Mack Reynolds - Amazon Planet

A voice said, “You have forgotten to put your hours card on the screen, Madam.”

He jerked his head around, inadvertently.

The voice was some sort of built-in recording. He brought his purloined card out and put it on the screen, and started all over again.

He was going to have to operate it manually. He had no idea of how to set the coordinates on the auto controls. He would have had to have a more complete knowledge of the city for that.

He got under way without much difficulty and concentrated on his destination. He was going to have to experiment, he wasn’t quite sure of the location.

However, he made it with little difficulty, cruising up and down the streets until he spotted the place. There were hovercars before it, but none that looked particularly as though they were police or military.

He stopped, removed the stolen hours card from the screen and climbed from the vehicle, half expecting it to say something further. It didn’t, and the moment he was out, took off into the traffic, evidently heading for some taxi park. He looked after it. Give credit where due. It was an efficiently handled service.

He looked up at the building. A fairly large number of persons were coming and going through the elaborate entrance. Most of them were women, but there were a few males. He continued to have difficulty telling them apart. Civilian clothes were all but identical. This was a continuing surprise. His first impression, picked up on the ship, and later in his audience with the Hippolyte, was that practically all women wore the armor-like uniform of the Amazon warrior. But here there were no such outfits in sight.

It was a minor puzzle, and he had major ones to solve. He mounted the steps and entered the building. Now his problem had only begun. He was afraid to ask questions. Just as surely as he did, he would stand out like a walrus in a goldfish bowl.

He doubted that his destination was on the first floor, although it might have been. He mounted, instead, to the second, and prowled up and down, hopefully.

Ronny Bronston’s luck continued to hold. There were name plates on the doors. He found what he was looking for twenty minutes later on the third floor: Patricia O’Gara.

There was a door eye and he activated it.

In less than a minute the door opened and she was there, smiling at him.

This was the crux, now. If she showed any indication that she was aware of the morning’s developments, he was going to have to overpower her. She said “Why, Guy! Guy Thomas!”

He grinned at her. “Can I come in?”

She stepped back. “Of course. So you managed to land all right. How in the name of Artimis did you know where I was?”

“Minythyia pointed the building out.” The questions didn’t bother him. At long last the Scop had worn off.

He followed her into a small living room. Evidently, she had been assigned a fairly comfortable apartment by the powers that be. She had been on the planet a couple of days before he landed.

“Minythyia?” she said, even while gesturing toward a seat for him. “I’ll bet this will come as a surprise to you. Do you know who that madcap Mynythyia is?”

“You mean the daughter of the Hippolyte?” He sank into the chair with relief. “Ummm, somebody mentioned it. Imagine her acting as a lowly customs officer.”

Pat said primly, “Everybody works on Amazonia. There are no parasites. Only children and the retired are without positions.”

“Great,” Ronny said, “but you expect a bit of nepotism even in the feminine Utopia. Look, I’m famished. You haven’t got anything to eat around here, have you? And some pain killer? I’ve got a headache.”

“Why, of course,” she said. “The auto’s in here. Order anything you wish. Oh, I forgot. Do you have an hours card?”

“Well, no.” He was going to have to take it easy with the card of Tanais. He had no way of knowing whether or not, or when, the student might report the loss of that valuable document. He couldn’t afford to have the computers on the lookout for it.

She said, “You can use mine. You’d be amazed at the efficiency here. Within hours after I was off the Schirra , they’d assigned me this apartment, enrolled me in a school where I have special tutors to give me a foundation in the Amazonia culture, and began crediting me with hours for the time I put into my studies. I’m already a citizen. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“I suppose so,” he told her, following her into the small dining alcove.

She put her card on the payment screen and he stared down at the extensive menu set into the auto-table. After taking the headache-relieving pill, he dialed more food than he could reasonably have eaten.

“You are hungry,” she said. “There is no nepotism on Amazonia.”

The change of subject had stopped him for a moment. “Oh,” he said finally, watching the food begin to emerge. “Why not? It’s a natural development, you’d think.”

“Not if you understand the workings of an advanced society,” she told him righteously. “Since there is no profit to be gained by being, say, an admiral, rather than an ordinary seaman, there’s no motive in attempting to push your offspring into positions she can’t competently occupy.”

He was eating hungrily. “That’s right, everybody gets paid exactly one hour for putting in one hour’s time, don’t they? But there are other things than, uh, crass material payment. An admiral has power, position, honors, that sort of jetsam.”

“And how stupid they are unless you’ve earned them. Back on my home planet, Victoria, we have universities that grant so-called honorary degrees. Politicians, soldiers and what not, who can hardly read the sport sections of newstapes, or write more than their own names, are given doctor’s degrees. All it does, actually, is water down the deserved acknowledgement of the accomplishments of the scholars who have really earned such degrees.”

He was still forcing food into his mouth as though starved. He could hardly know when he would be able to eat again.

However, he couldn’t help bite away at the hand that was feeding him. “Sure, great. A real feminine Utopia. However—”

“Amazonia isn’t a Utopia, Guy,” she said. “Utopia is a dream world, a perfect world. We Amazonians realize that there is always another rung up the ladder of progress. Utopia can never be reached, but even if it could be, we would not wish it. The satisfaction is to be found in the common effort upward.”

“Very inspiring,” Ronny said sarcastically. “It’ll be a great day when in the course of this progress they get around to examining their marriage laws.”

She scowled at him, a hint of color beginning to come to her cheeks. He couldn’t help but remember the endless run-ins she’d had with Rex Ravelle on the Schirra .

“Marriage laws?” she said. “There is no marriage on Amazonia. They passed beyond that institution a century and more ago.”

He had been about to devour a chunk of some vegetable he had found in his stew, a vegetable he had never come upon elsewhere. Now he put down his fork and stared at her.

“Are you completely drivel-happy?” he demanded. “No marriage on Amazonia! I’ve never seen so damn much marriage in my life. And such an easy way of getting into it!”

It was her turn to stare. “Why, why, you’ve simply been misinformed,” she said definitely.

“Look,” he said. “This tutoring you’ve been taking; hasn’t anybody mentioned the fact that any Amazonia warrior can have three husbands?”

“Oh, don’t be a cloddy. Of course they can have three husbands, though that’s hardly what you’d call them. And a man can have three ‘wives’ for that matter, if he wished. Amazonians don’t believe in restricting personal relationships with too many laws. Actually, though, useage frowns on promiscuity and having close relations with even two or three persons at a time is considered rather far-out. However, some people are just built that way. They’re not one-man women, or one-woman men. You’ve had the problem down through the ages. On your own planet, Earth, don’t you have people who are continually getting married and getting divorced? And on my planet, Victoria, it isn’t at all unknown for a man to be supposedly happily married, but on the side be maintaining one or more mistresses.”