Time Slave

24

The hands of the man in the woolen tunic were on her breasts, roughly. He was pleased.

“Be docile, pretty little beast,” said Gunther.

Hamilton felt another man feeling her legs, from behind. He grunted affirmatively.

“Suck in your belly “said Gunther. “Stand straight.”

Hamilton did so. She felt a hand slap her belly, twice. She felt the man behind her testing the sweetness, the firmness of her buttocks.

“Stand straight,” said Gunther. Tears in her eyes, Hamilton did so. She felt her upper arms held and released, and again held and released. Another man held out her hair, which was now quite long, in his two hands, to the light, examining it for condition and sheen. She felt, from behind, her legs, one after the other, bent up and backward, as the arch of her instep was noted.

Hamilton wore no clothing, but there was a tether on her throat. She stood on a large, flat, wooden platform. Other men, in woolen tunics, stood about, watching the appraisal of the slave girl. Four men of the Weasel People, too, were about. The large, bearded fellow was he who held her tether. She had worn, in the march, and upon the platform, at first, one of the hide tunics of the women of the Weasel People, concealing her breasts. Gunther had first torn it to her waist, before stripping it totally away from her. Ugly Girl, naked, a leather tether on her neck, in the hands of one of the men of the Weasel People, crouched to one side on the platform. She had not been clothed from the beginning.

“It is my intention,” Gunther had told Hamilton, “to sell the monster, too, with you. Her presence on the platform will dramatically accentuate your beauty, my dear. It will make you seem twice as desirable, twice as beautiful.”

The man who had felt Hamilton’s breasts now thrust back her head and, roughly, with his fingers, pried her mouth widely open, inspecting her teeth. To one side, below the platform, Hamilton heard the bleating of a sheep. It was a large animal, long-haired, with soft wool beneath; its horns were spiraled, and yellowish in color. The platform was within a palisaded wall; there were several huts, too, some of them open, within the wall. Some children, too, idly, watched the men appraise her; in the background, before two looms, four women, too, in woolen tunics, had turned about to watch. One girl, a saucy, impudent, bright-eyed girl, perhaps seventeen years of age, with bare arms, and a copper armlet on her left arm, came to the edge of the platform. One of the women called angrily to her, and she, angrily, turned about and went back to stand with them, by the looms. Before she left, she made a face at Hamilton.

The man who had forced open the female animal’s mouth, to check its teeth, now stood back from her, sizing her up. Then he walked about her. Then he stood close to her, before her, and put his heavy hands on the sides of her waist, holding her. His eyes met hers. She looked quickly down. His eyes were those of a free man. Hers were those only of a female slave. “Look into his eyes quickly, deferentially,” said Gunther. “Then smile, and look down.”

“Gunther,” wept Hamilton.

“Do so,” said Gunther.

Hamilton looked up, into the eyes of the man in the woolen tunic. Indeed she did so deferentially, frightened, for she was slave, and he free.

“Smile Animal,” said Gunther.

Hamilton smiled, then sobbed and thrust her head down.

She felt the power of his hands, gripping her waist. He laughed mightily, and shook her, then released her.

Gunther was grinning. “Kneel,” he said to her, casually, as an aside.

She knelt on the wooden platform, sick, her head down. The tether was still on her neck. The man who had held it, at the indication of one of the men in woolen tunics, thrust its free end through a small circular hole in the platform; beneath the surface of the platform a child tied it about a piece of wood not large, but too large to be drawn upward through the hole in the platform. The men, and the child, withdrew. No one looked at her. She had been assessed; she would now be bargained for. She recalled Gunther’s words, “I am going to sell you, Brenda.” How far away then seemed her world her time, her friends, her education her degrees, her aptitudes, her former experiences; she recalled, idly, her apartment, buying a newspaper in Pasadena, noting the mountains, the low, earth-colored, Spanish-style buildings of the California Institute of Technology, her classes and seminars, the oral examination on her dissertation for the Ph.D. degree, the men coming up to her, shaking her hand, congratulating her. She had worn a light, white pantsuit, with Oxford shirt, buttoned, with tie. “I am being sold,” she thought. “I am being sold!”

She looked wildly about. It seemed impossible, unreal, but it was as real as the leather on her neck. The gate to the palisade was shut. Ugly Girl, tethered, too, hands bound, crouched at the corner of the platform; the line about her neck fell to the boards, lay across them, and then disappeared over the edge; beneath the boards, ascending again, it was tied, high, about one of the legs of the structure; both girls, Ugly Girl at the edge of the platform, Hamilton near its center, were alone. Hamilton closed her eyes. “I must wake up,” thought Hamilton, wildly. “I must wake up!” The heat and light of the clearing in the camp of the Dirt People was refulgent, red and warm, through her gritted eyelids. She could feel sweat beneath her armpits and between her thighs. The sun was hot, beating down, burning on her back. Beneath her knees and the tops of her toes, as she knelt, she felt the rough, splintery surface of the heavy boards of the platform. The tether, tight which could not be slipped, close on her, making her neck feel hot, broken out, she tried to reject. She tried, too, to reject that she was naked, that the deliciousness of her beauty, so curved, so soft and delicate, so vulnerable and helpless, which for no reason she clearly understood, but frightened her, so excited men, that drove them to lust for her and desire her, and wish to own her, was now, so against her will so publicly exposed for their gaze and pleasure. She tried, by sheer force of will, to thrust herself into another reality. She smiled to herself. She laughed. “I must wake up,” she thought. A warm wind, slow-moving, carrying dust, stirred by the feet of those in the clearing, moved across the platform. She felt it, fully, on the surfaces of her body, warm, moving, granular. It was a not unpleasant sensation. She recalled that at one time she would. have been scandalized to have been naked out of doors. She now had little choice. She was slave. Then she breathed in some of the dust. It was not pleasant. Her mouth felt dry. She did not open her eyes; she felt the particles against her eyelids. “This is impossible,” she whispered. “I must wake up! I must wake up!” She tried to thrust herself into an alternative reality. The men were. coming up to her. Her defense of her dissertation had been professional, and crisp. They would shake her hand, congratulating her. She wore a light, white pantsuit, with blue-pastel Oxford shirt, buttoned, with a yellow tie. The slave was jerked to her feet on the platform. A hand, hot, swift, heavy, exploded at the side of her mouth; she tasted blood, felt it running about her tongue and between her teeth; she looked into Gunther’s face; he was grinning; “Wake up,” said he, “pretty little bitch.”

“Tell me it’s not real, Gunther!” she wept.

“You have been sold,” he said.

“Gunther!” she wept.

“Sold,” he said.

The end of the tether was freed from the wood beneath the platform and the free end drawn through the small circular hold in the floor of the platform, and taken in the hand of one of the men in a woolen tunic. She felt the tether jerk her toward the edge of the platform. She stopped, the tether taut and turned to regard Gunther. “Please, Gunther,” she wept.

“You brought eight sacks of barley,” he said, “and a bronze ax.”

She looked at him, aghast. She now knew the measure of her value in the rude economy of the Dirt People. Eight sacks of barley and a bronze ax was the barter equivalent of Dr. Brenda Hamilton, stripped. She now knew that women, though they might be urgently sought, and desperately desired, when the needs of men were upon them, were not, on the whole, considered particularly valuable. She was not worth much. She was a female. She doubted that she would have brought two bronze axes.

“The monster,” said Gunther, nodding toward Ugly Girl, “brought far less.”

She saw Ugly Girl being jerked from the platform, and being dragged away. She felt a jerk on her own neck tether. There were tears in Hamilton’s eyes. “Don’t leave me here in this place, Gunther,” wept Hamilton. “I beg you!” She flung herself to her knees wildly, weeping, and pressed her lips to his boots. She held his ankle, her small fingers about the dusty leather of his boots. “You have been sold,” he told her. Then she was dragged away, hauled stumbling to her feet by the neck tether and, choking, pulled from the platform and conducted between the huts.

“I have been sold!” she cried out, in misery. Then she screamed when she saw where they were going to put her.