John Norman (49 page)

Hamilton then looked at the broad-backed male of the Ugly People, squatting near his female, cutting the hide from the deer with the ax, and then ripping it with his teeth and fingers. He took a bit of meat from a rib and gave it to the woman, and then to the boy, and then to Ugly Girl, who joined them. They were not human, Hamilton knew. Then, no longer did she scorn the male of the Ugly People. Perhaps, to him, she was no more than a female monkey might have appeared to Tree, different, small, ungainly, of no interest sexually. This annoyed her to some extent, for she was vain of her beauty, but, too, she was relieved that he had not wanted her. He gave another piece of meat to the child. It was growing dark outside. Hamilton edged toward the mouth of the cave. They were of a different species. The innocence and cruelty with which a human hunter treated his human females was, apparently, not that of the Ugly People; too, she suspected, the deep needs in her own body, and in those of the other human females, to seek out and respond to sexual domination, were apparently much less pronounced in the Ugly People; they were less sexually driven, Hamilton conjectured, than humans; doubtless, they, too, had their dominance and submission behaviors, but such behavior seemed less clear cut, less evident, than in humans; their sexual drives were less she conjectured than those of humans; the sexes in the Ugly People, she recognized, shuddering, were much less clearly differentiated than in humans; she suspected they would not breed as well. They were an experiment in evolution quite different from that of humans, Hamilton recognized, an interesting alternative, one which humans would survive, but one which, in its long millennia, when all was said and done, should man destroy himself, might prove to have endured the longer span on the calendars of time. They seemed very gentle with one another.

Hamilton again eyed the large open mouth of the cave. It would be difficult to defend, she thought. They are fools, stupid. The shelters of the Men were more rational, more defensible. Hamilton did not realize that the best shelters were indeed those of the Men, and various other human groups. The Ugly People were peaceful. They were not as aggressive as men, nor as swift, nor as intelligent, nor as cruel. Accordingly they would take what little, if anything, was left. They would compete unsuccessfully with fiercer groups. As would Pygmies and Eskimos they would be driven farther and farther from desirable land, good hunting and adequate shelter; unlike Pygmies and Eskimos, clearly distinguishable as human types, the Ugly People were not human; human beings, loathing them, would not tolerate them as competitors; they, in a peculiarly intense fashion, with their mockery of human shape, would trigger the instinctual fear of the stranger, the different; they would be hunted down and exterminated. The man thrust a tiny piece of meat into the mouth of the boy, and then rubbed his bearded chin on the boy’s shoulder.

Hamilton suddenly bolted from the cave, running into the night.

In an instant Ugly Girl was up and after her.

Hamilton plunged through the night, cutting her feet, branches striking her body. She ran. Behind her, always, sometimes closer, sometimes farther, she heard Ugly Girl. Sometimes Hamilton stopped, to hide, to elude Ugly Girl, but each time, to her misery, Ugly Girl turned toward her, approaching. Then Hamilton realized that Ugly Girl, like a hunter, could follow her trail by smell; that, like a hunter, she might hear her breathing, even from yards away. Miserable, Hamilton would leap up and run again. Her hope was to outdistance Ugly Girl. But Ugly Girl seemed tireless. More than once, Ugly Girl called out to her, in the strange tongue of the Ugly People. Then, gasping, Hamilton turned and picked up a rock. Ugly Girl stopped, a shadow among the branches. “Go back! Go away!” said Hamilton. Ugly Girl spoke to her in the language of the Ugly People. “Stay away!” cried Hamilton, lifting the rock. Ugly Girl stepped toward her. Hamilton, with a cry of misery, flung the heavy rock. It hurtled past Ugly Girl. Hamilton struck at her. Briefly the girls grappled. Hamilton wildly bit and clawed, and scratched, weeping, screaming, at Ugly Girl, but Ugly Girl handled her with ease, with much the same ease with which a man might have handled her; the women of the Ugly People, Hamilton realized to her misery, were much stronger than human females; she was no match for her, no more than she would have been for a strong boy; Hamilton was thrown to her belly; Ugly Girl knelt across her body; the women of human beings had not been bred and sexually selected by males for sturdiness and strength, and independence, but for beauty, obedience, submissiveness, responsiveness to masculine domination; Hamilton wept as she felt the hide belt on her garment removed, and felt Ugly Girl pull her wrists behind her back, and, as though she might be a man, fasten them together. Ugly Girl then removed the belt from her own garment and tied its ends together and then, slipping one end of the loop behind Hamilton’s neck, passed the other end of the loop through the first, pulling it tight, putting Hamilton in a choke collar and short leash. She then dragged Hamilton to her feet. Since the leash was short

Hamilton had to walk bent over, at her side. Pulling Hamilton, half choking, beside her, Ugly Girl then returned to the mouth of the cave of the Ugly People. There was a fire there now, rather near the mouth, and various branches and rocks had been brought and put before the opening, to close it somewhat. But the opening had not been yet completely closed. Ugly Girl had not yet returned.

The male of the Ugly People,, and his woman, and the child, emerged from the cave.

Hamilton stood neat to Ugly Girl, bent over, her hands bound behind her back, in her simple choke collar and leash, helpless, a prisoner of Ugly Girl.

The child looked at her, and laughed.

He said the word she had heard before, and he laughed again, as did the male and the female.

“Please don’t eat me, or kill me,” she whispered.

The male and the woman, and the child returned to the cave. Then, to Hamilton’s astonishment, Ugly Girl removed the leash from her throat, and untying its ends, refastened it as her own belt. Then, to her greater astonishment, Ugly Girl untied her hands. Hamilton dared not run. Ugly Girl tied the belt about Hamilton, as it had been before. Then she stepped toward the mouth of the cave. Hamilton turned to face her. She was free. Ugly Girl gestured that she should enter the cave. She made a clucking noise.

Behind Hamilton, in the forest, she heard the roar of a leopard. She shuddered. Well did she recall the leopard which, long ago, had stalked her, which, to her good fortune, had been slain by Tree.

Again Ugly Girl gestured that she should enter the cave. Again, from the forest, closer this time, she heard the roar of the leopard. Swiftly, gratefully, she entered the cave.

Ugly Girl gestured that she should kneel beside the fire, where some of the meat from the slain deer was roasting on a stick. Hamilton would have knelt behind the male, but Ugly Girl shook her head and placed Hamilton by the fire. She knelt to the left of the woman; the child was on the woman’s right; the male squatted diagonally across from Hamilton; when Ugly Girl had closed the entrance to the cave with thick branches, she came and knelt between the child and the male. The male, with a sharp piece of flint, and a stick, separated pieces of meat from the roast. He gave a piece first to the child; he then gave a piece to the woman; then he gave a piece to Ugly Girl. Then he handed Hamilton a piece of meat. “Thank you,” she whispered. He then cut himself a piece of meat, a large one, and, holding it in two hands, squatting, grease running between his fingers, began to eat it.

That night Hamilton lay down beside Ugly Girl, in the cave of the Ugly People. She looked at the glowing redness of the embers of the fire.

“Can you understand me?” asked Hamilton of Ugly Girl, in the language of the Men.

Ugly Girl, her head illuminated by the redness, signified her assent, nodding her head. Ugly Girl, as Hamilton had suspected, understood much of the speech of the Men, but it was difficult for her to repeat the sounds. Hamilton, too, of course, would have found it difficult to imitate, with adequate exactness, the phonemes of the Ugly People. There was, she suspected, subtle differences in the anatomy of the throat, a thicker, less nimble tongue, a different oral cavity, and, too, of course, a somewhat differently formed brain, with a speech center wrought through an evolution divergent for generations from that of the human.

“What is the word by which they address me?” asked Hamilton. “What is it they call me?”

Ugly Girl repeated the word.

“Yes,” said Hamilton. “What does it mean?”

Ugly Girl crawled over to the fire. She knelt by it. Hamilton joined her there.

Ugly Girl repeated the word. She made, in the sign language common to many of the groups of humans, the name sign, pointing to Hamilton. Tooth, and Fox, at the behest of Tooth, had taught her several signs.

“That is the name they have given me?” asked Hamilton. “It is my name here?”

Ugly Girl nodded.

“What does it mean?” asked Hamilton. She remembered how they had laughed at her, even the child.

Ugly Girl, with a twig, beside the fire, scratched an animal. Hamilton could not make it out. Then Ugly Girl made the sign in the, hand talk of the human groups. Hamilton then looked down. She then understood the drawing.

It was a drawing, primitive, simple, an outline drawing, but one now unmistakable. It was the drawing of a small, female bush pig. Hamilton leaned back on her heels, and smiled. “You are so ugly,”. signed Ugly Girl to her, and then, smiling, kissed her. Hamilton, among the people of Ugly Girl, was no longer the beauty, a casual, inadvertent movement of whose body might lead one of the hunters, to whom she and the other women belonged, to throw her on her back and, without ceremony or courtesy, rape her. Here, among the people of Ugly Girl, it was she, not Ugly Girl, who was the ugly girl. Ugly Girl, of course, among the men, had been used. They were fierce sometimes indiscriminatory breeders. Hamilton did not feel the male of the Ugly People would bother her. To her he seemed large, kind, and sexually sluggish. If he did wish to use her, of course, she would have to serve him, for she was a female. As a primitive woman she would have no choice but to obey the male, and do what he wished. Hamilton smiled to herself. Among the Ugly People, her name was “Sow.”

“What is your name?” asked Hamilton.

Ugly Girl laughed, an almost human laugh. She made the sign for “Flower.” Hamilton smiled.

“What is the name of your people?” asked Hamilton. She had thought only of them, in the habitual manner of the Men, as the Ugly People. She knew, of course, of the Horse People, who hunted horse on the prairies; she knew of the Bear People, with whom the Men sometimes exchanged women; of the Shell People, who traded shells; and of the Weasel People, enemies of the men; and of the Dirt People, vanished now, save for some of their females in the thongs of the Weasel People. “What is the name of your people?” asked Hamilton again of Ugly Girl.

Ugly Girl grinned, not responding.

Her people, this family, had taken her in, she, Hamilton, a female of an enemy kind, different even biologically from them, one displeasing to their senses. They had protected her, fed her, sheltered her.

“What is the name of your people?” asked Hamilton.

Swiftly Ugly Girl made the signs. “The Love People,” she said, in the hand talk of certain of the human groups.

“Oh!” cried Hamilton, angrily, stung on the thigh. Bees swarmed about her. “Hurry!” she cried. She looked up the height of the blasted, desiccated tree. On a branch, a smoking torch in one hand, stood Ugly Girl. She thrust her other hand, and arm, into an aperture in the tree. Bees, in a cloud, swarmed about her. She scooped out combs of honey, pounds, mixed with bees, smearing them on the branch next to her, on a large, flat leaf. Then she thrust the torch, as she had done before into the hole in the tree, trying to overcome the bees inside the nest. Her left eyelid was swollen. Hamilton could see welts on her body. Another bee stung Hamilton, on the side of the left ankle. Beside Hamilton, about her feet, were several leaves, laden with honey. Ugly Girl rolled the leaf and dropped it to Hamilton, who caught it, put it with the others, and then, as Ugly Girl bent down, squatting, handed her another leaf. Hamilton put her finger into the sweet, whitish mash. There were dead bees in it. Hamilton licked her finger. She could taste the smoke from Ugly Girl’s torch. “Oh!” cried Hamilton, as another bee stung her, on the left side of the neck. “We have enough!” she cried. “Please come down! Please, Flower!” Ugly Girl, with the last leaf in one hand, the torch in the other, had, too, had enough. Bees hot and black about her head and shoulders, she leapt down. Hamilton and Ugly Girl bent down, picking up the leaves. Another bee stung Hamilton on the back of the left leg, some seven inches above the knee. Then another stung her on the back of the neck. Weeping, laughing, she and Ugly Girl scooped up the honey and, torch smoking, fled.

When they were free of the lingering avengers of the nest, the two girls sat down in the grass, beside a large rock. Ugly Girl extinguished the torch. She knelt by Hamilton. Ugly Girl picked a flower, and fixed it in her hair. Hamilton could not do the same, for her own hair had been almost cut from her head, leaving her scalp cut and scraped, by the Dirt People. Hamilton, looking at Ugly Girl, did not feel any longer that she was ugly, though she was much different from a human female. The large eyes of Ugly Girl, dark, deep, Hamilton found to be beautiful. Ugly Girl dipped her finger in the honey, and tasted it.

“I wish to return to the Men,” said Hamilton. She thought of Tree. “Will you help me?”

It seemed not strange now to Hamilton that she wished to return to the Men, that she wished to return to a group where she would be no more than a rightless slave, where her neck would be given no choice but to bend beneath the yoke of a complete masculine domination. She could not, in her new knowledges, envy the frustrated, denied females of her own artificial times, cheated of their absolute sexual subjugation to a male, thereby denied the attainment of the totality, the fullness, of their sexuality.