by John Norman
Gunther laughed. "But I have other plans for you," be said.
Hamilton regarded him, puzzled.
"Do you not notice," asked Gunther, "that the rock upon which I sit is of shaped stone, and, so, too, is that on which William has his place?"
Hamilton said nothing.
"Did you not notice," asked Gunther, "that the pit in which you were confined was formed of shaped stone?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"And what then did you infer?" he asked.
"I did not understand it," she whispered.
"Did you not see in its bottom tiny grains?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
"And what did you make of them?" he grinned.
"Nothing," she whispered.
"Females, even bright ones like yourself," said Gunther, "are fools, fit only to be slaves."
Hamilton was suddenly conscious of the tether on her neck, that she knelt, that she was stripped, that her wrists were confined helplessly.
"But it is impossible," she whispered.
"Believe the evidence of your senses, little fool," said he. "The pit in which you were confined is a storage pit, used for the keeping of barley. The stones were shaped with saws and axes of bronze."
"It cannot be," she said. She had seen no tools or weapons of metal among the Weasel People, no evidence of agriculture. "Are we not exiled in the early Aurignacian Period," she asked, "sometime during the late Pleistocene?"
"Herjellsen's assertions, and the cultural and geological evidence," said Gunther, "confirm that hypothesis."
"Then, how?" breathed Hamilton.
"The discovery of metal, its utility, the discovery of food grains, their cultivation," said Gunther, "I conjecture took place many times, perhaps hundreds of times, independently, perhaps centuries ago, perhaps again millenia in the future, given our current spatio-temporal coordinates. Such discoveries, by rational creatures, given an order of social organization, a tradition, would presumably be made many times."
"But there is no evidence of such developments in this period," said Hamilton. "Not even polished rock is known to the Men, nor, it seems, to the Weasel People."
"Human groups are isolated," said Gunther.
"But why would there be no evidence of such developments in this period?"
"The groups," said Gunther, unpleasantly, "are small." He grinned. "We may surmise they will not survive."
Hamilton shuddered.
She supposed that it might be true that such developments as agriculture, before they became broadspread and irreversible, might have had tiny beginnings, perhaps over and over again failing, or being obliterated by fiercer peoples. Perhaps it would be only with the cultivation of the broader, lengthy river valleys, the Yangtze, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, with their capacity for supporting gigantic populations, that agriculture, and agricultural peoples, would have the numbers and power to become the dominant mode of humanity. For long millenia they might have remained the prey of hungry hunters, raiding from the hills and forests.
"I know of only one such group within trekking distance," said Gunther. "In the language of the Weasel People, they are called the Dirt People. From them, from time to time, a bronze tool is purchased with fur, or supplies of barley. The Dirt People, incidentally, you will be interested to learn, herd sheep, though you are not familiar with the variety. They weave. They clothe themselves in wool."
"They are quite advanced," said Hamilton.
Gunther laughed unpleasantly.
Hamilton looked at Flower. She knelt beside William, smug. Cloud, lying at Gunther's feet, would not meet her eyes.
"I am King here," said Gunther.
"How many bullets do you have left?" asked Hamilton.
"Enough to keep me King," said Gunther.
"And I," asked Hamilton, gazing evenly at Gunther, "am I to be your queen?"
Gunther spoke abruptly. The girl with the bright red hair, behind Hamilton, suddenly began to strike her, viciously, with the supple switch. Hamilton cried out and fell, twisting, turning, struck across the belly, the legs, the back, by the switch, held by the short tether in the hand of the short, dark-haired girl. "Forgive the insolence of a slave, Master!" wept Hamilton. Gunther made a swift motion, and the beating stopped. Half choking, Hamilton was dragged again to her knees. She could scarcely see Gunther for the tears; she gasped for breath; her slave body, stung and ravaged by the switch, held in its tether, burning, shook with the misery of the sharp discipline which had been inflicted upon it.
"Perhaps," said Gunther, "I should have so proud a girl as you eaten."
"I am not proud, Gunther," she whispered, "my master. I will do whatever you wish."
"Eagerly?" asked Gunther.
"Yes, Master," she whispered, "—eagerly!"
"Cut her hands free," said Gunther to William. William rose and went to Hamilton, cutting the thongs which confined her wrists.
Her hands were white; in the wrists were deep, circular marks, the imprint of her former constraints.
"Stand up," said Gunther.
Hamilton did so. Gunther then spoke to the red-haired girl. He then turned to Hamilton. "Tonight," he said, "you will eat well. Tomorrow you will be washed and combed, and again fed well."
"What are you going to do with me?" she asked.
"Tomorrow, Brenda," said he, grinning, "you must look your best."
"What are you going to do with me?" she asked.
"I am going to use you in my plans," he said.
"What are you going to do with me!" she cried.
He looked at her for a time. Then he said, "I am going to sell you, Brenda."
She looked at him with horror, and then she felt the pull of the neck tether.
24
The hands of the man in the woolen tunic were on her breasts, roughly. He was pleased.
"Be docile, pretty little beast," said Gunther.
Hamilton felt another man feeling her legs, from behind. He grunted affirmatively.
"Suck in your belly," said Gunther. "Stand straight."
Hamilton did so. She felt a hand slap her belly, twice. She felt the man behind her testing the sweetness, the firmness of her buttocks.
"Stand straight," said Gunther. Tears in her eyes, Hamilton did so. She felt her upper arms held and released, and again held and released. Another man held out her hair, which was now quite long, in his two hands, to the light, examining it for condition and sheen. She felt, from behind, her legs, one after the other, bent up and backward, as the arch of her instep was noted.
Hamilton wore no clothing, but there was a tether on her throat. She stood on a large, flat, wooden platform. Other men, in woolen tunics, stood about, watching the appraisal of the slave girl. Four men of the Weasel People, too, were about. The large, bearded fellow was he who held her tether. She had worn, in the march, and upon the platform, at first, one of the hide tunics of the women of the Weasel People, concealing her breasts. Gunther had first torn it to her waist, before stripping it totally away from her. Ugly Girl, naked, a leather tether on her neck, in the hands of one of the men of the Weasel People, crouched to one side on the platform. She had not been clothed from the beginning.
"It is my intention," Gunther had told Hamilton, "to sell the monster, too, with you. Her presence on the platform will dramatically accentuate your beauty, my dear. It will make you seem twice as desirable, twice as beautiful."
The man who had felt Hamilton's breasts now thrust back her head and, roughly, with his fingers, pried her mouth widely open, inspecting her teeth. To one side, below the platform, Hamilton heard the bleating of a sheep. It was a large animal, long-haired, with soft wool beneath; its horns were spiraled, and yellowish in color. The platform was within a palisaded wall; there were several huts, too, 'some of them open, within the wall. Some children, too, idly, watched the men appraise her; in the background, before two looms, four women, too, in woolen tunics, had turned about to watch. One girl, a saucy, impudent,
bright-eyed girl, perhaps seventeen years of age, with bare arms, and a copper armlet on her left arm, came to the edge of the platform. One of the women called angrily to her, and she, angrily, turned about and went back to stand with them, by the looms. Before she left, she made a face at Hamilton.
The man who had forced open the female animal's mouth, to check its teeth, now stood back from her, sizing her up. Then he walked about her. Then he stood close to her, before her, and put his heavy hands on the sides of her waist, holding her. His eyes met hers. She looked quickly down. His eyes were those of a free man. Hers were those only of a female slave. "Look into his eyes quickly, deferentially," said Gunther. "Then smile, and look down."
"Gunther," wept Hamilton.
"Do so," said Gunther.
Hamilton looked up, into the eyes of the man in the woolen tunic. Indeed she did so deferentially, frightened, for she was slave, and he free.
"Smile, Animal," said Gunther.
Hamilton smiled, then sobbed and thrust her head down.
She felt the power of his hands, gripping her waist. He laughed mightily, and shook her, then released her.
Gunther was grinning. "Kneel," he said to her, casually, as an aside.
She knelt on the wooden platform, sick, her head down. The tether was still on her neck. The man who had held it, at the indication of one of the men in woolen tunics, thrust its free end through a small circular hole in the platform; beneath the surface of the platform a child tied it about a piece of wood, not large, but too large to be drawn upward through the hole in the platform. The men, and the child, withdrew. No one looked at her. She had been assessed; she would now be bargained for. She recalled Gunther's words, "I am going to sell you, Brenda." How far away then seemed her world, her time, her friends, her education, her degrees, her aptitudes, her former experiences; she recalled, idly, her apartment, buying a newspaper in Pasadena, noting the mountains, the low, earth-colored, Spanish-style buildings of the California Institute of Technology, her classes and seminars, the oral examination on her dissertation for the Ph.D. degree, the men coming up to her, shaking her hand, congratulating her. She had worn a light, white pantsuit, with Oxford shift, buttoned, with tie. "I am being sold," she thought. "I am being sold!"
She looked wildly about. It seemed impossible, unreal, but it was as real as the leather on her neck. The gate to the palisade was shut. Ugly Girl, tethered, too, hands bound, crouched at the corner of the platform; the line about her neck fell to the boards, lay across them, and then disappeared over the edge; beneath the boards, ascending again, it was tied, high, about one of the legs of the structure; both girls, Ugly Girl at the edge of the platform, Hamilton near its center, were alone. Hamilton closed her eyes. "I must wake up," thought Hamilton, wildly. "I must wake up!" The heat and light of the clearing in the camp of the Dirt People was refulgent, red and warm, through her gritted eyelids. She could feel sweat beneath her armpits and between her thighs. The sun was hot, beating down, burning on her back. Beneath her knees and the tops of her toes, as she knelt, she felt the rough, splintery surface of the heavy boards of the platform. The tether, tight, which could not be slipped, close on her, making her neck feel hot, broken out, she tried to reject. She tried, too, to reject that she was naked, that the deliciousness of her beauty, so curved, so soft and delicate, so vulnerable and helpless, which for no reason she clearly understood, but frightened her, so excited men, that drove them to lust for her and desire her, and wish to own her, was now, so against her will, so publicly exposed for their gaze and pleasure. She tried, by sheer force of will, to thrust herself into another reality. She smiled to herself. She laughed. "I must wake up," she thought. A warm wind, slow-moving, carrying dust, stirred by the feet of those in the clearing, moved across the platform. She felt it, fully, on the surfaces of her body, warm, moving, granular. It was a not unpleasant sensation. She recalled that at one time she would have been scandalized to have been naked out of doors. She now had little choice. She was slave. Then she breathed in some of the dust. It was not pleasant. Her mouth felt dry. She did not open her eyes; she felt the particles against her eyelids. "This is impossible," she whispered. "I must wake up! I must wake up!" She tried to thrust herself into an alternative reality. The men were coming up to her. Her defense of her dissertation had been professional, and crisp. They would shake her hand, congratulating her. She wore a light, white pantsuit, with blue-pastel Oxford shirt, buttoned, with a yellow tie. The slave was jerked to her feet on the platform. A hand, hot, swift, heavy, exploded at the side of her mouth; she tasted blood, felt it running about her tongue and between her teeth; she looked into Gunther's face; he was grinning; "Wake up," said he, "pretty little bitch."
"Tell me it's not real, Gunther!" she wept.
"You have been sold," he said.
"Gunther!" she wept.
"Sold," he said.
The end of the tether was freed from the wood beneath the platform and the free end drawn through the small circular hole in the floor of the platform, and taken in the hand of one of the men in a woolen tunic. She felt the tether jerk her toward the edge of the platform. She stopped, the tether taut, and turned to regard Gunther. "Please, Gunther," she wept.
"You brought eight sacks of barley," he said, "and a bronze ax."
She looked at him, aghast. She now knew the measure of her value in the rude economy of the Dirt People. Eight sacks of barley and a bronze ax was the barter equivalent of Dr. Brenda Hamilton, stripped. She now knew that women, though they might be urgently sought, and desperately desired, when the needs of men were upon them, were not, on the whole, considered particularly valuable. She was not worth much. She was a female. She doubted that she would have brought two bronze axes.
"The monster," said Gunther, nodding toward Ugly Girl, "brought far less."
She saw Ugly Girl being jerked from the platform, and being dragged away. She felt a jerk on her own neck tether. There were tears in Hamilton's eyes. "Don't leave me here in this place, Gunther," wept Hamilton. "I beg you!" She flung herself to her knees wildly, weeping, and pressed her lips to his boots. She held his ankle, her small fingers about the dusty leather of his boots. "You have been sold," he told her. Then she was dragged away, hauled stumbling to her feet by the neck tether and, choking, pulled from the platform and conducted between the huts.
"I have been sold!" she cried out, in misery. Then she screamed when she saw where they were going to put her.
25
For eleven days Brenda Hamilton had been owned by the Dirt People.
It was now late at night, almost toward morning, after a night of a full moon. The insects were quiet. The birds, which began to cry at dawn were not yet active. The wooden plug, which had been forced into her, and secured by thongs, irritated her. Ugly Girl, who slept near her, had been similarly humiliated. In the darkness Hamilton put forth her hand, and felt, some six inches from her face, the logs of the kennel. It was a yard high and a yard wide, and some twenty feet long. The floor was also of logs, smoothed at the top, but separated by some four inches, giving access to the dirt. The logs were fastened in place by mortise and tenon joints, fitting over stakes first driven into the ground. The mortise was not open to the inside of the kennel. Hamilton and Ugly Girl could not lift the logs from the tenons, as the logs, in addition to" their weight, projecting, were anchored under the front and rear of the kennel. The floor of the kennel was, thus, formed of bars of wood, in between which lay dirt. Over the dirt was thrown a straw of barley stalks. Ugly Girl and Hamilton shared the kennel with four ewes, the other sheep being penned outside. The ewes were pregnant and were penned at night. The kennel, when not secured, opened into the general sheep pen.
Hamilton was curious that the insects were now quiet. She could tell by Ugly Girl's breathing, that the simple creature was not asleep. She did not, however, speak to her. One could not, even though Ugly Girl understood some of the language of the Men, easily communicate with her. She could not even form the
sounds of the language of the men. She was stupid.
Hamilton turned on her back, dry eyed. The wooden plug hurt her. She clenched her fists in the darkness.
On the first night, after she had been, in the afternoon, locked with Ugly Girl in the kennel, she had heard the heavy door of the kennel being unfastened. She had crouched within. Then she had been ordered out. She had crawled out on her hands and knees, to be seized by the hair by a reeling farmer and dragged after him to the drinking hut. The Dirt People, from barley, half crushed and germinated, made a simple bread. This they cut into small pieces, and soaked in water. The process of fermentation was initiated by air-borne yeasts. It took only twenty-four hours to make a brew. Sometimes they strained it through cloth; at other times they drank the fermented mash, thick with barley hulls soaked loose from the crude bread. Hamilton was startled. She had not realized the immediacy, the simplicity, the naturalness of the relation between grain and beer; yet they were almost as naturally consanguine as the stone hammer and the flint knife, and as expectable; bread and beer lay at the foundation of the agricultural revolution; perhaps it was only beer, Hamilton thought, that tempted men to give up the hunt, that lured them to the slavery of the soil; or, more likely, it, the alcohol, was the drug which kept them in their fields, which broke them and tamed them, in the deliriums of which they could, in sorrow and mock hilarity, drown the dreams of freedom and the pursuit of game. He who worked bent in the dirt, poking at the soil, under the sun, his body aching, might, at night, lose himself in drunken stupor, forgetting the heritage of the hunt, keeping him in the village another night, to waken again to the dirt, the stones and seed, the beating sun, and the sticks with which he scratched at the earth. She wondered if it were not for the alcohol men might have gone mad or fled. It gave them the narcotic wherewith to endure their lot.
Hamilton well remembered, and bitterly, the night in the drinking hut.