John Norman

by Time Slave

  “I see,” said Gunther.

  “Yes,” said Hamilton. “The males of my group are hospitable, and generous. While he stayed with us, he had his pick of the females.”

  “Did he pick you?” asked Gunther.

  “No,” said Hamilton. “There is one more beautiful than I in the group. Her name, in English, would be Flower. She it was whom the trader selected.”

  “Perhaps I shall pick her over you,” said Gunther.

  “Why not take us both?” asked Hamilton.

  William gasped.

  “And if I should choose you,” asked Gunther, “in what way must you serve us?”

  “In any way you wish,” smiled Hamilton. “I am a slave.” Then she turned and, carrying the wood, trudging through the snow, led the way toward the shelters.

  Gunther sheathed the Luger.

  “Of course,” said Hamilton, “they might not welcome you. You would then be killed.”

  William moaned.

  Gunther left open the flap on his holster.

  “Have no fear,” said Gunther, “my dear, if we are not killed, you at least will be chosen.”

  “Very well,” said Hamilton. “You are the master.”

  20

  Hamilton entered the cave, a log on her left shoulder.

  William was sitting in the cave, leaning against his pack, his back to the wall. He was stripped to the waist. Against him, curled, her head on his thigh, lay Flower, stripped save for the collar of strands of leather and shells knotted about her throat. William had his hand on the side of her head.

  “I shall want you later,” said William to Hamilton.

  “Yes, Master,” said Hamilton, in English.

  Hamilton knelt beside the fire and thrust the log in place. With a stick she thrust small, burning branches about it. The firelight was reflected in her face, redly. She was stripped save for the brief skirt of deerskin, knotted at the left hip, and the collar, that proclaiming her a female of the Men. She did her work well. Fire was precious. One of the first things she had been taught among the Men was the keeping of fires. A girl who let a fire go out, whose responsibility it was, would be mercilessly beaten. This had happened once to Hamilton. Tree had beaten her. Never again had the girl let a fire which she was tending go out, until it was no longer needed. Although it was cold outside, and snowy, the white flakes falling through the winter moon’s light, she had not donned her skins, nor wrapped the hide about her feet. She had gone only to the wood shelter, and returned.

  “I shall want you later,” had said William to Hamilton.

  “Yes, Master,” she had responded.

  Beside William, on his left, lay his rifle. Hamilton sat beside the fire, her feet toward it, rubbing them with her hands. They were cold from the snow.

  She looked up and saw Gunther, sitting on a large rock, his rifle across his knees.

  “Fetch me water,” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said. She went to a crevice in the cave, in which was fitted a sewn, leather bucket in a wooden frame. With a gourd she dipped water. She carried it to the male. “Give it to me,” he said. She held the gourd while he drank. Then he said, “Return the gourd.” She did so. When she had returned the gourd, she returned to stand before him. “Remove your garment,” said he, “Slave.” She tugged it loose and dropped it to one side. “Kneel,” he said, “and put your head to my feet.” She did so.

  “It is pleasant to have you as a slave, Brenda,” said Gunther.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  William chuckled, fondling Flower. “These savages are most hospitable,” he said. “They even give us women.” Flower began to kiss him.

  Hamilton did not dare lift her head. She had not been given permission.

  “Perhaps,” said William, lightly, “we shall elect to remain in this place.”

  “Your needs here,” said Gunther, “for the first time, have been satisfied.”

  William thrust Flower away, holding her from him by the arms. Her eyes were startled, suddenly bright with tearing. He thrust her down to the stone beside him, his hand in her hair. She waited there, held. He looked at Gunther. “-Perhaps,” he said.

  “Surely.” said Gunther. “Never before this have you truly had a female. You have only participated in what are, biologically, distortions of, and perversions of, the instinctual, psychosexual conquest. Nature knows not equality in conjugation but only dominance and submission, conqueror and conquered, owner and owned.”

  “But what of love?” asked William.

  “There are a variety of emotions which are indiscriminately designated by that vague expression,” said Gunther. “But love and sex are not identical. One may have sex without love, as your little savage has taught you; and you may have love without sex, as you well know, as this slut kneeling before me taught you so painfully in Rhodesia.”

  Hamilton, her head down, was startled. Had William loved her? Was that why, now, remembering his frustrations, be had used her with such ruthlessness? Surely he did not love her now. Now that she lay open to him as a mere slave he no longer respected her. He used her often, and insolently, and with power. Contemptuously he made her scream with pleasure, scorning her in her helplessness. If she had frustrated him in Rhodesia, he had now taken his vengeance on her, many times. She, as a slave, her use given to him and Gunther by the men, had repaid him many fold for Rhodesia. When she had been inaccessible, frigid, a lady, he had stood in awe of her, and had perhaps loved her. She smiled to herself. Now that she was fully alive, arousable, impassioned, and his at a word, a glance, a snapping of his fingers, his as a helpless, yielding slave, he no longer loved her, no longer respected her. And it was not that he was content to use her as a mere instrument of his pleasure; he was not so kind; when he ravished her, it was to devastate her complete person; he would call her by name, tenderly, and, she held in his arms, remind her of their experiences in Rhodesia, how she had looked, what she had said, what he had said, and then, when he was ready, he would inform her, “Now I am going to have you, Miss Hamilton, use you, use you as the slut and slave you are,” and then he would do so; sometimes he would stop, cruelly, making her beg, in tears, for him to continue. “Please fuck me, William,” she would whisper. “Please fuck me, William!” she would beg, crying out. Then he would laugh, and give her pleasure. It was interesting. Before she had diminished him, and he had stood in awe of her. Now that her helplessness, her humiliation, his success, exalted him, he scorned her. He was far kinder to Flower. Once when she had not obeyed him promptly enough, he had beaten her with a switch. No one had interfered, even Tree. He, William, as a male, had had this right. She was only a woman. After the beating, she feared him, knowing him then, as she had not before, as being capable of disciplining her; moreover, she now knew he was willing to discipline her, and would, if he thought it necessary, or it pleased him to do so. After the beating she, for the first time, profoundly respected him as a male. And after the beating he no longer respected her, as anything. She was then only an imbonded wench to him. From a lady she had become only a slave. As a lady she had been admired and respected, perhaps even loved; as a slave she found herself relished with the delight of a master in his property, ravaged with the joy of a conqueror amidst the daughters of his enemies, and scorned as no more. She found herself tempted to love William, but her heart belonged to Tree.

  “And, of course,” said Gunther, “at times sex and love may coexist, though commonly briefly, infrequently, and sometimes incompatibly.” Gunther grinned. “And, of course, one might have neither love nor sex. This, I submit, is the endemic condition of our much-vaunted civilization, constructed according to agricultural values, shaped by the fanatic, diseased brains of celibates, battening, not working, on the increase of the land, those with a vested interest in the perpetuation of superstition, misery and fear.”

  “These matters are rather above me,” said William. “I am only a lowly physician.”

  “Make men miserable in th
is world,” said Gunther, “then promise them a better one somewhere else, a promise on which you are never required to pay off. Tell them to behave themselves and roof the temples with gold. Control sex. Exploit the fear of death, invent terrors, and ring up the proceeds on the cash registers. Tell them you have secret magic. Cultivate their fears, their ignorance, carefully. It is valuable to you. Claim to hold the keys to the mystery. But the mystery mocks them. The mystery mocks us all.”

  “What are you speaking of?” asked William.

  “Tyranny, despotism,” said Gunther. “Existence, life, the world.”

  The fire in the cave crackled; there was silence otherwise; shadows flickered on the walls of stone.

  “Let us speak of simpler things,” said Gunther. He looked at Hamilton, who still knelt before him, her head and hair to the stone floor of the cave. He regarded her for some time, as did William. She did not move.

  “Every male, from time to time,” said Gunther, “desires absolute power over a female.”

  “Yes,” said William.

  “One who admits to this desire,” said Gunther, “in our familiar world, is characterized as peculiar or perverted, or weak, or timid or sick, and usually characterized as such with a belying hysterical intensity, for here some obscure nerve is touched. On the other hand, since this desire, from time to time, is universal in males, it seems that an entire sex, literally billions of human beings, must be then characterized as we have suggested. In a different reality, the tiger, wanting meat; in a world of antelope, would be characterized similarly. It is a way the antelope have of trying to protect themselves from tigers. Program the tiger’s brain in such a way as to conflict with its instincts. Let the tigers die in misery, starving. But when the tiger has taken meat he no longer starves; he is then determined to feed. You, William, for the first time, have fed.”

  William turned Flower’s head to face him. His hand was still in her hair. Then he turned her about again, holding her face to the stone.

  “How do you feel, William?” asked Gunther.

  William released Flower, who rolled against his leg, her lips to his thigh. “I feel strong, and powerful,” said William.

  “Are you happy here?” asked Gunther.

  “I have been more than happy here,” said William. “I have been joyful.”

  “That is interesting, is it not?” asked Gunther.

  “Perhaps,” said William.

  Flower had lifted her eyes timidly to those of William. “Look into the eyes of your pretty little blond sow,” said Gunther. “She adores you.”

  William smiled.

  “That pleases your vanity, does it not?” asked Gunther.

  “It does not displease me,” said William, grinning.

  “The important point,” said Gunther, “is to note that it does please you.”

  “Certain weaknesses, I suppose,” said William, “are natural.”

  “That it is a weakness is a value judgment, automatically generated from your conditioning program,” said Gunther. “All we know is that it is natural. What if feelings of power, of pleasure, of dominance, were not weaknesses, but strengths? The tiger’s ability to tear flesh, to break a heifer’s back with one blow, is not weakness.” Gunther grinned. “One need not claim the natures of men are either weaknesses or strengths. One need only recognize them as realities, which, thwarted, produce miseries, diseases, deaths.”

  “Nothing natural can be evil,” said William.

  “But what of your desire to dominate, to own, a desirable female?”

  “In a male,” said William, “speaking as a physician, that is a natural disposition.”

  “Can it then be evil, or strange, or peculiar, or perverted, or timid, or a symptom of illness?”

  “No,” said William. “No more than breathing or the circulation of the blood within the musculature.”

  “But to say that it is not evil, is not to say that it is good?”

  “No more than to say that breathing or the circulation of the blood is good. In themselves, they simply exist.”

  “True,” said Gunther. “Here we speak not of goods and evils, but of realities. We are here, so to speak, beyond good and evil.”

  “But,” said William, “surely, relative to a species, one might speak of good and evil.”

  “Perhaps,” said Gunther. “But what is to be the criterion of such appraisals. Shall we say that that which is good creates misery, produces illnesses and shortens life?”

  “I suppose we could,” said William.

  “But we need not do so,” said Gunther. “We might, alternatively, say that is good which makes men strong, which makes them healthy, which prolongs life, which enhances their power and exalts them, which lifts them to vitality and kingship, which makes them great.”

  “Do you dare,” asked William, “speak of alternative moralities?”

  “I speak,” said Gunther, “of a morality to which there is no alternative, save disease and misery.”

  “I do not understand,” said William.

  “Moralities, in their own times,” said Gunther, “seem, in the optical illusion of the present, manifestations of eternal necessities. The moral revolutionary is as convinced of the justice of his position, its moral necessity, as is the defender of the threatened tradition of his. They join arms in the naivety of their dogmatisms. But in the trek of history these moralities, with their martyrs and their victims, appear as fashions, as transient expediencies, usually enlisted in the service of either defending an establishment or altering one, that a new establishment, that in which the moral revolutionaries will stand high, take its place.”

  “You speak as a cynic,” said William.

  “I think of myself as a realist,” said Gunther. “But consider, some morality is a necessary condition for the existence of social orders, as essential as access to drinking water or a supply of food. Moralities, to some extent, are selected for, as are visual sensors and prehensile appendages. Groups the members of which cannot rely on one another, groups without conviction, discipline ‘and courage, perish as groups, though their women are commonly spared to bear sons to the conquerors. Have you ever wondered why women, after some tears, yield themselves so readily to masters? It is because women desire, innately, to belong not to their equals but to their superiors, to the strongest, to the mighty, to the conquerors. Woman desires to submit; one cannot submit to an equal. The conqueror is not an equal; the woman is property to him; she submits; as a humiliated, submitted property she knows sensations that can never be experienced by her free sister, who, in her own frustrations, must be content to denounce her for her ecstasies. Women, too, wish to place their children in the future. The future belongs to the conquerors. Her own group lies already in the rubbish of the past; but the life stirring in her much-ravished body belongs to the tomorrow of the new conquerors; she, thus, chained at the heels of her new masters, turns gladly to the future.”

  “If evolution selects for moralities,” said William, “that would tend to explain a considerable amount of the resemblance among moralities, similarities and continuities among them.”

  “Surely,” said Gunther. “For example a group would not be likely to survive which permitted broadcast intragroup perfidy, disloyalty or slaughter. It is no surprise that these tenets are not recommended by historically tested moralities. Groups which might have adopted such tenets, if any groups had had so little sense, presumably left their bones in the jungles of history.”

  “Yet,” said William, “apparently diverse moralities have escaped the filters of history.”

  “Of course,” said Gunther. “There are many ways to survive. The sponge does so in one way, the crab in another, the antelope in another, the tiger in another.” He smiled. “That there is a morality is essential, not that there be a particular morality.”

  “Is there any way to adjudicate between moralities?” asked William.

  “Assuredly,” said Gunther. “Ruling classes have always manag
ed this quite well. For them, the correct morality is the one which consolidates and enhances their own position and power.”

  “Do you mean to suggest that adjudication can be only by means of armament?”

  “No,” said Gunther. “One could draw straws or throw dice.”

  “Can there not be a more rational decision procedure?” asked William.

  “Rationality,” said Gunther, “is the instrument of the passions. Rationality, in itself, does not prescribe ends, only how they might be sought.”

  “Surely it is rational to wish to survive,” said William.

  “It is a fact that man wishes to survive. Rationality can help him attempt to do so. But man’s desire to survive does not logically imply that he should survive. `I wish to live’ does not logically imply `I should live’. Only the passions can give you that premise. No decision follows from logic alone. Logic is empty.”

  “The British empiricist, David Hume, once said as much,” remarked William. “`According to reason alone I may as well prefer the destruction of the world to the pricking of my little finger.’ “

  “The passions, of course,” said Gunther, “fortunately for us, are more clearly partisan. And I thought David Hume was a Scotsman.”

  “He was,” said William.

  “You referred to him as a British empiricist,” said Gunther.

  “We always so refer to him,” said William.

  “You are incurable imperialists at heart,” said Gunther. “Next you will be after Mach and Goethe.”

  “We have already claimed Wittgenstein,” laughed William.

  Hamilton understood little of this. It was the talk of men. She was a woman. And only a slave. She knelt; her head was to the stone; she wore a collar of shells, and claws, and strands of leather.

  “There must be, however,” said William, “some intelligent way to adjudicate among competitive moralities.”

  “One may choose criteria, said Gunther, “and evaluate them in virtue of these criteria.”