A Different Flesh (25 page)

The sim cringed. It managed to get one hand free of its burden for a moment to sign,
Sorry
. Then it staggered on.

Jeremiah felt briefly ashamed. After all, were it not for sims, blacks would have been at the bottom of things, the target of everyone's spleen.

He almost went after the subhuman to apologize, but the sim would never have understood. And that was exactly the point.

He kept on toward the bank.

1812

Trapping Run

The range where bands of wild sims could continue to live their lives much as they had before Europeans came to North America continued to shrink as human settlements pushed westward. Few bands remained entirely untouched by human influence. Sign-talk, for example, spread from band to band, even in areas where no people had ever been seen, because it was a conspicuously better means of communication than the subhumans' native assortment of noises and gestures.

Some trappers and explorers were friendly with the wild sims through whose lands they passed. Others, manifestly, were not. Bands of sims, naturally, often responded in kind, being well-disposed toward humans if the first person they met had been friendly to them, and hostile even to those who would not have harmed them if their first experience with humans had been a bad one. In this as in so much else, sims revealed how closely they resembled people.

In colonial days, and in the early years of the Federated Commonwealths, sims' differences from us counted for more than their similarities. This was an attitude not without its good points for, as we have seen, it helped emphasize the essential likeness of all races of people. It also resulted, however, in the ruthless exploitation of sims by humans and, on and beyond the frontier, sometimes in sims' being hunted as if they were no more than wild beasts.

Trappers acquired a particularly evil reputation for their treatment of sims. And yet, as events transpired, it was a trapper who began what came to be known as the sims' justice movement.…

From
The Story of the Federated Commonwealths

Silent as drifting smoke, the sim stepped into the forest clearing where Henry Quick made his camp. The sim's hairy hand grasped a steel knife; its arms were bloody to the elbows.

Something—perhaps the first hint of its strong odor cutting through the damp sweetness of the air in the clearing—told Quick of its presence. He turned. He was a dark, stocky man whose deliberate motions belied his name.

“Sit by the fire,” he said, though he knew his words were wasted. It did not matter. As he spoke, his fingers moved in the hand-talk even the wild sims here beyond the Rockies used these days. Their mouths could not shape human speech, but hand-talk let them convey far more complex ideas than did their native hoots and grunts and cries.

As the sim hunkered down beside him, Quick shook his head, surprised he had spoken at all. When he was out on a trapping run he seldom talked, even to himself, and when he did he was as apt to use signs as words.

He shrugged. Nothing wrong with talking, if he felt like it. As if to prove the point to himself, he spoke out loud again: “What do you have there for me?” Once more, his fingers echoed his words; not enough people yet crossed the mountains for the sims hereabouts to have learned to understand English.

The sim grinned, displaying broad yellow teeth.
Good fur
, it signed. Its gestures were less crisp than Quick's, not as fully realized; in their transmission through who knew how many bands of sims, the signs had grown sketchy, attenuated. But Quick followed its meaning, as a city man will grasp his country cousin's rude dialect. And, of course, the marten fur the sim held out spoke for itself.

Good fur
, Quick agreed after examining it. The sim had done a neat, careful job of case-skinning, cutting from the center of the hind claws up the hind legs, across the anus and belly, and down the forelegs. The soft, plushy pelt had no extra knife holes in it to lower its value. The sim had either caught the marten in a snare of its own devising or, much more likely, brought it down with a well-flung stone.

Under their beetling brow ridges, the sim's eyes grew intent.
You give how much
? it signed.

Quick considered.
You
—he repeated the sign to make it apply to the whole band, not just the sim in front of him—
have flint, steel
.

Have
, the sim echoed. Along with signs, fire-making tools had spread to the wild sims. When humans had settled North America more than two centuries ago, the native subhumans had known how to use fire and keep it alive, but not how to start it if ever it went out. Their wits, though weaker than people's, were not dull enough to miss the advantage of that.

Want hatchet
? Quick asked.

Show
. The sim's wide, hairy face remained impassive, but its member rose to betray its eagerness. “Get their peckers up and you got a deal” was an adage everyone who traded with sims knew.

Quick rose, ambled over to his pack, took out three hatchets.
Pick
, he offered. All three were heavier, in both head and handle, than he would have cared for himself. Sims, though, were stronger than men, and did not care for tools as humans did. Clumsy ones suited them fine.

The sim hefted all three, chose one, swung it through the air, and let out a hoot of delight. It walked over to a sapling, chopped it down with a few hard swings. Then it checked the edge of the hatchet head with its thumb. It hooted again.
Still sharp, no chips
, it signed.
Good
. In spite of its metal knife, it was still used to the chipped stones sims made for themselves.

Good
, Henry Quick agreed. He had paid fifty sesters for the hatchet back in Cairo; the marten fur would be worth easily twenty times as much. Some people in the cities of the Federated Commonwealths called that robbery. Quick did not see it that way. Back on the other side of the mountains, hatchets were easy to come by, marten furs much less so. The situation was reversed here. Accounts balanced.

Too, back in the cities of the Commonwealths, Quick would have had to put up with the stink of coal smoke, railroad noise, and the endless presence of people. He had little use for pointless chatter. Maybe that was one reason he got on well with sims: they lacked the brains to talk when they did not have something to say.

Some trappers, Quick knew, treated sims like wolves or foxes or any other vermin, and hunted them savagely. Sims robbed traps, no doubt of that. They were hungry all the time, and meat already caught was easy meat. Quick was sure the sim in the clearing with him had eaten the marten's carcass as soon as the pelt was off it.

In a way, Quick followed the reasoning of the trappers who went after sims. Because of their hands and wits, sims made devilish thieves. But those same hands and wits made them dangerous enemies. By the nature of things, trappers traveled alone or in small groups. The ones who came down hardest on sims often never returned.

Quick had always felt that making them into allies worked better. His initial expense was greater because of the trade goods he bought before every journey, but he thought he got more furs by enlisting the sims' aid than by harassing them. He found a trap robbed every now and again, yes, but more often were cases like this one, sims doing his hunting for him.

The subhuman flourished the hatchet again, making the air sigh.
Good
, it signed, and left the clearing with no more farewell than that. Henry Quick was not offended; he had scant use for ceremony himself.

He stretched the skin, fur side in, on a piece of wood, and set it aside to dry. He did not have many marten pelts back at his base camp, which made him doubly glad for this one.

He also thought he would have to be a lot hungrier than he was, to want to eat marten meat.

He walked the trap line to check the snares he had set within a couple of miles of the clearing. Blazes he had cut on trees at eye level guided him from one trap to the next. As far as he knew, sims had not figured out what blazes were for. He had several sets of traps within the territory this band wandered, each grouped around a clearing. He tried to make a complete circuit every couple of weeks or so, to make sure none of the beasts he caught decomposed enough to harm their pelts.

His nose guided him to the first trap. He shook his head in annoyance. The trap must have taken a victim almost as soon as he reset it the last time through. He was doubly annoyed when he found the metal jaws holding only a striped ground squirrel, whose skin would have been worthless even if fresh. Doubly disgusted, he threw the little corpse away, set the trap again, stuck on a fresh suet bait, and went on to the next one.

Something, probably a bird but maybe a sim, had stolen the bait from that trap without springing it. Quick sighed and replaced it. The bait on the trap after that was still intact. Quick sighed again; he'd have to think about moving it.

When he neared the next trap, he heard a wild, desperate thrashing. He drew his pistol and sidled forward, soft leather boots sliding soundlessly over dirt and grass, leaves and twigs. Catching a sim in the act of robbing a trap would be tricky; finding one caught in a trap might be worse, for that could turn the whole band against him.

His breath hissed out in relief as he saw that the trap held only a fox. The animal must have been fighting the spiked iron teeth for some time. It was nearly exhausted, and lay panting as Quick approached. His mouth tightened. This was the part of his job he tried not to think about; taking a dead animal from a trap was much easier than dealing with a live one there.

No help for it, he thought. On his belt by his pistol he carried a stout bludgeon for times such as this. He set the gun down, drew it out. The fox's yellow eyes stared unblinkingly at him. Next to the torment of its trapped and broken leg, he was as nothing. He brought down the bludgeon once, twice. The fox writhed and twitched for a few minutes, then sighed, almost in relief, and lay still.

He sat not far from the body, waiting for it to cool and the fleas and other pests to leave it. Then he pried apart the jaws of the trap, rolled the fox onto its back, and began to skin it. He always took pains at that, and took extra ones today, with the memory of the marten fur still fresh—he did not want any sim's work to outdo his.

So intent was he that he had almost finished before he realized he was not alone. A sim stood a few paces away, intently watching him. It was a female, he saw with some surprise—unlike the males, they did not usually stray far from the clearing where a band was staying. He kept away from that clearing. Of all his traps, this one was probably closest to it, but it was still a good mile away.

Female sims, Henry Quick thought, were not so brutal-looking as males. Their features were not as heavy, and the bony ridges above their eyes were less pronounced. That did not mean the sim would have made an attractive woman. It lacked both forehead and chin, and short reddish hair covered more of its face than Quick's brown beard concealed of his own.

Like all sims, it wore no clothes, but like all sims, it was hairy enough not to need them. Even its breasts were covered with hair, though the pinkish-brown nipples at their tips were exposed. It had an unwashed reek like that of the one that had traded Quick the marten pelt.

Take skin
? it signed. That, at any rate, was what Quick thought it meant. He had trouble being sure; it could not use its fingers well because its hands were full of roots and grubs, and its gestures were blurry in any case.

Yes
, he answered.

He must have understood correctly, for its next question was,
Why club, not noise-stick
? It pointed at his pistol.

Not want hole in skin
, he signed.

It rubbed its long jaw as it considered that, then grunted, exactly like a person who got an unexpected answer that was still satisfying.

As if putting a hand to its face had reminded it of the food it carried, it popped a grub into its mouth, chewed noisily, and swallowed. Like most wild sims, it was on the lean side. Quick glanced down at the fox carcass. To him, it was so much carrion. Not to sims.
Want meat
? he asked.

Me
? It pointed to itself, brown eyes wide with surprise. Male sims hunted, females gathered; probably, Quick thought, this one had never taken anything bigger than a mouse or ground squirrel. But it did not need much time to decide.
Want meat
, it signed firmly, leaving off the gesture that turned the phrase into a question.

Quick handed the fox's body to the sim. It gave a low hoot as it stared at the unaccustomed burden it held. It turned to leave, then looked back at the trapper, as if it expected him to take back the bounty he had given.
Keep. Go
, he signed. It hooted again and. slipped away.

Henry Quick went in a different direction, off to check his next trap. As he walked, he chuckled quietly to himself. There would likely be consternation among the sims tonight, especially if the males had had a luckless day at the chase.

The trapper paused for a moment, frowning. He did not want his gift to land the female sim in trouble. Among humans, that might happen if a woman stepped into men's territory. With sims, on reflection, he did not think it would. Being less clever than humans, sims lacked much of their capacity for jealousy. Their harsh lives also made them relentless pragmatists. Meat would be meat, no matter where it came from.

Quick found a rabbit in his last trap. It was freshly dead. He skinned it, cleaned it, and brought it back to the clearing.

His pack of trade goods was undisturbed. Had he been one of the trappers who habitually maltreated sims, he would not have dared leave it behind … but then, had he been one of that sort, he would not have dared travel alone in this land where men had not yet settled.

He started his fire again, spitted the rabbit on a stick, and held it over the little blaze. The savory smell the lean meat gave off made his nostrils twitch and his mouth grow suddenly wet. He smiled, wondering what roast fox smelled like.