Ruth waved from the cabin doorway.
“Right,” Locklear snarled, too exhausted to let his anger kindle to white-hot fury. “Minuteman, I named you well. Your pants would be down, if you had any. Ahh, the hell with it.”
Loli was asleep in her cage, and Minuteman found employment elsewhere as Locklear ate chopped goat, grapes, and gruel. He did not look at Ruth, even when she sat near him as he chewed.
Finally he walked to the pallet, looking from it to Ruth, shook his head and then lay down.
Ruth cocked her head in that way she had. “Like Ruth stay at fire?”
“I don’t give a good shit. Yes, Ruth stay at fire. Good.” Some perversity made him want her, but it was not as strong as his need for sleep. And rejecting her might be a kind of punishment, he thought sleepily. . . .
Late the next afternoon, Locklear completed his airlift and returned to the cabin. He could see Minuteman sitting disconsolate, chin in hands, at the edge of the clearing. Apparently, no one had seen fit to take Loli from stasis. He couldn’t blame them much. Actually, he thought as he entered the cabin, he had no logical reason to blame them for anything. They enjoyed each other according to their own tradition, and he was out of step with it. Damn right, and I don’t know if I could ever get in step.
He called Minuteman in. “Many, many gentles at big water,” he said. “No big bad meat hurt gentles. Like see gentles now?” Minuteman wanted to very much. So did Ruth. He urged them onto the scooter and handed Ruth her woven basket full of dried apricots, giving both hindquarters of the goat to Minuteman without comment. Soon they were flitting above conifers and poplars, and then Ruth saw the dozens of cages glistening beside the lake.
“Gentles, gentles,” she exclaimed, and began to weep. Locklear found himself angry at her pleasure, the anger of a wronged spouse, and set the scooter down abruptly some distance from the stasis cages.
Minuteman was off and running instantly. Ruth disembarked, turned, held a hand out. “Locklear like wake gentles? Ruth tell gentles, Locklear good, much good magics.”
“Tell ’em anything you like,” he barked, “after you screw ’em all!”
In the distance, Minuteman was capering around the cages, shouting in glee. After a moment, Ruth said, “Ruth like go back with Locklear.”
“The hell you will! No, Ruth like push-push with many gentles. Locklear no like.” And he twisted a vernier hard, the scooter lifting quickly.
Plaintively, growing faint on the breeze: “Ruth hurt in head. Like Locklear much . . .” And whatever else she said was lost.
He returned to the hidden kzin lifeboat, hating the idea of the silent cabin, and monitored the comm set for hours. It availed him nothing, but its boring repetitions eventually put him to sleep.
* * *
For the next week, Locklear worked like a man demented. He used a stasis cage, as he had on Kzersatz, to store his remaining few hunks of smoked goat. He flew surveillance over the new encampment, so high that no one would spot him, which meant that he could see little of interest, beyond the fact that they were building huts of bundled grass and some dark substance, perhaps mud. The stasis cages lay in disarray; he must retrieve them soon.
It was pure luck that he spotted a half-dozen deer one morning, a half-day’s walk from the encampment, running as though from a predator. Presently, hovering beyond big chestnut trees, he saw them: men, patiently herding their prey toward an arroyo. He grinned to himself and waited until a rise of ground would cover his maneuver. Then he swooped low behind the deer, swerving from side to side to group them, yelping and growling until he was hoarse. By that time, the deer had put a mile between themselves and their real pursuers.
No better time than now to get a few things straight. Locklear swept the scooter toward the encampment at a stately pace, circling twice, hearing thin shouts as the Neanderthals noted his approach. He watched them carefully, one hand checking his kzin sidearm. They might be gentle but a few already carried spears and they were, after all, experts at the quick kill. He let the scooter hover at knee height, a constant reminder of his great magics, and noted the stir he made as the scooter glided silently to a stop at the edge of the camp.
He saw Ruth and Minuteman emerge from one of the dozen beehive-shaped, grass-and-wattle huts. No, it wasn’t Ruth; he admitted with chagrin that they all looked very much alike. The women paused first, and then he did spot Ruth, waving at him, a few steps nearer. The men moved nearer, falling silent now, laying their new spears and stone axes down as if by prearrangement. They stopped a few paces ahead of the women.
An older male, almost covered in curly gray hair, continued to advance using a spear—no, it was only a long walking staff—to aid him. He too stopped, with a glance over his shoulder, and then Locklear saw a bald old fellow with a withered leg hobbling past the younger men. Both of the oldsters advanced together then, full of years and dignity without a stitch of clothes. The gray man might have been sixty, with a little potbelly and knobby joints suggesting arthritis. The cripple was perhaps ten years younger but stringy and meatless, and his right thigh had been hideously smashed a long time before. His right leg was inches too short, and his left hip seemed disfigured from years of walking to compensate.
Locklear knew he needed Ruth now, but feared to risk violating some taboo so soon. “Locklear,” he said, showing empty hands, then tapping his breast.
The two old men cocked their heads in a parody of Ruth’s familiar gesture, then the curly one began to speak. Of course it was all gibberish, but the walking staff lay on the ground now and their hands were empty.
Wondering how much they would understand telepathically, Locklear spoke with enough volume for Ruth to hear. “Gentles hunt meat in hills,” he said. “Locklear no like.” He was not smiling.
The old men used brief phrases to each other, and then the crippled one turned toward the huts. Ruth began to walk forward, smiling wistfully at Locklear as she stopped next to the cripple.
She waited to hear a few words from each man, and then faced Locklear. “All one tribe now, two leaders,” she said. “Skywater and Shortleg happy to see great shaman who save all from big fire. Ruth happy see Locklear too,” she added softly.
He told her about the men hunting deer, and that it must stop; they must make do without meat for awhile. She translated. The old men conferred, and their gesture for “no” was the same as Ruth’s. They replied through Ruth that young men had always hunted, and always would.
He told them that the animals were his, and they must not take what belonged to another. The old men said they could see that he felt in his head the animals were his, but no one owned the great mother land, and no one could own her children. They felt much bad for him. He was a very, very great shaman, but not so good at telling gentles how to live.
With great care, having chosen the names Cloud and Gimp for the old fellows, he explained that if many animals were killed, soon there would be no more. One day when many little animals were born, he would let them hunt the older ones.
The gist of their reply was this: Locklear obviously thought he was right, but they were older and therefore wiser. And because they had never run out of game no matter how much they killed, they never could run out of game. If it hadn’t already happened, it wouldn’t ever happen.
Abruptly, Locklear motioned to Cloud and had Ruth translate: he could prove the scarcity of game if Cloud would ride the scooter as Ruth and Minuteman had ridden it.
Much silent discussion and some out loud. Then old Cloud climbed aboard and in a moment, the scooter was above the trees.
From a mile up, they could identify most of the game animals, especially herd beasts in open plains. There weren’t many to see. “No babies at all,” Locklear said, trying to make gestures for “small.” “Cloud, gentles must wait until babies are born.” The old fellow seemed to understand Locklear’s thoughts well enough, and spoke a bit of gibberish, but his head gesture was a Neanderthal “no.”
Locklear, furious now, used the verniers with abandon. The scooter fled across parched arroyo and broken hill, closer to the ground and now so fast that Locklear himself began to feel nervous. Old Cloud sensed his unease, grasping handholds with gnarled knuckles and hunkering down, and Locklear knew a savage elation. Serve the old bastard right if I splattered him all over Newduvai. And then he saw the old man staring at his eyes, and knew that the thought had been received.