Mack Reynolds - Amazon Planet

“Oh, it’s so lovely to meet you,” Podner Bates gushed.

Guy Thomas winced perceptibly again. The other, although approximately of Guy’s own weight and build, and, for that matter, dressed almost identically, projected an effeminancy that would have passed for slapstick comedy in a Greater Washington floorshow. His obviously artifically curled hair alone was enough.

“Thanks,” Guy got out. He looked at the major. “Who’s the Hippolyte?”

“Who’s the Hippolyte! Are you being funny?”

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

“Don’t you cloddies back on Earth know anything at all about Amazonia?”

He was embarassed. “Frankly, you don’t encourage much intercourse. I know as little about your institutions as you seem to know about ours.”

She glowered at him. “The Hippolyte is the living reincarnation of the Hippolyte!” She spun, so that her cloak billowed out, and snapped over her shoulder. “I’ll be here in the morning. Keep your windows barred.” She was gone, slamming the door behind her.

Guy looked at Podner Bates.

Podner giggled. “Isn’t she handsome ?” He sighed. “If I could just land one like that , goodness!” He flutttered a wrist. “But I suppose I’m getting along now, they’re not so gallant anymore.” He added archly, “You’d never know that a few years ago I was the beau of Themiscyra. Before those filthy Lybians killed my wife, of course.”

Guy Thomas said, “Uh, look, uh, Bachelor Bates—”

“Oh, darling, just call me Podner.”

Guy scowled at him. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that name before.”

Podner giggled. “It was my sainted father. Ordinarily, he was very masculine, but he did love to watch the old, old historical Tri-Di tapes, from Earth. The wild, wild West.” Bates fluttered a hand. “He did so love a Western. Podner was one of the most popular names used in those old days. So nothing would do but he must name me Podner.”

Guy looked at him bitterly.

“You’re lucky he didn’t call you Stranger,” he muttered.

“I beg your pardon, darling?”

Guy said, “What’s the chance of showing me my room?”

“Your suite , you mean. Oh, you’re quite the honored guest, you know.” Podner began to trip along, leading the way. “Oh, dear, it must be so impossibly exciting to have come from far, far Earth. Imagine! I have simply never met a person, not a single person, who has ever been over-space.”

Guy fell in step beside the other. He said, “I understand a few of your people get to Earth as diplomatic personnel, and a few more go out on trade missions.”

“Oh yes, but that’s women’s work, of course. Goodness, I wouldn’t dream of being so effeminate as to forget my place and…”

Guy looked at him.

“What’s the matter, darling?” Podner said. They had reached a door in the hallway on the second floor. The Amazonian bachelor began to push it open.

When they got into the small living room, before looking around, Guy said, “Look. I’ll make this brief, but I’d like to try to make it stick. The next person, man, woman or child that makes another crack suggesting I’m effeminate, I’m going to award a very fat lip!”

His guide was taken aback. “A very fat lip?” he wavered.

“A bust in the mouth.”

“Oh, dear, you’re so unmanly.”

Guy Thomas closed his eyes. “I give up,” he muttered.

He looked about the room. It was furnished approximately as he would have expected an apartment hotel for bachelor women to be furnished back on Earth. Comfortable enough, but by no stretch of earthside imagination could it have been called a man’s quarters. He shrugged resignation, and walked into the bedroom, which was even more in the way of frills and lace, and then stuck his head into the refresher room.

“How do you like it?” Podner gushed. “I’m truly sorry we couldn’t have done better, but the sanctuary is literally overflowing. It’s all a boy can do to be out on the streets these days. I do hope that the new raids on the Lybians will release some of the pressure on we bachelor types.” He giggled. “It is sort of fun, though. You know what I mean, being so much in…” he giggled again “… demand .”

“It’s fine,” Guy said. “The suite, I mean, not being pursued by bands of panting women. And now, if you don’t mind, I have to see the Hippolyte tomorrow, whoever the Hippolyte is. Which reminds me. Who, or what, is an Hippolyte?”

“But the major told you, darling.”

Guy looked at him.

Podner said, “Oh, you know. I’m not really superstitious myself, but I do think all these old traditions and all are really very sweet, don’t you?”

“What’s the Hippolyte?”

“My dear boy, Hippolyte of the Golden Girdle of Ares. Hippolyte of the famous battle axe. The queen of the Amazons, who was betrayed by Heracles.”

Some of it vaguely came back to Guy Thomas from high school mythology. “What’s all that got to do with here and now?”

“Oh now, really, darling. Is it different on other planets? So many of the traditions of antiquity are called upon today, simply for the sake of, why, oh dear, I don’t know. It’s always been so. Remember how in your own Earth history that the name of Caesar and the title of Imperator was used for a thousand and more years after Julius himself died? The German Kaiser, the Russian Czar, the British Emperor Rex.”

Guy said, “So the present government of, uh, Paphlagonia has a queen they call Hippolyte. And she’s supposed to be a reincarnation of the last Hippolyte, and she of the one before. And, I suppose, all the way back to the mythological Hippolyte who had her belt swiped by Heracles as one of his twelve labors.”

Podner giggled. “You make it sound so silly.” He fluttered a hand. “But I suppose that’s about it. Actually, of course, when the Hippolyte dies, a new one is elected by representatives from each of the families.”

“Families?”

Podner looked at him archly. “Oh, not families in the usual sense. From the clans, darling. The genos , as the Greeks called them, or the Roman gens .”

Guy Thomas was out of his depth. “All right,” he said. “So tomorrow I’m to meet the chief of state and her council.”

“Good heavens, how exciting. Men so seldom have the opportunity to even see the Hippolyte, not to speak of talking with her. She’s impatient of masculine chatter, so I’m told. Won’t you just be terrified, dear?”

“I hope not,” Guy muttered. “But look, I’ve got to go to bed. Is there anything else?”

“Oh dear no,” Podner fluttered. “Do forgive me for keeping you up so long. When you wish breakfast, just switch on the orderbox and call for it. And now, do get your beauty sleep.”

“Goodnight,” Guy said.

When the other was gone, he stood for a long moment in the center of the living room, in thought. He let his eyes go around the apartment. After a time he went to the door and threw the lock. It looked adequate.

He went to the window then, opened it and looked out. It faced on the garden, which completely surrounded the building. He could see down the boulevard, toward the center of town. There was a statue in a plaza not two blocks away. They hadn’t passed it in the hovercar on the way in from the spaceport. A woman, what seemed to be a quiver of arrows on her back, her hand resting on some sort of animal. A dog? No, it looked more like a deer. It came to him. A colossal statue of Diana the Huntress. He sought through his memory and nodded. He knew where he was in the city of Themiscyra.

He closed the window. There was a knob to polarize the window glass. He turned it.