Half a dozen wild sims dashed off after more fuel. The rest crowded toward the blaze, drawn to the flames like moths.
Not even the clever sim was immune to the fascination. This time it did not object when Charles stooped and began cutting Kentons bonds.
The scout grimaced at the sting of returning circulation he had imagined a few minutes before. He clenched and unclenched his fingers and toes, trying to work feeling back into them. All the same, it was some minutes before he could stand. When he finally did, he had to clutch undignifiedly at his trousers; their sueded leather had stretched from the soaking it had taken.
He did not think he could get his knife back from the clever sim, but did go over to where the other male had discarded his musket. With his powder spilled and bul ets scattered, he had only the one shot till he got back to his pack, but that was better than nothing. And the wild sim had been right, in its way, at need, the rifle would make a good club.
Kenton also gathered up the spearfang canines, although to his annoyance one had disappeared in the mud. He had come by them through hard, dangerous hunting, and they represented wealth too great and too easily portable for him to abandon.
Though the scout hurried, Charles waited with barely concealed impatience. We go? he signed, adding the emphatic gesture to the questioning one.
"Indeed we do!"" Kenton wanted to be as far from the encampment as he could when the hunting party returned.
The clever sim watched them withdraw. Its massive jaw muscles worked.
The scout could all but taste its frustration. It had met beings and found tools and skil s beyond any it could have imagined, and here, afoer only a brief moment, they were vanishing from its life again.
That proved more than it could bear. With a harsh cry, it rushed Kenton and Charles. The scout flung his musket to his shoulder, but hesitated with his finger still on the first trigger. The males in the hunting party had heard gunfire before; the sound of a shot would surely bring them on the run.
Charles had no such worries. His arm went back, then forward.
The hatchet spun through the air. It buried itself deep in the clever sims chest.
The clever sim shrieked. It wrenched the hatchet out, heedless of the blood that gushed from the wound. The clever sim flung the hatchet back at Charles, but its throw was wild. It staggered on rubbery legs, sat heavily. Kenton could hear how its breath bubbled in its throat.
The rest of the wild sims came out of their trance round the fire.
They shouted and hooted. Hands groped for stones to throw. Saving his single bullet against desperate need, Kenton ran. Charles fled with him, stopping only to get the hatchet from where it lay on the ground. Red streaked the gray steel blade.
Kenton never found out whether the clever sim lived or died. He was everlastingly grateful it was the only robust male at the encampment. He and Charles outdistanced the gray-hairs and youngsters that tried to pursue them. They might not have had such good fortune if tested against the members of the hunting band, the more so as the scout's abused limbs could not carry him at full speed.
Kenton knew the troop's hunters would be expert trackers. They would have to be, living as they did from what they could run down.
And so, no matter how urgently he wanted to put distance between himself and the camp, he and Charles did not neglect muddling their trail, doubling back on their tracks and splashing down streams so they would not leave footprints.
A large bullfrog sat on a half-submerged log, staring stupidly as Kenton and Charles drew near. Too late, it decided to leap away. The scout grabbed it and broke its neck.
A bit farther on, they came upon clumps of freshwater mussels growing on some rocks. Charles used his knife and Kenton borrowed his hatchet to sever the foot by which the shellfish moored themselves.
By then it was nearly dark. Neither of them knew the countryside well enough to head back toward the camp by night. They would have to shift camp anyway, Kenton realized, it was too close to the salt lick.
The wild sims would surely scour that whole area in search of them.
The scout hoped he could recover his pistols from the spot where he had kil ed the spearfang.
All that, though, could wait. Finding a hiding place for the night came first. A hollow with a rock pile down one side proved suitable, after Kenton stoned to death a fat rattling-snake that had been nesting among the rocks.
Fire Charles signed.
The scout considered the lay of the land. "Yes," he said, "a small one." If the wild sims came close enough to spot a tiny blaze by night, they would be on top of him anyway.
And while he did not mind eating raw shellfish, even hungry as he was he wanted to roast the frog and snake.
His stomach stil growled when he was done with his share, but he felt better for it. He licked his fingers clean of grease and looked across the fire at Charles, who was still worrying tiny fragments of meat from a frogleg with his tongue.
In the dim, flickering red light, the sims eyes were sunk in pits of shadow, unreadable. "Charles," Kenton began, and then stopped, unsure how, or if, to go on.
Charles tossed the bones, by now quite naked, to one side. He gave a low-voiced, questioning hoot.
"I thank you," the scout said.
Charles grunted, a noncommittal sound.
Kenton almost let it rest there. His curiosity, though, was too great.
People had been trying to understand sims, and to see how close sims could come to understanding them, for close to two centuries.
And so the scout asked, "Why did you decide to rescue me."
The skin moved on Charles's brow-ridges; a man would have been wrinkling his forehead in concentration. You, I come here together, he signed. We go back together.
The scout wondered if that indeed was the whole answer. Because they were less imaginative than men, sims rigidly fol owed plans.
Kenton had often talked about the return trip; perhaps Charles had simply been unable to conceive of anything else happening, and had acted as he did more for the picture of the future the scout had outlined than for Kenton's sake.
Kenton's lips twisted wryly; there was a thought to put him in his place. He persisted, "It would have been easier and less risky for you to join the wild sims."
He knew he was treading on dangerous ground. Back in Virginia, many sims fled to the wild troops that still lurked in the backwoods.
There was always the risk of putting ideas in Charles's head that had not been there before.
The sim surprised him with an immediate gesture of rejection. Not leave you, Charles signed. You, me, together, good. Years and years, not want end.
"I thank you," Kenton said again. Had he followed the course of some colonists, who treated their sims as much like beasts as possible, he was sure he would have been shared among the wild sims in raw gobbets, with Charles likely joining the feast.
But the sim, to his surprise, was not done signing: Not want to live with wild sims. Want to live with people. Wild sims boring, an enormous yawn rendered that, not know houses, not know music, not know knives, not know bread. Charles sniffed with the same disdain a Portsmouth grandee would have shown on learning his daughter's prospective bridegroom wore no shoes and shared a cabin with his mule.
Kenton burst out laughing. Charles snorted indignantly. The scout apologized, both in words and with the customary sim gesture: he smacked his lips loudly and spread his hands, meaning he had intended no harm.
Charles accepted, once more with a lord's grace.
Inside, though, Kenton kept chuckling, though he was careful not to show it. He did not want to hurt Charles's feelings. But how on earth, he wondered, was he going to explain to Lord Emerson that he had been saved because his sim was a snob.
I782 The Iron Elephant
The Americas proved
to possess a number of animals unlike any with which Europeans had been familiar the ground sloth, the spearfang, and the several varieties of armadi
llo, of which the largest was bigger than a man. Others, such as the hairy elephant, had counterparts in distant areas of the Old World but still seemed exotic to early generations of settlers.
Just before the American colonies broke away from English tyranny and banded together to form the Federated Commonwealths of America, however, efforts began to exploit the hairy elephants great strength in a new way. The first rail systems, with waggons pulled by horses, appeared in England at about this time to haul coal from mines to rivers and canals.
Hairy elephants began their railroad work in this same capacity, but soon were pulling other freight, and passengers as well.
In the decades fol owing the creation of the republic, railroads spread across the country. Because the
Federated Commonwealths is so much larger than any European nation, such a web of steel was a vital link in knitting the country together. By I780, tracks had reached across the New Nile. The mighty river remained unbridged, but ferry barges joined the settled east with the new lands that were just beginning to be farmed.
But the hairy elephant's trumpet was not destined to remain the characteristic sound of the railroads. Coal mining also resulted in the development of the steam engine. At first used only in place, to pump water from the mines, the steam engine soon proved capable of broader application. Soon the hairy elephants that had been for more than a generation the mainstay of the American railway system began to feel the effects of mechanical competition.
From The Story of the Federated Commonwealths
THE TRAIN RATTLED east
across the prairie toward Springfield. Preen Chand kept his rifle across his knees, in case of sims. From his perch atop Caesar, the lead hairy elephant, he could see a long way over the grassland.
"We should make town in another hour," Paul Tilak called from Hannibal, the trail beast. "An easy trip, this one."
Preen Chand turned around. "So it is, for which I am not sorry."
He and Tilak were both small, light-brown men with delicate features.
Their grandfathers had come to America when the English decided to see if elephant handlers from India could tame the great auburn-haired beasts of the New World.
The two dozen waggons stretched out behind the pair of elephants showed that the answer was yes, though the Federated Commonwealths had been free of England for a generation. With people even then beginning to settle west of the New Nile, no country aaoss the sea could hope to enforce its will on its one-time colonies.
"Sim" Tilak shouted suddenly. "There, to the north!" Preen Chand's head whipped round. He followed his friend's pointing finger.
Sure enough, the subhuman was loping along paral el to the train, about three hundred yards away. Preen Chand muttered something unpleasant under his breath. Sims might have no foreheads to speak of, but they had learned how far a gun could shoot with hope of accuracy.
"Shall we give him a volley?" Tilak asked.
"Yes, let us," Preen Chand said. Three hundred yards was not quite impossibly long range, not with more than a dozen rifles speaking together. And the sims arrogant confidence in its own safety irked the elephant driver.
He waved a red flag back and forth to make sure the brakemen posted on top of every other car saw it. Tilak peered back over his shoulder.
"They're ready."
Preen Chand swung the flag down, snatched up his rifle.
It bellowed along with the others, and bucked against his shoulder. The acrid smell of gunpowder fil ed his nose.
The hairy elephant beneath him started at the volley. It threw up its trunk and let out a trumpeting roar almost as loud as the gunshots.
Preen Chand shouted, "Choro, Caesar, choro: stop, stop!" Elephant commands were the only Urdu he still knew. His father had preferred them to English, and passed them on to him.
He prodded Caesar behind the ear with his foot, spoke soothingly to him. Being on the whole a good-natured beast, the elephant soon calmed. Tilak's Hannibal was more excitable; the other driver had to whack him with a brass ankus to make him behave. Hannibal's ears twitched resentfully.
Preen Chand peered through the smoke to see whether all that gunfire had actual y hit the sim. It hadn't The subhuman let out a raucous hoot, shook its fist at the train and bounded away.
Preen Chand sighed. "I do not like those pests, not at al .
One day I would like to unharness Caesar and go hunting sims from elephant-back."
"Men only began settling hereabouts a few years ago," Tilak said resignedly. "Sims will be less common before long."
"Yes, but they are so clever it's almost impossible to root them out altogether. Even on the eastern coast, where the land has been settled for a hundred-fifty years, wild bands still linger. Not so many as here west of the New Nile, true, but they exist."
"Mere vermin fail to worry me," Paul Tilak said. He put a hand to his forehead to shade his eyes. "We should be able to see Springfield soon."'
"Oh, not yet," Preen Chand said. But he also looked ahead, and saw the thin line of black smoke against the sky. Alarm flashed through him.
"Fire!" he shouted. "The town must be burning!"
He dug his heels into Caesar's shoulders, yelled, "MAIImal : go ant" He heard Tilak using the elephant goad to urge Hannibal on. The two beasts had to pull hard to gain speed against the dead weight of the train.
Preen Chand hoped the brakemen were alert. If he had to slow suddenly, they would need to halt the waggons before they could barrel into the elephants ahead of them.
The line of smoke grew taller, but no wider. Preen Chand scratched his head. Funny kind of fire, he thought.
"What's burning?" a farmer called as the train rolled by, farms sprouted like mushrooms along the tracks close to town, though they were still scarce farther away. Preen Chand shrugged. Even then, in the back of his mind, he might have known the truth, but it was not the sort of truth he felt like facing before he had to.
Then he could see Springfield in the distance. Its wooden buildings looked quite intact. The smoke had stopped rising. The prairie breezes played with the plume, dispersing it.
Houses, stables, a church, warehouses passed in swift succession.
Preen Chand guided Caesar gto the last turn before the station.
"Choro!" he called agalg. Caesar slowed. The brakemen worked their levers. Sparks flew as the waggons' iron wheels squealed on the track.
The train pulled to a halt.
"Seventeen minutes ahead of schedule," Paul Tilak said with satisfaction, checking his pocket watch. "No one will be able to complain we are late on this run, Preen."
"No indeed," Preen Chand said. "But where is everybody?" Their being early was no reason for the eastbound side of the station to be empty, they had been in sight quite a while.
Where were the men and tame sims to unload the train's freight? Where were the people coming to meet arriving passengers? Where were the ostlers, with fodder and water and giant currycombs for the elephants?
Come to think of it, where had the smal boys who always gawked at the train disappeared to?
Preen Chand tapped Caesar's left shoulder, as far down as he could reach.
The hairy elephant obligingly raised its left leg. Preen Chand shinnied down to the broad, leathery foot, then dropped to the ground.
A passenger stuck his head out the window of a forward wagon.
"See here, sir," he cal ed to the elephant driver, "what is the meaning of this? I am an important man, and expect to be properly greeted. I have business to transact here before I go on to Cairo." He glared at Preen Chand as if he thought everything was his fault.
"I am very sorry, sir," Preen Chand said politely, which was not at all what he was thinking. "I will try to find out."
At that moment, a door in the station house opened. Finally, Preen Chand thought, someone's come to take a look at us. It was George Stephenson, the stationmaster, a plump little man who always wore a stovepipe hat that went badly with his build.
"What is the meaning of this?" Preen Chand shouted at him, stealing the pompous passenger's phrase. "Where are the men to take care of the elephants?" To a driver, everything else was secondary to that.
Stephenson should have felt the same way. Instead, he blinked; the idea did not seem to have occurred to him. "I'll have Wil ie and Jake get round to it," he said grudgingly. "Get round to it?" Preen Chand clapped a hand to his forehead in extravagant disbelief. "How else will they make enough money for their whiskey?
What is wrong with this town today? Has everyone here gone out of his mind?"
"Not hardly," Stephenson said. He was looking at Caesar and Hannibal in a way Preen Chand had never seen before. Was that pity in his eyes?
"We've just seen the future, is al . Maybe you better take a peep too, Preen, so as you and Paul there can start hunting' out a new line of work."
Then Preen Chaud did know what had happened, knew it with a certainty that gripped his guts. Even so, he had to make Stephenson spell it out.
"You mean, ?"
"Ayah, that's right, Preen. One o' them newfangled steam railroad engines has done come to Springfield. How do you propose outdoin' a machine?"
The pennant tied to the front of the steam engine called it "The Iron Elephant." To Preen Chand, the name was an obscene parody. The upjutting smokestack reminded him of Caesar's trunk, yes, but that trunk frozen in,rkgor mortis. Painting the boiler red-brown to imitate a hairy elephant's pelt did not disguise its being made of non. And the massive gears and wheels on either side of that boiler seemed to Preen Chand affixed as an afterthought, not parts of the device in the way Caesar's great legs were part of the elephant.
Besides, the thing stank. Used to the clean, earthy smel of elephant, Preen Chand's nostrils twitched at the odors of coal smoke and damp, cooling iron.
A Different Flesh Page 10
