and push west into the North American heartland. Bands of wild sims made sure some would not find their way home, and others fel victim to spearfangs and other wild beasts. But neither sims nor beasts could halt or even slow the steady westward push of people into North America.
Still, as has always been true, the first humans to go west of the mountains faced no smal danger, and had to show extraordinary resourcefulness in unfamiliar and dangerous circumstances....
From The Story of the Federated Commonwealths
THOMAS KENTON PAUSED to
look westward at land no man had seen before. The gap in the mountains revealed an endless sea of deep green rolling woods ahead.
Virginia had been such a wilderness once, before the English landed eighty-odd years ago.
'But no more, eh, Charles?' he said to the sim at his side.
'Virginia fills with farmers, and the time has come to find what this western country is like.'
Find, Charles signed. Like most of the New World's native subhumans, he understood speech well enough, but had trouble reproducing it. Signals based on those used by the deaf and dumb came easier for him.
The sim was close to Kenton's own rangy six feet one. His eyes, in fact, were on a level with the scout's, but where Kenton's forehead rose, his sloped smoothly back from beetling brow ridges. His nose was low, broad, and flat; his mouth wide; his teeth large, heavy, and yellow; his jaw long and chinless. As an Englishman, he would have been hideous. Kenton did not think of him so; by the standards of his own kind, he was on the handsome side.
On, Charles signed, adding the finger-twist that turned it into a question. At the scout's nod, he strode ahead, his deerskin buskins silent on the mossy ground. His only other clothing was a leather belt that held water bottle, hatchet, knife, and pouches for this and that.
His thick brown hair served him as well as did Kenton's leather tunic and trousers.
A turkey called from a stand of elms off to one side.
Kenton felt his stomach rumble hungrily, and an instant later heard Charles's. They grinned at each other. Hunt, the scout signed, not wanting to make any noise to alert the bird.
The sim nodded and trotted toward the far side of the trees.
Kenton gauged distances. If all went well, the shot would be only about fifty yards, a half-charge of powder should serve. He poured it into the little charge-cup that hung from the bottom of his powderhorn, then down his musket barrel it went.
Working with practiced speed, he set a greased linen patch on the gun's muzzle, laid the round ball on it, and rammed it home til it just touched the powder. Then he squeezed down on the first of the musket's two triggers, setting the second so it would go off at the lightest touch.
The whole procedure took about fifteen seconds.
And it was al needless. Kenton waited, expecting the frightened turkey to burst from cover at any moment. What emerged, however, was Charles, carrying the bird by the feet in one hand and his bloody hatchet in the other. He was laughing.
'Good hunting,' Kenton said. He careful y reset the first trigger, making sure he heard it click back into place. He did not begrudge the sim the kill; he welcomed anything that saved powder and bul ets.
Stupid bird, Charles signed. I get close, throw. He pantomimed casting the hatchet. It had a weighted knob at the end of the handle to give it proper balance for the task. Even wild sims were dangerous, flinging the sharp- chipped stones they made.
The sun was going down over the vast forest ahead. 'We may as well camp,' Kenton decided when they came to a smal , cool, quick-flowing stream. He and Charles washed their heads and soaked their feet in it. They drank til they sloshed, preferring the stream's water to the warm, stale stuff in their canteens.
Then they scoured the neighborhood for dry twigs and brush for the evening's fire. Kenton was careful to make sure trees and bushes screened the site from the west. When he took out flint and steel to set off the tinder at the end of the fire, Charles touched his arm.
Me, please, the sim Kenton passed him the metal and stone. Charles briskly clashed them together, blew on the sparks that fell to the tinder. Soon he had a small smokeless blaze going.
When he started to pass the flint and steel back to L Kenton, the scout said, 'You may as well keep them; you use them more than I do, anyway.'
The flickering firelight revealed the awe on Charles's face. That awe was there even though he was of the third generation of sims to grow up as part of Virginia. In the wild, sims used fire if they came across it, and kept it alive as best they could, but they could not start one.
To Charles, Kenton's simple tools conveyed a power that must have felt godlike.
The scout burned his hands and his mouth on hot roasoed turkey, but did not care. Blowing on his fingers, he chuckled, 'Better than going hungry, eh, Charles?'
The sim grunted around a mouthful. He did not bother with any more formal reply; he took his eating seriously.
They tossed the offal into the stream. Charles had taken the first watch the night before, so tonight it belonged to Kenton. The sim stripped off his shoes and belt, curled up by the fire, with his hair, he needed no blanket, and fel asleep with the ease and speed Kenton always envied. Charles and his breed never brought the day's troubles into the evening with them. Were they too simple or too wise?
The scout often wondered.
He let the fire die to red embers that hardly interfered with his night sight. The moon, rounding toward ful , spilled pale light over the forest ahead, smoothing its contours till it resembled nothing so much as a calm, peaceful sea.
