Thy Name Is Woman Part 4

"Maybe it's ... it's all a mistake after all ... maybe it is. I've never been too sure, not for a while now. And then you--the way you talked and looked--the excitement. I don't know why. But the touch of your beard--your voice. I don't know what happened. We've carried it to extremes, extremes, Eddie. It was always this way with us--once we were sure of our man, and even before, when he was blinded by new love, we tried to make him over, closer to _our_ idea of what was right. But now I know something ... those faults and imperfections, most of them were men's, the real men's chief attractions. Individuality, that's the thing, Eddie, that's it after all. And it's imperfections too, maybe more than anything else. Imperfections.... Oh, Eddie, you're close, much closer to human nature, to real vitality, through _your_ imperfections.

Not imperfections. Eddie--your beard is beautiful, your dirt is lovely, your yelling insults are wonderful--and...."

She stopped a minute. Her hands ran through his hair. "When you get a man made over, he's never very nice after that, Eddie. Never--"

She sobbed, pulled his lips down. "Eddie--I can't let them kill you."

"Forget it," he said. "No one can do anything. Don't get yourself in a jam. You'll forget this in a little while. There's nothing here for a guy like me, and I'm not for you."

She stepped way, her hands still on his shoulders. "No--I didn't mean that. I've got to go on living in the world I helped make, among the men we all decided we would always want. I've got to do that. Listen, Eddie, how did you intend to get back to Earth?"

He told her.

"Then it's just a matter of getting back aboard that same s.h.i.+p, and into this secret room un.o.bserved?"

"That's all, Gloria. That and keep from being exterminated first."

"I can get you out of here. We'll have to do it right now. Take that beard off, and get that hair smoothed down somehow. I hate to see it happen, but I've got to get you out of here, and the only way to do it is for you to be like one of the men here."

He went to work on his face and hair. She went out and returned with a suit like the other men wore. He got into it. She smiled at him, a hesitant and very soft smile, and she kissed him before they left the room and cautiously went out of the City.

The way was clear across the moonlit field and under the deep dark shadow of the s.h.i.+p. He kissed her and then took hold of the ladder. She slipped a notebook of velonex, full of micro-film, into his hands.

"Goodbye, Eddie," she said. "Take this with you. It may give you men down there a way out. I never thought much before of how mad it must be for you."

He took the folder. He looked up at the double moons painting the night a fantastic s.h.i.+fting wave of changing light. And then he looked down at Gloria Munsel again, at the glinting s.h.i.+ne of her hair.

"Goodbye," he said. "I might stay after all--except that a lot of men on Earth are waiting for me to tell them something. They'll be surprised.

I--" He hesitated. Her eyes widened. Warmth of emotion moved him and he said, or started to say, "I love you," and many other things, but she interrupted him.

"Don't please, Eddie. Anything you said now would sound just like what my devoted husband says, every day. I'd rather you wouldn't say anything at all now, Eddie, just goodbye."

"Goodbye then," he said again.

He looked back from the opened door in the s.h.i.+p's cargo bin. Her face was s.h.i.+ning up at him, her lips slightly parted, her cheeks wet. It was a picture he would never be able to forget, even if he wanted to.

"When you forget to shave in the mornings, Eddie, think of me."

Bowren stood up and addressed the investigation committee which had sent him to Mars. He hadn't made any statements at all up to this moment. The ten members of the Committee sat there behind the half-moon table. None of them moved. Their faces were anxious. Some of them were perspiring.

Eddie told them what he had seen, what he had heard, his own impressions about the whole thing, about his escape. He left out certain personal details that were, to him, unnecessary to this particular report.

The Committee sat there a while, then started to talk. They talked at once for a while, then the Chairman rapped for order and stood up. His face had an odd twist to it, and his bald head was pocked with perspiration.

Eddie Bowren took the book of micro-film from under his arm, the one Gloria Munsel had given him. He put it on the table. "That has been thoroughly checked by scientists, and their report is included. I thought it surely was a false report, until they checked it. The first page there gives a brief outline of what the micro-film contains."

The Chairman read, then looked up. He coughed. He mopped at his head.

Eddie said. "As I saw it up there, this is the way it's going to stay.

We'll never get into s.p.a.ce, not without using the methods that were used with me. And they're too destructive. I've been examined. I could never go through it again and live. And that's the only way Earth men can ever get into s.p.a.ce. The women aren't coming back to us. They have husbands of their own now. Believe me, those women aren't going to leave their perfect husbands. They've set up a completely feminine culture. It's theirs, all theirs. They'll never give it up to return to a masculine world, and that's what Earth will always be to them. There are only a few women left on Earth, and they're of such subnormal intelligence as to be only a menace to any possible future progeny. Our birthrate has stopped. We are living under extremely abnormal circ.u.mstances without women. I have, as I said before, but one recommendation to this Committee, and you take it for what it's worth. I personally don't care--much--and that isn't important either."

"What is your recommendation, Bowren?"

"I a.s.sure you that the formulas in that book will work for us, Mr.

Chairman. Will you accept the reports of the scientists who investigated those formulas?"

"I will," the Chairman said hoa.r.s.ely. "I'll accept it. Why not--?"

Bowren grinned thinly at the ten men. "There's the secret of doing what the women have done. It'll work for us too. Our only chance for survival is to follow their procedure. We've got to start turning at least a percentage of ourselves into women."

One man leaned forward and put his head on his arms. The others sat there, in a kind of stunned numb att.i.tude, their eyes drifting vaguely.

The Chairman coughed and looked around the silent hall, and at the other ten men in it.

"Any volunteers?" he whispered.