John Norman

by Time Slave

  Outside the hut she could hear a pounding on sticks and something like singing, and laughter.

  She did not know but tomorrow, at dawn, the people would go for salt, and then to the flint, and then, when ready, return to the shelters.

  When the camp was quiet Brenda Hamilton heard something coming, slowly, shuffling, animallike, toward the hut. In the darkness, she struggled to sit up. It was coming closer. Brenda shrank back against the side of the hut pit, pushing back against it.

  A head appeared in the entrance to the hut.

  “Stay away!” screamed Hamilton, suddenly terrified, knowing she was helpless, and could not defend herself.

  The creature entered the hut, stepping down, its head low on its rounded shoulders.

  “Stay away from me!” screamed Hamilton. “You’re not human! You’re hideous! Stay away!”

  Ugly Girl, her ankles in their leather shackles, but otherwise free, peered down, in the darkness, looking at Hamilton.

  She thrust her wide, round head toward Hamilton. Hamilton felt the greasy, stringlike hair on her shoulder.

  “No! No! No!” cried Hamilton. “Help! Help!” She tried to turn away, trapped against the side of the hut pit.

  The creature looked at her, quizzically.

  “Stay away from me!” screamed Hamilton. “You’re a monster! You’re repulsive! You are hideous! Keep away! Keep away!”

  Ugly Girl backed away, squatting down.

  “You. haven’t the intelligence of a dog!” screamed Hamilton. “Keep away from me!”

  Ugly Girl made no noise, squatting in the darkness, near Hamilton.

  “Stay away!” hissed Hamilton. “Stay away!”

  Ugly Girl did not move for some time but then, slowly, neared Hamilton. “Stay away!” screamed Hamilton.

  Ugly Girl, steadily, not listening to Hamilton, disregarding her cries, her movements, thrust her mouth against Hamilton’s. Hamilton tried to twist her mouth away, terrified, hysterical, almost retching, but Ugly Girl persisted, forcing her mouth to Hamilton’s. Suddenly Hamilton realized that there was something in her mouth.

  It was meat.

  Hamilton suddenly took it and chewed it, and swallowed it. Ugly Girl pulled back her head.

  There was a long silence.

  “Thank you,” said Hamilton.

  Ugly Girl’s hand reached out, tenderly, and touched Hamilton’s cheek, and then she went to the other side of the hut and lay down.

  In a few moments Hamilton heard the breathing of her sleep.

  During the night, at times, Ugly Girl whimpered, and twisted.

  “How hideous she is,” thought Hamilton. “How hideous.”

  16

  Brenda Hamilton struggled tied back to back with Ugly Girl, her hands tied behind her, about Ugly Girl, fastened in front, tightly, of Ugly Girl’s belly Ugly Girl’s hands similarly in front of her own belly. The two girls knelt, their ankles tied together, Ugly Girl’s left ankle to Hamilton’s right, Hamilton’s left to Ugly Girl’s right. They could not rise. They saw the ovoid eyes gleaming in the darkness, like fiery copper.

  They were in the vicinity of the shelters.

  Yesterday the animal, in the morning had dragged one of the women into the brush. That same afternoon it had killed a child.

  It was a lone animal, like most who would prey upon human groups, taking them as game when, being too old or too ill, it could not pursue and slay its more accustomed quarry.

  But men were dangerous game.

  That afternoon and morning, in a narrow place between thickset trees and brush, the women, Brenda and Ugly Girl among them, had, with stones and sticks and shells, dug the pit, lifting the dirt from it in leather sacks on rawhide ropes. In the bottom of the pit Spear and Stone had set a large number of sharpened stakes, at intervals of some six inches from one another. The pit was some sixteen feet deep, some ten by five feet wide. It had been covered with light sticks, over which leaves and grass had been spread.

  Ugly Girl’s breathing seemed almost to stop. Her back felt cold against Brenda’s.

  Hamilton threw back her head and screamed, and struggled. The eyes came a foot closer. By their movements Hamilton could see it turn its head from side to side. It was a large shadow, lithe and sinuous. She heard the breathing, and smelled the animal.

  It was ten days after Brenda Hamilton bad first been brought by Tree to the camp of the Men. The morning after her arrival in camp the camp had broken and the Men had trekked to the salt. It was only a half day’s trek from where the game camp bad been set.

  Once in the vicinity of the salt the women, and the children, with Brenda and Ugly Girl, were herded between some trees. There they were made to huddle, closely together. A thin strip of rawhide was stretched about the trees, like a tiny string fence. The women and the children, and the two slaves, must remain within this perimeter until the men returned with the salt.

  The location of the salt was a secret of the Men. Women must not know its whereabouts. Women might be stolen, and were subject to barter. They were exchangeable. If a woman knew the location of the salt, a most precious commodity, more valuable than themselves, they might reveal it to others. A male, of course, when he became old enough to run with the hunters, when he became of the Men, would be taught the location of the salt. He, in learning it, would not be sworn to secrecy, sworn to keep it from the females. That was not necessary. Any male knew that females might not know the location of salt. They were females.

  It was said in the group that Spear had found the salt, but there were those among the Men who remembered that it had been Tree. He had found it while following antelope.

  Brenda and Ugly Girl had waited with the women. Their ankles were no longer thonged. That was impractical in the trek. But they were tied together by the throat, by a length of rawhide some five feet long.

  In the trek the women had, on their heads, carried hide bundles. Ugly Girl had held hers on her shoulder, for it was painful for her, with the placement of her neck to support weight in that fashion. Hamilton balanced the bundle she was given by Short Leg on her head, in the fashion of the other women. Hamilton was human. The bundle she carried, though perhaps heavier than most, was not particularly heavy. She was not permitted to carry food or water. The possessions of the Men, other than the women and the children, were few. The men traveled lightly. Hamilton’s bundle, like that of Ugly Girl, consisted of several skins, prepared during the sojourn at the game camp.

  About the huddled women, inside the rawhide string, strode one of the men, Fox, with a switch, to be assured that they did not attempt to follow the Men and learn the whereabouts of the salt. Even Short Leg, to her irritation, must remain within the string. She, too, was only a woman. Even Old Woman did not complain. She had long since resigned herself to the fact that salt must remain a secret of the men. Too, she did not much care any longer where the salt might be. Free salt was of great value, far more than gold or diamonds would have been, but it was not essential for life, for it could be obtained in, the tissues of slain animals, in meat. Still it was a great luxury. Free salt was a trading commodity par excellence.

  By nightfall the men had returned with four sacks of salt.

  The group bad camped in the open that night, and, in the morning, had continued the trek, to the flint lode.

  The next evening, at dusk, they had come to the flint cliffs.

  Although Hamilton did not understand it, there was much anger, much fury, among the men. Clearly the flint cliffs had been worked in their absence.

  Furthermore, to their outrage, in a deposit of clay thrust between two stones, was drawn a sign, the meaning of which was clear to the Men. It was the sign of the Weasel People. And it meant that they claimed the flint as their own.

  Spear scratched away the sign of the Weasel People and, in its place, with his knife, cut the sign of the Men. It was an angled line, surmounted by a straight line. At the tip of the straight line, to the left, was a point. It was a representation
, crude, of an arm hurling a spear.

  That night guards were set.

  For four days the Men worked the flint. Skins were sewn into long bags, five feet in length, a foot wide. The men, with green sticks, and picks of antler horn, and rocks, cracked and pried the flint from the cliff. When a piece of suitable weight and size was obtained it was put into a bag. Little of the flint was shaped at the lode. The amount of flint taken was a function of the number and strength of the females, who would carry it.

  At the lode Brenda Hamilton bad not been fastened to Ugly Girl, but had been free, though she was set much work. She carried water in skins to. the men, and carried flint down to the sacks, and gathered wood for the night fires. She was also taught to dig roots and gather fruit and vegetables. There was no hunting done at the lode, for the men were concerned with. the flint. Dried meat was eaten, together with vegetables and fruits. Hamilton also noted that certain insects, and grubs, were eaten. She would not eat such. She was not given meat, but she fed well enough, on roots and fruits, and vegetables, of the sort which she was instructed to gather. The children also joined in such work. Hamilton was, to some extent, pleased, because she now realized how much more free with food was the land than she had realized. There were many things to eat which she had not understood heretofore as being edible. She realized she might have starved in the midst of plenty. Among other things she learned were edible was the inner bark of the white birch tree, and pine nuts and rose hips. During the first two days at the lode Hamilton had tried to remain in the vicinity of the hunter who had taken her slave, bringing him water, gathering his flint, but he had paid her little attention, and, some four times, with the stroke of a switch, wielded by either the darkhaired girl or the shorter blond girl, she had been driven from his vicinity. “I do not care,” she had said to herself. “He is nothing to me.” But she hated the darkhaired girl and the shorter, blond girl.

  They did not want her near the hunter. They would beat her when she lingered near him.

  The switch stung her and made her angry. She fled from it. It hurt her.

  After four days at the lode the flint sacks were filled with what rock a human female could carry.

  The sacks were then lifted by the beasts of burden, the females. They were slung about the neck, the weight falling to each side.

  Even Short Leg carried flint. So, too, did the older children, though in lesser amounts. Of the women, only Old Woman did not carry flint. “I am too old to carry flint,” she said. The bags given to Hamilton and to Ugly Girl were especially heavy, for they were slave. Hamilton could scarcely believe that she was expected to carry it. Fox, with his switch, gestured that she lift it. She, now thonged again by the neck to Ugly Girl, struggled to lift the sack. Suddenly stung by Fox’s switch, she stood erect, feeling its weight. She almost fell. Fox’s switch tapped her in the small of the back, indicating that she should stand straight. She then felt the switch tap her under the chin, twice, indicating that she should hold up her head. She stood, a beautiful, erect slave girl, under her burden. Spear cried out, from the head of the column. The Men, carrying their weapons lightly, preceded the column. The switch struck twice, along the column. Fox strode on one side, Wolf on the other. The women, struggling under the weight of the stone stumbling, followed the men. With them, leashed by the throat behind Ugly Girl, went Brenda Hamilton. She, too, like the others, though a woman of our time, though the holder of an advanced degree from a prestigious institution of higher learning, barefoot, sweating, carried flint.

  On the morning of the third day of the trek, unexpectedly, the beast had struck. Hamilton did not even see it, though she did hear the screams of the woman being dragged by the shoulder through the brush.

  Spear had not permitted the men to follow. It was his belief the female would be dead before she could be reached. Further, it was dangerous, with the primitive weapons at the disposal of the men, to cope with such a beast. To attack it as one might a cave bear would be to invite the loss of three or four men, or perhaps more. Such an animal, stone-tipped spears hanging from its haunches, bleeding, maddened by the bruising of rocks, could, frenzied, attacking, with the blows of its paws and the lockings of its great jaws, destroy an entire hunting party. Such a beast must be met with guile.

  That afternoon the beast had struck again, this time seizing a child in its jaws and padding away, white-muzzled, into the brush. The child had been taken not more than twenty yards from Hamilton. Its back had been broken in the first bite. Its eyes open it had dangled in the jaws, lost in shock. It would not live more than a few moments. Hamilton had screamed and tried to flee. Ugly Girl, jerked about by the leash, had held her, not letting her run. Hamilton, wildly, sank to her knees, and held Ugly Girl. They clung together. The women began to weep and cry out. One woman, the mother, tried to run into the brush after the animal but Spear followed her and, striking her again and again, tried to beat her unconscious. To Hamilton’s amazement he, with his strength, could not do so, but, at last, dazed, and in shock, the woman sunk to the ground and Spear carried her back to the old woman and to the heavy-breasted woman. Another child, too, ran to her and she took it in her arms, holding it closely, weeping, rocking back and forth, trying to sing to it.

  That night many fires bad been set about the group and the women, Ugly Girl and Hamilton, too, and the children, were put in the center of the group. The men crouched about the outside of. the circle, where they might reach brands from the fire.

  Wolves circled the group late, in the darkness, but they were merely curious.

  The beast did not return. Somewhere, gorged, it slept. It might not wish to feed for another two or three days. It might wish to feed again by tomorrow nightfall. The men did not know its hunger.

  The next morning, the tenth after Hamilton’s arrival in the Men’s camp, in a suitable place, the pit was dug. It was some sixteen feet deep, some five feet wide, some ten feet long. While the women dug and carried away dirt, the men constructed the runway. It was done with naturalness, with branches and sticks and thorn brush. It was widest at the point at which the beast would find it most convenient to enter, narrowest before the pit. It would be difficult to approach, except from one direction. Spear and Stone, in the bottom of the pit, when it was ready, at roughly six-inch intervals, set many sharpened stakes. The intervals were narrow for the beast, though large, was lithe, sinuous. If it were not impaled it would have little difficulty climbing from the pit. Furthermore, if it survived, it would be doubly dangerous, for it would now be wary of its approach and its footing. It would have profited, unfortunately for the Men, from a lesson that would not need to be repeated, a lesson which the men, in effect, had the opportunity to administer only once. When the stakes had been placed, Spear and Stone, on ropes, scrambled from the pit. Then the light network of branches was placed over the pit, and covered with other branches, and grass and broad leaves.

  Behind the pit, leading to it, a path, approximately a foot wide, had been left in the thorn brush.

  Brenda Hamilton wondered with what the pit would be baited.

  She felt the band of Stone on her arm.

  “No!” she cried.

  She saw Spear held Ugly Girl, who was whimpering, her simple, vacant eyes filled with terror.

  The rawhide thong which linked the two slaves by the throat was removed.

  For an instant Hamilton was elated. They would use Ugly Girl, not her!

  But Spear gestured that she, too, should edge between the narrow walls of thorn brush leading to the back of the pit.

  “No!” she cried.

  She fell to her knees.

  “Use her! Not me!” cried Hamilton. “I’m human! I’m like you! Use her! Not me! Not me!”

  But Stone, rawhide strips in his teeth, pulled her up by the arm and, painfully, thrust her through the narrow opening in the brush.

  At the back edge of the pit Brenda Hamilton and Ugly Girl were forced to kneel. There they were tied back to back, their arms ab
out one another, the wrists of each, behind them, tied about the belly of the other. Then their ankles were tied together, right ankle to left, left to right. They knelt then at the back edge of the pit; they could not rise to their feet.

  Through the opening in the brush Hamilton saw the women. Several of them were smiling in particular the darkhaired girl, and the shorter, blond girl. She saw, too, her hunter. He was looking at her, impassively. She moaned. She struggled in the bonds perfectly secured. Then she saw, thorn, bush by thorn bush, the narrow opening, from the edge of the pit backwards, being filled with brush, walling them in. There was a ledge about a yard wide between the wall of thorn brush and the edge of the pit. It was here that the bait would wait, kneeling.

  “Come back!” cried Hamilton. “Come back!”

  But the Men had gone.

  The eyes of the animal, ovoid, gleaming, came a foot closer.

  Brenda Hamilton threw her head back and screamed, struggling in the rawhide thongs.

  It was some ten yards away.

  It paused, testing the wind, lifting its head. Then it entered, back low, head down, between the walls of brush at the open end of the funnel.

  Ugly Girl was, head turned to one side, watching it.

  The beast, low, dark, tail moving back and forth, was suspicious.

  Now Brenda Hamilton was too terrified even to scream. It seemed she could not move her body. Her world seemed limited by the dark walls of brush, the shape, the gleaming eyes.

  Then the beast, low, tail switching, ears back, crept a foot closer, then stopped.