A Different Flesh (26 page)

When he woke the next morning, he rolled up his blanket and went over to wash in a creek that ran near the clearing. The water was bitterly cold; he shivered all the way back to his campfire, and stood gratefully in front of it until he was dry. No wonder sims did not bathe, he thought as he dressed. And this was still August, with the days hot and muggy. In another month, though, snow could start falling among the peaks of the Rockies, the ultimate source of his little stream. He would have to think about heading back to inhabited country soon, unless he wanted to spend a long, cold winter living with the sims.

“Not bloody likely,” he said out loud. No trapper had a lot of use for his fellow humans, but Quick ached to spend a couple of days with good bouncy company in a bordello. He was bored with his hand.

His next set of traps surrounded a clearing a few miles northwest of this one. The way was blazed, and to guide him if he got lost he had a sketch map and a list of landmarks he had made when he first scouted this territory. Except for the ones he had given them, none of the places hereabouts had names. No other man, so far as he knew, had seen them.

The behavior of the local sims certainly argued for that. They had neither fled from him on his first appearance nor attacked him on sight. Having no hostile memories to overcome made establishing himself much easier than it would have been otherwise.

As if thinking of the sims had conjured them up, Quick heard a crashing in the undergrowth off to one side of him and the hoarse, excited cries of several males. They must have been chasing something big, most likely a deer. They were tireless trackers, and more skilled even than an out-doorsman like Henry Quick. They had no guns with which to kill at a distance, but had to rely on thrown stones and spears either tipped with fire-hardened wood or made from a knife, gained in trade, lashed to the end of a sapling.

The sims' voices rose in a chorus of triumph. They would eat well tonight, and for the next couple of days. Quick's stomach rumbled. He was not so sure of a good meal himself. When he got to the clearing that formed the center for his next set of traps, he set down his pack and went out to do some hunting of his own.

He came back near sunset, seething with frustration beneath the calm shell he cultivated. The sims had had more luck than he. He was carrying a squirrel by the tail, but there wasn't much meat on a squirrel. He made a fire, coated the squirrel with wet clay, and set it among the flames to bake.

When he thought it was done, he nudged it out of the fire with a stick and began breaking the now-hard clay with the hilt of his dagger. The squirrel's fur and skin came away with the clay, leaving behind sweet, tender meat ready to eat.

Quick, unfortunately, also remained quite ready to eat after the squirrel was gone. Along with his trade goods, he still had about ten pounds of dried, smoked buffalo meat in his pack. He worried every time he decided to gnaw on a strip—he might need it later. He was only a little hungry now, he told himself severely. He turned his back on the pack, avoiding temptation.

A noise in the darkness beyond the edge of the clearing sent ice darting up his back and made him forget his belly. He grabbed for his rifle, peering out to see what sort of beast was prowling round his camp. Light came back red from wolves' eyes, green from those of a spearfang. Even with the gun in his hand, he shivered at the thought of confronting one of the great cats at night.

Try as he would, he saw nothing. A moment later, he realized why. A male sim stepped into the flickering circle of light his campfire threw. Like the eyes of humans, sims' eyes did not reflect the light that reached them.

The male came toward him slowly, deliberately. He saw it was the one that had brought him the marten fur. It carried its knife in one hand, the hatchet he had traded it in the other. Neither weapon was raised, and the sim showed no hostility. Still, Quick stayed wary. No sim had ever visited him at night before.

He did not set aside his rifle until the sim put down what it carried. Even then he had misgivings. Sims were stronger than people; if this one chose to grapple with him, he was in trouble.

But it had only freed its hands so it could use signs.
You give food
, it signed, amplifying,
Meat. You give to female
.

Yes
, Quick agreed.
I not eat fox, not want to
—He hesitated. Hand-talk had no way to express
waste;
the concept was alien to the sim mind.
—put aside
, he finished lamely.

Why not eat fox? Meat good
, the sim signed, and the trapper's tight nerves finally eased a bit. Still, the male's next question took him by surprise:
Hungry now
?

Yes
, he signed again, with a rueful glance in the direction he had thrown the squirrel's small bones.

Then he was surprised all over again, for the sim signed,
You come with me to our fire, eat there
.

Go there
? he asked, not quite believing he had seen correctly. He had always made a point of staying away from the clearing the sims used as their own. That was partly what with people he would have called politeness, but more the simple desire not to draw unwelcome attention to himself. Well, he seemed to have drawn attention, but not of the unwelcome sort.

Come to our fire
, the sim repeated. Although almost every wild band owned flint and steel now, fire and the memory of the time when they had not been able to make it still loomed large in sims' lives.
Fire
meant to this male what
home
meant to Henry Quick.

I come
, he signed, stepping toward the sim.

It picked up its weapons, signed
Follow
, and plunged into the woods. Quick followed, as best he could. Again he was reminded how wild sims perforce became masters of forest craft. The sim glided along so quietly that he felt slow and clumsy by comparison; sometimes only its lingering odor let him stay close to it. He suspected it could have gone faster had it not been leading him.

Blinking on in front of his nose, a firefly made him jump. Other than that, the forest was impenetrably dark. The sim pressed on with perfect confidence.

Just when Quick was beginning to wonder if anything lay behind that confidence, he scented woodsmoke on the breeze. The sim must also have caught the smell, for it said
“Hoo!”
—a breathy, throaty noise, the first sound it had made all night—and hurried ahead. A moment later, Quick smelled charring meat along with the smoke. He hurried too, and soon saw light ahead.

The male hooted before it entered the clearing where its band was staying. Answering calls came back to it. They made Henry Quick think of shouts heard on the breeze, with the words blown away but the sense—here, welcome—remaining.

Quiet fell as the trapper stepped into the open area. With the male sims, it was a measuring sort of silence. Quick had encountered most of the dozen or so of them as they and he hunted; he had traded tools for furs with more than half of them. Meeting them as a group, though, emphasized the differences between him and them as solitary contacts could not.

The females and youngsters, on the other hand, had never seen him before, except for the one to whom he'd given the fox carcass. Their stillness was more than a little fearful. But they were curious too. A child (for the life of him, Quick could find no better word, especially since young sims, like grown females, had a more human semblance than did grown males) of perhaps seven came up to him. It touched his suede trousers and tunic, then looked up at him, the picture of puzzlement.
Strange skin
, it signed.

A couple of males growled warningly, and one hefted a stone as Quick stretched out his arm. All he did, though, was roll up the fringed sleeve of his tunic to show what lay beneath.
No hair
, he signed. That was not strictly true, but by sim standards he might as well have been bald.
Put on animal skins instead. Warm
.

The youngster felt the trapper's bare skin, jerked its hand away with a grimace.
Hair better
, it signed.

Startled, Quick burst out laughing. The sims laughed too, loud and long. The male that had been holding a stone threw it on the ground, came over to Quick, and hugged him hard enough to make his ribs creak. He wished he could have taken more credit for winning acceptance, but was glad to get it no matter how it came.

The male that had brought him tugged him toward the fire.
Eat
, it signed, and the trapper needed no further invitation.

One leg still remained from the carcass of a buck—likely, Quick thought, the one he had heard the males chasing. The rest was bones, the big ones split to get out the marrow and the skull crushed for the sake of the brains.

A grizzled male had charge of the meat. As Henry Quick came over, the sim picked up a chipped stone and began to carve off a chunk for him. He started to offer his own steel knife instead, but stopped when he saw the stone tool gliding through the leg of venison. A steel knife lasted almost forever, was easy to hone again and again, and did not chip. None of that, however, meant stone could not be sharp.

Quick's eyes widened slightly at the size of the piece the old sim gave him.
Too much
, he signed.
Not eat all
.

The sim shrugged and grunted.
Someone
, it answered. Someone will if you don't, Quick thought it meant. Even the single gesture had been hesitant. The trapper wondered when hand-talk had reached this band. Maybe it was so recently that the old sim had already been grown and only learned it imperfectly, as a man will have trouble speaking a foreign language he acquires after his youth.

Watching the meat bubble and brown as he held it on a stick over the fire drove such speculation from his mind. Beside him, the sim that had brought him here was roasting an even larger piece. Less patient with cooking than he, it jerked its gobbet away from the flames, tossed it from hand to hand until it was cool enough to eat, then tore off one great bite after another. The venison disappeared with astonishing haste.

Quick sat beside the sim and tried valiantly to match its pace, but its bigger teeth and bigger appetite meant he was outclassed. Since they starved so much of the time, sims made the most of good days like this one. The trapper was groaningly full by the time half his piece was gone, yet by then the male had almost finished and showed no signs of slowing down.

He was thinking of offering it what was left of his venison when another sim touched him on the knee. He turned round to see the female he had met the day before. The female held out its left hand in a begging gesture, signing
Meat
? with the right.

He cut off a piece and gave it to the sim. Two youngsters were begging from the male next to him, which gave them some scraps. A little one that could hardly toddle came up to one of the children with its hand out, and in turn received a few tiny fragments of meat. It stared at the trapper as it ate.

The male turned to Quick.
More
, it signed, getting up and walking over to pluck a handful of whortleberries off a pile of branches heavy with the large, purple-blue fruit. The trapper ate a few himself; their tart sweetness cut through the greasy film coating the inside of his mouth.

Both males and females freely took the berries; no begging was involved. Only dearly won meat required that. Though they usually shared their prey, the males who hunted had some prior claim on it. With a burst of pride that made him feel foolish a moment later, Quick realized the female sim had treated him as if he were a hunter himself, a dominant member of the band.

Despite that acceptance, he remained an object of curiosity. That, he knew, was natural enough—he was probably the first
live
creature ever to share the band's campsite. If they changed their minds about him, he might not stay that way, either. Sims sometimes ate sims from other bands and, when they could catch them, people too. A good many such grisly episodes punctuated man's westward expansion across America.

But this group found him only interesting. The grizzled elder that tended the meat ran its hands over his clothes, as fascinated by the soft suede as the youngster had been.
Make
, it signed, and then, after obvious painful groping for the sign,
How
?

Skins cut to arms, legs, chest. Not stink—rub tree bark—not any tree, right tree
. As a trapper, he knew how to tan hides; what he could not do was put it in terms the sim understood.
Show one day
, he promised. If a sim saw something done, it could copy as well as a human. But sims would not improve on a process, as humans might.

Show
, the old sim agreed. It pointed to Quick's fancy silver belt buckle.
Show
?

Regretfully, he shook his head. He knew nothing of metalworking, save that it was too complex for the subhumans to fathom.

His person fascinated the sims as much as his gear. They pointed at his gray eyes, then at their own, which were uniformly dark. He had to roll up his sleeve several times, and take off his boots to show that under them his feet were like theirs, if less battered and callused. His forehead, though, intrigued the sims most. They kept patting at it to compare it to their own heads, which sloped sharply back from their brow-ridges instead of rising.

He shuddered at the idea of eking out a living with so few resources to use to challenge nature. He shuddered even more when he thought of doing so through the winters hereabouts. On the face of it, it seemed impossible. The female to whom he had given the fox carcass was close by. He signed,
How live, when snow come
?

Bad
, the sim signed, repeating for emphasis.
Hard. Cold. Hungry. Many die in cold
. A shiver illustrated the idea. Far more fluent with her signs than the elder had been, the female went on,
Dens like bears'—brush, branches. Still cold. Make fire. Still cold. Cold. Cold. Cold
. The sim's eyes widened with dread. Winter was a worse enemy than spearfang or bear.