Authors: Andrew J. Offutt
I won’t try to keep you in suspense, or pretend that some miracle occurred, or that I valiantly dragged myself up, bounded in one mile-long leap to them, and chopped both of them into Vardor sausage. There was no miracle. No Aronian god popped out of the machine and intervened. I remained where I was, lying sprawled on the yellow desert. Through her mind, I “listened.”
Ard had brought her down; Ard took his turn first. When she came to she was on her back in that soft yellow dust, her arms pulled up and back. The other Vardor, Oth, was holding them tight against the ground, which did not come close to requiring all his strength. Her legs were unfettered, as if that were of any value to her: the pain that awakened her was that of Ard’s entry. Apparently he accomplished it in about the same way mostly newly-web American husbands do (or did—you people grown up yet? Did the Freedom to Read of the Sixties help any?). Violently, suddenly, quickly, and totally without finesse or regard for her. Just do it and assume with o’erweening masculine ego that she’s loving every minute of it.
Which, as it turned out, Arone women do.
If Jadiriyah had been a maiden, she no longer had to worry about being snatched by unicorn hunters. Under a sky containing one big yellowish moon and, far across the heavens, another smaller one, I “witnessed”—
experienced
—a scene I’d only read about and seen—carefully presented. Ard had his Kang woman. Sprawled on my face on an alien planet, wallowing in soft dust (as she was, but on her back), I experienced all of it with the Jadiriyah. Rummaged by one eight-foot andromorph with blue-gray skin while his partner held her, she joined the ranks of girls who’ve had the experience without a hint of love. (About six-tenths, on Earth, except in California where it’s maybe eight-tenths. Here on Aros it’s closer to 9.99)
I—
I!
—felt a jagged spear of pain, another—and then a slackening of it, a dull hurt that faded slowly as she wallowed, crushed into dust that was soft but highly unyielding. She had cried out as she awoke. Now she pressed her lips tight and lay as still as possible, trying to still her groans. Eight-foot Vardors are built proportionately big all over.
Yell? She would not. That would have increased his pleasure: violence comes natural to all us males, including the blue-gray almost-men of Aros. Wiggle? Try to throw him off? Buck, try to twist away? She knew better. That is known as passion, and is reserved for situations in which the woman is a participant, not an object. It’s women who are still and quiet who create unhappy husbands and get written about in articles in psychology journals and the women’s magazines. (There, I mean, on Earth; we are forced to struggle along without
Family Circle
and Helen Girlie Brown here.)
The Jadiriyah lay still and quiet. And felt it, broadcasting with tremendous power. Perhaps I’ll go into Arone Frequency-modulation (mental) later.
Well, she was not quiet still. I was very conscious, as her brain was, of her one anxious movement. I was astonished at it, astonished that she could think of such at such a time. Where was her horror? Where was the shrieking anguished shock and revulsion and horror that traumatizes American girls in similar circumstances, some into amnesia or catatonia or the male-hating lesbianism that is a sort of catatonia?
Absent. She was not exactly overjoyed at this penile penetration in which she was far from a willing participant, but she accepted it with singular aplomb. Her prime thought was to gain all possible clitoral stimulation. She succeeded, and my astonishment grew: she was there at the peak before Ard was!
Had I been in any doubt about being on a planet other than Earth, the reservations would have vanished then.
It was over very soon, and he was lying on her/me/us, even heavier in the gasping ennui of his exhaustion. “I” felt the pain lessen as his hugeness diminished and he sighed wearily:
post coitam omnia anima triste est,
someone said a long time ago, but it’s more tired than sad.
There was another flash of pain as he pushed back, regarded her for a moment, smiling, then rose to his knees and stood. He went to relieve his companion Oth at her arms. I gritted my teeth, trying to prepare myself for the Jadiriyah’s broadcast of the next oversized invader.
He comes, with some pain, though less than the other one. I clamp my mouth tight. HE is even huger than Ard. The pain is less, now, but it hurts. He is so heavy! But I shed no tears. Perhaps I will weep later, if they do not slay me. If I am to be slain I shall not give them the satisfaction f my tears! I regret the cry they’ve already heard from me. Kro Kodres would have been better than this. Easier and less painful. He is big, but not Vardor-huge—where is he? Could they have caught him? Could these be the same ones who pursued him, after he left me here to lead them off and return to take his pleasure later? Perhaps he is dead! Mixed emotions…he deserves no less than death, but…if he is, then I have no hope of rescue, no hope ever of seeing Brynda again! And all the time I have waited here!
Unh—! He batters me, this beast, like the clapper of a great bell rung by a madman. But…I cannot be still…ah, that’s good! Such an effort; he is concentrating on himself, not me, but I am sure he is trying not to pleasure me—which takes effort on his part, the monster! Ah…good…good…it rises, like water, warm water…flowing up…over me…enveloping me…aAHHHHHHH!
She arrived, and then he did, and then I did, helplessly. Sprawled on my belly, I could only groan and strive to grind myself into the satiny dust. My diaper-like briefs, I thought, would be stiff tomorrow.
The Vardor, his business finished, slid back. He pushed himself to his knees and looked down at the girl. Cursing her for an unresponsive, frozen Kang-animal, he slapped her so that her head rang—and I grunted and listened to the ringing in my own skull. She became aware of the headache left her by the previous blow from Ard. Then her nocturnal ravagers stood over her, side by side, and laughed.
They had opened a Kang-she. Now they pretended contempt; Oth kicked her in the side, just between hip and ribs, and they watched her twist, trying to fold up. They laughed the louder.
Then they turned her over and wiped her face in the dust until she gasped and then sneezed several times running, floundering and writhing—while they laughed.
“She tries to blow the powerful spirit of our life juice out her nose,” Oth exulted, “so that she’ll not bear two fine Vardors.”
I’ve never killed anyone,
I thought.
But I swear I think carving Oth up might be fun!
They bound her wrists behind her back with a rawhide strip that was entirely too thin. I felt its bite as she did. They also indulged in a little fondling while she lay there silently enduring it. I was shocked at what I saw in her mind: they died horribly, both of them, horribly and slowly and very bloodily indeed. In her mind.
Well,
I thought,
that sort of experience could make a woman that bloodthirsty, I suppose. I believe it has me.
Stretching out on their saddle blankets on either side of her, they went calmly to sleep. Both slept on their backs, and her mind broadcasted disgust at their snores. I listened carefully, striving to cock my ears in that silent Arone night. But I heard nothing; I was too far away. And it was time. I started dragging myself to my feet. I tried to think of what would
not
taste good; I could think of nothing. Even a bagel would have tasted palpable to me then. And I think I could have slept on a bed of nails.
She astonished me again, although I thought I’d been shocked, surprised, astounded, etc. etc. so many times already by her mind and behavior I was numb. This time she went to sleep, quiet soon after they did. Oh sure, she tested her bonds first.
I dragged myself up and moved in. I was weak from hunger, but rested, at least. The rocks grew larger and larger I as approached.
Just as I reached the, over an hour later, Jadiriyah’s mind came alive again in mine (no, her dreams were not broadcast). Oth was waking her, pulling her to him. This time it was worse. Her hands dug into her back and the rawhide thongs cut into her wrists; I could feel them.
Suddenly I wondered: why had I never felt Kro Kodres’ pain? Was this woman’s mind so powerful? She had “told” me, of course; she was “broadcasting,” in hopes K.K. would hear and come arunning.
She groaned. I heard her in my ears, not in my brain. Instantly he slapped one hand over mouth and clamped the other around her upper arm, glancing at the still-sleeping Ard and giving her a dangerous look.
So he does not want his comrade wakened,
she thought.
He removes his paw from my lips—
I
heard
her scream, aurally and mentally, and I started violently, fearful I’d given away my presence. No, they were all too busy. She howled and did her best to hurl herself into orbit. I had just started forward. I halted.
Damn
her! Now she had them both awake. Ord had been about eight seconds away from getting my sword in his back; I figured it would take no longer than that to cover the twenty or so feet separating them from me.
Now I could see them. The girl barely; little more than an arm, her soles, glimpses of her legs. His back was toward me. Even in the moonlight I could see his color. Slate, dirty slate.
Ard came awake just as Oth belted her one across the face—it hurt, and this time automatic tears squirted. The tears angered her. But Ard wasn’t mad. He laughed and told his friend—if Vardors have “friends” in the sense that we do (do
we?
)—to hold up a bit. Roll back on your side, Oth. Attaboy—pull her with you. Fine, now I’ll…oop, her tied hands are in the way. (He rectified that with his dagger, separating her wrists.) There. Now put your hands on Oth’s hips, Kang-she, and keep them there unless you want your head crushed like a jubb-egg!
That was the gist of what he said, in a voice like gravel rolling across old leather. She obeyed. She would up gripping Oth’s hips until he groaned; she had to have something to clutch. This time she was not groaning, or cooperating. She was screaming, screaming in a hideous voice that sounded as though she were stripping the lining from her throat.
I winced, wishing fervently that I could tune her out. She shrieked. Louder than ever before in her life, if her brain remembered correctly, because she’d never really felt pain before in her life, until then. She’d only thought she had.
I shared her pain, and I stopped considering and watching and being careful. I eased out Kro Kodres’ sword and took a deep breath and another and crouched, low. Then I leaped. Soared. I drifted down, I struck, jackknifing my legs. I leaped again: over twenty feet in two bounds, the first from a standing start.
Ard was groaning and hunching, yowling to Oth about the felicities of this dual activity with the soft Kang-she. He sounded as if she were a game of Monopoly they were playing for the first time. He laughed—
—And I was there, coming lightly down only a couple of feet behind him, swinging my sword while I was still airborne. It took only one blow: I swung that good Arone sword like a woodman attacking a Sequoiah. It chopped into his gray back just at the base of his neck, slicing through the pad of flesh there between his shoulders. And on in. When the blow at last dissipated itself—with a shocking jolt to my arm—his head was attached to his big trunk only by part of his trachea, a few shreds of flesh, and perhaps a leader or two.
His body, jerking ever harder now, did not fall back. His hands clutched the girl in the spasmodic grip of sudden death and its gamic release known to men everywhere.
I could still see very little of her, and little more of Oth. But his face was there, peering at me over her shoulder with very wide eyes, and I dragged the sword out of his companion and shoved it into the right eye. His shriek drowned hers. His hands, of course, did not clutch her tighter, but snapped reflexively up to his face. He fell back from her. I dropped a hand to the shoulder of the jerking, blood-spouting chunk of dead meat that had been Ard. Dragging him back, I also pulled the girl. Away from Oth.
I stepped across her and, aiming carefully, thrust between Oth’s upraise arms. The blade went in, and I leaned on it. But it did not seem to kill him, and I pulled it out and stabbed him again. Then I stepped back, satisfied he was dying or dead. I didn’t give a damn which.
It had been a very brief fight. It had not, in point of fact, been a fight at all. I merely charged in and killed two men—almost-men. My first two. Obviously I could have shouted, to give them an opportunity to disengage themselves from their victim an seize their weapons so that we could have had a “fair fight.” But that sort of twisted concept of fair play is also known as “suicide.” I could also have said
something,
to allow Ard to turn and see his death as it came, rather than merely chopping him in the back.
But if a man is to kill, and he knows, what difference does it make whether the killee knows and sees it coming, or gets it in the back? None, save this: backstabbing is much less cruel. Ard, for instance, very literally never knew what hit him.
He
died, come to think, in a moment of ecstatic joy.
“Blackie!” the TV or movie hero snaps, and Blackie spins and the hero blasts him into the next world. It appeals to the American ideal of fair play, that sort of fiction—and to American sadism.
Because it was far more kind to put that slug in Blackie’s back and be done with it, without giving him that instant of horror.
(Also safer. Had it been Blackie who’d snapped “Whitehat!” the hero would not have spun and died. He’d have dived sideways, behind a horse trough or somehting, and Blackie’s fate would have been the same. But I’ve always hat that terrible thought: those villains are usually pretty clever. In reality, wouldn’t
they
dive behind a horse trough?)
Both Ard and Oth jerked and kicked and thrashed quite a bit, but I had stabbed one three times and sheared off the other’s head but for a few strings, and their movements were the reflexes of death. Blood had spurted hotly up my arm. Both of them bled on the girl. But she rolled over and looked curiously at me, ignoring the gore and the thrashing and the noises.