Amazon Planet

IV

Somewhat to Guy’s surprise, the little space launch which dropped them to the surface of Amazonia was piloted by a man. He was business-like, efficient, and either shy or intimidated by the uniformed women. He had nodded to the Earthling when the other had slipped through the Schirra’s small boat hatch, and had run his eyes up and down Guy’s clothes, quickly, and evidently in disappointment. For all purposes, they were identical to his own.

They had disconnected from the over-space freighter and swooped away, the major and her two assistants too blasé to bother looking at the viewing screens. However, Guy stared. Obviously, he had no background in landing in such wise on a a new planet.

He said, “Why…it’s not too different from Earth.”

The major was busy with her thoughts and said nothing.

Clete said, “So I understand, Sweety. Two main land masses, a few large islands, quite a few small ones. What do you call the two land masses on Earth?.”

“Well, actually, we think of seven continents.”

Lysippe grunted. “Three of them are joined, aren’t they, and two of the others only overgrown islands?” Her voice, as their voices usually were when talking to a man, was domineering.

“Why…why, I suppose so,” Guy said. “Actually, we have the Western Hemisphere, the Americas. And then Europe, Asia and Africa, the Eastern Hemisphere.”

“Two continents,” Clete grunted. “Like us.”

Guy held his peace and continued to stare at the view-screen. Actually, the two continents of Amazonia were almost identical in size. Then he remembered that there was conflict between them and wondered of what nature it might be. Here they were using spacecraft, if only to ferry back and forth to interplanetary freighters. Besides that, they seemed to conduct considerable trade, in spite of the fact that the landing of freight had to be done by lighter. That meant there was no reason to believe the more sophisticated nuclear weapons might not be available to these belligerent female warriors.

They had chosen to land him at night.

The space launch zipped in to come to a halt on the far edge of what was obviously a gigantic airport, sometimes utilized for at least minor spacecraft. It came to a halt but nobody made motion to disembark. The administration buildings were at least three miles away.

Guy Thomas looked at the major.

She said, “You’re coming in incognito, obviously. There’ll be a hovercar out shortly.”

A hovercar. Guy Thomas had to bring himself up sharply. Why not? They had this modern space launch, didn’t they? Why shouldn’t they use hovercars? It was just that their uniforms simulated the armor of antiquity to such a point that he wouldn’t have really been surprised had they got about on the surface in chariots. But, of course, that was silly.

Shortly, they could make out the landcraft gliding toward them at a breakneck speed. It came to a halt, settled to the ground. There was no driver. He realized he was continuing to be a flat about his anticipations. Obviously, automation was no mystery to Amazonia. Why should it be?

But he stirred unhappily. The technical progress of this world certainly didn’t seem to jibe with its social institutions. He thought about it uncomfortably. Or did it? Was he so chauvinistic, as a male, that he identified an advanced economy with man’s domination of the sexes? Why should Amazonia be backward, just because women were in the saddle? He had no reason to so expect. But he still felt uncomfortably unhappy.

“Come along, Sweety,” Clete said. They left the launch’s pilot behind to take care of his craft. The four of them got into the hovercar, a large limousine affair, and the major immediately turned a knob. The windows went opaque. She fingered controls and the vehicle rose and got under way.

Guy said, “Can’t we even see out the windows?” The major said, “We don’t want anyone to spot you, even though you are in men’s clothes now.”

Lysippe said, as though unthinking, “Turn it over to polar.”

The major looked at her. Lysippe said, “Well, why not?”

“Shut up,” the major said.

Guy said, “You can switch the screen so we can look out but no one can look in?”

The major started to say something, shut her mouth sourly and turned the knob again. They were passing the administration buildings of the transportation complex and heading out onto what was obviously a major roadway. It was all as modern as anything Guy Thomas could remember having seen.

Nor, for that matter, were the streets of Themiscyra as different as all that from Greater Washington or any of the other larger Earthside cities such as New Copenhagen, Peking or Lagos. Largely, that was due to the fact that for the past half century Earth architecture had been going through an antiquity revival phase which involved exteriors, at least, looking like the buildings of ages past. To Guy’s taste, it was all on the far-out side, what with a Florentine palace standing cheek to jowl with a Babylonian temple, next in its turn to a Zuni adobe pueblo. A phase, undoubtedly, but the quicker it passed the better, so far as he was concerned.

Actually, he had to admit he preferred Themiscyra. Situated on both banks of a winding river, something like Nouvelle Paris, architecture was based on ancient Greek. Or, at least, a modernized ancient Greek, if that made sense. It occured to Guy Thomas that present day man knew precious little about Greek architecture save for a few temples and theatres that had come down through the ages. The Parthenon and Theseum in Athens and the even better preserved Greek temples in Magna Graecia of Southern Italy, and on Sicily. But what had the ancient Greeks themselves lived in? What sort of house did Pericles or Aristotle call home? He didn’t know, and he rather doubted than anyone else did.

Which hadn’t prevented the Amazonians from using their imagination. And their imagination was tasteful—give them that. The city was a planned dream. Wide boulevards, spacious parks and plazas. An unbelievable number of fountains, monuments and statuary. Marble and stone predominated as building materials, especially on the grand boulevards.

It was well into the night and the streets were comparatively free of pedestrains and of motor vehicles. However, Guy, staring in obvious fascination, could make out a few of the citizenry, in spite of the speed at which the major was hurrying them through to their destination. She was obviously pushing to get him under wraps, soonest. Well, considering the circumstances, that was understandable to Guy Thomas.

Those pedestrians he did see, set him back somewhat. He had gained the impression from the major, Clete, Minythyia and Lysippe that all Amazons, or nearly all, were warriors and hence probably garbed in much the same manner as were his guards. To the contrary, he spied no uniforms whatsoever on the streets, save what were probably some form of police involved with traffic. But what surprised him even more was that at the speed they were traveling, and due partially without doubt to the darkness, he couldn’t distinguish woman from man. There didn’t seem to be enough difference in dress to differentiate. Every pedestrian he saw in the half light could have been either man or woman, so far as clothing was concerned.

But then he brought himself up abruptly as a new thought occured. Possibly all of these citizens he was seeing were women. Was the institution of the gynaecum so strong that men, particularly married men, were not allowed on the streets at all? Or could it be that they simply were not allowed out after dark? Some of the things he had read about the Arabian harem, the Turkish seraglio, came back to him. Could a person really be forced to spend his adult lifetime in the confined quarters of a few rooms? What difference between that and prison?

He got the impression that the major was trying to direct them down back streets. But whether or not that was true and for whatever reason, they eventually pulled up before a two-story building of some magnitude which reminded Guy vaguely of the reconstructed Agora in Athens.

“Where are we?” he said.

The major was opening the hovercar’s hatch. “One of the bachelor sanctuaries,” she said.

He didn’t ask what that meant. For one thing, it seemed self-explanatory; for another, he realized he’d soon find out.

“Come along, Sweety,” Clete said.

They hurried him up a walk, through a rather elaborate garden which surrounded the building, and to a door. There were neither doorman nor guards. Somehow, he had expected a guard. Some burly wench, possibly, to keep off the predatory warriors bent on acquiring a husband or two.

Lysippe threw open the door and held it for them. Guy went on through, the major following.

The major looked back over her shoulder and said, “What in the name of the Goddess is the matter with you two?”

Lysippe was embarassed. “I’ve never been in one of these places.”

“Me either,” Clete said.

“It’d be like going into a beauty parlor,” Lysippe said. She squirmed her shoulders under her military cloak.

The major said in disgust. “All right, you two flats. Stay out here. I won’t be long. There’s nothing to be done tonight.” She slammed the door shut behind her. However, Guy Thomas got the impression that she wasn’t any too happy about this atmosphere herself.

He looked about him. The place wasn’t as offbeat as all that. It looked like an apartment hotel, minus much in the way of public rooms. Perhaps the public rooms, lounges, reading rooms, restaurant, card rooms and such were tucked away here and there in other parts of the building.

“Where’s my luggage?” he demanded. They had taken that down the first day, and he hadn’t seen it since.

“Already in your room,” the major said. “Where in the name of Artimis is that confounded cloddy?”

A figure came hurrying toward them.

A wrist fluttered. “Oh dear, I am so very sorry, my sweets. I didn’t truly, not truly, expect you for another half hour or so. Please forgive me, Major. And you, my dear boy, I’m sure you’re simply exhausted.”

Guy Thomas closed his eyes in pain.

He shouldn’t have. He opened them again just in time to avoid getting himself kissed on the cheek.

“Zen!” he said, taking a half-step backward.

The major bit out, “Citizen Guy Thomas, of Earth; Bachelor Podner Bates.” She looked at Guy. “Bachelor Bates is in charge of this sanctuary. He’ll take care of you. Clete and Lysippe are stationed in quarters across the street. Their number is on the vizo-phone table in your room. So is mine. In any emergency, the smallest beginning of emergency, call either or both numbers. Don’t leave this building alone under any circumstances, understand? The Hippolyte and her council will interview you tomorrow. They wouldn’t be at all happy if something happened so that you were unable to complete your mission. Evidently, this need for columbium is much more pressing than I had thought. Frankly, I don’t know much about mineral matters.”

“Oh, it’s so lovely to meet you,” Podner Bates gushed.

Guy Thomas winced perceptibly again. The other, although approximately of Guy’s own weight and build, and, for that matter, dressed almost identically, projected an effeminancy that would have passed for slapstick comedy in a Greater Washington floorshow. His obviously artifically curled hair alone was enough.

“Thanks,” Guy got out. He looked at the major. “Who’s the Hippolyte?”

“Who’s the Hippolyte! Are you being funny?”

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

“Don’t you cloddies back on Earth know anything at all about Amazonia?”

He was embarassed. “Frankly, you don’t encourage much intercourse. I know as little about your institutions as you seem to know about ours.”

She glowered at him. “The Hippolyte is the living reincarnation of the Hippolyte!” She spun, so that her cloak billowed out, and snapped over her shoulder. “I’ll be here in the morning. Keep your windows barred.” She was gone, slamming the door behind her.

Guy looked at Podner Bates.

Podner giggled. “Isn’t she handsome?” He sighed. “If I could just land one like that, goodness!” He flutttered a wrist. “But I suppose I’m getting along now, they’re not so gallant anymore.” He added archly, “You’d never know that a few years ago I was the beau of Themiscyra. Before those filthy Lybians killed my wife, of course.”

Guy Thomas said, “Uh, look, uh, Bachelor Bates—”

“Oh, darling, just call me Podner.”

Guy scowled at him. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that name before.”

Podner giggled. “It was my sainted father. Ordinarily, he was very masculine, but he did love to watch the old, old historical Tri-Di tapes, from Earth. The wild, wild West.” Bates fluttered a hand. “He did so love a Western. Podner was one of the most popular names used in those old days. So nothing would do but he must name me Podner.”

Guy looked at him bitterly.

“You’re lucky he didn’t call you Stranger,” he muttered.

“I beg your pardon, darling?”

Guy said, “What’s the chance of showing me my room?”

“Your suite, you mean. Oh, you’re quite the honored guest, you know.” Podner began to trip along, leading the way. “Oh, dear, it must be so impossibly exciting to have come from far, far Earth. Imagine! I have simply never met a person, not a single person, who has ever been over-space.”

Guy fell in step beside the other. He said, “I understand a few of your people get to Earth as diplomatic personnel, and a few more go out on trade missions.”

“Oh yes, but that’s women’s work, of course. Goodness, I wouldn’t dream of being so effeminate as to forget my place and…”

Guy looked at him.

“What’s the matter, darling?” Podner said. They had reached a door in the hallway on the second floor. The Amazonian bachelor began to push it open.

When they got into the small living room, before looking around, Guy said, “Look. I’ll make this brief, but I’d like to try to make it stick. The next person, man, woman or child that makes another crack suggesting I’m effeminate, I’m going to award a very fat lip!”

His guide was taken aback. “A very fat lip?” he wavered.

“A bust in the mouth.”

“Oh, dear, you’re so unmanly.”

Guy Thomas closed his eyes. “I give up,” he muttered.

He looked about the room. It was furnished approximately as he would have expected an apartment hotel for bachelor women to be furnished back on Earth. Comfortable enough, but by no stretch of earthside imagination could it have been called a man’s quarters. He shrugged resignation, and walked into the bedroom, which was even more in the way of frills and lace, and then stuck his head into the refresher room.

“How do you like it?” Podner gushed. “I’m truly sorry we couldn’t have done better, but the sanctuary is literally overflowing. It’s all a boy can do to be out on the streets these days. I do hope that the new raids on the Lybians will release some of the pressure on we bachelor types.” He giggled. “It is sort of fun, though. You know what I mean, being so much in…” he giggled again “…demand.”

“It’s fine,” Guy said. “The suite, I mean, not being pursued by bands of panting women. And now, if you don’t mind, I have to see the Hippolyte tomorrow, whoever the Hippolyte is. Which reminds me. Who, or what, is an Hippolyte?”

“But the major told you, darling.”

Guy looked at him.

Podner said, “Oh, you know. I’m not really superstitious myself, but I do think all these old traditions and all are really very sweet, don’t you?”

“What’s the Hippolyte?”

“My dear boy, Hippolyte of the Golden Girdle of Ares. Hippolyte of the famous battle axe. The queen of the Amazons, who was betrayed by Heracles.”

Some of it vaguely came back to Guy Thomas from high school mythology. “What’s all that got to do with here and now?”

“Oh now, really, darling. Is it different on other planets? So many of the traditions of antiquity are called upon today, simply for the sake of, why, oh dear, I don’t know. It’s always been so. Remember how in your own Earth history that the name of Caesar and the title of Imperator was used for a thousand and more years after Julius himself died? The German Kaiser, the Russian Czar, the British Emperor Rex.”

Guy said, “So the present government of, uh, Paphlagonia has a queen they call Hippolyte. And she’s supposed to be a reincarnation of the last Hippolyte, and she of the one before. And, I suppose, all the way back to the mythological Hippolyte who had her belt swiped by Heracles as one of his twelve labors.”

Podner giggled. “You make it sound so silly.” He fluttered a hand. “But I suppose that’s about it. Actually, of course, when the Hippolyte dies, a new one is elected by representatives from each of the families.”

“Families?”

Podner looked at him archly. “Oh, not families in the usual sense. From the clans, darling. The genos, as the Greeks called them, or the Roman gens.”

Guy Thomas was out of his depth. “All right,” he said. “So tomorrow I’m to meet the chief of state and her council.”

“Good heavens, how exciting. Men so seldom have the opportunity to even see the Hippolyte, not to speak of talking with her. She’s impatient of masculine chatter, so I’m told. Won’t you just be terrified, dear?”

“I hope not,” Guy muttered. “But look, I’ve got to go to bed. Is there anything else?”

“Oh dear no,” Podner fluttered. “Do forgive me for keeping you up so long. When you wish breakfast, just switch on the orderbox and call for it. And now, do get your beauty sleep.”

“Goodnight,” Guy said.

When the other was gone, he stood for a long moment in the center of the living room, in thought. He let his eyes go around the apartment. After a time he went to the door and threw the lock. It looked adequate.

He went to the window then, opened it and looked out. It faced on the garden, which completely surrounded the building. He could see down the boulevard, toward the center of town. There was a statue in a plaza not two blocks away. They hadn’t passed it in the hovercar on the way in from the spaceport. A woman, what seemed to be a quiver of arrows on her back, her hand resting on some sort of animal. A dog? No, it looked more like a deer. It came to him. A colossal statue of Diana the Huntress. He sought through his memory and nodded. He knew where he was in the city of Themiscyra.

He closed the window. There was a knob to polarize the window glass. He turned it.

He stood in the center of the room again, looking about. Finally he pulled the ring from his finger, took it in his left hand and with the nail of his little finger, activated it by flicking an all but microscopic stud.

He started at the orderbox and the vizo-phone on the table near the bed, passing the ring over and about, slowly, carefully. There was no reaction. Slowly then, he went about the rest of the room, over each piece of furniture, over each decorative device, up and down the walls. And then into the refresher room.

It took him a full half hour. Finally he nodded. The room was either not bugged, or if it was, the device was so sophisticated that his equipment couldn’t detect it. He deactivated his sweeper ring, put it back on his finger, and took up the tool kit which Clete had examined so thoroughly on the Schirra. He opened it on the center table of the small living room.

He pulled out the cutter drill and twisted it expertly. It fell apart into three separate pieces. He laid the pistol grip to one side and picked up another of the tools. This twisted apart as well, this time into two units. He took one of them and attached it to the pistol grip. Still a third tool divided under his fingers. He added a part of it to the pistol grip which was metamorphosing into an entirely different device from that which it had started out.

He looked at it thoughtfully, reached down into the kit and came up with a medium sized capsule. He slugged it home into the butt, threw the charge lever and then the safety. He stuck the gun into his tunic and under the belt which held his flowing garment together.

He looked around the room again, as though checking, shook his head and returned the various tools which he had strewn about the table to the tool kit and put it into a closet. He turned the lights out and stepped to the windows and threw them open.

The nearest light of any brilliance at all was over on the boulevard. Occasionally a hovercar passed, but there were no pedestrians in sight for the moment. It was getting late.

He swung a leg over the window ledge, lowered himself carefully. His toes, mountain-climber educated, sought proturberances and found them. He had noted earlier that the decorative motif of the building allowed ample scope for the educated climber. He slowly worked his way down the wall to the garden.

He stood there for a long moment, listening. There was nothing.

He made his way over to the boulevard and openly strode along it. He walked the better part of a kilometer, stopped for awhile, scowling, at a crossroad, then decided and turned right. The street was narrower here. Narrower and darker. Evidently, the Amazonians had no particular reason to over-illuminate their capital city during the night hours.

He walked somewhat more rapidly now. He had not wanted to attract what little traffic there had been on the boulevard by a hurried pace. This was different.

Twenty minutes later, he paused again, then turned to his left, down a way that could have been described more as an alley than a street. It was darker still, but his eyes were used to the dim now.

It came as an utter surprise when bright light flashed from ahead and to one side of him, and a beam reached out, searchingly, missing him by but a fraction. He could hear brick chipping away on the wall behind him.

He flung himself to the side and down, the gun instantly in his hand.

Guy Thomas had been partially blinded, for a moment, by the flash from the other’s weapon, a type of arm he had never come up against before.

He heard a shuffling in the dark before him. His opponent was evidently shifting position before resuming the attack, obviously avoiding a return of fire in the direction from whence the destructive beam had come.

“Holy Jumping Zen,” the Earthman muttered under his breath. “This wasn’t in the script!” He thumbed off the safety stud on his gun.