She of Strangeness

By J. Sheldon Jones

Karel has been kidnapped into an unwanted marriage. Worse yet, she finds herself in a society where brutality toward captive women is the accepted norm. This puts a severe strain on Karel’s belief that it is her duty to remain objective, abide by any and all local customs, learn as much as she can and never pass judgment. It is small comfo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Mar 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781949574746

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Copyright © 2019 by J. Sheldon Jones.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

To my wife, Eileen, for her incredible support over more years than I care to mention.

Chapter 1

The gun weighed more heavily on Karel’s mind than it did on her hip.

The act of opening the arms locker, the actual withdrawal of the weapons, the process of strapping on a thing that was meant to kill, and the knowledge that the killing might involve an intelligent being, had created a pain in her stomach that only grew worse as the waiting continued.

There was no immediate need for fear.

Mik had argued, successfully, that the danger source – whatever it might be – must give substantial warning before it attacked. The village they had explored the day before had not been deserted by a mob. The people had not fled in panic, they had evacuated.

In the time required for Mik and Karel to land the ship, evaluate the planetary conditions and reach the village, the place had been stripped bare. The people and all their belongings were gone, leaving only the tracks.

The tracks! A carefully constructed – and probably false – trail leading directly into the central, bandstand-like structure. The tracks went in, they did not come out.

Everything about the place spoke of a people with a place to go, an established hiding place, and a method of getting there without being followed. An escape route would indicate a need to escape from…something.

Or someone, Karel thought, people don’t create such elaborate mysteries for the benefit of animals.

Another mystery, albeit an unintentional one, was the chairs. Massive, almost throne-like, and in the exact center of the main room of every house.

Anything central is significant. It dominates the area of which it is the focal point. Anything larger than usual, larger than necessary, larger than its counterparts, is significant. Anything universal…

And what the frack are the crossbars for?

Every chair had a pair of armrests and a crossbar, a horizontal beam sticking out a full meter on either side at approximately shoulder height. The crossbars were deeply notched at each end as if they were designed for some sort of attachment – possibly something that had been removed during the evacuation.

If the tracks were a mystery, however, and the chairs an enigma, the plaque was a shock.

WM. TERVIL

1026-1078 S.Y.

Mik and Karel had stared at it with almost horrified fascination. They could read it. At some time in the distant past it had been set into one of the posts that supported the roof of the gazebo, and the lettering had been carefully burned into it. The writing was faded now, but the message was still clear.

Call it a memorial – or an actual grave marker – Wm. Tervil had lived, was now dead, and might even be buried under the platform. Man or woman, Wm. Tervil was human.

Mik and Karel had rediscovered one of the almost legendary Lost Starships.

Twenty-five tiny vessels had crawled away from the Earth in a time so ancient that only the most ardent of historians could remember their names and initial destinations. Twenty-five crews, consisting of five or six thousand men, women and children had jammed themselves into so many tin cans and, at speeds well below that of light, and dared to reach for the incredibly distant stars.

Generations had passed.

The stars had come to mankind in the form of the Federation. The slow, painful process of educating a race that had fired its weapons at the first emissaries was completed, and humanity was now a full-fledged member of the Federation.

Generations. The tiny starships plowed their way through the interstellar medium toward destinations which, once achieved, might very well prove devoid of habitable planets. Most of those starships were probably still in space, but Mik and Karel had discovered one of them majestically orbiting this planet. The crew, the descendants of the crew, had been…nearly exterminated.

Three days earlier the tiny, two-man Scoutship had popped out of hyperspace. For several hours, automatically, the ship’s instruments had scanned and re-scanned the space surrounding the star they had come to explore, examining and re-examining every light source, locating with pinpoint accuracy the tiny sparks in the blackness and, ultimately, finding the ones that moved.

Still automatically, without interrupting its crew’s almost perpetual card game and the accompanying banter, the ship had crawled forward to evaluate each of the seven planets it had located. Mass, density, orbital period, average distance from the local sun, a thousand factors were recorded and compared with all the combinations of such data that were known to have produced and sustained some form of life.

Finally a bell demanded the crew’s attention and, almost without looking, Mik had reached over and instructed the ship to approach, orbit and scan the world it had selected as having the highest probability of supporting life.

Mik took a nap. Karel fixed herself a sandwich to munch on while she studied a course on word origins from the ship’s library. When Mik woke up, the card game resumed as if it had never been interrupted, and then…

The second sounding of the bell brought them both to the console to study the list of figures the ship was flashing on the screen. The planet had life, all right, abundant vegetation and…an artificial satellite! There were only two ground patterns, however, that showed a significant probability of being other than natural formations.

The first, a rectangle surrounding two neat rows of smaller rectangles in the center of which was a large circle, showed a 92.35 percent probability of having been made by Intelligent Life. Three hundred kilometers south of that point was an area that might have been a cultivated field but which only showed 34.232 IL probability. Naturally, Mik and Karel went to…

A fortified village surrounded by a high wall, wooden houses held together by the wood itself without nails, screws or any sort of metal fastenings. But people who once knew how to build spaceships should not be living without metals.

The village was large enough to house, perhaps, three hundred individuals. The original population of the starship would have been maintained at approximately six thousand, but colonists remove all restraints on their birth rate – they multiply. The population should have grown, not shrunk.

People build fences to keep animals and other people out. People do not, without reason, develop a means of disappearing without a trace.

Mik and Karel had returned to the ship and solemnly, almost bitterly, snapped the seal on the weapons locker.

The idea of fighting, however, the prospect of being forced to kill a person, was contrary to the whole purpose of her mission. It made her cringe and shrivel up inside to think of actually having to use the weapon she now wore, of firing on an intelligent being.

Because of someone else’s STUPIDITY, her mind shrieked.

Because a shipload of human beings had been too ignorant – or too selfish – to recognize the fact that people are people regardless of their physical housing, Karel might be forced to defend herself against people whose planet had been…usurped. No matter how desperately the crew of the starship wanted a world, this one belonged to the people who had evolved on it.

By an accident of fate, Mik and Karel belonged to the same race as the intruders who had stolen this world from its rightful owners and who had – quite understandably – been attacked by the rightful owners. Mik and Karel would have no way, would probably be given no opportunity to explain that, for all their physical similarities, their attitudes were different. Having seen the need, they were required, by regulation, to protect themselves. Karel was by no means sure she would be able to comply with the regulation.

She was a Scout. She and others like her, other teams like hers, were the exploratory arm of the Survey Corps. She was two-fourths of a carefully selected team that was designed to compact the four most divergent human points of view – male and female, youth and experience – into a pair of bodies.

Karel was the more recent graduate of the Academy, whose curriculum was so rapidly updated as to make her knowledge as valuable as Mik’s experience. When they finished their tour of duty together, Mik would retire and Karel would return to the Academy to teach. Years from now, when she took the field again, it would be with a new, younger partner. She would probably never wear a gun again. She would never get over the shame she felt at having worn a gun in the field.

Scouts did not arm themselves. Scouts did as she and Mik were now attempting to do. They met with previously undiscovered races and…won them over.

A gun is a tool, a food-gathering implement. This … this is perversion of a tool. At the moment, the ship itself was a perverted tool, and Mik was trying to change that.

It was by no means unusual for local populations to be frightened by the landing of a Scoutship. It happened almost every time. When it happened, the first thing the Scouts tried was a casual stroll away from the ship. An individual Scout was a great deal less threatening than the ship, and often one of the locals was able to dredge up enough courage to approach. If this technique failed, there were others, but until friendly contact had been made, one member of the team was required to stay with the ship.

Scouts were expensive, their training cost the Survey Corps a great deal of time and money, but Scouts were expendable, their mission was not. Half the team could be lost – but not all of it.

Strangers do not usually fight at the first encounter, however, unless there is provocation. Unfortunately, on this world there had been provocation.

Which is a shame, Karel thought.

It was one of the most truly beautiful planets she had ever visited, and it was difficult to remember the possibility of danger lurking nearby. Not when she could lean back comfortably against the side of the ship and look up at the trees that rose majestically above her head. The warm sunlight that filtered down through the branches and landed softly on her face carried only comfort. The tiny, fearless, squirrel-like balls of fur that occasionally bounded across the clearing in front of her were curious, not hostile.

Karel liked the little animals. Their random scampering was a dance being staged, however unintentionally, for her benefit, and she felt a twinge of sadness remembering that at any moment the radio would crackle and send them scampering up into the trees.

The man startled her.

As if he had risen from the ground, he appeared directly in front of her. Tall, muscular, naked except for a single, utilitarian belt, he stood looking down at her with a pair of hard, grey eyes behind which something seemed to smolder. There was nothing gentle, nothing kind about that face. He towered over her, and she caught a sense of violence held in check by a calculating will.

He had chopped off his hair to keep it out of the way – nothing got in this man’s way. The rope that coiled itself across one shoulder and the bow on the other left his hands completely free. The knife and the quiver had been shoved to the back of the belt. All the weapons were accessible.

He took her in, absorbed her with his eyes, and she sat quietly, daring to make no move that would provoke or frighten.

She was not afraid, except in the sense that she was always afraid at a first contact. There were so many mistakes, so many unintentional gestures that could be wrong. The first move had to be his. She would take her cues from him and hope the moves she chose were the right ones.

Yours is womanhood? His voice rolled deeply out of his chest.

Karel was delighted that she understood him. She was an accomplished linguist, of course, but she had expected his dialect to have drifted so far from her own as to have become unintelligible. In his first utterance, at least, he had selected words that were still recognizable, and she could answer. There was no guarantee that she would be understood, but she could answer.

Yes, she said, I am a woman.

Damn, Sang thought. My coming was not for this.

Yet the coming had been needful, and the doing had come to be his because no other had the courage of it. The others would have remained, quaking and trembling in their burrows, and betime had been the coming of hunger.

Even at the coming of hunger, their going to the hunt would have been a thing of fear, an everness of hiding from this thing that had come from the sky. Even now the shes made whisperings that this was the Coming of The Mother, to work her vengeance on…

For truth, he demanded insistently, yours is womanhood…of sameness to any other?

There is no harm, Karel knew, in taking as much time as necessary to formulate an answer. There is harm in giving an incorrect answer to a question that is not fully understood. In this instance, she was sure she understood the question – but not the reason it had been asked.

I am no different, she answered carefully, from any other woman.

He gave an emphatic nod, as if this were the answer he had expected. Your coming, he pointed with his chin first to the ship and then away to the south, your coming is of Term?

Of Term, Karel wondered, does that mean from Term? The word itself was rooted in one that had to do with a time period, but his actions seemed to indicate a specific location. Term? Was it a place, possibly another village, or was he asking how long she planned to stay?

I came, if this were the wrong answer, he would repeat the question or correct her in some other way, from another sun.

This was truth, Sang concluded, or near to it. A Terman she had known him for what he was, had made screaming and tried for a running from him. This she had made hesitating in beforeness to the giving of answer, as if he had named a city – and a people – that was not in her knowing. Had he named Poly instead of Term, though he had not because the place had more farness, her hesitating had been of no differentness. The she was not of this world.

"But you are a she," he repeated for the third time, of no differentness to any other!

She allowed herself to nod because she had seen him use the gesture, but she wondered why he kept repeating the same question.

There is, he snapped irritably, clothing.

There was, indeed, clothing. A great deal more than she would ordinarily have chosen at this temperature. Judging from his attire and his comment, however, it appeared that her fear of violating a modesty taboo had been unfounded.

But he keeps asking … oh, don’t be silly. He can’t possibly be having trouble determining my sex. I don’t understand.

It is of not-things, he growled, that a she make such wearings.

Not-things! Were they taboos or customs? Was her transgression forgivable? Could she overcome the mistake? Fully fifty per cent of Karel’s training had been designed to give her the ability to answer this type of question quickly and correctly. That same training had instilled fear of having to answer such questions. To a Scout, the most sacred thing in the universe was another being’s way of doing things.

She rose carefully to her feet. She had remained seated out of fear that he might misinterpret almost any move she made, but this thing had overcome…

I’m sorry, she said desperately, I didn’t know. Would you like me to take my clothes off?

Heyn.

She felt a flood of relief wash through her at his grunt of acceptance. Maybe it was not too late, maybe the thing could still be remedied by removing the cause. She stripped herself as quickly as she could.

For an instant she considered retaining the gun, but she decided against it. This, too, could be a not-thing. The man lived here. He would be alert to any possible danger long before she would, and there would be plenty of time to retrieve the weapon if it became necessary. She set the gun aside with the rest of her clothing and turned to face him, hoping fervently that she had at least partially compensated for her mistake. She swallowed an impulse to smile and regarded him anxiously, looking for some sign of approval.

Sang had come to a muchness of anger. This was not the reason of his coming. His coming had been a needfulness, a thing to end the hunger of small ones before they came to hunger, a thing to end the starving of shes before they came to starving. His coming had been a needfulness.

It had also been a thing of speaking that he was not the coward they named him behind his back.

There was a doing that was not in him, and because it was not in him, they had named him coward. So he had come to make proof of his courage. He had come to learn of the thing that was here and in the learning end their fear of it. The thing that was here…was a she.

Of shame that she named herself a she of ordinariness. Had she named herself The Mother, he had turned from her and walked from the place. Had she named herself witch, he might yet have walked away. Even from her ordinariness he might have made his walking had it not been for the other thing. He had come to make proof of his courage, and it was done, and it would be so even if he ended the doing now. Even if he went to the Elders and spoke a fear that had ended his staying in this place, his courage was proven. They would believe of his lying, but his manhood ended with the speaking of those lies. His manhood ended here and now unless he made the doing that was not in him.

Betime there had been another doing that might have been his, but in a time of small pastness he had done a thing that ended his walking away from…

Damn it all! Why did it have to be a she?

His attack was sudden and completely unexpected. His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, spinning her around and wrenching her arm behind her back. His leg wrapped itself around her ankles and his shoulder slammed into her back so that she fell on her stomach with a force that knocked the breath out of her. By the time she realized what was happening and tried to struggle, he had her wrists locked behind her back and had already taken several turns around them with his rope.

When he had finished tying her hands, he leaped to his feet and planted one foot on her back while he eyed the door of the ship suspiciously.

You, he grunted, you and the other – you are the allness?

It took her a minute to understand the question and another minute to recover enough of her breath to answer it.

There are only two of us, she said. There was no point in lying. Mik was due to call her any time now, and when she failed to answer…

Apparently he did not believe her, anyway. He continued to watch the ship for signs of life. He knew about Mik, but he might not understand the radio. It might give her a chance. The sound of a voice coming out of nowhere…well, what if it did scare him off? The contact was already pretty much of a disaster.

It had become quite apparent that a not-thing was a rather serious crime. Just how serious it was, what it represented in this man’s mind, was something she would try to discover as soon as possible. Hopefully her plea of ignorance would be listened to, but it would have to wait. For the time being she intended to cooperate until given an opportunity to speak in her own defense. At the moment cooperation meant lying quietly and waiting for his next move.

The thing that worried Karel most was the resentment that was beginning to grow inside her. In spite of all her efforts to suppress it, her mind was beginning to lash out at the man above her, and resentment was the wrong reaction. The right reaction was to remain objective, think clearly, try to understand the motives that had prompted the attack.

She had been reduced to a condition of helplessness, however, and she was not accustomed to helplessness, to this sense of being overcome by a force greater than the self. It was the self that reacted resentfully.

Karel had landed on a rock. It pressed against her ribcage painfully, and the pain added to her resentment of the foot that held her there. She tried to ignore the pain and overcome the reflexive anger that wanted to strike back at the cause of the pain.

It is easy," she mentally quoted to herself, to conduct an objective study of vors – right up until the moment when one of them bites you. Objectivity becomes difficult, however, when you realize that you are paralyzed from the bite and that the vor will be back shortly to begin feeding. But you must try to maintain it.

This was the first situation she had ever been in that could realistically be equated with the bite of a vor, those huge, spider-like creatures that had exterminated – eaten – an entire biological expedition and given rise to the slogan that had become a by-word of the Survey Corps. And Karel was now fighting to live up to that slogan, to set her own emotions aside. She was struggling to remember that the man had his own motives for what he had done and that her mission was to discover the nature of his motives.

The fact that it was being done to her, however, clashed with what she was trying to achieve. She was losing control of her temper. She was …

The allness, then.

Sang had come to a deciding. Be there a moreness inside this thing that shone, it was a moreness of those who feared to face him. The door would make no opening, there would be none to come from it. Small goodness, then, to a moreness of waiting.

He had yet the long end of the rope to his hand, and of this he made a loop and slid it over one of his arms. It was thus that, when he bent and grasped the hair of the she, he could raise her head from the ground and yet have a way that the loop could be slid over her head and tightened about her neck. With the hand that was yet free, he pulled the hair from beneath the loop.

He held of the rope and slid his hand along it to a place beneath her chin. This he used to bring her to her feet. When she stood he saw of her eyes a thing that had not been in the eyes of any she of his knowing. Again he thought on this thing that was not of his wishing, this thing that was the wishing of…others.

When he turned abruptly and started away across the clearing, Karel was taken by surprise. The rope jerked taut and Karel was yanked so violently that she pitched forward on her face. He stopped, looked back disgustedly, and came back to lift her to her feet. She came up glaring balefully, but when he started off again – she followed.

There was no such thing as resistance, anyway. Even with her hands free, there would have been no such thing as resistance. The man was a skilled, practiced, trained fighter, Karel was not. Karel was, barely, able to recognize the fact that such training had existed – must have existed – at some time in the ancient past when men fought each other. This man, and the people he sprang from, still fought, and fought with a skill and confidence that could only be born of training. Even if she had known in advance that he planned to attack her, she could never have beaten him, she could not even have resisted much longer than she had when he took her by surprise, and now, with her hands tied behind her, all question of resistance was gone. He could force her to follow him. He could force her to do anything that can be forced on a person –