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Authors: John Wyndham
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conflict, has it not?"
"As a historian who must have studied men, women, and motives you should have taken my meaning better," I told her.
She shook her head, with reproof. "You are so much the conditioned product of your age, my clear. They told you, on all levels, from the works of Freud to that of the most nugatory magazines for women, that it was sex, civilised into romantic love, that made the world go roundand you believed them. But the world continues to go round for others, toofor the insects, the fish, the birds, the animalsand how much do you suppose they know of romantic love, even in brief matingseasons? They hoodwinked you, my dear. Between them they channelled your interests and ambitions along all courses that were socially convenient, economically profitable, and almost harmless."
I shook my head.
"I just don't believe it. Oh, yes, you know something of my worldfrom the outside. But you don't understand it, or feel it."
"That's your conditioning, my dear," she told me, calmly.
Her repeated assumption irritated me. I asked: "Suppose I were to believe what you say, what is it, then, that does make the world go round?"
"That's simple, my dear. It is the will to power. We have that as babies; we have it still in old age. It occurs in men and women alike. It is more fundamental, and more desirable, than sex; I tell you, you were misledexploited, sublimated for economic convenience.
"After the disease had struck, women ceased, for the first time in history to be an exploited class. Without male rulers to confuse and divert them they began to perceive that all true power resides in the female principle. The male had served only one brief and useful purpose; for the rest of his life he was a painful and costly parasite.
"As they became aware of power, the doctors grasped it. In twenty years they were in full control. With them were the few women engineers, architects, lawyers, administrators, some teachers, and so on, but it was the doctors who held the keys of life and death. The future was in their hands and, as things began gradually to revive, they, together with the other professions, remained the dominant class and became known as the Doctorate. It assumed authority; it made the laws; it enforced them.
"There was opposition, of course. Neither the memory of the old days, nor the effect of twenty years of lawlessness, could be wiped out at once, but the doctors had the whiphandany woman who wanted a child had to come to them, and they saw to it that she was satisfactorily settled in a community. The roving gangs dwindled away, and gradually order was restored.
"Later on, they faced betterorganised opposition. There was a party which contended that the disease which had struck down the men had run its course, and the balance could, and should, be restoredthey were known as Reactionists, and they became an embarrassment.
"Most of the Council of the Doctorate still had clear memories of a system which used every weakness of women, and had been no more than a more civilised culmination of their exploitation through the ages. They remembered how they themselves had only grudgingly been allowed to qualify for their careers. They were now in command: they felt no obligation to surrender their power and authority, and eventually, no doubt, their freedom to a creature whom they had proved to be biologically, and in all other ways, expendable. They refused unanimously to take a step that would lead to corporate suicide, and the Reactionists were proscribed as a subversive criminal organisation.
"That, however, was just a palliative. It quickly became clear that they were attacking a symptom and neglecting the cause. The Council was driven to realise that it had an unbalanced society at its handsa society that was capable of continuity, but was in structure, you might say, little more than the residue of a vanished form. It could not continue in that truncated shape, and as long as it tried to disaffection would
"As a historian who must have studied men, women, and motives you should have taken my meaning better," I told her.
She shook her head, with reproof. "You are so much the conditioned product of your age, my clear. They told you, on all levels, from the works of Freud to that of the most nugatory magazines for women, that it was sex, civilised into romantic love, that made the world go roundand you believed them. But the world continues to go round for others, toofor the insects, the fish, the birds, the animalsand how much do you suppose they know of romantic love, even in brief matingseasons? They hoodwinked you, my dear. Between them they channelled your interests and ambitions along all courses that were socially convenient, economically profitable, and almost harmless."
I shook my head.
"I just don't believe it. Oh, yes, you know something of my worldfrom the outside. But you don't understand it, or feel it."
"That's your conditioning, my dear," she told me, calmly.
Her repeated assumption irritated me. I asked: "Suppose I were to believe what you say, what is it, then, that does make the world go round?"
"That's simple, my dear. It is the will to power. We have that as babies; we have it still in old age. It occurs in men and women alike. It is more fundamental, and more desirable, than sex; I tell you, you were misledexploited, sublimated for economic convenience.
"After the disease had struck, women ceased, for the first time in history to be an exploited class. Without male rulers to confuse and divert them they began to perceive that all true power resides in the female principle. The male had served only one brief and useful purpose; for the rest of his life he was a painful and costly parasite.
"As they became aware of power, the doctors grasped it. In twenty years they were in full control. With them were the few women engineers, architects, lawyers, administrators, some teachers, and so on, but it was the doctors who held the keys of life and death. The future was in their hands and, as things began gradually to revive, they, together with the other professions, remained the dominant class and became known as the Doctorate. It assumed authority; it made the laws; it enforced them.
"There was opposition, of course. Neither the memory of the old days, nor the effect of twenty years of lawlessness, could be wiped out at once, but the doctors had the whiphandany woman who wanted a child had to come to them, and they saw to it that she was satisfactorily settled in a community. The roving gangs dwindled away, and gradually order was restored.
"Later on, they faced betterorganised opposition. There was a party which contended that the disease which had struck down the men had run its course, and the balance could, and should, be restoredthey were known as Reactionists, and they became an embarrassment.
"Most of the Council of the Doctorate still had clear memories of a system which used every weakness of women, and had been no more than a more civilised culmination of their exploitation through the ages. They remembered how they themselves had only grudgingly been allowed to qualify for their careers. They were now in command: they felt no obligation to surrender their power and authority, and eventually, no doubt, their freedom to a creature whom they had proved to be biologically, and in all other ways, expendable. They refused unanimously to take a step that would lead to corporate suicide, and the Reactionists were proscribed as a subversive criminal organisation.
"That, however, was just a palliative. It quickly became clear that they were attacking a symptom and neglecting the cause. The Council was driven to realise that it had an unbalanced society at its handsa society that was capable of continuity, but was in structure, you might say, little more than the residue of a vanished form. It could not continue in that truncated shape, and as long as it tried to disaffection would
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