Clive Bedford - Mistress of torment

With these three powers, together with the rest of Europe out of action, the rest of the world was defeated before it realized what had happened. There was gallant, last ditch resistance, but it did not last long. After the total destruction of key centers such as London, Bonn, Paris and New York, the heart went out of people. Pockets of guerilla warfare endured until the end came, but they made no impact on global events.

We were up against, during all that bitter time, beings whose life attitude was entirely different from ours. They were not moved by any shade of compassion or "human feeling". They were emotionless, cold and, by our standards, brutal. Even during our most bloody wars, we had at least paid lip-service to the idea of humanity. The Red Cross, the Geneva Convention had meant something, even to the Japanese and Germans. But to the Andromedans such concepts were meaningless. To them, we were no more important than insects had been to us. Insects eat your crops? Spray them with poison! They invade your home? Trample on them! They breed too fast? Feed them drugs to make them sterile. The attitude of the Andromedans was as simple and straight forward as that.

Maybe things would have been different, but for one Andromedan. They might have tried to come to terms with us, to have found a way of living alongside us which would have been of tremendous long-term advantage to mankind. If we had been able to learn their technology, for instance, it would have saved us many weary centuries of struggle. But, in the fierce internal struggle that occurred in the advance space-craft, between the Lady and Gulda, Gulda won! Gulda, the only Andromedan left with an emotional life based on sexual desire, defeated the Lady by sheer passion and intensity.

In half an hour the deed was done. Gulda, revengeful and resentful, sent the Lady to the Torture Room, and there, not immediately, not quickly as would have been seemly; but slowly, over a period of several days, Gulda watched the Lady die, screaming in agony as she herself had done.

After that, things proceeded smoothly for the Andromedans. All through that year the advance party watched from their craft as mankind, led by the small cadre of men and women who had been put under control, deliberately destroyed their systems of government which had held their affairs in precarious balance. At the end of ten months, the whole world had fallen into chaos and anarchy. Countless millions had starved to death. Hunger and disease stalked the Earth like pale ghosts. No one was safe. No place was secure.

Then the main fleet arrived, and because she had a firm grip on affairs and more knowledge of the management of Earth than anyone else, Gulda became Supreme Leader of the Andromedans. With half a million of them landed and rapidly taking possession of the land, ultimate victory seemed certain. Mankind, with all its long traditions of love and hate, self-sacrifice and cruelty, nobility and meanness, goodness and evil, seemed doomed to complete destruction…

Months before the arrival of the main invasion, Gulda had to face and resolve a great problem. Although her groups could bring ruin to the Earth, as it had done, they were too few to take possession of it. And even half a million invaders would not be able to occupy the Earth in a satisfactory manner. Millions of new creatures would be required. The population of Andromedans must be multiplied over a decade – and then the multiplication must be stopped because creatures with a possible life-span of one thousand years or more could not be allowed to multiply indefinitely. This must be a "once for all time" breeding.

Over a thousand years ago the policy had been decided. By then enough was known about the genetics of the human race to prove that it had certain characteristics desirable in Andromedans living in this new environment. So, the new creatures would be a careful cross-breed, with human fathers and Andromedan mothers. Over the millennia, the male sex had been almost totally eliminated among the Andromedans, only enough males being maintained to ensure continuity of the race. No more than a thousand were kept at stud, as donors in artificial insemination. Sex, in its emotional aspects, did not enter into the matter. Such emotions as "love" and "passion" had been bred out of the race as being time-wasting and illogical.

By the time the main invasion arrived, Gulda wanted to have a semen-bank ready so that the breeding of cross-breeds could be put in hand immediately. Inside a century there would be a new race of Earth-born Andromedans, hundreds of millions of them. And from this nucleus of new creatures would arise other armies of invasion which could reach out into space to find and prepare other planets for occupation. Andromeda did not intend to be caught again with a planet that might die around them!

Gulda thought that she was dutifully carrying out established policy, but of course her decisions were clouded by the sexual passions that tore at her. That was why she had opposed the Lady. That was why, in the final issue, the Lady had had to be destroyed. Now Gulda was in supreme power, and she could and would have her own way. Her sexual obsession centered on just one man, out of all the teeming millions on Earth, for a very good reason that she could never understand. She was in love with Gerry Glasner! Gulda did not know love when she experienced it. To her, this obsession which haunted her every waking hour, and many of her sleeping ones, was something unaccountable. She had to have this man in her power. She bad to see him suffer, in order to soothe her own suffering. And she realized that there was now a special relationship between Gerry and the American girl, Sonia Evans. She did not recognize it as "love" because to her there was no such thing. She did not even have a word for it! But she did recognize Sonia Evans as some kind of impediment to her own desires, and as such she must be overcome.

To Gulda this obsessional emotion that over-powered her and clouded her judgment was not related to giving, but to taking; not to submission but to domination; not to yielding, but to aggression. She understood nothing of the mutuality of love, only the personality of desire.

Gerry Glasner did not get far. He was not even sure that he wanted to go far, and if it came down to bedrock, where was there to go? Something terrible was going to happen to his world, and he felt he wanted to be there to do what he could to help. His immediate inclination was to go to see Sonia. He took a cab to the hospital, listening with half his mind to the talk of the cab driver commenting on the news that had just broken, of the new military government. The man was understandably bewildered, but Gerry did not want to discuss the topic. He enquired at reception of Sonia and was sent up to the private room she was occupying. She was conscious now, obviously in pain, but clearheaded.

Gerry told her what he knew, and she listened gravely.

"What are you going to do, Gerry?" she asked.

"I don't know… I'm more worried about you."

"About me?"

"Yes. For one thing, you're such a long way from home. For another, you're marked. I think the Andromedans have very long memories."

"You believe they'll bother about me?" She smiled. "I'm not all that important, Gerry. They'll have a lot more to think about."

"I'm not sure, Sonia. That woman who impersonated you was someone to be reckoned with."

As they talked, neither of them took any special note of the two white-coated young men who came quietly into the room.

"Do you want me to leave?" asked Gerry.

"No, don't disturb yourself, Sergeant Glasner," said one of them.

As he struggled against the cloth pressed over his nose and mouth, and smelled the pungent odor of ether, Gerry knew he had been right to fear Gulda!