Collected Short Fiction, page 221
“She claims she knows nothing at all,” said the Shan in English. “She has never seen the Earthman.” There was a pause, then he continued: “However, a little torture should loosen up her tongue.”
“Go ahead,” said the gunrunner. “We’ve got to find that guy.”
Overman stood there, indecisive for a moment. If he went ahead to the roof, he might be able to get away unseen in the flyer. But that would mean leaving the girl to be tortured. He hesitated only for an instant. Then he drew the sword at his side and eased open the door.
Both the gunrunner and the Shan had their backs to him, but when the door opened, they turned. The Earthman had a beam pistol at his hip, but he didn’t attempt to draw it. Overman looked just like another of the Yetuni guards to him.
The Shan knew better. He saw Overman’s blue eyes and recognized him immediately under the brown skin stain.
He shouted something and reached for his sword hilt.
Overman was already in action. Before the gunrunner could realize what was happening, the flat of Overman’s sword crashed against his temple. The gunrunner dropped to the floor, unconscious.
Then Overman turned his attention to the Shan. The Yetuni ruler was fast and still fairly young. In addition, he was an expert swordsman. Overman knew he stood no chance against an expert who knew how to use the point. But the Yetuni swordplay used the edge, not the point. They used the weapon in wide swings, to cut and hack, not to stab. They had not yet learned that the point is by far the most useful and deadliest part of the weapon.
Coming in close, Overman parried an edge cut and lunged forward. The Shan danced back out of the way, somewhat puzzled by the Earthman’s swordplay.
Overman stepped in again as the ruler brought up his weapon for a backhand cut.
Overman didn’t want to kill the Shan; he knew that if he did, his chances of getting out alive were practically nil. He aimed his thrusts, therefore, at the Yetuni’s sword-arm, not at his heart.
When the Shan lifted his weapon for a third cut, Overman leaped in, thrusting for the shoulder. The point of his sword went into the flesh, and the Shan’s sword spun across the room, released from nerveless fingers on the downswing.
“Don’t move an inch!” Overman snapped, holding the point of his weapon at the ruler’s heart. The Shan froze. “Get the Earthman’s gun,” Overman told the girl.
Quickly, she ran over to the fallen gunrunner and pulled the beam pistol from its holster. She handed it to Overman, who lowered his sword point from the Shan’s heart at the same time he aimed the beam gun. “Wake up the Earthman,” he commanded the Shan. The Yetuni ruler, staring at the deadly beam gun, obeyed. He slapped the gunrunner a few times, and the Earthman finally groaned and shook his head. Within a few minutes, he was fully awake.
“All right,” said Overman, “we’re going up to the roof. The first one to act up gets a beam.”
They went out of the room and climbed the stairway in silence. When they reached the roof, Overman noticed that there were four guards around the flyer.
“Order them to leave,” he told the Shan. “No tricks now; the girl can tell what you’re saying.”
The order was given, and the guards obediently turned and headed for the other stairway across the roof.
Overman marched the two men toward the flyer; at the same time, twisted the intensity control knob on the beam pistol down to minimum. When they were standing by the flyer, Overman fired twice, knocking them unconscious without killing them.
“Help me get them into the baggage compartment,” he told the girl. “Quickly!”
When they were safely stowed away, he and the slave girl climbed inside. Overman activated the antigravs, and the little ship lifted into the air.
Then he picked up the radiophone and called the High Space Commission. After listening, the officer said: “We’ve been on that guy’s trail for months. Good work. We’ll have to release the Shan to his people, of course; he’s not subject to Earth law. But we’ll have a ship there in an hour to get the guns.
“Meanwhile, how would you like to do us another favor? We’ve had an operative there in Yetun-Vey for several weeks, trying to get a line on what the Shan was doing. She’s been disguised as a native, and—”
“She?” Overman jerked his head around to look at the girl. She smiled.
“That’s right; you’re a good guesser, Overman. I was afraid you’d be suspicious when I showed you the dye. I didn’t know who you were, so I couldn’t reveal myself.”
“What’s going on there?” said the officer’s voice from the headquarters of the High Space Commission.
“I was just about to tell you that I have already picked up your operative.”
“Already? Say, you’re a good man; we could use you!”
“Me? No thanks! I’ll just go on being an anthropologist; I get in enough trouble that way. Besides, it was just luck.” He looked again at the girl. “Damned good luck!” When he hung up, he frowned for a moment. “By the way, what did you say your name was?”
The girl began laughing so hard she could hardly get the words out. And then she was kissing him so hard that it didn’t matter. THE END
Woman’s World
He found himself five hundred years into the future, a man eagerly sought and he didn’t know why. Then he found out. The future was a—
COMING UP OUT of five centuries of sleep was like fighting my way up from the bottom of the sea. I was blind, I was choking, I was mangled by the pressure. All I could think was that I had to get up and out, up and out.
My sleep-cramped brain battled toward consciousness. The blackness around me gave way to deep violet, then gray, then a vague colorless dinginess as I rose to wakefulness. I moved my arms, tentatively, feeling the centuries-old numbness starting to give way. This is what it feels like to he born, my mind said.
Then, voices. Loud, strident, horribly painful to nerves that hadn’t felt the impact of sound in five hundred years. A kind of terror ran through me; I cringed at the thought of the unknown future into which I had so boldly plunged. It had seemed like a joke, once—but I had slept away half a millenium, and time for awakening was here.
Voices. Someone shouting, “He’s mine! I got here before you did, Sam!”
Another voice: “The hell you did, Phil. I was here. You get out of here.”
I shook my head foggily and stirred. Sam and Phil, whoever they were, were making much too much noise. I wanted them to go away; I was terribly tired, wanting nothing but another few hundred years of sleep.
I yawned and sat up. And gasped. For as I opened my eyes and gradually focussed them, I saw Sam and Phil. They were having a knockdown tussle, and it was hard to tell which one was on top.
But there was one thing I could tell: they were both female. One seemed to be a magnificent brunette, wide-shouldered and fiery-eyed; the other, a redhead, lithe and wiry. They wore only skintight blue trunks; as they rolled over and over on the floor, I caught occasional glimpses of bare breasts and lovely flashing thighs.
I climbed out of my somnocasket and lowered myself to the floor of the chamber, wobbling unsteadily. They ignored me, and continued to battle it out.
“Hold on, girls,” I said finally. “This is no way to welcome a man from the distant past.”
At my words they cut out the wrestling instantly. They clambered to their feet, glaring bitterly at each other, and turned to look at me.
They were really stacked. To my astonishment I discovered that they stood nearly six feet tall, both of them, with high, proud breasts and tapering, well-muscled bodies. What a pair of amazons. I thought admiringly.
But they seemed to be doing some admiring too. The redhead emitted a most feminine sigh and said, “Isn’t he lovely?”
“He certainly is,” the brunette agreed. “Worth waiting five hundred years for.”
With sudden dismay I realized I was naked. I reddened and grabbed for a cloth that had been draped over the somnocasket, and wrapped it around myself. I felt a little bewildered by things; I hadn’t expected to be greeted by a pair of half-naked amazons when I woke.
The brunette nudged the other and said, “Let’s get out of here with him now, Phil. We won’t fight over him.”
“Good idea,” the redhead responded. “If we keep on fighting over who gets him, Her Majesty’ll find out he’s awake and take him away from both of us. Let’s go!” They approached me and grabbed me firmly, one on each side. “Come on, muscles,” the one named Phil said. “Let’s travel.”, “Just a second,” I said. “Who are you? Where are you taking me?” I didn’t feel like trusting myself to these two till I had my bearings.
“Don’t worry about that, honey,” Sam said. “We’ll take good care of you.” She winked broadly and said, “Won’t we, Phil?”
They started to propel me out the door of the chamber. I was still a little too woozy to put up much of an argument, and they were both substantial specimens who knew how to swing their weight around. Weak as I was, I had no choice but to let them push me into the corridor.
“Where to?” Sam asked.
“To the Lower Quarters,” Phil said. “There’s a copter there, and we—oh, oh! Here comes trouble!”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw a truly gigantic woman coming down the corridor towards us. She looked about seven feet tall, a real monster. She was wearing the usual trunks, plus some sort of jeweled diadem dangling between at her bosom.
“Hold up there!” she bellowed. “Where are you three going? Where’s the guard on the Sleep Chamber?”
Phil and Sam didn’t stop to make conversation. They tightened their grips on my arm and started to run. I dragged helplessly for a couple of steps, then got straightened away and began to run with them.
“Stop! Come back!” the big woman yelled—and she came roaring after us. The floor seemed to shake as she thundered along the corridor.
We fled. I allowed myself to be dragged along by my two amazon captors, with the third pounding away behind us. The corridor seemed to be endless.
And suddenly it stopped being endless. There was a horde of women coming up toward us from the other direction.
“The old cow’s called the guards,” Sam muttered. “We’re caught, now!”
We were. The tide of female guards swept over us like a herd of cattle, and abruptly I found myself in the midst of a vast heaving mass of struggling women. At first I thought they were after Sam and Phil, who had tried to steal me and failed—but the truth dawned only after I had eluded the steellike clutches of one powerful mademoiselle and fallen right into another’s arms.
As she hugged me triumphantly to her surging bosom, I understood. They were after me.
Me.
Two dozen women, chasing after me. And I was still not really fully conscious from my long stay under suspended animation.
Maybe I’m dreaming! I thought.
No. No dream. I was at least wide-awake enough to tell that. The women were battling furiously; I was being shunted back and forth from one to another. I was starting to feel like a plaything. So I struck back.
I landed a fist in a tough, unyielding female stomach, then splatted a hand into a pair of lovely lips. I was fighting for my life now; they were threatening to smother me. Two of them got me down, while a third grabbed one arm and tried to drag me away.
Suddenly I heard a loud voice yell, “Stop!” And an instant later, everything stopped. Completely. None of us could move a muscle. I was locked in the embrace of a wild-looking but rather lovely blonde, whose face was frozen in an expression of glee.
Only my eyes could move. I rolled them around and saw a woman in regal panoply stalking majestically toward us. She held a small metal weapon in her hand.
“You’ve all behaved disgracefully!” she said ringingly. She clicked the weapon at us a second time and the stasis broke. The horde of women picked themselves up and stood staring sheepishly at the floor. The Queen—for her rank seemed obvious—swept imperiously toward me.
“Are you the Sleeper?” she demanded.
“I believe so, your majesty.”
“Excellent. Come to my chamber at once. The rest of you remand yourselves to the guardhouse, for punishment. Follow me, male!”
AS I FOLLOWED (HER up the long corridor, I was struck by the humor of the situation. I had volunteered for the Somnocasket project after the bustup of my engagement; feeling that there was no place for me in the world of the twentieth century and that I wasn’t much interested in continuing to live in it, I grabbed at a straw and let myself be tucked away in suspended animation, as a guinea pig. The scientists of five hundred years from now would revive me, and I would be a living man from the distant past.
So I had awakened. But in the intervening five centuries, while I slumbered under my time-lock, my casket had been shifted from Professor Ostrov’s laboratory to this—this madhouse of furious amazons, and I was now apparently playing Adam to a few dozen Eves.
And now the queen bee herself had grabbed me off. Two guards prodded me from behind, and the Queen strutted ahead of me toward her private chambers. What waited for me there, I didn’t know.
I wasn’t to find out, either. Because as we came to a bend in the corridor, two men stepped out of nowhere. Men—real males.
I was so astonished to see another unshaven face again that I froze and glared at them goggle-eyed. One of the men turned to me and said, “Help us! We’re here to rescue you!”
That sounded good to me. So I took the club one of them handed me, and while they grabbed the two guards I clonked them—gently, but efficiently. The Queen finally caught on to what was happening, and turned.
She let out a howl. “Guards! Guards!”
I shut my eyes and pictured another madhouse and another wild chase back down the corridor. But this time it didn’t happen. The two men nodded to one side. The wall opened, and we stepped in, out of sight.
Into an elevator.
Down, down, down . . . into the depths of the Earth, it seemed. Finally the elevator stopped.
“We get out here,” one of the men said.
We were in a dank, dungeon-like place. We started up a cold, crawling corridor, but happily turned off before we had gone too far. One of my male escorts opened a door.
“Here he is, boss.”
A man sat behind the desk—unshaven, naked to the waist. His face was aggressively male; his>bare chest was covered with a thick mat of black hair. “My name is Lola,” he said, in a rumbling basso. “Welcome to our happy land.”
“Lola?” I asked.
“Isn’t it a beaut? The women take men’s names now—and we get theirs. Lola,” he repeated, bitterly.
“So that explains Phil and Sam, then.”
“What?”
“Two chicks I met topside, before all the fuss began. I couldn’t understand why they were named like that.”
“Now you do,” Lola said. “Let’s get down to business: you come from 1957, don’t you?”
“That’s right. I—”
“You know what it’s like to live in a world where men were supreme. Right?”
“Right.”
“We’re in a pretty bad fix here,” Lola said. “The women grabbed control about three hundred years ago. It started with little things like running for office, and now it mush-roomed into this. We’re under their heels! And we can’t do a thing about it!”
“Why not? Do they outnumber you?”
“Yes and no,” Lola said. “In terms of actual arithmetic, we’re about even; they’ve got a slight numerical edge, not much. But in terms of battle strength, they’ve got us licked. Most of today’s men are weaklings.”
“But you don’t look like any milksop,” I pointed out.
“I’m an exception. There’s a pretty tight core of us, down here biding our time. We’ve planned a rebellion against the Matriarchs. But we need you, brother.”
“Me? What for?”
“You’ve been asleep for five hundred years—and all that time, the world’s been waiting for you to awaken. You’re almost a demigod now—you’re a historical figure. Imagine the impact if you come to life and spearhead a rebellion against the Matriarchs! You’ll kindle the spirits of millions of downtrodden males who wouldn’t have dared to do any such thing unless—”
“Wait a second,” I said uneasily, thinking of the amazons upstairs. “I don’t plan to get messed up in any private quarrels of this century, friend. Those girls look pretty tough, and I’m not going to risk my—”
“The hell you aren’t,” Lola said quietly. “We’ve been waiting for this day too long for you to mess it up now that you are awake. You cooperate or else.”
I was tempted to ask what the “or else” was, but I didn’t. There was too much menace hidden in Lola’s flat voice.
“You’re going to appear suddenly in Central Plaza tonight,” he told me. “You’ll use this photonic amplifier and tell everyone who you are. It’ll attract a big crowd—and then you yell out, ‘On to the Palace.’
“At that moment, my men appear. There are about five hundred of us, and with them as a nucleus we recruit as many of the men in the Plaza as we can. We storm the Palace, take over the place, and on the impetus of that we bring the women under our dominance again.”
I folded my arms. “Suppose I don’t make your speech?” I could see myself getting assassinated, torn to pieces by wild women, or dying in any number of horrid ways.
Lola smiled. “Then we brainwash you and hype you up with something that’ll make you give your speech. After that, we throw what’s left of you away. Sound better?”
“I’ll think it over,” I said.
“Good.” He glanced at one of his brawny underlings. “Clara, lock this guy up in the keep until we’re ready to spring things. Then start getting the boys together, huh?”
I SAT ALONE in the dark and tried to figure things out. Somehow, the women had gotten the upper hand in this society, and most of the men were reduced to mere milksops. Except for a handful of determined musclemen, that is, who were holed up down here ready to make a last stand against feminine supremacy.
