John Norman

by Time Slave

  Hamilton had to walk bent over, at her side. Pulling Hamilton, half choking, beside her, Ugly Girl then returned to the mouth of the cave of the Ugly People. There was a fire there now, rather near the mouth, and various branches and rocks had been brought and put before the opening, to close it somewhat. But the opening had not been yet completely closed. Ugly Girl had not yet returned.

  The male of the Ugly People,, and his woman, and the child, emerged from the cave.

  Hamilton stood neat to Ugly Girl, bent over, her hands bound behind her back, in her simple choke collar and leash, helpless, a prisoner of Ugly Girl.

  The child looked at her, and laughed.

  He said the word she had heard before, and he laughed again, as did the male and the female.

  “Please don’t eat me, or kill me,” she whispered.

  The male and the woman, and the child returned to the cave. Then, to Hamilton’s astonishment, Ugly Girl removed the leash from her throat, and untying its ends, refastened it as her own belt. Then, to her greater astonishment, Ugly Girl untied her hands. Hamilton dared not run. Ugly Girl tied the belt about Hamilton, as it had been before. Then she stepped toward the mouth of the cave. Hamilton turned to face her. She was free. Ugly Girl gestured that she should enter the cave. She made a clucking noise.

  Behind Hamilton, in the forest, she heard the roar of a leopard. She shuddered. Well did she recall the leopard which, long ago, had stalked her, which, to her good fortune, had been slain by Tree.

  Again Ugly Girl gestured that she should enter the cave. Again, from the forest, closer this time, she heard the roar of the leopard. Swiftly, gratefully, she entered the cave.

  Ugly Girl gestured that she should kneel beside the fire, where some of the meat from the slain deer was roasting on a stick. Hamilton would have knelt behind the male, but Ugly Girl shook her head and placed Hamilton by the fire. She knelt to the left of the woman; the child was on the woman’s right; the male squatted diagonally across from Hamilton; when Ugly Girl had closed the entrance to the cave with thick branches, she came and knelt between the child and the male. The male, with a sharp piece of flint, and a stick, separated pieces of meat from the roast. He gave a piece first to the child; he then gave a piece to the woman; then he gave a piece to Ugly Girl. Then he handed Hamilton a piece of meat. “Thank you,” she whispered. He then cut himself a piece of meat, a large one, and, holding it in two hands, squatting, grease running between his fingers, began to eat it.

  That night Hamilton lay down beside Ugly Girl, in the cave of the Ugly People. She looked at the glowing redness of the embers of the fire.

  “Can you understand me?” asked Hamilton of Ugly Girl, in the language of the Men.

  Ugly Girl, her head illuminated by the redness, signified her assent, nodding her head. Ugly Girl, as Hamilton had suspected, understood much of the speech of the Men, but it was difficult for her to repeat the sounds. Hamilton, too, of course, would have found it difficult to imitate, with adequate exactness, the phonemes of the Ugly People. There was, she suspected, subtle differences in the anatomy of the throat, a thicker, less nimble tongue, a different oral cavity, and, too, of course, a somewhat differently formed brain, with a speech center wrought through an evolution divergent for generations from that of the human.

  “What is the word by which they address me?” asked Hamilton. “What is it they call me?”

  Ugly Girl repeated the word.

  “Yes,” said Hamilton. “What does it mean?”

  Ugly Girl crawled over to the fire. She knelt by it. Hamilton joined her there.

  Ugly Girl repeated the word. She made, in the sign language common to many of the groups of humans, the name sign, pointing to Hamilton. Tooth, and Fox, at the behest of Tooth, had taught her several signs.

  “That is the name they have given me?” asked Hamilton. “It is my name here?”

  Ugly Girl nodded.

  “What does it mean?” asked Hamilton. She remembered how they had laughed at her, even the child.

  Ugly Girl, with a twig, beside the fire, scratched an animal. Hamilton could not make it out. Then Ugly Girl made the sign in the, hand talk of the human groups. Hamilton then looked down. She then understood the drawing.

  It was a drawing, primitive, simple, an outline drawing, but one now unmistakable. It was the drawing of a small, female bush pig. Hamilton leaned back on her heels, and smiled. “You are so ugly,”. signed Ugly Girl to her, and then, smiling, kissed her. Hamilton, among the people of Ugly Girl, was no longer the beauty, a casual, inadvertent movement of whose body might lead one of the hunters, to whom she and the other women belonged, to throw her on her back and, without ceremony or courtesy, rape her. Here, among the people of Ugly Girl, it was she, not Ugly Girl, who was the ugly girl. Ugly Girl, of course, among the men, had been used. They were fierce sometimes indiscriminatory breeders. Hamilton did not feel the male of the Ugly People would bother her. To her he seemed large, kind, and sexually sluggish. If he did wish to use her, of course, she would have to serve him, for she was a female. As a primitive woman she would have no choice but to obey the male, and do what he wished. Hamilton smiled to herself. Among the Ugly People, her name was “Sow.”

  “What is your name?” asked Hamilton.

  Ugly Girl laughed, an almost human laugh. She made the sign for “Flower.” Hamilton smiled.

  “What is the name of your people?” asked Hamilton. She had thought only of them, in the habitual manner of the Men, as the Ugly People. She knew, of course, of the Horse People, who hunted horse on the prairies; she knew of the Bear People, with whom the Men sometimes exchanged women; of the Shell People, who traded shells; and of the Weasel People, enemies of the men; and of the Dirt People, vanished now, save for some of their females in the thongs of the Weasel People. “What is the name of your people?” asked Hamilton again of Ugly Girl.

  Ugly Girl grinned, not responding.

  Her people, this family, had taken her in, she, Hamilton, a female of an enemy kind, different even biologically from them, one displeasing to their senses. They had protected her, fed her, sheltered her.

  “What is the name of your people?” asked Hamilton.

  Swiftly Ugly Girl made the signs. “The Love People,” she said, in the hand talk of certain of the human groups.

  28

  “Oh!” cried Hamilton, angrily, stung on the thigh. Bees swarmed about her. “Hurry!” she cried. She looked up the height of the blasted, desiccated tree. On a branch, a smoking torch in one hand, stood Ugly Girl. She thrust her other hand, and arm, into an aperture in the tree. Bees, in a cloud, swarmed about her. She scooped out combs of honey, pounds, mixed with bees, smearing them on the branch next to her, on a large, flat leaf. Then she thrust the torch, as she had done before into the hole in the tree, trying to overcome the bees inside the nest. Her left eyelid was swollen. Hamilton could see welts on her body. Another bee stung Hamilton, on the side of the left ankle. Beside Hamilton, about her feet, were several leaves, laden with honey. Ugly Girl rolled the leaf and dropped it to Hamilton, who caught it, put it with the others, and then, as Ugly Girl bent down, squatting, handed her another leaf. Hamilton put her finger into the sweet, whitish mash. There were dead bees in it. Hamilton licked her finger. She could taste the smoke from Ugly Girl’s torch. “Oh!” cried Hamilton, as another bee stung her, on the left side of the neck. “We have enough!” she cried. “Please come down! Please, Flower!” Ugly Girl, with the last leaf in one hand, the torch in the other, had, too, had enough. Bees hot and black about her head and shoulders, she leapt down. Hamilton and Ugly Girl bent down, picking up the leaves. Another bee stung Hamilton on the back of the left leg, some seven inches above the knee. Then another stung her on the back of the neck. Weeping, laughing, she and Ugly Girl scooped up the honey and, torch smoking, fled.

  When they were free of the lingering avengers of the nest, the two girls sat down in the grass, beside a large rock. Ugly Girl extinguished the torch. She knelt by H
amilton. Ugly Girl picked a flower, and fixed it in her hair. Hamilton could not do the same, for her own hair had been almost cut from her head, leaving her scalp cut and scraped, by the Dirt People. Hamilton, looking at Ugly Girl, did not feel any longer that she was ugly, though she was much different from a human female. The large eyes of Ugly Girl, dark, deep, Hamilton found to be beautiful. Ugly Girl dipped her finger in the honey, and tasted it.

  “I wish to return to the Men,” said Hamilton. She thought of Tree. “Will you help me?”

  It seemed not strange now to Hamilton that she wished to return to the Men, that she wished to return to a group where she would be no more than a rightless slave, where her neck would be given no choice but to bend beneath the yoke of a complete masculine domination. She could not, in her new knowledges, envy the frustrated, denied females of her own artificial times, cheated of their absolute sexual subjugation to a male, thereby denied the attainment of the totality, the fullness, of their sexuality.

  “I will help you,” said Ugly Girl, in hand talk.

  Hamilton hugged her with joy.

  “You need not come near their camp,” said Hamilton. “Just show me the way. Then I can go into the camp alone. You will not then be recaptured.”

  Hamilton wondered if Tree would tie her and beat her, for not having returned sooner. She hoped he would not do so. She had done her best to return to his collar.

  “I will go with you,” signed Ugly Girl. Then she looked at Hamilton. “Tooth,” she said, making the sound, saying the word in the language of the Men, as nearly as she could. Her face seemed strained with the effort.

  “You like Tooth?” asked Hamilton. She recalled the prognathous-jawed giant, with the extended canine, so fearsome seeming, so much loving children, he who had been kind to Ugly Girl, of all the Men. “I care for him,” said Ugly Girl. “I love him.”

  “But you are of another people,” said Hamilton.

  “I love him,” she said, speaking the words in the language of the Men. It required effort. Sweat stood on her forehead. Then she reverted to hand sign. “Do you not want to be owned?” she signed, asking Hamilton a question which, in Hamilton’s time, would have been a forbidden question, one which one woman would scarcely dare to ask another, but which, in this honest time, was natural, a straightforward, civil inquiry.

  “Yes,” said Hamilton, smiling. “I want to be owned.”

  The two girls hugged and kissed one another, and Ugly Girl touched Hamilton with her nose, in the manner of the Ugly People, drinking in her scent. Then laughing, the two girls gathered up their honey, and made their way toward the shelter of the Ugly People. In the morning, they had decided, they would begin the journey back to the shelters of the Men.

  Hamilton preceded Ugly Girl to the shelter of the family of the Ugly People, carrying the honey. Ugly Girl delayed, stopping to gather sticks for the fire that night. Inside the shelter, its mouth now open, as it was during the day, Hamilton saw the male of the Ugly People, and his mate. She called out to them. The child did not come forth to greet her. Hamilton, tired, sweating, carried the honey to the cave, putting it down, in its rolled leaves, to one side. She turned to face the male and his mate, and froze with horror. He sat cross-legged, two pieces of flint in his hand, his head bent over. She, too, sat cross-legged, to one side, leather, with a rawhide thread and awl, in her hands. She was staring straight ahead, not seeing. Hamilton threw her hand before her mouth with horror. Blood was about the head of both. Both were dead. They had been propped in position and each tied to a short stake thrust into the dirt behind them. Hamilton screamed. She turned. In the mouth of the cave, behind her, blocking her exit, was a bearded man, the leader of the Weasel People.

  29

  “My power here is precarious,” said Gunther. “I can do nothing to save you.”

  Please Gunther!” wept Hamilton. “I beg you, Gunther! As a helpless human female, I beg you!”

  “I can do nothing,” said Gunther.

  “You are mad,” said William, behind him.

  The drums began to beat more madly. The chants became more wild.

  Hamilton struggled on the pole, lying on the ground, to which she was tied. It was some two inches in thickness, supple, green, some ten feet in length. Her wrists, over her head, were crossed and tied to the pole; she was stretched at full length; her ankles, drawn down, crossed, were tied, too, to the pole; rawhide ropes about her body, at the knees, at her thighs, her waist, her shoulders, her neck, held her tightly to the pole; she could scarcely squirm; she was stripped; honey had been smeared on her body; to one side, in a ditch a yard wide, and some eight feet in length, the red-haired girl prodded the fire.

  “Please, Gunther,” wept Hamilton.

  “No,” said Gunther. “It is beyond my power now to interfere. Did I oppose them now, did I interfere in this thing, my power here would be at an end.”

  Hamilton heard the moving back of the hammer of a pistol. “It is not beyond my power to interfere,” said William. “You have gone too far, Gunther. If we die, we must stop this.”

  “If we stop it,” said Gunther, “we shall die. Do you not understand this? Do not be a fool.”

  One of the men of the Weasel People, standing nearby, regarded them, puzzled.

  The red-haired girl, followed by the shorter, darkhaired one, who had been cruel, weeks before, to Hamilton, now brought sticks, throwing them on the fire.

  Two of the men of the Weasel People bent to the hide drums, stretched over hollowed wood. Others, slapping their knees, sitting cross-legged, chanted.

  Gunther looked up, into the muzzle of the pistol leveled at his head by William. “I cannot permit this,” said William. “I have followed you, too far. You have taught me much of what it is to be a man, but this I conjecture, can be no part of that instruction. I, simply, do not find this acceptable. It isn’t to be done.”

  “This,” said Gunther, “has nothing to do with manhood. It is neither of a man nor not of a man. My action now is simply that of a rational organism. Better one lost, and that only a female, than three. How much do you value your life?”

  “Not this much,” said William. “Untie her.” Gunther looked up at him. “You are not the Gunther I once knew, once admired, once saluted,” said William. “He is gone, left now is only a monster, corrupted by greed for a pittance of power. You were the mightiest of the men I ever knew, Gunther, but you have fallen. Gunther is gone. You pretend to his name, but you are not him. The Gunther I once knew would have led in this action. He would have been too proud to have valued his life in this situation; you have betrayed the Gunther I once knew, who was a great man, one who could dream in steel and theorems, and envisage a world bold enough to lift its hands to stars.”

  “Untie her yourself,” said Gunther, standing.

  William holstered his pistol and knelt to Hamilton’s bonds. Hamilton wept with relief. She screamed. From behind William, Gunther struck down with the butt of his Luger.

  Gunther spoke to two of the men of the Weasel People, who dragged William to one side.

  Hamilton wept as two other men lifted the pole and set it across the two tripods, one at each end of the fire. She screamed. She felt the honey melt from her body and heard it fall, hissing, into the fire.

  The leader of the Weasel People squatted nearby, watching her body, tied on the spit.

  Hamilton cried out, a long, piteous scream. Nearby, kneeling, her head down, her neck tied on a short strap, some six inches long, to a short stake, her wrists tied behind her back, Ugly Girl whimpered with misery. Her back was covered with switch welts.

  The women of the Weasel People, at a command from the men, threw aside their garments and, legs flexed, hands lifted over their heads, stood before their men. They stood perfectly still. The drums stopped. Then, when the drums, with a sudden sound began again, the females, as one, danced, turning, stamping, about the fire, crying out, their hair wild. The eyes of the men glistened; they slapped their knees and thighs;
Hamilton’s ears rang with the chant; about her, blurred, whirled the nude women, pleasing their men; she heard the honey fall from her body, crackling, in the fire; she screamed in pain, her body a sheet of heat, bound on the thick, greenwood spit.