given her his boots, and worried so much whether Martin would take them away. And if he desired her, and at the same time wanted to gladden her in other ways, He startled himself by speaking out loud. 'If that's not love, I don't know what the devil is. The summer before, using that word in connection I a sim would have seemed as ridiculous as thinking a female sim as a woman. He shrugged, not so disturbed as he expected to be. Living as part of the band had this perspective.
Sims weren't human, he thought, but they were people. He nodded slowly, pleased with the distinction. The sim had been living in these woods for who knew how many years. For the first time, Quick felt guilty over the people who were supplanting wild sims all across the continent.
Even tame sims depended on their masters' whim’s for security. The trapper had trouble finding that right, be the same time did not know what else could have happened.
more the sims hunted with bows, the deadlier of the males brought in such an unending stream of food that the clearing constantly smelled of cooking meat. The whole band began to lose the gauntness that went with most of them, though, was fat, to Quick, a fat wild sim contradiction in terms. So he thought, at any rate, he noticed Sol's belly beginning to protrude. Yet she d no extra flesh on her limbs or in her face. The trapper scratched his head and kept on trying to get about on his crutches.
His right leg was never going to be the same. There was famous knot of bone where the leg had been broken ad not healed straight, which made it a little shorter its mate. Quick stumped patiently back and forth, as much weight on it as he could. Day by day it bore but he knew he had made his last trapping run. He would need a stick for the rest of his life.
He was exercising, his mind, he would have sworn, Where far away, when the reason Sol was putting on Fat dawned on him. He sat down heavily. No matter often his body had joined with hers, he had never thought issue might spring from it. In hindsight, that was stupid. In hindsight, of course, a lot of things were stupid.
He stayed on his haunches, lost in his own thoughts.
When Sol came back from a foraging trip, she gave him a bachful look. Not wash she asked.
No. Henry Quick pointed at her. Baby in you?
She glanced down at herself. The bulge was obvious, so obvious that Quick again kicked himself for not figuring what it meant before.
She signed, Baby in me.
She did not say anything about him being the father, but since that first time she had rarely coupled with anyone but him. After a moment, he realized he had never seen any sim in the band use the sign for father.
They viewed mating for its own sake, not for the sake of children, and had never made the connection between the two.
He wondered what to do, and wished he were callous enough for her pregnancy to make no difference to him. He had intended to head back toward the Commonwealths soon as the snow melted. Now . . . it would not be so easy You want me stay here? he signed.
Where go? Sol asked.
To men like me.
Sol frowned. One of him was strange enough; visual ing many of his kind took more imagination than she h At last she signed, winter not gone.
'Only too right it's not,' Quick said aloud. Even or mild day like this one, the breeze made his teeth chatter. first he thought Sol had changed the subject, but arte moment he realized such subtlety was beyond her. Sh simply pointed out that, whatever he decided to do wasn't going to do it tomorrow, or the day after either.
He thought about what staying with the sims and the going back to the Commonwealths would be like. He ca for Sol as he had for no woman on the other side of Rockies, and she was carrying his child. That counted something, but he was not sure in which direction it swt the balance.
Son of a sim was a bad enough thing to call a man, but father of a sim . .
. ? Still, he could be like a god if he chose to stay. There was so much the sims did know. He laughed at himself. Like a god, was it? A god who huddled naked, cold, and stinking in fir branches, who ate whatever was alive (or had been lately) and was glad to get it, who could not even use his own speech but had to content himself with a clumsy, limited makeshifts Anyone who bought godhood on those terms deserved to think he had it.
That the trapper lived hardly better than the sims while in the field did not enter into the equation. He deliberatly chose those hardships to escape from his fellow men for time, and to earn the money to live high when he got back to civilization. Until now, he had never imagined staying west of the mountains. Without Sol, he would have had no doubts.
Without Sol, he would have been dead months before, and would not be in this quandary.
Male sims were not normally quiet and reflective. Sol had accepted that Henry Quick sometimes was, but had also come to know him well enough to tell when his thoughts troubled him. you good? She asked.
Even after trading signs with him for so long, she could not come closer than that to probing his feelings. He spread his palms, a gesture that meant neither yes nor no. She rummaged about, offered him some half-frozen roots she had found.
Eat, she signed, as if food could cure mental as well as physical distress.
He sighed and ate. Sol made another gesture. He acted on that one, afterward, no matter how sated his body was, his mind did not rest.
could it be love, he wondered, when he could not express the idea to Sol? But what else was it? He had no idea, not even for himself. He turned to Sol. You want me he asked.
It was her turn to hesitate. Finally she signed, you good. He tugged at his beard, frowning; sometimes sims' statements were oracular in their obscurity. At last he decided she was telling him that the most important thing was his own happiness, a curious mirroring of his own feelings toward her. And if that wasn't love, what else was at even if it was, was it worth abandoning the Commonwealths for good? He knew a fair number of men who had given up the lives they had known to stay with one whom they had fal en in love. Once the first lust faded, most came to regret it.
