Short Fiction, Mack Reynolds [best book reader txt] 📗

must be a thousand women toward Denver without a husband between them.”

Vivian quieted. “Let’s hope they don’t all decide on Alan at once,” she said. “I wonder if the Turtles are having the same trouble.”

“They’re having more,” Alan said. He had lowered himself wearily into one of the chairs.

The two warriors looked at him. “How do you know, sweetie?” Vivian asked him.

“I was talking to Warren, a few weeks ago. He’s husband of the Turtle clan now, they traded him from the Foxes. Both clans were getting too interbred.⁠ ⁠…”

“Get to the point, honey,” Jean said, embarrassed at this man talk.

“The Turtles are having more trouble than we are. They have a stronger natural fortress at the center of their farm lands, but they’ve had so many raids that their arsenal is depleted and half their warriors dead or wounded. They’re getting desperate.”

“That’s too bad,” Vivian muttered. “They make good neighbors.”

Jean said, “The matriarch told me to let you know there’d be a meeting this afternoon in the assembly hall. Clan meeting, all present.”

“What about?” Vivian said, her attention going back to the beauty of her captured weapon again.

“About the prisoners. We’ve got to decide what to do with them.”

“Do with them? We’ll push them over the side of the canyon. Nobody thought we’d waste bullets on them did they?”

Alan said, mildly, “The question has come up whether we ought to destroy them at all.”

Vivian looked at him in gentle annoyance. “Sweetie,” she said, “don’t bother your handsome head with these things. You’ve had enough excitement to last a nice looking fellow like you a lifetime.”

Jean said, echoing her chief’s disgust, “Anyway, that’s what the meeting is about. Alan, here, has been talking to the matriarch and she’s agreed to bring it up for discussion.”

Vivian said nastily, “Sally is beginning to lose her grip. If there’s anything a clan needs it’s a strong matriarch.”

“A wise matriarch,” Alan amended, knowing he shouldn’t.

Vivian stared at him for a moment, then threw her head back and laughed. “I’m going to have to spank your bottom one of these days,” she told him. “You get awfully sassy for a man.”

As chairman, Alan had a voice but not a vote in the meetings of the Wolf clan. He sometimes wondered at the institution which had come down from pre-bomb days. Why was it necessary to have a chairman. Of course, myth-legend had it that men were once just as numerous and active in society’s economic (and even martial!) life as were women. But that was myth-legend. It all had a basis in reality, perhaps, but some of it was undoubtedly stretched all but to the breaking point.

Of course if all men had been fertile in the old days. But if you started with if, as a beginning point, you could go as far as you wished in any direction.

He called the meeting to order in the assembly hall which stood possibly a hundred feet below the citadel in one direction, another hundred from the stone corral which housed their prisoners, in the other. The Wolf clan was present in its entirety with the exception of children under ten and except for four scouts who were holding the prisoners. As chairman, Alan sat on the dais flanked by Sally, the matriarch, 35 years of age, tall, Junoesque, on one side and by Vivian the scout chief, on the other.

Before them sat, first, the active warrior-workers, some thirty-five of them. Second, the older women, less than a score. Further back were the sterilies, possibly twenty of these and quite young, only within recent memory had they been allowed to become part of the clan, in the past they had been driven away or killed. Further back still were the children above ten but too young to join the ranks of either warrior-workers or sterilies.

Alan called the meeting to order, quieted them somewhat and then invited the matriarch to take the floor.

Sally stood and looked out over her clan, the dignity of her presence silencing them where Alan’s plea had not.

She said, “We have two matters to bring to our attention. First, I believe the clan should make it clear to Alan, our husband, that such interference in the affairs of women is utterly out of the question. I am speaking of his unmanly activities in the raid this morning.”

There were mumblings of approval throughout the hall.

Alan came to his feet, his face bewildered. “But, Sally, what else could I do? If I hadn’t overcome the enemy warriors and turned the Bren gun on the others you would all be gone now. Possibly none of you would have survived.”

Sally quieted him with a chill look. “Let me repeat what is well known to every member of the clan. We consist of less than sixty women, a few more than thirty-five of whom are active. There are twenty sterilies and twenty-five or so children. And one husband. A few more than one hundred in all.”

Her voice slowed and lowered for the sake of emphasis. “All of our women⁠—except for two or three⁠—might die and the clan would live on. The sterilies certainly might all die, and the clan live on. Even the children could all die and the clan live on. But if our husband dies, the clan dies. The greatest responsibility of every member of any clan is to protect the husband. Under no circumstances is he to be endangered. You know this, it should not have to be brought to your attention.”

There was a strong murmur of assent from those seated before them.

Alan said, “But, Sally, I saved your lives! And if I hadn’t, I would have been captured by the Crows and Horses and you would have lost me at any rate.”

This was hard for Sally Wolf, but she said, “Then, at least, they would have had you. If you had died, in your foolhardiness, you would have been gone for all of us. Alan, two clans, husbandless clans, united in this attempt to capture you from