confirm your much-criticized hypothesesconcerning our own women. If our enemies who object so strongly toYour Excellency's statements could be here for only one hour theywould become your devoted supporters. American women are the proofthat your theories are correct. Your famous attempt to explain some ofthe incongruous and apparently ridiculous passages in our ancientmanuscripts by assuming the existence of a now-vanished femaleprinciple is irrefutably demonstrated by these women, Your Excellency.
Here, the female principle exists, and as you predicted, most of thewomen are therefore entirely different from ours. The term used inthis language is "femininity." It is a devastatingly attractivething--but almost impossible to explain. I will make an attempt.
Senseless, reasonless, even foolish motions of the body and the hands,the expressions of the eyes and the mouth, the way the head is movedand tilted are a part of it. So are unusual tones of the voice andspecial ways in which things are said. Laughter, a whisper, thedirection of the glance, the fingers' pressure--these, too, are partsof it.
There are infinitely various types of adornment which hang on thebody, fabrics in delicate or brilliant colors which cling and flow,gleaming stones at throat and wrists. The faces are enchantinglypainted, the hair shining and arranged in numerous wonderful designs.There is an aura of the scent of flowers and fruits.
I tell you, Excellency, everything about this femininity assails thesenses. It is so potent that once having experienced it the mererecollection causes the pulses to pound and throb. My hand trembles asI write these words to you. I am confused and disturbed and wild witha longing I never knew at home. I wish to meet Your Excellency's highstandards in preparing this report, and yet I am unable to bescientific. The logic of the laboratory cannot be employed.
As soon as I could I began to hunt desperately for the secret of thefemale principle. I analyzed the soil, the food, the water, and theair by our own most refined methods. I found nothing to help us. Iwent to the risky extreme of killing two of their women. One possessedan unusual amount of this femininity. The other, who seemed to havevery little of it, was essentially like one of our own women. _Therewas not the slightest chemical difference in their bodies._ Dead, theywere precisely the same. But alive, Your Excellency, they wereoverwhelmingly dissimilar.
I was able to kill the unfeminine one scientifically without emotionor regret. But, although it was clearly my duty, I could hardly bringmyself to kill the other one. I had known her for several days. Herfemininity almost prevented my continuing with the experiment. Shetold me that she loved me.
I don't know if I have the skill to explain to you what this "love"is. Briefly, it means that the woman was in a mental state--areceptive mental state, Excellency, infinitely more violent than thepeak our women reach after intensive application of the maleprinciple. Your Excellency, _she was that way all of the time_.
* * * * *
This brings me to another extraordinary difference between them andus. The men here lack the male principle. They obviously don't need itbecause of the existence of the female principle in the women. If themen had it, as we have, I leave it to Your Excellency's vividimagination as to what would be happening here.
In general the men are enough like us to be called humanoids in oursense of the word. They have about the same intelligence quotient thatwe have, and are physically almost identical except for our inducedmodifications. As Your Excellency predicted they do not have thesesince they have not yet discovered the methods of inducing them. As aresult, while they have the same muscular potential as we do, they arefar weaker, and their life span is not more than 70 or 80 years bytheir calendar.
They do not have heat sensors, so they stumble around in the dark andtrip over things like children. They squander more energy on electriclights than on anything else in the economy. Also, their hearing andeyesight cannot be compared to ours. I am always hearing and seeingthings without their suspecting it. A low conversation across the roomis perfectly audible to me. Much of my best information comes thisway. Naturally, since they completely lack heat generators, theycannot set things on fire.
To get back to the account of my activities, Excellency; my biggestmistake was in killing the two women for the femininity research. Thisgot me into terrible trouble. They feel strongly about killing womenhere. Now that I appreciate their women, I can see why.
The local police were not hard to handle, but they have a centralpolice system called the F.B.I. It is comparable to Your Excellency'sorganization in techniques and training, and in some ways evensuperior to it. When the F.B.I. started investigating me, things gotserious immediately.
One day my heat sensor detected a man standing outside my front door.He was a huge bulky man. I sensed a mass under his left arm pit. Myheat sensor analyzed it. It reflected heat like iron, but there seemedto be some small pieces of lead there too.
The man was polite and apologetic when I opened the door. He tippedhis hat. He said that he had come to the wrong apartment. Then heasked, "How did you know I was standing outside the door?"
Without thinking, I uttered the first thing that came into my head. "Isaw your shadow."
His eyes widened only slightly. He had good control of himself. "Howcould you see a shadow through a wooden door?" he asked softly.
I was exasperated at my mistake but I smiled the way people here dowhen they are at a disadvantage. "I do not explain my tricks," I toldhim. "I earn my living by performing them at the theatre."
I closed the door.
The next night I was experimenting with the male principle. I sat on abench in a place called Central Park and practiced on the women asthey went by. I discovered that the more feminine the women thegreater the effect the wave has on them. Some would hesitate and lookaround as they walked by me. Some would stop and stare at me in apuzzled fashion. I was growing tired and ravenously hungry. I decidedthat when the next attractive woman passed me I would generate onelast powerful wave, and then go on to a restaurant.
* * * * *
I allowed a few unfeminine ones to go by. Then I saw her, a lovelyblonde girl about twenty-five years old. Her hair was a mass of shortcurls that covered her head with a uniform thickness like the stylesin our Second Renaissance Period. She had on a black dress and wascarrying a black bag in her hand. I sensed small pieces of differenttypes of metals in her bag. She was walking slowly and weeping.Occasionally she dabbed at her nose with a piece of white cloth.
She was so beautiful, Excellency. Her warmth started flowing over mychin when she was at least sixty feet away. I decided to wait untilshe was quite close and then to engulf her with the full force of themale principle. I was shaken and impatient. Even at the highest pointof excitement, though, Your Excellency should know that the importanceof my mission was in my mind. When she was on the sidewalk directly infront of me I did as I had planned. She stopped. Her handkerchiefdropped to the ground, and then her bag. She looked at me wildly. Sheran over and sat on the bench beside me. She put her arms around myneck and kissed me.
"Why were you crying?" I asked.
"I don't remember," she said. "I don't care."
I closed my eyes. My senses were responding to her warmth and herscent. Suddenly there was a blast of male heat on my chin. I startedand stared. There standing above us was the huge heavy man of thenight before. The mass of metal was still under his left arm pit. Hehad an odd expression on his face. He was watching the girl as if hercondition was answering a question for him.
In a sudden flash of intuition everything was clear to me. The girlwas a decoy. I had fallen neatly into a trap. I had thoughtlesslydemonstrated my power to the F.B.I, man--a power I could not explainby saying it was a trick.
I pushed the girl away and stood up. The man's eyes were fixed upon mewith horror. I saw that he knew there was something monstrous andmenacing about me. Something he did not understand. Something thatmeant terrible danger to him and his kind. His right hand started tocreep towards the m
ass of metal under his arm. I cupped my handtowards him and started accumulating a heat charge. His glance droppedfearfully. It fell to my hand, and his temperature went up. He hadundoubtedly seen me burn pieces of paper in the theatre.
His right hand fumbled in his pocket and he drew out a little package."Have a cigarette?"
I shook my head. He put one in his own mouth and lighted a match. Inspite of the strongest effort of my will I jumped back. I jerked myhand up over my chin. A little stick of wood with a flaring flame onthe end of at least 600 degrees Centigrade, right in front of my heatsensors, took my breath away. The searing heat burned right into mybrain. It was like some of the tortures in Your Excellency's ForceNumber Five.
The heavy man observed all of this, but he did not understand it. Helooked at the girl, who had risen and was leaning against me,oblivious of everything.
"You've got quite a way with women,