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 great 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 pot belly 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.
'No, I won't do it,' he said. But a part of him had wanted to; still wanted to out of sheer frustration. Cloud's face was a rigid mask of fear, big teeth showing, and Locklear slowed the scooter as he approached the encampment again.
Cloud did not wait for the vehicle to settle, but debarked as fast as painful old joints would permit and stood facing his followers without a sound.
After a moment, with dozens of Neanderthals staring in stunned silence, they all turned their backs, a wave of moans rising from every throat. Ruth hesitated, but she too faced away from Locklear.
'Ruth! No hurt Cloud. Locklear no like hurt gentles. '
The moans continued as Cloud strode away. 'Locklear need to talk to Ruth!” And then as the entire tribe began to walk away, he raised his voice: 'No hurt gentles, Ruth!'
She stopped, but would not look at him as she replied. 'Cloud say new people hurt gentles and not know. Locklear hurt Cloud before, want kill Cloud. Locklear go soon soon,' she finished in a sob. Suddenly, then, she was running to catch the others.
Some of the men were groping for spears now. Locklear did not wait to see what they might do with them. A half-hour later he was using the dolly in the crypt, ranking cage upon cage just inside the obscuring film. With several lion cages stacked like bricks at the entrance, no sensible Neanderthal would go a step further. Later, he could use disassembled stasis units as booby traps as he had done on Kzersatz. But it was nearly dark when he finished, and Locklear was hurrying. Now, for the first time ever on Newduvai, he felt gooseflesh when he thought of camping in the open.
For days, he considered a return to Kzersatz in the lifeboat, meanwhile improving the cabin with Loli's help. He got that help very simply, by refusing to let her sleep in her stasis cage unless she did help. Loli was very bright, and learned his language quickly because she could not rely on telepathy. Operating on the sour-grape theory, he told himself that Ruth had been mud-fence ugly; he hadn't felt any real affection for a Neanderthal bimbo. Not really…
He managed to ignore Loli's budding charms by reminding himself that she was no more than twelve or so, and gradually she began to trust him. He wondered how much that trust would suffer if she found he was taking her from stasis only on the days he needed help.
