John Norman (27 page)

Then Short Leg had turned away, and returned to the women. She was, now, no longer looking at Hamilton.

Hamilton, red-eyed, angry, stood up.

She knew that she must if she remained in the camp, try to please Short Leg. If she did not, she knew, she would suffer greatly; indeed, she might even be killed. She sensed Short Leg had power in the camp, even with the men. Even the leader, the heavy-jawed, narrow-eyed man, had listened when she had spoken. He had not complied with her wishes, but he had listened. She sensed that the men seldom listened to the women. That the leader had listened to the scarred woman was evidence of her power. Hamilton shuddered.

But when she had groveled before Short Leg, kneeling and putting her head to the ground, Short Leg had not struck her, or even spoken to her. She had only turned away, and returned to the women.

Hamilton was much relieved. She still feared Short Leg, and terribly. But Short Leg had not harmed her. Hamilton sensed that she would be unlikely to kill her, particularly if given no provocation. Hamilton would be zealous to see that Short Leg was given no provocation. She would try to be completely pleasing to her, ingratiating, obedient, servile, and give her no cause for anger. Already she had, in kneeling and putting her head to the ground, acknowledged Short Leg’s complete and absolute dominance over her. And Short Leg had turned away, satisfied.

This made Hamilton feel strong. She now felt she might, if she were careful, control Short Leg.

If she posed no threat to Short Leg, she might be safe.

Hamilton’s face clouded with anger.

Too, Short Leg might be pleased at her absolute power over such a beautiful woman. Short Leg might be pleased with the beautiful new slave’s deference to her. Would it not make Short Leg seem even more impressive and formidable among the men, to see the new slave, their prize, so small and helpless before her, so desperate to please her.

“I hate her,” said Hamilton to herself. “I hate her!”

But then she smiled. There were others in the camp beside Short Leg. Doubtless Short Leg could not do precisely as she wished. Doubtless she might not, simply, destroy her, even if she wished. There were, after all, men in the camp. The men would not want her killed. Hamilton laughed to herself. The power of the men, if she were careful, would protect her. The men would be her champions, protecting her from the women. She realized, of course, swallowing hard, she might have to be pleasing to the men. “Well,” she said to herself, defiantly, “I can please a man, if I must, as well as any other woman.” She was angry. “It is my intention to survive,” she told herself.-But she told herself that she would not really have to please men to survive, only submit to them. The use of her beauty, even she inert, not responding, would be more than enough for them. “I am beautiful,” she said to herself. “That is sufficient.”

She looked about herself.

She smelled the meat cooking.

To one side, some yards away, before a but, the small, twisted man, who had thrown the sticks, was kneeling in the dirt arranging small shells in geometric patterns, muttering to himself. He was the only one of the Men who had not used Hamilton.

She watched him for a time, he picking up and laying down shells, forming patterns, intent, muttering.

Idly she wondered if he were insane.

She saw the short blond woman, Cloud, emerge from one of the huts, brushing back her hair from her face. The taller woman, Antelope, had been with the other women, being groomed.

Brenda Hamilton slowly approached the hut from which the short, blond woman had emerged.

Her heart was beating rapidly.

She took short steps, the rawhide shackle confining her movements, and pretended to be looking at the sky. As she passed the hut she would, casually, inadvertently, glance inside. She was angry with the short, blond woman, but she was gone now, and so, too, was the darkhaired woman.

Suddenly her legs, backward, flew out from under her, jerked back by the rawhide strap, and she pitched forward into the dirt. She heard a squeal of laughter.

The young blond girl, Butterfly, stood over her.

Brenda Hamilton, the slave, on her side, kept her head down, and did not dare to rise.

She remembered Ugly Girl.

She hoped she would not be switched.

With a laugh, Butterfly turned about and, stepping over Hamilton, left her.

Angrily Hamilton got to her feet. She was relieved, however, that she had not been beaten.

The animosity, she suddenly realized, which the group felt for the ugly girl, doubtless in part a function of repulsion and fear, they did not feel for her. She, slave though she might be, was, if not of their group, of their kind. The ugly girl was not. Hamilton was pleased that there was one less than she in the camp. Hamilton was pleased that she was better than the ugly girl, for she, at least, was human. The ugly girl, it was clear, was not.

From where she stood, Brenda Hamilton could see the deer roasting on a long spit. It made her hungry. She was angry at the young blond girl who had tripped her.

Then, looking about, she approached the hut from which the short blond woman, Cloud, had emerged.

She looked within.

Inside, he was sleeping.

He had not taken her with the rest of the men, on the hide between the huts.

“You beast,” she said, “I hate you.”

It was he who had captured her. It was he who had brought her, slave, to this camp. It was he who had taken her virginity, she recalled angrily, and within moments of seizing and binding her. And, too, she recalled, how he had tied her down at the wrists, and had spread her legs, securing them, and had, at his leisure, taken her, again and again during the night, and again at dawn. She was furious. How casually, bow arrogantly, he had used her for his pleasure.

Then he had brought her to the camp as a slave.

On the hide she had learned that she belonged to all the men, as, too she suspected, so did the women.

But she thought of one as more her master than any other, and she now looked upon him, sleeping, lying on his side, his head on his arm.

“I hate you,” she said, “you beast.”

Then she turned about and looked up at the clouds, and the sky. She drew a deep breath. She inhaled the odors of the camp, the smoke, the smell of fat and the meat.

She looked about the camp, and at its inhabitants.

They were people, clearly, of her race, and of her kind. Yet here they were clearly savages as much or more so as any isolated, deprived or benighted group in any jungle or mountain remoteness of her own time, and these people were not remnants of competitively unsuccessful groups, driven to, or fleeing to, wildernesses, unable to withstand the onslaughts of harsher, stronger groups. These men, she understood, were as strong, or stronger, as formidable, or more formidable, than any other human groups of their time. Indeed, their hunting terrain, she suspected, might be extensive and rich in game. It was probably no accident that they hunted the forests they did. She regarded them. They were larger and stronger, and better looking, generally, than modern men, and, too, she suspected they were, human by human, more natively profound, more quickly witted, more intelligent than their later counterparts, the results of large, indiscriminately mated gene pools, and an environment in which the harsh strictures of nature, due to an advanced technology, were largely inoperative. In these times she realized that foolish or stupid men might not live; in her times she realized that such might thrive, and be encouraged to multiply themselves, providing useful and exploitable populations for their more clever brethren. Here there was little place for the foolish, the ignorant, the gullible and the weak; there were no votes to be cast, no products to buy, no institutions to support no uniforms to wear, no rifles to bear; if these men fought, or killed, they would do so because it was their own will, and they saw the reason; they would decide themselves if they would trek, or fight, or kill. They did not thrash in traps constructed by ambitious men; they did not salivate on signal, at the will of psychologists, the employees of invisible potentates.

They were people clearly, of her race, and of her kind, but they were very different.

Their technology was one of stone.

“They are at the beginning,” said Brenda Hamilton to herself.

In a way, this was true, but the Men, whose property she was, stood not at the beginning, but far along an ancient journey, a trek of life forms. There had been manlike things for thousands of years before them, and before such things, other successions and journeys, and even the tarsiers, and the tiny shrews, whose viciousnesses and tempers are so like our own, lay late along this journey. It was a journey that extended back to distant, turbulent seas, whose saline ratios we carry still in our blood, and to growths and movements scarcely to be distinguished from simple chemical exchanges, the rhythms and affinities of oxygen, and nitrogen and hydrogen, and, crucially, the instabilities and complexities of carbons. It was a journey that had seen worlds and climates wax and wane, which had witnessed stones boiling like mud and the endless, falling rains; it had witnessed the first stirrings in the slime; it had noted the track of the trilobite; it would remember the grandeur of the fern forest and would not forget the tread of the stegosaurus; and sometime, somewhere along this journey, a hominid creature had discovered what a noise might mean; and what a frightening illumination that might have been for a small, dark brain; and it may have lifted its teeth and eyes to the stars, for the first time, snarling, challenging, but frightened, wondering at the reality, the mystery, which had spawned it; and in that tiny, dark brain the reality, the mystery, itself, may first have wondered at its own nature; in that snarling hominid, frightened, reality may have first asked itself, “What am I?”

And so the Men were not truly at the beginning, but were, truly, only yesterday. The beginning which was theirs, for they were a beginning, however, was the human beginning, the truly human beginning, for the Men, and other groups like them, were among the first of the truly human groups.

Brenda Hamilton, a woman of our time, the slave girl of savages, naked, her ankles linked by a rawhide thong, stood erect in the primeval camp. She looked up at the sky, and then again at the huts, and at the men and women. She smelled the fragrant air, the meat roasting on its spit. Incredibly, and she did not understand the emotion, she felt a surge of joy. Although she did not comprehend how it might be true, she knew that she was happy to be where she was, that she did not wish it otherwise. “I am at the beginning,” she told herself. “I am at the beginning of human beings.”

Herjellsen had told her, she recalled, “Turn their eyes to the stars.”

She laughed. She was only a slave. She knew that she would be expected to work, and work hard, and serve the pleasures of her masters.

But, incomprehensibly, she was not unhappy. She did not wish to be other than where she was.

“I am at the beginning,” she told herself. “I am at the beginning of human beings.”

“Turn their eyes to the stars,” Herjellsen had said.

She laughed.

She could not turn their eyes to the stars.

She was only a slave.

Hamilton cried out with humiliation and pain as the switch struck her, unexpectedly, below the small of the back. And then another switch, too, struck her.

She fell to her knees, her head down, covering her head with her hands, as she had seen the ugly girl do, earlier in the day.

Again and again the switches fell, two of them.

Hamilton tried to crawl away, but she was held by the hair. Then the switches stopped.

She looked up, through tears, to see the two women, the darkhaired woman, and the shorter blond woman, who had accompanied her captor earlier in the day.

They stood between her and the entrance of the hut in which he who had captured her slept. They were angry, and raised their switches. They motioned her away.

She had been caught dallying in the vicinity of the hut. of the handsome hunter.

Hamilton, with difficulty, rose to her feet.

They took a quick step toward her, and Hamilton, trying to move away, but confined by the thong tying her ankles, fell. They were on her, striking her again.

Hamilton crawled from their blows and, when they had stopped hitting her, she rose again to her feet, and moved away. But as she did so, on some impulse she did not fully understand, but could not resist, looked at them, over her shoulder, and smiled, the smile of a female who well understands the motivations of other females, but is aware of the power of her beauty, and does not care for their wishes. Her smile said to them, “I am beautiful, and if be wants me, he will have me, and you will have nothing to say about the matter.” She felt an incredible female thrill as she did this, an emotion so deep and primitive she would not have known she could feel it, the elation and pride of the competitor female, but then, almost instantly, she regretted her action for, like she-leopards they were on her again with the switches. Brenda Hamilton howled for mercy before they stopped beating her. She fled, crawling, before them, driven on her hands and knees from the hut of the handsome hunter. When they stopped beating her, she stopped crawling, and head down, concealing it, smiled. Her body hurt and muchly, laced by stinging stripes, but she knew she had, as a female, inspired fear and hatred in the two women. It had been their intent, clearly, to drive her from the hunter. She told herself they had misjudged her motives. Then she asked herself why she had been lingering in the vicinity of his hut, and bad crept to it, to look in upon him, for she had no interest in him, and, indeed, hated him, for what he had done to her. He had abused her and it was he, too, who had brought her to the camp as a slave. “I hate him,” said Brenda Hamilton to herself. “But he is rather handsome,” she said to herself. And, too, she remembered the beginning of the strange sensation, which he had, in the darkness of the night, when she had lain bound at his mercy, begun to induce in her, that sensation which she had, with closed eyes and gritted teeth, fought, but to which she had known she must shortly yield, when he had finished with her, withdrawn and rolled to one side, to sleep. She had lain there bound in the darkness, miserable, hearing the sounds of his breathing. “I hate you,” she had whispered. “I hate you. I hate you!” And she had resolved to resist more mightily than ever, and never to yield to him, or such a beast as him, but forever, proudly, to keep the integrity of her personness, her independent selfhood, her dignity. Never would she permit such a beast to transform her into a beautiful, helpless, spasmodic, yielding female animal, only a surrendering prize, his conquest. She was, after all, a full and complete human being. She would at all costs protect her self-respect. They would never make her yield. Never! But never, too, had she forgotten the sensation.