A World Between (29 page)

Now just a closeup on the man, more angry than frightened now. “Look, I don’t think you understand what I’ve been telling you,” he said. “They’re
brainwashing
people. They’ve chosen their students for susceptibility to mind-molding techniques, and that’s what they’re doing! They don’t want the people of Pacifica to know what’s going on, and that’s putting it very mildly! There are no private net consoles. They’ve got an electronic barrier around the Institute, supposedly to keep godzillas out, but it also keeps the so-called students
in.
How do
I
know how far they’d really go? You think I wanted to find out the hard way?” Another two-shot including Nancy Muldaur, looking slightly skeptical while asking her next question. “This... ah, so-called brainwashing... what
is
it, specifically?” “It’s hard to describe unless you’ve gone through it For one thing, all the students are constantly being fed drugs. Brain-eptifiers to enhance the chemical matrix of consciousness, they claim, and it certainly
does
sharpen your mind—but who knows what
else
is in the formula? For another thing, it’s what they’re teaching and the way they teach it. For the first two weeks they don’t teach any real science at all. They fill your head full of theories of consciousness that sync into their own mindset, and then they teach you so-called psychohistory which is pure Transcendental Science propaganda dressed up as scientific objectivity. And during the whole process, you have these sessions every day with so-called tutors who are really brainwashing experts evaluating your reaction. I tell you— I tell the people of Pacifica—that’s no
school,
that’s a brainwashing academy!”

Shrill and unstable as the Institute “escapee” sounded, what he was saying rang true to Carlotta. It was full of emotional conviction, and she could hardly put such tactics past Falkenstein and his crew. A great hollow bubble built up in her gut. There was only one possible question that might defuse this thing before the Madigan Plan blew up in everyone’s face. “Ask him how come it didn’t work on
him!”
she muttered at the screen.

Nancy Muldaur, pro that she was, obliged her and asked the question that must have been on the minds of the millions of Pacificans plugged into the interview. “No offense, Mr. Carstairs, but what made
you
so special? If this Institute brainwashing is all you say it is, why didn’t it work on you? Why are you alone sitting here and warning us?”

The camera moved in for a closeup on Carstairs. The look of confusion on his face seemed utterly genuine, utterly ingenuous, even appealing in its lack of guile or facileness. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really know,” he said after a long pause. “I
have
studied some media psychodynamics, and I kept that off my application because I thought that might disqualify me, so maybe I had more insight into the process than the other students. I don’t have a degree or anything, I just picked it up from a friend I once lived with, so there’s no way they could’ve found out...”

He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was much calmer. “Also, I was curious about those brain-eptifiers... not really suspicious then, just intellectually curious. So as an experiment, I stopped taking them for a few days. My mind seemed to get clearer. Things that they had taught me didn’t seem so self-evident any more...e shrugged. “l’m not saying that’s the reason,” he said appealingly. “Maybe I was just lucky...

“Maybe you’re not the only one,” Nancy Muldaur said as a closeup of her replaced Carstairs on the screen. Carlotta could see the newshunger in her eyes as she spoke directly to the camera. “This clearly calls for a complete investigation. And you can be sure that if one isn’t immediately forthcoming from the government, this news net will—”

“Enough!” Carlotta muttered, unplugging from the news channel. “I get the picture!”

Royce peered at her ruefully from the comscreen. “Well?” he said ironically.
“Important?”

“Disasters are always important,” Carlotta sighed. “And this one puts us right back where we started.”

“If
we’re very, very lucky,” Royce said. “The Femocrats are going to go utterly berserk over this, and who knows what Falkenstein’s counterblitz is going to be like. I only hope we
do
end up no worse than we started before we got the Madigan Plan through.” He grimaced. “But I doubt it. This looks like escalation time.”

“We’re going to have to close down the Institute right now,” Carlotta said. “No government can tolerate
this
kind of shit and still call itself a democracy.”

Royce shook his head firmly. “No way,” he said. “On the basis of unsubstantiated charges? Before we can gauge the political reaction? Do that, and Pacificans for the Institute will be howling for your blood.”

“You think it’s not true, Royce?”

He shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “All I know is that we’d better not take a stand until we know the truth. I mean, this Carstairs character didn’t sound like the most stable person on the planet to me...

But he
is
telling the truth, Carlotta thought. I know it in my bones. Nevertheless, Royce’s analysis was correct. We’re back in the shit again, and once more we have to temporize. But not for much longer. Not for bloody much longerl “What do you suggest, O master of the media?” she asked.

Royce frowned. “Announce that the matter is under investigation. Get the facts. Wait for the full political reaction to develop before saying anything.”

“Too weak,” Carlotta said. “We’ve got to make
some
immediate dramatic gesture.”

Royce shrugged. “Then announce that I’m going to God-zillaland to investigate the situation personally,” he said. “I’ll stay around for a few days to handle the media aspect and then fly down and have it out with Falkenstein.” “Leaving me to sit here as the muck hits the exhaust...”

Royce forced a wan smile. “At least you won’t have godzillas to contend with.”

Carlotta sighed and managed a small grin back. “Just a planetful of people bellowing like them,” she said.

12

A
CLOSE UP OF
C
ARSTAIRS, THE
I
NSTITUTE DEFECTOR,
taken from the news channel footage; angry, righteous-looking.

Carstairs:...hosen their students for susceptibility to brainwashing techniques, and that’s exactly what they’re doing! They don’t want the people of Pacifica to know what’s going on, and that’s putting it very mildly...

A hard cut to a closeup on Cynda Elizabeth. She is holding a large sheaf of documents and she waves it for emphasis as she speaks.

Cynda Elizabeth: “It certainly
is,
Mr. Carstairs, and there are a few things even
you
don’t know either! I have here a list of one hundred and eighty verifiably Pacifican Institute students, and all of them are
male
. Furthermore, we’ve been able to trace connections between ninety-seven of them and Pacificans for the Institute. And Transcendental Science’s faschochauvinist treachery goes even further than
that.
There is the matter of the twenty so-called female Institute students. No record of their prior existence on this planet can be found. Only one conclusion can be drawn—they’re not Pacifican sisters at all, but spies off the
Heisenberg
itself!”

A series of panoramic shots of Pacifican women demonstrating and marching*—in downtown Gotham, the streets of Valhalla, a town on the bank of the Big Blue, a village in the Island Continent.

Cynda Elizabeth’s voiceover: “So what we have in Godzillaland is exactly what I predicted when I opposed passage of the Madigan Plan—a Transcendental Science brainwashing academy with an all-male student body chosen for their faschochauvinist tendencies to begin with, and infiltrated by secret agents from the
Heisenberg
. Overt faschochauvinism, drugs, mind-molding, spies, lies, and duplicity! A total effort to subvert Pacifican society through the creation of a brainwashed male faschochauvinist elite!” A closeup on Cynda Elizabeth, oozing an I-told-you-so smugness.

Cynda Elizabeth: “If there was ever any doubt in the minds of the sisters of Pacifica that this so-called Institute should be closed immediately, this certainly removes it. The sisters of Pacifica are demonstrating everywhere today, and their demand is simple and clear: close the Institute now, and banish Transcendental Science from this planet forever!”

A panoramic shot of the public entrance to Parliament, thronged with marching people. The camera moves in closer, revealing that they are all women organized into massive, orderly picket-lines. Their placards repeat the same three phrases over and over again: “Femocratic League of Pacifica,” “Close the Institute Now!” and “Banish Faschochauvinist Fausts!”

Cynda Elizabeth’s voiceover: “The sisters of Pacifica are on the march, and they will not rest until the last faschochauvinist Transcendental Scientist has left this solar system! We call on the government to
close the Institute now!”

Chanting pickets: “Carlotta Madigan,
close the Institute now! Carlotta Madigan, CLOSE THE INSTITUTE NOWr A closeup of a man’s wong and balls. A huge knife wielded by a female hand slashes across the frame and severs them from his body. Cut to a medium shot on a woman looking very much like Cynda Elizabeth as she waves a bloody knife in one hand and the male organs in the other with a demented look of triumph.

Harsh male voiceover: “Don’t kid yourselves anymore, buckos,
that’s
what ifs all about”

Cut to a panoramic shot of a large male crowd filling Seaside Park in downtown Gotham, angry, shouting, and waving placards that read “Pacificans for the Institute,” “Fuck Femocracy!” and “Bucko Power!” The camera moves in for a shot on the stage that has been set up on a green hillside in front of the crowd. Behind the stage is a huge screen. On the screen is the previous shot of the Cynda Elizabeth lookalike waving the knife and the gory male organs triumphantly. On the stage is a big angry-looking man wearing a tight black suit with a decidedly neomilitary cut Man in black: “Women have always been equal on Pacifica
—more
than equal! They have economic power and political power and the Chairmanship itself—but now that’s not enough! Now they want...
thatI
Our effing
balls
on a silver platter!”

The crowd roars its ugly defiance.

Man in black: “You want to see what they want to turn us into? Have a look at buckohood, Femocrat-style!” A huge ugly woman leads a man up on stage by a steel chain attached to a collar around his neck.
The
man wears a short fluffy blue skirt and pink tights. His hair is dyed a hideous pastel pink and set in high-piled ringlets. He minces across the stage to the uneasy laughter of the crowd. Hie woman yanks him forward by his leash.

Woman: “Tell them how wonderful it is to be a Femo-crat breeder, you balless bucko!”

Man in the skirt (in a thin falsetto): “Yes mistress. We
boys
all
love
being Femocrat breeders. Our mistresses take good care of us and give us pretty dresses to wear and we don’t have to worry about
anything,
we don’t even have to
think.
All we have to do is kiss their boots, and we
love
licking our mistresses’ boots clean...

He falls to his knees and begins slobbering over the booted feet of the woman holding the leash. After a few moments of this, she kicks him across the stage, where he lies in a heap, whimpering. The crowd boos, hisses, and curses. There is very little laughter.

Man in black: “Do we want to lick our women’s boots?” Crowd roar: “NO!”

Man in black: “Do we want an Institute?”

Crowd roar: “YES!”

Man in black: “Are we going to take any more shit from the Femocrats and their fellow travelers?”

Crowd roar: “NO!”

Man in black: “Are we going to kick their fucking asses off our planet?”

Crowd roar: “YES!”

Man in black: “And are we going to take a good hard look at how this planet’s being run? We’ve given our women political and economic power, and what are they giving us? A kick in the balls! Who are the natural leaders and rulers of Pacifica?”

Crowd roar: “WE ARE!”

Man in black: “And what do we want?”

Crowd roar: “BUCKO POWER!”

Man in black: “And what are we going to take?” Crowd roar: “BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER!” Man in black: “Say it again! Say it loud enough to be heard in Parliament, all over this city, all over this planet!” The camera pulls back for a panoramic shot of the crowd, chanting, waving placards, stamping its feet in thunderous unison.

“BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER! BUCKO POWER!”

As Eric tinned the sailboat around and headed back toward the lights of Gotham, a sadness overcame Cynda Elizabeth, tinged with something utterly alien that she could not begin to fathom.

It wasn’t just that their getting it off had been so cold and perfunctory this time, nor, she thought, was it entirely the dreadful images that had filled her mind as his body slammed hers to the cockpit deck, as his piercer plunged in and out of her like some weapon of vengeance —crowds of Pacifican breeders chanting “BUCKO POWERI BUCKO POWER!” to the rhythm of his piercer in her flower, as if every man on the planet were watching him pierce her to a sadistic cadence of encouragement.

Nor, indeed, was it entirely the utter conviction that Eric, too, had the same images in his head, that he had felt his body moving to a planetary chant of “BUCKO POWER!”

No, she thought, the horrible fact is that some sick part of me
enjoyed
the fantasy. There was something about this whole Bucko Power thing that both raised a bubble of nausea in her gut and sent unwholesome shivers up her spine, and the dichotomy terrified her and filled her with an unfocused self-loathing.

“Eric?”