Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

Kenton watched the stars spin slowly through the sky. When he reckoned it was midnight, he woke Charles, stripped off his breeches and tunic, and rolled himself in his blanket. Despite exhaustion, his whirling thoughts kept him some time awake. This once, he thought, he would not have minded swapping wits with his sim.

Sunrise woke the scout. Seeing him stir, Charles nodded his way.

All good, the sim signed. Spearfang stay away.

"Aye, that's good enough for me," Kenton said. Charles nodded and built up the fire while Kenton, sighing, stretched and dressed. Jokes involving wordplay were wasted on sims, though Charles had laughed like a loon when the scout went sprawling over a root a couple of days earlier. The turkey was still almost as good as it had been the night before. Munching on bulbs of wild onion between bites went a long way toward hiding the slight gamy taste the meat had acquired.

The way west was downhill now; the explorer and his sim had passed the watershed not long before they made camp. The little stream by which they had built their fire ran westward, not comfortably toward the Atlantic like every other waterway with which Kenton was familiar.

The scout strode along easily, working out the kinks a night's sleep on the ground had put in his muscles. His mouth twisted. A few years ago, he would have felt no aches, no matter what he did. But his light-brown hair was beginning to be frosted with gray, and to recede at the temples.

Kenton was proud the governor had chosen him for this first western journey, rather than some man still in his twenties. "Oh, aye, a youngster might travel faster and see a bit more," Lord Emerson said,

"but you're more likely to return and tell us of it."

He laughed out loud. He wondered what Lord Emerson would have said after learning of his spearfang-hunting plans. Something pungent and memorable no doubt.

Charles stopped with a perplexed grunt very much the sort of sound a true man might have made. Ahead strange sound, he signed.

Kenton listened, but heard nothing. He shrugged. His eyes were as sharp as the sims, but Charles had very good ears. They were surely not a match for a hound's, nor was the sims sense of smel , but Charles could communicate what he sensed in a way no animal could match.

"Far or close?" the scout asked.

Not close.

"We'll go on, then," Kenton decided. After a few hundred cautious yards, he heard the rumble too, or perhaps felt would have been the better word for it. He thought of distant thunder that went on and on, but the day was clear. - He wondered if he was hearing a waterfall far away.

"Kenton's Falls," he said, trying out the sound. He liked it.

Charles turned to look at him, then made as if to stumble over a root.

The sim got up with a sly grin on his face. Kenton laughed too.

Charles had made a pun after all, even if unintentionally.

The game path they were following twisted southward bringing the edge of a large clearing into view. Kenton stared in open-mouthed wonder at the teeming, milling bur&lo the break in the trees revealed.

There were more of them than Virginia herds had cattle. The beasts were of two sorts. The short-horned kind, with its hump and shaggy mane, was also fairly common east of the mountains; it closely resembled the familiar wisent of Europe. The other variety was larger and grander, with horns sweeping out from its head in a formidable defensive arc. Only stragglers of that sort reached Virginia. They were notoriously dangerous to hunt, being quicker and stronger than their more common cousins.

The rumble the sim and scout had heard was coming from the clearing; it was the pounding of innumerable buffalo hooves on the turf. Charles poinoed to the herd, signing, Good hunting. Good eating

"Good hunting indeed," Kenton said. Its meat smoked over a fire, a single buffalo could feed Charles and him for weeks. But the scout saw no need for that much work. With the big beasts so plentiful, it would be easy to kil one whenever they needed fresh meat.

Good hunting in another way also, the scout realized. A herd this size would surely draw wolves and spearfangs to prey on stragglers.

Kenton smiled in anticipation. He would prey on them.

"Let's get some meat," Kenton said matter-of-factly. Charles nodded and slipped off the trail into the trees. The scout followed.

He could just as well have led; the sim and he were equal y skilled in woodscraft But he would not go wrong letting Charles pick a spot from which to shoot.

Once away from the trail, the scout felt as though the forest had swallowed him. The crowns of the trees overhead hid the sun; light came through them wan, green, and shifting. Shrubs and bushes grew thick enough to reduce vision to a few yards, but not enough to impede progress much. The air was cool, moist, and still, with the smell of earth and growing things.

Steering by the patterns of moss and other subtle signs, Charles and Kenton reached the clearing they had spied in the distance. It was even larger than the scout had thought, and ful of buffalo. More entered by way of a game track to the north that was wider than most Virginia roads; others took the trail south and west out.

Charles picked a vantage point where the forest projected a little into the clearing, giving Kenton a broad view and a chance to pick his target at leisure. "Good job," the scout murmured. Charles wriggled with pleasure at the praise like a patted hound.

But Kenton knew there was more to the sims glee than any dog would have felt. Charles's reasoning was slower and far less accurate than a man's, but it was enough for him to understand how and why he had pleased the scout. People who treated their sims like cattle or other beasts of burden often had them run away.

Kenton shook his head slightly as he aimed at a plump young buffalo not thirty yards away. If Gharles wanted to flee on this journey, he had his chance every night.

The flintlock bucked against the scout's shoulder, though the long barrel of soft iron reduced the recoil. Buffalo heads sprang up at the report; the animals' startled snorts filled the clearing. Then the buffalo were running, and Kenton felt the ground shudder under his feet.

If the sound of the beasts' hooves had been distant thunder before, now the scout heard the roar as if in the center of a cloudburst. Charles was shouting, but Kenton only saw his open mouth, his cry was lost in the din of the stampede.

The cow the scout had shot tried to join the panic rush, despite the blood that gushed from its shoulder just below the hump and soaked its shaggy brown hair. After half a dozen lurching strides, blood also poured from its mouth and nose. It swayed and fel .

Several other buffalo, most of them calves, were down, trampled, when Kenton and Charles went out into the clearing, which was now almost empty. The scout took the precaution of reloading, this time with a double charge, before he emerged from the woods, in case one of the buffalo stil on their feet should decide to charge.

Crows and foxes began feasting while Charles was still cutting two large chunks of meat from the tender, fat-rich hump. Soon other hunters and scavengers would come: spearfangs, perhaps, or wolves or sims. Kenton preferred meeting any of them on ground of his own choosing, not here in the open. He drew back into the woods as soon as Charles had finished his butchery. They got well away from the open space before they camped, and Kenton made sure they did so in a small hollow to screen the light of his fire from unwelcome eyes.

After he had eaten, he wiped his greasy hands on the grass, then dug into his pack for his journal, pen, and inkpot. He wrote a brief account of the past couple of days of travel and added to the sketch map he was keeping.

As always, Charles watched with interest. Talking marks? he signed.