Guy Thomas was shaking his head. “He didn’t make his destination. The United Planets Assembly, which, of course, is composed of delegates from every member planet, never heard his plaint.”
Teucer, indignant, shrilled, “How come?”
Guy looked at him. “Sarpedon appeared at the Octagon in Greater Washington. He was turned over to the Interplanetary Department of Justice which listened to his story and decided against letting him speak before the Assembly. He gave us your passwords, and where we could make contact with you. He turned over charts and city plans of Themiscyra. Of course, when I was given this assignment, I memorized them. We located him in an apartment, with the intention of keeping him in Greater Washington until we could look further into his complaint. Frankly, he was a hot potato. A few days later, he disappeared, leaving most of his effects, even personal ones, in the apartment. Needless to say, we suspected the worst. There is no possible way to exist on Earth as it is today, without such things as credit cards. Even the credit card we had issued him had been left behind.”
“What I don’t get,” Zeke said lowly, “is the Octagon and this Department of Interplanetary Justice getting in his way to speaking his piece in front of the Assembly. That would’ve given us a chance.”
Guy looked at him in silence for a long moment, his mouth pursed in perplexity, as though wondering how to phrase what he had next to say.
Finally, “Zeke, Teucer, don’t read more into the United Planets than is there. It’s a very loosely knit organization and practically powerless. It isn’t and was never meant to be a super-government. If it attempted to be, the member planets would drop away until for all practical purposes Earth would stand alone as a member.”
They were frowning unhappily at his words, unhappily and half unbelievingly.
He shook his head. “In actuality, most planets join the orgaization to be assured of not being interfered with. They want protection against their neighboring worlds which have possibly different political, socioeconomic or religious institutions than their own. Aren’t you familiar with Articles One and Two of the UP Charter?”
They were uncomprehending.
Guy sighed. “I thought every schoolkid learned them by heart. They go like this. Article One: The United Planets organization shall take no steps to interfere with the internal political, socioeconomic, or religious institutions of its member planets. Article Two: No member planet of United Planets shall interfere with the internal political, socioeconomic or religious institutions of any other member planet.”
“You mean,” Teucer accused, “you’re’ not allowed to help us?”
Guy shook his head. “Not by United Planets law. What happens on Amazonia is strictly the business of Amazonia and nobody else’s. If we employees of UP began to stick noses in the affairs of the Hippolyte, she’d simply drop out of the organization and if we continued to interfere it would mean war. And, I assure you, a thousand other member planets who don’t wish their internal affairs to be pried into, would take a very dim view of the UP Space Forces being aggressors against a planet which has shown no hostility to any other worlds.”
Zeke blurted hotly, “Then what do you do? What good is the nardy organization?”
Guy Thomas waited for him to cool off before going on. “We explore and patrol space. We try to promote trade and foster progress. If the medical researchers of one planet discover an improved cure for cancer, or whatever, we make every effort to spread the new discovery, avoiding, of necessity, such planets as Eddy, which was colonized by Christian Scientists. If some planet seems about to interfere with the affairs of some other, then we take the most aggressive step in our power. We send the fleet, in all its might, to go into protective orbit about the threatened world. Never has actual combat ensued, the warning is sufficient. The UP fleet, needless to say, could blow the strongest planet into nothingness within split seconds. It has never had occasion to, obviously.”
Teucer glared at him. “Why’d you bother to come, then? You aren’t willing to help us! You’ll stand by and let a billion men and more be treated like slaves, like zombies, like…”
Guy said mildly, “I haven’t been on Amazonia very long, admittedly, but from what I’ve seen you have a surprisingly advanced technology. This is by no means one of the have-not worlds.”
“Yes!” Teucer snarled. “And why? Because we men produce it. We slave our lives away and don’t even have a voice in the nardy government that shoves us around like we were children. You don’t know what it’s like, Thomas! Why’d you bother to come?”
“I’ll answer that,” Guy said cautiously. “First of all, realize that although the UP Charter ties the hands of the Octagon when an appeal like yours comes through—there have been others, the United Planets is not composed exclusively of Utopias. Though our hands are legally tied, we are not insensitive to your situation. I am, of course, incognito. I landed in the guise of an expediter from the Department of Interplanetary Trade, to arrange a deal between Amazonia and Avalon. My real job is to locate you people and get the full story.”
“But what good can it possibly do us?”
Guy Thomas said very carefully, “You never know. Just out of curiosity, what is it you need to promote your cause? Money? I never heard of a revolutionary organization that didn’t need money.”
“Money?” Teucer grunted bitterly. “We don’t use money here.”
“That’s right, one of you mentioned that. How do you carry on exchange? There’s always some equivalent to money.”
“Not on Amazonia. There is no exchange. We keep telling you, this is the most far-out dictatorship you ever ran into in all your United Planets.”
Guy was frowning puzzlement at him. He said, “On anarchist planets, such as Kropotkin, yes. I can understand no medium of exchange. They utilize simple barter. But an advanced world such as Amazonia?”
The scarecrow of a man wrenched a wallet from a purselike affair that hung from his belt. He pulled a plastic card forth and shook it at the agent from Earth. “I work, see? Every hour I put in is credited to me in the computers. Every time I spend something, I put this card up against the credit screen and the amount is deducted.”
“What amount?” Guy said. “You said you didn’t have money.”
Suppose I want to buy a camera. They’ve figured out just how long it took to produce that camera, the number of hours to extract the aluminum in its body, the time to grind the lenses, everything. The total number of hours involved. Say it’s two hours. Then it costs me two hours of my time—I work in sewage disposal—to buy the camera. The computers keep track of the whole thing.”
Guy said, “Well, suppose you wanted to buy a hovercar, something like that which would take hundreds of hours to produce?”
“What do you think? The computers won’t let me buy it until I’ve saved up that number of hours.”
Guy was frowning. “You say you work in the sanitary system. But suppose another man was a…well, research chemist, a highly trained scientist. How would he be awarded these hour credits?”
“Exactly the same,” Zeke said in disgust. “The smartest man in the country doesn’t get anything more for his time, than the dumbest moron. In fact, he gets less, if you want to look at it that way. The moron gets taken care of for free, the big brain has to work if he wants to eat.”
Guy thought about it for awhile. “There’s no way for you to get ahead, really, eh? What’s your initiative? Why bother to try at all?”
“Initiative!” Zeke said, still bitterly. “Our initiative is that we like to eat.”
A window was beginning to gray with the first of dawn.
Guy, shaking his head, finished his wine and said, “There’s a lot still to go over but I suppose it’ll have to wait until I meet this Damon of yours. How can we get in touch with each other?”
“Where are you staying?” Zeke said.
Guy told him.
“One of those semi-prisons for single men,” Teucer sneered.
“Thus far,” Guy told him, “it’s been quite comfortable.”
“Jails can be comfortable, but they’re still jails.”
Zeke said, “All right, all right, Teucer. We can’t convert him all at once. Listen, Guy, I don’t know if we can contact you there or not. I don’t know what kind of guard they’ve got over you. We’ll find out; we’ve got spies everywhere. But you can always reach us here. This is one of our drops. If anything happens to this place, here’s the address of another.” He handed Guy a paper. “Memorize it, and destroy it. We take every precaution we can, but I guess you can be trusted. I guess you’re more up on these things than we are.”
Guy said, “Why do you guess that?”
Zeke looked at him. “I get the impression this isn’t the first assignment of this type you’ve been on.”
Guy said nothing to that.
Zeke said, “The first impression you give is kind of ineffectual, but if you look below the surface…”
Guy Thomas shrugged and came to his feet. “You can trust me,” he said. “I’d better be getting back.”
“You’ve got a shooter, eh? You said you winged whoever it was tried to crisp you.”
“Yes,” I’m armed.”
“How’d you ever get it past those custom mopsies? They’ve got a reputation.”
“We’ve got ways,” Guy said shortly.
Zeke saw him to the door.
Before leaving, Guy said, “How many men do you have in your organization, Zeke?”
The other hesitated. “Active? Thousands, tens of thousands. I mean real members of the Sons of Liberty. But inactive sympathizers who’ll rally round when the time comes? At least half the population. Half the men, that is.”
Guy said slowly, “How many of them are like Teucer?”
Zeke scowled, uncomprehending. “What’s the matter with Teucer?”
Guy said, “He’s not the most educated type in the world, and he’s on the emotional side. I’ve seen revolutionary organizations before, Zeke. In the clutch, you want…”
“Aw, Teucer’s all right. You got to get used to him.”
“How many have you got like Teucer?” Guy repeated. Zeke rubbed the bottom of his chin with a beefy paw. “Too many,” he growled. He opened the door for the Octagon operative. “He’s from Lybia,” he added. “On the run from the police over there. We’re hiding him out temporarily, till we can figure where to use him.” As a safety measure, Guy took a different route home, and covered the distance considerably more cautiously than he had in coming.
His gun was handy to his fingers, and he stopped at each street crossing, looking both ways. He wanted no repetition of the ambush of a couple of hours earlier. Pure luck had saved him there and pure luck seldom blesses you twice running.
The slower pace he had to take, to eliminate any further chance of attempted assassination, conflicted with his need to get back to his quarters before full dawn. He agonized, but there was nothing for it.
By the time he reached the sanctuary, it was too light to attempt to scale the wall to his window. Too great a chance that he would be spotted.
He marched deliberately up to the door through which the major had ushered him, some hours earlier, grasped the knob and pushed his way through. Again he was surprised at the lack of guard, or even lock. To hear the major and the others, a man wasn’t safe in the vicinity of a warrior who had less than three husbands in her home. How did this jibe with the fact that this building full of bachelors was so easily entered?
He started up the stairway to the second floor where his small suite was located.
A voice tittered, “Oh, good heavens! Where have you been, darling?” It was Podner Bates, coming down.
Guy said, making his voice grumpy, “I couldn’t sleep. I decided to take a walk.”
“A walk! Artimis! Dear boy, don’t you realize your freedom isn’t worth a nicker, not a flicker, out on those streets? Suppose some young warrior had spotted you?”
They’d met half way down the stairs.
Guy said, “Search me. What would have happened?”
Podner flicked his wrist, flabbergasted. “My dear, haven’t you been informed at all? Any warrior whosoever who spots you and decides she likes you, can simply place her hand on your shoulder and say, I thee take. Your only recourse, if you object to being taken under her wing, is to throw yourself on the mercy of some warrior you like better. If she refuses you, for whatever reason, darling, then you must…” Podner arched his eyebrows “…give yourself to the one who claimed you.”
Guy said, “I was just walking along the street, trying to think, getting a breath of air. How’d one of these warriors know I wasn’t already married?”
Podner fluttered, even as he turned to accompany Guy back to his suite. “Darling, you’re so naive. You see how my tunic tucks up over my shoulder here? That proclaims, me a widower. I am eligible for the taking, of course, but…” he cleared his throat delicately “…of course, it’s virgins that are always in demand.”
“Virgins?” Guy said blankly.
He looked at the shoulder of his own tunic.
“Your garb,” Podner tittered, “proclaims you to one and all a virgin.”
Guy Thomas closed his eyes in pain.
VI
Podner Bates saw him to his suite, gossiping along as they went.
Guy felt a coldness in his stomach. Along the way, had he run into any man-seeking Amazon, it would have either been a matter of shooting her, or submitting to the damnedest marriage custom he had ever heard of.
I thee take, yet! How informal could you get? And didn’t the man, or even the man’s parents, have anything to say about it? In all his readings on far-out societies, and they had some dillies in United Planets, Guy Thomas had never run into one quite this cavalier.
“How come?” he blurted to Podner, in protest.
“I beg your pardon, darling?” They were nearly to his door.
“Why’s it so easy for a…a warrior to latch onto any man who comes along? Isn’t there any way of avoiding being up for grabs?”
“Oh dear,” Podner sighed. “It’s so hard to realize you aren’t familiar with our ways. It seems so natural to me. Well, let me think. I have heard that wooing is somewhat different on your unnatural planets.”
“Unnatural?”
“Where…” Podner giggled delicately “…where we boys dominate. It’s so hard to believe, isn’t it? Anyway, I understand the Goddess Artimis first revealed her desires pertaining to a warrior taking a mate, when the early colony ships set down on Amazonia. She saw in her infinite wisdom that the need was to be…” Podner coughed gently “…fertile and populate the land. Girls were proclaimed warriors at the age of fourteen, and everything facilitated to hurry them into a relationship. If the medicos permitted, the first child was on its way at not later than fifteen.” Podner giggled. “As you can imagine, obstetrics was quite our foremost science. It has progressed to the point where a warrior is inconvenienced for but a week or so.”
Guy shook his head, his hand on the doorknob of his suite. “Thanks for the information. I’ll know, next time, to be more careful. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell the major about my little jaunt. She had already told me to stay put.”
Podner fluttered a hand. “Oh, don’t you worry. I’m no tattletale. We boys have to stick together.”
Guy Thomas closed the door behind him and looked warily in the direction of his still unrumpled bed. But then he did a quick double-take. His eyes were suddenly wide, sleep forgotten.
The room was a shambles. His things had been ransacked, and no effort made to disguise the fact. He stood rooted, his mind whirling. This made no sense at all. It made no more sense than his being shot at on his way to contact the Sons of Liberty. There was no reason for him to be an assassin’s target. There was no need to ransack his belongings.
He began gathering them together. He had had no time, earlier, to properly unpack, and his clothe
s and personal belongings had remained in his luggage. Now they were scattered about the bed, on the table, on chairs. Some of them thrown to the floor.
His tool kit had been emptied, helter skelter, on the table top where he himself had assembled his gun, earlier, from its disguised component parts. He went over each item he had brought with him from Earth, in careful memory. For a time, he could find nothing missing, but then a cold fear went through him. He sought frantically.
His communicator. It wasn’t actually gone. He found it, or rather its remains. Someone had obviously crushed it under heel and then kicked it under the bed, deliberately, as though in contempt.
His communicator.
He had lost his only method of contact with either the UP Embassy on its artificial satellite, or with Earth itself. He was stranded on the planet Amazonia, from which no man had ever been known to escape, save the revolutionist Sarpedon, in the memory of any living person.
Guy Thomas was baffled. But who? It made no sense. No sense at all. Podner Bates came to his mind. The only person who knew he was here, save the major and her underlings. The major? But why? They had searched his things with painful care on the ship. There was hardly reason to search them again. Besides, who could possibly have known he wasn’t in his room? Who could have expected to come burgling without resistance on his part?
Burgling? No. Nothing was gone, nothing bothered, save his communicator. The only thing that made sense at all was that someone had known he wasn’t in his rooms and had entered deliberately to find and destroy his communicator.
And there was just one hole in that theory. The sophisticated communication device was not even known to exist outside the bounds of his own department, and his department was a close-knit, dedicated outfit, far beyond all others in UP.
Guy Thomas had had too much tossed at him in the past twenty-four hours. He threw himself, face down, on his bed. He was asleep in moments. He awoke surprisingly rejuvenated, at half-past eight. He made his way into the elaborate refresher room, shedding his slept-in clothing as he went and was fully under the spray before allowing himself to dwell on the past and the future.
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