A Different Flesh

by Harry Turtledove

  Though meant but as a pleasantry, quoth I, why not? Against true men they could not long have stood, but needs must have given way as round Plymouth and Virginia. Even without battle they must soon have failed, as being less able than mankind to provide for their wants.

  There we let it lie, but as I think more on't, the notion admits of broader application. Is't not the same for trout as for men, or for lilacs? Those best suited living reproduce their kind, whilst the trout with twisted tail or bloom without sweet scent die all unmourned, leaving no descendants. And each succeeding generation, being of the previous survivors constituted, will by such reasoning show some little difference from the one as went before.

  Seeing no flaw in this logic, resolve tomorrow to do this from its tachygraphic state, bereft, of course, of maunderings and privacies, for prospectus to the Royal Society, and mightily wondering whatever they shall make of it.

  May 23. Closeted all this day at the Admiralty. Yet did it depend on my diligence alone, I fear me the Fleet should drown. Still, a deal of business finished, as happens when one stays by it. Three quills worn quite out, and my hands all over ink. Also my fine camlet cloak with the gold buttons, which shall mightily vex my wife, poor wretch, unless it may be cleaned. I pray God to make it so, for I do mislike strife at home.

  The burning work at last complete, homeward in the twilight. It being washing-day, dined on cold meat. I do confess, felt no small strange stir in my breast on seeing Tom taking down the washing before the house. A vision it was, almost, of his kind roaming England long ago, till perishing from want of substance on vying therefore with men.

  And now they are through the agency of men returned here again, after some great interval of years. Would I knew how many.

  The writing of my notions engrossing the whole of the day, had no occasion to air them to Lord Brouncker of the Society, as was my hope.

  Yet expound I must, or burst. Elizabeth, then, at dinner made audience for me, whether she would or no. My space at last exhausted, asked for her thoughts on't.

  She said only that Holy Writ sufficed on the matter for her, whereat I could but make a sour face. To bed in some anger, and in fear lest the Royal Society prove as closeminded, which God prevent.

  Did He not purpose man to reason on the world around him, He should have left him witless as the sim.

  May 24. To Gresham College this morning, to call on Lord Brouncker. He examined with great care the papers I had done up, his face revealing naught. Felt myself at recitation

  I, once more before a professor, a condition whose lack these last years I have not missed. Feared also he might not be able to take in the writing, it being done in such haste some short-hand characters may have replaced the common ones.

  Then to my delight he declared he reckoned it deserving I knew not how to make answer, and should have in the next moment fled. But up spake to my great surprise Lord Brouncker, reciting from Second Chronicles, the second verse of the fourth chapter, wherein is said of Solomon and his Temple, Also he made the molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and the height thereof was five cubits, and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.

  This much perplexed the Puritan and me as well, though I essayed not to show it. Lord Brouncker then proceeded to his explication, to wit that the true compass of a ten-cubit round vessel was not thirty cubits, but above one and thirty, I misremember the exact figure he gave. Those of the Royal Society learned in mathematics did agree he had reason, and urged the Puritan make the experiment for his self with cup, cord, and rule, which were enough for to demonstrate the truth.

  I asked if he was answered. Like a gentleman he owned he was, and bowed, and sat, his face ful of troubles. Felt with him no small sympathy, for once one error in Scripture be admitted, where shal it end?

  The next query was of different sort, a man in periwigg enquiring if I did reckon humankind to have arisen by the means I described. Had to reply I did. Our forefathers might be excused for thinking otherwise, them being so widely separate from al other creatures they knew.

  But we moderns in our travels round the globe have found the shimpanse, which standeth nigh the flame of reasoned thought; and more important still the sim, in whom the flame does burn, but more feebly than in ourselves. These bridging the gap twixt man and beast meseems do show mankind to be in sooth a part of nature, whose engenderment in some past distant age is to be explained through natural law.

  Someone rose to doubt the variation in each sort of living thing being sufficient eventually to permit the rise of new kinds. Pointed out to him the mastiff, the terrier, and the bloodhound, all of the dog kind, but become distinct through man's choice of mates in each generation.

  Surely the same might occur in nature, said I. The fellow admitted it was conceivable, and sat.

  Then up stood a certain Wilberforce, with whom I have some small acquaintance. He likes me not, nor I him. We know it on both sides, though for civility's sake feigning otherwise. Now he spoke with smirking air, as one sure of the mortal thrust. He did grant my willingness to have a sim as great-grandfather, said he, but was I so willing to claim one as great-grandmother? A deal of laughter rose which was his purpose, and to make me out a fool.

  Had I carried steel, I should have drawn on him. As was, rage sharpened my wit to serve for the smallsword I left at home. Told him it were no shame to have one's greatgrandfather a sim, as that sim did use to best advantage the intel ect he had. Better that, quoth I, than dissipating the mind on such digressive and misleading quibbles as he raised. If I be in error, then I am; let him shew it by logic and example, not as it were playing to the gallery.

  Came clapping from all sides, to my delight and the round dejection of Wilberforce. On seeking further questions, found none.

  Took my own seat whilst the Fel ows of the Society did congratulate me and cry up my essay louder, I thought, than either of the other two.

  Lord Brouncker acclaimed it as a unifying principle for the whole of the study of life, which made me as proud a man as any in the world, for all the world seemed to smile upon me.

  And so to bed.

  I69I Around the Salt Lick Europeans soon settled the Atlantic seaboard of North America.

  Settlement was slower in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies further south, as the harsh tropical climate of much of Central and South America posed a serious chal enge to immigrants. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, only New Granada and Argentina, the most northerly and southerly of the Hispanic settlements, tnuly flourished.

  The British North American colonies, however, soon outdistanced even the most successful settlements farther south. Because the land was more like that to which the settlers had been accustomed, European farming techniques needed less adaptatbn than was the case in Central and South America. Moreover, the establishment of a divine-right monarchy on the French model in England made political and religious dissenters eager to leave the island, and the Crown happy to see them go. Thus a constant stream of settlers was assured.

  As the seventeenth century drew toward a close, explorers were beginning to penetrate the mountain passes and push west into the North American heartland. Bands of wild sims made sure some would not find their way home, and others fel victim to spearfangs and other wild beasts. But neither sims nor beasts could halt or even slow the steady westward push of people into North America.

  Still, as has always been true, the first humans to go west of the mountains faced no smal danger, and had to show extraordinary resourcefulness in unfamiliar and dangerous circumstances....

  From The Story of the Federated Commonwealths

  THOMAS KENTON PAUSED to

  look westward at land no man had seen before. The gap in the mountains revealed an endless sea of deep green rolling woods ahead.

  Virginia had been such a wilderness once, before the English landed eighty-odd years ago.

  "But no more, eh, Charles?" he said to the sim at his side.


  "Virginia fills with farmers, and the time has come to find what this western country is like."

  Find, Charles signed. Like most of the New World's native subhumans, he understood speech well enough, but had trouble reproducing it. Signals based on those used by the deaf and dumb came easier for him.

  The sim was close to Kenton's own rangy six feet one. His eyes, in fact, were on a level with the scout's, but where Kenton's forehead rose, his sloped smoothly back from beetling brow ridges. His nose was low, broad, and flat; his mouth wide; his teeth large, heavy, and yellow; his jaw long and chinless. As an Englishman, he would have been hideous. Kenton did not think of him so; by the standards of his own kind, he was on the handsome side.

  On, Charles signed, adding the finger-twist that turned it into a question. At the scout's nod, he strode ahead, his deerskin buskins silent on the mossy ground. His only other clothing was a leather belt that held water bottle, hatchet, knife, and pouches for this and that.

  His thick brown hair served him as well as did Kenton's leather tunic and trousers.

  A turkey called from a stand of elms off to one side.

  Kenton felt his stomach rumble hungrily, and an instant later heard Charles's. They grinned at each other. Hunt, the scout signed, not wanting to make any noise to alert the bird.

  The sim nodded and trotted toward the far side of the trees.

  Kenton gauged distances. If all went well, the shot would be only about fifty yards, a half-charge of powder should serve. He poured it into the little charge-cup that hung from the bottom of his powderhorn, then down his musket barrel it went.

  Working with practiced speed, he set a greased linen patch on the gun's muzzle, laid the round ball on it, and rammed it home til it just touched the powder. Then he squeezed down on the first of the musket's two triggers, setting the second so it would go off at the lightest touch.

  The whole procedure took about fifteen seconds.

  And it was al needless. Kenton waited, expecting the frightened turkey to burst from cover at any moment. What emerged, however, was Charles, carrying the bird by the feet in one hand and his bloody hatchet in the other. He was laughing.

  "Good hunting," Kenton said. He careful y reset the first trigger, making sure he heard it click back into place. He did not begrudge the sim the kill; he welcomed anything that saved powder and bul ets.

  Stupid bird, Charles signed. I get close, throw. He pantomimed casting the hatchet. It had a weighted knob at the end of the handle to give it proper balance for the task. Even wild sims were dangerous, flinging the sharp-chipped stones they made.

  The sun was going down over the vast forest ahead. "We may as well camp," Kenton decided when they came to a smal , cool, quick-flowing stream. He and Charles washed their heads and soaked their feet in it. They drank til they sloshed, preferring the stream's water to the warm, stale stuff in their canteens.

  Then they scoured the neighborhood for dry twigs and brush for the evening's fire. Kenton was careful to make sure trees and bushes screened the site from the west. When he took out flint and steel to set off the tinder at the end of the fire, Charles touched his arm.

  Me, please, the sim Kenton passed him the metal and stone. Charles briskly clashed them together, blew on the sparks that fell to the tinder. Soon he had a small smokeless blaze going.

  When he started to pass the flint and steel back to L Kenton, the scout said, "You may as well keep them; you use them more than I do, anyway."

  The flickering firelight revealed the awe on Charles's face. That awe was there even though he was of the third generation of sims to grow up as part of Virginia. In the wild, sims used fire if they came across it, and kept it alive as best they could, but they could not start one.

  To Charles, Kenton's simple tools conveyed a power that must have felt godlike.

  The scout burned his hands and his mouth on hot roasoed turkey, but did not care. Blowing on his fingers, he chuckled, "Better than going hungry, eh, Charles?"

  The sim grunted around a mouthful. He did not bother with any more formal reply; he took his eating seriously.

  They tossed the offal into the stream. Charles had taken the first watch the night before, so tonight it belonged to Kenton. The sim stripped off his shoes and belt, curled up by the fire, with his hair, he needed no blanket, and fel asleep with the ease and speed Kenton always envied. Charles and his breed never brought the day's troubles into the evening with them. Were they too simple or too wise?

  The scout often wondered.

  He let the fire die to red embers that hardly interfered with his night sight. The moon, rounding toward ful , spilled pale light over the forest ahead, smoothing its contours till it resembled nothing so much as a calm, peaceful sea.

  The ear pierced the il usion that lulled the eye. Somewhere close by, a field mouse squeaked, briefly, as an owl or ferret found it.

  Farther away, Kenton heard a wolf howl to salute the moon, then another and another, until the whole pack was at cry.

  The eerie chorus made the hair prickle upright at the nape of the scout's neck. Charles stirred and muttered in his sleep. No one, human or sim, was immune to the fear of wolves.

  The pack also disturbed the rest of a hairy elephant, whose trumpet call of protest instantly silenced the wolves. They might pull down a calf that strayed too far from its mother, but no beasts hunted ful -grown elephants. Not more than once, anyway, Kenton thought.

  The normal small night noises took a while to come back after the hairy elephant's cry. The scout strained his ears listening for one set in particular: the grunts and shouts that would have warned of wild sims.

  No camp was in earshot, at any rate. Hunting males ranged widely, though, and these sims would from long acquaintance not be in awe of men, and thus doubly dangerous.

  A coughing roar only a couple of hundred yards away cut short his reverie on the sims. The scout sprang to his feet, his finger darting to the trigger of his musket. That cry also roused Charles. The sim stood at Kenton's side, hatchet ready in his hand.

  The roar came again, this time fiercely triumphant. Spearfang, Charles signed, with kil .

  "Yes," Kenton said. Now that the beast had found a victim, it would not be interested in hunting for others, such as, for instance, himself and the sim. In dead of night, he welcomed that lack of interest.

  All the same, excitement prickled in him. The big cats were not common along the Atlantic seaboard, and relentless hunting had reduced their numbers even in the hinterlands of the Virginia colony. Not many men, these days, came to the governor at Portsmouth to col ect the 5 pound bounty on a pair of fangs.

  Kenton imagined the consternation that would ensue if he marched into the Hal of Burgesses with a score of six inch-long ivory daggers.

  Most of the clerks he knew would sooner pass a kidney stone than pay out fifty pounds of what was not even their own money.

  The scout snorted contemptuously. "I'd sooner reason with a sim," he said. Charles grunted and made the question-mark gesture. "Never mind," Kenton said. "You may as well go back to sleep."

  Charles did, with the same ease he had shown before. Nothing troubled him for long. On the other hand, he lacked the sense for long-term planning.

  Kenton watched the stars spin slowly through the sky. When he reckoned it was midnight, he woke Charles, stripped off his breeches and tunic, and rolled himself in his blanket. Despite exhaustion, his whirling thoughts kept him some time awake. This once, he thought, he would not have minded swapping wits with his sim.

  Sunrise woke the scout. Seeing him stir, Charles nodded his way.

  All good, the sim signed. Spearfang stay away.

  "Aye, that's good enough for me," Kenton said. Charles nodded and built up the fire while Kenton, sighing, stretched and dressed. Jokes involving wordplay were wasted on sims, though Charles had laughed like a loon when the scout went sprawling over a root a couple of days earlier. The turkey was still almost as good as it had been the night
before. Munching on bulbs of wild onion between bites went a long way toward hiding the slight gamy taste the meat had acquired.

  The way west was downhill now; the explorer and his sim had passed the watershed not long before they made camp. The little stream by which they had built their fire ran westward, not comfortably toward the Atlantic like every other waterway with which Kenton was familiar.

  The scout strode along easily, working out the kinks a night's sleep on the ground had put in his muscles. His mouth twisted. A few years ago, he would have felt no aches, no matter what he did. But his light-brown hair was beginning to be frosted with gray, and to recede at the temples.

  Kenton was proud the governor had chosen him for this first western journey, rather than some man still in his twenties. "Oh, aye, a youngster might travel faster and see a bit more," Lord Emerson said,

  "but you're more likely to return and tell us of it."

  He laughed out loud. He wondered what Lord Emerson would have said after learning of his spearfang-hunting plans. Something pungent and memorable no doubt.

  Charles stopped with a perplexed grunt very much the sort of sound a true man might have made. Ahead strange sound, he signed.

  Kenton listened, but heard nothing. He shrugged. His eyes were as sharp as the sims, but Charles had very good ears. They were surely not a match for a hound's, nor was the sims sense of smel , but Charles could communicate what he sensed in a way no animal could match.

  "Far or close?" the scout asked.

  Not close.

  "We'll go on, then," Kenton decided. After a few hundred cautious yards, he heard the rumble too, or perhaps felt would have been the better word for it. He thought of distant thunder that went on and on, but the day was clear. - He wondered if he was hearing a waterfall far away.

  "Kenton's Falls," he said, trying out the sound. He liked it.

  Charles turned to look at him, then made as if to stumble over a root.

  The sim got up with a sly grin on his face. Kenton laughed too.