Free Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25) by John Fletcher, Irving Cox

but ten days shorter than
the Terran year, and the day was some two hours longer.   Gan glanced up at the bright orange double
star that served both Konapar and Phira as a sun.   Menkis, they called it.   On the charts it was labeled Menanger.  
    “What was
that device you and your friends were lowering through the floor when you shot
at me?” he asked, watching her face closely.   She did not even look at him, watching instead the flight of a gold and
blue bird hovering above their heads.   Her voice was a discreet murmur, audible not three feet away.  
    “It was
part of the secret which we did not wish the Konaparians to discover, as you
suspect.”  
    Gan felt a
swift elation surge through him.   So she
was a convert to his way of thinking; was a friend and ally against the
secretive selfishness of these so-holy priestesses.  
    Then she
turned her head and laughed, and spoke more loudly.   “What did you say?   I am so sleepy…”
    He spoke
loudly himself.   “Aren’t you sorry you
shot at me last night?   You might have
killed me.”  
    Her eyes
danced.   “Oh, I could have, but you are
too good-looking to kill.   I meant only
to take some of the smugness out of you.”  
    “You did,”
Gan laughed.   “I will admit that women
can do as good a job of soldiering as men, and but short weeks ago I thought
differently.”  
    Aphele
twitched the mort’s ugly head closer again.   She whispered:   “I am sick to death of hearing the two sexes compared.   Never mention it to me again.   Do you hear?”
    “No sex
conversation?   What will we talk about?”
    Aphele
frowned.   “That is not what I meant, and
you know it.   On Phira, when a woman
decides she wants a Phiran male, she tells him so.   I understand that, with Terrans, the opposite
is true and the woman must never mention the subject closest to her heart, but
wait for the man to speak his love.”  
    Gan nodded, his eyes on hers doubtfully.   He read the signs aright—she was his friend,
and more!   Up to now it had been his
custom to avoid too close entanglement with any female.   They had always meant trouble.   Now it seemed he was in trouble again…   But there was an honesty and candor on her face—and Aphele was not only very lovely, but she was also a
woman who had already lived several lifetimes.   Perhaps her mind, also, was so far ahead of his in perception that she
knew exactly what he thought.   Certainly
the simple directness in her meant profound knowledge of the human mind rather
than simplicity.  
    He asked:   “You have
lived so much longer than I, you should have greater wisdom, should be able to
guess my every thought before I speak; can you tell me what I’m thinking?”
    Though she
looked at him whimsically, her lips gave a bitter twist.   “I know you’re afraid to have me say I am
attracted to you.   I know you are not
affected by my beauty.   I know that the
first Matriarch is in your heart.   But
listen to me, Terran.   Sometimes it is
better to be loved than to love.   I, at least,
would be your friend, and I would expect no lease on your life in return.   You know nothing of the nature of my
mind.   I can be more to you than she—if
you will allow yourself to understand.”  

 
    GAN WAS
struck by her serious tone, as well as by the thread of her speech.   But another thing occupied his
attention:   “You say the first
Matriarch.   Who is that?   I had thought Celys was the Supreme
Matriarch.”  
    “There are
several who play the part of the Supreme Matriarch.   She is but a figurehead.   The real power rests in the ancient one we
travel to consult.   She holds the keys to
the mystery, the secret you seek.   I want
to guide you correctly, so that it may be possible for you to live beside
me.   You see, Terran, I have lost two
mates in the years long past, because the secret is denied to males.”  
    Her
countenance was a bitter mask of strange loneliness for a