Eventually, between food-gathering forays, he used pebbles and sketches to tell Ruth of the many, many other animals and people he could bring to the scene. She was no sketch artist; in fact, she insisted, women were not supposed to draw things—especially huntthings. Ah, he said, magics were only for men? Yes, she said, then mystified him with pantomimes of sleep and pain. That was for men, too, and food-gathering was for women.
He pursued the mystery, sketching with the kzin memo screen. At last, when she pretended to cut her throat with his wtsai knife, he understood, and added the word “kill” to her vocabulary. Men hunted and killed.
Dry-mouthed, he asked, “Man like kill Locklear?”
Now it was her turn to be mystified. “No kill. Why kill magic man?”
Because, he replied, “Locklear like Ruth, one-two other man like Ruth. Kill Locklear for Ruth?”
He had never seen her laugh aloud, but he saw it now, the big teeth gleaming, breasts shaking with merriment. “Locklear like Ruth, good. Many man like Ruth, good.”
He was silent for a long time, fighting the temptation to tell her that many men liking Ruth was not good. Then: “Ruth like many man?”
She had learned to nod by now, and did it happily.
The next five minutes were troubled ones for Locklear. Ruth did not seem to understand monogamy in any form. Apparently, everybody took potluck in the sex department and was free to accept or reject. Some people were simply more popular than others. “Many man like Ruth,” she said. “Many, many, many . . .”
“Okay, for Christ’s sake, I get the idea,” he exploded, and again he saw that look of sadness—or perhaps pain. “Locklear see, Ruth popular with man.”
It seemed to be their first quarrel. Tentatively, she said, “Locklear popular with woman.”
“No. Little popular with woman.”
“Much popular with Ruth,” she said, and began to rub his shoulders. That was the day she asked him about her appearance, and he responded the best way he could. She thought it silly to trim her strong, useful nails; sillier to wash her hair. Still, she did it, and he claimed she was pretty, and she knew he lied.
When it occurred to him to ask how he could look nice for her, Ruth said, “Locklear pretty now.” But he never thought to wonder if she might be lying.
* * *
Whatever Ruth said about women and hunting, it did not seem to apply to Loli. While aloft in the scooter one day to study distribution of the animals, Locklear saw the girl chasing a hare across a meadow. She was no slouch with a short spear and nailed the hare on her second toss, dispatching it with a stone after a brief struggle. He lowered the scooter very, very slowly, watching her tear at the animal, disgusted when he realized she was eating it raw.
She saw his shadow when the scooter was hovering very near, and sat there blushing, looking at him with the innards of the hare across her lap.
She understood few of his words—or seemed to, at the cabin—but his tone was clear enough. “You couldn’t share it, you little bastard. No, you sneak out here and stuff yourself.” She began to suck her thumb, pouting. Then perhaps Loli realized the boss must be placated; she tried a smile on her blood-streaked face and held her grisly trophy out.
“No. Ruth. Give to Ruth,” he scowled, pointing toward the cabin. She elevated her chin and smiled, and he flew off grumbling. He couldn’t much blame the kid; kzin rations and fruit were getting pretty tiresome, and the gruel Ruth made from grain wasn’t all that exciting without bits of meat. It was going to be rougher on the animals when he woke the men.
And why wake them at all? You’ve got it good here, he reminded himself in Sequence Umpteen of his private dialogue. You have your own little world and a harem of one, and you know when her period comes so you know when not to play. And one of these days, Loli will be a knockout, 1 suspect. A much niftier dish than poor Ruth, who doesn’t know what a skag she’d be in modern society, thank God.
Moments like this made him squirm. Setting Ruth’s looks aside, he had no complaint, not even about the country itself. Not much seasonal change, no dangerous animals unless you want to release them, certainly none of the most dangerous animal of all. Except for kzinti, of course. One on one, they were meaner predators than men—even Neanderthal savages.
“That’s why I have to release ’em,” he said to the wind. “If a fully-manned kzin ship comes, I’ll need an army.” He no longer kidded himself about scholarship and the sociology of homo neanderthalensis, which was strictly a secondary item. It was sobering to look yourself over and see self-interest riding you like a hunchback. So he flew directly to the crypt and spent the balance of the day releasing the whoppers: aurochs and bison, which didn’t make him sweat much, and a half-dozen mammoths, which did.
A mammoth, he found, was a flighty beast not given to confrontations. He could set one shambling off with a shout, its trunk high like a periscope tasting the breeze. Every one of them turned into the wind and disappeared toward the frostline, and now the crypt held only its most dangerous creatures.
He returned to the cabin perilously late, the sun of Newduvai dying while he was still a hundred meters from the wisp of smoke rising from the cabin. He landed blind near the cabin, very slowly but with a jolt, and saw the faint gleam of the kzin light leap from the cabin window. Ruth might not have a head for figures, but she’d seen him snap that light on fifty times. And she must’ve sensed my panic. I wonder how far off she can do that. . . .
Ruth already had succulent broiled haunches of Loli’s hare, keeping them warm over coals, and it wrenched his heart as he saw she was drooling as she waited for him. He wiped the corner of her mouth, kissed her anyhow, and sat at the rough pole table while she brought his supper. Loli had obviously eaten, and watched him as if fearful that he would order her outside.
Hauling mammoths, even with a grav polarizer, is exhausting work. After finishing off a leg of hare, and falling asleep at the table, Locklear was only half-aware when Ruth picked him up and carried him to their pallet as easily as she would have carried a child.
The next day, he had Ruth convey to Loli that she was not to hunt without permission. Then, with less difficulty than he’d expected, he sketched and quizzed her about the food of a Neanderthal tribe. Yes, they hunted everything: bugs to mammoths, it was all protein; but chiefly they gathered roots, grains, and fruits.
That made sense. Why risk getting killed hunting when tubers didn’t fight back? He posed his big question then. If he brought a tribe to Newduvai (this brought a smile of anticipation to her broad face), and forbade them to hunt without his permission, would they obey?
Gentles might, she said. New people, such as Loli, were less obedient. She tried to explain why, conveying something about telepathy and hunting, until he waved the question aside. If he showed her sleeping gentles, would she tell him which ones were good? Oh yes, she said, adding a phrase she knew he liked: “No problem.”
But it took him an hour to get Ruth on the scooter. That stuff was all very well for great magic men, she implied, but women’s magics were more prosaic. After a few minutes idling just above the turf, he sped up, and she liked that fine. Then he slowed and lifted the scooter a bit. By noon, he was cruising fast as they surveyed groups of aurochs, solitary gazelles, and skittish horses from high above. It was she, sampling the wind with her nose, who directed him higher and then pointed out a mammoth, a huge specimen using its tusks to find roots.
He watched the huge animal briefly, estimating how many square miles a mammoth needed to feed, and then made a decision that saddened him. Earth had kept right on turning when the last mammoths disappeared. Newduvai could not afford many of them, ripping up foliage by the roots. Perhaps the Outsiders didn’t care about that, but Locklear did. If you had to start sawing off links in your food chain, best if you started at the top. And he didn’t want to pursue that thought by himself. At the very top was man. And kzin. It was the kind of thing he’d like to discuss with Scarface, but he’d made two trips to the lifeboat without a peep from its all-band comm set.