A large anthology of sci.., p.345
A Large Anthology of Science Fiction, page 345
Leeds Markham was just finishing his meal when there were loud voices and scufflings and other sounds of conflict from the entry port below. He looked up at the red-head, whose name was Aleta
Ryana as nearly as he could pronounce it.
She jumped to her feet, strode to the doorway and delivered an extremely businesslike left hook to the first of a dishevelled cluster of women who sought to invade the control room. Alarmed, Markham went to the weapons locker, got out a machine-pistol.
“Man!” cried one of the women despairingly. Her voice was echoed by others below. But Aleta Ryana’s aides, reinforced, were soon again in control of the situation. She came back, breathing hard, and looked first at his weapon, then at him.
“That won’t do you much good,” she said of the machine-pistol. “You know, you’re attractive, Leeds Markham. And you’re interestingly different, coming from the past as you have. But most of all, you’re a man.”
“So I was informed quite early in life,” he said drily.
“You don’t have to be horrid about it,” said the red-head. She glanced furtively toward the door, saw that they were for the moment alone. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, she grabbed him in strong arms, pulled him to her and kissed him with a violence that shook him considerably—not the less so by the fact that she was a lot of extremely personable young woman.
She was panting a little when she stepped back. Her eyes, he noticed, were green and her figure was exciting. She said unevenly, “If you report me I’ll be psyched for that, but I couldn’t help myself. I simply had to. After all the next mating week is still almost a planet-circuit away.”
SHE moved toward him again but sounds from the doorway deterred her. Confused, Markham sank down again on the gyro-bed. A quartet of avid-looking females in some sort of uniform appeared this time. With them they brought written orders for Aleta, who read them and frowned wretchedly.
“U1 Stell wants to see you, Markham,” she said, slapping the order with her fingers. It was of some composition material—not paper—that made a rasping sound. Markham shrugged. After all, he could scarcely increase his nightmare. He went to his clotheslocker. The red-head and two of the guards stayed right there while he dressed. They seemed amused at his archaic costume.
“You’re not going to be exactly inconspicuous,” said Aleta when they at last were out of the ship.
“So I see,” said Leeds Markham. A line of women in bright green kilts and bearing some sort of weapons was having a rough time keeping a horde of females off the field. Leeds looked at her and said, “Why, Aleta? Why all this?” He gestured at the crowd.
“Why?” echoed the red-head and her laugh was strident and harsh. “There are no men on Dryadaeum, that’s why.” She gave him a green-eyed look of sheer possessive envy.
“But—” began Markham. He was cut off as a wingless aircar settled lightly to the ground in front of them and a smartly uniformed chauffeur and foot-woman leaped smartly to the ground.
“U1 Stell will tell you—come on,” said Aleta, leading him into the car, which had a low but extremely comfortable rear seat. “Watch out for her—she’s powerful and has strong instincts.”
“Meeeow,” said Markham to his own considerable surprise. For a moment he thought Aleta was going to strike him. But she didn’t.
It was, he thought, a little like being a Ming vase from ancient China. He was too rare to risk breakage. And then he began to laugh. To a misogynist who had fled Earth to get away from women, Dryadaeum was the ultimate in ironies.
“Am I so funny?” Aleta asked him acidly.
He shook his head, tears streaming down his cheeks. “No, Aleta—not you. I’m the joker in this deck.”
“I don’t understand,” she replied.
“You will,” he told her. “I took this trip to get away from women. Due to circumstances quite beyond my control I became something of a fetish for females on Terra during the late Twentieth Century. I took the eight-hundred-year sleep to get away from them. And now look what is happening to me—Dryadaeum!”
“I think you’re a very conceited young man, for an ancient barbarian,” Aleta told him.
“I’m just beginning to realize how right you are,” said Leeds Markham. “But remember, after all, I am a man.”
“It’s far from funny,” Aleta murmured unhappily. She sat far away from him—as far as the dimensions of the aircar permitted.
They landed in the courtyard of a large, angular but oddly attractive structure set well apart from a mediumsized vari-hued city. It was of oddly alien design to Leeds Markham’s archaic eyes. Windows at first seemed set in its walls without any relationship to routine structural needs. And the tall trees that lined the inner walls of the court were a bright cerise in color.
Then his eyes began to make sense of a sort out of the design and he realized that here was a new and exciting architecture. But he forgot about such minor items as he was led past a number of large offices, entirely peopled by women, to a softly luxurious anteroom hung with glimmering plastic materials.
“You will please wait here, Dr. Ryana,” said a crisp middle-aged woman with pleasant features and neatly-groomed graying hair. Then, to Leeds Markham, “Madame U1 Stell is awaiting you.”
MARKHAM glanced at Aleta, who nodded not at all happily. He followed the gray-haired woman. He was ushered into a smaller, more sumptuous chamber, where a tall brunette stood waiting for him, a faint smile on her full dark red lips. Her costume would have made a Bikini bathing suit of the Mid-Twentieth century on Earth look like a Victorian Mother Hubbard for concealment. And, like Aleta, she had plenty not to conceal.
“How come you to Helios City?” she asked in a deep contralto voice which sounded used to issuing commands. “Madame,” said Leeds Markham, bowing, “I seem to have landed here in error, though the error was made nearly eight hundred years ago. I am Leeds Markham, a man of Twentieth Century Earth.”
“Ah, the Mother Planet,” said Madame U1 Stell wistfully. “We are not permitted to visit her.” She stared at him and then, before he could move a muscle, Leeds Markham found himself being thoroughly and avariciously kissed.
Later, when things had quieted somewhat, he managed to ask Marina, for that was the name of U1 Stell, the Madame President of Dryadaeum, why no men lived on the planet. He was beginning to wonder if these Amazons were cannibals where men were concerned.
“No men can live on Dryadaeum for more than a year,” she told him. “There is something in the atmosphere, perhaps in the soil, perhaps in the aliments. In a few months they take sick and, if they are not removed within one revolution of the planet, they die. Dryadaeum has been quarantined for all male creatures by galactic decree for more than two hundred Earth years.”
“How do you—well, how do you continue to exist?” he asked.
She gave him a questioning lift of her dark handsome brows, then seemed to understand. “Once a year on Satyrium—our planet’s one satellite—carefully selected Dryadaea gather to meet selected young men of other planets. They are given exactly one Earth week.”
“It hardly allows for much emotional satisfaction,” said Leeds Markham thoughtfully. In spite of his basic misogyny he was feeling a certain pity and sympathy for these manless women.
“We must be satisfied with what we have,” said U1 Stell.
He then began to ask her more about life and living conditions not only upon Dryadaeum but throughout such of the universe as man had spread to in the eight centuries since his sleep had begun. Some of her answers amazed him, open-minded as he was.
The creatures of Earth had spread far out through the galaxy. Proxima Centauri had been but a stepping stone on their path through the star spaces, once a speedy enough mode of travel had been perfected. Planets suitable for colonization had been found in system after system and the growth was still going on.
“Except here,” the brunette ruler told him unhappily. “We can take no part in any of this great chapter of history.”
“It seems strange that your language should have changed so little in nearly eight centuries—and over such a span of space,” he remarked, voicing a factor that had been puzzling him.
“Accent and language in general have changed but little since your era,” U1 Stell replied. “Once the art of recording was perfected, the great changes in language ceased.” She stared at him and shook her head. “But what are we going to do with you?”
It was decided that he would have to remain in the official residence, lest a man-hungry crowd of women do him physical harm outside. At his suggestion his food and drink supplies were brought in from the Star Chariot so that he should not risk death needlessly.
“We’ll have to get you away, of course,” said U1 Stell. “We are allowed a few emergency ships and I’ll turn one of them over to you. You won’t have to go into a cataleptic sleep to return to Earth. It will take a little time to prepare your vessel.”
“You’re too generous,” said Leeds Markham. “I did not bring any means of payment with me. It scarcely seemed necessary.”
“Your vessel will more than compensate for any expense you put us to,” said the dark ruler with a faint smile. “Remember, it is of rare antiquity. Meanwhile, make yourself at home.”
N the long days and nights that followed—a single revolution of Dryadaeum took up slightly over thirty-three Earth hours—Leeds Markham discovered that his very rareness proved to be his best protection against the women of this strange new world.
Like a very large and rare diamond.
he was not for use. He was more or less kept in a vault as something to be admired by the few on rare occasions. He only hoped, wrily, that his hostesses would not decide to cut him up, diamond-wise, into smaller portions.
Meanwhile he wandered around the palace, reading in the library, observing, studying the world about him. Despite their unnatural situation the women of Dryadaeum ran their world smoothly and, as far as he could see, with a nice sense of social fairness. They fulfilled their duties quietly and efficiently and managed to live in a thoroughly enlightened spinsterhood.
FUTHERMORE, almost all of them were good looking. One day, while pottering about Aleta Ryana’s laboratory in a wing of the official residence, he asked her about it. “You,” he said, “are what used to be called a good looking chick back on Twentieth Century Earth, but here you’re one of a lot. In fact your standard of looks is so high here I have not seen one outstanding woman. You all are knockouts.”
“It’s the mating rules,” said Aleta, pushing red hair back from her smooth wide forehead. “We early found out that attractive women are better conditioned women even in a manless world. So our ancestors arranged that appearance as well as health and intelligence be considered when issuing the annual permits to Satyrium. As a matter of fact they usually go together.”
“What a waste!” murmured Leeds Markham thoughtlessly. Aleta laid down her test tube and advanced on him with that hungry look. Markham said hastily, “I didn’t come here for that, Aleta. I used to be a man of what we called Science on Earth. I’d like to have an idea of your lab progress. I’ve been boning up in the books but in some ways I’m very visual minded.”
“So I’ve noticed,” said Aleta ironically. Then she brightened as if to make the best of a bad thing and began to explain the work she was doing. She was, it seemed, engaged in the centuries’ old research on the problem of male
fatality on Dryadaeum.
“It seems utterly hopeless,” she said. “We think, of course, that it must lie in the diet. Atmosphere doesn’t seem the answer.”
“Then why not import your food and drink?” Leeds asked.
“We can’t,” said Aleta Ryana sadly. “The cost alone would ruin our economy. AH worlds must produce their own food once they attain a fourth level population rating. And we are already at the seventh level. Believe me it wouldn’t make sense.”
“How about matter transmission?” Leeds Markham inquired, beginning to jet interested.
“Oh, that!” said Aleta vaguely. “It works over a short radius dependent on the curve of the planet and the horizon. But it has never been feasible in space. It needs a powerful gravity to permit any sort of control.”
Leeds Markham, now comfortably attired in scanty breech-clout, pouch and huaraches of Dryadaean reeds, thought it over. He said, “Well, then, what about the food? Surely you could detect any poison capable of slaughtering everything male.”
“That’s just it—we can’t,” cried the girl. “We began our researches of course at the atomic level. We worked through electronics, through sub-electronics, through the seven known smaller stages of matter, and we have found no indication.”
“Hmmm,” said Leeds Markham. He was staring at Aleta but he didn’t know it. He didn’t even know much when, with a little cry of joy, she ran to him and embraced him—nor when, with a little cry of despair, she released his nonreacting frame. He put her from him with detachment and strode from the laboratory.
In a corner of his assigned room were stacked the several thousand works of Twentieth Century science he had brought with him. They occupied but a small cubic area as they were micro-recorded.
He got busy with them, digging out the rolls of film he wanted.
TWO Dryadaean days and three Dryadaean nights later Leeds Markham, looking tired and disheveled, strode into Aleta Ryana’s laboratory. Startled, she jumped as he entered. She had grown increasingly nervous and sensitive of late.
“I think I have your answer,” he told her grimly. “I must make an experiment. I shall need”—curtly he reeled off the instruments he desired. Wonderingly, a little sullenly, the red-head obeyed him. He neither looked at her nor thanked her. He was utterly wrapped up in the problem of male fatality on Dryadaeum.
“What are you doing?” Aleta finally asked and her green eyes were large and puzzled, her hurt forgotten as, for the first time, she realized that, in Leeds Markham, she was watching a great if a primitive scientist in action.
“Ever hear of vitamins V he inquired through compressed lips as he carefully measured the levels in two test tubes.
“Vitamins?” said the girl. She laughed. “But they’ve been outmoded for centuries. They’re far too gross a medium for any sort of accuracy in dietetics. You don’t mean to tell me—”
“In my day a great many scientists considered the mediaeval alchemists as charlatans or illiterate fools. Yet a number of their weird concoctions, when scientifically analyzed, proved to be perfectly logical and effective. Don’t laugh at vitamins, my dear. They may be the answer to the whole problem.
She laughed a little, partly in disbelief, partly in pleasure at his having called her “my dear”—even though she knew perfectly well it was but a figure of speech.
In spite of herself she began to grow interested in what he was doing. He explained further in answer to her questions. He said, “I happened to remember something when you talked of subelectronic research, Aleta. Back in my time on Earth one of the newer discoveries was a vitamin called folic acid or pteroylglutamic acid. Fed to laboratory animals it killed all females while leaving the males intact.”
“Good heavens,” cried the red-head. “None of our books has anything about it. And you say it’s a vitamin?”
“Correct,” said Leeds Markham. “It turned out to be an isolated case and therefore a dead end. Evidently folic acid has been all but forgotten. But it occurred to me that—”
“That we shook! have considered mass rather than a breakdown to sub-electronic elements when we sought the poison,” said the red-head, her green eyes shining. “Suppose there were some commonly-used combination of elements here on Dryadaeum that brought about a reversal of the effects of folic acid. Here, let me help.”
From then on Leeds Markham discovered that he had an assistant whose learning was eight centuries advanced beyond his own. But his native brilliance and training and intelligence enabled him to keep at least abreast of her.
It was a stimulating time. They sought the catalyst in all commonly used food elements, in fabrics and in the water of Dryadaeum. They sought it in ferment beverages and in the atmosphere itself. They combined them in all possible ways, listed and labeled the compounds, inserted them needle-wise in laboratory beasts.
In the early experiments pteroylglutamic or folic acid worked as it had on Earth. The females died and the males remained healthy—until, like all male creatures on Dryadaeum—they began themselves to show signs of the planetary sickness. As they were imported from Satyrium it was costly business. But somehow they got U1 Stell to back them all the way.
Aleta began to grow discouraged as the weeks went by and no solution seemed near. But Leeds Markham, bred in a less defeatist age, stayed on the job, his determination undimmed. And at last, late one night, he awoke Aleta, who had fallen asleep with her red head on a laboratory table, shouting his triumph.
“It’s in the order of taking,” he said, picking her up and for the first time planting a buss on her full warm lips of his own volition. “Basically it’s in the H-element of all vegetables on Dryadaeum—but it occurs when water is taken like sandwich filling between two mouthfuls of any greens—or rather pinks. It’s the anti-chlorophyl process of Dryadaean vegetation, the same thing that makes them pink, that reverses the folic acid process on Earth. And the cure is simple. Don’t let men eat vegetables and drink water at the same time.”
ALETA’S eyes glowed as she gazed up into his flushed face.
“Leeds, darling!” said the girl, her arms tightening around his neck. “You great big wonder-ful hunk of man!”
“Merciful heavens!” cried Leeds, shocked. “What are you doing?” He pulled himself free from the lovelorn girl and hastened toward the apartments of U1 Stell.
Once again, as on Earth eight hundred years before, Leeds Markham found himself the idol of the women of a planet. His first weeks on Dryadaeum had seen him a freak—hunted and haunted but a freak, not a hero. Now he was back where he had started—but more so. Ho was feted and feasted and pursued and chivvied until at last, a gaunt and hollow-eyed ruin, he visited U1 Stell and asked her please to hurry preparations for his flight from Dryadaeum.
