\"Planet of Men!\"

 

  STILL MORE SYNOPSIS!

I had originally thought of beginning this series 'in media res', (as Horace recommends!) and allowing Readers to discover the odd practices of this strange society for themselves as the tale unfolds. On second thoughts, I concluded that this might be a little too much of an imposition, and this further synopsis is intended to give those Readers who have persisted so far a basic introduction to my imaginary world.

 

  This is a planet much the same as Earth, but far older. Its mountains have been worn down, its great rivers wind and twist placidly across its continents on their way to the quiet oceans, and the temperature gradients across its latitudes are now too gentle to provide the energy for the storms of younger planets. Climactically quiescent, its temperatures varied from averages of eighty degrees on its Equator to forty at the poles, though its ice caps still return in the Winters.

 

  Its species of flora and fauna, pitifully few and lacking in variety by the teeming standards of Earth, cover the normal range: marine life forms in the seas; trees, bushes and grasses, worms and insects, birds and animals on land, but in only a very few varieties of type. The sole large mammal on the planet is a two-legged creature whose possession of a ludicrously large brain and opposable thumbs has won it the chief place amongst its few would-be competitors. This creature terms itself Man or human beings, and its species Mankind or humanity. But it is only the males of this species who reserve for themselves this description, the far more numerous females they call Women,* and they are so different as to be almost a different life-form. They are bigger and stronger than the males, though with life-spans a mere fraction of theirs at about seven years as opposed to about eighty. There are other, more significant differences between the sexes. The brains of the females, although as large or larger than those of Men, are severely limited. Unlike human beings they cannot converse either by telepathy or simple speech, lacking the mental capacity to do so even if their primitive voice-boxes could cope. They have no opposable thumbs, nor, indeed, digits of any description on their blunt fore paws upon which they walk by preference, although they can and do stand upright upon their hind-legs at need.

  *Or beasts, or animals. The word is the same in both their (single) spoken language and their mental one.

 

 The men, or human beings, of this planet are uneasily aware that, despite their manifest superiority over these animals, they are essentially parasitic upon them, for they rely on them for a constant supply of new human beings i.e. male babies. But, for reasons they can only speculate about, the vast majority of births are those of foals, female animals. During the yearly birthing season they must search amongst the scattered herds of wild women which roam their continents for the precious male babies. The superficially easier method of breeding from domesticated women was long ago found not to work; no human being has ever been born to tamed women, and even the females born to them deteriorate physically over two generations. (Indeed, it is for this reason that periodic raids are made upon the herds to replace the stock of domestic animals.)

 

  And now I must mention a subject the human beings of this planet found uncomfortable; that is, their essential part in the propagation of their species. No longer are they physically obliged to carry this out on each individual animal (fortunately a woman, once impregnated, continued to give birth for the few years of its breeding period; it would continously produce milk, too) as less inconvenient means had been discovered. But they must make sperm donations at regular periods, and all of them had experienced sexual intercourse with women as a youthful experiment, always with a young and reasonably attractive animal once she'd been cleaned up. And some of them continued this practice -- which was regarded as vaguely perverse -- long into middle age.

 

 Human beings are equally dependent upon their animals for meat, for clothing which they make from their pelts and woven hair, and for their milk from which they manufacture plastics and pharmaceuticals along with many other useful things. On a planet so metal-poor as theirs, women are used as draught animals, to pull their carts and ploughs, to pump their water and to generate their electricity; in short, to perform all the tasks motors are employed to do on Earth.

 

 This is not to say that the men of this planet are ignorant of such machines. On the contrary, they discovered their mechanical principles long ago and only the paucity of sufficient metals and the non-existence of any sort of industrial base prevent their widespread use. They do have personal, portable computers cum mobile message senders, but they are crudely constructed and somewhat unreliable; necessarily the case when each man must assemble and programme his own machine. They have ships, powered by the wind and by great paddle wheels turned by teams of women trudging around deep in the holds, and they have airships too, though they are few and rarely seen. They have a, more or less, efficient (by their own happy-go-lucky standards) land transport network for both goods and people, the former bring powered by great teams of the biggest and strongest animals and the latter by smaller teams of swifter animals (the so-called 'pacers'). Passenger travel operates on a rough and ready timetable, honoured more in the breach than the observance, and is the subject of universal complaint. But no-one ever does anything about it: this is, after all, a purely male society; ramshackle, slovenly and badly organised, relying on solving its problems at the very last moment by feats of brilliant improvisation rather than taking the obvious steps to resolve them by timely and obvious action. Their chief advantage over the human beings of Earth is their telepathic ability and their general mental powers. Together, enough of them can generate enough power to move objects physically over great distances, although the after-effects are physically and mentally debilitating. For the last few years they have been operating a series of mental probes deep into time and space. This they call the 'Dimension Gate'; it allows them to view creatures and events on other planets, and even to bring back small objects for further study. The whole operation takes but little power, and there are nearly always enough men sufficiently interested to volunteer their mental efforts on a regular basis.

 

  Another invention as yet unknown on Earth was their mechanical servants whom they collectively called 'Androids'; robots of human shape, hand-assembled and programmed at home by each individual man and as cranky and dubiously efficient as their computers. It was to these whom they deputed the disagreeable task of artificially impregnated the women in the short period each year when the animals came onto heat. They helped in other ways too, cleaning their houses, looking after their animals and helping around their farms, but all in a somewhat slipshod fashion. But this was, after all, a solely male society in which what was near enough was good enough!

 

  It was the Dimension Gate which provided the hero, 'Gershon', of my tale's official position in his society. In between farming his land and caring for his animals -- as nearly all men must -- he was second in seniority at the grandly entitled 'Faculty of XenoAnthropology' at the prestigeous 'Institute', the oldest Higher Education facility on the planet, rivalled only by the newer Eastern and Western Universities on the neighbouring continents. His Faculty was a newcomer, founded by Sisath, his older superior, who had argued for its essential existence for the study of intelligent life, if and when it was ever found, which some doubted. Despite the heated objections of the already existing Faculty of XenoBiology, who argued that their own remit adequately covered such an eventuality, Sisath, an elderly, irascible and energetic man, got his way, and Gershon, who had been one his students, had immediately been co-opted as second in command of the new and tiny Faculty. Alas! No such intelligence had yet been found on any of the twenty planets the Dimension Gate had scanned, but the new Faculty attracted its students none the less. The whole thing was, all agreed, jolly good fun; and Sisath gave good Dinners and was generous with the contents of his excellent cellar. And so matters proceeded on this planet where the ratio of the sexes had long been stabilised at one million widely scattered human beings to five hundred million women.

 

  My tale opens with an account of the final days of one of Gershon's obligatory annual expeditions into the interior of the continent in search of bands of wild women. Each year they must be tracked down, the new foals collared, and the ones nearing puberty given their adult collars in exchange. This signalled that the women had been seen and inspected by a human being, and ensured that any early indications of disease were learnt of well in advance of its possible spread. Also, of course, it enabled those men unfortunate enough to have to undergo these tedious tours to compensate themselves with taking away with them any of the animals they thought might be useful, either for use on their farms or to barter for accommodation on their long return journeys.

 

 I hope to develop this theme further, and would be most grateful for any comments or suggestions.

 

 "PASTORAL CARE."

 

CHAPTER ONE

 Gershon pulled back on the reins and halted his cart downwind of the little herd of wild women he'd been tracking for the last two days. Dismounting, he closed the blinkers over the eyes of the two women between the shafts and tied their reins to an iron-wood stake he thrust firmly into the thick turf of the steppe. Satisfied that the animals were secured, he took his bag and stick and walked away, his nostrils following the pungent woman-reek emanating from the nearby herd.

 

 He found them two hundred yards away, in one of the innumerable folds on the otherwise featureless landscape, feeding on the patch of fodder plants usually to be found in such places. They had been there some days and would soon have to move on in search of more food; they would have to move for another reason, too, for Gershon could now smell the distinctive metallic odour of a band of termagants. These huge, semi-intelligent, carnivorous insects preyed exclusively on women, but then, Gershon thought, so did a great many creatures, from the flies who laid their eggs and hatched their larvae under the skin of their backs, up to the little carrion-eating rodents who devoured what the termagants left, through the huge insects themselves, to Men, who enslaved these creatures for their muscles and the products of their bodies; their meat, their pelts, their hair, and their milk. It had always been so, and always would.

 

 Standing on the crest of the little rise beyond which was the shallow fold in the ground, Gerson looked down on the grazing beasts below. As was usual, the women had trampled and fouled as many of the plants as they'd eaten, though several of the weaker ones were grubbing about amongst the wreckage, their short muzzles probing the filthy churned-up soil for any broken fragments they could find. With a practised eye, Gershon estimated the herd's numbers at about fifty, along with some twenty foals feeding by their mother's sides. That would be about right, he thought; thirty or so of the women were of breeding age; all would have dropped their yearly foal over the last two or three months, and about ten of the foals would have died in their first month or so of life from one cause or another. The vast majority of those living were now old enough to take care of themselves, and most of them would breed at least once after their first and only impregnation; all of them dropping a foal yearly for their full breeding term of four years. There were, of course, no human babies amongst them, but he didn't expect any; such births were rare despite their vital necessity.

 

 Since a human being had last visited the herd some six of the women had reached puberty and were ready for their adult collars. But first he would collar the youngest animals, and he walked slowly down the gentle slope towards the herd, his bag of collars in readiness in one hand and his stick in the other.

 

 The cattle, as was the way with women, took little notice of him, continuing to graze on all-fours and only lumbering to their hind legs in alarm if he came within less than six feet from them. They would stand and stare down at him with their dull, brown eyes, trying to decide if he was a threat to them or their offspring. Then a gentle prod with the pointed end of his stick would persuade even the largest of them to shift from his path. The mares with the youngest foals were the most nervous; in a typical defensive mechanism of their kind, they would stand protectively over their foals and freeze motionless, hoping that their hairless skins, striped and mottled brown, black and purple under their thick coating of dirt, would enable them to pass unnoticed by a predator.

 

 But Gershon was well used to dealing with women. He would stroke their thick bodies gently, talking nonsense words to them, until they were calm, then allow them to sniff and nuzzle his hand. Then he would gently push them away and collar their perplexed foal. He would leave the mare to sniff its daughter's collar suspiciously for the few moments before all recollection of the event faded from her dull brain.

 

 The last foal he collared was the youngest; a tiny creature of little more than a month old, no larger than a human baby of three years. Gershon sighed; so helpless at her age; too heavy for her mother to carry her to safety and too small and weak to run along beside her in flight when the nearing termagants struck. Her mother too was unlikely to survive; she was badly infested by parasites and she had an unhealed gash on her leg. It was scarcely worth collaring her tiny foal, but he did so anyway; the collar could always be recovered later.

 

 Then it was the turn of the older beasts. They were a more difficult proposition, skittish and unpredictable. But they were impulsively inquisitive at their age, and he only had to pick up a a length of battered foliage from the mud and they would come to him on all-fours. Then, while they chewed on his gift, he would remove their first collars and put on their permanent, adult ones, oddly bulky around their still slender necks. Two of them were outstanding for their height and strength; they would make good pacers, fast and enduring between the shafts once they'd been broken to harness, and those he leashed, intending to take them with him and barter them on his long journey back for his food and lodging. As an after thought, he also leashed one of the bigger foals, at three months old as tall as a six year old human being. She he intended to cover the price of his stay at the first Inn he came to. It was nicely plump, and it would make good eating when she was slaughtered.

 

 He left the herd, climbing the slope with the three women leashed behind him. After their normal brief resistance, more puzzled at not being able to wander wherever they wanted than anything else, they followed docilely enough; women were easy to tame. Even when they crested the rise and cought the scent of the termagants they came on trustingly, as if knowing as well as he did that their predators would not -- dare not! -- harm a human being, nor even approach him.

 

 Once back at his cart, he tethered his three recent acquisitions to the wooden stake and lowered the rear ramp of his cart. Down it he wheeled a small, wire-mesh cage, its floor thickly carpeted with the pulped fodder plants stalled animals were fed upon. Taking up the little woman's leash, he took her over to the cage and ushered her gently inside. Then he detached her leash, shut and latched the door, and pushed the cage back up the sloping ramp. He secured the cage in position on the load-bed of the cart and closed up the tail-gate, leaving the little animal staring around her and butting her head tentatively against the bars of her prison, puzzled by her inability to pass their obstruction, before lowering her blunt snout into her bedding and beginning to graze, fouling herself as she did.. After leashing the two younger animals to the rear of the cart, he untethered the women between the shafts, flipped open their blinkers to the straight-ahead position, and took his seat behind them, carrying the precious metal stake in his hand. Laying it safely aside, he whipped his beasts into a slow walk, then into a fast trot.

 

 About a hundred yards on his path, Gershon decided to return to the scene of his recent exertions to watch the impending attack by of the termagants upon the herd. Tugging hard on their bits, he urged his animals round in a big semi-circle and whipped them back in the direction they'd just come from.

 

 He found himself just in time to observe the massacre, being able to see the predators take up their positions along the sides of the little vale where they hid amonst the scattered boulders. The wind was blowing from him towards them, and they paid him no attention. Then the carefully prepared trap was sprung.

 

 The first termagant sauntered out into plain view at the head of the valley; its demeanour casual, almost insolent, as it walked slowly towards the grazing women on its six legs, its shiny black carapace gleaming ominously in the sunlight. The women nearest to it caught its scent and rose to their hind legs in sudden alarm, their foals huddling against their mothers' legs for protection. At the giant insect's inexorable approach, their fright spread to the rest of the herd. All the animals were standing now,and at a further pace from their Nemesis they broke and ran in panic. As they passed the line of hidden predators, the termagents sprang out at them in turn, each choosing its prey and leaping at her thighs. A quick slash with a razor-sharp mandible and the woman was hamstrung. She stumbled and fell; another leap and the deadly mandibles tore out her throat. Then came the feasting.

 

 Gershon watched dispassionately as the little foal and her lame mother were dispatched in the same coldly efficient manner. The limping woman was carrying her foal; doubly handicapped she was easy prey. An insect crippled her, and her daughter fell from her arms. Pausing to rip out the foal's throat in passing, their hunter leapt upon its prostrate mother. Then the mare's own throat spurted blood; lying on the ground she kicked spasmodically and died even as her killer was tearing off the first portion of her flesh.

 

 Despite the attack's suddenness, and despite the efficiency of their hunters, only fourteen corpses remained when the last of the fleeing women had vanished into the hazy distance. Eleven of them were of beasts too old or too young to keep pace with the younger and stronger women; two of the remainder were those of the little foal and its mother. The skirmish had not been completely one-sided; the fourteenth body was that of an attacker.Though it had killed its victim, her last, frantic, dying kick had sent its surprisingly light body somersaulting away to crack its carapace upon a rock. The green ichor the insects used for blood would not coagulate, and it had bled to death still tearing at the flesh of its dying prey. The casualties amongst the cattle were normal, as was their escaping further attacks from this band of predators. Twelve termagants; twelve victims: the foal's death was by the way. The insects were much slower than a running woman, nor did they have a woman's stamina; the only way they could succeed was by ambush, stealth and guile.

 

 Gershon slapped down the reins on the shoulders of his pair of patient animals, laid his whip across their broad and muscular haunches, and drove off on the first stage of his long return journey.