Amazon Planet

XI

Minythyia followed him down to the street silently. The overcar she’d had earlier was parked near the curb, once again, he noted, in a zone marked prohibited. He was somewhat surprised that she had no other guards with her.

“How’d you know where I was?” he said.

She chuckled, as though fondly, at him. “Where else could you be? You had no place else to go. I forgot it at first but then, after I left mother and the others, I recalled pointing Pat O’Gara’s building out to you.”

“I was a flat to come here,” he muttered. “You realize, obviously, that Citizeness O’Gara had nothing to do with it. I intruded on her. She knows nothing about me, nor why I’m on Amazonia.”

“Of course, Cutey,” Minythia yawned. She banged at the control levers of the little vehicle, brought them off the street and zoomed forward, pressing him back into the seat.

He was disgusted with himself. He had spent the last precious half hour batting his gums about non-essentials when he should have been desperately trying to figure out some manner in which he could have escaped this insane planet. Some manner in which he could have appropriated a space launch and got himself out to the UP Embassy.

Instead, here he was, recaptured by a slip of a girl—or so she appeared, when not in uniform. He looked over at her. It was the confounded uniform that made these women look so aggressive and truculent.

He said in nasty irritation, “Where’d you people ever come up with the idea that women made superior warriors to men?”

She looked at him from the side of her eyes, mockingly, as usual. “My dear husband, whoever contended that women make better warriors than men? Didn’t Heracles and Theseus and their Greeks clobber the original Hippolyte and her warriors? And Achilles, when he fought Penthesileia before the walls of Troy, did he have any trouble defeating her?” she leered. “And you know what the legends tell us he did to her afterwards. But anyway, no. I’d never claim that women made better warriors than men. Now soldiers are another thing.”

“What are you talking about?” he grumbled. They were driving into an area he hadn’t been in before. Probably to the palace, he decided. He wondered how far it was. He could vaguely remember this part of town from the map he had been shown, but he couldn’t remember where the palace was located. Confound it, where had the palace been on the chart that Sarpedon had shown them at the Octagon?

She was going on, even as she zipped up one street, down another, in a heart sinking display of a racing driver’s art.

“Back in the old days, the good old days, I suppose you’d call them, admittedly a man could take a woman. A 120 pound man, in a fight with a 120 pound woman, could mop the floor with her assuming equal, normal physical development and training. Man is capable of a peak power output about four times that of a woman his size. However…there’s an however, you must realize.”

“However,” he muttered disgustedly. He had few illusions of what was going to happen to him, once they had him under Scop again. They’d drain every bit of information he had in his brain, from childhood on. Every detail of the workings of Section G with which he was familiar, would be theirs to utilize. They’d get as complete a list of agents, and their secret whereabouts, that he, Ronny Bronston, could provide.

“However, a woman can endure a continuing strain longer than a man. How many men could bear up under a difficult childbirth? At any rate, back when warriors fought with swords, men had the ascendency. But it began to taper off, dear husband, when weapons began to change, when even the bayonet became antiquated, since you never got near enough to the enemy to use a sticker. Even back in the so-called First World War, women were beginning to show up in combat, especially among the Russians. By the Second World War they were in full swing. Literally millions of women used every type of weapon, once again especially among the Russians. There were women flying aces, women commanders of warships, women artillerists, and especially women infantry. And it wasn’t the Russians alone. The British discovered that the female anti-aircraft crews ran up at least as high scores as the male ones. You see, women have more patience, more stolidity. But possibly the real proof was seen in the Israeli-Arab wars. It was soon found that a 120 pound girl could buck a Brenn gun just as efficiently as a man, and was less apt to wind up with a galloping case of battle fatigue, if the fight went on too long, or if the shelling got a bit too heavy. Oh yes, women might make poorer warriors, but, believe me, husband dear, it has finally developed that they make better soldiers.”

She was evidently taking short cuts by going down less traffic ridden main arteries. For the moment, they were on an empty street.

Ronny growled, “I seem to be going from one lecture to another today. But at least, I think I’ve got something from this one.”

She looked at him from the side of her eyes, slowing down for a sharp turn. “Oh…?”

He snapped, “Yes.” His hand snaked out and switched the engine off. “The fact that man is admittedly better, hand to hand.”

She tried to whip her gun from its holster, but his hand was before hers. Open, it slammed the gun deeply down into the holster. And he kept his left hand over the weapon, even as he reached out with his right.

Her eyes wide, she began to shrill something, squirming to escape him.

Ronny chopped her expertly behind the ear, and didn’t even wait to watch her slump. He brought the vehicle to a bucking halt, awkward as he was with the controls in this position.

His eyes went quickly up and down the street. There were some pedestrians, more than a block away. And several hovercars in the distance. No one, seemingly, had seen the fray.

He heard a yell from above him, darted his eyes up. He had thought himself unobserved too soon. On the third floor of the building before which they had come to a stop, a man was leaning from, a window, shouting as though demented.

“Traitor,” Ronny muttered. He hurried out of the car and around to her side. He opened the door that she customarily vaulted, and dragged her forth. He carried her, noting, somewhat to his surprise, that she wasn’t nearly as heavy as he would have expected, and unsuspectedly soft in his arms. He set her down bodily against the wall of the building. The apartment occupant above continued to shout blue murder. Another head popped from another window, this time in a building across the way. A scream, sounding ludicrously feminine in this land of Amazons, reached for the skies.

He whipped the gun from Minythyia’s holster, stuck it in his belt, dashed back to the car, and slid into the seat she had forcibly been hauled from.

He banged the controls, for a moment ineffectually.

She had come awake. “Ronny!” she yelled at him. “Come back…!”

“Oh great,” he muttered sarcastically. He had the sporthover underway now, and realized why she had driven like a racing zealot. This souped-up vehicle took the bit in its teeth. He blasted down the street as though all demons were, after him.

“You don’t understand…!” her voice faded after him.

He grunted at that with sour humor. He didn’t understand was right, but he understood enough to keep away from that gang of hefty inquisitors, and those armed to the teeth bully-girls in the Hippolyte’s palace. This was one honeymoon Minythyia could count him out of.

He sped down the narrow way, took a quick right turn into the first street that appealed to him. Sped some more, and turned again. It would take a time, now, for them to find him.

However, he knew he was going to have to go to ground. He couldn’t indefinitely prowl the streets of Themiscyra in this sporthover and expect to keep away from the Hippolyte’s people forever. He had seen too many examples of Amazonian efficiency to doubt that once they set their nets it was just a matter of time until he was fished in.

But where could he go?

He had emerged into a broader avenue, one of the main arteries, and he slowed to keep attention from falling upon his speeding two seater. He hadn’t been on this particular boulevard before, but it checked out in impressive beauty with the others. Public buildings, libraries, he assumed, fountains, monuments, parks, plazas, theatres…

He was passing a theatre now. It was more or less of a replica of the Pantheon, Roman, rather than Greek. Very beautiful…

He jammed the brake down suddenly and goggled.

After a long moment, he brought the little hovercar over to the curb and left it to walk to the display advertising the show within. There were various posters in the old-fashioned style. Basically photographs, he decided, but then touched up with an artist’s imagination. It was evidently some sort of variety show, a vaudeville sort of thing, beloved of all centuries. But it was the poster’s subject that had caused him to come to a halt, for there stood Clete in a gaudy costume. In her left hand she held half a dozen throwing knives by their points. In her right hand she had a single knife, ready for a cast. Beyond her stood what was obviously an assistant, an apple on the top of his head. The old but ageless William Tell bit.

But that wasn’t all.

In one of the other posters he recognized still another face. A face that made it too utterly much.

He walked back to the hovercar in thought. Some of the pieces, just some of them, were beginning to fit into place.

When he got back into the hovercar, he sat for a moment, ignoring anyone who might have been looking at him. His mouth worked, and he rubbed it thoughtfully, roughly with the knuckles of his left hand, so roughly that it stung.

A woman was coming up the street and was due to pass within a few feet of him.

He said to her suddenly. “I beg your pardon. I’m from out of town. Could you tell me where I can get a newspaper?”

She smiled at him. “Right up the street there at the entrance to the pneumatics. Don’t you have a screen in your car? You’d get exactly the same thing by dialing NEWS.”

“Thanks,” he told her, without inflection.

When she was gone, he sat and concentrated some more. Finally he took the shooter he had appropriated from Minythyia and holding it low, between his knees, inspected it. He had never seen the model before, but he was experienced enough with handguns to figure out its working. It was evidently constructed to throw some sort of projectile, probably a small bullet, with or without either an explosive or a gas cartridge. A somewhat primitive weapon, by the standards of the more militaristically inclined planets of UP, but one that had its uses under circumstances.

The difficulty was, there was no clip in the butt.

It was useless.

He looked at it and grunted. Some warrior Minythyia had turned out to be.

He tossed the shooter to the floor at his feet and started up the car again. He brought back, before memory’s eye, the map of the city and directed the speedy little vehicle at a definite destination this time. However, he drove more slowly than he had before. There was still quite a bit to think about.

He passed the bachelor sanctuary, as the major had called it, drove around to its rear and parked the car.

He stood there for a moment, looking at the building, and figuring out where his quarters had been. Then he found a path that wandered through, the garden and made his way to the area beneath the windows of that suite. Looking up now, he was mildly surprised that he had been able to climb down the wall with such ease. The handholds and footholds didn’t look as promising as all that.

He found the gun he had ditched only that morning, in the bush where he had thrown it.

He couldn’t afford to be spotted with it in his hand, and tucked it into his belt, without further examination. He had checked it this morning, knew it was charged, knew how it was operated. He doubted if he’d be overly accurate with the weapon at any range at all, at first, but, then, he doubted that he would be using it at any great distance.

He walked around the building and into the entrance he had used before. Inside, he walked up one of the halls aimlessly until he met an inhabitant.

The other was hurrying to some destination or other, but Ronny asked him, “Could you tell me what apartment Podner has?”

“Podner Bates? He’s in forty, isn’t he?” The man hustled on.

Ronny Bronston figured out the numbering system of the apartments and finally found forty.

He pulled the same trick that Minythyia had at Pat O’Gara’s place. He put his hand over the door’s eye before activating it. Inside, Podner, if he was at home, would see nothing but black on his screen.

The door opened and Podner was there, blinking.

Ronny pushed his way past him. He looked about the room. It was far from the frilly affair he had been given the night before. It was a man’s apartment—comfortable, scruffed-up furniture that had seen many a shoe rested upon it, a bar with a goodly selection of liquor. Paintings on the wall that would appeal to the masculine taste whether it be on Earth, New Delos, Victoria, or, Ronny Bronston was beginning to understand, Amazonia.

Ronny looked at the other. “You’ve forgotten your curly wig.”

Podner fluttered a hand at him. “Oh, darling, you know how it is. A boy simply has to get out of his frills once in awhile. Don’t you just hate girdles?”

Ronny looked at him wryly, “I never had one on,” he said. “And I doubt if you have either.”

He held a moment’s silence and then said, “You’re an actor.”

Podner blinked at him. He looked disgusted. “Damn it,” he said, “What’d I do wrong?”

“Nothing,” Ronny said. “Come along. I’ve got to talk with you, and I don’t think I’m safe here.”

“Why should I come with you?” Podner said sourly. “Damn it, I thought I was doing fine in that part. Minythyia is going to be furious with me.”

Ronny put his tunic back a few inches so that the gun in his belt was revealed. He tapped it two or three times with his forefinger. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice cold.

The other stared at the gun. “Holy Ultimate,” he said, all the astonishment in the galaxy in his voice. “You mean it. You’re threatening me with violence.”

They marched out of the building and toward the car.

Ronny said, “What happened to my luggage?”

“Major Oreithyia and some others came and got it a couple of hours ago.”

Ronny grunted disgust, but he couldn’t have expected anything else. They climbed into the car, and he looked at the other man, remembering his own attack upon Minythyia shortly before. He said, “Look, Podner, don’t try anything. I realize that sissy act of yours was laid on and that you’re no molly, however, in this sort of thing, I’m a pro.”

“I’m sure you are,” Podner muttered unhappily. “I’m not resisting. I’m not a hero.”

Ronny got under way. He looked from the side of his eyes at the other, trying to dope him out. “What are you? Obviously, you support the Amazonian government.”

“Of course,” the other said strongly. “Why not?” It’s the best government I’ve ever heard or read about, and I’m interested in the subject.”

Ronny said evenly, “Oh? My own ideas would lead a little nearer to democracy. You’re like a dog licking the hand of the master that has just clobbered him.”

“Democracy!” Podner snorted in scorn. “We’ve gone far beyond democracy on Amazonia.”

“Oh, you have, eh? And just what do you find beyond democracy?”

“In the first place, I doubt if you know what the word means,” the actor said in high scorn. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out. So I don’t know what democracy means. Please enlighten me.”

“Very well. As you possibly know, ancient man’s governmental institutions were based on the gens, or genos, as the Greeks called them.”

Ronny continued to tool the speedster down the boulevard. “So everybody’s been telling me,” he complained.

“Very well, when city states began to form and new institutions take the place of old, the former ways needed change. A council of chiefs was inadequate to handle municipal affairs. The first attempt to handle the problem is credited in legend to Theuseus, but that’s undoubtedly nonsense. It wasn’t until Solon, about 549 B.C. that they took the first big step to end gentile society and begin a new form of representation based on geographic factors and on property, rather than on family. In Athens, by the time of Cleisthenes in 509 B.C. the changes were culminated. Instead of being represented in government from the genos into which you were born, you were represented from the deme, or city ward, in which you lived and according to the amount of property you controlled. Democracy, then, actually means rule of the city wards.”

“Great,” Ronny said sarcastically. “However, the word has come to mean rule of the people.”

“Then seldom, if ever, did the reality live up to definition. Take a look down through history. The Athenians with their supposed democracy, in which only the citizens were allowed to vote and the overwhelming majority of the people, the slaves, were not. Florence and Venice and the other Italian republics. Who voted besides the wealthy merchants, the propertied elements? Bring it down to more modern times. Did you labor under the illusion that the soldiers who followed Washington at Valley Forge were allowed the vote after the revolution was won? Comparatively few of them, I’m afraid. Property requirements were stiff before you could vote in the early United States.”

“They loosened up later,” Ronny said.

“Yes, but by then they had new restrictions, some of them not so obvious. By the middle of the 20th Century, they had the so-called two party system. You could vote for the candidates of either one or the other. The trouble was they both stood for the same thing and represented the same elements. Laws were passed that made it all but impossible for a third party with conflicting principles to get on the ballot. Rule by the people? Take the election of 1960 during which Kennedy, one of the most popular political figures of the century, became president. He had some thirty-four million votes cast for him. The population at the time was one hundred and eighty million, so that you can figure that a bit more than one American out of six voted for him. The others either voted against, didn’t vote at all though eligible because of cynicism or whatever reason, weren’t allowed to vote because of restrictions based on race or education, or weren’t allowed to vote due to insufficient age. One out of six. This is rule by the people?”

“All right,” Ronny said. “So you’ve gone beyond democracy.”

“Yes. Actually, rule by the people is only valid under certain circumstances. For instance, would you be willing to abide by the vote of the Roman mob such as it had become in the early centuries of the Empire?”

“So what are the conditions under which it becomes valid?” Some other parts of Ronny Bronston’s puzzle were beginning to fall into place. He continued to needle the actor, getting a crumb of information here, another there.

“Only when the electorate is composed of peers. To use a simple illustration, suppose five men are shipwrecked upon an island. If they average out in intelligence, experience and ability, then the only sensible method of deciding who should fish, who should collect coconuts, who should haul water and who should build huts, is the vote. But suppose only two of these men fit that description and one of the others is a moron, another a homicidal maniac and the other in a conditon of shock due to the experiences of the shipwreck. The vote then becomes silly.”

“All right,” Ronny said passively. “Under what conditions are men peers so that they’re competent to vote for their governmental officials?”

Podner’s tone had long since taken on a superior, professorial tone. “My dear Guy, man has come up with but three schemes of representation down through the centuries. The first based on the family, kinship; the second based on geographical lines and property.”

“And the third?”

“Based on your work, your profession, where you hold down your job.”

“There we’re peers, eh?”

“Yes. If a man is knowledgeable at all, he’s knowledgeable when he talks shop. He may not know the duties of a senator as compared to those of a bishop, he may be tempted to vote for a president because the man projects well on a TriDi, or one with an excellent staff of speechwriters. He might be an absolute flat when it comes to politics—I suspect most people are—but on the job he’s knowledgeable, whether he works at digging ditches or in a laboratory.

“Let’s picture an industry here on Amazonia. Say the hat-making industry. In one of the hat planets there is a gang of eight men who must vote for one of their number to be foreman. Since they work each day with each other, they are in the best position to know who among them is best suited to hold down the job. It is to their interest to elect the best man, since a good foreman can so coordinate their efforts as to make the job easier for all. Very well. The dozen or so foremen in that particular section of the plant work together each day on the problems involved in being a foreman. They elect from their number a section supervisor. The section supervisors of the plant, who also work together each day,select from their number a factory manager. All the factory managers of the hat industry of all Paphlagonia send representatives to an industry-wide conference of the clothing industry, which meets periodically, and in turn sends representatives to the central congress of the nation. There, of course, are the delegates from each field of endeavor, not only manufacturing, but from the professions and from the arts as well. At this congress is planned the production of the nation.”

“Syndicalism,” Ronny muttered. “They messed around with the idea in the 19th century in Europe.”

“I beg your pardon?” Podner said.

Ronny coud begin to anticipate more of his puzzle pieces falling into position.

He said, drawing the other out with argument. “Ummm. I see your idea. But look. That’s a pretty limited democracy. Your gang of unskilled laborers on the bottom can vote for their foreman, but that’s all. Suppose the overwhelming majority in the plant are opposed to the, say, manager? There’s no way of getting rid of him. Only the section supervisors have anything to say about him.”

Podner nodded. “It’s an interesting question, and highly debated. In fact, over in Lybia, they’re trying another system. There, the foremen can only nominate a section supervisor, and he must be confirmed by a majority vote of all the men who are to work under him. In turn, the supervisors can only nominate from their number a manager of the factory, and all employees of the plant must vote to confirm him in office. And so up, all the way to the central congress.”

Another piece had dropped into place. The puzzle was beginning to show final form. It wasn’t complete by any means, but it was shaping up.

Ronny, still searching, said, as though half in sympathy, “Ummm. That sounds very fine. Another form of democracy, perhaps. But how does the Hippolyte come into this, and those heads of the pylons, and women’s domination of the planet?”

“Oh, that’s not important. That’s civil government.”

Ronny darted a sharp glance at him. “How do you mean…?”

But suddenly the other’s mouth clamped shut. “I talk too much,” he muttered.

Ronny said quickly, “I thought the Hippolyte was the supreme head of Paphlagonia. The chief of state.”

“She is,” Podner said lowly.

“Well, how does that fit in with the central congress bit?”

“I’ve said enough,” Podner muttered, unhappily. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“Here,” Ronny told him, swinging into the curb. “I suspect it’s one place nobody will be searching for me.”

Podner Bates looked up at the building, showing no signs that he had ever seen it before.

He said, “You realize, of course, that this amounts to kidnapping? I’m accompanying you under duress.”

Ronny had to laugh, even as he left the hovercar. “You’re complaining? You should’ve been through what I have in the past twenty-four hours or so. Amazonia, ha!”

He had the actor precede him to the entrance and then up the stairs.

Ronny said, in half explanation, “I was here just a short time ago. I doubt if anyone would expect me to return. We can talk it out further, and there’s someone else here that might help out with a few matters.”

The door of Patricia O’Gara’s apartment was ajar. Ronny scowled at that. Instead of activating the eye, he pushed his way through, saying over his shoulder, “Don’t try to buzz off. A beam in the leg doesn’t look good, fella.”

Podner grunted.

Ronny Bronston came to an abrupt halt, his right hand flicked to the gun in his belt. On the floor, partly obscured to his view, lay a girl. Over her, back turned, bent a figure, a gun in one hand.

Ronny snapped, “Drop the shooter!”

The figure stiffened, held the pose for a moment, then let the gun go. The head turned. The man came slowly erect.

Ronny said, “Teucer!”

The other looked at him warily, his hands held wide from his body, palms forward, showing he was taking no action.

Ronny Bronston said, “Get over there by the window. Quick!”

Teucer said, “She’s dying.”

Minythyia, her face contorted in pain, opened her eyes and stared up at the Section G operative.

Ronny said, even as he sank to his knees beside her, “What happened? This doesn’t make sense. This doesn’t fit in!”

“It fits in,” Teucer growled from his position near the window. There was no belligerence in him.

“Artimis!” Podner Bates ejaculated. “It’s the Hippolyte’s daughter! She’s been hurt. We’ve got to get help.”

“Shut up!” Teucer said wearily.

Minythyia looked up at Ronny Bronston. Pain racked her again. She whispered, “Cutey…kiss me the way they do in the Tri-Di shows from Earth…”

His face agonized, he bent toward her.

But she was dead.