A World Between (33 page)

“At which point, we call for the ouster of both the Transcendental Scientists and the Femocrats.”

“
What?”
Carlotta shouted. He’s gone whackers! she thought. That’s what all this is. Falkenstein’s fed him something that’s turned his mind to mulch. “You’re starting to gibber, bucko,” she said. “If that’s the net result, then what are we putting ourselves through all this shit for?” “For a Pacifican Institute of Transcendental Science,” Royce said.

“Huh?”

“Run by Pacificans, staffed by Pacificans, with a student body of male and female Pacificans, and no off-worlder meddling,” Royce said. “You never gave me a chance to tell you what else I’ve done.” *

“Great grunting godzillas, there’s
more?”

“I’ve got a list of middle-level Pacifican scientists screened for stability and political neutrality. They’ll be put through a crash-course in media psychodynamics to counteract any Institute brainwashing. We’ll slip them into the new student body. In four months, they may not know as much as the
Heisenberg
people, but they should know enough to put us in the Transcendental Science business for ourselves.”

“An all-male spy corps, I gather?”

“Obviously.”

“And this is the keystone of the vast political edifice you’ve built up on your own behind my back?” Carlotta said. “Who’s the Chairman here, anyway? You’ve been a busy little bucko, haven’t you?”

‘Tve been doing my job,” Royce said stonily. “I’ve done what I thought best.”

“What you thought best!” Carlotta shouted, bolting to her feet. “I thought I was the effing Chairman! I thought we were
a team!
Now you tell me you’ve committed my administration to some godzilla-brained scheme without even bothering to consult me!”

“Yeah, well
I
thought
I
was the Minister of Media, not just your tame errand boy!” Royce snapped. He rose, and they stood there glaring at each other, nose-to-nose, toe-to-toe.

“That doesn’t mean you can commit this administration to a policy without my authority!” Carlotta said.

“I didn’t commit your effing administration to anything, Carlotta! I committed
me,
Royce Lindblad, Minister of Media of Pacifica. I gave Falkenstein
my
word, not yours. I made it clear I wasn’t speaking for the whole government* For once in my life, I made a personal political decision on my own.
Falkenstein
seemed to think the support of the Pacifican Minister of Media was worth something on its own, without the great Carlotta Madigan, even if you don’t!” “And if I tell you I think what you’ve done stinks? If I tell you that it’s
my
independent decision to come out for the closing of the Institute now?”

Royce paused. The anger seemed to drain out of him. He walked over to the railing of the veranda, leaned up against it, and stared out over the tranquil turquoise sea. “You’re an independent human being, Carlotta,” he said quietly. “You’re entitled to go
your
way if you think it best. And so am I.”

Carlotta came up beside him. A flock of boomerbirds overhead began honking in chorus, and for once the sound seemed sad and mournful, a far-off dirge. “But you wouldn’t support me, would you Royce?” she said softly. “We’d be on opposite sides. You’d do what you could to keep the Institute open.”

“I made my decision and I gave my word,” Royce said, turning to her. “What am I if that means nothing? A Terran breeder on a chain? Can’t you respect that, Carlotta?”

“Bucko Power... ?” Carlotta muttered sardonically. Royce laughed, and for a flash, he was her bucko again, the breeze ruffling his long hair, the sun shining golden through his eyelashes, and Carlotta sensed that this was not a death; that which bound them together was stronger than what was now driving them apart. Stretched a little thin by the pain of this moment, perhaps, but yet alive.

“You could call it that,” Royce said softly. “I love you, and at least as far as I’m concerned, no political hassle is going to change that, babes. But I’m the second most important official on this planet, and if
I
didn’t have the balls to stand on my own against my woman when I thought I was right, what would that say about Pacifican men? If you can’t live with that, what does it say about you? About us? About what we’re supposed to believe in?” “Am I really like that?” Carlotta asked. “Have I really kept you in my shadow?”

Royce shrugged. He touched her arm. “I think maybe
we've
been like that,” he said. He smiled at her. “Besides, you’re one hell of a lady, and you’re usually right.”

A strange feeling came over Carlotta. Without Royce’s support, any move on her part to close the Institute now would be an utter disaster. Her own Ministry of Media would be against her, and the man who had done so much to get her past other crises would be on the other side. And this deal with Falkenstein, this plan to infiltrate the Institute with male spies personally loyal to him, stank of faschochauvinism and the pathology of the Pink and Blue War. She was blocked, she was hamstrung, and it was Royce who was doing it to her.

Yet she felt her body bending closer to his, as if caught in his magnetic field. She found herself putting her arm around his waist and slipping her hand around to the inside of his thighs. And it was not lust that moved her. Somehow, in some unfathomable way, the respect that he was demanding flowed freely from her heart. Confronted, shouted down, stalemated, she had never quite felt this proud. It was as if the child she had never had had suddenly revealed himself as an adult, an equal entity. Loss there was, but it was a thing of the ego, and what replaced it came from the heart, a kind of love for him that she had never felt before.

“So be it, then,’* she said. “If you think this is the price of your manhood, I can fight you politically if I have to, and still love you, you obstinate, wrong-headed, fascho-chauvinist son of a bitch!”

Royce laughed and moved his body against hers. The boomerbirds soared off toward the west, and Rugo leaped into the sea with an ungainly splash. Everything was as screwed up as it could be, and yet two warm tears flowed down her cheeks in the bright sunlight, and in this moment of all incongruous moments, she felt a oneness with him beyond all understanding, a unity in conflict that surpassed anything she had known before.

“How about a tender loving grudge-fuck?” Royce whispered in her ear. They laughed, and they kissed, and they clung to each other even as a lone white cloud passed across the golden disc of the sun.

For two days political and domestic life had hung in limbo for Royce Lindblad while Carlotta tried to sort things out and reach a position of her own. He had announced the public portion of his agreement with Falkenstein to a good deal less effect than he had projected. The Femocrats could not possibly have become more rabid, and the Bucko Power movement was now not to be mollified by anything less than the expulsion of Femocracy. Royce half-believed Falkenstein’s claim that it now had an indigenous life of its own.

So he had spent most of the time monitoring the net, searching for political movement that was not forthcoming, and setting up the crash course in media psychodynamics for the corps of infiltrators, while Carlotta tried to count nonexistent noses in favor of a showdown vote to close the Institute, Their hours together since his return from Godzillaland had had a certain unreality. If anything, their lovemaking had been more frequent, more prolonged, more intense, more tender, as if to fill the long silences and bridge the gap between them via the only remaining effective medium. It seemed to Royce that Carlotta was both trying to humor him out of a brittle sense of noblesse oblige and trying to transcend political differences with a very real, if exaggerated, personal tenderness. As a result, even their genuinely loving sex did not entirely escape having political overtones.

So they had spent their off-duty hours making love, and during working hours Carlotta had kept to her office in the Parliament building while Royce closeted himself in his office at the Ministry plugged into the net, as they went their separate political ways. The tension was becoming unbearable;
something
had to break soon.

Royce was listening to a progress report from the Minister of Science when all the screens on his net console began strobing red and all audio channels began shouting, “PRIORITY OVERIDE! PRIORITY OVERIDE!”

What now?
Royce wondered bleakly. “We’ll continue this later,” he told Harrison Winterfelt, unplugging him from the circuit and plugging his comscreen into the priority channel. The strobing and shouting ceased immediately and Bill Munroe from news monitoring appeared on comscreen, harried and excited.

“What?” Royce asked curtly.

“Strike in Thule,” Munroe said. “It’s on all the news channels. Plug into any of them.”

Royce shrugged. “That’s for the Ministry of Labor, not me.”

“Not
this”
Munroe said. “Maybe I’d better play it back for you from the beginning. Gov channel okay? No differences in any of the coverages.”

“Okay,” Royce said. “But what’s this all about?”

“Effing FemocratsI"
Munroe grunted. “Look!”

On the newsscreen, a panoramic shot of a big pit mine under a medium-sized permaglaze dome. Outside the dome, the whirling whiteness of a full-bore Thule blizzard. Inside the dome, the great shovelers and conveyors stand idle and abandoned like frozen godzillas of steel. Lines of female pickets wearing the workclothes of Thule techs cordon off the machinery and the lip of the mining pit.

Picket signs read “Ban Faschochauvinist Fausts Now!” “Close the Institute!” and “Femocratic League of Pacifica.”

Announcer’s voiceover: “A general strike called today by an ad hoc committee of female workers in Valhalla has effectively paralyzed most mining and industrial activity in Thule.”

A series of shots: female pickets outside another pit mine, a deep-mining complex, half a dozen factories under Thule environment domes. In two of the shots, a few male workers appear to be counterpicketing, unorganized, without signs.

Announcer’s voiceover: “Male workers appear to be avoiding confrontations and are not attempting to cross the picket lines. No incidents of violence have been reported. Susan Willaway, spokesman for the striking female workers, explained the purpose of the strike at a rally held in Valhalla three hours ago...

A medium shot on a sandy-haired woman addressing a large female crowd from a makeshift podium.

Susan Willaway: “.. . no woman will go to her job here in Thule until the faschochauvinist Institute of Transcendental Science is closed and the
Heisenberg
is sent back to wherever it came from! Let’s see how
Bucko Power
can keep the mining and industrial heartland of Pacifica producing with half a work force! Thule sisters, unite against the Institute! Work is power! No work while the Institute remains open!”

A panoramic shot on the wildly cheering crowd of women, without local audio.

Announcer’s voiceover: “The Ministry of Labor estimates that the strike has the support of at least seventy-five percent of the female Thule work force...

Royce’s auxiliary comscreen came alive. It was Carlotta. “Have you—”

“Yeah, yeah, just a minute...” Royce said. He turned off the news channel audio. “Unplug from this circuit, Bill,” he told Munroe. “And thanks.” He turned his full attention back to Carlotta.

“Well, that changes things, doesn’t it, Royce?” she said, her agitation undertoned with a certain smug satisfaction, or so he thought.

“Does it?” Royce said dubiously.

“Good lord, Royce, all our heavy industry and most of our mining operations are in Thule!” Carlotta said. “A few days of this, and the whole planetary economy will start to shut down. Everything else aside, we’ve
got
to close the Institute now or we’ll have mass unemployment and a crunching depression.”

“Give in to a bunch of Femocrat-fomented strikers?” Royce said angrily. “You should get in touch with Cynda Elizabeth and demand that they call this thing off or else!” “Or else
what!”

“Or else we’ll kick their asses off the planet forthwith!” Carlotta grimaced. “That would only egg the strikers on. We’ve got to give in now, and I have the authority to do it on my own if I have to. I’ll declare a state of—”

“It’d solve nothing, Carlotta, wait and see,” Royce said, Roger Falkenstein’s face appeared on the main comscreen. Oh-oh, he thought, it looks like we won’t have to wait very long! “Falkenstein’s calling me,” he told Carlotta, “and he does not look happy.”

“Well, that’s something anyway,” Carlotta said sardonically. “Patch me in, monitoring only.”

“Right,” Royce said. He cleared a monitoring channel from his net console to Carlotta’s, so that she was plugged into Falkenstein’s call but he wasn’t plugged into her. Carlotta’s tensely pensive face remained on his auxiliary comscreen as he plugged in Falkenstein’s audio.

“What’s the meaning of this strike in Thule, Royce?” Falkenstein said angrily. “I thought we had reached an agreement.”

“We have, Roger, and it still stands.”

“Well, what are you going to do about this situation?” Falkenstein demanded. “Our Arkmind projects that your economy will begin to falter within a week if this situation continues, and there’ll be mass unemployment within two. At which point, the economic pressure to close the Institute will become overwhelming, and—”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Royce said. “The right to strike is protected by the Constitution.” Although, he mused, a strike for a non-work-related political goal might skirt perilously close to insurrection... might pay to check it out with the Ministry of Justice...

“Is it?” Falkenstein said slowly. “You mean you have no legal means of bringing this strike to an end?”

“Looks that way to me, Roger,” Royce said, knowing what the inevitable response would be, and half-welcoming it. There could be only one viable political counterweight to this Femocrat strike, and Falkenstein was certainly smart enough to perceive the obvious. It would escalate the situation further, but it would certainly remove knuckling under to the Femocrats as a real alternative.