John Norman (51 page)

“Old Woman!” screamed Hamilton.

“Antelope will fetch her,” said Cloud. “Lie down.”

Hamilton, suddenly in the grip of the reflex, screamed. “Be quiet,” scolded Cloud. “Do not awaken the men!”

Hamilton eased herself to her left thigh, lying on the stone. There was no pain now. Her eyes were wide in the darkness. She felt the stone, granular, against her body. She felt the dampness on her left thigh, where she lay in the wetness.

With her own hair, which was now fully grown again, Cloud wiped her forehead.

“Your hair is very beautiful,” said Cloud. It was seldom that Cloud paid compliments. Hamilton did not respond to her. But Hamilton was grateful.

Hamilton lay in silence. She must try not to arouse the men. “Old Woman will come soon,” said Cloud.

Hamilton, lying in the darkness, legs drawn up, frightened, waited.

Four months ago, when the men had fought a cave bear, contesting a deep shelter with it, with torches and spears, hunting it deep in its own lair, Knife had, suddenly, withdrawn. The bear, freed of the prodding spear, had leaped forward, striking Spear. The great claws had raked, like hooks of steel across the face of Spear, taking his left eye from his head, and blinding, with a long, hot furrow of red, his right eye. Spear, his face and head covered with blood, had fallen backward, the bear biting at him. Tree, from the side, on the bear’s exposed flank, had driven his stone-headed spear to the heart and the great animal, a thousand pounds of fury, thrashing, snapping the shaft of the spear, had rolled to the side of the shelter, biting at the rock, and died. “Why did you fall back?” demanded Tree of Knife. If the Men did not stand together, they would die. Each must depend on the other. He who saves himself slays his brother. But Knife had not been afraid. Knife was not a coward. He looked at the bloodied head of Spear, pulling the large man’s hands away from his face. Knife had grinned. “Spear is blind,” said Knife. “I am first among the Men.”

Hamilton screamed, her head back. It was like nothing she had felt or imagined.

When, at the end of the preceding summer, Hamilton and the others had been retaken by their men, Gunther and William, stripped and bound, had been brought back, too, to the shelters. Their clothing, weapons and other accouterments had been destroyed, cast in a river. Spear, and the others, not knowing the power of them, such strange artifacts, would take no chances. Even Gunther’s wrist watch, which Cloud had liked, was destroyed. Perhaps such objects had some strange affinity with their owners; perhaps they were loyal to them; perhaps they would betray or injure others, or strangers? They would be destroyed. Gunther and William, thus, hands tied behind their backs, ropes on their necks, herded by women, came naked to the camp of the men. They did not know what would be done with them. The leader of the Weasel People, his jaw torn from his face by Tree, his legs and arms broken, had been left behind for the leopards.

“I want Old Woman!” wept Hamilton. “Please! Please! I want Old Woman!”

“She will come,” said Cloud.

With the men to the camp had come, too, the captive females, taken from the Weasel People, some of whom had been girls of the Dirt People. Hamilton, herself, with pleasure, had tied the wrists of the nude red-haired girl behind her back. She had knotted the coffle rope, too, tightly, about her throat; she had similarly secured the nude virginally bodied girl of the Dirt People. “You will learn what it is to be the girls of the Men,” Hamilton told them in triumph. She turned away. Already Fox had his hands on the waist of the red-haired girl; already Spear, grinning, stood before the virginally bodied girl; she shrank back, bound; she pulled back against the coffle rope; it stopped her; she, by her right arm, above the elbow, and her left ankle, was lowered to the ground. Before even the Men quitted the destroyed camp of the Weasel People, the newly captured women, tied in coffle, in the dirt, were well taught the domination of their new masters; but Tree did not busy himself with the new slave flesh; rather, four times, pounding, scarcely moments between them, he struck Hamilton with his force; it had been long since he had held a female body and he was not kind with her; the slave, Brenda Hamilton, clung to her master, her head back, her eyes closed, beaten by his body and will; so swiftly, so ruthlessly did he satisfy himself with her, that no common pleasure was permitted her; she held to him, as though for her life; struck again and again she gasped, and knew no simple pleasure, but that she was helpless again in his arms, that she again was held by him and that she belonged to him; she looked at him, adoringly; his will and might had again been impressed upon her; she pitied women who had never known such men; then, when Tree had again looked upon her as Turtle, and not simply a thing to beat and abuse for his pleasure, he alerted himself to her responses, it pleasing him to pleasure her, and, subtly and at length, reduced her to submissive splendor. She was, at the last, carried from the camp of the Weasel People in Tree’s arms, on the trail of the Men and their loot and captives. Behind them the camp lay shattered; behind them lay the fires, broken, sticks about, weapons snapped, dying ashes; behind them lay the coming of darkness, and the wailing of a man, broken jawed, broken limbed, who would wait for the leopards.

She had not felt the pain now for more than five minutes. She recalled gentler times with Tree, among flowers.

“Tree!” she cried out.

“Be quiet,” said Cloud. “Do not disturb the men.” Tree had left her, to go sleep elsewhere when it had begun.

William and Gunther had been brought, bound, and naked, to the camp of the Men. The women had thrown Gunther on his back over a rock, several of them holding him. Cloud, with a shell, had bent to cut his manhood from him.

“Please,” had wept Hamilton. “Do not hurt him!”

Spear had looked at Tree, who had nodded. “Stop,” had said Spear.

Half in shock Gunther and William had then been put in the brief skirts of the women of the Men, necklaces tied about their throats.

The women had much laughed. The children had struck them with sticks.

Then the Men had hurled them into a pit in the shelters, roughly circular, more than twenty feet in depth, filled with refuse, infested with the brown rat. They had been left there to die.

One night, the second night of the return to the shelters, Hamilton, with a torch, had crept to the edge of the pit.

“Gunther! William!” she called softly.

In the light, she saw William’s face, raised to her. In his left hand he held, by the left hind foot, a dead rat, more than a foot in length. It was partially eaten.

He stood ankle deep in the bones, the filth. She saw there were pools of water in the pit.

“You’re alive,” she whispered.

He had taken the necklace from his neck. It was looped in the waist of the garment he wore.

“Gunther?” she asked.

“He is alive,” said William, blinking against the light of the torch.

Hamilton fought nausea, the impulse to vomit from the stink of the pit.

Hamilton lifted the torch. At one side of the pit, not sleeping, staring into the darkness, sitting, his back against the stone, was Gunther.

“He’s dead,” whispered Hamilton, sick.

“No,” said William.

Hamilton looked down, tears in her eyes.

“I make snares with this,” said William, lifting the leather strands of the necklace of the Men. “Sometimes,” said William, “I catch them with my bare hands, by feel. Sometimes I pretend to be asleep. Sometimes I let them crawl over my arm and then, like this,” he making a sudden grasping motion, “seize them.”

“You will die in here,” said Hamilton.

“What the rats eat we can eat,” said William. “But I must feed Gunther.”

“He’s dead,” whispered Hamilton.

“No,” said William. “He is alive.” Then he added, “His body is alive.”

“What is wrong with him?” she asked.

William shrugged. “He has met defeat. He has met hunters. He has met men greater than he himself. Inside his body, this has killed him.”

Hamilton looked upon the body that had been Gunther, so mighty, so proud and fine. It now stared into the darkness. She suspected he did not even hear them speak.

“Do not worry for him,” said William. “I shall keep him alive as well as I can.”

The minds of men greater than Gunther, Hamilton suspected, might have broken under the dislocations of the last months.

“Is he insane?” asked Hamilton.

“I do not think so,” said William. “It is more like the will to live is gone.”

“Gunther was so much alive, so strong,” said Hamilton.

“He was not a hunter,” said William. “He thought himself such, but he was only a man of our own times, my dear Hamilton, a small man, greater than most, but frail, crippled, far from the mightinesses he envisioned. It is a tragedy. For such a man it would be best that he never met what he conceived himself to be, one worthy of the spear, the hunt and knife.”

“You are a kindly man, William,” said Hamilton.

William shrugged. “I respect Gunther,” he said. “I admire him. He is, for all his faults, and mine, my friend.”

“What can you do?”

“It is my intention,” said William, smiling, “to continue to live.”

“I must free you somehow,” said Hamilton.

“Do not be foolish,” said William. “They would kill you.”

“Do you care for these men?” asked Tree.

Hamilton cried out. She almost lost the torch. Tree crouched in the darkness behind her. He had followed her. He took the torch from her. He held it up. William, in the pit below, stepped back. Tree looked down at Hamilton. “Do you care for these men?” he asked.

“They are my friends,” said Hamilton.

Tree looked at her. It was strange for a man to be a friend of a woman.

Yet he did not think the concept could not be understood. Once on the height of the shelters, on the rocks, under the stars, they had lain together, looking up.

“There are fires in the sky,” had said Tree.

“Someday, perhaps,” had said Hamilton, “men will seek the fires in the sky.”

“They are far away,” said Tree. “Once, when I was little, I climbed a high mountain, to light a torch from them. I could not reach them. They are very high. They are higher, I think, than the tallest trees.”

“I think so, too,” she said, “but someday, perhaps, men will touch them.”

“Do you think so?” asked Tree, turning to look at her.

“Perhaps,” said Hamilton.

“But we would have to build a ship,” said Tree.

“Yes,” said Hamilton.

“There are seas in the sky,” said Tree, suddenly, “for rain falls from them to the land. If we took a ship to a high mountain, overlooking the sea in the sky, we could sail to the stars!”

Hamilton kissed him.

“Let us build such a ship!” cried Tree.

“About these fires,” said Hamilton, “about some of them, there are, warmed by them, lit by them, new worlds, new forests, new fields, game, places where the Men have never gone.”

“I will make a ship!” cried Tree.

“And for every fire there is another fire, and another world, and for every fire a fire beyond that, and a world beyond that.”

“I want to go there,” said Tree.

“You cannot go there, my love,” said Hamilton. “It is a long journey, my love, with many lands and skies to cross, more than you could know, and many lifetimes would it take to build even the ship, and who knows how many to complete even the first step, to place the first foot upon an island other than our own.”

“An island?” asked Tree.

“We live upon an island in a vast and endless sea,” said Hamilton gently.

“I want to see what is on the other islands,” said Tree. “I will see what is on them!”

“Not you,” said Hamilton, “not I, but others, perhaps the sons of your sons.”

“The seed of the Men?” asked Tree, slowly.

“Yes,” said Hamilton. “The sons of the Men.” Then the life had stirred within her. She felt it, a heel or knee, tiny, vital.

“I want to go,” said Tree, angrily.

“The sons,” she said. “The sons of the Men.” Then she had rested back, looking upward, looking on the stars. And Tree, too, puzzled, restless, biting his lip, watched the stars.

At the brink of the pit, holding her torch high, Tree looked down on the woman who had come, though it was forbidden her, to see the prisoners.

“I am your friend, not them,” said Tree.

“Yes, Tree,” had said Hamilton. “You are my friend. I am your friend.”

“It is Tree who is your friend,” he said, belligerently.

“They, too, are my friends,” said Hamilton, boldly. Because of the life in her she knew Tree would not strike her. Women within whom the mystery of life waxed might not be beaten.

“I will kill them,” said Tree, simply.

“No,” said Hamilton. “One does not kill the friends of one’s friend.”

“You are mine, none other’s,” said Tree. It was rare of him to speak so possessively of her. Was she not, after all, a woman of the Men, belonging, like the other females, to all with equal justice?

“Yes, Tree,” she whispered. “Though they are my friends, and you are my friend, it is to you, and you alone, that I belong.” Hamilton spoke truly.

“Do you want me to help them?” asked Tree.

“Yes,” said Hamilton.

Tree regarded Hamilton’s swollen body. “I will speak with Spear,” said Tree.

Hamilton screamed again, her head back. She felt Cloud’s hand on her arm. Then another body was beside them. She saw the head of Ugly Girl. Ugly Girl whimpered. Then Ugly Girl began to lick at the fluid on her body, cleaning her. “I want Old Woman,” whispered Hamilton. Two other women entered the shelter, blond Flower, and the virginally bodied girl, who had been taken from the Weasel People. They knelt near her. The virginally bodied girl was frightened. Then Antelope was beside her, touching her arm. “Old Woman!” said Hamilton. “I want Old Woman!” “Old Woman says there is time,” said Antelope. “She will come later.” The girls knelt about Hamilton. Hamilton was silent. The pain was gone now. There were tears on her face. She began to sweat. “Old Woman says there is time,” repeated Antelope. “She will come later.” Hamilton felt Flower kiss her. Hamilton’s fists clenched.