Mack Reynolds: Amazon Planet

She flushed, but not exactly in anger, this time. She said, “I told you I was a refugee from the world on which I was born.”

“But that’s not the worst. Do you realize that you have no visa to land on Amazonia?”

Guy Thomas seemed to adapt easily to the routine of life aboard a spaceborne passenger freighter—the Guy Thomases of life drift easily along the buoy marked way, not for them to venture this way or that into unpathed waters.

Had any of the ship’s officers or crew been called upon to make a snap judgement of Guy Thomas, to be expressed in one word, surely it would have been average . For Guy was all but unbelievably average; in height, in weight, in countenance, in color of hair and eyes, in clothing. It was necessary to meet Guy Thomas a half dozen times before one could remember the man.

Following Earth Basic Time, he arose as late as possible in the morning still able to have his breakfast. He spent the next few hours either reading borrowed fiction tapes of the most bland variety, or taking in the Tri-Di shows they had brought along. After lunch he often idled around the ship, making a nuisance of himself, staring at officers and crew at their duties, managing from time to time to get into compartments off bounds to passengers, so that he had to be ordered away wearily—albeit respectfully, since he was a paying passenger—by engineer or signalman, ship’s cook or navigator.

Largely, he seemed impressed by these men of space. For all but a few, such as Happy Harrison, it was far more than a job. It was a sharing in the big dream that man was currently embarked upon. The big dream of achieving his destiny, his explosion into the stars, his releasing of the bounds that had for so long tied him to Mother Earth. Out here were the stars, and the officers and crew of the Spaceship Schirra were participating in their conquest.

Colorless, perhaps innocuous would be better, though he might be, he was company, and on more than one occasion he sat in the copilot’s acceleration chair with the deck officer who was standing easy watch. Easy, since there is so very little do do when a vessel is in underspace. Guy Thomas proved a good listener and a means to break the boredom of a watch when no watch is truly needed in this era of automation.

He sat and listened to it all, dropping occasionally only the affirmations, questions or answers, that were needed to keep the conversation flowing, indicating that his attention was focused on the other’s biographical discourse, romances, opinion of United Planet’s affairs, bigoted beliefs, off-color jokes, wistful descriptions of family at home, or spaceman’s, dreams.

They told him of far planets with offbeat cultures that would make even Amazonia pale by comparison. They commented upon the fact that nowhere in all his explorations had man found other intelligent life. They told of shipwrecks and of rescues, and of shipwrecks without rescue. And always he listened, as though fascinated by every word.

He didn’t exactly avoid the firey Pat O’Gara, but in the presence of that aggressive feminist, usually let others bounce the ball of argumentation. Seldom did he get in a word, on either side of the almost continual controversy that Citizeness O’Gara managed to keep astir. But seldom, obviously, did he wish to add his own small supply of fuel to the source of heat.

Once or twice he was unable to avoid participation at the salon table, or afterwards during the evening’s leisure hours, when Pat and Rex Ravelle, her usual opponent, had it out. He suspected, as would have anyone, that the second officer was debating more out of amusement than sincere conviction; only his opponent was so blinded by her own earnest belief as not to realize her leg was being pulled.

Over coffee, following dinner one evening, Rex had typically slipped her the needle.

“All right, suppose I concede women are just as competent to handle government, although I’ll be a funker if I can think of any historic—”

She let him get no further than that. “I assume you’ve never heard of Elizabeth the First, of Cleopatra, of Zenobia, of Catherine the Great!”

“Touché,” Guy murmered.

Rex grinned. “Okay, I’ll take that. There’ve been exceptions. But that’s not the point. Suppose we’d admit women are potentially as competent to handle state affairs as men. But why should we think they can handle them any better? There’s no proof, and no reason to believe it would develop that way.”

Pat O’Gara said testily, her face pinking as usual in verbal combat, “It’s unfortunate, Ravelle, that you’re so uninformed on the subject. Otherwise, we’d be able to discuss the matter on a higher level.”

The ship’s officer continued to smile mockingly, “Aw, you can’t get by with that, you know.”

“The fact is,” she said contemptuously, “that such government as existed during the overwhelmingly greater period of man’s existence was predominantly in the hands of the women. It has only been in comparative recent history that man usurped the female position of control of society.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Jerry Muirhead, the third deck officer protested. “I got lost somewhere. What’s all this about women running the shooting match for most of history?”

“What do they teach you in the Space Academy when it comes to primitive society and anthropology?” she scoffed.

Guy Thomas said apologetically, “As a matter of fact, Jerry, it seems to me that I have read that earliest man did trace his descent through the matrilineal line. But…”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Rex said. He grinned around at the other deck and engine officers seated in the salon cum messhall. “I think we’ve got a traitor among us, men.”

Guy said quietly, “It means that the children of a relationship between a man and woman took the woman’s name.”

Pat snorted her superiority again. “Which means, in turn, that women dominated the family. That in case of a ‘divorce’ the children remained in her clan, not that of the father’s. That property, such as there was in those days, was inherited by her relatives, remaining in her clan and that of her children on death or split-up of a relationship.”

Jerry twisted his youthful face. “Well, I don’t know about that, but whether or not kids were named after their mothers or fathers, it was the men who really ran the tribe.”

“If you mean they did the hunting and the fighting, largely you may be right,” Pat said overbearingly. “Although even in those fields the women had a great deal more to say about nomination of chiefs and the deposing of them. You should read Bachofen’s Das Mutterrecht .”

“ Das what?” Rex scowled.

“It’s been translated into Earth Basic,” Pat said. “ The Motherright . It’s possibly the first serious work on gyneocracy.”

They looked at her.

She said, smugly, “Or would you rather, gynarchy? They mean approximately the same thing. Rule by women. Why even as recently in time as the Iroquois Confederation, women were the great power among the clans and didn’t hesitate when occasion required to ‘knock off the horns’ as it was technically called, from the head of a chief and send him back to the ranks of the warriors. The original nomination of the chiefs also rested with them.”

Rex Ravelle said, “It’s not quite the picture of braves and squaws that I’ve been familiar with, Pat, my dear.”

Patricia said firmly, “Then you’re the victim of a false picture that male propagandists and pseudo-historians have painted. There was, admittedly, division of labor among the primitives and ancients. Men made superior hunters and warriors. The women did the just as important agricultural work, raised the children and maintained the long houses or the adobe community houses. But they also dominated in such government of the tribe as was necessary.”