John Norman (28 page)

Slowly, painfully, Brenda Hamilton rose to her feet.

She was, somehow, rather proud of herself.

Then she stood very straight, very beautifully, very proudly, almost disdainfully, for she saw him, standing before his hut. She was thrilled, but did not show it, seeing the strength, the leanness, the bronzedness of his body, so tall, so lithe and yet mighty. Never in her life had she seen such a man. She wondered how much of her beating he had witnessed. Doubtless the blows and her cries had aroused him.

He was eating a yellowish fruit, biting into it with his strong, white teeth, looking at her. She did not care what he thought but she hoped he had not seen her howling and being beaten. That would have been embarrassing. He grinned at her, his mouth filled with the white meat of the fruit. She turned away, disdainfully, and tossed her head.

She made her way between the huts, away from him.

“If he wants me,” she said to herself, “he may have me, for he is a man. And I may not resist him, for I am a woman.”

She stopped some yards from the group of women, to which the darkhaired woman, and the shorter, blond woman, had now joined themselves.

Several of them looked at her with hatred.

Brenda Hamilton turned away.

“Those women with switches have misjudged my motives,” she said to herself. “They may have him if they wish. I have no interest in him. He is only a beast, a savage. I do not even find him attractive. He bores me.”

But Hamilton, in the heart of her, not nicely perhaps, was quite pleased with the jealousy she had induced in the two other women. Clearly, they regarded her beauty as a serious threat, that they would not even let her linger near his hut, and this Hamilton found exquisitely flattering, even though she was not, she told herself, in the least interested in the hunter. “Perhaps I could smile at him sometimes,” she said to herself, “if only to drive them wild. That might be amusing. But, of course, I do not wish to be switched again.” Then she grew angry. “Who are they to say whom he picks for his pleasure?” she asked. But she did not wish to be switched. That hurt. She felt a violent surge of hatred for the two other women.

“I cannot help it,” she said to herself, “if he simply takes me and rapes me. They must surely understand that. That is not my fault. It is nothing I can help.”

Then she smiled to herself. “I am beautiful,” she thought, “and I cannot help it if he desires me, and that he, being a beast, will simply take what he desires. That is not my fault. It is nothing I can help. Surely they must understand that.”

Brenda Hamilton then understood the adversary relationship in which the unusually beautiful woman stands to other women, that they hate her, and that such a woman then, alienated from other women, has no choice but to turn to men, and is pleased to do so, for among them she finds herself exquisitely prized.

She looked back at the closely grouped women.

“I do not wish to huddle with the women,” said Brenda Hamilton to herself. “I would find the company of the men more congenial.”

“The women,” thought Brenda Hamilton to herself, “are my enemies.” And then she thought, soberly, “And the men are my masters.”

Brenda Hamilton thought of the tall, lean, mighty hunter. She smiled to herself. “If one must have a master,” she said to herself, “it might as well be one such as he.” And she regretted that she was not his alone, but, apparently, the common property of all the males, as, too, she gathered in effect, were the other women. We are all slaves, she thought, all of us. “In this time women are held in common, all of them as slaves of the men.” She thought of the men she had seen. “How dominant they are,” she thought, “how unassuming, how arrogant, how masculine, simply keeping their females as slaves.” She was scandalized, horrified, but, too, somehow, indescribably thrilled. Men were stronger, and could do what they wished. And here, in this primitive camp, she realized, shuddering, they did. “If. I were a man,” thought Brenda Hamilton, scandalizing herself, “I, too, would keep women as servants and slaves. Such weak, desirable, pretty things! I would be a fool not to do so!” And then she recalled that she herself was such a thing, desirable, weak and lovely, and would, accordingly, by men such as these be kept, like other women, as a slave.

Hamilton asked herself if she feared the switches more than she desired the hunter. “I am not afraid of the switches,” she said. “Too, if I am pleasing, the men will not let them switch me. Let them, then, dare to switch me, when the men are about. They would then be beaten!” Hamilton smiled to herself. “I will survive here,” she said to herself. “I need only please my masters.”

Hamilton stood straight.

She put back her head and, hands at the back of her neck, shook out her hair, long and dark, over her back.

She saw the old woman, with a stick, poking at the meat, it hot and dripping, roasting on the spit.

Two other women, under her supervision, bad been turning the spit. The heavy, large-breasted woman stood nearby.

With her stick the old woman, poking and tearing, ripped free a chunk of hot meat. It was torn from between the animal’s ribs. It emerged, hot, half-cooked, thrust on the stick.

The old woman and the heavy-breasted woman, the meat between them, began to bite at it, tearing it away from the stick. The other two women, who had been turning the spit, stood to one side, watching them.

Hamilton approached the fire.

She became suddenly aware of how hungry she was. All day, she had had only a bit of meat and fruit, near dawn, and, later in the day, before the men had raped her, their new slave, on the hide, some tiny pieces of meat.

She was ravenous.

She noted that, hanging loose, dangling by a thread of meat, torn almost free by the old woman’s stick, there was a handful of meat, popping and hot with fat. There would be no difficulty in taking it, for it was hanging there, like fruit, ready for the seizing. The fire pit was rectangular and narrow, and Hamilton need only reach over the flames and pull it free.

The old woman and the heavy-breasted woman had now torn the meat from the stick. Each now had her own piece. The old woman, her eyes closed, was sucking on fat from the meat. The heavy-breasted woman was thrusting her piece of meat into her mouth, ripping at it, moving her head in doing so. Hamilton saw juice running at the side of her mouth.

Hamilton went to the side of the fire, to the meat.

The two women who had been turning the spit took no note of her, they conversing.

Old Woman opened her eyes, looking at Hamilton.

Hamilton smiled at her.

Old Woman did not smile, but watched her, carefully.

Hamilton thought her fingers were broken, so savagely had the old woman’s stick struck them!

Hamilton screamed with pain, and twisted, and, stumbling, fighting to keep her balance, fled, driven, from the meat, she crying out, the old woman screaming, the stick lashing her, hot on her back, and then, her ankles caught up by the rawhide shackle, sprawling, she fell to the ground.

“Please!” she cried.

The old woman’s stick was merciless. Hamilton, kneeling, head down, hands covering her head, wept with misery.

The two other women, those who had been turning the spit, leaped to her, striking her with their hands, kicking her with their feet. Even a child ran to her, striking at her.

Then the old woman said something, sharply, and the blows had stopped.

Hamilton, abused, crawled from the light of the fire.

She now knelt outside the ring of the firelight, in the falling dusk. She sucked her fingers, and then, carefully, painfully, moved them. They had not been broken.

She had learned that she could not take meat. She was a female.

Her back was sore from the beating of the stick. Her ankles were chafed by the rawhide shackle.

But she had seen Old Woman take meat, and the large, heavy-breasted woman, too. She had learned now that they were special, and that she was not. She was only another female. Even the two women who assisted the old woman, she had noted now, did not take meat. They, too, were not permitted to feed themselves. The meat, like the women, Brenda now understood, belonged to the hunters. It was theirs to dispense. The only exceptions were apparently the old woman and the heavy-breasted woman. They were privileged. Hamilton would learn that Old Woman did much what she wanted, and that Nurse, too, did much as she pleased. Nurse and Old Woman, Hamilton conjectured, though women, were somehow not in the same way as she, and the others, of the women. Those two were special. The others, and she, were not.

Hamilton was furious, kneeling outside the circle of the firelight.

She moved her ankles.

“They are fools,” she thought. “Anyone could untie the knots on my ankles. When I wish to do so, I will, and run off.”

A few feet from her, crouching in the darkness, round shouldered, head set forward on her shoulders, eyes peering at the cooking deer, was the squat, clumsily bodied girl, she with the blank, vacant eyes, the slack jaw, the hair down her curved back like strings.

Hamilton shuddered, repulsed. She edged to one side, to be farther from her.

Hamilton was terribly hungry.

She smelled the roasted deer. She could see the fat dripping from the roasted carcass of the deer, dropping into the fire, sizzling and flaming.

She moved her fingers again. She was pleased that Old Woman’s stick had not broken them.

The old woman said something to the two women who had been cooking the meat, turning the spit.

Those two women then, under the supervision of the old woman, now, one at each end, lifted the green-wood spit on which, impaled, hung the roasted carcass. They lifted it from the fire slowly, heavily, and sat it down on a large, fiat, gray rock, on which it would be cut. The green-wood spit was left in the meat.

All day Hamilton had had only a bit of meat and fruit, near dawn, and, later in the day, some tiny pieces of meat.

She was ravenous.

“Feed me, you beasts,” she said to herself, “I’m starving.”

The old woman cried out a single word, loudly, shrilly. Immediately the women, who had been clustered together, got to their feet and came forward. The children, too, came forward. They all stood in a circle, about the flat rock on which the meat lay. With her stick the old woman pushed back some children, and one of the women. The women and children now stood in an open circle about the meat, it forming the center of the circle. Then the women parted and, between them, tall and mighty, the masters, strode the men. “How small and weak women are beside them, the uncompromising beasts,” thought Brenda Hamilton. First among the men came Spear, with his narrow eyes, his easy movements. Hamilton noted that there was gray in the shaggy dark hair at his temples. Behind him, first, came the one she knew must be his son, for he had the same cruel features, the same shape and heaviness of jaw. Then came the others, among them the tall, handsome hunter who had taken her, who had made her a slave. “How incredibly handsome and strong he is,” she thought, in spite of herself, “what a magnificent male!”

Her hunter, with. the others, squatted down about the meat. He was between her and the meat; too, there were others between them. Brenda stood up, so that she could see better. The women then, to her interest, separated from the children. The children went to one side, foremost among them the young, blond girl, who had tripped her and, earlier, the ugly girl. The women, Brenda noticed, aligned themselves about, and behind, various hunters. She was sure that this was not a random dispersal, but that there was an order involved. She saw the two women, the taller, darkhaired girl, and the shorter, blond girl, kneeling closely behind her hunter. They were too close to him! The blond girl put her lips to his shoulder. Hamilton was furious.

Spear’s flint knife, some eight inches long, the handle wrapped in leather, taken from a rawhide belt, thrust down into the hot meat.

It was the first time, of course, that Hamilton had witnessed a feeding.

She was startled at much of what she saw. The first piece of meat Spear lifted to the sky and the directions, and then threw into the fire, that it might be destroyed.

There were many meanings in this, and various groups did this differently. There seemed nothing in this of childish magic, like the throwing of the sticks. In its way it seemed simple and profound. It was a gift to the power, and showed both the gratitude and generosity of the Men. Part of what they bad been given they would give back, for they were the Men. The power was in the trees and the water, and in the wind and the budding flower, the curling leaf, the stone the tiny branch, in the swiftness of the fish, in the flight of the bird, the stealthy padding of the lion’s paw, and in the Men; it was in all things. In Spear’s act there was little of superstition, but little, too, of reverence. It was rather a celebration, and acknowledgment, of the aimless, random grandeur of the power. The power, as conceived of by the Men, had no greater love for them, nor should it, than for the blade of grass or the beasts they slew for food. No more than the rain and the sun could the power be placated, for it was the power. It gave not only life but it destroyed it as well; meaninglessly it bestowed all things, misery and joy, and life and death; with equanimity it looked on the recurrent cycles of growth and decay; it delivered men into the hands of age and blindness and antelope into the hands of the hunter; Spear had heard it in the scream of the murderess and in the cry of the newborn child; he did not prostrate himself before it, nor did he reverence it; but, in his way, he acknowledged it, and, perhaps, did it honor, for, without the power, there was nothing. Men, in these days, were not so foolish or arrogant as to create deities in their own image; they were too close to the power, in its terribleness, too close to the reality, for such invention to be taken seriously; only too obviously was the power not a manlike thing; only a fool could think so, one who did not sense the nature, the pervasiveness, the mightiness, the amorality, of the power; but, without the power there would be nothing; without the power there would not be the grass, or the antelope or the men; without the power there would be nothing; but Spear, and the others, did not grovel before the power, for they were men; they were grateful when the hunt went well, and part of the kill they would return to the power; this showed gratitude, but too, in its generosity, that they returned a portion of this gift, it showed the mightiness of the hearts of the men; not even the cave lion would be so proud, so arrogant, that it would dare to exchange gifts with the power; Spear, and the others, did not love the power, nor did they reverence it, but they acknowledged it, and, in their way, honored it. They would not worship it, of course, for the power was not so trivial or petty, so childish, that it either required, or demanded, worship; it would simply have been pointless to worship it, for it was not that sort of thing; and, had the power been a man, if it were not psychotic, worship would have simply embarrassed it; and so Spear, on behalf of himself, and the others, not reverencing and not worshiping, but acknowledging, and, in his way, honoring, did, with a good heart, lift unto the power meat, and then burned it.