“Why don’t you transmit a man?” begged Hamilton.
“We think,” said Herjellsen, calmly, “they would kill a man.”
“Kill?” asked Hamilton.
“Surely,” said Herjellsen.
“That is why we are transmitting a woman,” said Gunther, “and one who is young and not unattractive.”
Hamilton looked down. It was the closest Gunther had ever come to complimenting her.
She looked up at Herjellsen. “How do you know they will not kill me?” she asked.
“We do not know,” said Herjellsen.
“What do you expect them to do with me?” asked Hamilton.
“If they have a language,” said Herjellsen, “you will not be able to speak it. You will be to them a stranger. You will not be known to them. You will have no kinship ties, no blood ties, with the group. You will be to them an outsider-a complete outsider. You will not be a member of their group.” Herjellsen smiled at her through the thick lenses. “Do you understand, my dear,” asked Herjellsen, “what that might mean-in a primitive situation-not being a member of the group?”
“What do you expect them to do with me!” demanded Hamilton.
“You will be transmitted naked,” he said, “and, as Gunther has observed, you are not unattractive.”
“What will they do with me?” whispered Hamilton.
“Make you a slave,” said Herjellsen.
Hamilton looked down, miserable.
“Drink your coffee,” said Gunther. Hamilton sipped the coffee.
“If you were a man,” said William, “they would probably kill you.”
“I do not want to be a slave,” whispered Hamilton. Then she looked up. “Slavery,” she said, “is a complex societal institution. Surely it could not exist in such a primitive society.”
“Apache Indians,” said Gunther, “in your own country, kept slaves.”
“Semantics is unimportant,” said Herjellsen.
“You will be an out-group female,” said Gunther. “Doubtless you will live, if you are permitted to live, on their sufferance, depending presumably on how well you please and serve them. You would be, of course, subject to barter and exchange.”
“-I would be a slave,” whispered Hamilton.
“Yes,” said Herjellsen.
“You have been training me for that?” asked Hamilton.
“When a man enters your room, what now is your inclination?” asked Herjellsen.
“Unthinkingly,” said Hamilton, “I feel an impulse to kneel.” She reddened. “You have made me kneel, as a prisoner, in the presence of males,” she said.
“This is to accustom you to deference and subservience to men,” said William.
“You must understand,” said Herjellsen, “that if you were transmitted as a modern woman, irritable, sexless, hostile, competitive, hating men, your opportunities for survival might be considerably less.”
“We do not know the patience of these men,” said Gunther. “They might not choose to tolerate such women.”
Hamilton shuddered.
“We have tried to teach you various things in your training, my dear,” said Herjellsen, not unkindly. “First we have tried to teach you that you are a beautiful female, which you are, and that this is a glorious and precious thing in its own right, and that being a woman is not the same as being a man. Each sex is astonishing and marvelous, but they are not the same. We have tried to teach you the weakness, the beauty, the vulnerability, the desirability of your womanhood. We have tried to teach you that you are a woman, and that this is deeply precious.”
Hamilton, though she did not speak, knew that in her incarceration, she had for the first time in her life, accepted herself as a woman, and had found joy in doing so.
These men, cruel as they might have been, had given her to herself.
She was grateful to them. She was no longer the little girl who had wanted to be a little boy, nor the young woman who had pretended her sex was unimportant, and had secretly wanted to be a man. She was now a woman happy in her womanhood. She looked at Gunther. She rejoiced that he was a man, not she. She wanted to be held by him, and had, helplessly, yieldingly. She wanted to be a woman in his arms.
Herjellsen put down his coffee. “It is our hope,” said Herjellsen, “that we have improved your chances for survival in an environment of primitive realities.”
“Other aspects of your training,” said William, “were reasonably straightforward. For example, the cleaning of the floor and walls of your quarters accustomed you to manual labor. The alignment of the cot was intended to induce discipline, attention to detail, neatness, compliance with the arbitrary will of a male.”
“Your punishments,” said Gunther, “have taught you to expect humiliation and pain if you are disobedient or insubordinate.”
“You have been very thorough, Gentlemen,” smiled Hamilton.
“We have perhaps saved your life,” said Herjellsen.
“It might all have gone for naught,” said Hamilton, “if I had escaped.”
“You had no opportunity to escape,” said Herjellsen.
Hamilton looked at him, puzzled.
“You were given utensils,” he said, “that you might attempt escape.”
“Oh,” said Hamilton.
“The first time, of course, we did not permit you to escape. I used muscle reading to locate the missing utensil. This was to induce a feeling of psychological helplessness in you. We were interested to see if this would crush you. Happily, it did not. That very evening, with a second utensil, you attempted your escape. You are a brave, fine woman, intelligent and resourceful. We were proud of you.”
“I told William, that night,” she said, “that no fork had been brought with the tray.”
William smiled.
“I thought I had fooled him,” she said.
“You were an excellent actress,” said William. “I had been informed, however, that your escape attempt would take place that night. Indeed, that is why the second fork was provided with your food that evening.”
“How did you know I would try that night?” asked Hamilton.
“It was simple, my dear,” said Herjellsen. “You were anxious to escape. You did not know how long you might have, before your portion of the experiment began. You would attempt to escape as soon as possible. Further, you would know that the missing fork would be noted, at least by morning. You would know, too, that its location, if hidden, could be revealed by the technique of muscle reading. Thus your attempt to escape, and a brave one it was, to essay the bush at night, alone, would take place that night.”
“We heard you digging out,” said William.
“We even interrupted the guard in his rounds,” said Herjellsen, “that you would have time to dig under the fence.”
“I hoped you weren’t shocked too severely,” said William.
“No,” she said. She looked at Gunther. “I was clumsy to touch the wire, wasn’t I, Gunther?” she said.
Gunther shrugged.
“We thought you would strike out for the road,” said Herjellsen.
“But Gunther, with a dark lantern, followed the trail for some time, to ascertain this,” said William.
“You followed me, Gunther?” she asked.
“For a time,” he said. “I then returned to the compound”
“It was not difficult to pick you up in the Land Rover,” said William.
“I left the road,” she said. “You followed.”
She recalled the frantic flight through the bush, the headlights of the Land Rover, the searchlight on its side, the sting of the anesthetic bullet.
“You were not difficult to take,” said Gunther. “But the hunt was enjoyable.”
“I’m pleased,” she said, acidly, “that I gave you sport.”
“It is pleasant,” said Gunther, “to hunt women.”