John Norman - Time Slave

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.”