Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) by James Tiptree Jr. Page A

speculate that the present crisis might be caused by some substance, perhaps at the viral or enzymatic level, which effects a failure of the switching or triggering function in the higher primates. (Note: Zoo gorillas and chimpanzees have recently been observed to attack or destroy their mates; rhesus not.) Such a dysfunction could be expressed by the failure of mating behavior to modify or supervene over the aggressive/predatory response; i.e., sexual stimulation would produce attack only, the stimulation discharging itself through the destruction of the stimulating object.
In this connection it might be noted that exactly this condition is a commonplace of male functional pathology, in those cases where murder occurs as a response to, and apparent completion of, sexual desire.
It should be emphasized that the aggression/copulation linkage discussed here is specific to the male; the female response ( e.g. , lordotic reflex) being of a different nature.
    Alan sat holding the crumpled sheet a long time; the dry, stilted Scottish phrases seemed to help clear his head, despite the sense of brooding tension all around him. Well, if pollution or whatever had produced some substance, it could presumably be countered, filtered, neutralized. Very very carefully, he let himself consider his life with Anne, his sexuality. Yes; much of their loveplay could be viewed as genitalized, sexually gentled savagery. Play-predation . . . He turned his mind quickly away. Some writer’s phrase occurred to him: “The panic element in all sex.” Who? Fritz Leiber? The violation of social distance, maybe; another threatening element.
    Whatever, it’s our weak link, he thought. Our vulnerability . . . The dreadful feeling of rightness he had experienced when he found himself knife in hand, fantasizing violence, came back to him. As though it was the right, the only, way. Was that what Barney’s budworms felt when they mated with their females wrong-end-to?
    At long length, he became aware of body need and sought a toilet. The place was empty, except for what he took to be a heap of clothes blocking the door of the far stall. Then he saw the red-brown pool in which it lay, and the bluish mounds of bare, thin buttocks. He backed out, not breathing, and fled into the nearest crowd, knowing he was not the first to have done so.
    Of course. Any sexual drive. Boys, men, too.
    At the next washroom he watched to see men enter and leave normally before he ventured in.
    Afterward he returned to sit, waiting, repeating over and over to himself: Go to the lab. Don’t go home. Go straight to the lab . Three more hours; he sat numbly at 26°N, 81°W, breathing, breathing. . . .
Dear diary. Big scene tonite, Daddy came home!!! Only he acted so funny, he had the taxi wait and just held on to the doorway, he wouldn’t touch me or let us come near him. (I mean funny weird, not funny ha-ha.) He said, I have something to tell you, this is getting worse not better. I’m going to sleep in the lab but I want you to get out, Anne, Anne, I can’t trust myself anymore. First thing in the morning you both get on the plane for Martha’s and stay there. So I thought he had to be joking, I mean with the dance next week and Aunt Martha lives in Whitehorse where there’s nothing nothing nothing. So I was yelling and Mother was yelling and Daddy was groaning, Go now! And then he started crying. Crying!!! So I realized, wow, this is serious, and I started to go over to him but Mother yanked me back and then I saw she had this big knife!!! And she shoved me in back of her and started crying too: Oh Alan, Oh Alan, like she was insane. So I said, Daddy, I’ll never leave you, it felt like the perfect thing to say. And it was thrilling, he looked at me real sad and deep like I was a grownup while Mother was treating me like I was a mere infant as usual. But Mother ruined it raving, Alan the child is mad, darling go. So he ran out of the door yelling, Be gone. Take the car. Get