoil. He didn’t really expect Bara to breed him right then and there; he was having
fun
with her.

“Faschochauvinist vermin!” Bara Dorothy snarled under her breath as she stepped aboard. “Rutting animals!”

“Not exactly like the breeders we’re used to,” Cynda said as solemnly as possible. “But try to remember you’re on Pacifica, not Earth, Bara. If you try to command the breeders here like the tame ones on Earth, they’ll like as not give you a beating like the old machos used to do.” “I’d like to see one try!”

So would I, Cynda thought, watching the muscles ripple on the shoulders and backside of the Pacifican breeder. I’ll bet they know how to
breed
like the old machos, too! She flushed under the hot sun, then sighed. Maybe my sisters are right about me, she thought sadly. Maybe I
am
a secret breeder-loving pervert at heart...

Thinking these dark thoughts, Cynda followed meekly as Bara Dorothy led her to the open foredeck, safely away from the Pacifican breeder crew. A few moments later, the hydrofoil eased away from the bank, then rapidly accelerated to a giddy speed, slapping through the choppy river, spraying both of them with a fine mist of foam as they sat on the hot metal deck watching the green banks zip by in a dizzying blur.

Bara Dorothy screwed up her face in her chronic expression of distaste. “I’m getting wet,” she said. “Let’s go into the cabin.”

“You go ahead if you want to,” Cynda said, quite enjoying the heat of the sun, the rhythm of the waves, the rush of the fragrant planetside air, even the cooling spray on her face. “I’d rather not mix with all those breeders.” “Suit yourself,” Bara Dorothy said, walking away shakily toward the stem. Cynda sat there alone for several minutes, glancing at the farmsteads along the banks pouring by, watching a flock of big blue birds pacing the hydrofoil for a few moments, straining her eyes forward to catch the first glimpse of the Pacifican capital, enjoying the sense of isolated motion through the alien landscape. For the first time since she had been selected for this mission, she thought she might end up enjoying it.

“Hi, there, I don’t think your friend likes me very much, how about you?” The tall blond Pacifican breeder had come up from the stern. He stood towering above her, balancing himself against the motion of the ’foil with his hands on his hips, in Bara Dorothy’s characteristic domineering pose. Glancing toward him, Cynda found herself staring straight at the tight crotch of his blue pants. Flushing, and not entirely with embarrassment, she looked away.

“She’s not exactly my friend,” Cynda said. “More a colleague.”

The Pacifican smiled and sat down beside her. “That’s nice,” he said. “I mean, she’s an obvious lesbo, and I thought maybe the two of you...

“Lesbo?
I don’t believe I know the word.”

“A woman who has it off with other women,” the breeder said. “What do you call it?”

“Why... why, we don’t call it anything. What do you call a woman who...
breeds with men?”

The Pacifican inched closer. “Nothing in particular,” he said, “but I’d be glad to whisper a few nonspecifics in your ear.”

“What do you think I am!” Cynda snapped with an indignation a good deal stronger than what she felt.

The Pacifican frowned. “So you
are
lesbo,” he said.

“Of course!” Cynda said self-righteously. “You think I’m some kind of breeder loving
pervert?”

The breeder’s expression lightened. “Aha!” he said. “Me-thinks the lady doth protest too much.”

Cynda Elizabeth froze, stared down at the rushing waters, away from the breeder, paralyzed by fear, and perhaps something else.
How can he possibly know?
she wondered. Can these Pacificans be
telepathic?
For what this breeder had so casually surmised was something buried so deep in the core of her that she only half-admitted it to herself, and then only when confronted with an absolutely unavoidable moment of self-revelation. As far as she knew, she had never actually overtly manifested these... these loathsome perverse fantasies. A certain coldness in bed with sisters, a dearth of long-lasting or meaningful affairs —that surely only revealed itself as a tendency toward asexuality. The true perversion took place only in the privacy of her mind—the way she imagined an atavistic macho atop her when engaged in a mandatory contribution to the fetus-banks with some cretinous inept breeder, or fantasizing a macho piercer inside her.

But the psychs recognized that even these fantasies were normal atavistic throwbacks to the primitive age, evolutionary detritus from the animal backbrain. Doctrine clearly stated that
all
sisters experienced them from time to time; they were nothing to worry about until they were acted out. Only the
act
of unauthorized sexual contact with a breeder was punishable as perversion, and such crime was rare, though the twisted impulse was scientifically recognized as relatively common. Cynda had never been in real danger of succumbing to such loathsomeness in
deed;
she had never even seriously considered the possibility of acting out her atavistic fantasies. They had always remained a private shame, locked securely inside her own skull.

Yet this Pacifican breeder had read them as clearly as if they were written in letters of fire across her face! Mother! Cynda thought. Can it really show so plainly?

“I’ve offended you?” the breeder said softly, an amazingly unbreederlike tenderness in his voice. “I’m sorry. We’ve all heard that you Femocrats are all lesbo, but... well, looking at you I found it hard to believe...

Cynda looked at the Pacifican. There was neither ordinary breeder servility nor atavistic macho arrogance on his face. What she saw there was simple concern, a desire for sentient contact as human as that of any sister. Even a certain strange strength edged with softness that did peculiar things to her stomach.

She smiled at the Pacifican. “It’s all right,” she said. “I think we have more to learn about each other than anything that can be put on tape.”

Up ahead, the towers, islands, and bridges of the Pacifican capital appeared in ghostly distant silhouette where the river widened into the sea, an alien city shimmering in the mind’s eye.

“Maybe we can help each other learn,” the Pacifican said. “My name’s Eric Lauder. Look me up if you have time, and I’ll show you the sights, lesbo or not.” He nodded slyly toward the stem. “If your friend will let you.”

“I told you, she’s no friend of mine,” Cynda snapped. “And
l'm
the Leader of this mission, not Bara Dorothy.
Vm
in command.”

“Sure
you are,” the breeder said challengingly. “Well, since you say you’re the boss-lady and a free woman, do we have a date?”

“I’ll think it over,” Cynda said neutrally. But inside, she was a turmoil of impotent anger. Oh, yes, she thought, I’m officially in command! But Bara Dorothy was the direct representative of the Comity of the Sisterhood; on matters of doctrine, her word was supreme, she could place
anyone
in suspended status for any uncorrected violation. And who decided when something was a doctrinal issue?
Bara Dorothy!

Now, for the first time since this mission had been put together on Earth, Bara Dorothy was beginning to grudgingly appreciate the wisdom of the Sisterhood in choosing a questionable character like Cynda Elizabeth as official Leader.
I
certainly couldn’t deal with these people this way, she thought. I’d never have the stomach for it.