"Don't let the presence of this man be known beyond these four walls,
or out of your own laboratory. For your sake and mine, heed my
suggestion, Draken."
"Yes," quivered Draken. "I am heeding it. But you know my attitude
toward this _great_ order. You know how I regard the maintenance of the
Status Quo."
I knew it too, from the way his pallid lips curled. This little man
hated the Mohln system, whatever it was.
Jokan got languidly to her feet, a fluid musical allegro. "I know,
Draken. If you weren't the greatest thinker in Mohln besides myself, I
would report you to the Council for the Maintenance of the Status Quo.
But as long as you only think idly, you can cause Mohln no harm."
"The only harm Mohln can suffer," said Draken wearily, "is to continue
on as it does now. Toward final decay and rot."
Jokan laughed frostily. I shivered. "Stop worrying, Draken, and go
away. I must begin my experiments." She turned her eyes on me. She
could have stared down a bronze statue. I turned my eyes from hers on
the pretense of looking for Draken, but he was gone.
I jumped to my feet, and the movement revealed that I, too, had on the
costume that Draken wore.
Without egoism, I can say that it must have looked more becoming on me
than on the little scientist. I was at least a foot taller than Jokan.
She came toward me, fluid motion. I couldn't back away--I insist I
wanted to get away for various reasons, the least being that I wanted
to get solid on my mental feet--from the metal table. I looked almost
frantically for a door or some kind of exit, even a window. There was
nothing.
Then those perfect arms slipped around my neck and that body pressed
itself against mine and--
I am only human. That's a trite enough excuse, if an excuse is
necessary, but under those conditions I could certainly do no less. I
let my arms come around her perfect waist, and I bent her back in the
most acceptable televex manner and planted a long solid one right on
those perfect lips--lips I'm very certain had never been kissed before.
And that was precisely the trouble, perhaps, with that thoughtless,
but irresistible, impulse of mine. Her nails were long and sharp and
they clawed at my face. Cold light blazed in her eyes, flashing with
outraged dignity and burning hate.
I swung down and away, sliding across the metal table, and stood with
blood running down my face, with the table my only protection between
myself and this paradoxical Circe.
"Savage," she shrieked, and shrieking was very unbecoming to the cold
austerity of her. In fact it was like a cloak I had torn away from her
body. "Primal, barbaric beast!"
"I'm not quite primal enough to cope with you," I said, looking more
frantically still for an exit. There still weren't any exits, but
people came into this room, and people went out of it. How?
I expected her to vault the table after me, but she lithely backed
away, and though I didn't realize it then, her cold brain was summoning
her eunuchs from afar.
A section of the wall to one side began to glow like a light through
semi-opaque glass. The light deepened and began to whirl. And then I
saw that there was a kind of opening there. Yes. A kind of opening with
something promising no good lumbering through, its head and massive
shoulders projecting up out of the shifting mist like a televexed
fictional monster.
It was a monstrous metal man. A real, animated robot out of an old
scientification fabrication. It was coming directly for me. I flashed
one look--I think it was a beseeching one--at Jokan. In such instances
as that people swallow great lumps of their pride.
* * * * *
Jokan was stretched up to her complete height against the far wall. Her
face was expressionless, and her eyes oozed liquid oxygen. Her hands
were strained into fists at her sides. "Atavistic," Draken had said of
this female scientist of Mohln. An understatement promising no hope for
consideration.
I dodged beneath the robot's reaching appendages. There were three arms
with a number of variously utilized digits at the end of each. And all
of them were wicked. Many of them designed for purposes I couldn't
grasp. Anyway I looked at it, the robot represented a perfect mauling
and crushing instrument.
I can describe it now with a light touch. _Then_ I was trembling with
cold fear, and sweat poured off my face as I eluded the robot by
dodging about the only fixture in the middle of the room, the table. I
noticed a minor motion of Jokan; then I watched, with a hideously empty
stomach, the table fold itself into the floor.
I leaped to one side and grabbed Jokan, twisted her around in front of
me, and said with as little chattering as possible into her perfect
pink little ear, "Call them off or--"
I tightened my arm about her throat and began bending her head back.
She writhed around and kicked me, and her finger nails started their
old habit pattern again. But she wasn't used to this sort of thing, and
didn't employ any real effeminate technique at all.
I continued bending her head back. I could feel her choking and
gasping. She knew then that I would kill her. I hadn't asked to come
to Mohln, wherever and whenever it was. It was all something I had
nothing to do with, that now threatened my life. All directly the
responsibility of Jokan. To me, she was a real Circe, deserving no
sympathy, only hate, and deserving death. But I could never have
actually tried, or threatened to kill her, under less pressing
conditions than those. It was simply a case of breaking her neck to
save mine, which I consider justified.
The metallic digits squeezed shut on each elbow, from behind. I twisted
my head upward at the second robot, sweating pain in my eyes. Unfeeling
paralysis then, as the digits tore through muscle tendon, nerve fibers
and even cracked bone. I was mouthing sounds, probably screaming,
hearing my own cries from a great distance, blinded by pain, a mist
blurring my eyes.
I was lifted straight up, then swung down beneath one implacable arm.
I dangled there, my crushed elbows swinging and dripping beneath my
face. I saw those perfect little feet come up and stand in front of
my tortured eyes. And they _were_ perfect little feet, encased in red
sandals to match the blood from my wounds. Even facing torture, and
possible death, I thought of them as perfect little feet. I didn't
attempt to twist my face upward.
I kept on staring crazily at those perfect little feet. There was
character and expression in them, different and more sympathetic than
the body they supported. They came closer, shifted a bit, uncertain
and nervous. I had been brought here as the subject for anatomical
research, a laboratory specimen to be dissected. Yet, for an instant,
another purpose had shown in Jokan's eyes. I knew that, or did I merely
want to know it. I tried to imagine how terribly lonely and maladjusted
she must be in a loveless world. Beautiful and to be desired, yet in a
loveless, sexless world.
With specimens like Draken, I could easily guess that this was the
kind of world in which Jokan lived out frustration. Perfect women, and
pathetic, skin-and-bone puppets for men.
She had said I would be a god among women. Without egoism, again, I
could see why. There was too much gross ambiguity. The women and men
just didn't seem to be of identical species. And in addition, Jokan was
an atavistic.
Which wouldn't matter anymore to me, because I was being dragged out of
there. Where? Into what? How could I know? I watched those feet fade
into blurred distance. They were whirling around as they faded. I knew
I was losing all grasp of consciousness. Which was all right, too,
because hard after the initial shock, the real excruciating agony was
beginning to shoot into my brain.
Only a few hours later, that's all, and I was all in one piece again.
A more effective and healthy feeling organism than before, thanks to
incredible biological treatments I couldn't even guess at. I kept
flexing my arms, watching them bend and unbend with questioning
fascination.