But the Xenorian supply lines had been cut by rocket fire from hidden Earth installations, thus depriving the Lizard Men of the vital ingredients for their zorch-ray death guns, and Earth had rallied and struck back—not only with her own fighting forces but with clouds of gas made from the poison of the rare Iridis hortz frog once used by the Nacrods of Ulinth to tip their arrows, and to which, it had been discovered by Earth scientists, the Xenorians were particularly susceptible. Thus the odds had been evened out.
Also their carchineal shorts were flammable, if you could hit them dead on with a missile that was hot enough already. Earth snipers with bull’s-eye aim, using long-range phosphorus-bullet guns, were the heroes of the day, although retaliations against them were severe, and involved electrical tortures previously unknown and excruciatingly painful. The Lizard Men did not like having their private parts burst into flame, which was understandable.
Now, by the year 2066, the alien Lizard Men had been beaten back into yet another dimension of space, where Earth fighter pilots in their small, quick two-man harry-craft were pursuing them. Their ultimate goal was to wipe out the Xenorians entirely, keeping perhaps a few dozen for display in specially fortified zoos, with windows of unbreakable glass. The Xenorians, however, were not giving up without a fight to the death. They still had a viable fleet, and a few tricks left up their sleeves.
They had sleeves? I thought they were naked on top.
Judas Priest, don’t be so picky. You know what I mean.
Will and Boyd were two old buddies—two scarred and battle-seasoned harry-craft veterans of three years’ standing. This was a long time in the harry-craft service, where losses ran high. Their courage was said by their commanders to exceed their judgement, though so far they had got away with their rash behaviour, raid after daring raid.
But as our story opens, a Xenorian zorch-craft had closed in on them, and now they were shot to hell and limping badly. The zorch-rays had put a hole in their fuel tank, knocked out their link with Earth control, and melted their steering gear, giving Boyd a nasty scalp wound in the process, whereas Will was bleeding into his spacesuit from an unknown site in midsection.
Looks like we’re for it, said Boyd. Screwed, blued, and tattooed. This thing’s gonna go kablooey any minute now. I just wish we’d of had the time to blast a few hundred more of the scaly sons of guns to kingdom come, is all.
Yeah, ditto. Well, mud in your eye, old pal, said Will. It looks like you’ve got some running down in there anyway—red mud. Ha, ha.
Ha, ha, said Boyd, grimacing in pain. Some joke. You always had a bum sense of humour.
Before Will could reply, the ship spun out of control and went into a dizzying spiral. They’d been seized by a gravity field, but of which planet? They had no idea where they were. Their artificial-gravity system was kaput, and so the two men blacked out.
When they awoke, they couldn’t believe their eyes. They were no longer in the harry-craft, nor in their tight-fitting metallic spacesuits. Instead they were wearing loose green robes of some shining material and reclining on soft golden sofas in a bower of leafy vines. Their wounds were healed, and Will’s third finger on the left hand, blown off in a previous raid, had grown back. They felt suffused with health and well-being.
Suffused, she murmurs. My, my.
Yeah, us guys like a fancy word now and then, he says, talking out of the side of his mouth like a movie gangster. It gives the joint a bit of class.
So I imagine.
To proceed. I don’t get it, said Boyd. You think we’re dead?
If we’re dead I’ll settle for dead, said Will. This is all right, all righty.
I’ll say.
Just then Will gave a low whistle. Coming toward them were two of the peachiest dames they had ever seen. Both had hair the colour of a split-willow basket. They were wearing long garments of a purplish-blue hue, which fell in tiny pleats and rustled as they moved. It reminded Will of nothing more than the little paper skirts they put around the fruit in snooty Grade-A grocery stores. Their arms and feet were bare; each had a strange headdress of fine red netting. Their skin was a succulent golden pink. They walked with an undulating motion, as if they’d been dipped in syrup.
Our greetings to you, men of Earth, said the first.
Yes, greetings, said the second. We have long expected you. We have tracked your advent on our interplanetary tele-camera.
Where are we? said Will.
You are on the Planet of Aa’A, said the first. The word sounded like a sigh of repletion, with a small gasp in the middle of it of the kind babies make when they turn over in their sleep. It also sounded like the last breath of the dying.
How did we get here? said Will. Boyd was speechless. He was running his eyes over the lush ripe curves on display before him. I’d like to sink my teeth into a piece of that, he was thinking.
You fell from the sky, in your craft, said the first woman. Unfortunately it has been destroyed. You will have to stay here with us.
That won’t be hard to take, said Will.
You will be well cared for. You have earned your reward. For in protecting your world against the Xenorians, you are also protecting ours.
Modesty must draw a veil over what happened next.
Must it?
I’ll demonstrate in a minute. It merely needs to be added that Boyd and Will were the only men on Planet Aa’A, so of course these women were virgins. But they could read minds, and each could tell in advance what Will and Boyd might desire. So very soon the most outrageous fantasies of the two friends had been realized.
After that there was a delicious meal of nectar, which, the men were told, would stave off age and death; then there was a stroll in the lovely gardens, which were filled with unimaginable flowers; then the two were taken to a large room full of pipes, from which they could select any pipe they wanted.
Pipes? The kind you smoke?
To go with the slippers, which were issued to them next.
I guess I walked into that one.
You sure did, he said, grinning.
It got better. One of the girls was a sexpot, the other was more serious-minded and could discuss art, literature, and philosophy, not to mention theology. The girls seemed to know which was required of them at any given moment, and would switch around according to the moods and inclinations of Boyd and Will.
And so the time passed in harmony. As the perfect days went by, the men learned more about the Planet of Aa’A. First, no meat was eaten on it, and there were no carnivorous animals, though there were lots of butterflies and singing birds. Need I add that the god worshipped on Aa’A took the form of a huge pumpkin?
Second, there was no birth as such. These women grew on trees, on a stem running into the tops of their heads, and were picked when ripe by their predecessors. Third, there was no death as such. When the time came, each of the Peach Women—to call them by the names by which Boyd and Will soon referred to them—would simply disorganize her molecules, which would then be reassembled via the trees into a new, fresh woman. So the very latest woman was, in substance as well as in form, identical with the very first.
How did they know when the time had come? To disorganize their molecules?
First, by the soft wrinkles their velvety skin would develop when overripe. Second, by the flies.
The flies?
The fruit flies that would hover in clouds around their headdresses of red netting.
This is your idea of a happy story?
Wait. There’s more.
After some time this existence, wonderful though it was, began to pall on Boyd and Will. For one thing, the women kept checking up on them to make sure they were happy. This can get tedious for a fellow. Also, there was nothing these babes wouldn’t do. They were completely shameless, or without shame, whichever. On cue they would display the most whorish behaviour. Slut was hardly the word for them. Or they could become shy and prudish, cringing, modest; they would even weep and scream—tha
t, too, was on order.
At first Will and Boyd found this exciting, but after a while it began to irritate.
When you hit the women, no blood came out, only juice. When you hit them harder, they dissolved into sweet mushy pulp, which pretty soon became another Peach Woman. They didn’t appear to experience pain, as such, and Will and Boyd began to wonder whether they experienced pleasure either. Had all the ecstasy been a put-on show?
When questioned about this, the gals were smiling and evasive. You could never get to the bottom of them.
You know what I’d like right about now? said Will one fine day.
The same thing I’d like, I bet, said Boyd.
A great big grilled steak, rare, dripping with blood. A big stack of French fries. And a nice cold beer.
Ditto. And then a rip-roaring dogfight with those scaly sons of guns from Xenor.
You got the idea.
They decided to go exploring. Despite having been told that Aa’A was the same in every direction, and that they would only find more trees and more bowers and more birds and butterflies and more luscious women, they set out toward the west. After a long time and no adventures whatsoever, they came up against an invisible wall. It was slippery, like glass, but soft and yielding when you pushed on it. Then it would spring back into shape. It was higher than they could possibly reach or climb. It was like a huge crystal bubble.
I think we’re trapped inside a big transparent tit, said Boyd.
They sat down at the foot of the wall, overcome by a profound despair.
This joint is peace and plenty, said Will. It’s a soft bed at night and sweet dreams, it’s tulips on the sunny breakfast table, it’s the little woman making coffee. It’s all the loving you ever dreamed of, in every shape and form. It’s everything men think they want when they’re out there, fighting in another dimension of space. It’s what other men have given their lives for. Am I right?
You said a mouthful, said Boyd.
But it’s too good to be true, said Will. It must be a trap. It may even be some devilish mind-device of the Xenorians, to keep us from being in the war. It’s Paradise, but we can’t get out of it. And anything you can’t get out of is Hell.
But this isn’t Hell. It’s happiness, said one of the Peach Women who was materializing from the branch of a nearby tree. There’s nowhere to go from here. Relax. Enjoy yourselves. You’ll get used to it.
And that’s the end of the story.
That’s it? she says. You’re going to keep those two men cooped up in there forever?
I did what you wanted. You wanted happiness. But I can keep them in or let them out, depending how you want it.
Let them out, then.
Outside is death. Remember?
Oh. I see. She turns on her side, pulls the fur coat over her, slides her arm around him. You’re wrong about the Peach Women though. They aren’t the way you think.
Wrong how?
You’re just wrong.
The Lizard Man of Xenor by Margaret Atwood:
An Open Letter from
Margaret Atwood to the
Judson Independent
School District
First, I would like to thank those who have dedicated themselves so energetically to the banning of my novel The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s encouraging to know that the written word is still taken so seriously.
That thought aside, I would like to congratulate the students, parents, and teachers who have supported the use of my book in advanced placement courses. They have aligned themselves against the censurers, book-banners, and book-burners throughout the ages, and have stood up for open discussion and a free expression of opinion—which, last time I looked, was still the American way, though that way is under pressure.
I would also like to comment on the objections to the book that have been made. The remark “offensive to Christians” amazes me—why are some Christians so quick to see themselves in this mirror? Nowhere in the book is the regime identified as Christian. It puts into literal practise some passages from the Bible, but these passages are not from the New Testament. In fact, the regime is busily exterminating nuns, Baptists, Quakers, and so forth, in the same way that the Bolsheviks exterminated the Mensheviks. The only person who says anything Christian is the heroine herself. You will find her own version of The Lord’s Prayer at the end of Chapter 30.
As for sexual explicitness, The Handmaid’s Tale is a good deal less interested in sex than is much of the Bible. Leaving aside the Song of Solomon, there’s quite a bit of sex—rape, incest of various kinds, seduction, lust, prostitution, public intercourse on a rooftop with one’s father’s concubines, and more. One of the things that makes the Bible such a necessary book is its refusal to throw a lace tablecloth over this kind of behaviour.
The sexual point in my book would seem to be that all totalitarianisms try to control sex and reproduction one way or another. Many have forbidden inter-racial and inter-class unions. Some have tried to limit childbirth, others have tried to enforce it. It was a common practise for slave owners to rape their slaves, for the simple purpose of making more slaves. And so on.
The other point would be that the free choice of a loved one—when denied by a regime or a culture—is going to happen anyway, though under such conditions it will be both brave and dangerous. I give you Romeo and Juliet. Also, when marriage itself has been made into a travesty, talk of sex within the bonds of marriage becomes simply fatuous.
Two last thoughts. First, I put nothing into my book that human beings have not already done. It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s our picture, or part of it. Second, if you see a person heading toward a huge hole in the ground, is it not a friendly act to warn him?
Again, I congratulate you, and wish you well. Your thoughtfulness and courage have set an example well worth following.
Sincerely,
Margaret Atwood
Weird Tales Covers
of the 1930s
“ … you could have a pack of nude women who’ve been dead for three thousand years, with lithe, curvaceous figures, ruby-red lips, azure hair in a foam of tumbled curls, and eyes like snake-filled pits … I could throw in some sacrificial virgins as well, with metal breastplates and silver ankle chains and diaphanous vestments. And a pack of ravening wolves, extra … Popular on the covers—they’ll writhe all over a fellow, they have to be beaten off with rifle butts.”
These words appear in my 2000 novel, The Blind Assassin. They’re spoken by Alex Thomas, who’s a writer of pulp-magazine fiction in the 1930s. He’s not writing at this moment in the novel, however: he’s picking up a girl in a park. His initial method is storytelling, always a good thing to know something about, whichever role you’re playing. If you’re the pickup artist, it’s as well to be able to tell a good story or two, and if you’re the target you need to be able to determine if you’ve heard them before.
The fictional Alex Thomas got his beautiful vamps and their adornments straight off the covers of Weird Tales, definitely the sort of magazine he’d have wanted to publish in. In the 1930s and ’40s, Weird Tales published, well, weird tales: fantasy, horror, and sci-fi of the bug-eyed monster variety. Its covers were in lurid colour, lovingly drawn in pastels by Margaret Brundage—the only female pulp cover artist of her era—who was fresh from a career as a fashion designer and illustrator.
Brundage specialized in vicious or threatened young women, sometimes totally nude, but otherwise dressed in colourful and revealing outfits involving metal brassieres, translucent veils, and ankle chains both decorative and functional, often accessorized with whips and shackles. Large fanged animals are a recurring motif: the Brundage women have equivocal relationships not only with wolves but with other charismatic carnivores. Sometimes the women appear frightened by their dangerous friends, but they may also stride forth, alpha females leading the pack.
The Brundage covers run from 1933 through the early 1940s, making them a perfect source for my invention, Alex Thomas; so
it’s clear where Alex got his clichés. But—looking back at these clichés now—I wonder where I myself got them? I wasn’t born when Brundage was creating most of her covers; yet her subject matter seems very familiar to me. When you’re a child, you soak up images like a sponge. It doesn’t matter to you where they come from. In those timeless years between infancy and, say, seven, what is has always been: in that way, children inhabit the realm of myth.
In the 1940s, when I was a comic generation kid, there were certain things we all knew. We took it as a given that children could make friends with wolf packs, and might even be raised by them; these packs would rush to their aid in times of peril. I had my own imaginary pack of this kind, and therefore was not alarmed by Al Capp’s Wolf Gal of the popular 1940s cartoon strip L’il Abner. Wolf Gal must have been the first Brundage-like carnivorous pinup I ever saw. She had white hair and fierce white eyebrows, she most likely ate men, she was scantily dressed, and like all the members of Capp’s harem of eccentric glamour gals (stunners such as Stupefyin’ Jones, Appassionata Von Climax, and the mud-covered pig-fancier Moonbeam McSwine), she was what was once called “bountifully endowed.” Hubba hubba, men said in those days: a term obscure in origin but most likely a variant of hübsche, the German word for “beautiful.”
Books and characters in books, pictures and elements in pictures—they all have families and ancestors, just like people. What generated Wolf Gal? Probably Brundage’s wolf gals of Weird Tales, which—I’d bet—Capp would have read and drawn from. Was their grandparent Kipling’s The Jungle Book, in which the wolf-raised child was a boy? Did these clawed lovelies devolve from the high art of the late nineteenth century, so fond of depicting femmes fatales paired with animals to show how animalistic they were underneath? Or does the line stretch way back, to folklore and tales of lycanthropy, or even further back, to times when animals were thought to assume human form at will?
In Other Worlds Page 21