A Woman's Place Read online

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  A Woman's Place

  By MARK CLIFTON

  Illustrated by EMSH

  [Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science FictionMay 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]

  [Sidenote: Home is where you hang up your spaceship--that is, if youhave any Miss Kitty along!]

  It was the speaking of Miss Kitty's name which half roused her fromsleep. She eased her angular body into a more comfortable position inthe sack. Still more asleep than awake, her mind reflected tartly thatin this lifeboat, hurtling away from their wrecked spaceship back toEarth, the sleeping accommodation was quite appropriately named. Onanother mental level, she tried to hear more of what was being saidabout her. Naturally, hearing one's name spoken, one would.

  "We're going to have to tell Miss Kitty as soon as she wakes up." It wasSam Eade talking to Lt. Harper--the two men who had escaped with her.

  "Yes, Sam," the lieutenant answered. "What we've suspected all along ispretty definite now."

  Still drowsing, she wondered, without any real interest, what they feltthey must tell her. But the other level of her mind was more real. Shewondered how she looked to these two young men while she slept. Did shesleep with her mouth open? Did her tiara slip while she snored?

  * * * * *

  Vividly, as in full dreaming, she slipped back into the remembered scenewhich had given birth to the phrase. At some social gathering she hadbeen about to enter a room. She'd overheard her name spoken then, too.

  "Miss Kitty is probably a cute enough name when you're young," the cattywoman was saying. "But at her age!"

  "Well, I suppose you might say she's kept it for professional reasons,"the other woman had answered with a false tolerance. "A school teacher,wanting to be cozy with her kiddies, just a big sister." The tolerancewas too thin, it broke away. "Kind of pathetic, I think. She's so plain,so very typical of an old maid school teacher. She's just the kind tokeep a name like Miss Kitty."

  "What gets me," the first one scoffed, "is her pride in having such abrilliant mind--if she really does have one. All those academic degrees.She wears them on every occasion, like a tiara!"

  She had drawn back from the door. But in her instant and habitualintrospection, she realized she was less offended than perverselypleased because, obviously, they were jealous of her intellectualaccomplishments, her ability to meet men on their own ground,intellectually as good a man as any man.

  The half dream drowsiness was sharply washed away by the belated impactof Sam Eade's question to Lt. Harper. Reality flashed on, and she wassuddenly wide awake in the lifeboat heading back to Earth.

  "What is it you must tell me?" She spoke loudly and crisply to the men'sbroad backs where they sat in front of the instrument panel. Theimplication of the question, itself, that they had been holdingsomething back....

  Lt. Harper turned slowly around in his seat and looked at her with thatdetested expression of amused tolerance which his kind of adult maleaffected toward females. He was the dark, ruggedly handsome type, thekind who took it for granted that women should fawn over him. The kindwho would speak the fatuous cliche that a woman's place was in the home,not gallivanting off to teach colonists' children on the fourth planetof Procyon. Still, perhaps she was unjust, she hardly knew the man.

  "Oh, you awake, Miss Kitty?" he asked easily. His tone, as always, wasdiffident, respectful toward her. Odd, she resented that respect fromhim, when she would have resented lack of it even more.

  "Certainly," she snapped. "What is it you must tell me?"

  "When you're dressed, freshened up a bit," he answered, not evasively,but as if it could wait.

  * * * * *

  She started to insist, but he had already turned back to the nose windowto study the starry sky and the huge misty green ball of Earth in frontof them. Sam Eade, the radioman, was intently twisting the dials on hisset with a puckered frown between his blond eyebrows. He was an entirelydifferent type, tall, blond, but just as fatuously masculine, asarrogantly handsome. Probably neither one of them had an ounce ofbrains--handsome people so seldom needed to develop mental ability.

  Sam, too, turned his face farther away from her. Both backs told herplainly that she could dress, take care of her needs, with as muchprivacy as the lifeboat could allow anybody.

  Not that it would take her long. She'd worn coveralls since thecatastrophe, saving the dress she'd had on for landing on Earth. They'dhad to leave most of her luggage behind. The lieutenant had insisted ontaking up most of the spare space in the lifeboat with that dismantledspace warper from the wreck of their ship.

  She combed her short graying hair back of her ears, and used a littlewater sparingly to brush her teeth. Perhaps it had been a quixoticthing, her giving up a secure teaching post on Earth to go out toProcyon IV. Except that she'd dreamed about a new colony where therising generation, under her influence, would value intellect--with thegirls no different from the boys. Perhaps it had been even sillier totake a cabin on a freighter, the only passenger with a crew of four men.But men did not intimidate her, and on a regular passenger ship she'dhave been bored stiff by having to associate with the women.

  Two of the men....

  It wasn't quite clear to her, even yet, what had happened. They'd usedthe normal drive to get clear of regular solar shipping lanes. Thewarning bell had rung that they were about to warp into hyperspace, amechanism which canceled out distance and made the trip in apparent timeno more than an overnight jaunt to Mars. There was a grindingshudder--then a twisted ship which looked as if some giant had taken awet rag and torqued it to squeeze out the water. Lt. Harper and Sam hadgot her out of her cabin, and finally into the lifeboat which was onlypartly crippled.

  The other two men of the crew....

  She zipped up the front of her coveralls with a crisp gesture, as if tosnap off the vision. She would show no weakness in front of these twomen. She had no weakness to show!

  "All right, gentlemen," she said incisively to their backs. "Now. Whatis it I must be told?"

  * * * * *

  Lt. Harper pointed to the ball of Earth so close ahead. It was huge,almost filling the sky in front of them. The misty atmosphere blurredoutlines slightly, but she could make out the Eastern halves of Northand South America clearly. The Western portions were still in dimdarkness.

  "See anything wrong, Miss Kitty?" the lieutenant asked quietly.

  She looked more closely, sensing a possible trap in his question, arevealment of her lack of knowledge.

  "I'm not an authority on celestial geography," she said cautiously,academically. "But obviously the maps I've seen were not accurate inshowing the true continental proportions." She pointed to a small charthanging on the side wall. "This map shows Florida, for example, a muchlonger peninsula than it actually is. A number of things like that. Idon't see anything else wrong, but, of course, it's not my field ofknowledge."

  Lt. Harper looked at her approvingly, the kind of look she gave a brightpupil who'd been especially discerning.

  "Only it's not the map that's wrong, Miss Kitty," he said. "It is _my_field of knowledge, and I've seen those continental outlines hundreds oftimes. They always corresponded to the map ... before."

  She looked at him without comprehension.

  "Not only that," Sam Eade entered the conversation. "As soon as we wereclear of the wreck, Lt. Harper took a fix on stars and constellations.He's an astrogator. He knows his business. And they were wrong, too.
Just a little wrong, here and there, but enough. And even more thanthat. On a tight beam, I should have been able to make a connection withEarth headquarters on this set. And I haven't yet got communication, andwe know there's nothing wrong with this set."

  "Sam knows his business, too, Miss Kitty," Lt. Harper said. "If he can'tget communication, it's because there isn't any."

  She looked wide-eyed from one to the other. For once, she was moreconcerned with a problem than with concealing her ignorance about it.

  "It means," the lieutenant said, as if he were answering a question shehadn't yet asked, "that the Earth we are returning to is not the Earthwe left."

  "I don't understand," she gasped.

  "There's a theory," Lt. Harper answered slowly. "Heretofore it has beenconsidered only a mathematical abstraction, and having no counterpart inreality. The theory of multiple dimensions." She looked at him closely,and in her habitual ambivalence of thought reflected that he soundedmuch more intelligent than she had suspected.

  "I've read about that," she answered.

  He looked relieved, and threw a quick look at Sam. Apparently he hadunderestimated her intelligence, too--in spite of all her degrees.

  * * * * *

  "We never thought it could be real," he emphasized. "But the theory wasthat multiple universes lay side by side, perhaps each an instant's timeaway from the other. The only thing I can see is that some flaw in thespace warper threw us out of our dimension into another one closelyadjacent--not far enough for things to be totally different, justdifferent enough that the duplication isn't identical. It's Earth, butit's not our Earth. It's a New Earth, one we don't know anything about."

  "In another few hours, we'll be entering the atmosphere," Sam put in,"and we don't know what we'll find. We thought you ought to know."

  She flared in exasperation at the simple assumption of male arrogance.

  "Of course I should know!" she snapped back. "I am not one of yourlittle bits of blonde, empty-headed fluff to be protected by strongmales! I should have been told immediately!"

  Lt. Harper looked at Sam with a broad grin. It was amusement, but it wasmore--a confirmation that they could depend on her to take it in herstride--an approval. Apparently, they had discussed more things abouther than she'd overheard, while she slept. He didn't turn off the grinwhen he looked directly at her.

  "What could you have done about it, if we had told you, Miss Kitty?" heasked mildly.

  * * * * *

  It was not the same Earth. The charts and maps had not been wrong. Hertentative theory that perhaps there were vision flaws in the plasticnose window which had not stood up.

  The continents, the lakes, the rivers--the topography really wasdistorted. Now there was the Mississippi River, one spot swinging rathertoo widely to the East. The Great Lakes were one huge inland sea. TheGulf of Mexico swung high up into what had once been Alabama andGeorgia.

  There was no New Orleans, shipping center of the world, headquarters ofSpace.

  There were no cities anywhere up and down the Mississippi. Where St.Louis should have been, there was virgin forest. As they dropped downinto the upper reaches of atmosphere, experiencing the familiar andsometimes nauseating reference shift from ahead to below, there had beenno New York to the East, no San Francisco to the West. There had been noBoulder Dam, no Tennessee Valley project, no continuous hydroelectricinstallations running the entire length of the Mississippi, where thestrength of the Father of the Waters had finally been harnessed for Man.There were no thin lines of highways, no paint-brush strokes of smokeagainst the canvas of the Gulf of Mexico to denote steamers, for atomicpower was still not available to all.

  On this New Earth, Man could not yet have reached a state of complextechnology.

  And as they dropped lower still, through their telescope sights, theysaw no canoes on the river or the feeder streams. They saw no huts alongthe river shore, no thin streamers of wood smoke from huts hidden underthe trees along the bayous. New Earth was purple and blue, then shadinginto green as they dropped lower. They sighted a deer drinking at theedge of a pool.

  But there was no trace of Man.

  "If there are no scars, no defacements upon this forest primeval," MissKitty said didactically, "then Man has not evolved on New Earth." Sinceit was spoken in the tone of an axiom, and there was no evidence torefute it, neither of the two men felt like arguing the matter.

  * * * * *

  They were low enough now that they were flying horizontally rather thandropping vertically. They were still searching for traces of some kindof artifacts. They were also searching, Lt. Harper advised them at last,for a suitable place to land. They wanted a higher ground than the deltacountry so they might be free of insect pests, assuming there were somesince deer could be seen throwing their heads back along their sides asif to chase away flies. They wanted higher ground with a stream of watergoing over falls to supplement their limited power in the lifeship. Onthe chance there were fish, it would be nice to be handy to a lake. Aforest for game. A level ground for a permanent camp.

  Since they were here, and it might be some time before they could figureout a way to return to Old Earth, they may as well make the best of it.

  They found the kind of place they wanted, a little to the west of theMississippi. They grounded the lifeship at the edge of a naturalclearing beside a lake where a stream of sparkling water dropped from arock ledge.

  They settled the ship on the springy turf, then sat and looked at oneanother as if they were suddenly all strangers. Wordlessly, Lt. Harpergot up and opened the door of the lifeship. He threw down the hingedmetal steps. He stood back. Miss Kitty went through the door first anddown the steps. The two men followed.

  They stood on the ground of New Earth, and looked at one another the waythey had in the ship. In the minds of each there was the thought thatsome kind of a ceremonial speech should be made, but no one volunteeredit.

  "I suppose we should have a campfire," Miss Kitty said doubtfully.

  They did not realize it at the time, but it was the most effectivespeech which could have been devised. It was a symbol. Man haddiscovered and taken possession of New Earth. His instinctive thoughtwas to place his brand upon it, an artificial fire.

  All of them missed the significance of the fact that it was Miss Kittywho had made the first move in the domestication of this New Earth.

  * * * * *

  In the weeks which followed, Miss Kitty began to be dimly aware of thesignificance. At first they had lived a sort of Robinson Crusoe kind oflife, leaning pretty heavily upon the stores of the liferaft.

  It had been she who had converted it over into more of the Swiss FamilyRobinson pattern of making use of the resources about them.

  The resources were abundant, bountiful. Yet the two men seemed littleinterested, and appeared content to live off the stores within theliferaft. They devoted almost all their time, except that little forbringing up firewood and trapping game, to fiddling with that gadgetthey called a warp motor. They were trying to hook it up to the radiosets, they said.

  Miss Kitty detested women who nagged at men, but she felt compelled topoint out that this was the fall season upon New Earth, and winter wouldsoon be upon them. It should not be a severe winter at this latitude,but they must be prepared for it with something more substantial thanher uncomfortable sleeping place in the liferaft; nor would the two ofthem continue to enjoy sleeping out under the trees, if a blanket ofsnow fell some night.

  "I was hoping we could be back home before winter sets in, Miss Kitty,"Lt. Harper apologized mildly.

  She had not nagged them. She had simply shut her lips and walked away.

  The next day they began cutting logs.

  It was odd, the basic pleasure she felt in seeing the sides of the cabinstart to take form. Certainly she was not domestic by nature. And thiscould, in no sense, be considered a home. Still,
she felt it might havegone up faster, if the men had used their muscles--their brutestrength--rather than spend so much futile time trying to devise powertools.

  They were also inclined to talk too much about warping radio wave bandsthrough cross sections of sinowaves, and to drop their work on the cabinin favor of spending long hours trying new hookups.

  But Miss Kitty never nagged about it. She had even tried to follow someof the theory, to share in their efforts to put such theory intopractice, to be just a third fellow. Instead she found her thoughtswandering to how an oven could be constructed so she could bake androast meats instead of broiling and frying them over an open fire.

  Game was plentiful, fish seemed to be begging for the hook. Every day,without going too far away from camp, she found new foods; watercress,mustard greens, wild turnips, wild onions, occasionally a turkey nestwith eggs still edible, hollow trees where wild bees had stored honey,persimmons still astringent, but promising incredibly sweet anddelicious flavor when frost struck them, chinquapin, a kind of chestnut,black walnuts. There was no end to what the country provided. Yet themen, instead of laying in winter stores, spent their time with the warpmotor.

  * * * * *

  Without meaning to, Miss Kitty interrupted an explanation of Lt.Harper's on how they were calibrating the torquing degrees. She told himthat he and Sam simply must help her harvest a hillside patch of wildmaise she had found, before the rains came and ruined all the grain withmold, or the migrating birds ate it all.

  The cabin they were erecting would contain only two rooms--a largegeneral room for cooking, eating,