A Different Flesh (28 page)

The pistol ball left no visible wound, now that the bear's mouth was closed in death. Quick's first shot, with the rifle, had torn along the left side of the beast's neck and lodged in its shoulder. It might have been a mortal wound, but not quickly enough to do the trapper any good.

He tried to push the point of his broken shinbone back into his flesh, and failed repeatedly: the pain was too much to stand. He did drag himself to a sapling close by the bear's carcass and cut it down with his knife. Then, using the lace from his left boot, he tied the sapling to his leg. It was not much of a splint, but it was a little better than nothing. With it on, the broken pieces did not grind together quite so agonizingly.

He set out to make a fire, against the coming chill of night and the chill of his damaged body and for cooking a bloody gobbet he had worried off the bear's shoulder. He was still crumbling dry leaves for tinder when the hunting party of male sims came upon him.

He did not realize they were there until they were almost on top of him. Along with their crude weapons, they carried squirrels and rabbits, a snake, and a couple of birds: not a great day's bag by any means. They looked in wonder from Henry Quick to the bear and back again.
You kill
? one asked. After a little while, he recognized it as the male that had brought him the marten fur.

Understanding its hand-talk and responding took all the concentration and strength the trapper had.
I kill bear
, he answered.
Bear hurt me—break leg bone
.

The sims grimaced. One gave an involuntary hiss of pain. Another pointed at the rude splint.
Why stick
?

Hold bone pieces still. Hurt less
. Quick changed the subject; his leg did not hurt much less. He waved at the dead bear.
Cut up meat—take to your fire
. He could not hope to eat a twentieth part of it before it spoiled.

The sims could have done what they wanted with the bear no matter what he said, but his free giving of it seemed to take them aback.
Come with us, eat with us again
? signed the male he knew.

He had prayed it would ask that. The band of sims, he knew, was his only hope of living through the winter, though he had scorned the thought not long before. It was his only hope of living longer than a few days, come to that. Even if his leg healed well, he would not be able to travel for months. And with the injury he had, he had a bad feeling it would not heal well.

A male with a broken front tooth was signing at the one he knew best:
Kill
, it urged.
More meat
.

Kill
, another male agreed.
No hunt, no walk. Lie by fire, eat. Cold soon. No food to give. No good to us. Kill
.

In other circumstances, Quick might have agreed with those sims. He would be a burden for the band, and one more mouth to feed when they went hungry themselves. Unless he could find a way to make himself valuable to them, he was done for.
Take me to fire, then take all tools in pack
, he offered.

One of the sims, unfortunately, was smart enough to see the flaw in that.
Kill, then take tools
, it signed.

He almost gave up then. Like a bullet, a spear going into his chest or a club breaking his head would put him out of his pain. But he had not shot himself, and he did not want to end as a feast for subhumans. He forced his battered wits to work.
Take me to fire, make more tools
. That was the best he could do. If it did not appeal to the sims, he was dinner.

The male that had brought him the marten pelt hooted.
Make noise-sticks
? it asked. He could see the eagerness on its broad features.

No
, he signed, hating to have to do it. But even had he had metal to hand, he did not know how to make a gun.
Use noise-stick to kill game near fire
.

He happened to think of bows and arrows. They were rare in the Commonwealths, but some rich men back east liked to hunt with them, claiming they were more sporting than guns. Quick cared nothing for sport. He was interested in surviving.
Make thing like noise-stick, but quiet
, he signed.

Kill far like noise-stick
? the male asked.

Not that far. Farther than spear
.

The sims shouted at one another, not so much arguing as trying to intimidate. Finally the male that had brought Quick the marten fur signed
Take
, and pointed at him. He tried without much luck to stifle a shriek as two sims hauled him upright. Others fell to butchering the bear. Soon they were toting slabs of meat bigger than those a man could easily carry.

That strength also helped the pair over whose shoulders Quick had draped his arms. All the same, the journey to the band's clearing was a nightmare. It would have been dreadful even with careful men hauling the trapper. It was worse with sims. They were not deliberately cruel, but they were careless. Several times his broken leg hit the ground so hard he thought it would fall off. He rather wished it would. Mercifully, he passed out again before the hunting party got home.

The anguish when his bearers let him down like a sack of meal brought him back to himself. Sims were all he could see as he peered blearily upward. Their thick odor clogged his nostrils.

He felt blood flowing down his leg again. The thought of getting the sims to set the broken bone made him sweat cold, but leaving it untended was worse.
Take off stick
, he signed.
Take off boots, pants
. The sims grunted in puzzlement; the hand-talk gesture for trousers meant nothing to them, since they had never seen any except his. He pointed at his pair, and they understood.
Fix bone, put stick back on, put another stick on, hold bone in place
. He thought of something else.
Hold me down. I yell, you do anyhow
.

The sims hooted in dismay when they saw how he was hurt.
He die
, a female signed flatly.

He live, he make for us
, answered the male he knew.

He live
. That was another female. After a moment, he recognized it as the one that had wanted to couple with him. Well, no danger of that now, he thought, and even in his torment almost laughed.

The grizzled sim pushed forward.
Make
? it signed.
Good. Live
. That was the most sign-talk the trapper had ever seen from it.

He turned his head away. The sight of his red-smeared white tibia sticking through his flesh was making him even sicker than he felt already.
Push bone into leg
, he signed.
Make straight, like other leg
.

Till then, he had only thought he knew what pain was. Again, the sims were not cruel on purpose; again, that did not help. No one could have set the fracture without hurting him badly. That the would-be healers were inexperienced subhumans made things worse, but perhaps not by much.

Some unmeasurable time later, his agony lessened, if only by a tiny fraction. He chose to believe that was because the two pieces of bone were properly aligned. If not, he knew he could bear no more. His throat was raw from screaming; he could feel the blood slick on his hands, where his nails had bitten into his palms.

Tie sticks on
, he signed.
Tie tight. Hold bones in place
. His senses failed him before the sims were done. This time they did not return to him at once.

When at last he woke again, the sun was in his eyes. It was in the wrong part of the sky. It was, he realized, the next morning. His leg felt dreadful, which was a marvelous improvement on how it had felt the day before.

He looked around. Most of the sims were long gone from the clearing, the males to hunt, the females to forage. Youngsters ran around. A couple of aging females kept an eye on them, as did the grizzled male. It chipped at stones, stuck the ends of saplings into the fire so they would make stronger spear points.

The female that had wanted him came out of the woods. Its arms were full of berries and roots; it carried a small dead snake in its left hand. When it saw he was conscious, it set down its prizes and came over to stoop beside him. After a moment it rose again, to return with a chunk of charred bear meat.
Eat
, it signed.

His stomach twisted. He was not ready for food, but he had a raging thirst.
Water
, he signed. His trousers still lay beside him. He took his canteen off his undone belt. A little water, none too fresh, sloshed in it. He drained the canteen, held it out to the female sim.
Fill
, he signed, and then discovered he had to explain how—the idea had never occurred to the sim.

It hurried away, returning quickly; the stream was not far away. The chill, sparkling water flowing down Quick's throat was one of the most delicious things he had ever felt. He gave the female the canteen for a refill. He felt warm, though the day was still early.

He saw a thick branch, not far from the fire, and a hatchet lying on the ground close to it—the sims knew nothing of rust. The grizzled sim was watching him with interest.
Chop
, he signed to it, indicating with his hands a length of about eight inches.

It eagerly picked up the hatchet, and fell to work with a will. When it was done, it handed him the piece of wood.
Make
? it signed, more curiosity on its face than he expected to find in a subhuman.

He began hollowing out the branch with his dagger. The work took most of the day. It was interrupted when he had to move his bowels. He could do nothing but lie in his own filth. After a while, an old female, wrinkling its broad, flat nose, got a handful of leaves and carried the dropping away. He hoped the sim would clean him too, but it did not. Sighing, he went back to his carving.

When the rude cup was done, he explained with signs what it was good for. The grizzled male took some time to understand. When at last it did, it hurried off to test the marvel for itself. It came back with a wide grin on its face. Standing where he could see it, it held the cup over its head and poured water into its mouth from arm's length. It got wet, but it did not seem to care.

The female that had wanted him returned from another foraging trip. It handed him another piece of cold cooked bear meat.
Eat
, it signed again. This time he felt ready to try. The flesh tasted like beef, but was greasier. His stomach, long empty, churned uneasily.

His bowels moved again not long after that. The young female dealt with the mess in the same way the old one had before. It came back, though, with more leaves, and did a rough job of wiping him.

Thanks
, he signed. It only grunted; the gesture meant nothing to it. Back in the settled parts of the Commonwealths, where sims served humans, polite phrases had come into hand-talk. They had not, however, become part of the rough, abridged version this band used. Quick shook his head, sorry he could not express the gratitude he felt.

The last thing he remembered when he fell asleep that night was seeing the grizzled sim hard at work on another cup. The one he had made was in front of it. Every so often it would pick his up and study it, as if to remind itself what it was doing.

The trapper woke before sunrise, shivering. He had thought of the pain in his leg as a fire before; now it was hot in the most literal sense. He put a hand to his forehead. Fever, he thought. It was the last coherent thought he had for a long time.

He never knew how long he lay in delirium; the hours and days stretched and twisted like taffy. Every once in a while, something would lodge in his memory. He recalled a young sim bending over to peer down at him, its solemn face so close to his that it filled his field of vision. A mite was crawling across its cheek. The mite seemed more interesting to him than the little sim.

He remembered telling the male that had brought him the marten fur how to get coffee stains out of linen. He went into great detail, though the sim knew nothing of either coffee or linen and understood not a word of English. Using hand-talk never occurred to him. After a while, the sim went away. Quick kept on talking until his mind clouded again.

He remembered being fed two or three times, all of them by the female that had wanted him. The first time, he choked on a piece of meat and had to struggle to spit it out. After that, the sim gave him only soft, pasty food. He watched it chewing meat and fruit before passing them on to him, as if he were a just-weaned infant. He knew he should have been disgusted, but he lacked the strength. He did not spit out the food, either.

Quick heard deep, racking coughing, and marveled that his lungs and throat were not raw. Only gradually, over a couple of days, did he realize he was not the one coughing. A little after that, the noise stopped, or he stopped noticing it; he did not figure out which until much later.

He remembered the female shaking him back into foggy awareness of the world around him. It held a plant in front of his face, a plant with downy, gray-green leaves, each cut into blunt lobes and teeth. The flower heads held many small, tubular, pinkish-white flowers. They were sere and brown now, well past their peak. Dusty maiden, the plant was called—one of the thousands of little nondescript shrubs that grew in the woods.

He laughed foolishly; he was a good way past his peak too, he thought. “Not quite ready for flowers, though,” he said out loud. The sense of the words brought him closer to real consciousness. He was not far from being ready for flowers, and knew it.

The female held the root against his lips.
Eat
, it signed over and over until he opened his mouth. It thrust the root in. He gagged, bit down. Dirt crunched between his teeth. So did the root. It tasted horrid. When he tried to spit it out, the female sim held a hand over his mouth and would not let him. It kept signing
Eat
. With no other choice, he did. Tears of rage and weakness filled his eyes.

The next thing he remembered was thinking it had started to rain. But when he opened his eyes, the sun was shining. Yet he was wet. Sweat covered every inch of his body. It dripped from his nose and trickled through his beard and matted hair. He put a hand to his forehead. It was cooler. His fever had broken. He drifted away again, but into something closer to natural sleep than to the oblivion in which he had wandered before.