Hamilton tried to jerk away, but she only tightened the rope. It was now about her waist. Terrified she turned and tried to run but the rope, tight in her flesh, stopped her. She pulled against it; it burned in her belly. She turned and, looking up, faced the man. The man was not pleased. The rope was taut. She tried to back away. But his eyes stopped her. Then, angrily, he jerked her toward him. She spun, stumbled and then, her feet off the ground, swung, striking, hard, with her shoulder, the wall of stone. Swiftly, her burden nothing to his strength, he drew her from the pit. At the surface he threw her to his feet and, removing the rope from about her body, knotted it about her neck, making of it a tether. The two girls of the Weasel People, whom she had seen before, were standing near, apparently waiting to take charge of her. The shorter one took up the free end of the tether. The girl with the bright red hair held a switch. She struck Hamilton once with it. Hamilton scrambled to her feet. She felt a jerk on the tether and, stumbling, followed the shorter girl. The red-haired girl, following them, struck her twice more, to hurry her. Hamilton heard the bearded man replacing the grille. He was apparently no longer concerned with her. She was only a slave. The free women could handle her.
Hamilton found that the cylindrical pit covered with the roof of thatch, on poles, was at the edge of a clearing, which lay before some caves.
Some of the Weasel People were about. Some of the men, who had not been in the raiding party, as she was dragged past them, looked up swiftly considering her body, their eyes speculating on the pleasure that it, leaping to their touch, helpless in its slavery, might yield them. Women glared at her, their eyes stern and dour. One of them spit at her as she was dragged past. The red-haired girl struck her twice more with the switch.
Hamilton was dragged up a sloping stone ramp. On a ledge at its height, before the most imposing of the cave entrances, more than ten feet in height and width, was a block of stone, a throne. On this throne, a fur cape, from a cave bear, tied about his neck, grinning, his rifle across his knees, sat Gunther.
“Good afternoon, Doctor Hamilton,” said Gunther.
“Gunther,” she wept.
“Kneel, Slave,” said he.
She knelt before him. “Yes, Master,” she said. They spoke in English. The short girl stood near her, the tether gripped in her right hand, its free length looped, coiled several times, in the same hand.
At Gunther’s feet, naked, lay Cloud. Loops of rawhide, knotted, were fastened on her neck, as a collar. Behind Gunther and to his left, on another block of stone, sat William. Flower knelt beside him, on his left. She had been given a hide tunic, of the sort worn by the women of the
Weasel People. It was brief; but it concealed her breasts. About her neck, too, were loops of rawhide, knotted, forming on her, as on Cloud, a collar. But, too, with them about her neck, was a necklace of shells, and, too, about her left ankle was an anklet, it, too, of shells. Gunther and William had taken Cloud and Flower as their personal slaves.
“Where were your hunters?” asked Gunther.
“My hands,” said Hamilton. “I cannot feel them. Please, Gunther. I beg of you to untie me.”
“We did not meet your hunters,” said Gunther.
Hamilton put her head down.
Gunther slapped the rifle which lay across his knees. “It is fortunate for them,” said he, “we did not meet them, else they would have fallen swiftly to my bullets.”
Hamilton lifted her head. “Had you seen them,” she said.
“The Weasel People,” said Gunther, “eat human flesh. If you do not please me, I will feed you to them.”
“I will try to please you, Gunther,” said Hamilton. “I will! I will!”
Gunther laughed. “But I have other plans for you,” he said.
Hamilton regarded him, puzzled.
“Do you not notice,” asked Gunther, “that the rock upon which I sit is of shaped stone, and, so, too, is that on which William has his place?”
Hamilton said nothing.
“Did you not notice,” asked Gunther, “that the pit in which you were confined was formed of shaped stone?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And what then did you infer?” he asked.
“I did not understand it,” she whispered.
“Did you not see in its bottom tiny grains?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“And what did you make of them?” he grinned.
“Nothing,” she whispered.
“Females, even bright ones like yourself,” said Gunther, “are fools, fit only to be slaves.”
Hamilton was suddenly conscious of the tether on her neck, that she knelt, that she was stripped, that her wrists were confined helplessly.
“But it is impossible,” she whispered.
“Believe the evidence of your senses, little fool,” said he. “The pit in which you were confined is a storage pit used for the keeping of barley. The stones were shaped with saws and axes of bronze.”
“It cannot be,” she said. She had seen no tools or weapons of metal among the Weasel People, no evidence of agriculture. “Are we not exiled in the early Aurignacian Period,” she asked, “sometime during the late Pleistocene?”
“Herjellsen’s assertions, and the cultural and geological evidence,” said Gunther, “confirm that hypothesis.”
“Then, how?” breathed Hamilton.
“The discovery of metal, its utility, the discovery of food grains, their cultivation,” said Gunther, “I conjecture took place many times, perhaps hundreds of times, independently, perhaps centuries ago, perhaps again millennia in the future, given our current spatio-temporal coordinates. Such discoveries, by rational creatures, given an order of social organization, a tradition, would presumably be made many times.”
“But there is no evidence of such developments in this period,” said Hamilton. “Not even polished rock is known to the Men, nor, it seems, to the Weasel People.”
“Human groups are isolated,” said Gunther.
“But why would there be no evidence of such developments in this period?”
“The groups,” said Gunther, unpleasantly, “are small.” He grinned. “We may surmise they will not survive.”
Hamilton shuddered.
She supposed that it might be true that such developments as agriculture, before they became broadspread and irreversible, might have had tiny beginnings, perhaps over and over again failing, or being obliterated by fiercer peoples. Perhaps it would be only with the cultivation of the broader, lengthy river valleys, the Yangtze, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, with their capacity for supporting gigantic populations, that agriculture, and agricultural peoples, would have the numbers and power to become the dominant mode of humanity. For long millennia they might have remained the prey of hungry hunters, raiding from the hills and forests.
“I know of only one such group within trekking distance,” said Gunther. “In the language of the Weasel People, they are called the Dirt People. From them, from time to time, a bronze tool is purchased with fur, or supplies of barley. The Dirt People, incidentally, you will be interested to learn, herd sheep, though you are not familiar with the variety. They weave. They clothe themselves in wool.”
“They are quite advanced,” said Hamilton.
Gunther laughed unpleasantly.
Hamilton looked at Flower. She knelt beside William, smug. Cloud, lying at Gunther’s feet, would not meet her eyes.
“I am King here,” said Gunther.
“How many bullets do you have left?” asked Hamilton.
“Enough to keep me King,” said Gunther.
“And I,” asked Hamilton, gazing evenly at Gunther, “am I to be your queen?”
Gunther spoke abruptly. The girl with the bright red hair, behind Hamilton, suddenly began to strike her, viciously, with the supple switch. Hamilton cried out and fell, twisting, turning, struck across the belly, the legs, the back, by the switch, held by the short tether in the hand of the short, darkhaired girl. “Forgive the insolence of a slave, Master!” wept Hamilton. Gunther made a swift motion, and the beating stopped. Half choking, Hamilton was dragged again to her knees. She could scarcely see Gunther for the tears; she gasped for breath; her slave body, stung and ravaged by the switch, held in its tether, burning, shook with the misery of the sharp discipline which had been inflicted upon it.