Time Slave

4

Dr. Brenda Hamilton awakened in her own quarters. She stared at the ceiling. The half light of late afternoon, golden, hazy, filtering, dimly illuminated the room.

The white-washed interior seemed golden and dim. She looked at the arched roof, its beams, the corrugated tin. It was hot, terribly hot. She seldom spent time in her quarters before sundown.

She was vaguely aware that she lay on her mattress, on her iron cot, and that there were no sheets beneath her.

She recalled, suddenly, her trip with Gunther and William, the heat, the dust, the seeing of the leopard, her being handcuffed, tranquilized.

She was angry. They could not treat her in this fashion. Herjellsen must hear of this!

She tried to rise, but fell back, fighting the lethargy of the drug.

Again she stared at the ceiling, at the hot tin above her. She closed her eyes. It was difficult to keep them open. It was so warm.

She opened her eyes again.

The room seemed familiar, and yet somehow it was different. She moved one foot against the other, dimly aware that her shoes, her stockings, had been removed.

Suddenly she sat up in bed. The room was indeed different, it was almost empty.

She looked about herself, alarmed. She swung her legs quickly over the side of the bed. Startled, she realized she was clothed differently than she had been.

Her dresser, her trunk, her suitcases, her books, were gone. The table had been removed. The only furniture remaining in the room was three cane chairs, and her iron cot.

A mirror was in the room, which had not been there before. She saw herself. She wore a brief cotton dress, thin, white and sleeveless. It was not hers. It came well up her thighs, revealing her legs. She noted in the mirror that her legs were trim. She was terrified. The tiny dress was not belted. It was all she wore, absolutely.

She leaped to her feet and ran to the door of the almost empty, bleak room. The knob had been removed. She dug at the crack of the door with her fingernails. It was closed. She sensed, too, with an empty feeling, it must be secured, on the outside. She turned about, terrified, breathing heavily, her back pressed against the door. She looked across the room to the window. She moaned. She ran to the window and thrust aside the-light curtain. Her two fists grasped the bars which had been placed there.

She turned about again, regarding the room. It was bare, except for the three cane chairs, the iron cot with its mattress, no bedding.

She felt the planking of the floor beneath her bare feet. She looked across the room to the mirror, which had not been in the room before. It its reflection she saw, clad in a brief, sleeveless garment of white cotton, a slender, trimlegged, very attractive, dark-haired woman. She was a young woman, not yet twenty-five years of age. Her eyes were deep, dark, extremely intelligent, very frightened. She had long straight dark hair, now loose, unpinned and unconfined, falling behind her head. She knew the woman was Brenda

Hamilton, and yet the reflection frightened her. It was not Brenda Hamilton as she had been accustomed to seeing her. No longer did she wear the severe white laboratory coat; no longer was her hair rolled in a tight bun behind her head. The young woman. in the reflection seemed very female, her body in the brief garment fraught with a startling, unexpected, astonishing sexuality.

Suddenly, to a sinking feeling in her stomach, she realized that her body had been washed, and her hair combed. The dust of the Rhodesian bush was no longer upon her.

She looked at her figure, her breasts lovely, sweet, revealed in the cotton. She wanted her brassiere. But she did not have it.

She threw her head to one side. She fled from the window to the closet, throwing open its door. It, too, was empty. There was nothing within, not even a hanger.

There was no hanger; such might serve, she supposed, as a tool. Her shoes were gone, with their laces, and, too, her stockings. The bedding from her cot, was missing. Her brief cotton dress lacked even a belt.

She returned to the center of the room, near the cot. Over it, dangling on a short cord, some four inches long, from a beam, was a light bulb. Its shade was missing. The bulb was off.

Numbly she went to the wall switch and turned the bulb on. It lit. Then, moaning, she turned it off again.

She went then again to the center of the room, and looked slowly about, at the white-washed plaster, the bleakness, and then up at the hot tin overhead, then down to the thin, striped mattress on the iron cot.

Then suddenly she ran to the door and pounded on it, weeping. “William!” she cried. “Gunther! Professor Herjellsen! Professor Herjellsen!”

There was no answer from the compound.

She screamed and pounded on the door, and wept. She ran to the barred window, which bars had been placed there in her absence with William and Gunther. She seized the bars in her small fists and screamed between them. “William!” she screamed. “Gunther! Professor Herjellsen! Professor Herjellsen!” Then she screamed out again. “Help! Please, help! Someone! Help me! Please help me!”

But there was again no answer from the compound.

Dr. Brenda Hamilton, shaking, walked unsteadily to the iron cot. ‘

Her mind reeled.

“You understand nothing,” Gunther had told her. “You were a fool to come to the bush,” Gunther had told her.

“I’m needed!” had cried Hamilton.

“Yes, little fool,” had said Gunther. “You are needed. That is true.”

Hamilton was bewildered.

She sank to the floor beside the cot. She put her head to the boards, and wept.

“Here is a brush, cosmetics and such,” said William, placing a small cardboard shoe box on the floor of Brenda Hamilton’s quarters.

Brenda Hamilton stood across the room from him, facing him. She wore still the brief white garment, that of thin cotton, sleeveless.

He sat on one of the cane chairs. It was ten P.M. Mosquito netting had been stapled across the window. The room was lit from the single light bulb, dangling on its short cord from the beam.

A tray, with food, brought earlier by William, lay on Brenda Hamilton’s cot. It was not touched.

“Eat your food,” said William.

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

He shrugged.

“I want my clothing, William,” she said.

“It is interesting,” said William. “In all your belongings, there was not one dress.”

“I do not wear dresses,” she said.

“You are an attractive woman,” said William. “Why not?”

“Dresses are hobbling devices,” she said. “They are a garment that men have made for women, to set them apart and, in effect, to keep them prisoner.”

“You do not appear much hobbled,” observed William.

Brenda Hamilton flushed.

“I feel exposed,” she said. “Another function of the dress,” she said, “is to make the female feel exposed, to make her more aware of her sexuality.”

“Perhaps,” said William.

“Give me my own clothing,” begged Brenda Hamilton.

“You are quite lovely as you are,” said William.

“Do not use that diminishing, trivializing word of me,” snapped Hamilton. “It is as objectionable as `pretty’.”

William smiled. “But Brenda,” he said, “you are quite pretty.”

Please, William,” begged Hamilton.

She looked in the mirror. It was true what William had said. She was, to her fury, very lovely, very pretty.

“Actually,” said William, “you are rather more than lovely, and certainly far more than pretty.”

“Please, William,” begged Hamilton.

“You are beautiful, quite beautiful, Brenda,” said William.

“Call me Doctor Hamilton,” said Hamilton.

“Very well,” agreed William. He looked at her, appreciatively, scrutinizing her casually, to her rage, from her trim ankles to her proud head. “You are indeed far more than pretty, Doctor Hamilton,” said William. “You are beautiful, quite beautiful, Doctor Hamilton,” said William.

Hamilton turned away, stifling a sob.

“Be careful, Doctor Hamilton,” cautioned William. “That is almost a female response.”

She spun to face him. “I am a female!” she cried.

“Obviously,” said William.

“Why am I being treated like this?” demanded Brenda Hamilton.

“Like what?” asked William.

“Why has that mirror been placed in the room?” she demanded. “Why am I dressed like this?”

“It seems strange, does it not,” asked William, “that you, an attractive female, should object to being clothed as an attractive female?”

“I do not wish to be so clothed!” she cried.

“Are you ashamed of your body?” asked William.

“No!” she cried.

“Of course, you are,” smiled William. “But look at yourself in the mirror. You should not be ashamed of your body, but proud of it. You are extremely beautiful.”

“I am being displayed,” she wept.

“True,” said William.

“I do not wish to be displayed,” she said.

“You are not simply being displayed for our pleasure,” said William.

She looked at him.

“You are being displayed also for your own instruction, that you may be fully aware of what a beauty you are.”

She looked at the mirror. “It is so-so different from a man’s body,” she said.

“Precisely,” said William. “It is extremely different, its softness, its vulnerability, its beauty.”

“So different,” she whispered.

“And you, too, my dear Doctor Hamilton, are quite different.”

“No!” she snapped.

William laughed.

“Being a female is a role,” cried Hamilton. “Only a role!”

“Tell that to a sociologist,” said William, “not to a physician, or a man of the world, one experienced in life.”

Hamilton turned on him in rage.

“The body and the mind,” said William, “is a unity. Do you really think that with a body like yours you might have any sort of mind, one, say, like mine or Gunther’s? Do you not think there might not be, associated with such a body, an indigenous sensibility, indigenous talents,. emotions, brilliancies? Do you really think that the mind is only an accident, unrelated to the entire evolved organism?”

“I have a doctorate in mathematics,” said Hamilton, lamely, defensively.

“And we both speak English,” said William. “I speak of deeper things.”

“Being feminine,” said Hamilton, “is only a role.”

“And doubtless,” said William, “being a leopard is only a role, one played by something which is really not a leopard at all.”

“You are hateful,” said Brenda Hamilton.

“I do not mean to be, Doctor Hamilton,” said William. “But I must remind you that what you seem to think so significant, a cultural veneer, is a recent acquisition to the human animal, an overlay, a bit of tissue paper masking deeper realities.” William looked down. “I suppose,” he said, “we do not know, truly, what a man is, or a woman.”

“We can condition a man to be feminine, and a woman to be masculine,” said Brenda Hamilton. “It is a simple matter of positive and negative reinforcement.”

“We can also stunt trees and dwarf animals, and drive dogs insane,” said William. “We can also bind the feet of Chinese women, crippling them. We can administer contradictory conditioning programs and drive men, and women, insane with anxieties and guilts, culturally momentous, and yet, physiologically considered, meaningless, irrelevant to the biology being distorted.”

Brenda Hamilton looked down.

“You are afraid to be a woman,” said William. “Indeed, perhaps you do not know how. You are ignorant. You are frightened. Accordingly, it is natural for you to be distressed, hostile, confused, and to seize what theories or pseudotheories you can to protect yourself from what you most fear-your femaleness.”

“I see now,” said Doctor Hamilton, icily, “why I have been dressed as I am, why there is this mirror in my room.”

“We wish you,” said William, “to learn your womanhood, to recognize it-to face it.”

“I hate you,” she said.

“It is my hope that someday,” said William, “you will see your beauty and rejoice in it, and display it proudly, unashamed, brazenly even, excited by it, that you will be no longer an imitation man but an authentic woman, true to your deepest nature, joyous, welcoming and acclaiming, no longer repudiating, your femaleness, your womanhood, your sexuality.”

“Being a female,” wept Hamilton, “is to be less than a maul”

William shrugged. “If that is true,” he said, “dare to be it.”

“No!” said Hamilton. “No!”

“Dare to be a female,” said William.

“No!” said Hamilton. “No! No!”

Brenda Hamilton ran in misery to the wall of her quarters. She put her head against the white-washed plaster, the palms of her hands.

She sobbed.

“Very feminine,” said William.

She turned to face him, red-eyed.

“You are doubtless playing a role,” said William.

“Please be kind to me, William,” she begged.

William rose from the chair.

“Don’t go, William!” she cried. She put out her hand.

William stood in the room, in the light of the single light bulb. He did not move.

“Why am I being treated like this?” whispered Brenda Hamilton.

“The third series of tests will begin in a day or two,” said William.

Brenda Hamilton said nothing.

“The second series will terminate tomorrow evening.”

“Why am I being treated like this?” demanded Brenda Hamilton.

William did not speak.

“Bring me my clothing, William,” begged Hamilton.

“You are wearing it,” said William.

“At least bring me my brassiere,” she begged.

“You do not need it,” he said.

She turned away.

“Your other clothing,” said William, “has been destroyed, burned.”

Brenda Hamilton turned and faced him, aghast.

She shook her head. “Why?” she asked.

“You will not be needing it,” said William. “Furthermore it is evidence of your presence.”

She shook her head, numbly.

“All of your belongings have been disposed of,” said William. “Books, shoes, everything.”

“No!” she said.

“There will not be evidence that you were ever within the compound.”

She looked at him, blankly.

“You have never been outside of it, except once in the Rover with Gunther and me,” said William. “You can be traced to Salisbury,” said William, “that is all.”

“But Herjellsen,” she said.

“The Salisbury authorities know nothing of Herjellsen,” said William. “They do not even know he is in the country.”

Brenda Hamilton leaned back against the wall. She moaned.

William turned to go.

“William!” she cried.

He paused at the door.

“Free me,” she said. “Help me to escape!”

William indicated two buckets near the wall. He had brought them earlier. “One of these,” he said, “the covered one, is water. The other is for your wastes.”

“William!” wept Hamilton.

William indicated the tray, untouched, on the bed. “I recommend you eat,” he said, “that you keep up your strength.”

“I do not want to be a woman,” said Hamilton. “I have never wanted to be a woman! I will not be a woman! Never!”

“You should eat,” said William. “It will be better for you.”

Hamilton shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’ll starve!”

With his foot, William indicated the cardboard shoe boa on the floor. “Here is a brush and comb,” he said, “and cosmetics.”

“I do not wear cosmetics,” said Hamilton.

“It does not matter to me,” said William. “But you are expected to keep yourself groomed.”

Hamilton looked at him with hatred.

“Is that understood?” asked William.

“Yes,” said Hamilton. “It is understood perfectly.”

Just then Hamilton and William heard the two heavy locks, padlocks, with hasps and staples, on the door being unlocked. William, while within the room, was locked within.

“Who is it?” asked Hamilton.

“Gunther,” said William.

“He must not see me like this!” wept Hamilton.

The door opened. One does not knock on the door of a prisoner.

Gunther entered. Hamilton backed away, against the opposite wall.

Gunther looked at her. His eyes prowled her body. Gunther had had many women.

His eye strayed to the cot, to the untouched tray. He looked at Hamilton.

“Eat,” he said.

“I’m not hungry,” whispered Hamilton.

“Eat,” said Gunther, “now.”

“Yes, Gunther,” she said, obediently. She came timidly to the cot.

William was irritated.

“Herjellsen is nearly ready,” said Gunther.

“All right,” said William.

Hamilton sat on the cot and, looking down, began to eat.

“No,” said Gunther to Hamilton. She looked at him, startled, frightened. “Kneel beside the cot,” he said.

Hamilton knelt beside the cot, and, as she had been bidden, ate from the tray.

“She must be habituated,” said Gunther to William. “You are too easy with her.”

William shrugged.

“When a man enters the room,” said Gunther to Hamilton, “you are to kneel, and you are not to rise until given permission.”

Hamilton looked at him, agonized.

“Do you understand?” asked Gunther.

“Even if it is one of the blacks?” asked Hamilton.

“Yes,” said Gunther. “They are males.” He looked down at her. “Is this clearly understood?”

“Yes, Gunther,” said Brenda Hamilton. She dared not question him.

Gunther indicated the cardboard boa. He kicked it toward her.

“She does not use cosmetics,” said William.

“Tomorrow night,” said Gunther to Hamilton, “adorn yourself.”

He then turned away, and left the room. “Do not lock the door,” said William. “I am coming with you, presently.”

Hamilton leaped to her feet, angrily.

“You obey him very well, Doctor Hamilton,” said William.

She blushed.

“Adorn yourself!” she mocked.

“I would do so, if I were you,” said William.

“I do not like this dress!” said Hamilton.

“Then remove it,” said William.

Brenda Hamilton’s hand lashed forth to strike William, but he caught her wrist, easily. She struggled to free it, and could not.

He forced her, she resisting, again to her knees.

“One thing you must learn, Doctor Hamilton,” said William, “before you think of striking with impunity, is that men may not choose to permit it. Further, such a blow might have consequences. You might be beaten, and perhaps severely.” He looked down at her. “It is important that you understand, Doctor Hamilton,” he said, “that men are stronger than you.”

At his feet Brenda Hamilton, for the first time in her life, understood truly what this might mean, that men were stronger than women.

“You are angry with me,” she said, “William.”

He looked down on her, furious.

Unable to meet his eyes, she put her bead down.

Then he turned away, and left the room.

She looked up, at the door. She knelt on the planks of the room. She heard the two hasps being flung against the staple plates, angrily. She heard two heavy padlocks, one after the other, thrust through their staples, and snapped shut.

She leaped up, and ran to the door. She put her fingernails to its crack, futilely.

She turned away from the door, and looked back into the room.

She saw the cardboard box, lying near the cot on the floor. She saw her reflection, red-eyed, across the room.

Slowly she went to the box and knelt beside it, taking a brush and comb from it and, with the brush, slowly, watching herself in the mirror, began to brush her long, dark hair.

The work in the experimental shack was apparently not going as well as it might.

The days passed slowly for Brenda Hamilton. In the morning, with a broom, she swept her quarters, and, when she had finished sweeping, with a cloth, dampened with water, on her hands and knees, she mopped the boards of her floor. Similarly, once a day, she wiped down the walls of her cell, using the cane chairs, to the ceiling of corrugated tin. There was little point in this. It was merely Gunther accustoming her to servile work. Also, he insisted that the cot be placed at a certain place and angle in the room, aligned with certain floor boards, and that the mattress be straight upon it. Doctor Hamilton was being taught discipline. She was being taught, too, to comply perfectly with the arbitrary will of a male. But such work was finished by ten in the morning, when the heat of the day was beginning, and there was then little to do in the hot, stifling room, now her cell, and she spent much time on the cot, lying upon it, staring at the wall or ceiling. She was fed small meals, four times a day, the last at nine P.M. She had more water than she needed. The diet was high protein, with few fats or starches. William, she knew, was in charge of her diet. The meals, and water, and such, were brought now by blacks, those whom Herjellsen used to guard the compound and perform its duties. There were two of them. As Gunther had told her, when they were in the room, she knelt. The first day one of them had pointed at the wall opposite the door. Understanding, she had risen and gone to the wall and knelt there, across the room from him, away from the door. There seemed little point in this there were always two of them, one who would bring the food, or whatever it might be, and the other who would stand by the door, watching, just outside. She could not run to the door and escape. After the first time she did not have to be again instructed but, when one of them entered the room, she would kneel across the room, unbidden, away from the door. In the afternoon, she would wash her body and her single garment, using a chipped wooden bowl, and a piece of toweling, supplied by William, and water from the drinking bucket. Each night, after her supper, as Gunther had commanded, she adorned herself. At first she was clumsy, but she was highly intelligent, and her small hands were sure. She taught herself to apply lipstick, which she had not worn since high school, and to apply powder and eye shadow. It seemed very barbaric, somehow, for her to do so, so primitive, this adorning of the body. Did it truly make her more beautiful, she wondered, or was it only a device to attract attention, to signal her sexuality, to proclaim her femaleness, to announce her eagerness for, her readiness for, her vulnerability to, male aggression. She shuddered. She removed two earrings from the cardboard box. They were golden pendants, with clips. She fastened them on her ears. Her ears had never been pierced. Doctor Brenda Hamilton would leave scorned that very idea, so primitive, like an aboriginal sex rite. She regarded herself in the mirror. Yes, they were beautiful. She was beautiful. She regretted suddenly that she bad never had her ears pierced. How exciting, she thought, the symbolism, the flesh meaning of such an adornment, the piercing of her softness by the hardness of the metal, the literal wearing of such an ornament, its beads or rings or pendant against the side of her throat, beneath the dark hair, their being fastened on her. I am beautiful, she thought. Kneeling before the mirror, she reached again into the box. In a moment she had opened a small vial, and touched herself, twice, with perfume. She lifted her hair and regarded herself. You are an exquisitely beautiful woman, she told herself. She regretted never having had her ears pierced.

She leaped to her feet and walked about the room, looking at herself in the mirror.

How beautifully she moved! And she found she could move even more beautifully if she wished. She noticed that she was graceful, and beautifully curved. She understood then, as she had not before, how beautiful a human female can be. For a brief instant she was not displeased to be such a creature, but felt an indescribable thrill of joy, of pride, that it was what she was, that that was she, so soft, so delicious, so alive, so vital, so marvelously beautiful. For an instant Doctor Brenda Hamilton was pleased that she was a female. Then as she looked at the softness, the beauty, the delicacy of herself, she was angry, frustrated, furious. Tears came to her eyes. It was so soft, so vulnerable, her beauty! She thought then of men, so hard, so large, so strong, so different and sometimes fierce, so different, so different from her. She wondered of the meaning of her beauty, its softness, its vulnerability. Perhaps, she wondered, it belongs to men. “No!” she cried. “No!” And then she hated the beautiful, soft, thing she saw in the mirror. “No!” she cried, looking into the mirror. “No!” She would have torn away the earrings, washed away the lipstick and cosmetics, the perfume, but she did not dare, for Gunther had commanded her to wear them and she was afraid to disobey him.

But Gunther had not come the first night. He had been working in the experimental shack with Herjellsen.

When the door had opened, it had been William. Brenda was kneeling before the cot, as she had planned, the striped mattress to be seen behind her, transecting, at its angle, her body.

William had stopped, stunned.

Disappointment had been visible, though only for an instant, in Brenda Hamilton’s eyes. William had noted it, with brief irritation.

“Stand up,” had said William.

Brenda had stood up, and she, unconsciously, smoothed down the thin cotton dress. The movement, as she realized instantly, had accentuated her beauty, drawing the dress momentarily tight over the softness of her breasts. She flushed.

They stood apart from one another, regarding one another. Brenda Hamilton was timid, inspected. Then she saw genuine awe in William’s eyes. She smiled.

“You are beautiful, Brenda,” he said. He did not address her as Doctor Hamilton. That would, in the moment, have seemed foolish.

He was a male, confronting a beautiful female prisoner. That was all. One would not address such a prisoner by such a title.

“Hello, William,” whispered Brenda Hamilton.

“Stand straight,” said William.

He walked about her, viewing her. He stopped behind her, some seven feet away, on the other side of the cot. She did not turn to face him.

“Yes,” he said, “you are a truly beautiful woman.”

She lifted her head, not turning.

He ranged about her and stood again in front of her. “Truly beautiful,” he said.

“Thank you, William,” said Brenda Hamilton. It was the first time in her life that such a thing had been said to her. It was the first time she had acknowledged such a compliment. Deep within her there glowed a sudden, diffused warmth. Startled, she felt, within her, which she would not have admitted, a surge of pleasure.

A man had inspected her, candidly, as she had stood well displayed before him, as she had stood as a mere prisoner, and had termed her, objectively, with nothing to gain which he could not have taken by his strength, beautiful. Brenda Hamilton, the prisoner, knew then that she was pleasing to a man.

This filled her, for no reason she clearly understood, with incredible pride.

She had stood well revealed, captive, before a man, and had been pronounced beautiful. But suddenly she felt very helpless, very vulnerable.

To her terror she saw William’s hand reach out and touch her shoulder.

“No!” she hissed. She backed away. “Don’t touch met” she cried.

William looked at her with fury. He did not advance toward her.

“I have come to tell you,” he said, “that we are encountering difficulties in completing the second series of experiments. There will be some delay.”

“I demand to speak to Herjellsen!” said Brenda Hamilton.

But the door had shut.

She heard the hasps strike the staple plates, the locking of the heavy padlocks.

Brenda turned away, agonized. She had wanted William to stay. He seemed the only link with the outside. Herjellsen had not so much as seen her since she had left in the Land Rover with William and Gunther. Gunther had not visited her since her first night in captivity. There had been only the blacks and, from time to time, William.

Brenda Hamilton regarded herself in the mirror, in the light of the single light bulb under the tin roof.

Tonight, she knew, she had attracted a man. She lay down on the cot, twisting in the heat, unable to sleep. She got up and walked about the room. She drank water. She desperately wanted a cigarette, but William would not allow her any. “Tobacco must not be smelled on your breath,” he had told her. “A keenly sensed organism can detect such an odor, even days afterward.”

Brenda Hamilton had understood nothing of this. But she had not been given tobacco.

Fitfully, in the heat, she slept.

Once she awakened, startled. She had dreamed that Gunther had taken her in his arms, as she was, as she had been when William had seen her, and forced her back on the cot, his hands thrusting up the thin dress, over her breasts, freeing her arms of it, until it was about her neck and that he had then, with one hand, twisted it, sometimes loosening it, sometimes tightening it, controlling her by it, making her do what he wished, while his other hand had forced her to undergo delights of which she had not dreamed. How she had writhed and struggled to kiss him as he had then, when her body uncontrollably begged for him, deigned to enter her. But then she screamed and awakened, the light of a flashlight in her eyes.

“Go to sleep,” said a voice from the window, on the other side of the bars, the netting. It was one of the blacks, making his rounds, checking the prisoner.

She lay terrified on the cot.

She lay awake. She waited. In what she surmised might be an hour, the flashlight again illuminated her body on the cot. She pretended she was asleep.

When it was gone, she groaned. She had not dreamed they would be so thorough.

Then she understood, too, the order of entries into her room, during the day, their timing, when the broom was given to her, the water, the wastes emptied, the food brought, the late checking.

She was under almost constant surveillance.

She had no tool. She was helpless in the room. She could not pick the lock for the locks were on the outside. She did not even have a fork, or spoon. With her fingernails and teeth she could not splinter through the floor, nor dig through the wall.

And, even should she gain the outside, there were the blacks, at least one on guard, and the fence.

And outside the fence there was the bush, the heat, the lack of water, the dryness, animals, the distance.

Gunther, she knew, was a superb hunter. Tracks, in the sand and dirt, soft, powdery, dry, would leave a trail which she supposed even she, a woman, might follow.

She lay on the cot looking up at the dark ceiling. I would leave a trail, she told herself, that even I could follow, even a woman.

She feared Gunther.

Then she noted that she had thought of herself not simply as Doctor Hamilton, but as a woman. No, no, she wept to herself. I do not wish to be a woman. I will not be a woman! I will not be a woman!

She twisted desirably, deliciously, in the brief dress, and thought of Gunther.

Suddenly she said to herself, startling herself, I want to be a woman!

Yes, I want to be a womanl

I am a woman!

No, she cried, I will not be a woman! Never!

She realized, though she could not understand the motivations, that it was no accident that she had been dressed as she had, that there had been a mirror placed in the room so that she would be forced to see herself so clad, that she had been ordered to adorn herself with cosmetics, and, indeed, most brutally, most unfairly of all, that she had been forced to kneel in the presence of males, and could not rise until their permission had been given.

“I hate them!” she cried. “I hate men! I hate all of them! I do not want to be a woman! I will never be a woman! Never!”

But a voice within her seemed to say, be quiet, little fool, little female.

She rolled on her stomach and wept, and pounded the mattress. Suddenly she realized she had not removed the earrings, the makeup. She removed them, and, too, from her body, washed the perfume. Then she lay again on the cot. She was almost frightened to go to sleep. There was no sheet, no cover. She knew the blacks would, from time to time, during the night, check with the flashlight. Then she laughed to herself. “I am only a prisoner,” she said, “what do I care if they see my legs?” It seemed to her somehow amusing that a prisoner might attempt to conceal her legs from her jailers. Every inch of her, she knew, was at their disposal, if they so much as wished.

She lay on her stomach on the cot, on the striped mattress, her head turned to one side. The mattress, she sensed, was wet with her tears. Her fists, beside her head, on each side, were clenched.

As she lay there, helpless, locked in the room, she knew that the men had won, that whatever might be their reasons, their plans or motivations, their intentions with respect to her, that they had conquered.

She knew that it was a woman who lay on the striped mattress on the small iron cot, in the hot, tin-roofed building in a compound in Rhodesia.

“I know that I am a female,” she said to herself. “I am a female.”

In her heart, in her deepest nature, for the first time in her life, Doctor Brenda Hamilton-the prisoner Brenda-the woman-acknowledged her sex.

She did not know for what reason the men had done what they had done, but she knew that they had accomplished at least one of their goals.

They had forced her, cruelly and incontrovertibly, in the very roots of her being, to accept the truth of her reality, that she was a woman.

Brenda wondered what might be their further goals.

They had succeeded quite well in their first. They had taught her that she was a woman.

Brenda no longer had doubt about this. She was tired. Brazenly she took what position she was comfortable with on the cot. She no longer cared about the blacks and their flashlights. She was a female prisoner. Her entire body, she knew, each curvacious, luscious inch of it should her jailers wish it, lay at their disposal. She stretched like a cat on the cot, in the heat, and. fell asleep. She was mildly scandalized, as she fell asleep, to discover that she was not displeased to be a woman, that she was quite satisfied with the luscious, curved, sexy body which was she.

On the fourth night, at 10 P.M., Brenda Hamilton heard the keys turn in the padlocks outside the door, heard them lifted out of the staples and, on their short chains, fall against the door; then she heard the hasps flung back.

The door opened.

“Gunther,” she whispered.

She fell to her knees, and looked up at him.

This was the first time since the first night of her captivity that he had entered the room.

She had adorned herself beautifully, even to the earrings and perfume.

Kneeling on the wooden floor of her cell, in the thin, white dress, she looked up at him.

It came high up her thighs.

He did not tell her to rise. She remained kneeling. He looked at her, for a long time.

It was the first time he had seen her adorned.

It was a quite different Brenda Hamilton on whom he now looked, than on whom he had looked before. It was a Brenda Hamilton who was now a woman.

“Hello. Gunther,” said Brenda Hamilton.

He drew up one of the cane chairs, its back to her, and sat across it, facing her, looking at her. He did not. speak. After a time, Brenda whispered, “Do you like me as I am now, as you see me now?”

He did not answer her. His face betrayed no emotion. He turned about. “Lock the door,” he said to someone outside, one of the blacks.

It was shut and locked.

He regarded her.

“We are now alone,” he said. “We will not be disturbed.”

“Yes, Gunther,” she whispered.

Gunther regarded her. “You are now, without inhibition,” he said, “to do precisely what you wish.”

She regarded him, startled. Then she smiled. “No,” she said.

“What is it that you feel like doing?” he asked. “What secret thought do you fight? What impulse do you repudiate, rejecting it as too terrible, too degrading?”

“It is not terrible,” she laughed, “it is only silly.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“A silly impulse,” she said. “You would laugh, if I told you.”

“Tell me,” he said.

“It is too silly,” she laughed.

“Tell me,” he said.

“I have a silly impulse,” she said, “to crawl to you on my belly and kiss your boots.” She laughed.

“Do it,” said Gunther.

“No!” she cried. “No!”

“Do so,” he said. His eyes were stern.

“No, please, no!” whispered Brenda Hamilton.

“Do so,” said Gunther.

Brenda Hamilton, possessor of a doctorate in mathematics, a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, slipped to her stomach. She approached Gunther. Her hair fell over his boots. She took them in her hands and, again and again, kissed them. She tasted the leather, the dust of the Rhodesian bush, in her mouth. Tears in her eyes, she lifted her head, helplessly looking at him.

“Go to the cot,” he said.

“Yes, Gunther,” said Brenda Hamilton. She went to the cot. She knelt on the cot. She waited for him to come to her.

He slipped from the chair and went to the cot, and sat on it, his body turned, regarding her.

He placed his hands on her upper arms, and drew her toward him.

“What do you want?” asked Gunther.

She turned her head away.

“Speak,” said Gunther.

She looked at him. “Must I?” she whispered.

“Yes,” said Gunther. “What do you want?”

“I’m a prisoner,” she said. “I want to be fucked like a prisoner, used!”

“Oh?” asked Gunther.

“By you, Gunther,” she whispered, “-by you!”

He said nothing.

“You are the most attractive man I have ever seen, Gunther,” she whispered. “You see,” she said, “as a prisoner I must speak the truth. Ever since I have seen you I have wanted you to take me. Fuck me, Gunther. I’m your prisoner. You can do with me what you want. Fuck me, Gunther, please! I beg you to fuck me!”

“You are an American,” said Gunther.

“Please, Gunther,” she whispered.

“Do you not want candlelight?” asked Gunther, amused. “Soft music, sentiment, romance?”

He held her arms, she in the thin, white dress, under the single light bulb, high over their heads, under the tin roof, on the flat, thin striped mattress on an iron cot, in a stifling cell in Rhodesia.

“No,” she said, “Gunther. I want sex. I want you to be hard with me, show me no mercy. Throw me down on my back, you, loveless and powerful, and treat me as what I am, and only as what I am, your female prisoner. Please, Gunther!”

“You seem quite different from what I knew before,” said Gunther.

“I’m begging you to fuck me, Gunther,” pleaded Brenda Hamilton.

“You are a virgin,” said Gunther.

Brenda Hamilton stiffened. This would have been established in London, in William’s gynecological examination. Tears came to Brenda Hamilton’s eyes. The results had obviously been made available to the men.

Doubtless they were familiar with all of her records, her measurements.

“Yes,” said Hamilton. “I’m a virgin.”

“And twenty-four years old,” laughed Gunther.

“Yes!” wept Hamilton.

“Virgin,” laughed Gunther.

“I give you my virginity, Gunther,” she wept.

His hands were hard on her arms. She cried out with pain, he held her so tightly.

“You give nothing,” said Gunther. “If I want it, I will take it.”

“Yes, Gunther,” she whispered.

Suddenly Gunther thrust her from him. She was startled.

“Gunther!” she cried.

Gunther stood up. He seemed very tall.

“Please, Gunther!” she wept.

“Beg on your knees to be fucked,” said Gunther.

Brenda Hamilton slipped to her knees, on the floor, before him. She lifted her head to him, tears in her eyes. “I beg to be fucked,” she said.

“No,” said Gunther. He laughed.

Brenda Hamilton looked up at him, in disbelief.

Gunther turned and stepped away from her. Near the mirror he bent down and picked up the cardboard box of cosmetics. He threw the brush and comb on the cot. The box, with the rest of its contents, he held in his left hand.

She had not moved. With his right hand, one after the other, he jerked the clip earrings, those with pendants, from her ears. “Oh!” she cried, her head jerked to one side. “Oh!” she wept, her head jerked to the other side. She put her fingertips to her ear lobes and felt blood. “Gunther!” she wept. He dropped the earrings in the box. He shook the contents of the box before her. “You will not be needing these any longer,” he said. “They have done their work.”

Brenda Hamilton shook her head negatively. “Gunther,” she whispered. “I do not understand.”

“Wash yourself,” said Gunther. “Get rid of the powder, the makeup, the lipstick.”

She looked at him.

“Hurry,” he said.

Obediently, Brenda Hamilton went to the water bucket and filled the bow). With the tiny sliver of soap, and the reverse side of the piece of toweling allotted to her, she washed, and wiped, her face.

She faced him.

“Again,” he said. “And swiftly!” ‘

She turned again to the bowl, the soap, the towel. Quickly, clumsily, she cleaned her face. She then turned again to face him, to be inspected.

“Come here,” said Gunther.

With his hand in her hair, he inspected her. He bent to smell her shoulder. “The perfume,” he said, “lingers, but it will dissipate in a day or so.”

By the hair he threw her to the cot..

He went to the door and knocked twice, sharply.

Brenda heard the padlocks being removed from the staples, heard them fall on their chains against the door. Then the door was ajar.

“Gunther,” she said.

He turned to face her.

“Why did you not rape me?” she asked.

“It is not mine to rape you,” he said.

“Not-yours?” she asked.

“No,” said Gunther.

She looked at him, not understanding.

He turned away.

Quickly she rose from the cot. She went to him. She put her hand on his arm. He looked down into her eyes. “Gunther,” she whispered, looking down, “please, please do not tell anyone what occurred in this room tonight – 2’

“Kneel,” he said.

She knelt, looking up at him.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Do not tell anyone, please,” she said, looking up at him, “-how-how I acted.”

“How you acted?” he asked.

“What I said-what I did!” she whispered.

“On my honor as a gentleman?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, fervently, “on your honor as a gentleman!”

“I am afraid,” he smiled, “that I cannot comply.”

“I do not understand,” she said.

“Surely you must understand that a full report, a complete report, exact and detailed, must be made to Herjellsen and William?” he asked.

“Report?” she whispered. “No! No!”

Brenda Hamilton, aghast, kneeling, sank helplessly back on her heels. She knew she had exposed herself as a woman with sexual needs, publicly, incontrovertibly, as a woman with desperate sexual needs, exposed clearly, publicly, unrepudiably. She did not doubt that Gunther’s report would be objective, complete, accurate. She put her head in her hands, weeping.

You are coming around beautifully, Brenda,” said Gunther. “In my opinion you are, even of this instant, quite ready.”

She lowered her hands, lifting her tear-stained face to him. “Ready?” she said, numbly.

“Yes,” said Gunther, “quite ready.”

“I do not understand,” she said.

“Go to the cot,” he said. “Stand beside it.”

She did so.

I do not understand,” she said.

“Sit on the cot,” he said. She did so. “Sit prettily,” he said. “Put your knees together. Put your ankles together, and to one side. Turn your body to face me.” She did so.

“What did you mean `ready’, Gunther?” she asked. “I do not understand.”

“You are stupid,” he said. He regarded her sternly.

She put her eyes down. “Yes, Gunther,” she said.

He smiled, and turned away.

“Let me have the cosmetics,” she begged, suddenly, looking up. “Let me keep them here.”

They were tiny articles. She had little else to cling to.

Gunther turned to face her. He regarded her evenly. “You will not need them,” he said. “They have served their purpose.”

“Please, Gunther,” she begged.

“When you are transmitted,” said Gunther, “surely you must understand that you will be transmitted raw.”

“Transmitted!” she cried.

“Certainly,” said Gunther. “You are essential to the third series of experiments.”

“Oh, no!” she wept. She slipped from the cot, and fell to her knees on the floor. “No!”

Gunther laughed.

Wildly, desperately, Brenda Hamilton looked about, like a caught animal, terrified.

“No!” she cried, as Gunther snapped one of his handcuffs on her left wrist, and, pulling her, threw her half back over the cot.

“You will try to escape,” he told her.

He then snapped the other cuff about the curved iron bar at the head of the cot, securing her to it.

“This will discourage you,” he said.

Brenda Hamilton leaped to her feet, pulling at the cuff, jerking the iron cot. She was perfectly secured to it. Bent over, her hand at the curved iron bar, cuffed to it, she watched Gunther leave.

“There is no escape,” said Gunther, closing the door behind him.

She heard the locking of the door.

With the frenzy of a caught she-animal she jerked at the cuff. She was held perfectly. Moaning she threw herself on the cot her left wrist on the mattress, just below the bar. She heard the cuff slide on the iron. She jerked at it. And then she lay still, weeping.

There was no escape for Brenda Hamilton.