A World Between Read Online Free PDF Page B

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