William Tenn - Of Men And Monsters

Eric gaped at her. “Confinement? Here? You mean what you’re thinking about—what you’re suggesting—”

“My dear barbarian stalwart, I am not thinking and I am not suggesting. I am proposing. I am proposing an alliance betwixt me and thee, from this day forward, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health. Do you accept my proposal, or do you not accept my proposal?”

“But why? You’ve never seen me before—you don’t know anything about me—we come from different peoples. Look, Rachel, it’s not that I’m trying to raise objections. But—but, I haven’t been in the cage long, and you’re moving kind of fast. Too fast for me to understand you. There must be a reason.”

“Yes, there is. In fact, there’s more than one reason, Let’s skip lightly over the fact that I’m not getting any younger and a girl has to think of her future. Let us also merely note in passing that your appearance pleases me and your personality pleases me and that you don’t seem to have any vicious characteristics. All well and good, but not crucial. The following, however, is crucial.”

She moved closer to him and took his hand. Eric felt excitement begin to build inside his body as he appreciated the girl’s nakedness now. All his life he’d been surrounded by girls conventionally naked. But it was different when you realized that very shortly you and she …

“The important reasons,” Rachel said softly, “have to do with saving lives. Your life, and probably mine. There were three other boys from the expedition up here with me originally. I saw them taken out, one by one, and I saw them being—each one was—oh, you know. You’ve seen it.”

“I know, all right,” Eric told her fiercely. “I saw what they do to us.”

“Once they took me out, and I thought it was the end. But after passing me from one green rope to another—four or five Monsters were in a huddle over me—they returned me to the cage. Sammy Josephson—he was the last one left here—Sammy suggested that they might know I was a female and, well, something of a rarity in Monster territory. We talked about it, but before we were sure or had worked out any conclusions, it was Sammy’s turn.

What they did to him—oh-h! I think that was the worst of them all.”

She shook her head heavily from side to side. Eric found himself squeezing her hand. She smiled at him tremulously, nodded, and went on: “And then came the succession of Wild Men, followed by you—all with long, unbound hair, just like mine. It’s apparent that the Monsters do know I’m a female, and that they’re trying to mate me. Now, Eric, I don’t particularly want to cooperate with them in their search for knowledge about human behavior, but on this point and by this time, I’m more than willing to let them have their way. If we don’t, they’ll take you out of here eventually and tear you apart in an experiment. And they’ll probably get tired of waiting and do the same to me. The best I have to hope for, once they remove you, is more and more Wild Men coming in here with their fangs all shiny and that gleam in their eyes which says, ‘Food! On two delicious legs, the way it should be!’ I’m tired of fighting and killing. That’s a man’s job. You be my man and do it for me.”

Eric adjusted his knapsack straps self-consciously as he absorbed her analysis and her final entreaty. She was right. Given the situation, the only sensible thing was to let the Monsters know they were satisfied with each other and were mating. And he’d fallen into pure luck—Rachel constituted a fantastic prize, far beyond his wildest dreams of a mate. A girl with this much knowledge would outrank anyone in the Female Society of Mankind—probably in most Stranger Female Societies as well. That would automatically mean a tremendous boost to his own rank, if he ever got affiliated with a specific people again.

All well and good. But he was a man and a warrior. And mating was a serious business: it must be conducted with dignity, and according to tradition.

“Turn around,” he ordered. “Let me look at you.” Rachel obeyed with complete docility, as he knew she would. Front-burrow or back-burrow, Aaron People or Mankind, there could not be that much difference in the customs of humanity. A man’s Right to Examine was everywhere the same.

She stepped away a pace and turned round and round slowly, spreading her hair high behind her with the backs of her hands so that the lines of her body could be completely visible: This also brought her breasts up a bit more prominently: they were by no means the largest breasts he had seen on a girl, Eric noted, but they were pretty enough and would probably do. And while her thighs and hips were a shade too narrow as well, he had to remember that the demands of a singleton birth—the greatest probability here—were much smaller than those of the multiple deliveries a husband usually had to take into consideration.

On the other hand, she had an absolutely lovely, well-shaped rump, which, within the limitations posed by the narrowness of her hips, left nothing to be desired. And her face—he let go of the rump, turned her around again and took hold of her chin with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand—her face was infinitely appealing. Large, glowing brown eyes above a small, impudent nose, a soft mouth full of femininity that held an uncertain smile forever imprisoned at its corners, warm, beautifully curving cheeks, a high, white forehead, and, finally, clouds upon clouds of brown hair that was certainly of decent, adequate length. While her face was the least relevant portion of a woman’s attractiveness, Eric had always had certain weaknesses in that respect which he had admitted only to himself. He was glad her face was the best part of her. Add to the face that truly first-class rump, consider that neither her hips, thighs nor breasts were outright failures, throw in the well-stocked mind which provided a magnificent dowry and thus substantial advancement for her man in any conceivable tribe—yes, Eric had to admit that Rachel was a treasure worth shedding blood for.

It would hardly do to tell her so, of course. Members of the Male Society must always maintain a certain essential diplomatic reserve toward members of the Female Society.

He moved back, folding his arms slowly and emphatically on his chest to indicate that the Examination was over.

Rachel relaxed, letting out a huge breath. “Are you satisfied?” she inquired with exactly the proper amount of anxiety. Eric was terribly pleased: he’d been afraid from her jocular manner of speaking that she knew nothing at all of formal behavior.

“I am satisfied,” he told her, using the decorous phrases of the courtship formula. “You please me. I want you for my mate.”

“Good. I am glad. Now I claim the Right of Invitation. You may not approach me sexually for the first time until I give you leave.”

“That is your right,” Eric agreed. “I will wait for your call. May it come soon! May it come soon! May it come soon!”

And it was over. They stood apart and grinned at each other self-consciously, observing mutual individuality return as the ritual prototype was sloughed off. Above them, below them, around them, lay the white vastnesses of Monster territory, the transparent cages in which fellow humans awaited fate and the Monsters’ pleasure. But here in this cage, they were mate and mate, Eric and Rachel, two separate people who would become one, when the girl felt the time was ripe to beckon.

Suddenly Rachel giggled. “I was so nervous! Were you nervous?”

“A little,” Eric admitted. “After all, from start to finish, it was a pretty fast mating. One of the fastest I ever heard about.”

“I hope we didn’t leave anything out, Eric.”