Woman from another planet

by Frank Belknap Long

It was incredible, it stunned him, because he was susceptible beyond the average—so overwhelmingly so that there were times when the mere touch of a beautiful woman's hand on his arm could set him to trembling.

And now he was clasping a woman who was almost savage in her direct approach to passion, a woman utterly without inhibitions, primitive as few women would have dared to be. But a woman of flesh and blood notwithstanding, with an eagerness to love and be loved that was as human as his own demanding need of her had been.

That was as human.... The thought was insidious at first, a small, gnawing doubt in an obscure recess of his mind, emerging fearfully crawling out into the light like some tiny rodent with razor-sharp teeth.

Hadn't her great beauty seemed from the first almost unendurably tormenting, as if no woman had a right to be quite so beautiful and to drive a man to such a wild, uncontrollable frenzy of desire? Hadn't he felt for an instant that she could have very easily destroyed him, simply by withholding her favors and refusing to let him touch her? And the fierceness of his desire, his feeling that all of his ancestors lived in him and desired her with a deep, racial urgency, a Dawn Man's primitiveness—hadn't that been a little different from the strong virile desire which a perfectly normal, civilized man of ardent temperament would feel even in the presence of an extraordinarily beautiful woman?

He was completely human, all too human, and it was useless to pretend that he hadn't found the going a little rugged at times since he'd set himself the difficult task of staying loyal to just one woman. It had been tough, but he had proved to himself that he could do it. Not once, but a dozen times. And yet, when he had taken this strange woman into his arms something dark and terrible had stirred in his blood, and blotted out every loyalty.

Why? What did it mean? The metal disk on her thigh, her great beauty, the strangeness of her. The strangeness.... There was something in the Song of Songs about that. "The magic and wonder of a strange woman."

According to Biblical legend there were two women in Eden. There was Eve, who was Adam's lawful wife. And there was Lilith, the enchantress, the dark sorceress, a creature of fire and dust who was not human and who gave birth to demons. But Lilith was beautiful beyond imagination—more maddeningly desirable than a human woman could ever be.

She was clothed in garments of flesh, but she was not flesh. She was the eternally seductive female that Man cannot do without, lest his manhood wither on the vine. He must pursue and clasp her, in wild dreams of madness and desire, or his Earthbound lovemaking will be futile and absurd and living women will turn from him to seek a more accomplished lover elsewhere.

The sorceress came bearing gifts—the greatest of all gifts, a wealthy fruitage that was hers alone to share. "Love me at your peril," she whispered, "but love me well, or you will be less than a man and you will live to regret it. Why should you fear the kind of love I bring you? All life is uncertain; all men dwell in the shadow of the grave. But there is one supreme fulfillment, one joy that, once experienced, can never be taken from you. I am Lilith, all woman, all soft yielding flesh, and I have come to you alone, in a secret place, and in the joining of our bodies there is rapture unspeakable."

They were not the words of the woman in his arms. That Loring knew. But still they found an echo in his thoughts, as though the woman he was clasping could see deep into his mind and knew that from myths and dreams and legends Man had built an imperishable inner world that no reality, however harsh, could wholly shatter and destroy.