Read "The Last Brave Invader" by Charles L. Fontenay online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
_In youth Lauria was beautiful, proud, unattainable. But when autumn came, she changed her code and lowered her defense._
Lauria Swept down the spiral staircase in regal dignity, and wished there were someone there to witness her entrance. She walked across the parlor to the gun-rack and strapped a holstered pistol to her hip, just above the rustling flare of the full skirt of her evening dress.
The green sun's slanting rays in the parlor window told her it was late afternoon, nearly time to get started. She went to the full-length mirror. Beside the mirror hung the framed copy of the Constitution of Pamplin, hand-lettered on parchment. In bold red letters it proclaimed:
_We, the people of Pamplin, hold that_:
_1. No government is the best government._
_2. A man's home is his castle._
_3. A woman's rights are equal to a man's rights._
_4. Only the brave deserve the fair._
Lauria looked in the mirror, almost fearfully.
She saw with approval the breadth of her hips, the erectness of her shoulders. With more reluctance, her eyes rose to her face. There was still beauty there, she told herself, to the discerning eye. That touch of slackness to the jaw, that faint hollowness of cheek: those were no doubt exaggerated by the dimness of the room.
In a table drawer, Lauria found jars and tubes. From them she carefully filled in a fuller form for her mouth, dabbed heavily at her cheeks, touched up her eyes, smeared over her jawline. She fluffed out the thinning blond hair and donned a light scarf then she removed the heavy bars from the front door. She went out, and locked its triple locks behind her. She gazed around cautiously and stepped lightly down the gravelled path. Around the house, the grounds were a solid mass of blooming flowers. Lauria had plenty of time to spend in the garden. The baskets and other handicraft articles that were her means of income left her a good deal of leisure, and cooking and household chores were routine and brief.
Farther from the house, the grounds looked better kept than they were. It was fortunate that the blue grass of the planet Pamplin grew short and neat, for Lauria never would have been able to keep the ten acres of her property trimmed. But the big trees that shaded the grounds had dropped twigs and leaves that she wouldn't clear away until the big effort of the fall clean-up.
The path curved down past a small cleared area in which a dozen upright wooden markers were spaced in rows. This was the cemetery.
She paused to look out across the neat rows of markers. There were men buried there. Twelve young men. They had died by her hand, in accordance with the Constitution and the law.
At one end of the cemetery stood a large wooden plaque on which she had carved the Constitution of Pamplin. Many times had her mother explained the meaning of the Constitution to Lauria, when Lauria was a little girl and still intruding on her mother's privacy.
"The people who colonized Pamplin left Earth many years ago because there they always had to sacrifice some of their individual rights to some government," her mother had said. "There are many kinds of governments, but all of them try to regulate people. And to regulate people, they have to invade people's privacy.
"The people of Pamplin came to this world because we don't want any government. We believe that every man and woman should have his individual right to do as he pleases, without other people bothering him."
"But what does No. 4 mean, Mother? " Lauria had asked. "_Only the brave deserve the fair? _"
"That means," replied her mother, for Lauria was fourteen and deserved to know these things, "that a woman on Pamplin is not subservient to the whims of men. No man may approach her and take her in his arms unless he has fought his way through the defenses of her home. Then they may agree to share the home, if they wish, but no woman of any character will permit a man to do this until he has proved his valor by fighting his way to her."
"Then my father must have been a brave man, wasn't he, Mother?"