Amazon Planet

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 clothes 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.

The past twenty-four hours bewildered him, and after only a quick mental review, he refused to dwell further on what had developed. He had too much to consider in the future.

When he had allowed the refresher to bathe, shave, trim his hair and massage him to glowing pinkness, he issued forth and began opening closets and drawers in search of fresh local raiment. He assumed that they had outfitted him with a supply and found he was correct.

In slipping into a tunic, he tried for a time to adjust the shoulder in the manner that Podner Bates had his. It didn’t work. The tuck was built in. He was going to have to remain a potential prey to any Amazon on the prowl.

Dressed, he went over to the orderbox which sat on the table next to his bed and flicked on the switch. He noted that the instrument was almost identical to those on Earth or on any of the other most advanced worlds. The Amazonians, obviously, kept up with developments. He was again impressed.

He said into it, “My breakfast, please, and if Bachelor Bates is available, could he come to my rpom?” And then he added, “Are there newspapers?”

“No, Bachelor Thomas.”

“Well, how do I tune on newscasts? What’s the drill for getting the news?”

“I do not understand what you mean by news, Bachelor Thomas,” the orderbox said. The voice was feminine, he noticed. Or what passed for feminine on this forsaken planet.

“New, news,” he said, surprised. “The day’s developments on Amazonia and throughout United Planets, for that matter. Political events, scientific developments, sports results, fires, wrecks, air and spacecraft crackups if any, criminal cases, that sort of thing. News.”