Time Slave

by John Norman

  Herjellsen sat before his apparatus, his head beneath the hood, his fists clenched.

  Slowly, muscle by muscle, she moved her body, raising herself again to her hands and knees. She tried to lift her head.

  She saw a tendril of light appear now to her right.

  She lifted her head. She looked out through the plastic. It was heavy. She saw that it had been, on the outside, reinforced with metal piping.

  She rose to her feet. Light played about her ankles. "No," she whispered. She could not feel the light. She was conscious only of a tiny coolness.

  A set of beads of light darted from one side to the other of the cubicle.

  She stumbled against the plastic wall and, weakly, tried to beat on it with her fists. "Please!" she wept. "Let me out! Let me out!"

  Tears streamed down her face.

  She saw Gunther and William, impassive, on the other side of the plastic.

  "Gunther!" she wept. "William! William!"

  Suddenly it seemed a tendril of light moved about her leg. She kicked wildly at it. She tried to thrust the light from her body. She could not see the floor of the cubicle now, though she felt it, as firm and cool and solid as before, beneath her bare feet.

  "Let me out!" she wept.

  It seemed to her suddenly that she was a little girl in a closet, crying to be let out, pounding on the wood in the darkness. The voice that seemed to cry within her was that of a child.

  Then she saw again William and Gunther outside, and Herjellsen, under the hood.

  She shook her head, wildly, having sensed the dissociation which, as a psychological concomitant, occasionally accompanied the presence of the Herjellsen phenomenon.

  She must resist, she knew. She must resist!

  Her body, her will, was weakened, but she would fight. She could fight, and would!

  She stood in the center of the cubicle, bent over, fists clenched, hair wild. "No!" she cried. "No! No! No! No!"

  It seemed that light, wildly, swirled about her; for an instant she feared she might drown in light, but then she realized that there was no impediment to her breathing, indeed, that the very phenomenon of light itself depended on some reaction with oxygen in the cubicle.

  "No!" she said.

  Then she felt herself, as though being buffeted, reel in the cubicle. But she knew that, no blows were struck upon her body. Yet it seemed she was struck, as though by sound that could not be heard, but felt.

  She felt herself weakening, and fell to her knees at the plastic wall, almost lost in light. She piteously scratched at the plastic, trying to find a crevice, a flaw, that might admit of her access, secure her release.

  Outside she saw Gunther and William. Their faces wore no emotion.

  She shook her head, and fell half backward from the wall and rolled to the center of the cubicle. Then she could see nothing, nothing but the light, which like a brilliant, luminous, sparkling golden fog almost blinded her. She shut her eyes. "No!" she said. "No!" She rose again to her knees. She clenched her fists, now tightly. "No!" she cried.

  When she opened her eyes again, to her astonishment, her relief, the light was gone.

  She was alone in the cubicle.

  Outside she saw Herjellsen, no longer beneath the hood. He was standing outside, looking at her. Gunther and William stood to one side.

  "You have failed!" she cried.

  Her heart bounded with elation. They had been unable to transmit her. They had failed.

  "I have resisted you!" she cried. "I have resisted you!" She laughed. "You have failed!" She looked at Gunther. "You will have to sell me, Gunther!" she cried. "You will have to sell me!"

  Herjellsen, she saw, picked up a small microphone from the table, near the hood.

  "Can you hear me?" he asked.

  She nodded. She heard his voice, quite clearly. The speaker was fixed in the ceiling of the cubicle.

  "Turn their eyes," he said, "to the stars."

  She looked at him, puzzled.

  Then she said, "You have been unable to transmit me. My will was too strong for you. You have failed."

  "Turn their eyes," said Herjellsen, "to the stars."

  "It will not be necessary to dispose of me in the bush, Professor Herjellsen," she said. "There is an alternative. I realize you cannot simply release me. But there is an alternative, an excellent one, to consider. I have discussed this with Gunther, and he informs me it is practical." She drew a deep breath. "I can be sold," she said. "Please, Professor Herjellsen," she said, "do not kill me." She looked at him. "Instead let me be sold."

  "We have no intention of killing you, my dear," said Herjellsen, "nor, indeed, of having you sold."

  "I—I do not understand," she "said.

  "Retrieval of living material, once transmitted," said Herjellen, "is apparently impossible. Retrieval was attempted with the leopard. We received only certain fragments of bone. These have been identified as those of a contemporary species of leopard, but the dating has fixed the acquisition at better than twenty-eight thousand years ago."

  "I do not understand what you are saying," said Hamilton.

  "I am saying," said Herjellsen, "that it seems that retrieval is impossible."

  "Retrieval?" she asked.

  "Yes," said Herjellsen.

  "What has this to do with me?" she whispered.

  "Surely you must understand," said Herjellsen, "that the chamber is now open."

  She looked about herself, in terror. Everything seemed the same.

  "Don't kill me," she said. "Sell me!"

  "It will be necessary neither to kill you nor sell you, my dear," said Herjellsen.

  "I don't understand," she said.

  "The chamber is now open," he said.

  "You are mad, mad!" she screamed.

  "Turn their eyes," said Herjellsen, "to the stars."

  Hamilton threw back her head, and threw her hands to the side of her head, and screamed.

  11

  Brenda Hamilton knelt, head thrown back, hands pressed to the sides of her head, screaming, in cold, wet grass, in the half darkness.

  "No, no, no!" she wept.

  She threw herself to her stomach in the cold grass, and clawed at it, and pressed the side of her cheek against it. She felt her fingers dig into the wet mud at the roots of the grass. "No," she wept. "No!"

  A light rain was falling. "Herjellsen," she wept. "No!" She felt cold. "Please, no!" she wept.

  She rose to her knees, shaking her head. She felt the cold, wet grass, flat and cutting, on her legs and thighs. She was cold. "No," she wept. The sky was dark, except for a rim of cold, gray light to her left. "No!" she cried.

  She rose to her feet, unsteadily, cold, in the half darkness. She felt mud with her right foot.

  The rain, slight, cold, drizzling, fell upon her. She cried out with misery.

  "Herjellsen!" she cried. "William! Gunther! Take me back! Take me back! Do not send me away! Please!"

  She screamed to the dark, gray, raining sky, standing in the wind, the cold rain.

  "Take me back!" she cried. "Do not send me away! Please! Please!"

  She knelt down and seized the grass with her hands. "I'm here!" she cried. "I'm here! Take me back! Please!" Then suddenly she screamed, and fled stumbling from the place. "It seems retrieval is not possible," had said Herjellsen. All that had been recovered of the leopard had been crumbled bone, indexed by carbon dating to a remote era, more than twenty-eight thousand years ago.

  She looked at the place, in the early, cold light, where she had lain and knelt.

  It seemed no different than other places she could make out, except that the grass had bent beneath her weight, wet, crushed.

  She crept back to it, and put her hand timidly to the grass. Suddenly there was a stroke of lightning, broad and wild, cracking in the sky, and she screamed and fled away, falling and getting up.

  In that stroke of lightning she had seen illuminated what seemed to be an open field, of uncomprehended breadt
h.

  Thunder then swept about her, a pounding drum of sound, a stroke, rolling, of great depth and might, and suddenly the rain, wild with wind, following the turbulence in the sky, lashed about her.

  She looked up, crying.

  Again and again lightning split the darkness. She stood alone. Thunder smashed the world, pounding about her. Rain lashed her body.

  "Herjellsen," she cried, "I am here!"

  Then she threw herself down on the grass, naked, terrified of the lightning, whipped by the rain, covered her head with her hands, and wept.

  In a few moments the storm had abated, and there was again only a light drizzle of rain. It was lighter now, and there was, all about her, the gentle, cool, gray of dawn. She could see the field extending away from her, on all sides.

  The light was substantially to her left, which direction she surmised was East.

  She stood up, in the drizzling, cold dawn, and' looked about.

  She tried to find where she had first knelt, but could not do so.

  She was hungry.

  She took grass and sucked rain from it. The grass had a sweet taste. The drops of water were cold.

  She looked up into the sky. The clouds were vast, the sky was vast. The rain had almost stopped falling now.

  "I am here, Herjellsen," she whispered.

  Then she remembered that in the human reality, in time as it could only be understood by humans, Herjellsen, and Gunther and William could not hear her.

  They had not yet been born.

  She kept the sun on her left and began to walk, generally south.

  12

  Tree's nostrils flared.

  He smelled female. And it was not one of the group. The other men did not notice. Several were sleeping. One was working a peeled, slender shaft, holding the wood over a small fire, softening it, and then inserting it through one of the holes in the drilled board, then bending the shaft carefully, straightening it.

  Tree looked about the camp. It was a trail camp, a day's trek from the flint lode, two days' trek back to the shelters, a half day's march from the salt. Tree had found the salt, following antelope. But Spear had said he had found the salt. Spear was first in camp.

  Tree rose to his feet, and stretched.

  It was not an attack, for a female would not come in the attack.

  The attack would not come from upwind.

  It was not the Ugly People. The smell was not the Ugly People.

  An ugly girl was in camp, who had been captured when Spear and two others had killed her group. She was short, and stooped and had large bones. Her head did not sit on her shoulders as did that of the Men; it leaned forward, looking at the ground; it was hard for her to lift her head; she had a squat body; her knees were slightly bent. The Ugly People, though, were good hunters. They could follow a trail for days, by smell, loping, heads down, like hunting dogs, on the scent But Tree was a greater hunter. He did not envy the Ugly People. They were not of the Men. In the camp, only Runner could outdistance Tree, and Runner was slight, but heavy chested. Tree was stronger, and could throw further. Tree was strongest in camp, except Spear, who was first.

  Tree did not count as we would, nor was there need for him to do so. We would have found that there were forty-seven individuals in the camp. If Tree had spoken of this, and he might have, for he had a language, the language of the Men, he would have told us that there were two hands in camp, for there were ten men, and it was these that were counted. But he would have grasped the concept of counting beyond this, if it had seemed important. If there had been eleven men in camp, he would have said there were two hands and one finger in camp, for that would be eleven individuals. Further, if one had asked him, if all in the camp were men, how many men would there be, he would have thought and said, then there would be nine hands and two fingers, or forty-seven individuals, only, of course, that there were really only two hands, for there were only ten men. If Tree's group had dogs, or goats, for example, it would not have occurred to him either to count those, but he might have done so, if asked. For example, if each dog was also a man, then how many men would there be, and so on. But Tree's group did not have dogs, or goats. They did have, though, like other groups, children and females.

  There were ten men in Tree's group; there were sixteen women; a woman is a female who can or has borne young; there were twenty-one children; a child is a female who is too young to bear young or a male who is not yet able to run with the hunters. There was only one woman in camp who was too old to bear young. Such women were rare. She was Old Woman. There were no old men. There had been one, but when he had gone blind, Spear had killed him.

  The men in the camp were Spear, who was first, and then Tree, finest of the hunters; Runner, who could single out an antelope and, in hours, run it to death, until it fell, gasping, and he would cut its throat; Arrow Maker, whose hands were the most cunning of all; Stone, who never laughed; Wolf, who did not look into one's eyes, and hid meat; Fox, quick, shrewd, who had once come from far away to trade flint for salt, and had stayed; he could speak the hand language of the Horse Hunters and Bear People; Spear had not killed him; he stole meat from Wolf; Knife, ill-tempered, cruel, the son of Spear; Tooth, a large man, fearsomely ugly, with an atavistically extended canine on the upper right side of his jaw, teller of stories, popular with children; and Hyena, whose brother was said to be a hyena, who spoke to him in dreams; the medicine of Hyena was thought to be the most dangerous in the camp.

  There were sixteen women in the camp, but few of them are important. We might remark, at this time, Short Leg, docile with men, fierce to the women, dominant among the females; Old Woman, who tended the night fires; Flower, sweet-hipped, blond, sixteen years of age, most avidly sought, most frequently used, of the camp women; and Nurse, a large woman, fat, whose breasts had not been permitted to dry, whom the camp keeps to give suck to the young.

  There were, too, twenty-one children in the camp, nine boys and twelve girls, ranging from infancy to the age of fourteen. These knew their mothers, but not their fathers. The others were only the Men. Kinship lines were simple because of the small size of the group, and relationship was traced through the female. This was not a matriarchy, if that implies that women had power, for the women, being women, had no power. We may, however, perhaps speak of the group being matrilineal, meaning by this only to denote the fact that kinship ties, such as they were, were, and, under the circumstances, could only be, established through, the mother. The men, of course, stood in awe of the growth of a child and its bringing forth. They, too, of course, stood in awe of the growing of the moon, the coming of grass in the spring, the appearance of fruit on hitherto barren branches. Specific paternity, puzzling as it may seem to us, was not of great account with them. But that the group should have young, that it should continue, that there should be new hunters, was for them a matter of great concern. Fertility was of great moment. It was not that the men did not know the connection between conception and birth, for it was familiar to them, but rather that the family, as we often today trunk of it, insular and monogamous, was not yet an economic or social practicality. There might, under such circumstances, be women who did not bear young; and there might be men who, protecting or defending a given woman or given set of children, would not stand with the group, and the group might thus perish. One might say either that the family, as we know it, did not then exist, or that the group, the whole, was the family. It is somewhat misleading to speak in the latter sense, however, for the emotions of men and women being what they are, one could not, in the group, under the circumstances, have the same sense of love or loyalty that can bind together smaller social structures. There was, in Tree's group, little love, save that of mothers for their children, a phenomenon of significant evolutionary consequence, pervasive among primates. There were, of course, in the group, shifting couplings, and favorites. The instinct to pair bond, strongest in the female, who needed a protector, was present; she had a biological desire, constantly rebuf
fed, to attach herself to a given male, thereby assuring her his attention and her feeding; he, the hunter of meat, was less instinctually driven to pair bond, but he, too, when the female was pleasing and served him well, was not unaverse to maintaining, at his will, a longer-term relationship. But the facts were simple. The female needed the male. The hunter did not need the female. The hunter could choose his women. No one in the camp would starve, but to be fed well, if one were not a child and not pregnant, it was well to be a hunter's woman.

  To be a hunter's woman meant, in effect, to be his favorite. This did not preclude the hunter using the bodies of other women for his pleasure, as the whim or urge came upon him. He could do what he wished, for he was a hunter. If he were a successful hunter, he might add to the number of women he fed. Spear fed five women. Tree, greatest of the hunters, fed what women he wished, when he wished. He had not permitted any of the women in the camp to kneel regularly behind him at the feeding, at his shoulder. Out of the relationship of favorite to hunter, and jealousy, and pride in one's children, not yet understood, would come in time marriage, intragroup mating restrictions.

  In short, the women belonged to the men, but relationships were in actuality much more complex than this. Each woman did not, so to speak, belong to each man in the same way. Women, in whom the pair bonding instinct is stronger than in males, tended to attempt to become the females of given hunters, their favorites; and among the men, too, there were those who felt more attracted to one woman than another, and, accordingly, tended, as one would expect, to feed her more often, or regularly. If she should displease him, he would then throw her no more meat, and then, if she were not pregnant, she would try to please another hunter, to be fed. If she were pregnant, of course, she would be well fed. But, interestingly, after the child was cast, she would again have to compete for food, with the other women, trying to please a hunter. If she was unsuccessful, she would have to creep to the bones when the others were finished, and scavenge what she might, for herself and the child. There was usually little left. It was important to a woman to be pleasing to a hunter, if she would eat.