A Different Flesh (6 page)

As if to make that pikestaff-plain, one of the sim infants lay beside her on a bed of grass and leaves. Terror stabbed Wingfield as an adult ran its hand down his daughter's chest and belly, but then it did the same to the hairy baby next to her. It stared at its palm, as if not believing what it had felt.

The sim Wingfield had wounded held up one of Joanna's hands, then that of the infant of its own kind. Then it held up their feet in the same way. The other sims grunted. Some looked at their own hands and feet, then toward Joanna's. Except for size and hairiness, there was not much difference between their members and hers.

But then the sim patted Joanna's smooth, rounded head, and that was nothing like what the tiny sim next to her had. Already its brow beetled bonily, and above it the skull quickly retreated. Noticing that, one of the adults rubbed her own receding brow. She scratched, for all the world as if lost in thought.

“What are they playing at?” Henry Dale whispered harshly. Wingfield, at a loss, could only shrug.

Caleb Lucas said, “If a tribe of devils set up housekeeping outside London and we wished to learn of what they were capable, were it not wise for us to seize on a small one, knowing full well a grown devil would drag us straight to perdition?”

“Why are you dragging in devils?” Dale did not have the type of mind that quickly grasped analogies.

Allan Cooper did. “Youngster, meseems you've thrown your dart dead center,” he said. “To the sodding sims, we must be devils or worse.” He stopped, then went on, sounding surprised at where that line of thought was taking him, “Which would make them men of a sort, not so? I'd not've believed it.”

Wingfield paid more attention to Joanna than to the argument. She was still crying, but did not seem in dreadful distress. It was her hungry cry, not the sharper, shriller one she used when gas pained her or something external upset her.

The female sim that had scratched its head might have been the mother of the infant with whom Joanna was being compared. It took Joanna away from the wounded sim and lifted her to a breast. The baby nursed as eagerly as if it had been Anne. Wingfield told himself that was something his wife never needed to know.

He invented and discarded scheme after scheme for rescuing his daughter. The trouble was that the sims would not leave her alone. Even while she was feeding, they kept coming up to stare at her and touch her. She ate on, blissfully oblivious to everything but the nipple.

“By God, I
shall
get her back,” Wingfield said.

He spoke loud enough to distract Allan Cooper. “What? How?” the guard said.

And then Wingfield knew what he had to do. “Do you three cover me with your weapons,” he said, “and should the sims harm Joanna or should I fall, do as you deem best. Otherwise, I conjure you not to shoot.” Before his comrades' protests could more than begin, he got up from his concealment and walked into the light of the sims' fire.

The first sim to see him let out a hoot of alarm that made the rest of the band whip their heads around. He walked slowly toward the fire, his hands empty and open; he had left his crossbow behind when he rose.

Had the sims chosen to, they could have slain him at any instant. He knew that. His feet hardly seemed to touch the ground; they were light with the liquid springiness fear gives. But the strange unreality of the moment gripped the sims no less than him. Never before had an Englishman come to them alone and unarmed (or so they must have thought, for the pistols in his boots did not show—in truth, he had forgotten them himself).

But then, the sims had never stolen a baby before.

Females snatched up youngsters and bundled them away in their arms as Wingfield passed. Lucas had it right, he thought wryly; it was as if Satan had appeared, all reeking of brimstone, among the Jamestown cabins.

He stopped a few feet in front of the male he had fought. That one had stooped to grasp a sharp stone; many of them lay in the dirt round the fire. But the sim made no move to attack. It waited, to see what Wingfield would do.

The Englishman was not sure if the sim knew him. He pointed to the plastered-over cut he had given; to the bruise and scab on his own forehead; to Joanna, who was still nursing at the female sim's breast. He repeated the gestures, once, twice.

The sim's broad nostrils flared. Its mouth came open, revealing large, strong teeth. It pointed from Wingfield to Joanna, gave a questioning grunt.

“Aye, that's my daughter,” Wingfield said excitedly. The words could not have meant anything to the sim, but the animated tone did. It grunted again.

Wingfield dug in his pouch, found a strip of smoked meat, and tossed it to the sim. The sim sniffed warily, then took a bite. Its massive jaw let it tear and chew at the leathery stuff where the Englishman had to nibble and gnaw, and made its smile afterward a fearsome thing.

When Joanna finally relinquished the nipple, the sim holding her swung her up to its shoulder and began pounding her on the back. The treatment was rougher than Wingfield would have liked, but was soon rewarded with a hearty belch. The female sim began to rock Joanna, much as Anne would have.

Wingfield pointed to his daughter, to himself, and then back in the direction of Jamestown. As best he could, he pantomimed taking Joanna home. When he was done, he folded his arms and waited expectantly, trying to convey the attitude that nothing but going along with his wishes was even conceivable.

Had he hesitated, faltered for an instant, he would have lost everything. As it was, that aura of perfect confidence gave him his way. None of the sims moved to stop the female when it came forward and set Joanna in his arms.

He bowed to it as he might have to a great lady of the court, to the sim he had fought as to an earl. Holding Joanna tightly to him, he backed slowly toward the brush where his companions waited. He expected the tableau to break up at any moment, but it held. The sims watched him go, the firelight reflecting red from their eyes.

He was close to the place from which he had come when Caleb Lucas said from the bushes, “Splendidly done, oh, splendidly, Edward!” His voice was a thread of whisper; none of the sims could have heard it.

“Aye, you have the girl, and good for you.” Henry Dale did not try to hold his voice down. Indeed, he rose from concealment. “Now to teach the vermin who stole her the price of their folly.” He aimed a pistol at the sims behind Wingfield.

“No, you fool!” Lucas shouted. He lunged for Dale at the same moment the sims cried out in fear, fury, and betrayal. Too late—the pistol roared, belching flame and smoke. The lead ball struck home with a noise like a great slap. The sim it hit shrieked, briefly.

With a lithe twist, Dale slipped away from Caleb Lucas. His hand darted into his boot-top for his other pistol. The second shot was less deliberately aimed, but not a miss. This time the screams of pain went on and on.

By then Wingfield was among the bushes. Behind him, the sims were boiling like ants whose nest has been stirred with a stick. Some scrambled for cover; others, bolder, came rushing after the Englishman. A stone crashed against greenery mere inches from his head.

“No help for it now,” Henry Dale said cheerfully, bringing up his crossbow. The bolt smote a charging sim square in the chest. The sim staggered, hands clutching at the short shaft of death. It pitched forward on its face.

More rocks flew. Wingfield turned to one side, to try to shield Joanna with his body.

Allan Cooper got to his feet. “God damn you to hell for what you make me do,” he snarled at Dale. He fired one pistol, then a second, then his crossbow.

A sharpened stone tore Wingfield's breeches, cut his thigh. Had it hit squarely, it would have crippled him. The sims were howling like lost souls, lost angry souls. Dale was right—no help for it now, Wingfield saw. His pistol bucked when he fired one-handed. He did not know whether he hit or missed. In a way, he hoped he had missed. That did not stop him from drawing his other gun.

“You purposed this all along, Henry,” he shouted above the din.

“Aye, and own it proudly.” Dale dropped another sim with a second crossbow bolt. He turned to kick Caleb Lucas in the ribs. “Fight 'em, curse you! They'll have the meat from your bones now as happily as from mine.”

“No need for this, no need,” Lucas gasped, swearing and sobbing by turns. But whether or not that was true, he realized, as Wingfield had, that there was no unbaking a bread. His pistols barked, one after the other.

But the sims on their home ground were not the skulking creatures they were near Jamestown. Though half a dozen lay dead or wounded, the rest, male and female together, kept up the barrage of stones. Their missiles were not so deadly as the Englishmen's, but they loosed them far more often.

One landed with a meaty thud. Allan Cooper, his face a mask of gore, crumpled slowly to the ground.

Dale shot his crossbow again, wounded another sim. He turned to Wingfield, who was struggling to fit another bolt into his weapon's groove. “Go on!” he shouted. “You have what you came for. I'll hold the sims. As you say, I am to blame here.”

“But—”

Dale whipped out his rapier. Its point flickered in front of Wingfield's face. “Go! Aye, and you, Caleb. I promise, I shall give the brutes enough fight and chase to distract 'em from you.”

He sprang into the clearing, rushing the startled sims. One swung a stout branch at him. Graceful as a dancer, he ducked, then thrust out to impale his attacker. The sim gave a bubbling shriek; blood gushed from its mouth.

“Go!” Dale yelled again.

Without Joanna, Wingfield would have stood by the other Englishman no matter what he said. When she squalled at the rough treatment she was getting, though, he scrambled away into the woods. Lucas followed a few seconds later.

For as long as they could, they looked back at Henry Dale. After that first one, no sim dared come within reach of his sword. He stayed in the clearing for what seemed an impossibly long time, stones flying all around him.

At last he turned. “Catch me if you can!” he shouted, brandishing his rapier. Wingfield saw how he limped as he ran; not every stone had missed. Dale crashed through the undergrowth, going in a different direction from his comrades and making no effort to move quietly. His defiant cries rang through the night. So did the sims' bellows of rage as they pursued him.

“You make for home,” Caleb Lucas urged Wingfield. “I will give Henry such help as I may.”

“They will surely slay you,” Wingfield said, but he knew he would not hold Lucas back. Had their positions been reversed, he would not have wanted the youngster to try to stop him.

Just then, the sims' shouts rose in a goblin chorus of triumph. Screams punctuated it, not all from an English throat. As Dale had promised, he did not die easily. Caleb Lucas sobbed.

“Come,” Wingfield said softly, his own voice breaking. “Now we have but to save ourselves, any way we may.”

Wingfield lay on the straw pallet in his cabin, having scant energy for anything more. After the desperate dash back to Jamestown, he was gaunt rather than lean. Insect bites blotched his face and arms; leeches had clung to his legs when he and Lucas plunged into the swamps to elude the sims.

The worshipful looks Anne sent his way went far to ease the memory of his privations. She had hardly let Joanna out of her arms since her husband had come stumbling home the night before. The baby was nursing again. She had done little else, once reunited with her mother.

The sound of weeping came through the doorway. That too had gone on since the night before, when Claire Cooper learned she was a widow.

Anne sighed. “So high a price—two good men lost, to rescue a single babe.”

Wingfield nodded. Lucas and he had agreed there was no point to speaking ill of the dead. Let Henry Dale be remembered as a hero; with his folly forgotten, the tale of his undoubted bravery at the end of his time would inspire those who still lived.

Wingfield did say, “Aye, we lost a pair, but the sims paid far dearer than we.” That far, at least, Dale had been right, he thought, though better none had died on either side. He went on, “Their bands range widely, but they are small; this one took a hurt from which 'twill be years recovering.”

“Good!” Anne said, a fierce light in her eyes. “The sooner those foul animals are driven far from the haunts of men, the sooner we sleep at our ease of nights.”

“As you've said, my dear, in the past I've taken both sides of that question, but now I will name the sims men.” Wingfield spoke reluctantly but firmly.

“How can you think that, after what your own daughter suffered at their hands?” Anne ran her hand protectively over Joanna's scanty yellow hair.

“Anne, were they beasts they would have slain her. Instead, they kept her hale as best they might. Caleb feels they sought to learn of us from her, as the Spaniards have fetched sims back to Europe for learned men to study. Having thought much on what I saw, I can draw no other conclusion than that he is right.”

His wife remained unconvinced. “Man or beast, what boots it in the end? We should rout out savages no less than wild beasts—or with all the greater vigor, as presenting more danger to us and ours.”

“But if they be men, it were wrong to slay them out of hand, as one would so many wild dogs: our souls should suffer for't.”

“What then?”

“I cannot say,” Wingfield admitted. He had not thought it through; he was still exhausted from his adventures, and in any case he did not seek a quarrel with his wife. When he continued, he was musing aloud: “They are less than we; that no one may deny. Perhaps God has set them here as our natural servants. If that be so, 'twere a wicked waste to flout His will by expunging them from the earth.”

To his relief, Anne let it go with a noncommittal “Hmm.” She had a strong will of her own, and was not usually shy about expressing it, but with Joanna safely home she did not really care what her husband believed.