John Norman (14 page)

He then bent to her ankles.

He removed the chain that confined them.

She rolled to her back, suddenly, sliding the handcuff along the iron bar, twisting the links, and faced Gunther.

She laughed with pleasure.

She lifted one leg, and then the other. They were long, slender, shapely, lovely. She had her eyes closed. She moved them slowly, exulting in the luxury of the movement. She lay then on her back, and opened her eyes. She stretched her left leg, and bent the right, knee lifted, heel on the mattress.

Gunther was watching her.

“It feels so good to move,” she said. She smiled at Gunther.

He looked at her, angrily.

“You do find me attractive, don’t you, Gunther?” she asked. She was smiling.

“Whore,” said Gunther.

“Yes,” laughed Brenda Hamilton, looking at him, “Doctor Brenda Hamilton is a whore.”

Gunther regarded her, puzzled.

“I’m your whore,” she said.

“I do not understand,” he said.

“Every woman,” said Brenda Hamilton, “if she is vital, for some man or other, would be his willing, eager whore.”

Gunther looked at her.

“I’m yours,” she said. She laughed.

“Whore!” he snapped.

“Only to you,” she laughed. “Not to William, or Herjellsen, or the blacks.”

He looked at her, not speaking.

“Sit beside me, Gunther,” she said. “Please.”

He did so. He sat on the edge of the cot, looking down on her, his left hand across her body, resting on the left side of the cot.

“I’m in your complete power, Gunther,” she said. She jerked at the handcuff, indicating that she was secured. She smiled. “You have absolute power over me,” she said. “Does that not excite you?”

He said nothing. His eyes were expressionless.

“You can make me do anything you want,” she said. “I will obey you, perfectly, completely.”

With his right hand, he touched her head, and then, holding her face, turned it from one side to the other, looking at it.

“Perfectly, completely,” she whispered.

He removed his hand from her face.

“Was the brown girl so marvelous?” she asked him.

“The slave?” asked Gunther.

“Yes,” said Brenda Hamilton, “-the slave!”

“Yes,” said Gunther.

“I can be better,” she said.

“Oh?” asked Gunther.

“Try me,” she said.

Gunther smiled.

“Have me stand before you,” said Hamilton, “as she did, not knowing what you will command. See which of us is better!”

He put his hand at the neckline of her thin, cotton dress. She felt his fist in its fabric.

“Strip me!” she begged.

He looked down on her.

“I’m in your complete power, Gunther,” she said. “You have absolute power over me! You can do with me what you want! Anything! Whatever you want! Does that not excite you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Too,” she whispered, “it excites me! I have never been so excited in my life, Gunther!”

She tried to sit up on the cot and hold him with her right arm. With his left hand he forced her right wrist down, and pinned it to the mattress. The handcuff on her left wrist confined her hand at the bar. The steel slid on the iron. She could not rise. She was held. Gunther’s right hand was still at the neckline of her frock.

She looked up at him.

“Could I not be your slave, like that brown girl?” she asked.

He did not answer her.

“Caress me, Gunther,” she begged.

Gunther stood up, releasing her. “Others will caress you,” he said.

“Others?” asked Hamilton.

“Yes,” said Gunther.

“But what if I do not want others to caress me?” she asked.

“It does not matter,” said Gunther. He bent down and picked up the chain and the two padlocks from the floor at the foot of the cot, and went to the door.

Brenda Hamilton rolled to her stomach, and screamed and sobbed, thrusting her mouth against the mattress. She squirmed and struck at the mattress, kicking it with her feet, pounding it with her right fist. She bit at it, sobbing, and scratched at it with the fingernails of her right hand. She turned on – her side, and held out her hand to Gunther, who stood by the door.

“Gunther!” she wept.

“Tomorrow night,” said Gunther, “we will attempt to initiate the final test sequence of the second series of experiments. Herjellsen has told me that you will be permitted to watch.

Hamilton regarded him, red-eyed.

“You yourself, as you have been informed,” said Gunther, “will figure essentially in the third series of experiments.”

“Why will you not make love to me?” asked Hamilton.

“Herjellsen has decided,” said Gunther, “that you are to be transmitted as a virgin. He expects that it may enhance your value, if trading is pertinent.”

“Value?” breathed Hamilton.

“Too, Herjellsen supposes,” said Gunther, “that they might be less likely to slay a virgin. A virgin might be something of a prize.”

“Who are-they?” asked Hamilton.

“We do not really know,” said Gunther. “But we suspect that they will have some connection with the Herjellsen artifact.”

“No!” cried Brenda Hamilton. “No! No!”

“There is some danger, of course,” said Gunther, “in transmitting a virgin.”

Hamilton looked at him.

“The sacrifice of virgin females may be practiced.”

Hamilton regarded him with horror.

“But, in your case,” said Gunther, “this seems unlikely.

Lovely as you are you are in your twenties, and this, we conjecture will be sufficient to remove you from this danger. Furthermore, such sacrifice, commonly, involves tribal girls of high station in the group, such being regarded as the fittest gifts for the gods.” Gunther looked at Hamilton. “You, not so much a girl as a woman, a stranger, ignorant, one foreign to them, one with no standing, no status, we conjecture will stand in little danger of being regarded as a desirable sacrifice.”

Hamilton sat now on the edge of the cot. She was aghast. She trembled.

“Furthermore,” said Gunther, “we commonly associate the sacrifice of virgins with agricultural economies, where men are more dependent on factors outside of their control, the weather, for example, than with hunting economies, where the nature of acquiring food, and the efforts relevant to its acquisition, are more clearly understood. Perhaps more importantly in agricultural economies the population is larger and the social institutions and structures more complex. A larger population is doubtless more willing to expend certain of its members; further there is in a larger population, naturally, less personal contact among all members, and this makes the sacrificial expenditure of a given member of the group a much more impersonal matter; furthermore, in the agricultural economy, with its larger population, you have, doubtless, an extensive, complex cult tradition, perhaps with its professional witch doctors or priests, providing the population with an elaborate justification for ritualized homicide. Social developments of this complexity would be less likely to occur in a hunting group. Furthermore, in a hunting group, where life would be more precarious, it seems likely to suppose that it might also be regarded as more precious. Women would be needed to bear children and carry burdens. It is not likely that they would be used as the victims in ceremonial homicides.”

“Oh, Gunther,” wept Hamilton. “Help me to escape!”

“Hunting groups, we conjecture, too,” said Gunther, “would, if they are to survive, be dominated by strong men, large men, rugged men, intelligent men, energetic, cunning and swift, men of much stamina, of sound constitution and hardy appetites.”

Gunther looked at Hamilton, and she shuddered.

“Such men,” said Gunther, “are likely to relish and appreciate, robustly, the bodies of their women. They will have better uses to put the bodies of their women to than human sacrifice.”

“You must help me to escape, Gunther,” wept Hamilton.

“With the conquest of agriculture, as you may not be aware,” said Gunther, “there was a concomitant degeneration of the human stock. This can be established skeletally, and also by cranial capacity. Modern man is smaller, and quite possibly intellectually inferior, to these free hunters. We have now, of course, in compensation, numbers and technology. We have libraries and a complicated culture. We are much more advanced, inferior, but much more advanced. We do not know what direction the race will take. As we are to the hunters, future man may be to us, miserable, petty and neurotic, or, perhaps, we shall grow again, toward the hunters-and the hunters will come again, from we ourselves-for surely we are their descendants, and surely we, somehow, somewhere, hidden within us, hold their promise-latent in our genetic codes the hunters may not be dead, but only asleep.” Gunther looked at Hamilton. “The race,” said Gunther, “is divided into the farmers and the hunters, those who grow millet and barley, those who trudge in the mud and dig in the soil the swarming mobs in the river valleys, scratching with their sticks and carrying their water, and the hunters, the lonely ones, the swift ones, the solitary ones, not understood, who will not dig in the soil, the ones who know the smell of the forest, the burrow of the ermine, the track of the caribou, who rise at dawn, in the cold, who can run fifty miles in one day, who can shoot the bow and hurl the spear, and live for weeks on the land, the cunning ones, the dissatisfied ones, the pursuers of meat.”

Hamilton looked at Gunther, strangely. Never had she heard him speak like this. He was usually silent, arrogant, taciturn.

“The world,” said Gunther, “is divided into those who fear, those who seek security, those who do not dare to lift their eyes from their narrow fields, and the other-the hunters.” Gunther was quiet for a moment, and then he spoke again. “Do you know where the hunters have gone?” he asked.

“No,” said Brenda Hamilton.

“The farmers, in their numbers, have killed them,” he said.

Hamilton regarded him.

“But they may not all be dead,” said Gunther. “Some may be only asleep.”

Hamilton said nothing.

“There has always been war,” said Gunther, “between the hunters and the farmers.” He smiled. “And I suppose there always will be.”

“There is nothing left to hunt,” said Hamilton.

“Mankind’s greatest game is now afoot,” said Gunther. He frowned. “The farmers will do what they can to prevent its pursuit.” “What game, Gunther?” asked Hamilton. “Meat!” said Gunther. “Meat fit for the godsl” “What meat, Gunther?” asked Hamilton. “The stars,” said Gunther. “The stars.” She looked at him. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “There is nothing more to hunt.” “There are the stars,” he said. Then he left her alone. Gunther is mad, thought Brenda Hamilton, he is as mad as the others. She lay back on the mattress and twisted in the heat. She jerked at the handcuff and cursed, and then tried to find a comfortable position in which to sleep.

Brenda Hamilton, fascinated, watched the leopard in the translation cubicle.

It was a beautiful, terrible beast.

It lay on its side on the smooth plastic of the cubicle. Its four feet had been tied together. Its jaws were muzzled. It was helpless. It had been drugged. It was now recovering. It whined, and struggled.

Hamilton recalled how she had first seen it in the wild, in the branch of a tree, lying across the carcass of a slain calf. Gunther, while William had distracted it, had struck it with an anesthetic bullet.

It had been captured.

Brenda, with fascination, watched the twisting beast, growling, whining.

She wore the white dress.

She sat in a cheap, kitchen chair, made of metal. Her hands, in Gunther’s handcuffs, were fastened behind her back. The cuffs had been placed before two of the narrow metal back bars of the chair and then pulled through. They had then been behind the chair.

“Sit in the chair,” Gunther had said.

He then pulled her wrists behind the chair and locked them in the cuffs, confining her to the chair.

The chain he had removed from her right ankle, looped it twice about the metal rung between the front legs of the chair, and then, snugly, fastened it once more about her right ankle. Her ankles were held back, close to the metal rung, fastened to it.

She was thus, doubly, confined to the chair.

Brenda watched the leopard. It was a capture.

She felt the handcuffs on her wrists, the chain on her ankles. She knew that she, too, was a capture.

Herjellsen sat beneath the steel hood, bent over, his fists clenched.

This night there was no play of light.

This night there was no dislocation of her time sense.

She watched the beast in the cubicle. It was uncomfortable, rebellious, growling, helpless.

Herjellsen sweated, fists clenched, bent over beneath the steel hood.

William and Gunther stood in the background.

Suddenly it seemed all strange to her, impossible, insane. She knew that what they were attempting to do could not be done. Even a child would know that.

It is insane, she felt. Insane! And she was locked in a shack, cuffed and shackled, with madmen!

The experiments, she knew, did not always go well.

She wondered if they ever had.

She recalled William and Gunther discussing Herjellsen, and fraud, and illusion, and madness, in the Land Rover.

She surely could not have seen once what she thought she had seen.

It could not have been true.

Then she was terrified.

She saw Gunther looking at her.

Herjellsen, at last, worn, exhausted, bent, withdrew from under the hood and, painfully, wearily, straightened his body. He looked at her blankly, his eyes blinking behind the large, heavy convex lenses. Then he left the shack.

Gunther turned off the equipment.

William left the shack.

It had been a failure.

The beast still lay, helpless, twisting, on the floor of the cubicle.

They had not transmitted it Gunther opened one of the cuffs and freed Hamilton’s wrists from the metal back bars of the chair, then closed it again on her wrist, keeping her hands cuffed behind her. He then freed her left ankle from the chain, disengaged the chain from the metal chair rung, and then, with the padlock, again fastened the chain about her left ankle, freeing her now completely of the chair, keeping her shackled.