Spartan Planet - A. Bertram Chandler [58]
"There was trouble, starting off with a few isolated murders, culminating in a full-scale revolt against the officers and those loyal to them. Somehow the twelve girls were . . . eliminated. Deems Harris doesn't say as much in his journal, but I gained the impression that he was behind it.
"Now, this Deems Harris. It is hard for us in this day and age of quick passages to get inside the skins, the minds of those old-time space captains. Probably none of them was quite sane. Most of them were omnivorous, indiscriminating readers, although some of them specialized. This Deems Harris seems to have done so. In history. By this time, with his colony off to a disastrous beginning, he seems to have hankered after some sort of culture in which women played a very small part—or no part at all. One such culture was that of Sparta, one of the ancient Greek city-states back on Earth. Greek women were little more than childbearing, housekeeping machines—and the Spartan women suffered the lowest status of them all. Sparta was the state that specialized in all the so-called manly virtues—and little else. Sparta was the military power. Furthermore, the original Spartans were a wandering tribe called Dorians. Dorians—Doric—See the tie-up? And their first King was Aristodemus. Aristodemus—Deems Harris.
"The first Aristodemus, presumably, kept women in their proper place—down, well down. This latter-day Aristodemus would go one better. He would do without women at all." Grimes looked at Margaret Lazenby. "At times I think that he had something."
"He didn't have women, that's for certain. But go on."
"All right. Aristodemus—as we shall call him now—was lucky enough to command the services of like-minded biochemists. The sperm, of course, was all neatly classified—male and female being among the classifications. Soon that first birth machine was turning out a steady stream of fine, bouncing baby boys. When the adult populace started to get a bit restive, it was explained that the stock of female sperm had been destroyed in the crash. And somebody made sure that the stock was destroyed."
"But," Brasidus interrupted, "but we used to reproduce by fission. Our evolution from the lower animals has been worked out in detail."
"Don't believe everything you read," Peggy Lazenby told him. "Your biology textbooks are like your history textbooks—very cunningly constructed fairy tales."
"Yes," said Grimes. "Fairy tales. Aristodemus and his supporters were able to foist an absolutely mythical history upon the rising generations. It seems fantastic, but remember that there was no home life. They—like you, Brasidus, and like you, Admiral—knew only the Spartan state as a parent. There were no fathers and mothers, no grandfathers and no grandmothers to tell them stories of how things used to be. Also, don't forget that the official history fitted the facts very neatly. It should have done—after all, it was tailor-made.
"And so it went on, for year after year, for generation after generation, until it became obvious to the doctors in charge of the birth machine that it couldn't go on for much longer. That bank of male sperm was near exhaustion. This first crisis was surmounted—ways and means were devised whereby every citizen made his contribution to the plasm bank. A centrifuge was used to separate X-chromosome-bearing sperm cells from those carrying the Y-chromosome. Then the supply of ova started to run out. But still the race was in no real danger of extinction. All that had to be done was to allow a few female children to be born. In fact, this did happen now and again by accident—but such unfortunates had been exposed on the hillside as defective infants. Even so, the doctors of those days were reluctant to admit female serpents into this all-male paradise.
"And now Latterhaven comes into the story. I'm sorry to have to disappoint you all, but there never was a villainous Admiral Latterus. And, apart from the ill-fated Doric, there never were any spaceships owned by Sparta. But while Aristodemus was building his odd imitation of