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 armadillo, 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
