Thy Name Is Woman Part 2

How ironic it was, there at the last! All of man's work through the ages had been aimed at the stars. And the women had a.s.sumed the final phase of conquest!

For a long time women had been revolting against the masculine symbols, the levers, pistons, bombs, torpedoes and hammers, all manifestations of man's whole activity of overt, aggressive power.

The big H-bombs of the last great war had seemed to be man's final symbol, destructive. And after that, the s.p.a.ceships, puncturing s.p.a.ce, roaring outward, the ultimate masculine symbol of which men had dreamed for so long, and which women had envied.

And then only the women could stand the acceleration. It was a physiological fact. Nothing could change it. Nothing but what they had done to Bowren.

All of man's evolutionary struggle, and the women had a.s.sumed the climax, a.s.sumed all the past wrapped up in the end, usurped the effect, and thereby psychologically a.s.suming also all the thousands of years of causation.

For being held down, being made neurotic by frustration and the impossibility of being the "equal" of men, because they were fundamentally psychologically and physiologically different, women had taken to s.p.a.ce with an age-old vengeance. Personal ego salvation.

But they hadn't stopped there. What had they done? What about the men? A man for every woman, yet no men from Earth. That much Bowren knew.

Native Martians? What?

He had been transported somewhere in a car of some kind. He didn't bother to be interested. He couldn't get away. He was held fast. He refused to open his eyes because he didn't want to see the men who held him, the men who had replaced him and every other man on Earth. The men who were destroying the civilization of Earth.

The gimmicks whereby the women had rejected Earth and left it to wither and die in neglect and bitter, bitter wonderment.

He was tired, very tired. The movement of the car lulled him, and he drifted into sleep.

He opened his eyes and slowly looked around. Pretty pastel ceiling. A big room, beautiful and softly furnished, with a marked absence of metal, of shiny chrome, of harshness or brittle angles. It was something of an office, too, with a desk that was not at all business-like, but still a desk. A warm glow suffused the room, and the air was pleasantly scented with natural smelling perfumes.

A woman stood in the middle of the room studying him with detached interest. She was beautiful, but in a hard, mature, withdrawn way. She was dark, her eyes large, liquid black and dominating her rather small sharply-sculptured face. Her mouth was large, deeply red. She had a strong mouth.

He looked at her a while. He felt only a deep, bitter resentment. He felt good though, physically. He had probably been given something, an injection. He sat up. Then he got to his feet.

She kept on studying him. "A change of clothes, dry detergent, and hair remover for your face are in there, through that door," she said.

He said: "Right now I'd rather talk."

"But don't you want to take off that awful--beard?"

"The devil with it! Is that so important? It's natural isn't it for a man to have hair on his face? I like hair on my face."

She opened her mouth a little and stepped back a few steps.

"And anyway, what could be less important right now than the way I look?"

"I'm--I'm Gloria Munsel," she said hesitantly. "I'm President of the City here. And what is your name, please?"

"Eddie Bowren. What are you going to do with me?"

She shrugged. "You act like a mad man. I'd almost forgotten what you men of Earth were like. I was pretty young then. Well, frankly, I don't know what we're going to do with you. No precedent for the situation. No laws concerning it. It'll be up to the Council."

"It won't be pleasant for me," he said, "I can be safe in a.s.suming that."

She shrugged again and crossed her arms. He managed to control his emotions somehow as he looked at the smooth lines of her body under the long clinging gown. She was so d.a.m.n beautiful! A high proud body in a smooth pink gown, dark hair streaming back and shiny and soft.

It was torture. It had been for a long time, for him, for all the others. "Let me out of here!" he yelled harshly. "Put me in a room by myself!"

She moved closer to him and looked into his face. The fragrance of her hair, the warmth of her reached out to him. Somehow, he never knew how, he managed to grin. He felt the sweat running down his dirty, bearded, battered face. His suit was torn and dirty. He could smell himself, the stale sweat, the filth. He could feel his hair, s.h.a.ggy and long, down his neck, over his ears.

Her lips were slightly parted, and wet, and she had a funny dark look in her eyes, he thought. She turned quickly as the door opened, and a man came in. He was only slightly taller than Gloria and he nodded, smiled brightly, bowed a little, moved forward. He carried a big bouquet of flowers and presented them to her.

She took the flowers, smiled, thanked him, and put them on the table.

The man said. "So sorry, darling, to intrude. But I felt I had to see you for a few minutes. I left the children with John, and dashed right up here. I thought we might have lunch together."

"You're so thoughtful, dear," she said.

The man turned a distasteful look upon Bowren. He said. "My dear, what is _this_?"

"A man," she said, and then added. "From Earth."

"What? Good grief, you mean they've found a way--?"

"I don't know. You'd better go back home and tend the yard today, Dale.

I'll tell you all about it when I come home this evening. All right?"

"Well I--oh, oh yes, of course, if you say so, darling."

"Thank you, dear." She kissed him and he bowed out.

She turned and walked back toward Bowren. "Tell me," she said. "How did you get here alive?"

Why not tell her? He was helpless here. They'd find out anyway, as soon as they got back to Earth on the cargo run. And even if they didn't find out, that wouldn't matter either. They would be on guard from now on. No man would do again what Bowren had done. The only chance would be to build secret s.p.a.ceships of their own and every time one blasted, have every member of the crew go through what Bowren had. It couldn't last.

Too much injury and shock.

As he talked he studied the office, and he thought of other things. An office that was like a big beautiful living room. A thoroughly feminine office. Nor was it the type of office a woman would fix for a man. It was a woman's office. Everything, the whole culture here, was feminine.

When he had finished she said, "Interesting. It must have been a very unpleasant experience for you."

He grinned. "I suffered. But even though I've failed, it's worth all the suffering, if you'll tell me--where did all the ah--men come from?"

She told him. It was, to say the least, startling, and then upon reflection, he realized how simple it all was. No aliens. No native Martians. A very simple and thoroughly logical solution, and in a way, typically feminine.

Hormone treatment and genetic manipulation, plus a thorough reconditioning while the treatment was taking place.

_And the women had simply turned approximately half of their number into men!_

She paused, then went on. "It was the only way we could see it, Mr.

Bowren. Earth was a man's world, and we could never have belonged in it, not the way we wanted to. Men wouldn't stand it anyway, down there, having us going into s.p.a.ce, usurping their masculine role. And anyway--you men of Earth had become so utterly unsatisfactory as companions, lovers, and husbands, that it was obvious nothing could ever be done about it. Not unless we set up our own culture, our own civilization, our way."

"But meanwhile we die down there," Bowren said. "Logic is nice. But ma.s.s murder, and the death of a whole world civilization seems pretty cold from where I'm standing. It's pathological, but it's too late to think about that. It's done now."

"But we're happy here," she said. "For the first time in a long, long time, we women feel like ourselves. We feel truly independent. The men around us are the kind of men we want, instead of us being what they want us to be, or even worse, the men being what we want them to be but resenting it and making life unbearable for both. All through the process of being changed into men, our women undergo such a thorough conditioning that they can never be anything else but model men in every sense. Their att.i.tude as women with which they started treatment helped.

They knew what they wanted in men, and they became what we wanted them to be, as men."

"Very logical," Bowren said. "It smells to heaven it's so logical." It was purely impulse, what he did then. He couldn't help it. It wasn't logical either. It was emotional and he did it because he had to do it and because he didn't see any reason why he shouldn't.