John Norman (7 page)

“An animal for the second series of experiments,” said William, “preferably a large animal, between one hundred and one hundred and fifty pounds in weight.”

“What do you see?” asked Hamilton, peering through the dusty, insect-stained windshield.

“There, in that tree, some ten feet from the ground,” whispered William, pointing, “on that branch.”

Hamilton looked closely. “It’s a calf,” she said. “A native calf. But it can’t be. It’s on the branch. And it’s dead. How could it be on the branch?”

“Look more closely,” said William.

Hamilton looked more closely. Across the body of the dead calf, half lost in the sunlight and shadows, sleepy, gorged, peering at them, was a leopard.

“Superb,” said Gunther.

“They pull their kills into the branches of trees, to keep them from scavengers,” said William. “They are incredibly powerful, lithe brutes, extremely dangerous.”

Hamilton gasped. She had never before sensed the sinuous power, its deceptive strength, the teeth, the jaws, the resilient incredible sinews of the leopard, perhaps the most agile and dangerous of the predators.

The beast lay across the body of the calf, watching them.

“You go there,” said Gunther to William. “Do not approach it. I shall circle to the back, and come within range. It will smell you, and see you, but it is not likely to attack you. If it seems to sense me, attract its attention. It will not wish to abandon its kill. If all goes well I shall have a clean shot.”

“What if it darts into the brush?” asked William.

“Then,” said Gunther, “we will have lost it.” He smiled. “I have no intention of following it into the brush.”

“Are you going to kill it?” asked Hamilton.

“You take the hunting rifle,” said Gunther to William. It was a medium-caliber, bolt-action piece, with a five-shot box magazine, with telescopic sight, of German design.

“Yes,” said William. He looked relieved.

“I’ll take the tranquilizer rifle,” said Gunther. It was a powerful, compressed-air gun, custom-made, of British manufacture, designed for the discharge of anesthetic darts.

William looked at Hamilton. “Herjellsen wants the bloody animal alive,” he said.

Gunther handed William five bullets. He himself, from the glove compartment of the Rover, removed four plastic-packaged darts. He broke two open. Both men wore side weapons, William, a revolver, Gunther, an automatic, a Luger, 9 mm., the classical 08 model.

Gunther looked at the leopard in the tree.

“Be careful,” said Hamilton to the men.

Gunther looked at Hamilton, and then he drew the keys out of the ignition, and slipped them in his pocket.

“Why did you do that?” asked Hamilton.

Gunther did not answer her. Then, to Hamilton’s astonishment, Gunther drew forth from a leather pouch at his belt a pair of steel handcuffs.

“Give me your left wrist,” he said to Hamilton.

Hamilton felt her left wrist taken in the strong hand of Gunther. She could not believe her eyes, nor her feelings. As though it might be happening to someone else, she saw, and felt, the steel of one of the cuffs close about her left wrist, snugly, and lock. In an instant the other cuff was locked about the steering wheel. She was handcuffed to the steering wheel.

“What are you doing!” she demanded.

William and Gunther were getting out of the car.

Hamilton jerked against the handcuff locked on her wrist. She was perfectly secured.

“Release me!” she cried. “Let me go!”

She looked at them, wildly.

“I’ll scream!” she cried. “I’ll scream!”

William smiled at her, the inanity of her threat. Hamilton flushed.

Gunther was serious. He glanced to the large cat in the tree, some one hundred and fifty yards away. He did not want the cat disturbed, the hunt interfered with. He glanced at William, and nodded. William, too, nodded.

“Release me,” whispered Hamilton.

William climbed back into the seat beside her, and then, quickly, to her consternation, put his left hand over her mouth, and held her right hand with his. She could utter only muffled noises. Her eyes were wild over his hand. Gunther was now reaching toward her, he had something in his hand. She felt her shirt on her right side pulled out of her slacks, and shoved up, exposing her right side, over and a bit forward of the hip.

She tried to shake her head no.

Then she felt Gunther’s hand and the needle, slap and press forcibly against her flesh. She felt the needle thrust better than a half inch into her body, and the hand of Gunther holding it into her, patiently, waiting for it to take effect. She felt dizzy. Everything began to go black. She tried to shake her head, no, again. And then she lost consciousness. She had been tranquilized.

Dr. Brenda Hamilton awakened in her own quarters. She stared at the ceiling. The half light of late afternoon, golden, hazy, filtering, dimly illuminated the room.

The white-washed interior seemed golden and dim. She looked at the arched roof, its beams, the corrugated tin. It was hot, terribly hot. She seldom spent time in her quarters before sundown.

She was vaguely aware that she lay on her mattress, on her iron cot, and that there were no sheets beneath her.

She recalled, suddenly, her trip with Gunther and William, the heat, the dust, the seeing of the leopard, her being handcuffed, tranquilized.

She was angry. They could not treat her in this fashion. Herjellsen must hear of this!

She tried to rise, but fell back, fighting the lethargy of the drug.

Again she stared at the ceiling, at the hot tin above her. She closed her eyes. It was difficult to keep them open. It was so warm.

She opened her eyes again.

The room seemed familiar, and yet somehow it was different. She moved one foot against the other, dimly aware that her shoes, her stockings, had been removed.

Suddenly she sat up in bed. The room was indeed different, it was almost empty.

She looked about herself, alarmed. She swung her legs quickly over the side of the bed. Startled, she realized she was clothed differently than she had been.

Her dresser, her trunk, her suitcases, her books, were gone. The table had been removed. The only furniture remaining in the room was three cane chairs, and her iron cot.

A mirror was in the room, which had not been there before. She saw herself. She wore a brief cotton dress, thin, white and sleeveless. It was not hers. It came well up her thighs, revealing her legs. She noted in the mirror that her legs were trim. She was terrified. The tiny dress was not belted. It was all she wore, absolutely.

She leaped to her feet and ran to the door of the almost empty, bleak room. The knob had been removed. She dug at the crack of the door with her fingernails. It was closed. She sensed, too, with an empty feeling, it must be secured, on the outside. She turned about, terrified, breathing heavily, her back pressed against the door. She looked across the room to the window. She moaned. She ran to the window and thrust aside the-light curtain. Her two fists grasped the bars which had been placed there.

She turned about again, regarding the room. It was bare, except for the three cane chairs, the iron cot with its mattress, no bedding.

She felt the planking of the floor beneath her bare feet. She looked across the room to the mirror, which had not been in the room before. It its reflection she saw, clad in a brief, sleeveless garment of white cotton, a slender, trimlegged, very attractive, dark-haired woman. She was a young woman, not yet twenty-five years of age. Her eyes were deep, dark, extremely intelligent, very frightened. She had long straight dark hair, now loose, unpinned and unconfined, falling behind her head. She knew the woman was Brenda Hamilton, and yet the reflection frightened her. It was not Brenda Hamilton as she had been accustomed to seeing her. No longer did she wear the severe white laboratory coat; no longer was her hair rolled in a tight bun behind her head. The young woman. in the reflection seemed very female, her body in the brief garment fraught with a startling, unexpected, astonishing sexuality.

Suddenly, to a sinking feeling in her stomach, she realized that her body had been washed, and her hair combed. The dust of the Rhodesian bush was no longer upon her.

She looked at her figure, her breasts lovely, sweet, revealed in the cotton. She wanted her brassiere. But she did not have it.

She threw her head to one side. She fled from the window to the closet, throwing open its door. It, too, was empty. There was nothing within, not even a hanger.

There was no hanger; such might serve, she supposed, as a tool. Her shoes were gone, with their laces, and, too, her stockings. The bedding from her cot, was missing. Her brief cotton dress lacked even a belt.

She returned to the center of the room, near the cot. Over it, dangling on a short cord, some four inches long, from a beam, was a light bulb. Its shade was missing. The bulb was off.

Numbly she went to the wall switch and turned the bulb on. It lit. Then, moaning, she turned it off again.

She went then again to the center of the room, and looked slowly about, at the white-washed plaster, the bleakness, and then up at the hot tin overhead, then down to the thin, striped mattress on the iron cot.

Then suddenly she ran to the door and pounded on it, weeping. “William!” she cried. “Gunther! Professor Herjellsen! Professor Herjellsen!”

There was no answer from the compound.

She screamed and pounded on the door, and wept. She ran to the barred window, which bars had been placed there in her absence with William and Gunther. She seized the bars in her small fists and screamed between them. “William!” she screamed. “Gunther! Professor Herjellsen! Professor Herjellsen!” Then she screamed out again. “Help! Please, help! Someone! Help me! Please help me!”

But there was again no answer from the compound.

Dr. Brenda Hamilton, shaking, walked unsteadily to the iron cot. ‘

Her mind reeled.

“You understand nothing,” Gunther had told her. “You were a fool to come to the bush,” Gunther had told her.

“I’m needed!” had cried Hamilton.

“Yes, little fool,” had said Gunther. “You are needed. That is true.”

Hamilton was bewildered.

She sank to the floor beside the cot. She put her head to the boards, and wept.

“Here is a brush, cosmetics and such,” said William, placing a small cardboard shoe box on the floor of Brenda Hamilton’s quarters.

Brenda Hamilton stood across the room from him, facing him. She wore still the brief white garment, that of thin cotton, sleeveless.

He sat on one of the cane chairs. It was ten P.M. Mosquito netting had been stapled across the window. The room was lit from the single light bulb, dangling on its short cord from the beam.

A tray, with food, brought earlier by William, lay on Brenda Hamilton’s cot. It was not touched.

“Eat your food,” said William.

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

He shrugged.

“I want my clothing, William,” she said.

“It is interesting,” said William. “In all your belongings, there was not one dress.”

“I do not wear dresses,” she said.

“You are an attractive woman,” said William. “Why not?”

“Dresses are hobbling devices,” she said. “They are a garment that men have made for women, to set them apart and, in effect, to keep them prisoner.”

“You do not appear much hobbled,” observed William.

Brenda Hamilton flushed.

“I feel exposed,” she said. “Another function of the dress,” she said, “is to make the female feel exposed, to make her more aware of her sexuality.”

“Perhaps,” said William.

“Give me my own clothing,” begged Brenda Hamilton.

“You are quite lovely as you are,” said William.

“Do not use that diminishing, trivializing word of me,” snapped Hamilton. “It is as objectionable as `pretty’.”

William smiled. “But Brenda,” he said, “you are quite pretty.”

Please, William,” begged Hamilton.

She looked in the mirror. It was true what William had said. She was, to her fury, very lovely, very pretty.

“Actually,” said William, “you are rather more than lovely, and certainly far more than pretty.”

“Please, William,” begged Hamilton.

“You are beautiful, quite beautiful, Brenda,” said William.

“Call me Doctor Hamilton,” said Hamilton.

“Very well,” agreed William. He looked at her, appreciatively, scrutinizing her casually, to her rage, from her trim ankles to her proud head. “You are indeed far more than pretty, Doctor Hamilton,” said William. “You are beautiful, quite beautiful, Doctor Hamilton,” said William.

Hamilton turned away, stifling a sob.

“Be careful, Doctor Hamilton,” cautioned William. “That is almost a female response.”

She spun to face him. “I am a female!” she cried.

“Obviously,” said William.

“Why am I being treated like this?” demanded Brenda Hamilton.

“Like what?” asked William.

“Why has that mirror been placed in the room?” she demanded. “Why am I dressed like this?”

“It seems strange, does it not,” asked William, “that you, an attractive female, should object to being clothed as an attractive female?”

“I do not wish to be so clothed!” she cried.

“Are you ashamed of your body?” asked William.

“No!” she cried.

“Of course, you are,” smiled William. “But look at yourself in the mirror. You should not be ashamed of your body, but proud of it. You are extremely beautiful.”

“I am being displayed,” she wept.

“True,” said William.

“I do not wish to be displayed,” she said.

“You are not simply being displayed for our pleasure,” said William.

She looked at him.

“You are being displayed also for your own instruction, that you may be fully aware of what a beauty you are.”

She looked at the mirror. “It is so-so different from a man’s body,” she said.

“Precisely,” said William. “It is extremely different, its softness, its vulnerability, its beauty.”

“So different,” she whispered.