Mack Reynolds - Amazon Planet

“However,” he muttered disgustedly. He had few illusions of what was going to happen to him, once they had him under Scop again. They’d drain every bit of information he had in his brain, from childhood on. Every detail of the workings of Section G with which he was familiar, would be theirs to utilize. They’d get as complete a list of agents, and their secret whereabouts, that he, Ronny Bronston, could provide.

“However, a woman can endure a continuing strain longer than a man. How many men could bear up under a difficult childbirth? At any rate, back when warriors fought with swords, men had the ascendency. But it began to taper off, dear husband, when weapons began to change, when even the bayonet became antiquated, since you never got near enough to the enemy to use a sticker. Even back in the so-called First World War, women were beginning to show up in combat, especially among the Russians. By the Second World War they were in full swing. Literally millions of women used every type of weapon, once again especially among the Russians. There were women flying aces, women commanders of warships, women artillerists, and especially women infantry. And it wasn’t the Russians alone. The British discovered that the female anti-aircraft crews ran up at least as high scores as the male ones. You see, women have more patience, more stolidity. But possibly the real proof was seen in the Israeli-Arab wars. It was soon found that a 120 pound girl could buck a Brenn gun just as efficiently as a man, and was less apt to wind up with a galloping case of battle fatigue, if the fight went on too long, or if the shelling got a bit too heavy. Oh yes, women might make poorer warriors, but, believe me, husband dear, it has finally developed that they make better soldiers.”

She was evidently taking short cuts by going down less traffic ridden main arteries. For the moment, they were on an empty street.

Ronny growled, “I seem to be going from one lecture to another today. But at least, I think I’ve got something from this one.”

She looked at him from the side of her eyes, slowing down for a sharp turn. “Oh…?”

He snapped, “Yes.” His hand snaked out and switched the engine off. “The fact that man is admittedly better, hand to hand.”

She tried to whip her gun from its holster, but his hand was before hers. Open, it slammed the gun deeply down into the holster. And he kept his left hand over the weapon, even as he reached out with his right.

Her eyes wide, she began to shrill something, squirming to escape him.

Ronny chopped her expertly behind the ear, and didn’t even wait to watch her slump. He brought the vehicle to a bucking halt, awkward as he was with the controls in this position.

His eyes went quickly up and down the street. There were some pedestrians, more than a block away. And several hovercars in the distance. No one, seemingly, had seen the fray.

He heard a yell from above him, darted his eyes up. He had thought himself unobserved too soon. On the third floor of the building before which they had come to a stop, a man was leaning from, a window, shouting as though demented.

“Traitor,” Ronny muttered. He hurried out of the car and around to her side. He opened the door that she customarily vaulted, and dragged her forth. He carried her, noting, somewhat to his surprise, that she wasn’t nearly as heavy as he would have expected, and unsuspectedly soft in his arms. He set her down bodily against the wall of the building. The apartment occupant above continued to shout blue murder. Another head popped from another window, this time in a building across the way. A scream, sounding ludicrously feminine in this land of Amazons, reached for the skies.

He whipped the gun from Minythyia’s holster, stuck it in his belt, dashed back to the car, and slid into the seat she had forcibly been hauled from.

He banged the controls, for a moment ineffectually.

She had come awake. “Ronny!” she yelled at him. “Come back…!”

“Oh great,” he muttered sarcastically. He had the sporthover underway now, and realized why she had driven like a racing zealot. This souped-up vehicle took the bit in its teeth. He blasted down the street as though all demons were, after him.

“You don’t understand…!” her voice faded after him.

He grunted at that with sour humor. He didn’t understand was right, but he understood enough to keep away from that gang of hefty inquisitors, and those armed to the teeth bully-girls in the Hippolyte’s palace. This was one honeymoon Minythyia could count him out of.

He sped down the narrow way, took a quick right turn into the first street that appealed to him. Sped some more, and turned again. It would take a time, now, for them to find him.

However, he knew he was going to have to go to ground. He couldn’t indefinitely prowl the streets of Themiscyra in this sporthover and expect to keep away from the Hippolyte’s people forever. He had seen too many examples of Amazonian efficiency to doubt that once they set their nets it was just a matter of time until he was fished in.

But where could he go?

He had emerged into a broader avenue, one of the main arteries, and he slowed to keep attention from falling upon his speeding two seater. He hadn’t been on this particular boulevard before, but it checked out in impressive beauty with the others. Public buildings, libraries, he assumed, fountains, monuments, parks, plazas, theatres…

He was passing a theatre now. It was more or less of a replica of the Pantheon, Roman, rather than Greek. Very beautiful…

He jammed the brake down suddenly and goggled.

After a long moment, he brought the little hovercar over to the curb and left it to walk to the display advertising the show within. There were various posters in the old-fashioned style. Basically photographs, he decided, but then touched up with an artist’s imagination. It was evidently some sort of variety show, a vaudeville sort of thing, beloved of all centuries. But it was the poster’s subject that had caused him to come to a halt, for there stood Clete in a gaudy costume. In her left hand she held half a dozen throwing knives by their points. In her right hand she had a single knife, ready for a cast. Beyond her stood what was obviously an assistant, an apple on the top of his head. The old but ageless William Tell bit.

But that wasn’t all.

In one of the other posters he recognized still another face. A face that made it too utterly much.

He walked back to the hovercar in thought. Some of the pieces, just some of them, were beginning to fit into place.

When he got back into the hovercar, he sat for a moment, ignoring anyone who might have been looking at him. His mouth worked, and he rubbed it thoughtfully, roughly with the knuckles of his left hand, so roughly that it stung.

A woman was coming up the street and was due to pass within a few feet of him.

He said to her suddenly. “I beg your pardon. I’m from out of town. Could you tell me where I can get a newspaper?”

She smiled at him. “Right up the street there at the entrance to the pneumatics. Don’t you have a screen in your car? You’d get exactly the same thing by dialing NEWS.”

“Thanks,” he told her, without inflection.

When she was gone, he sat and concentrated some more. Finally he took the shooter he had appropriated from Minythyia and holding it low, between his knees, inspected it. He had never seen the model before, but he was experienced enough with handguns to figure out its working. It was evidently constructed to throw some sort of projectile, probably a small bullet, with or without either an explosive or a gas cartridge. A somewhat primitive weapon, by the standards of the more militaristically inclined planets of UP, but one that had its uses under circumstances.