A World Between Read online

  Carlotta walked quickly down the central aisle, sat down behind the Chairman’s console, and surveyed the Delegates silently for a moment before calling for order.

  Two-thirds of the seats were filled. Glancing at her voting board, Carlotta saw green lights under the slots for all those not physically present, Royce included. The missing Delegates were all plugged in, so there would be no unseemly “Not Presents.” No one could say afterward that the decision she was hopefully about to maneuver was unrepresentative of the Pacifican people.

  Delegate districts were deliberately gerrymandered to represent not merely rough population equivalents but pragmatically recognized social and cultural realities. Thus, while roughly a third of the Delegates were plain-dressed Mainlanders and another third were Gothamites and Islanders in their usual idiosyncratic flamboyance, there were somewhat demographically disproportionate numbers of whackers from Godzillaland in shorts and token tank-shirts; Good Old Mountain Boys in earth-colored leathers with long unruly hair; and Thule ice-eaters elected in their work-districts, not from the off-months playgrounds. Coherent political parties as such did not exist; this was a collection of one hundred and three individualists representing the current attitudes of thirty-five million more mavericks, almost all of whom believed that stable political parties or even ideological coalitions were somehow un-Pacifican. About the only generalization that you could make was that a small majority of the Delegates were women.

  Who leaked the news of this closed session? Carlotta thought sardonically. I’ve got a hundred and three probable choices, and every last one of them could be right.

  Ceremoniously—and entirely unnecessarily in the hush that had greeted her entrance—Carlotta rapped her gavel and said: “Parliament is now in session.” She smiled sarcastically. “I suppose you’re all wondering why I gathered you here today.” She punched two buttons on her console. “Well, to make a long story short…”

  One of the screens behind her came to life with a realtime image of the Arkology Heisenberg moving toward Pacifica. Then the taped image of Dr. Roger Falkenstein appeared on the screen beside it and began to speak. The Delegates listened to the whole thing in stony silence, but the moment it was over, everyone was speaking and shouting at once and Carlotta’s board lit up with dozens of requests for the floor.

  “Order,” Carlotta shouted, rapping her gavel. “Order! Order!” When that didn’t work, she forthrightly yelled “Shut up!” at the top of her lungs.

  The Delegates shut up.

  “That’s better,” Carlotta said sweetly. “Chair recognizes Delegate Willmington.” Nora Willmington was a Gothamite and former newshound; she could be counted upon to take umbrage at the slightest hint of denial of news access, and it was best to get that question out of the way immediately.

  Nora rose as if to make a speech and indeed began to declaim in slow ironic tones. “I should like to ask the Chairman by what right, under what constitutional authority, she withheld the news of this contact with the Arkology Heisenberg from the news channels and issued instead a patently phony press release to the effect that the ship entering our solar system was unidentified and had not announced its identity to Pacifica—”

  “By right of common sense and under the authority of sweet reason,” Carlotta said. “The moment this august body saw the message, you were all screaming at once like godzillas with burrmites up their tails. How would you have liked to have had the whole planet bellowing like that before we had a moment to decide anything? We wouldn’t have been able to hear ourselves think. And we do think, don’t we?”

  “If the Chairman thinks that snide remarks can justify—”

  “Tell you what, Nora,” Carlotta interrupted, “I hereby move that we release the Falkenstein message with full details immediately following the conclusion of this session. And I further move that it be considered a formal vote of confidence in me, okay?”

  “I’ll second that,” Nora said.

  “Good,” Carlotta said. “Now do we have to waste valuable time debating this resolution or can we get it out of the way right now and deal with the real issues at hand?”

  “Vote! Vote! Vote!”

  “Thank you, people,” Carlotta said as Nora sank back into her seat. “Ayes for the resolution, nays against.”

  The central wall screen behind her lit up with the running tally as the Delegates pressed their “Aye” or “Nay” buttons. It took about thirty seconds, and the count was 99 to 5 in favor, Carlotta not voting. So far, so good, Carlotta thought. That was a neat little maneuver, avoiding a possible no-confidence vote on withholding the message by turning it into a vote on releasing it. We’re over the first hurdle.

  “Now to the issue at hand,” Carlotta said. “Falkenstein will be here in about eighteen days. Interstellar protocol demands that we allow him to land, and common sense dictates that he be allowed to present his case to some official entity or person. Since we’ve already voted to release everything we know at the end of this session, I submit that by then we must have decided who will meet with Falkenstein and what their policy directives from this body will be. Any dissent to that?”

  There was general silence. Lacking political parties, the Pacifican Parliament was not in the habit of debating the self-evident.

  First things first, Carlotta thought nervously. First whatever plenipotentiary powers I can extract, then the policy question. “I’d like to suggest that whoever meets with Falkenstein be empowered only to transmit whatever policy we decide upon today and that they not be empowered to discuss any deviation from that position without a full Parliamentary vote.” That’s a cagy way of putting it, she thought: no discussion, my hands are tied, I’m only expressing the will of my government. “Debate?” she asked.

  Carlotta’s board lit up with a dozen requests for the floor. At random, she recognized Jarvis Tatum, a beefy, red-haired Good Old Mountain Boy from the Cords.

  “Shouldn’t we decide our policy before we decide who’s going to speak for us?” Tatum suggested. Oh-oh.

  “A good point,” Carlotta said, “but I think not. We don’t want our spokesman to emerge from the winning side on the substantive issue, we want a neutral voice representing a consensus. Therefore, I rule that we consider the procedural point first and the substantive issue second.”

  There was a muted murmur of discontent at this, but the Chairman had the unquestioned right to decide points of Parliamentary order, and there could be no vote of confidence on such ostensibly procedural matters. But I’d better not be too heavy-handed about this, Carlotta realized. “Chair will entertain motions on the procedural question,” she said, hoping that she was not going to have to be the one to nominate herself.

  The board lit up, and she recognized Ian Palacci, a Columbian farmsteader, at random, not daring, at this point, to recognize any Delegate closely identified with herself.

  “I move we appoint a three-person delegation,” Palacci said. “One Delegate representing the eventual majority on the substantive issue, one Delegate representing the eventual minority, and the Chairman, if she is willing to so serve.”

  Carlotta pondered that for a moment. It was not quite what she wanted, but it was fair, both in substance and in eventual appearance. It would be hard for anyone to raise a serious objection, and it would serve her purpose well enough. “Chairman agrees to so serve and seconds the motion,” she said. “Any other suggestions?”

  Two lights on the board. Carlotta recognized Warren Guilder from Thule.

  “I move that instead of appointing a delegation, we invite Dr. Falkenstein to address Parliament directly,” Guilder said.

  Oh, shit!

  Twenty lights on the board. Carlotta ignored them for the moment and spoke herself. “Closed or open?” she asked, hoping to trap Guilder.

  “Uh…open, I guess…”

  Carlotta recognized Catherine Buhl from Gotham, whose light had come on after Guilder’s reply, figuring that her response would therefore have to be ne
gative.

  “Do we really want this person addressing the whole planet before we even know what he’s going to say?” Buhl said. “Does this Parliament trust a Transcendental Scientist that far?”

  “Well…uh…closed then…” Guilder muttered, to general laughter and more lights on the board. Again, Carlotta chose a Delegate whose light had come on in response to Guilder’s answer—Nora Wilmington, who could be counted upon to oppose any further move toward secrecy.

  “The notion of inviting any off-worlder to address a closed session of Parliament is unprecedented, repulsive, and will surely create nothing but thoroughly justified public outrage! Besides, we just voted to end secrecy in this matter!”

  There were general shouts of approval and Carlotta felt she could risk recognizing Cynthia Cronyn now, even though she was generally identified with the Madigan administration.

  “I call for a vote on Delegate Palacci’s motion!”

  The board lit up with about twenty seconds. Once again, Carlotta had managed to shift the vote to where she wanted it, this time without even having to take a position.

  “Very well, then,” she said. “Ayes for the resolution, nays against.”

  The vote was 71 in favor, 32 opposed, not as overwhelming this time, but still a better than two-to-one majority. “Motion carried,” Carlotta said. “Now the Chair will entertain motions as to how this body will instruct the delegation.” Now, she thought, comes the crunch.

  Royce Lindblad made his way to his front-row Delegate’s seat as unobtrusively as possible, exchanging only a quick covert glance with Carlotta as Delegate Maravitch continued to drone on.

  “…reasonably reliable sources further indicate that extended lifespans, perhaps as much as three centuries, have been achieved by…”

  Royce had followed the general drift of the debate on the delegation’s instructions on his office net console with half an eye while he prepared the basic press release and the backup media line, and it seemed to him the Delegates were now just repeating themselves endlessly. The three basic positions had coalesced during the first hour, and what had been going on for the past two hours was just so much redundant hot air.

  Perhaps a third of the Delegates who had spoken were, like Maravitch, entranced by the reputed scientific wares of Transcendental Science. Who wouldn’t want to live for centuries, be able to transmit matter instantaneously, regenerate damaged organs, and all the rest of it? This pro-Institute faction had a strong argument, and blithely assumed that Pacifican society was inherently strong enough to resist becoming a de facto satrapy of Transcendental Science.

  Another large faction was obsessed with the Pink and Blue War, even though there was no Femocrat factor in the current political equation. These Delegates equated a Pacifican Institute of Transcendental Science with inevitable involvement in the conflict, and stood foursquare for telling Falkenstein to remove his unwholesome presence from the Pacifican solar system. Strangely enough, many of them were male. It seemed to Royce that what they really feared was not the presence of an Institute of Transcendental Science, but the Femocrat response they assumed it would bring, as if they doubted the ability of Pacifican manhood to maintain its position of equality in the face of a Femocrat onslaught. This smelled unwholesomely unbucko to Royce, and, in a curious way, a slur against Pacifican women, too. Nevertheless, the political reality was that these Delegates were going to vote the way Carlotta wanted. Sometimes politics made rather effete bedfellows.

  The rest of the Delegates, the swing vote, were caught in the middle. They wanted what Transcendental Science had to offer, but they feared involvement in the Pink and Blue War. It seemed to Royce that this group basically wanted Transcendental Science without the Transcendental Scientists, and simply didn’t want to believe that such a thing was impossible.

  It also seemed to him that everyone was missing the real point, the line that the media campaign he had already set in motion was going to take…

  “…a planet that refuses to ride the leading edge of scientific advance must inevitably become a backwater of inbred nostalgic…”

  On and on went the debate, to no purpose that Royce could comprehend. Thus far, Carlotta had confined herself to chairing the session, and hadn’t spoken out on the issue at all, when a strong statement from the Chairman would probably have swung the vote her way, and almost certainly would have done the trick if she made it a vote of confidence in herself. Was she simply letting them wear themselves down—or did she want to avoid taking a personal stand entirely?

  Could that be it? Royce wondered. Does she want to conceal her own position so as to strengthen her hand in the forthcoming negotiations?

  Royce caught Carlotta’s eye and cocked his head slightly in a subtle gesture that only she would recognize. Carlotta returned the same signal, glanced down at her Delegate board, then looked directly into his eyes for a long moment.

  So that’s it, he thought. She wants me to do it. Uneasily, Royce pressed his request button, asking for the floor. It wouldn’t be the first time he had fronted for Carlotta this way, nor would it be the first time he had supported a policy of hers with which he was not in total agreement. But he wondered if what he was going to say would be quite the words she wanted to put into his mouth…

  “The Chair recognizes the Minister of Media…”

  Royce felt the attention of the Delegates focus on him with greater-than-usual intensity. The Minister of Media was ordinarily the second most influential figure in the gov, even when he was not the intimate of the Chairman. Royce, as Carlotta’s closest political ally and her lover, usually but not always spoke for the Madigan administration as well as the Media Ministry. It was the most powerful possible combination in Pacifican politics.

  “Speaking as a Pacifican,” Royce said slowly, “I must agree with those who want our planets to have the full benefits of Transcendental Science. Only a fool would not want to triple his lifespan, enhance his consciousness, and attain the max mastery of his total environment. Pacifica should have this knowledge.”

  He paused to let a low murmur whisper through the chamber, to let the Delegates glance at Carlotta, who was trying rather unsuccessfully to conceal her displeasure. Royce laughed to himself—it was the oldest rhetorical trick in the book.

  “Speaking as a man,” he continued, “I must agree with those who want to avoid embroilment in the idiocy of the Pink and Blue War at all costs.” There was a scattering of applause and much confusion at this apparent reversal; only Carlotta seemed to have caught on to what he was doing. “Speaking as a Delegate, I must agree with those who fear the subversion of Pacifican society by an Institute of Transcendental Science, Femocrats or no Femocrats.”

  Audible rumblings of confusion now. Even Carlotta was looking at him peculiarly, as if trying to figure out where he might be going. Perfect, Royce thought. I’ve summed up all three positions and managed to support them all. “If that sounds confusing, well, it is,” he said. “It’s like wanting rain for our crops but not wanting to get wet. We’re all caught in the middle of the same paradox. Our disagreements aren’t with each other but within our own selves.”

  He paused again, sensing that he had bled the conflict out of the debate now, tied them together in an emotional community by uniting the divergent viewpoints within himself, Now they were waiting hopefully for him to resolve the paradox; even Carlotta seemed to be hanging on his next words, as if she were no longer merely counting on him to serve her tactical purpose but to resolve a real confusion of her own.

  “However,” he said, hardening his voice, “as Minister of Media, I see the position this Parliament must take with crystal clarity. Pacifica’s Web exports are the key to our continued prosperity. ‘News of the Galaxy,’ our entertainments, and our unique transport designs give us an overwhelmingly favorable balance of interstellar payments and provide jobs, directly and indirectly, for perhaps a quarter of our adult population. Other planets can afford to buy our Web products and ke
ep us in the style to which we are accustomed only by exporting science and technology. Without free interstellar trade in science and technology, the interstellar economy based on the Web will eventually collapse, and if that happens, we will be the biggest losers.”

  Royce rose deliberately to his feet and began using his hands for dramatic emphasis. “Transcendental Science withholds its knowledge from the free Web market,” he said sharply. “Transcendental Science uses its advanced knowledge not as an item of trade but as a political weapon with which to build a monopoly at the leading edge of science and technology. The price of their knowledge is measured not in interstellar credits but in loss of political autonomy. If Transcendental Science succeeds in its ultimate goals, interstellar free trade will be destroyed and Pacifica will pay a heavy price in economic depression and mass unemployment.”

  Royce sat down slowly to a guttural rumble of angry approval. There could hardly be a Delegate in the chamber who disagreed with that! Carlotta’s face was unreadable as she studied him with a somewhat bemused expression. She now knew that he was giving her what she wanted tactically, but only by deflecting the Delegates from what she considered a matter of principle onto a bread-and-butter issue which would make them vote her way, and Royce wondered whether she might not be resenting that somehow.

  “Therefore, as Minister of Media, I say that even if there were no such thing as the Pink and Blue War and no such ideology as Femocracy, Pacifica should do nothing that in any way furthers the monopolistic practices of Transcendental Science. Therefore, I hereby move that our delegation be instructed to tell Falkenstein and his people that, while we are eager to buy any knowledge he may have to sell at a fair price, any such knowledge will then become a free item of interstellar trade, and that any Pacifican Institute of Transcendental Science must be run under Pacifican law—most specifically including the media access laws. And if they choose not to abide by these conditions, they are to remove themselves from this solar system forthwith!”