Time Slave

by John Norman

  They are like animals, she thought. Brenda Hamilton, though enlightened, though informed, though historically aware, was yet a creature of her own times and conditionings, of a world in which her attitudes and feelings had, without her knowing it, been shaped by centuries of misery, unhappiness and mental disease, thought to be essential in guaranteeing societal stability, thought to be the only alternative to chaos, the jungle and terror. Fear and superstition, often by men whose gifts for life were imperfect or defective, and hated or feared life, poured like corroding acids into the minds of the young, had been a culture's guarantee that men would fear to leave their fields, that they would keep the laws, that they would pay the priests and the kings, that the hunters would not return.

  But the women, and the men, on whom Brenda Hamilton looked, had not felt this oppressive weight.

  They were free of it, simply free of it.

  They still owned the world, and the mountains, and hunted the animals, and went where Spear decided they would go.

  They were as free as leopards and lions, as once men were, as once men might be again, among new continents, among new mountains, once more being first, now among the stars.

  "Her body is alive," said Old Woman, looking up into the face of Brenda Hamilton. "I do not understand why she would not kick well."

  Brenda Hamilton looked away from her.

  "You must learn to kick well, my pretty," said the old woman to her. "You must learn to kick well for the men."

  Brenda Hamilton turned to her, miserable, looking down into her face.

  The old woman looked up at her, and cackled. "You will learn to kick well, my pretty," she said, "if you would eat."

  Then she turned away.

  Spear looked at her. Then he said to the men, "Let us go to the men's hut."

  The men turned and went between the huts, leaving the women and children at the rack.

  Spear was the last of the men to leave.

  Before he left he faced Brenda Hamilton. "You are a slave," he told her. She looked at him, blankly. Then he said to the women and children about, "Teach her that she is a slave." Then he, too, walked away, following the men, between the huts.

  The women and children pressed closely about her, poking at her, smelling her, feeling her body.

  "Please untie me," begged Brenda Hamilton.

  One of the women struck her, sharply, across the mouth.

  Brenda Hamilton hung, wrists apart, hands now numb, from the pole, her feet some six inches from the ground.

  She tasted blood in her mouth, where the blow had dashed her lower lip against her teeth.

  She closed her eyes.

  Suddenly, from behind her, she heard the hiss of a switch and she cried out in pain, the supple, peeled branch unexpectedly, deeply, lashing into the small of her back, on the left side; she twisted in the thongs, agonized, to look behind her, and another switch, swiftly, cut across her belly; she cried out in misery, writhing in the thongs; first on one side and then the other, and in front and back, and the length of her body, the women and the children, chanting, circling her, leaping in and out, struck her.

  Brenda Hamilton saw the ugly girl, the stupid, horrid one, crouching, naked between the huts, watching her.

  Then the switch fell again, and again.

  Then she saw, limping from between the huts, the woman with the scar, who had screamed something before, and had later, after the sticks had been thrown, left the group. She demanded a switch from one of the other women. It was immediately given to her. And then the others fell back. Short Leg looked at Brenda Hamilton. Then she lashed her with the switch, making her cry out with pain. She lashed her methodically and well, with care and strength, and then Brenda Hamilton, broken, blubbering, wept in the thongs. "Please stop," she wept. "Don't hurt me," she wept. The older woman with the scar, Short Leg, held her face to hers, by the hair. Brenda Hamilton could not meet her eyes, but looked away.

  She knew that she feared this woman terribly, that she was dominant over her.

  Short Leg, angrily, threw away the switch, and limped away.

  Hamilton saw another woman pick up the switch, a dark-haired woman, one of the two women who had left with the hunter who had captured her. It was Antelope. Behind her was the shorter woman, blond, thick-ankled, who had accompanied them, Cloud.

  Antelope strode to her and struck her five times, and then gave the switch to Cloud, who, too, lashed her five times. Antelope smiled at her over her shoulder, as she walked away. She had the hip swing of a woman who has been muchly pleasured by a man.

  A little later the young, blond girl, who had left with the other hunter, Flower, strolled to the rack, and she, too, smiling, lashed Brenda Hamilton.

  "I don't want him!" wept Brenda Hamilton. "Don't beat me! He's yours! He's yours!"

  Flower threw away the switch and strolled from the rack.

  Then the old woman was among the other women and the children.

  She pushed them away, and they, weary now, from striking, and taunting and chanting, left the pole.

  Brenda Hamilton hung, beaten, alone. Her body was a welter of lash marks.

  To her left hung the deer, hind feet apart, tied upside down, with its cut throat.

  The sun passed the noon meridian, and none paid more attention to her. She watched the shadows of the poles then creep across the ground.

  Her hair was half across her face. In the early afternoon she fell unconscious.

  She awakened in the late afternoon, when the shadows were long.

  She saw most of the men sitting cross-legged, watching her. Among them, though, were not the hunter who had captured her, nor the small man who had thrown the sticks. Too, the small, quick man, Fox, was not among them. He was to her left, beginning to skin the deer. He began at the bound foot to his left, cutting around the leg with a small stone knife, and then made a deep vertical incision down the animal's body. In a few minutes he had freed the skin from the meat.

  The men watched impassively.

  When he had jerked the skin free and thrown it to one side, to the grass, he looked at Brenda Hamilton, who regarded him, numbly.

  Then, to her horror, with his knife he reached up to her bound wrist, that on his left and laid the knife against it.

  "No!" she screamed. "No! No!"

  The quick man, with a wide grin, took the knife away, and the other men, all of them with but one exception, the heavy-jawed, dour man she would learn was Stone, roared with laughter. And across even his face there was the trace of a smile.

  She blushed, so completely had she been fooled. She was still shuddering, when she was lifted in the thongs, untied from the pole, and carried to a place on the grass.

  She was sat on the grass, naked, the men about her.

  The one who was their leader handed her a broken gourd, filled with water.

  Gratefully she drank.

  She was then handed small bits of meat, dried. She ate them.

  She saw some of the women now untying the skinned deer from the pole. Others were preparing a large, rectangular fire in a clearing between the huts. Poles would be set up; it would be gutted and roasted. Another woman had picked up the skin, and was taking it away with her.

  Her body felt miserable, from the beating. She could scarcely move her hands; she could not feel her fingers. Her wrists bore deep, circular red marks, where the thongs had bitten into them.

  She was given more water, more pieces of meat. She drank, and ate.

  The men sat about, watching her.

  She felt less frightened with them than with the women. She knew that, to them, she was an object of curiosity, of interest, of pleasure. To the women she sensed she was only another woman, a rival, competitor. Moreover, she had recognized, with a woman's swiftness and awareness, that she was among the most delicious of the females in the camp. She had seen only one she had felt was her superior in beauty, the young, blond girl, whom she would learn was Flower. It was not without reason that the new slav
e feared the other women in the camp. She hoped the men would protect her from them. She sat now among them, naked, shielded from the women. She could see that they were pleased that she had been brought to the camp, that they were pleased that she was theirs.

  She felt some strength coming back to her body. She looked about herself, at the men.

  Suddenly she realized that they would have nothing to do until the women prepared the meat.

  She leaped to her feet, but one of the men, the dour-faced, heavy fellow, Stone, seized her ankle, and she was hurled to the grass, again among them.

  Spear pointed to a hide spread on the grass, that she should take her place upon it.

  The men were watching her.

  "Please, no," she said.

  Spear pointed again to the hide on the grass.

  She crept to it, and sat upon it.

  "No," she whispered, "please, no."

  She saw them inching toward her. She tried to move back on the hide.

  With a sudden cry, as of animals, they leaped upon her, she screaming, and thrust her shoulders back to the hide. She felt her ankles being jerked apart, widely, the hands and mouths of them eager and hot all about her body, holding her, caressing her, licking at her, biting at her, pinioning her.

  The first to claim her was Spear, for he was the leader.

  Brenda Hamilton thrust her fingers in her mouth. They were still sore from the blow of Old Woman's stick. She did not know whether or not they might be broken. She had tried to take a piece of meat. Screaming, striking her again and again with the stick, beating her on the back, Old Woman had driven her away from the roasting meat. Then Hamilton had fallen, stumbling, her ankles fastened, one to the other, with about a foot of play, like those of Ugly Girl, with rawhide. Spear had done this, when the men had finished with her, then turning her loose. Hamilton had fallen to the ground, helpless under the blows of Old Woman's stick. And then two other women, too, attacked her, striking at her with their hands, kicking her with their feet. Even a child hit her. Hamilton had knelt down, head down, her hands over her head, crying out in misery. Then Old Woman had said something, and the blows had stopped. And Hamilton had crawled, abused, from the light of the fire. She had learned that she could not take meat. She was a female. But she had seen Old Woman take meat, and the large, heavy-breasted woman, too, take meat. She had learned now that they were special, and that she was not. She was only another female. Old Woman, in the cooking, was assisted by two other women, but, like the other women of the Men, they, too, were not permitted to feed themselves. The meat, like the women, belonged to the hunters. It was theirs to dispense. The only exception to this practice was that taken, usually in the course of the cooking, by Old Woman and Nurse. Old Woman did much what she wanted, and few interfered. Nurse, too, was privileged. Without Nurse some of the young might die. Nurse and Old Woman were not thought of by the Men, perhaps strangely, as being of the women. They were women, but somehow not the same, not in the same way of the women.

  Brenda Hamilton knelt outside the circle of the firelight. The smell of the roasted deer was redolent in the air, with the smell of ashes and fat, and bodies.

  "They are fools," thought Brenda Hamilton. "Anyone could untie the knots on my ankles. When I wish to do so, I will, and run off."

  A few feet from her, crouching in the darkness, round shouldered, head set forward on her shoulders, eyes peering at the roasting deer, was the squat, clumsily bodied girl, with the blank, vacant eyes, the slack jaw, the hair down her curved back like strings.

  Brenda shuddered, repulsed, and edged to one side, to be farther from her.

  She was terribly hungry, for she had had little during the day, only the fruit and meat which her captor had given her, she bound, in the half darkness of the morning, and the bits of meat given to her by Spear before the men had put her to their pleasure. And that meat, both that of the morning and that given her by Spear, had been insufficient, and had been terribly dry, almost like cubes of leather.

  She could see the fat dripping from the roasting carcass of the deer into the fire, sizzling and flaming.

  She moved her fingers. She was pleased to see that Old Woman's stick had not broken them.

  This afternoon, after the men had finished with her, some more than once, she had lain on her stomach, dry eyed, miserable, on the hide that had been the bed of her masters' pleasure, for better than an hour. She had scarcely been aware, lying on the hide, that, when the men had finished, Spear had tethered her ankles, fastening on them that knotted rawhide shackle; she had known it had been done; her ankles had been handled roughly; but it had seemed almost as if it might be happening to someone else; dully only, she had comprehended that her slim ankles were now bound in leather restraints; had the men not taken much pleasure from her; Was this her only reward; she hoped that they did not think of her as they did the ugly girl; but that she, and the ugly girl, were identically shackled, told her much; that whatever status in the camp might be that of the ugly girl, that that status, too, was hers.

  I am a slave, she had said to herself, lying on the hide, her ankles shackled in leather, I am a slave!

  After an hour she had risen stiffly to her feet, and looked about herself.

  She had been forgotten. The slave was no longer of interest to those of the camp.

  She smiled to herself, ironically. Your conjecture, Professor Herjellsen, she said to herself, was correct. Your experiment is eminently successful. Unfortunately you do not know how successful it was, nor how accurate your speculations were regarding my probable fate.

  Naked, hobbled, her body switched and much abused, a woman of our world, and our time, Brenda Hamilton, intelligent, sophisticated, sensitive, looked about herself, finding herself the slave of savages in a primeval camp.

  But she stood erect, her head up.

  I am alive, she told herself. I am alive.

  She moved her body, slowly. It hurt her to do so. She had been suspended, for hours, from the pole, her entire weight on tightly knotted wrist thongs, and she had been, at length, and viciously, as she had hung helplessly, switched by the women and children. And her body, too, was stiff and sore, from the attacks of her captor yesterday, and during the night, and this morning, and from the rude, prolonged attentions of her other masters this afternoon.

  But I am alive, she told herself. I am alive!

  She breathed in the fragrant air of the woods, of the trees and grass.

  She smelled the roasting meat, the mingled odors of the camp.

  She heard the cries of children, naked, running about. One was pursuing the others, and then, when he would touch one, that one would turn about and, in his turn, pursue the others, or any one of them, until he managed to touch one, and that one would then take his place.

  It is tag, thought Brenda Hamilton. They are playing tag!

  She saw one of the men drawn into the game, the large fellow with the prognathous jaw, and the fearsomely extended, atavistic canine tooth on the upper right side. With the children he seemed playful and gentle, even foolish. But she recalled he had used her as brutally as had the others, and not long ago. He was almost instantly "it," and, though he was doubtless a swift, and dexterous, hunter, he seemed clumsily unable to touch the children, who, sometimes, would even run quite closely to him, taunting him, and then dart away swiftly when he leaped toward them.

  Brenda Hamilton turned away, looking about the camp. She noted the number of huts, and their construction. When she tried to look inside one, a woman had screamed at her and raised her fist, and Brenda Hamilton had, stumbling, turned away.

  One of the huts, one of the two with a rectangular pit, and the side poles laid and tied about a horizontal pole, had sewn hides stretched across the openings at either end, that none might look within. Though Brenda Hamilton did not know it that was the Men's hut. No female might enter it, not even Old Woman or Nurse. Even to look inside, if one were female, was to risk a severe switching. It was a mysterious place
to the women. Sometimes the men met within to make medicine, but generally it was only a place to talk, a place to be where women might not come. One other hut, a smaller round one, which lay at the outside edge of the camp, separated from the others, also had hide across its opening. Brenda Hamilton would learn later that it was the Bleeding Hut, to which women, caught in flux, were banished by Old Woman, driven there if necessary with a stick. Old Woman, Brenda Hamilton would learn, could drive even Short Leg to the Bleeding Hut. In the hut, it was Old Woman who brought them water and food. As Old Woman had grown older her senses were not as keen as earlier, and she could not smell the bleeders as readily. It was dark, and lonely and hot in the Bleeding Hut. Many of the women, to fool Old Woman, stanched their flow with a tiny roll of hide, sneaking away and cleaning and washing themselves once or twice a day. Old Woman, as she had grown older, was less zealous in her policing of the females. The Bleeding Hut was often empty. Last to be sent to it, howling and protesting, had been the girl, Butterfly, who cut the meat for the older children. She had been within it only a day.

  At the outside of the camp, outside of its perimeter, a line scratched in the dirt with a stick, was the midden, where bones and waste were thrown. Brenda Hamilton looked at it for some time, but she saw no signs of brownish rats, similar to that which Herjellsen had had caged in the translation cubicle in Rhodesia. Such rodents, she did not know, did not follow men in their marches, but remained at the greater middens, near the shelters. Only if the men failed to return, and the edible waste at the greater middens became exhausted, would the rodents again follow the men, picking up their trail, following it, reappearing at the new middens, at the new shelters, wherever they might be.

  She turned about, and, following the interior perimeter of the camp, circled the huts. In a little way, also outside the perimeter, was a waste ditch, a narrow trench, some two feet deep, some nine feet long. The dirt dug from the trench lay at its edges. The camp had two such ditches, one for the Men, the other, on the other side of the camp, for the women and children. When waste was deposited in the ditch, a small amount of the dirt from the edges of the ditch was thrown into the ditch, to cover the waste and eliminate the odor of spoor. When the ditch was filled a new ditch was dug by the women, with sticks and the flattishly curved hip bones of antelope. This trick had been learned by many of the primeval peoples. It had been learned from the great, predatory cats, who bury their wastes, thus concealing evidence of their presence in the vicinity from quarry, which might take flight, terrified by the odor of the predator. Certain human groups who had not adopted this, or a similar custom, had perished of disease. Unknown to the Men this custom, borrowed from the great cats, had, particularly in camps of long standing, sanitation values which far outweighed the concealments of scent. Another practice with indirect hygienic value was the washing of the body. Among the Men, and among their properties, their women and children, this was done with some frequency. It was done primarily that animals, either game or predators, be less easily apprised of the presence of the Men. It, like the covering of wastes was, too, in its way, an attempt at concealment. Too, it was done, particularly by the women, for cosmetic purposes. They were far more pleasing to themselves, and to the Men, when their bodies were washed free of acrid, fetid and stale odors, leaving their natural scents, exciting, sexually provocative, fresh and stimulating. The great associated advantage of washing, of course, was unknown to them, the sanitary advantage, the ridding of the body of sometimes dangerous, exodermically lodged bacterial cultures. The greatest sanitary protection of the various peoples, of course, was their isolation from one another. In these times a disease that might have later swept across continents, felling its millions, destroyed or decimated only a handful of victims. Indeed, we may surmise that many noxious mutations of bacteria or viruses did arise in these times, as in later times, but that having done what damage they could they either burned themselves out, dying themselves in dying bodies, or perished, leaving behind them only the immune, the survivors. Under such circumstances it is not unlikely that many a typhus, many a cholera, perished, unnoted in medical annals, never to reappear. Microscopic organisms, like their macroscopic brethren, too, may know extinction. Of starvation virulences and plagues, like men, may die.