Two way destiny

By Frank Belknap Long
They were alone on an enchanted planet, a lost Eden glowing with beauty and strangeness. But over them hung a cloud of tribal hate.
As science fiction has increased its speculative scope there has come into its orbit a new and largely unexplored world of shining possibilities—the world of comparative ethnology. Why do some primitive human societies glorify hate, fear, cruelty, war, and others live at peace with their neighbors? In this unusual novelette the gifted and versatile Frank Belknap Long has penetrated to the very core of the mystery with dramatically compelling logic.
She was kneeling when I saw her, her face half in shadows, her girlishly slender figure mirrored by the cool-running stream at her feet.
You'd think that on a planet like Dracona a man would be safe from shock. Between the fire mountains and the sea, and the snowy-crested birds that never stop singing you'd think that nothing could surprise him.
Remember Blake's City and Garden, his New Jerusalem with its shining Eden just over the hill? Well—Dracona is just as tremendous as that, even though it's all a garden wilderness with the city part left out.
Surely on Dracona there was enough nerve-tingling beauty everywhere to enchant a lad with my capacity for enjoyment. Why couldn't I have accepted that beauty as a near approach to paradise, content in the knowledge that I was my own master under the stars? Why did I have to step into a forest clearing and let a slender pale girl strip away all of my defenses, leaving me as naked as a new-born babe to the great, roaring winds of unreason?
If I had shouted the question then and there the forest might have murmured in reply: It's because you haven't seen a woman for so long. It's because loneliness is a destructive blight, and you're a young romantic fool.
It might have shouted that to my mind, to the tumultuously pounding blood at my temples. But it wouldn't have been a complete answer.