A World Between (4 page)

Royce slid open the doors, pecked her on the cheek, and sat down in the other lounger. “So?”

Carlotta nodded silently at the array of screens before them. Royce saw Laura Sunshine from his own Web Monitoring Bureau on the gov comscreen, and on the obscreen, the shimmering haloed image of some kind of decelerating starship.

“A visitor...”

“The Transcendental Science Arkology
Heisenberg
, to be precise,” Carlotta said. “And it makes orbit in twenty days.”

“Oh-oh,” Royce muttered. He leaned back in the lounger and pondered a moment. “Any contact?” he asked.

“Just this on a continuous tape-loop,” Carlotta said, punching a replay button.

The strong, calm, slightly intimidating face of a grayhaired man appeared on the access screen—ancient with wisdom, yet somehow agelessly youthful. Royce felt immediately attracted yet also repelled
—formidable
was the word. “I am Dr. Roger Falkenstein of the Transcendental Science Arkology
Heisenberg
. We are entering your solar system and will make orbit around Pacifica in twenty days. Our mission is peaceful and will greatly benefit your people. We intend to establish an Institute of Transcendental Science on Pacifica. As Managing Director of the
Heisenberg
, I request permission to land on your planet and open negotiations with your government.” The voice was authoritative, oceanic, and something in it called to Royce, promised the ineffable. The political considerations, however...

“How did this come through?” he asked.

“Tachyon transmission,” Carlotta §aid. “I requested they maintain silence until further notice, and they complied.”

“Who knows about this?”

“Laura Sunshine and one tech at planetary observation.”

Royce let out his breath slowly. Only the Ministry of Media had the equipment to pick up tachyon transmissions. Only two other people knew. “Seems as if it’s effectively sat on,” he said.

“For the next twenty days, anyway.”

“No good,” Royce said flatly. “We can’t do that. If we don’t break the news soon, there’ll be a Parliamentary vote of confidence.”

Carlotta frowned, indeed almost pouted. “I figured that much out myself,” she said rather plaintively. “But if we release this before we have a policy, we’ll be in the middle of a full-scale planetary debate when those bastards arrive, and my hands will be tied.”

“I believe that’s called democracy,” Royce said dryly.

Carlotta glared at him. “It’s called the Pink and Blue War,” she said.

Royce studied her face, and saw a very un-Carlotta-like defensive tension there. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Royce nodded toward the image of the
Heisenberg
on the obscreen. “What we have at the moment is
not
the Pink and Blue War,” he said. “We have a Transcendental Science mission. We have no Femocrats. We don’t even have an Institute of Transcendental Science, only some people who want to talk about establishing one.”

“I don’t quite follow,” Carlotta said. But her expression had softened, and she really seemed to be looking to him for advice and guidance now.

“I’m looking at this strictly on a current political level, because that’s what we’ve got to handle
right now”
Royce said. “The options are limited and so is the problem. We can’t not talk to this Falkenstein and we can’t refuse him permission to land, because that would violate interstellar protocol. So you have to negotiate, but at the moment, that’s
all
you have to do. So between now and then, all you need politically is to line up Parliament behind some negotiating position. Right now the issue isn’t the Pink and Blue War, it’s putting together political backing for a talking position with Falkenstein, period.”

Carlotta’s expression brightened. “I see what you mean,” she said. “Call a closed session of Parliament and line them up behind a negotiating position between now and the time the
Heisenberg
makes orbit”

“Right.”

Carlotta stared out the window at the lagoon for a moment “And I know just what that has to be,” she muttered. Oh-oh, Royce thought Carlotta turned to Royce again. “But what do we do in the meantime?” she asked. “We can’t sit on the news for very long, but we can’t release it until we’ve hammered out a consensus position in Parliament either.”

Royce nibbled on a thumbnail. It was all a matter of timing and nuance. “Okay...” he said slowly. “So we have to do something immediately to cover ourselves. A simple press release by a low-level Media official to the effect that a starship has entered the system, nothing about contact, the gov is trying to determine its identity. We can get away with that for a day or two...

“And two days from now... ?”

Royce grimaced. “By then, we’ll have to release the whole story or be charged with denial of media access when it finally breaks. No choice.”

“Which gives me less than two days to call a closed session of Parliament together in Gotham and line up a majority of the Delegates behind some kind of tentative policy...”

“ ’Fraid so ”

“Shit.”

They sat together silently for a long moment.
“How?”
Carlotta finally said. “If I tell them why I’m calling a closed session, do you think a hundred and three Delegates can keep a secret like that for two hours, let alone two days? If I just casually call an ordinary session, they’ll take a week to dribble in.”

Royce laughed. “You’re the Chairman,” he said, “but if I were you, I’d just tell them I was calling an immediate closed session on a matter of priority security. Nothing like that kind of curiosity to encourage max speed.” Carlotta smiled her Mona Lisa smile. “They’ll he jumpy as fiitbats, but they’ll be there practically before I can unplug,” she said. She got out of her lounger and gave Royce a quick wet kiss on the lips. “Gotta jump to it,” she said. “You take care of the press release in the meantime.” She ruffled Royce’s hair. “What would I do without you, bucko?”

“Offend the electorate twice a week and masturbate a lot,” Royce answered dryly.

It took only a few minutes to arrange the press release through Laura Sunshine (no sense in letting anyone else in on the secret), and Carlotta would be busy in her own netshop for hours setting up the Parliamentary session, so Royce decided he might as well use some of the time to refresh his hazy knowledge of Transcendental Science and the Pink and Blue War.

Pacifica had steered as clear of the conflict between Transcendental Science and Femocracy as was possible on a planet where media access to all points of view was a sacred constitutional right; at best, the conflict was regarded as light farce, as witness the snide local term for what on most other worlds was considered an ideological battle of grave cosmic import.

As a result, however, Royce found that his understanding of the Pink and Blue War was strictly in comic opera terms. Something like two centuries ago, militant feminists had come to power on Earth in the aftermath of the Slow Motion War, and now, apparently, the women were all godzilla-brained lesbos who kept a small supply of ball-less wonders in cages for breeding purposes, at least if one took the incomprehensible but massively solemn propaganda they poured into the Web at face value.

Meanwhile, back on Tau Ceti, a colony of doubledomed geniuses had founded the first Institute of Transcendental Science which began to spew forth a bottomless cornucopia of scientific wonders, or so they claimed, and then began to spread through the human worlds via perambulating artificial worldlets they called “Arkologies,” establishing new Institutes wherever they went, promulgating their scientific vision of a hyperevolved
Homo galac
-
ticus.

The Femocrats considered the Transcendental Scientists “faschochauvinist Fausts,” and the Transcendental Scientists considered the Femocrats “misguided primitives” several light-years beneath their intellectual contempt. These were the roots of the Pink and Blue War, an ideological conflict too silly to be taken seriously by sophisticated Pacificans, enlightened citizens of the media capital of the human galaxy.

However, Royce realized, there had to be more to it than material for historical comedies. Several planets had actually turned Femocrat after visits by missions from Earth, and Institutes of Transcendental Science on perhaps half a dozen planets were launching Arkologies of their own these days, Royce gazed out his window. The sun was beginning to set into the deepening blue of the sea. The western sky was a sheet of purpling orange flame, but toward the east the heavens were already darkening, and the first bright stars of night were winking into existence as a flock of birds passed like shadows across the truncated disc of the setting sun. It was hard to imagine that up there in the galactic night strident voices were screaming godzilla-brained propaganda at each other, ideologues were subverting long-established cultures, a war of sorts was going on, and out there beyond his unaided vision, the Arkology
Heisenberg
was speeding toward Pacifica, bringing the whole unwanted mess to the planet that he loved, a harmonious world at peace with itself.

Rugo slapped at the glass door with his big webbed swimming feet, demanding admittance. Royce got up and let the bumbler in. “Whonk-ka-whonk, ka-whonkl” the big brown bird opined as he followed Royce back to the lounger and stood beside it for his head to be scratched.

Royce laughed as the bumbler cocked his head at him solemnly. “You’ve got a point, Jocko,” he admitted. And I told Carlotta
she
was overreacting? he thought Nothing’s really happened yet. Surely we can handle these clowns.

Still, it behooved him to know something more about what was speeding toward Pacifica than a few stale jokes and the bilge that the Femocrats and Transcendental Scientists put out on the Web.

He called up the basic briefing tape on Transcendental Science from the accessbanks. “Transcendental Science is a philosophy, a technology, and one of only two human transtellar political entities,” a female voice said as the Transcendental Science ensign, a four-pointed silver star, appeared on the access screen. “Some contend that it is also an ideological religion.” The image of a middle-aged man with short blond hair appeared on the screen; there was something vaguely unsettling about his intense blue eyes. “The movement was founded two hundred and fifty years ago by Dr. Heinz Shockley who established a colony on the fourth planet of the Tau Ceti system. Citizenship was open only to scientists who passed a rigorous screening and their immediate families. Shockley’s basic philosophy is still the
reason detre
of Transcendental Science today....”

Shockley began to speak in a deep, urbane, almost syrupy voice. “We are living at the end of human prehistory. Though we travel haltingly from star to star, communicate instantly across the light-years, and have unlocked the secrets of the stellar phoenix, we are still circumscribed by the universal parameters of matter, energy, time, and mind. Science is our method for understanding those parameters and maximizing our mastery of the universe within them. But this is prehistory.
Homo galacticus,
true star-roving man, must learn to
transcend
the so-called natural limits of the universe through a
transcendental
science. He must not be confined by the speed of light, or the so-called natural human lifespan, or the consciousness he evolved with. He must seize this sorry scheme of things entire and mold it
totally to
the heart’s desire...

“Deep,” Royce admitted aloud. But not exactly relevant to the current problem. “Let’s have the capsule history,” he told the access computer.

A schematic map of the human galaxy appeared on the access screen—inhabited systems represented by white dots, a single blue dot for Tau Geti. “Fifty years after the founding of the first Institute of Transcendental Science on Tau Ceti, the first Arkology, the
Einstein,
left the system,” a male voice said. A blue dot moved away from Tau Ceti toward the system of Ariel. “Twelve years later, the Ariel Institute of Transcendental Science was established, and ten years after that, Ariel launched its first Arkology. Meanwhile, Tau Ceti launched three more of its own.” The dot representing Ariel turned blue as the dot representing the
Einstein
reached it. Other dots moved off into space from Tau Ceti, then one from Ariel. “Since then, five more systems have established their own Institutes of Transcendental Science and have begun launching Arkol-ogies...” White dots began to turn blue as blue dots moved across the schematic like a swarm of insects. “Sirius, Zeus, Barnard...”

“And so forth,” Royce muttered, stopping the tape. “Query: how many Arkologies are now in existence?” “Seventeen, plus or minus five,” the computer voice said. “This is an estimate, exact figure unknown.”

“Query: has any system visited by an Arkology failed to establish an Institute of Transcendental Science?” “Unverifiable. Hypothesis one: answer no. Hypothesis two: Transcendental Science only releases data on its successes.”

I’d buy hypothesis two, Royce thought. As he remembered, Transcendental Science didn’t put anything on the Web except straight propaganda, and Pacifica’s “News of the Galaxy” stringers were barred from their planets.

But the key question was the so-called “Transcendental Science.” These jockos were obviously Machiavellian political meddlers, but they couldn’t have run up against anything like the Pacifican political system before, and Royce didn’t seriously believe that
anything
could subvert Pacifica’s peculiar brand of dynamic stability. But did the cargo of the
Heisenberg
include anything that could benefit Pacifica sufficiently to justify whatever ijsk there was in letting them hawk their wares planetside?

“Program,” he ordered the access computer. “Report Transcendental Science and technology in advance of Pacifican or general galactic levels.”

“Verified: Transcendental Science Arkologies are capable of _ traversing a given distance 40 percent faster than any other known starships, method unknown,” the computer voice said. “Verified: inhabitants of Arkologies have survived prolonged 15-gravity acceleration with no ill effects, method unknown. Reported but unverified: possible extended lifespans, cloning, organ regeneration, telekinesis, telepathy, artificial sentience, time travel, matter transmittal, simulkinesis, methods unknown.”