Time Slave

by John Norman

  Brenda Hamilton picked her way carefully, for the ground, here and there, was soft.

  A quarter of an hour ago there had been a light shower, muddying the ground, but now the sun had broken through the clouds. The leaves and the grass were wet and sparkling.

  She picked her way carefully, for she was fastidious, and did not wish to muddy her feet.

  It happened swiftly.

  Brenda Hamilton scarcely saw him. It was suddenly something moving toward her.

  She cried out, and turned to flee. Her foot slipped in the mud. She began to run. She had gone no more than three or four paces when he was upon her; his shoulder struck her behind the back of the knees; her head and back snapped back and then, after a sickening instant, she momentarily conscious of his arms locked about her legs, she, her entire body, helpless, propelled by his weight and hers, snapped forward again, pitching headlong, violently, forward through the air. She landed, skidding in the grass and mud. She thought, momentarily, her back was broken. She gasped for breath. Dimly she was aware of herself, prone, her belly in the mud, his knees now on either side of her body. She tried to breathe. She felt her wrists jerked behind her and fastened together, with great tightness. She gasped, struggling for breath. She felt herself then turned on her back. "Oh!" she cried. "Oh!" She could scarcely believe the magnificence of the creature who had taken her. "No," she cried, then, "No, please!" She struggled, but it was to no avail. He thrust apart her thighs. He thrust to her. She closed her eyes in pain. "Please!" she wept. She saw his eyes, puzzled, angry. He had never had a virgin. Always it had been the older men who had taken them. He looked at her, partly not understanding, for the woman was clearly too old to be a virgin; in the group it was Spear who decided when a girl was too old to be a virgin, then ordering her to take her place with the other women, to beg meat from the hunters; this took place sometimes when a girl was as young as twelve, at other times as old as fifteen. A law had been made in the group that no hunter might take a girl until she had begun to beg meat; Spear had made this law; it was he, too, who had made the law that children and pregnant women must be fed, even if sometimes the hunters must do with less. Tree did not understand all of Spear's laws, but he obeyed them, for he did not wish to be killed. It was good he understood that the children and the pregnant women would be fed, though, for without them there would be no group, no growing. The other law Tree did not understand so clearly, but he did not object. Old Woman, when he had asked her of this, had said that the children of girls too young to beg meat were small and weak, and often died; and, too, girls who were made to kick too early were sometimes injured, and frightened, and they might not kick so well later. Tree had shrugged. The law did not matter to him, for he was not interested in girls too young to beg meat. When they put away their bone and skin dolls, and began to look sideways at the hunters, that was time enough for them to learn to beg meat. When a girl did take her place with the women, behind the men at the cutting of the meat, it was usually Spear, or Stone, or sometimes Arrow Maker, who used them first, always one of the older men. Tree had never had a virgin.

  Brenda Hamilton struggled back, pushing with her heels in the mud, backing away from him.

  "No," she said. "No."

  Tree grinned at her.

  He took her by the right ankle and pulled her again to him. "No!" she cried.

  Again her thighs were spread.

  She cried out with pain.

  When Tree had finished with her there was blood on the inside of her left thigh, smeared to the side of the knee.

  She lay on her side, her wrists still tied behind her.

  Tree took a bit of the blood on his finger and licked it. It tasted of blood, but there was other fluid, too. He found the taste of interest.

  She looked at him with horror.

  He took some more blood on his finger and held it to her lips, that she might taste. This was done in the group, that the girl, too, might know the taste of the blood of her deflowering. In the group they were eager to know the taste, for they experienced the world richly, sensuously, knowing it not only by sight and concept, but by touch, smell, feel and taste. The Bear People, Tree knew, even had a ceremony in which the girls were deflowered. The Men, though, had no ceremony for this. They did have a ceremony when the boy began to run with the hunters. He drank first blood of his first kill, the other hunters, even the great ones, waiting to drink after him.

  Brenda Hamilton cried out with misery, and turned her face away.

  This angered Tree, and he thrust her mouth open with his left hand and thrust the bloodied finger across her lips and tongue.

  Brenda Hamilton, forced, tasted and smelled Tree's trophy of her ravished virginity.

  She looked at him, with fury.

  Tree's hand again went forth to touch her ankle. She pulled away. "Please don't hurt me again," she wept.

  Tree reached to her and, taking her by the hair, pulled her to her feet. He led her beside him, bent over, holding her by the hair, to where he had left his pouch, and his rope and spear. There he sat her down, regarding her.

  "What is your people?" he asked.

  Brenda Hamilton did not understand him, for he spoke the language of the Men.

  "I cannot understand you," she said.

  She did not speak the language of the Men. Tree had not expected her to be able to do so, of course, though Old Man, long before Spear had killed him, had told him that there were other groups who did speak the language of the Men. Old Man had also told him of a great trek, which had lasted, in the telling of it, for five generations, in which the Men had moved westward. In this trek different groups, from time to time, had split away, seeking a territory sufficient for hunting. This had been, however, even before Old Man's time. Old Man had known many stories. Tree was sorry that Spear had killed him. Tree had liked Old Man, and, too, he had liked the stories he had told. He had even told of beasts, large and hairy, as large as huts, or larger, with great, long curved teeth, and of black rocks that, when lit, would burn like wood. Spear had said Old Man was a liar.

  Tree was not disappointed that the woman could not speak the language of the Men. He was glad.

  It meant one could do with her what one wished, completely. One, of course, did much what one wished with the women of the group, using them, and beating them, and such, but one was not supposed to kill them. They, though women, were of the group, its followers, and breeders and workers. Tree looked at the helpless, desirable, bound body of his catch. She was not of the group. If one of the hunters wished, she might even be killed.

  She did not speak the language, of the Men. Tree was glad.

  She would learn, of course, to speak the language of the Men, and learn it quickly. The women would see to that. She must understand the orders that would be given to her.

  Tree looked at his catch. She was just that, totally rightless.

  "You will belong to the Men," he told her.

  Hamilton looked at him blankly.

  Tree wondered if she could speak in the Hand Sign, that used by the Horse Hunters and the Bear People. Only Fox, in his group, was fully conversant with Hand Sign, but Tree knew the Hand Sign for the Men, and knew, too, how to ask for another's group, or people, and how to make the more general question sign. He also knew the hand sign for the Horse Hunters and the Bear People, and for salt and flint. That was the extent of his vocabulary. But Fox could speak fluently in Hand Sign.

  Tree took his long rope, and with one end of it, lashed together Brenda Hamilton's ankles.

  He then untied her hands.

  She sat and faced him, her hands free, her ankles crossed and tied together.

  Tree pointed to her, and then held up his left hand, palm facing to the right, and then placed his right index finger upright with the upright fingers of his left hand, one among others. "To what people do you belong?" he had asked in Hand Sign.

  She shook her head, she understood nothing.

  Tree frowned and touched his le
ft hand to his head, as though puzzled. Then he held his right hand forth, palm to the left, thumb folded in, four fingers pointing down toward the earth. "Are your people the Horse Hunters?" he had asked.

  She shook her head, trying to indicate that she understood nothing.

  Tree was patient. He knew, of course, that females, even in the Horse Hunters and Bear People, were not generally taught Hand Sign, being women, but he was sure they would know at least how to respond to certain simple signs. They would know, certainly, the sign for their own group.

  But this woman was apparently completely ignorant of Hand Sign.

  Tree touched his head and frowned, and then lowered and raised his hand in a cupped fashion, as though he might be scooping something from the water. "Are you of the Bear People?" he asked. He then moved his hands, as though striking flint, the sign for flint. No recognition came into her eyes. He then licked his upper lip, in the sign for salt. She did not respond. He then pointed to himself and raised his right fist, as though it might hold a spear. "I am of the Men," he had told her.

  She shook her head. "I do not understand anything," she said.

  Tree took her ankles and turned them, throwing her to her stomach. Then he knelt across her body and, again, tied her hands behind her back.

  When he had done so, she turned, and struggled to a sitting position, and again regarded him, her captor.

  He removed the rope from her ankles, tied one end of it about her neck, and tied the other end about a tree and over a branch some five feet from the ground. He regarded her, his captive.

  She looked upon him. Never before in her life had she seen such a male. He made even Gunther seem a lesser man. Her imagination had not even dreamed that such a man could exist. The men she had known earlier, even Gunther, had been no intimation that there might be such males as these. Such men, she thought, could not exist in her time. In her time there was no place; there could be no place, for such men as these.

  Before him she felt, as never she had in her own time, even before Gunther, a complete female. Never before had she understood the import of two sexes, as she did now. It suddenly seemed to her, as it had never before, radically and explosively significant that there were two sexes. And how overjoyed she was that she was one of them. But, in fear, and still feeling pain, she drew back from him, for he had hurt her.

  And, too, she was a woman of another time. Such a man terrified her.

  And suddenly she understood that the cost of civilization, and the ascendancy of women, was the crippling of such men, or their destruction.

  They were like great beasts that must be broken, or killed, that there might be the triumph of mildness, the victory of plows and religion, of fears and superstition, of complacency, of contentment, of smallness, and being afraid and mediocrity, and keeping in one's place and being polite, of camouflage and invisibility, of passionless comraderie, of achieving prescribed adjustment, of smiling normality, and being safe, and indistinguishable from others, and quiet, and then dying.

  She looked upon him.

  He was not such a man.

  Tree did not try to speak further to her. He sat across from her, observing her.

  "Please do not hurt me," said Brenda Hamilton to him. She knew it was foolish to try to speak to him, but she could not stand the silence, his watching her. In the group, men and women often looked at one another, sometimes for minutes at a time, simply seeing one another. In Hamilton's time men and women looked at one another, but they seldom saw one another. There is a great difference. Hamilton was uneasy, and wanted to cry out. She had never, in this way, been seen.

  In his eyes, and the carriage of his head, and body, the subtle movements of his face, Hamilton sensed, even though he was a gross savage, little more than an animal, great intelligence. She sensed, somehow, looking at him, that his intelligence was far greater than hers, or perhaps even Gunther's, or Herjellsen's, in spite of the fact that, doubtless, he could not read nor write, in spite of the fact that he must be little more than a primeval barbarian, ignorant, uncouth, illiterate. And in looking at him she understood sharply, with devastating force, for the first time, the clear distinction between learning and intelligence. He could not be learned, certainly not in the senses in which she understood that word, but she knew, and felt, looking upon him, that he was of incredible intelligence.

  But his hands, too, seemed strong and cunning, supple and powerful, like the rest of his body.

  It startled her to find, conjoined with intelligence, such strength, and power, such size, such supple muscularity. The mighty brain she sensed had in such a body its mighty throne.

  He seemed one thing to her, though, not a brain and a body, but one thing, somehow, a complete, and magnificent animal, whole, no part of him questioning or despising another part, not divided against himself, not diverted into attacking himself, not set at war with himself. There was no war here between this man's brain, and his glands, and blood, no more than between the left hand and the right hand, no more than between the beating of the heart and the breathing of the lungs. In him Brenda Hamilton sensed a terrifying unity, as simple as that of the lion or leopard. In his eyes she read power and intelligence, and lust and cruelty, and the desire for her body, and she read these things not as furtive glimmers but as a snared hind might read them in the eyes of the tiger, sinuously approaching, preparing to feed.

  "Don't hurt me!" she begged.

  Tree had not moved. He had not yet seen her, as he wanted to see her. When he had seen her, and wanted to, then he would move.

  Hamilton turned her head away from him. She could not bear to look at him. She could not meet his eyes.

  She knew now why civilization had no option but to break or destroy such creatures.

  It had no place for them. It had no place for hunters. It needed diggers, not hunters.

  Such a man, she knew, would never dig. There would always be another mountain, another horizon.

  He would never make a civilization. It did not interest him.

  Others would make a civilization, and breed in their hundreds, and thousands, and then millions, and the world of the hunters would be smothered, and the planet would be covered, and crowded, with the diggers. The giant cheetah would be extinct; the mammoth would no longer roam; the steppes would no longer shake to the charge of the wooly rhinoceros; and where the horses had run there would triumph the fumes of the internal combustion engine; the cave lion would be dead, and the cave bear, and there would be no striking of flints and hunting salt, for the hunters, too, like the lion and the bear, would have gone.

  But Gunther had said that the hunters might not be dead, but only sleeping.

  And Herjellsen had said to her, "Turn their eyes to the stars."

  "There is nothing more to hunt," Hamilton had told Gunther.

  "There are the stars," had said Gunther.

  Hamilton again looked at Tree.

  The hunters would rule the world for thousands of years, and the diggers, perhaps, for little more than some dozens of centuries.

  The longer triumph would he that of the hunters, and the beasts.

  And they might not wish to share the digger's world.

  But Gunther had said that the hunters might not be dead, but only sleeping.

  "There is nothing more to hunt," Hamilton had told Gunther.

  "There are the stars," had said Gunther.

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

  But Herjellsen was mad, mad!

  Tree had decided that he would not, this day, take the white-skinned slave girl to the camp. He would take her to the camp tomorrow. He had never seen a woman like this. He did not wish, immediately, to share her with the others. For the time he would keep her for himself.

  He looked at her. Her wrists were bound behind her back. She was sitting, with her knees bent She seemed very much afraid of him. His rope, knotted about her neck, tethered her to a tree.

  He was hungry. From his pouch he took
a strip of dried meat, antelope meat, and chewed it He did not offer the slave any.

  He was puzzled. She did not lie before him and lift her body. She did not beg meat. Perhaps she was not hungry. It did not occur to Tree that she did not know how to beg meat. He thought all women knew how to beg meat.

  "Please," she said. "I am hungry."

  He swallowed the meat Then he get up to look about, for three suitable roots.

  "What are you going to do?" asked Brenda Hamilton.

  He found three roots, of the sort he wished, sturdy, properly placed. From two, he scooped out dirt beneath them, exposing them. The third was already fully exposed. They formed the points of an isosceles triangle, whose longer sides were something over a yard in length.

  He then returned to Brenda Hamilton, and regarded her. She was filthy, from when she had been caught, tied, turned and raped in the mud.

  Tree untied the rope from the tree and, approaching her, coiled it in his hand. When he stood over her he pulled her to her feet by the end which was still knotted about her throat.

  "He is taking me to his camp," thought Brenda Hamilton.

  She followed Tree, his hand holding the rope, about a foot from her throat.

  At a stream he stopped and tied the rope about a small tree.

  He then, to her surprise, untied her wrists. He then, with a gesture, ordered her to the center of the stream. She stood there, shuddering in the cold water, it swirling about her waist. She looked at Tree. Her neck was tethered to a small tree on the bank.

  He, making scooping motions with his hands, and rubbing his body, instructed her to Wash herself.

  She stood there, looking at him.

  Tree wondered if she were stupid. Then he would wash her. He waded toward her.

  "No!" she cried. "I will do it!"

  Although the water was cold, Brenda Hamilton cleansed her body, and hair.

  It pleased her to do so. She washed the dirt from her body. She washed, too, the blood from her leg.

  She thought how ironic it was, the concern of Gunther and Herjellsen, and William, for her precious virginity. It had meant nothing. They could not have known, of course. She had lost it. Lost? She smiled to herself. It had been ripped from her. She stole a glance at the bronzed giant sitting on the bank, watching her. She had scarcely seen him before she had been caught, hurled to her belly and bound helplessly, then turned on her back. She had looked into his eyes, had been startled, had cried out with astonishment, seeing the magnificence of the creature that had caught her. Then, within the minute, that virginity which she had hoarded, protected and prized, and had hitherto been willing to surrender only to Gunther, had been, she helpless, unable to resist, torn from her. When Tree had caught her, she had been a girl; when he had pulled her, bent over, by the hair to his accouterments, she was a woman. She looked again at Tree. She was not sorry that it had been he, not asking, predatory, arrogant, insolent, her captor, like an animal, who had torn her virginity from her. She was pleased that she had not been invited to surrender it, or bestow it on some nice fellow as a gift; she could scarcely admit the thought to herself but she was pleased to have lost it as she had; she had not had to beg him to take her virginity, as she had Gunther; he had simply wanted her, and taken it; startled, protesting, shocked, suddenly she had found herself a captive; she had been powerfully desired; her virginity, at his will, by storm, had been removed from her. She looked once more at Tree. She was not displeased that it had been a man such as he. How many women, she wondered, could boast that they had inspired such a desire in such a man as he. But she again looked at him. But he might have taken any woman in such a way, she told herself. Any other woman he had fallen in with, she told herself, might have suffered the same fate. And she knew this was true, but still she was much pleased that on this signal occasion, when first her body was forced, completely, to serve a man, that the man had been such as he. To her horror, and pleasure, she realized she would not have wanted it otherwise. It had been, for her, a fantastic experience. Yet he had hurt her, and she feared him.