Dean Ing - The Man-Kzin Wars 02

He told her about the men hunting deer, and that it must stop; they must make do without meat for awhile. She translated. The old men conferred, and their gesture for “no” was the same as Ruth's. They replied through Ruth that young men had always hunted, and always would.

He told them that the animals were his, and they must not take what belonged to another. The old men said they could see that he felt in his head the animals were his, but no one owned the great mother land, and no one could own her children. They felt much bad for him. He was a very, very great shaman, but not so good at telling gentles how to live.

With great care, having chosen the names Cloud and Gimp for the old fellows, he explained that if many animals were killed, soon there would be no more. One day when many little animals were born, he would let them hunt the older ones.

The gist of their reply was this: Locklear obviously thought he was right, but they were older and therefore wiser. And because they had never run out of game no matter how much they killed, they never could run out of game. If it hadn't already happened, it wouldn't ever happen.

Abruptly, Locklear motioned to Cloud and had Ruth translate: he could prove the scarcity of game if Cloud would ride the scooter as Ruth and Minuteman had ridden it.

Much silent discussion and some out loud. Then old Cloud climbed aboard and in a moment, the scooter was above the trees.

From a mile up, they could identify most of the game animals, especially herd beasts in open plains. There weren't many to see. “No babies at all,” Locklear said, trying to make gestures for “small.”

“Cloud, gentles must wait until babies are born.” The old fellow seemed to understand Locklear's thoughts well enough, and spoke a bit of gibberish, but his head gesture was a Neanderthal “no.”

Locklear, furious now, used the verniers with abandon. The scooter fled across parched arroyo and broken hill, closer to the ground and now so fast that Locklear himself began to feel nervous. Old Cloud sensed his unease, grasping handholds with gnarled knuckles and hunkering down, and Locklear knew a savage elation. Serve the old bastard right if I splattered him all over Newduvai . And then he saw the old man staring at his eyes, and knew that the thought had been received.

“No, I won't do it,” he said. But a part of him had wanted to; still wanted to out of sheer frustration. Cloud's face was a rigid mask of fear, big teeth showing, and Locklear slowed the scooter as he approached the encampment again.

Cloud did not wait for the vehicle to settle, but debarked as fast as painful old joints would permit and stood facing his followers without a sound.

After a moment, with dozens of Neanderthals staring in stunned silence, they all turned their backs, a wave of moans rising from every throat. Ruth hesitated, but she too faced away from Locklear.

“Ruth! No hurt Cloud. Locklear no like hurt gentles.”

The moans continued as Cloud strode away. “Locklear need to talk to Ruth!” And then as the entire tribe began to walk away, he raised his voice: “No hurt gentles, Ruth!”

She stopped, but would not look at him as she replied. “Cloud say new people hurt gentles and not know. Locklear hurt Cloud before, want kill Cloud. Locklear go soon soon,” she finished in a sob. Suddenly, then, she was running to catch the others.

Some of the men were groping for spears now. Locklear did not wait to see what they might do with them. A half-hour later he was using the dolly in the crypt, ranking cage upon cage just inside the obscuring film. With several lion cages stacked like bricks at the entrance, no sensible Neanderthal would go a step further. Later, he could use disassembled stasis units as booby traps as he had done on Kzersatz. But it was nearly dark when he finished, and Locklear was hurrying. Now, for the first time ever on Newduvai, he felt gooseflesh when he thought of camping in the open.

For days, he considered a return to Kzersatz in the lifeboat, meanwhile improving the cabin with Loli's help. He got that help very simply, by refusing to let her sleep in her stasis cage unless she did help. Loli was very bright, and learned his language quickly because she could not rely on telepathy. Operating on the sour-grape theory, he told himself that Ruth had been mud-fence ugly; he hadn't felt any real affection for a Neanderthal bimbo. Not really …

He managed to ignore Loli's budding charms by reminding himself that she was no more than twelve or so, and gradually she began to trust him. He wondered how much that trust would suffer if she found he was taking her from stasis only on the days he needed help.

As the days faded into weeks, the cabin became a two-room affair with a connecting passage for firewood and storage. Loli, after endless scraping and soaking of the stiff goat hide in acorn water, fashioned herself a one-piece garment. She taught Locklear how repeated boiling turned acorns into edible nuts, and wove mats of plaited grass for the cabin.

He let her roam in search of small game once a week until the day she returned empty-handed. He was cutting hinge material of stainless steel from a stasis cage with Kzin shears at the time, and smiled. “Don't feel bad, Loli. There's plenty of meat in storage.” The more he used complete sentences, the more she seemed to be picking up the lingo.

She shrugged, picking at a scab on one of her little feet. “Loli not hurt. Gentles hunt Loli.” She read his stare correctly. “Gentles not try to hurt Loli; this many follow and hide,” she said, holding up four fingers and making a comical pantomime of a stealthy hunter.

He held up four fingers. “Four,” he reminded her. “Did they follow you here?”

“Maybe want to follow Loli here,” she said, grinning. “Loli think much. Loli go far far—”

“Very far,” he corrected.

“Very far to dry place, gentles no follow feet there. Loli hide, run very far where gentles, not see. Come back to Locklear.”

Yes, they'd have trouble tracking her through those desert patches, he realized, and she could've doubled back unseen in the arroyos. Or she might have been followed after all. “Loli is smart,” he said, patting her shoulder, “but gentles are smart, too. Gentles maybe want to hurt Locklear.”

“Gentles cover big holes, spears in holes, come back, maybe find kill animal. Maybe kill Locklear.”

Yeah, they'd do it that way. Or maybe set a fire to burn him out of the cabin. “Loli, would you feel bad if the gentles killed me?”

In her vast innocence, Loli thought about it before answering. “Little while, yes. Loli don't like to live alone. Gentles all time like to play,” she said, with a bump-and-grind routine so outrageous that he burst out laughing. “Locklear don't trade food for play,” she added, making it obvious that Neanderthal men did.

“Not until Loli is older,” he said with brutal honesty.

“Loli is a woman,” she said, pouting as though he had slandered her.

To shift away from this dangerous topic he said, “Yes, and you can help me make this place safe from gentles.” That was the day he began teaching the girl how to disassemble cages for their most potent parts, the grav polarizers and stasis units.

They burned off the surrounding ground cover bit by bit during the nights to avoid telltale smoke, and Loli assured him that Neanderthals never ventured from camp on nights as dark as Newduvai's. Sooner or later, he knew, they were bound to discover his little homestead and he intended to make it a place of terrifying magics.

As luck would have it, he had over two months to prepare before a far more potent new magic thundered across the sky of Newduvai.