Even Martin had had an ulterior motive.
The trapper caught a barmaid's eye, held up his glass. The girl looked bored, but finally nodded and off for a bottle. She was blonde, smooth-skinned, and Quick could easily imagine sharing a bed with her, afterward was something else again.
'Your health,' he said to the fur dealer when he had resupplied.
He drank again, sighed contentedly.
'Now, then, Henry,' Cartwright said, seeing that relaxation on the trapper's face, 'you really ought to tel me more about the clearing where your cache of furs is. It would be worth a pretty pile of silver denaires, I dare say.'
'So they would, so they would,' Quick admitted, “drunk or sober, I have nothing to say to you about it. You can test it if you like; I'll sponge up as much as yot to buy.'
'Worse luck for you, I believe it.' But, laughing, the dealer signaled for another round. After it arrived he turned serious again.
'Henry, I just can't fathom you're being so pigheaded. It's not as if you could get those pelts back for yourself. Moving the way you do you needed a special miracle to make the trip out once can't be thinking of going in again for them.'
'Oh, I can think about it,' Quick said; the urge to get away would never leave him. But whenever he tried to even now, he knew long journeys were really behind
'Why, then?' Cartwright persisted.
The liquor had loosened Quick's tongue enough for him to be willing to justify himself out loud. 'Because of the sims,' he said. 'That band deserves to have men leave them alone, instead of flooding in the way they would after they found my trail and took out my furs. Those sims took me in and saved me, and they've had enough grief for it.
'They're just Sims, Henry,' Cartwright said. He knew the trapper's story, as much of it as Quick had told anyone, new about Sol; no one knew about the child. No one ever would.
They were here first, John,' Quick said stubbornly. not their fault they're stupider than we are. Having to work fields and such is one thing; we can make better use of good land than they ever could. But let them keep the woods. Some of them ought to stay free.'
Maybe you won't want to go trapping after all,' Cartwright observed.
'You sound like you've got yourself a new aim in life.'
Quick hadn't thought of it in quite those terms. He stroked his chin.
He'd shaved his beard, but wasn't yet used to it feeling smooth skin again. At last he said, 'Maybe I do. Sims aren't animals, after al .'
A hunter sitting at the next table turned round at his remark. He grinned drunkenly. 'You're right there, pal. they give better sport than any damned beasts.' He hooked his thumb under his necklace, drawing Quick's eye to it. The necklace was strung with dried, rather hairy ears.
It took four men to pry Quick's hands from the fel ow's neck.
Freedom
Where can be no doubt that the labor of Sims
contribated greatly to the growth of the Federated Commonwealths of America. As we have seen, this was true in agriculture. It was also the case in the huge factories of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: simple, repetitive tasks proved to be within the capacity of the native subhumans. Their treatment at the dormitories next to these factories was all too often worse than any suffered by human workers, who had both the wit and the political ability to combine to improve their conditons.
These workers' alliances were early supporters of he sims' justice movement. if factory owners could use sims instead of people, rewarding them with no more than what was frequently inadequate food and shelter, then wages for all workers were depressed.
Only the fact that humans greatly outnumbered sims Prevented this problem from being even worse than it was.
The steady growth of technology, however, did as much to change conditions for sims as did political agitation. Farming grew increasingly mechanized, and
machines gradual y began taking over many of the simple factory jobs sims had formerly performed. This transformation also affected humans, of course. But most succeeded in changing with the times, and in finding new positions in emerging high technology industries.
This option was not open to sims.
Even with improved technology, the Sims' justice movement has continual y faced a serious problem: sims, while more than beasts, manifestly are less than men and women. Defining a middle ground, and an appropriate role for Sims in modern society, has never been easy; the movement itself has fragmented several times over attempts to do so.
In recent years, though, the area of research has drawn attention from almost al factions of the sims' justice movement.
Because they are so like people in so many ways, sims have since their discovery been used for experiments where humans could not in good conscience be employed. Sometimes this has resulted in glorious successes: witness the sim Abel, who orbited the earth six months before the first man to do so.
Sometimes, as in the case of certain nineteenth century medical research conducted without benefit of anesthesia, words cannot convey the horror suffered by sims.
And yet, it cannot be denied that much good has accrued to humanity through the testing in sims of new surgical techniques and various methods of immunization. Whether this good outweighs the suffering that sims are
