Transformation by James Gunn

Author:James Gunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Asha regarded the sacrificial male with compassion. She began unbuckling the straps that held him to the table, ignoring his protests. “Don’t worry,” she twittered at him. “I’ll protect you.”

She helped him sit up. The effort was almost too much for him, and he fell over when she let go. She pulled him upright again. “Stay there,” she said before she went into the bathroom/kitchen for a cloth and some water. She returned to find him flat on the table once more. She bathed his face and body, noticing even more keenly how thin and weak he was. He was unresisting but agitated, turning his head from side to side. It was pitiful, Asha thought, that he had been reduced to this state of animal-like subjection to the Lemnian females. But perhaps it had always been that way on Lemnia, the males smaller and weaker than the females; or perhaps it was only this male who had been allowed to live because he was small and weak.

Asha got grain from the kitchen, mixed it with some water, and mashed it with an implement she found that was something like a spoon. She put a small portion of the gruel in the male’s mouth. He let it dribble out the side. She wiped it away and tried again until he began to chew and then to swallow. After a few mouthfuls she paused and let him rest and then resumed until he had consumed half of what she had prepared. He rested again and then when she raised him to a sitting position, he stayed upright.

“Why do the females treat you so poorly?” she asked.

“Life is never easy,” he said.

“Males are slaves?”

“That is the way it has always been.”

“It just got worse,” Asha said. “It is not just that the other males died. The females killed them all.”

The information took a moment to register, and then the Lemnian began to tremble. Asha placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “Why?” he asked.

“It was a moment of madness,” Asha said.

“The females are never mad,” the Lemnian said. “They can be mean and they can be cruel, but they always have reasons.”

“They say they received instructions from ancient gods,” Asha said.

“There are no gods,” the Lemnian said. “That’s what you told me.”

“If I am right,” Asha said, “they only seem like gods. They are powerful creatures from places beyond the world you know. But the females were confused. They thought the ancient gods had returned and had commanded them to kill the males.”

“From another world?” the Lemnian asked.

“You know about other worlds?”

“I have heard the females talk about ships that fly above the sky, about worlds like ours but different, with different kinds of people who live on them, even of organizations that govern the ways in which such worlds relate. But I have never seen such things. That is female business.”

“Not any longer, apparently.”

“You, too, are from another world.”

“Yes, and I have come here to find out why your females have forgotten everything they have learned about their world and its place in the universe.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.