"James E. Gunn - The Misogynist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gunn James E)

I nodded over that for a moment before it soaked in. "And men and women aren't?" I practically
yelled.
"Sh!" he warned, and glanced nervously at the kitchen door.

THEN was when I began to think Harry should have been in the movies. And yet I had to admire the
guy, making a joke out of what isтАФevery husband can tell youтАФone of the greatest and most secret
tragedies of life, greater even because no one can talk about it. No one but Harry.
My chuckle must have been the right response, because he nodded, relaxed, and stopped glancing at
the door out of the corner of his eye. Or maybe that was after Lucille peeked around the corner and said,
"Harry off on one of his stories again? Tell us when he's through, so we can bring in the refreshments."
She was pretty light about it and you could tell it was a running joke and I couldn't help thinking what
a lucky guy Harry wasтАФif a fellow has to get married, that is, and most of us do.
"The alien race," Harry whispered and leaned back.
It was a good line and I laughed; there wasn't anything forced about it, either.
"What better way," he continued, "to conquer a race than to breed it out of existence? The Chinese
learned that a long time ago. Conqueror after conqueror took the country and each one was passively
accepted, allowed to intermarry . . . and eventually was absorbed. Only this case is the reverse.
Conquest by marriage might be a good term for it. Breed in the conqueror, breed out the slave. Breed in
the alien, breed out the human."
I nodded appreciatively. "Makes sense."
"How did it all start?" asked Harry. "And when? If I knew those answers, I'd know the whole thing.
All I've got is a theory. An alien race of women landed on EarthтАФwhen man was still a cave-dwelling
animal, maybe, or it could even have been in historic timesтАФand my guess is they were dropped here by
their men. Jettisoned. Dumped. Why? To get rid of them, obviously."
"But what did their men do then?" I had to ask, feeding him the next point.
"How do I know?" he replied irritably. "They were aliens, remember. Maybe they had some solution,
some procreative substitute for women. Maybe these women were just the worst of the lot and the
remaining ones were better. Maybe the men didn't give a damn and preferred racial suicide to
surrender."
He angrily shoved the coffee table aside, grumbling something about women's ideas of furnishing a
home, and pulled his chair closer. "Sure, surrender. They couldn't exterminate the men, could they? Who
has the weapons, the military knowledge? Besides, women don't think like that. Their minds work in
devious ways; they win what they want by guile and subtlety. That's why they married into the human
race."
I looked blink, which is always a good way to push him on.
"Well, look," he said earnestly, just as I figured he would, "how about the Amazons? Once a year,
you know, they visited the Gargareans, a neighboring tribe; any resulting male children were put to death.
That didn't work very long, of course. Their purpose and their very alienness were too obvious. And the
matriarchiesтАФtoo blatant, you see, might give the whole thing away. Besides, men are useful in ways that
women aren't. Men are inventive, artistic, creativeтАФand can be nagged or coaxed into doing what
women want them to do."

I LIT a cigarette and looked for an ashtray to put the match. He shoved over some silly little object
that would suffocate a cigarette the minute you laid it down. No grooves, either, of course.
"That's what women buy when they're on their own," he pointed out disgustedly. "Lights that they
think look pretty and make you blind or put a crick in your back when you try to read. You get a house
with a southern exposure so you'll have sunlight, and then they put up heavy drapes to keep the furniture
from fading. That's not enough, so they dress the furniture in slipcovers that always get twisted and
creased. They shed bobbypins like dandruff, hang stockings over towels to dry, never screw a cap on a
bottle or jar, so it always falls and breaks when you pick it up by the top, 'straighten up the house,' as