The Female of the Species

“Aren’t you concerned that I’ll tell?” asked Gray slowly. “About you? About Toroto?”

“Now, why would you do that? When I’ve been so gracious? And these people have someone to take care of them?”

Charles may not have been looking at Gray, but Gray was certainly looking at Charles now, very very carefully. “Because I’m an anthropologist. I’d want to come back with reinforcements.”

“So military! And I thought we were friends.”

“You’re the one who sees this village as one more battle of World War II.”

“Against them, not you, sweetheart.”

“Sweetheart is on their side.”

Charles clucked his tongue. “No racial loyalty.”

“The point is, I’d have every reason to return here with company. You’ve murdered people here. This is a British colony. You could be arrested.”

“Miss Kaiser, are you trying to convince me to shoot you?”

“I’m not telling you anything you haven’t already thought about.”

Charles said nothing. It seemed to Gray he should have finished shaving by now. His face looked smooth. Still, Charles picked at individual patches with great attention.

“What are you planning to do, turn me loose in the bush? I had a guide to get here. How would I find my way out?”

“You could have an escort partway. Why, maybe the Tooth Fairy himself would help you up the cliffs.”

“Maybe I’ll stay here.”

“Sorry. No room at the inn. Booked for the season. Manger’s filled, too. One Jesus per village. It’s checkout time.”

“When those Jews were gassed in the camps,” said Gray softly, “they were told they were going to take a shower.”

Charles turned toward her finally and looked her in the eye. He said nothing. His eyes were large and deep and black and hard to read. The muscles in his face did not move.

“All right,” said Gray. “Maybe you hadn’t decided. But it had occurred to you. There was a good chance.”

Still, he said nothing.

“It makes you feel a little funny, doesn’t it?” said Gray. “You think because I’m white, American, it’s different. But you also know, deep down, that it’s no different, and that you could do it.”

It was a strange moment. Charles still wouldn’t speak. There was nothing else for Gray to do but keep going. “I just feel we should discuss this, since I plan on staying here a while. For example, I find it pretty amazing that anyone could be so convinced of his own personal importance that no one’s sacrifice is too great. I mean, how many people, Charles? Is there any limit? You and Adolf. You may not like him, but. How many, Lieutenant?”

Charles seemed almost to smile. He turned his head a few degrees and looked at Gray from an angle. He pointed his forefinger slowly at her chest. “I don’t believe you,” he said at last.

“What?”

“I don’t believe you’re amazed. That you don’t understand.” Charles took his rifle from against the wall and slid it onto the table in front of her. “There. If you thought you could get away with it. If there weren’t several hundred religious fanatics outside that door. Would you use this? On me?”

This time it was Gray’s turn to be quiet.

“See?” said Charles. “If you climbed out of your cockpit a little dazed from an insanely lucky crash landing and you were surrounded by crouching men with sharp poles, would you be willing to shoot just one of them to make a point?”

Gray said nothing.

“And if one, why not two, if that’s what it took? And maybe, Miss Kaiser, over five years it would take even more than two.”

Gray stared down at the gun. “So is everyone like this?”

Charles stroked his chin. He touched it with a certain surprise, as if he’d never felt it so smooth; he didn’t seem to like it. He took his hand away. “Some women wouldn’t pick up that rifle, would they? Even with Charlie Corgie ready to cart them off down the trail. But you would.” Charles looked at her steadily. “We’re not so different.”

It was appalling. Gray found herself flattered. That was how she knew he was right.

“I know,” said Charles, looking Gray up and down. “You think of yourself as some sort of warm, gooey-hearted darling. I don’t buy it.”

“How do you know what I’m like?”

“The way you move. That’s the way I get everybody’s number. I’m never wrong. For example, I’ve never met such a tall woman who walked around so straight.”

“You can tell I would shoot you because I have good posture?”

“Sure. And more. You use your hands a lot when you talk. They cut the air, slash, slash.” Charles did a comic demonstration. Gray couldn’t help but laugh. “Listen, I’ve made a study of this. I didn’t know the language when I got here. We used sign language. The natives signed completely different for the same word. Some signed way out here.” Charles flailed his hands on either side. “They’re wide open. Trusting. Crazy. You operate from the center. You keep your hands close in, stab and parry. You’d be good with a knife. And,” he went on, “you keep your chin up. You have an unnerving stare and a long stride. You’re sarcastic and you obviously think you’re so smart. In short, Miss Kaiser,” said Charles, taking his gun back from the table, “you move like a real bitch.”

Charles walked out the door, letting his hand graze her hip as he walked by. Gray let out a slow, controlled breath and ground her molars together. No one had warned her that anthropology was going to be so complicated.

Gradually Gray and Charles worked out their truce. Charles would allow Gray to study Il-Ororen as long as she did her part in promoting his mythology. Gray cooperated, but she didn’t understand how they got away with it. While they took the most obvious precautions with injury and excretion, they still sweated and coughed and laughed, ate and grew tired and slept long, heavy nights. There was a thin line between being improbable and being debunked altogether, and the two of them trod this line as precariously as she’d skirted the ledges to this village. It was a long way down.

The other abyss before them was their future. Gray would conclude her study, and then what? Likewise, Corgie’s religious gadgetry was nearing its demise: the spare airplane batteries off which he ran his miraculous radio were finally running down. His stores of ammunition were running down.

“Do you ever think about going back to the U.S.?” asked Gray one day.

“I’m a god,” said Charles. “Why should I go back and be a schmo?”

The trouble was, while when Gray arrived Charles had seemed beleaguered, he now seemed to be enjoying his life among Il-Ororen with great gusto.

While Corgie was working on his projects, Gray helped the natives with their spring planting. It was right before the rains, but the only crop Charles cared about was his ersatz tobacco, so Gray taught Il-Ororen about topsoil and terracing while Corgie milled wood. Their first conflicts were over allocation of labor. Gray wanted tillers; Corgie wanted lumberjacks. Finally, Gray asked in the middle of a ritual confrontation over a work crew, “Why are you building that stupid tower, anyway?”

“Because I’m going to put a restaurant on top, why do you think?” said Charles blackly. “Three stars, with a great view of the city lights.”

“It seems about as useful—”

“Just the point, I don’t care about useful. I will build a scale model of King Kong or a ten-foot wooden replica of the Great American Hamburger if that’s what I feel like. Understand? And if I wake up one morning and decide that I can’t live without an Egyptian pyramid in my back yard, then these poor bastards will spend the rest of their lives mining stone—”

“Until they starve to death, and you with them. That’s all very capricious, but without a few Egyptians growing bananas along the Nile, those pharaohs would never have gotten past the first story. Alot-too-toni,” she said imperiously to the men, and looking confusedly from Gray to Corgie and back again, they followed Gray down the path to her fields, leaving Corgie by his half-built Babel furiously without lumber for the rest of the day.

Grudgingly, Charles walled off a portion of his one-room Olympus for Gray. It was thanks to this arrangement that she discovered the advantages of being a god extended well beyond architecture.

Lying in bed one night, Gray heard the ladder outside clatter and a woman’s shy, nervous laughter. The ladder was withdrawn again, and set with a clack on the other side of Gray’s bedroom wall. Fully awake now, Gray listened stiffly to the noises from Corgie’s bed. She was used to his gruff, angry orders in the night; Corgie didn’t sleep easily, as, she thought, he had no right to. She was used to the occasional clatter of his rifle when it fell from his arms; though it was terrifying to wake this way, she actually preferred those times the rifle fell and even went off to what she was hearing now: the rustling, a chuckle, a light feminine squeal. A growl and snuffling as if an animal were rummaging through his things. Then, worst of all, the sound of Charles Corgie peacefully, silently asleep for the first time Gray had ever heard.