He was close to the place from which he had come when Caleb Lucas said from the bushes, "Splendidly done, oh, splendidly, Edwardi" His voice was a thread of whisper; none of the sims could have heard it.
"Aye, you have the girl, and good for you." Henry Dale did not try to hold his voice down. Indeed, he rose from concealment. "Now to teach the vermin who stole her the price of their fol y." He aimed a pistol at the sims behind Wingfield.
"No, you fool!" Lucas shouted. He lunged for Dale at the same moment the sims cried out in fear, fury, and betrayal.
Too late, the pistol roared, belching flame and smoke. The lead ball struck home with a noise like a great slap. The sim it hit shrieked, briefly.
With a lithe twist, Dale slipped away from Caleb Lucas.
His hand darted into his boot-top for his other pistol. The second shot was less deliberately aimed, but not a miss. This time the screams of pain went on and on.
By then Wingfield was among the bushes. Behind him, the sims were boiling like ants whose nest has been stirred with a stick. Some scrambled for cover; others, bolder, came rushing after the Englishman.
A stone crashed against greenery mere inches from his head.
"No help for it now," Henry Dale said cheerfully, bringing up his crossbow. The bolt smote a charging sim square in the chest. The sim staggered, hands clutching at the short shaft of death. It pitched forward on its face.
More rocks flew. Wingfield turned to one side, to try to shield Joanna with his body.
Allan Cooper got to his feet. "God damn you to hel for what you make me do," he snarled at Dale. He fired one pistol, then a second, then his crossbow.
A sharpened stone tore Wingfield's breeches, cut his thigh. Had it hit squarely, it would have crippled him. The sims were howling like, lost souls, lost angry souls. Dale was right, no help for it now, Wingfield saw. His pistol bucked when he fired one-handed. He did not know whether he hit or missed. In a way, he hoped he had missed. That did not stop him from drawing his other gun.
"You purposed this all along, Henry," he shouted above the din.
"Aye, and own it proudly." Dale dropped another sim with a second crossbow bolt. He turned to kick Caleb Lucas in the ribs. "Fight 'em, curse you! They'll have the meat from your bones now as happily as from mine."
"No need for this, no need," Lucas gasped, swearing and sobbing by turns. But whether or not that was true, he realized, as Wingfield had, that there was no unbaking a bread. His pistols barked, one after the other.
But the sims on their home ground were not the skulking creatures they were near Jamestown. Though half a dozen lay dead or wounded, the rest, male and female together, kept up the barrage of stones. Their missiles were not so deadly as the Englishmen's, but they loosed them far more of often.
One landed with a meaty thud. Allan Cooper, his face a mask of gore, crumpled slowly to the ground.
He turned to Wingfield, who was struggling to fit another bolt into his weapons groove. "Go on!" he shouted. "You have what you came for.
I'll hold the sims. As you say, I am to blame here."
"But, "
Dale whipped out his rapier. Its point flickered in front of Wingfield's face. "Gal Aye, and you, Caleb. I promise, I shal give the brutes enough fight and chase to distract 'em from you."
He sprang into the clearing, rushing the startled sims. One swung a stout branch at him. Graceful as a dancer, he ducked, then thrust out to impale his attacker. The sim gave a bubbling shriek; blood gushed from its mouth.
"Gal" Dale yelled again.
Without Joanna, Wingfield would have stood by the other Englishman no matter what he said. When she squalled at the rough treatment she was getting, though, he scrambled away into the woods. Lucas fol owed a few seconds later.
For as long as they could, they looked back at Henry Dale. After that first one, no sim dared come within reach of his sword. He stayed in the clearing for what seemed an impossibly long time, stones flying al around him.
At last he turned. "Catch me if you can!" he shouted, brandishing his rapier. Wingfield saw how he limped as he ran; not every stone had missed. Dale dashed through the undergrowth, going in a different direction from his comrades and making no effort to move quietly. His defiant cries rang through the night. So did the sims' bellows of rage as they pursued him.
"You make for home," Caleb Lucas urged Wingfield. "I will give Henry such help as I may."
"They will surely slay you," Wingfield said, but he knew he would not hold Lucas back. Had their positions been reversed, he would not have wanted the youngster to try to stop him.
Just then, the sims' shouts rose in-a goblin chorus of triumph.
Screams punctuated it, not al from an English throat. As Dale had promised, he did not die easily. Caleb Lucas sobbed.
"Come," Wingfield said softly, his own voice breaking. "Now we have but to save ourselves, any way we may."
And So to bed
Sims made people
look at themselves and their place in nature differently from the way they had before.
They showed the link between humans and animals far more clearly than any creatures with which Euro peons had been familiar before.
Had there been no sims, had the Americas been populated by native humans, say, or only by animals-the development of the transformational theory of life might have been long delayed. This would have slowed the growth of several sciences, biology being, of course, the most obvious of them. Speculating on might-have-beens, however, is not the proper domain of history. The transformational theory of life was first put forward in I66I. After that, humans' view of their place in the world would never be the same
From The Story of the Federated Commonwealths May 4, I66I.
A fine bright morning. Small beer and radishes for to break my fast, then into London for this day.
The shambles on Newgaoe Street stinking unto
heaven, as is usual, but close to it my destination, the sim marketplace. Our servant Jane with too much for one body to do, and whilst I may not afford the hire of another man or maid, two sims shall go far to ease her burden.
Success also sure to gladden Elizabeth's heart, my wife being ever one to follow the dame Fashion, and sims all the go of late, though monstrous ugly. Them formerly not much seen here, but since the success of our Virginia and Plymouth colonies are much more often fetched to these shores from the wildernesses the said colonies front upon. They are also commenced to be bred on English soil, but no hope there for me, as I do require workers full-grown, not cubs or babes in arms or whatsoever the proper term may be.
The sim-sel er a vicious lout, near unhandsome as his wares. No, the truth for the diary: such were a slander on any man, as I saw on his conveying me to the creatures.
Have seen these sims before, surely, but briefly, and in their masters'
livery, the which by concealing their nakedness conceals as well much of their brutishness. The males are most of them well made, though lean as rakes from the ocean passage and, I warrant, poor victualing after. But al are so hairy as more to resemble rugs than men, and the same true for the females, their fur hiding such dubious charms as they may possess nigh as well as a smock of linen: nought here, God knows, for Elizabeth's jealousy to light on.
This so were the said females lovely of feature as so many Aphrodites.
They are not, nor do the males recall to mind Adonis. In both sexes the brow projects with a shelf of bone, and above it, where men do enjoy a forehead proud in its erectitude, is but an apish slope.
The nose broad and low, the mouth wide, the teeth nigh as big as a horse's (though shaped, it is not to be denied, like a man's, the jaw long, deep and devoid of chin. They stink.
The sim-sel er full of compliments on my coming hard on the arrival of the Gloucester from Plymouth, him having thereby replenished his stock in trade.