Alexander McCloud, the former captain of the space ship Pioneer, lay naked on his back, his hands on his studded collar. His unblinking gray eyes gazed on the white-washed ceiling. A woman next to him stirred and rolled away. In one fluid motion, he caught her shoulder and brought her body back to him. She opened her eyes.

"Not now," she said and pushed him away. "I'll be late for the board meeting."

She got off the bed and dressed quickly. Her long shimmering dress made her look as sexy as when she was naked. She was only one centimeter short of his two meters.

"Be a good boy, Alex," she said and blew him a kiss. "Mommy will be home soon."

"I should kill her," he thought. "Wring her neck." He knew he couldn't do it. It was just an abstract thought. Similar to a generic We All Will Die Some Day. Besides, she was great in bed.

"How soon is soon?" he said aloud.

"As soon as I can make it. But be a good boy and don't try to mess with the computer again or mommy will be forced to set your collar tighter."

She pecked him on the forehead.

"By the way, I talked to Lorry last evening. Peter said hello to you," she said. Lorry was Peter's master.

"How about Marge? I haven't heard anything about her."

"She's doing just fine. She's one of us now."

"So you managed to brainwash her? I hope she put up a good fight."

"What choice of words is this? Nobody brainwashed her. A smart woman, she understood that she had no other choice. That's all. I'm sure she's happy now. But I've got to go."

As soon as Melissa was gone, McCloud got off the bed, put on his shorts and headed for the computer room.

He should have been angry now, very angry, if not for the damn collar. The other day, Melissa adjusted its setting, so it would increase again the flow of drugs injected into his body.

In the computer room, he lowered his 100 kilogram body in front of the display, watching the news. Same old stuff. In presidential news, Linda Peters' lead had increased by another point over Susan Minnelli. Crime news--a thief arraigned for shoplifting a bottle of cologne. Society news--Nancy Rogers' mate gave birth to their second child while Nancy herself is on her eight month.

He switched to another channel. A preacher in flying white robes was giving a sermon.

"... dear sisters! When our scientists discovered Moses' tablets two hundred years ago, the truth that the males hid from the world for thousands of years had finally emerged. Yes, woman was not made from the man's rib. Yes, it was the other way around: she gave birth to the first male. No, Jesus Christ was not--"

McCloud turned to the local news.

"Another mysterious accident. A twenty five year old crashed in a one car accident. Her body was burned beyond recognition. The auto giant Viacar's rep said--"

Alex turned off the news. Just two months ago, he had been on board of his ship.

He closed his eyes, imagining the tightly spaced navigation room where he, his first officer Marge Bukofsky and the engineer Peter Rice were listening to the radio transmissions from Earth. Pioneer was the first craft to reach the Alpha Centauri traveling with the speed close to that of light. For five years they were away. Three hundred years passed on Earth. They were going home.

"Do you still think we'll see the planet of apes?" Marge teased Peter. "Or the land where people are slaves to computers, captain?" she turned to Alex. During the second year of the voyage, Marge and Peter fell in love. At first, they tried to hide their feelings from Alex, but since that was nearly impossibly in their tight quarters, they gave up hiding.

"No, the Earth is now a land of harmony where humans don't kill the animals for food," Peter said. "Right, Marge?"

A few days later, they landed.

They stood in the aisle connecting their ship to the hangar, hearts beating heavily, mouths dry, waiting for the airtight door to open.

"Watch out for the apes," Peter said and beat his chest with his fist. "Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!" Nobody laughed.

The door opened. Two figures clad in anti-contamination suites and helmets approached them. Their visors were tinted, but their figures in tightly cut suits were distinctively human. Human females.

"Greeting," one of them said. Her voice was melodic and a pleasant accent made it sound hauntingly attractive. "Welcome home. I'm Jennifer High and I'll be helping you to adjust."

She helped indeed. They were taken to three separate locked rooms and told that they have to stay there for two week quarantine. During these three weeks, they talked to Jennifer and each other only over video phone. Jennifer refused to answer most of their questions, citing the potential danger to their mental health. In the first morning of the third week, Alex woke up in a totally different place.

It was nothing like the Spartan surroundings of his quarantine room. The bed he lay on was not a narrow hospital-type abomination, but a wide and elaborate construction with a canopy. Sheets as white as pristine snow covered its soft expanses. Golden light streamed trough the huge open windows. The smooth walls glittered. The warm air was full of exotic aromas. Outside, birds signed the songs of love. And he was naked except for a studded collar on his neck.

He got off the bed and came to the window only to discover that thin metal bars ran along it. He put his hands on the bars and try to shake them. They didn't budge.

The door opened and a frighteningly beautiful woman walked in. Red hair framed her creamy-white face with piercing green eyes. She was dressed in a semi-transparent shimmering dress that covered her long legs to their ankles. Her hands with crimson fingernails were bare up to her shoulders.

"Hi, I'm Melissa Gold and you'll be my plaything," she said stopping a meter away from McCloud. "You better be good because I paid good money for you. You can call me pervert for willing to sleep with a man. As long as you're good, I don't care."

"Pardon me? Plaything? I'm Alexander McCloud, the captain--" "You're the captain no longer. Your job, your only job, is to give me pleasure from now on. You have to be grateful to me. They wanted to put you and Peter to sleep. If not for me. . ."

He shook his head. He felt calm and relaxed while he should had been angry or at least upset. But he felt no negative emotions. Perhaps a mild curiosity. Perhaps a tingle of sexual excitement. But nothing more.

"Tell me--," he began to say, but she came close to him and put her finger to his lips.

"Not one word more, Alex" she said and dropped her dress to the floor. . .

Now, a punished and well-used sex slave, McCloud opened his eyes to face reality again. The last two months, he spent in Melissa's house, watching the movies and news in the time available between sex. Locked and unbreakable doors and windows prevented him from leaving. The drugs from the collar prevented him from forcing Melissa to let him go. He needed the password to open the door. But then he would have to face the unknown world outside.

He switched the computer to the command mode.

"Let's hope it works," he muttered.

He knew that this was his last chance. If he failed now, Melissa would increase the collar settings to the point where he wouldn't care anymore.

He wasn't in a hurry. He had four hours before Melissa would return and only three tries available before the computer would lock him out.

He had an edge over his last tries, however. Melissa used voice commands to activate the computer. She always was alone in the computer room when she did that, but the other day McCloud succeeded in building a makeshift voice recorder he planted in the computer room. The quality of the recording was poor, though, and he wasn't sure if the computer would fall for it.

He touched the key for the password entry. "Please say the password, Melissa," the computer said in that sissy voice McCloud hated. He activated the recorder.

"Bother," the recorder squeaked. Perhaps it was 'brother'. Or maybe even 'lover'.

"Entry is invalid," the computer said. "Please say the password again."

McCloud switched it back to the display mode. "Now what?" he said aloud. He pressed the recorder playback button again.

Yes, it didn't sound like Melissa much. In desperation, he went back to the bedroom, pulled out one of Melissa's pantyhose and put it over the recorder.

Then he switched the computer to the command mode again and pressed the playback button when prompted.

"Bother," the muffled recorded voice said. The computer hesitated, or so it seemed to McCloud.

"Maintenance check," the computer said. The screen turned black. McCloud, his heart racing, walked around the room and came back.

The screen was black still. Not able to control himself, he smashed his fist at the top of the display. Pain shot through his hand.

But the display came to life.

"Password accepted. Your orders, Melissa?"

"Yes!!!" McCloud jumped, touching the high ceiling with his fingers. "Yes!!!" Then he returned to the chair. He knew it was foolish. He knew he should've told the computer to open the door and then run. Instead, he asked it a question. He knew he was playing with fire, but curiosity took a hold of him and didn't let go.

"What on Earth ever happened to men?"

That was the question he asked Melissa many times, but he never received an answer.

"Are you feeling well, Melissa?" the computer said.

"I'm fine," McCloud said. "I just didn't sleep well. Adjust the voice recognition pattern."

"Do you want me to give you a check-up?"

"No need. But do adjust the voice recognition pattern."

Computer was silent for a moment or two.

"The voice recognition pattern is adjusted."

"Good. Now, I need a lesson in history. What happened to men and where did they all go?"

"After the war of 2138, only ten percent of the men remained vs fifty percent of the women," the computer said. "Out of the remaining male population, ninety percent were infertile. The remaining fertile acquired a genetic defect that lead to a high infant mortality. Moreover, the backlash against male-initiated war grew very strong. In 2150, the Supreme court upheld the so-called The Fourth Clone law. That law forbid the genetic cloning of males. The vast majority of women refused to bear children from remaining virile men. In 2260 the last man died of natural causes."

"What was the third clone law?" McCloud thoughts ran scattered like antelope on the planes of Africa.

"The Third Clone law upheld in 2100, allowed combining DNA from two ovarian cells taken from two females to produce an offspring."

McCloud knew what the first two Clone laws were. Both were enacted before his star journey. The first allowed cloning of human beings from a cell taken from a single individual. The second allowed cloning from cells taken from two different people. The actual process was not really cloning, but the name stuck.

McCloud shook his head. He had many more questions to ask, but his was running out of time.

"Unlock the Alex's collar," he said.

"I advise against that, Melissa," the computer said. "Unlocking the male's collar might be very dangerous and-"

"Unlock the Alex's collar," he said, put both hands on his collar and pulled. The collar came apart. He threw it on the floor and stepped on it. Hard. But the tough plastic didn't even crack.

"Now, unlock the entrance door."

He saw the door halves coming apart and he dashed for the opening. Then he stopped and returned to the computer.

"I want a weapon," he said.

"A weapon?"

Alex had an impression that the computer sounded less sissy now.

"Yes, a weapon. Anything. A laser gun, a projectile thrower, anything."

"I don't understand your request. Is there something wrong with the stunner in the safe in your dressing closet?"

"No. There is nothing wrong with the stunner in the safe in your, er, my dressing closet. Is it locked?"

"Of course it's locked. You wanted it to be locked so that Alex won't find it."

"I remember that. But I forgot the key code. What is the key code?"

"25397. Are you sure you don't want me to give you a check-up, Melissa?"

He found the safe and pulled out the stunner. Its silvery body was not much bigger than his fist and didn't look reassuring at all.

By this time rage was pouring over the receding dam of his unnatural calm. He picked up a kitchen knife, went upstairs and slashed the bed sheets and pillows. He pulled out Melissa clothing from the closet and cut them, too. He contemplated burning the house, but decided against it. Not because he pitied it. He just didn't want to alert the authorities. Besides, he wasn't sure how flammable the modern houses were.

He pocketed the stunner, headed for the door but stopped again. He was dressed in shorts and nothing else. He needed a cover. The car! But Melissa took the car.

He went upstairs again and found what could have passed for an overcoat. He put it on. It had the texture of trench, but it surely was no trench. It was way too tight on the shoulders and he had to force it on real hard. Miraculously, the material held. A blond wig completed the makeover.

"Hi, drag queen," he said to his mirror reflection. "Gorgeous, darling, gorgeous."

He stuffed a plastic bag with food and stepped outside, for the first time in three hundred years.

He walked through the unlocked garden gate, and then he was on a completely deserted tree-lined street. Mansions behind the trees gazed at him with giant glassy eyes. Flower beds, artificially bright, displayed their sleeping beauties. The sun baked hard. He walked about five hundred meters and the street ended at the edge of the forest.

Ten minutes later, he was completely lost in its depths.

Deconditioned, he got tired and sat on the tree stump. In the dense forest, the heat of the day was diluted. Alex pulled a cookie from the bag and munched on it. He had no idea what to do next. He closed his eyes, breathing the damp, fresh air of the forest. When he opened them, he saw a large wolf about three meters away, staring at him with unblinking eyes.

Half-eaten cookie in his hand, Alex stared back. He had never seen a wolf outside of a zoo, and ancient fear rose inside him, clouding his brain and chilling his blood.

Very slowly, he inched his hand toward the stunner in his pocket. When his fingers touched their target, the wolf launched.

The impact knocked Alex off the stump, and the last thing he saw before passing out was the wolf's huge fangs centimeters away from his eyes.

When he came back, a wide, bearded face was next to his.

"Are you ok?"

With difficulty, McCloud sat up and coughed. The back of his head and his chest hurt. He was on a cot, inside a tent. Two more men, clean-shaven, stood behind the bearded one. All three were dressed in khaki shorts. Muscles bulged on their chests.

"King didn't bite you," the first man said. "But you bumped your head when you fell. I think you'll be fine."

"Where am I?" Alex asked. His voice was weak.

"Relax, Mr. McCloud," the man said. "You are among your fellow men, at last. My name is Greg."

"How do you know me?"

"We watch the news."

McCloud got of the cot. The world was spinning around him and he lowered himself back.

"I think you need rest," Greg said. "Take this."

McCloud swallowed the pill and fell asleep almost instantly. In his dream, Melissa came to him and they made love. When he awoke, it was dark outside. The headache had subdued a bit.

He got off the cot and walked outside. Twenty meters away, at least a dozen men danced around a fire, screaming at the top of their lungs. A few more people stand by, watching. He made another step and realized that two of the watchers were women.

"Come, dance with us, Alex!" somebody shouted.

McCloud came closer yet. A big wolf got up and bared his fangs. One of the men put his hand on his head.

"Hush, King! This is a friend!"

One of the men pulled Alex by the hand into the circle of dancers. McCloud made two of three wretched imitations of their wild gestures and stepped back. His head spun and he felt like throwing up.

"Come on!" the same man insisted.

"Leave him alone. He's tired."

That was Greg. He sat on the ground in the Lotus position.

McCloud sat next to him.

"Who are you, people?" he asked.

"We are men."

"I thought the last men died many years ago."

"Everybody thinks so. Just about everybody."

Alex paused, searching for words.

"I see women here."

"You can't have a woman. They are all taken. Sorry."

Alex felt very old all of a sudden. Old like his absolute age. Greg gave him a quizzical look.

"I didn't mean to offend you. But we don't have enough women here. If you capture a woman, though, you could have her for yourself for a month."

"Capture a woman?"

"You've heard me. If you can convince her to come here of her free will, that would work, too. But I doubt you would succeed."

"I'm confused."

"I'm sure you are. Have something to eat, go to bed, and we'll talk in the morning."

By the end of the following day, McCloud was much less confused. He spent all day wandering around the compound, talking to its inhabitants.

He learned that twenty three men, five children (all boys), eight women and a pack of domesticated wolves lived there. The women wore heavy anklets to prevent them from escaping. They walked quietly and they did all the dirty work around the compound.

"So you steal women?" he asked Greg.

"We sure do."

"And they don't notice this?"

"We make it look like accidents."

McCloud paused. He had so many questions, but he feared to overload Greg's patience.

"And how long has this colony existed?"

"Since about 2230."

"You should have an equal number of males and females after a hundred and twenty years."

"Ah, but our female children all die. A genetic defect."

Greg was saying this matter-of-factly, as if giving a lecture to a bunch of school kids.

"But tell me, how come the women didn't find you yet with all their sophisticated equipment? Granted, they don't know that you exist, but still?"

"They may have the right equipment, but they have female brains. Heh-heh-heh."

"Your women don't look happy."

"They shouldn't be. The bitches caused us all to suffer for too long. Let them suffer now."

"But that's wrong. Aren't they people, too!"

"No. They are women. Pussies."

"Yes, women. Men and women, two parts of the same body."

"I'm surprised to hear that. You talk like a traitor to your sex. After all your suffering?"

The following day, McCloud approached a woman washing laundry in the stream.

"Hi!" he said.

She gave him a quick look and then turned away. She wore nothing but shorts. Her left breast had a black-and-blue mark on it.

"You can't have me," she said. "I'm Michael's and Jim's woman."

"I just want to ask you a question."

She gave him another quick look and said nothing.

"Just tell me, don't the women know about this place?"

She didn't answer.

"Please," he said. "I'm captain Alex McCloud. I'm new to this world of the future. I was a captive like you are. Please help me."

She turned to him.

"You're Alex McCloud? The Alex McCloud? The captain of the Pioneer?"

"Yes."

She smiled. "Nice to meet you, captain. I did a school project on you."

"I could never imagined things would turn out this way."

"We all didn't." She returned to her wash.

"Please answer my question. Do women know about all this?"

She leaned closer to him.

"Some do."

"They do?"

"Yes. It's not a one word answer, though. Some consider this a frill of life. They think it's romantic, to be captured by a gentle man savage. But some know the truth, yet they do nothing because of sense of guilt."

"Alex! Don't flirt with my woman!" That was a male voice. McCloud left.

Five days later, when he was reading for bed in his tent, listening to the news, he heard something that make his heart jump.

"... Sue Long is recovering. Both suspects fled the scene. All citizens knowing the whereabouts of Margaret Lo and Peter Corbis, a man, both formerly from the space ship Pioneer, inform the authorities immediately!"

"Yes! Way to go, Marge!" Alex shouted.

Somebody knocked at the door. It was Greg.

"We just came from a hunt. Want to see our prize?"

Outside, the men danced around the circle of fire. In the middle of it, safe from the flames, a woman was tied to a pole.

McCloud came closer. Melissa! It was she!

Without thinking, he jumped over the fire and pulled out his knife. Her eyes meet his and he saw fear for the first time in her eyes.

"No!" the men shouted, but McCloud heard Greg's voice that overcame all the shouts.

"Let him do what he wants! He suffered enough!"

"Yes, I suffered enough. For me, for Peter, for Marge," McCloud said, bringing his knife high. "For all the humanity you perverted!" Melissa closed her eyes and then McCloud cut the rope that tied her. Silence fell.

"It's wrong! It's all wrong," McCloud said, turning to the men. He didn't say it loud but his voice carried his words over the crackling of the fire.

He saw Greg clearing away the coals. He led Melissa by the hand, through the circle of fire, out of the camp, into the wild forest. In his hand, he felt her gentle, feminine hand; her thigh brushed against his. Not all was lost in this confused world. The star ship Pioneer had a higher destiny than its designers had envisioned. McCloud's good genes, Peter's good genes, they would put humanity back on the healthy path.

Two parts of the same body can't live apart.