Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

The fire continued to crackle.

Kenton all but ignored it. His mouth was wide open, to catch as much of the rain as he could. The sims had given him no more water than food, and his throat felt raspy as a file.

It took a while to get enough for a swallow, but every one was bliss.

The downpour grew heavier, the wind stronger. Soon it was blowing sheets of water horizontal y. The sims' hides were less and less use.

They wailed in dismay as the fire went out. Kenton could hardly hear them over the drumming of the rain. He was glad they had not dumped him face down; he might have drowned.

The storm lasted through the night, and began to ease only when light returned. Drenched, Kenton was relieved the rain was warm; had the cloudburst come, say, in fal , he would have been all too vulnerable to chest fever. He imagined it carried off many of the sims.

They huddled together, sodden and miserable, around their dead fire, their arms up to keep some of the rain from their faces. Now and then one would let out a mournful, keening cry that several others would echo. It reminded the scout eerily of a wake.

When the rain was final y over, the clever sim raked through the ashes, searching for hot coals that might be coaxed back to life. But the storm had been too strong; everything was soaked. As the sims saw they were indeed without the heat to cook their food and, in days to come, to keep them warm, they broke out in a fresh round of lamentation.

Kenton wondered if they would seek to have him restart the blaze.

If that meant getting free of them, he would do so in an instant. He would have offered, if they understood his speech or if he could have used his arms to gesture. But they did not even look his way; it did not occur to them that anyone could start a fire. His strangeness, and the curious tools he bore, were not enough to overcome that automatic assumption.

Slowly, morosely, the sims began to pick up the usual business of the camp. A grizzled male chipped away at a chunk of flint to shape a new hand-axe. Females dug roots with sticks and went into the nearby forest after early ripening berries. Youngsters turned over rocks and popped whatever crawling things they found into their mouths.

A hunting party set out, armed with an assortment of wooden clubs and sharp stones. The sim with Kenton's musket apparently decided the long gun would be too clumsy to swing in tight quarters, for it exchanged the rifle for a stout bludgeon. The scout shook his head, relieved that the sim did not grasp what the musket could do.

The clever sim did not go with the band of hunting males. Its arms were filthy to the elbows from grubbing in the ruins of the fire.

it kept staring at Kenton, as if he were a puzzle to be pieced together.

When a couple of toddlers came over and prodded him, it bared its formidable teeth and shouted so fiercely that they tumbled backward in fright.

It came over and squatted by him; it made squelching sounds as it sat in the mud. "I am not your enemy," Kenton said, as he had the night before.

It grunted. He thought it sought to converse with him, but his words meant nothing to it. Sims came to understand human speech, but their own calls in the wild, even eked out by gestures, did not make up a language. The clever sim felt the lack, yet was powerless to remedy it.

Had his arms been free Kenton might have, but he needed dumb show to ask to be released, and could not use it until he had been.

Contemplating that paradox led only to discomfiture.

If the sim and he could not converse, though, only one thing was likely to happen to him. No sims he knew kept captives, and the treatment he was getting here showed this troop to be no different.

His flesh might not be so toothsome raw as roasted, but he did not think that would save him.

The way the clever sim was licking its lips now as it looked at him told him it had come to the same conclusion. The only reason he could find for its not kil ing him immediately was to keep his meat fresh for the hunting party when they came back. That did little to improve his spirits. He was getting thirsty again, too, and very hungry.

The day dragged on. The clever sim no longer bothered to keep the troop's youngsters away from Kenton. The small indignities they inflicted in their curiosity added to his misery. Still, human children would have done worse.

He heard a rustling in the woods, from the direction in which the hunters had gone. The old male who had been making tools gave the grunted greeting-noise. Kenton turned his head as the clever sim moved toward him, his knife in its hand. He expected the returning hunters would be the last thing he ever saw.

Then the old sim and several females cried out in alarm. The clever sim sucked in its breath in a harsh gasp. Coming into the clearing was not one of the hunters, it was Charles instead.

Charles's eyes went wide when he saw Kenton lying tied in the mud by the drowned fire. He was too far away for the scout to read his expression clearly. Kenton wondered what was going through his mind, observing his master bound and helpless in the hands of his wild cousins. Was he tempted to throw in his lot with them? How could he help it, with the scout's vulnerability so displayed? Superior wit was not all that let humans rule sims; their aura of might played no little role.

If Kenton's weakness gave Charles qualms, the sim from Virginia was as disturbing to the wild sims. The scout's clothes and possessions were strange to them, but so was he himself. Charles was of their own kind, yet he too wore a belt and buskins, and bore tools of the same alien sort as Kenton's.

The clever sim glanced from the knife he was holding to the one swinging at Charles's belt, and to the bright steel head of the hatchet Charles carried. The clever sims face was the picture of bewilderment. Kenton could hardly blame it. It had seen its world turned upside down twice now in two days.

Raising the hatchet in a plain warning gesture, Charles advanced into the clearing. Females and young scurried away from him. He was more frightening than Kenton, and not just because he was free. The familiar turned bizarre is always harder to face than something wildly different.

Charles strode toward Kenton, the hatchet still held high. The scout spoke through lips dry from thirst and fear: "Good to see you again. "

He had all he could do to hold his voice steady. Nothing, he knew, might more quickly ingratiate Charles with the wild sims than slaughtering him.

Charles surveyed the encampment. The clever sim was the only male there of vigorous years. When it saw that Charles understood Kenton, it scowled fiercely and tightened its grip on the scoout's knife.

Kenton had no choice but to wait to see what Charles would do.

But Charles also seemed unsure, staring from the scout to the clever sim and back again. At last his left hand moved in a sign Kenton understood: Trouble.

"Trouble indeed," Kenton said, though he could not tel whether Charles meant the sign for him or it was simply the sims equivalent of talking to himself. Daring to hope hurt, as an arm that has fallen asleep will tingle when the blood rushes in again.

Then Charles signed, I help, and squatted over him to cut his bonds. The clever sim shouted angrily and brandished the scout's knife. Charles shouted back, but drew away from Kenton. Had it just been the clever sim and he, the hatchet would have given him all the advantage he needed. But though none of the other sims was his match individual y, togther they could overwhelm him.

"Give them something to think about," Kenton exclaimed suddenly.

"The storm put out their fire, start it again."

The way Charles's face lit was almost enough to kindle a blaze by itself.

He deliberately turned his back on the clever sim, doing it with as much aplomb as any nobleman scoring off some rival. In spite of everything, Kenton could not help smiling; here was something unexpected that Charles had learned in Virginia.