He had his first sensation of something eerie, something just below his awareness, as he lay inert on his back bathed in honest sweat, his partner lying facedown more or less across him like one stick abandoned across another stick after both had been rubbed to kindle a blaze. He saw a movement at his window and knew it was Lolita, peering silently in. He sighed.
His partner sighed too, and turned toward the window with a quick, vexed burst of some command. The face disappeared.
He chuckled, “Did you hear the little devil, or smell her?” Actually, his partner had more of the eau de sweatsock perfume than Lolita did; now more pronounced than ever. He didn’t care. If the past half-hour had been any omen, he might never care again.
She stretched then, and sat up, dragging a heel that was rough as a rasp across his calf. Her heavy ragged nails had scratched him, and he was oily from God knew what mixture of greases in her long hair. He didn’t give a damn about that either, reflecting that a man should allow a few squeaks in the hinges of the pearly gates.
She said something then, softly, with that tilt of her head that suggested inquiry. “Locklear,” he replied, tapping his chest again.
Her look was somehow pitying then, as she repeated her phrase, placing one hand on her head, the other on his.
“Oh yeah, you’re my girl and I’m your guy,” he said, nodding, placing his hands on hers.
She sat quite still for a moment, her eyes sad on his. Then, delighting him, she placed one hand on his breast and managed a passable, “Loch-leah.”
He grinned and nodded, then cocked his head and placed a hand between her (wonderful!) breasts. No homecoming queen, but dynamite in deep shadows . . .
He paid more attention as she said, approximately, “Ch’roof’h,” and when he repeated it she laughed, closing her eyes with downcast chin. A big chin, a really whopping big one to be honest about it, and then he caught her gaze, not angry but perhaps reproachful, and again he felt the passage of something like a cold breeze through his awareness.
She rubbed his gooseflesh down for him, responding to his “ahh”s, and presently she astonished him again by beginning to query him on the names of things. Locklear knew that he could thoroughly confuse her if he insisted on perfectly grammatical tenses, cases, and syntax. He tried to keep it simple, and soon learned that “head down, eyes shut” was the same as a negative headshake. “Chin elevated, smiling” was the same as a nod—and now he realized he’d seen her giving him yesses that way from the first moment she awoke. A smile or a frown was the same for her as for him—but that heads-up smile was a definite gesture.
She drew him outside again presently, studying the terrain with lively curiosity, miming actions and listening as he provided words, responding with words of her own.
The name he gave her was, in part, because it was faintly like the one she’d offered; and in part because she seemed willing to learn his ways while revealing ancient ways of her own. He named her “Ruth.” Locklear felt crestfallen when, by midafternoon, he realized Ruth was learning his language much faster than he was learning hers. And then, as he glanced over her shoulder to see little Lolita creeping nearer, he began to understand why.
Ruth turned quickly, with a shouted command and warning gestures, and Lolita dropped the sharpened stick she’d been carrying. Locklear knew beyond doubt that Lolita had made no sound in her approach. There was only one explanation that would fit all his data: Ruth unafraid of him from the first; offering herself as if she knew his desires; keeping track of Lolita without looking; and her uncanny speed in learning his language.
And that moment when she’d placed her hand on his head, with an inquiry that was somehow pitying. Now he copied her gesture with one hand on his own head, the other on hers, and lowered his head, eyes shut. “No,” he said. “Locklear, no telepath. Ruth, yes?”
“Ruth, yes.” She pointed to Lolita then. “No—telpat.”
She needed another ten minutes of pantomime, attending to his words and obviously to his thoughts as he spoke them, to get her point across. Ruth was a “gentle,” but like Locklear himself, Lolita was a “new.”
* * *
When darkness came to Newduvai, Lolita got chummier in a hurry, complaining until Ruth let her into the cabin. Despite that, Ruth didn’t seem to like the girl much and accepted Locklear’s name for her, shortening it to “Loli.” Ruth spoke to her in their common tongue, not so much guttural as throaty, and Locklear had a strong impression that they were old acquaintances. Either of them could tend a fire expertly, and both were wary of the light from his kzin memory screen until they found that it would not singe a curious finger.
Locklear was bothered on two counts by Loli’s insistence on taking pieces of kzin plastic film to make a bikini suit: first because Ruth plainly thought it silly, and second because the kid was more appealing with it than she was when stark naked. At least the job kept Loli silently occupied, listening and watching as Locklear got on with the business of talking with Ruth.
Their major breakthrough for the evening came when Locklear got the ideas of past and future, “before” and “soon,” across to Ruth. Her telepathy was evidently the key to her quick grasp of his language; yet it seemed to work better with emotional states than with abstract ideas, and she grew upset when Loli became angry with her own first clumsy efforts at making her panties fit. Clearly, Ruth was a lady who liked her harmony.
For Ruth was, despite her rude looks, a lady—when she wasn’t in the sack. Even so, when at last Ruth had seen to Loli’s comfort with spare fabric and Locklear snapped off the light, he felt inviting hands on him again. “No thanks,” he said, chuckling, patting her shoulder, even though he wanted her again. And Ruth knew he did, judging from her sly insistence.
“No. Loli here,” he said finally, and felt Ruth shrug as if to say it didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t matter to Neanderthals, but—”Soon,” he promised, and shared a hug with Ruth before they fell asleep.
During the ensuing week, he learned much. For one thing, he learned that Loli was a chronic pain in the backside. She ate like a kzin warrior. She liked to see if things would break. She liked to spy. She interfered with Locklear’s pace during his afternoon “naps” with Ruth by whacking on the door with sticks and stones, until he swore he would ” . . . hit Loli soon.”
But Ruth would not hear of that. “Hit Loli, same hit Ruth head. Locklear like hit Ruth head?”
But one afternoon, when she saw Locklear studying her with friendly intensity, Ruth spoke to Loli at some length. The girl picked up her short spear and, crooning her happiness, loped off into the forest. Ruth turned to Locklear smiling. “Loli find fruitwater, soon Ruth make fruitfood.” A few minutes of miming showed that she had promised to make some kind of dessert, if Loli could find a beehive for honey.
Locklear had seen beehives in stasis, but explained that there were very few animals loose on Newduvai, and no hurtbugs.
“No hurtbugs? Loli no find, long time. Good,” Ruth replied firmly, and led him by the hand into their cabin, and “good” was the operative word.
On his next trip to the crypt, Locklear needed all day for his solitary work. He might put it off forever, but it was clear by now that he must populate Newduvai with game before he released their most fearsome predators. The little horses needed only to see daylight before galloping off. Camels were quicker still, and the deer bounded off like golf balls down a freeway. The predators would simply have to wait until the herds were larger, and the day was over before he could rig grav polarizers to trundle mammoths to the mouth of the crypt. His last job of the day was his most troublesome, releasing small cages of bees near groves of fruit trees and wildflowers.
Locklear and Ruth managed to convey a lot with only a few hundred words, though some of those words had to do multiple duty while Ruth expanded her vocabulary. When she said “new,” for example, it often carried a stigma. Neanderthals, he decided, were very conservative folk, and they sensed a lie before you told it. If Ruth was any measure, they also had little aptitude for math. She understood one and two and many. She understood “none,” but not as a number. If there wasn’t any, she conveyed to him, why try to count it? She had him there.