the status of women. In El Progranta, women were supposed to have been absolutely equal to men, except for performing the special function of childbirth. To keep the colony from becoming inbred, the planners had included ten thousand sets of sperm and egg, ready for quickening; all of the expedition’s men had allowed themselves to be sterilized. With what were then considered modern medical techniques, a woman could give birth in four to five months after implantation.
By the time the population had stabilized at around two hundred, it was obvious that every female would have to be kept pregnant every day for the rest of her life, until her womb cried uncle, or the race would wither on the vine. And she had to be protected from Selva, which was virtually a sentence of life imprisonment with time off for old age.
At first the women were kept in the five colonizing vessels, now useless as transportation but proof against teeth and claws. The men stayed with them at night and ventured out during the day to hunt, which was easy, and to try to farm, which was rather difficult with one eye and one hand otherwise occupied.
After some ten years they did manage to build high fortifications around each ship. The electric fences, which had proved useless before because dead creatures would just pile up and eventually make a bridge, were unraveled and restrung as barriers against the gliding monsters.
Population pressure shoved the walls outward as the years went by. The people lived first in capsules, then stockades, then forts, and finally in walled towns. Eventually five towns grew together to form the sprawling city of Castile Cervantes.
There were schools, but they taught a minimum of academic subjects and a maximum of how to stay alive.
Most of the first generation still considered themselves communists. The second generation thought communism was ridiculous. The third generation was sentimental about it, and by the tenth generation very few people knew what it was.
With the women locked away like precious jewelry and the men spending half their waking hours in the expectation or dispensation of bloody murder, it was not surprising that an ugly form of social organization should develop. Since strength and ruthlessness were the only survival traits, the strongest and most ruthless went to the top and made their own rules.
They conquered their own planet in three hundred years. When they started looking for other worlds to conquer, they broke one of the very few interplanetary laws—and the Confederation, through its clandestine TBII arm, sent one man to check out the situation.
Otto McGavin was still alive when dawn broke and the miscellaneous uglies tromped or slithered or flopped or flapped back to their holes and caves.
He sat exhausted in the middle of a wide circle of burned, bizarre-looking meat. That was what had saved him. He hadn’t had to fire a single shot in the past hour—Selva’s night foragers naturally preferred a freshly dead meal to going to the trouble of killing the new one that spat fire.
When the sun cleared the top of the jungle canopy Otto saw no sign of life in either the jungle or the clearing. Finally feeling safe, he automatically slipped back into the Ramos Guajana personality. He shook a fist at the dead creatures and shouted a joyful curse. Then he removed the sheath knife from the side of his kit, sliced a chunk of thigh from one of a creature’s six, and cheerfully munched on it as he plunged into the jungle.
At Ramos’s normal walking speed, he could cover 12.8 kilometers in a comfortable hour and a half. But junge trails are slow going and it was nearing dusk—Ramos was starting to get worried—when he broke into a clearing at the base of a steep hill. A handsome brick-and-stone building, evidently a lodge of some sort, sat on the top of the hill. Halfway up the hill a moat protected a substantial wall topped with electric webbing. He followed the path up the hill to the moat.
By the time the population had stabilized at around two hundred, it was obvious that every female would have to be kept pregnant every day for the rest of her life, until her womb cried uncle, or the race would wither on the vine. And she had to be protected from Selva, which was virtually a sentence of life imprisonment with time off for old age.
At first the women were kept in the five colonizing vessels, now useless as transportation but proof against teeth and claws. The men stayed with them at night and ventured out during the day to hunt, which was easy, and to try to farm, which was rather difficult with one eye and one hand otherwise occupied.
After some ten years they did manage to build high fortifications around each ship. The electric fences, which had proved useless before because dead creatures would just pile up and eventually make a bridge, were unraveled and restrung as barriers against the gliding monsters.
Population pressure shoved the walls outward as the years went by. The people lived first in capsules, then stockades, then forts, and finally in walled towns. Eventually five towns grew together to form the sprawling city of Castile Cervantes.
There were schools, but they taught a minimum of academic subjects and a maximum of how to stay alive.
Most of the first generation still considered themselves communists. The second generation thought communism was ridiculous. The third generation was sentimental about it, and by the tenth generation very few people knew what it was.
With the women locked away like precious jewelry and the men spending half their waking hours in the expectation or dispensation of bloody murder, it was not surprising that an ugly form of social organization should develop. Since strength and ruthlessness were the only survival traits, the strongest and most ruthless went to the top and made their own rules.
They conquered their own planet in three hundred years. When they started looking for other worlds to conquer, they broke one of the very few interplanetary laws—and the Confederation, through its clandestine TBII arm, sent one man to check out the situation.
Otto McGavin was still alive when dawn broke and the miscellaneous uglies tromped or slithered or flopped or flapped back to their holes and caves.
He sat exhausted in the middle of a wide circle of burned, bizarre-looking meat. That was what had saved him. He hadn’t had to fire a single shot in the past hour—Selva’s night foragers naturally preferred a freshly dead meal to going to the trouble of killing the new one that spat fire.
When the sun cleared the top of the jungle canopy Otto saw no sign of life in either the jungle or the clearing. Finally feeling safe, he automatically slipped back into the Ramos Guajana personality. He shook a fist at the dead creatures and shouted a joyful curse. Then he removed the sheath knife from the side of his kit, sliced a chunk of thigh from one of a creature’s six, and cheerfully munched on it as he plunged into the jungle.
At Ramos’s normal walking speed, he could cover 12.8 kilometers in a comfortable hour and a half. But junge trails are slow going and it was nearing dusk—Ramos was starting to get worried—when he broke into a clearing at the base of a steep hill. A handsome brick-and-stone building, evidently a lodge of some sort, sat on the top of the hill. Halfway up the hill a moat protected a substantial wall topped with electric webbing. He followed the path up the hill to the moat.
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