A Different Flesh

by Harry Turtledove

  Had he been able to get closer, he thought, he probably would have been able to find other things to dislike about the Iron Elephant. As it was, he had to despise the contraption at a distance. Almost everybody in Springfield had jammed into the westbound side of the station to stare at the steam engine.

  Stephenson turned to Preen Chand, saying, "I know you'll want to meet Mr. Trevithick, the engine handler, and compare notes. He's been waiting here for you. Come on, I'll take you to him." He plunged into the crowd, using his weight to shove people aside.

  Meeting this Trevithick person was the last thing Preen Chand wanted. He also had a schedule to keep. He grabbed Stephenson by the shoulder. "Of course he's been waiting, he only has that damned engine. Me, I have an entire train to see to. You have my elephants fed, this instant. You have them watered. You unload what comes off here, and get your eastbound freight on board. Get your passengers moving. If I am one minute late coming into Cairo on the New Nile, I will complain to the company, yes I will, and with any luck we will bypass Springfield afterwards."

  He knew he was bluffing. Likely Stephenson did too, but he could not afford to ignore the threat. Without a rail stop, Springfield would wither and die. With poor grace, he started pul ing station hands out of the crush and shouting for passengers to get over to the eastbound track. The press of people thinned, a little.

  "Satisfied?" the stationmaster asked ironical y.

  'Better, at any rate," Preen Chand said.

  "One fine day soon you won't be able to throw your weight around just on account of you drive elephants, Preen. When steam comes in, we won't need stables, we won't need the big hay yards. This operation'll run on half the people and a quarter the cost. " Stephenson rubbed his hands at the prospect.

  "And what do you do, pray tell me, when one of these engines breaks down? Whom will you hire? How much will you have to pay him?

  More than your ostlers or a leech, I would wager. And how long will the repairs take? Caesar and Hannibal are reliable. What sort of schedule will you be able to keep up."

  "The Iron Elephant's reliable too," Stephenson insisted, though Preen Chand's objections made him sound as if he were also trying to convince himself. But his voice steadied as he went on. "It's steamed all the way out from Boston in Plymouth Commonwealth without coming to grief. I reckon that says something'."

  In spite of himself, Preen Chand was impressed: that was more than I,300

  miles. Still, he said scornfully, "Yes, hauling nothing but itself and its coal-waggon." No passenger coaches or freight waggons stood behind the Iron Elephant. "How will it do, pulling a real load?"

  "I don't know anything about that. Like I told you before, fellow you want to talk to is the engine handler. Come on, Preen, you may as well.

  You know they'll be a good while yet over on the other side."

  "Oh, very well." Preen Chand followed Stephenson as the stationmaster forced his way through the crowd, which had thinned more while they argued.

  "Mr. Trevithickl" Stephenson called, and then again, louder, "Mr.

  Trevithickl" A pale, almost consumptivelooking young man standing by the traveling stem engine lifted his head inquiringly. "Mr. Trevithick, this here is Mr. Preen Chand, the elephant driver you wanted to see."

  "Ahl" The engine handler broke oft the conversation he was having, came hurrying over to pump Preen Chand's hand. "They spoke very well of you in Cairo, sir, when I was arranging permits to travel this line, said your Caesar and Hannibal were first-rate beasts. I see they were right; you're here a good deal ahead of schedule." Like any railroad man, Trevithick always had a watch handy.

  "Thank you so very much, sir." Preen Chand saw he was going to have to work to dislike this man; Trevithick was perfectly sincere.

  Looking into his intense blue eyes, Preen Chand suspected he was one of those people who always said just what they thought because it never occurred to them to do anything else.

  "Call me Richard, couldn't stand going as Dick Trevithick, you know. And you're Preen? Shouldn't be any stuffiness between folks in the same line of work."

  Again Preen Chand realized that he meant it. As gently as he could, he said, "Richard, it is a line of work that you and that, thing", he could not make himself call it the Iron Elephant, "are trying to get me out of."

  'Am I? How?" Trevithick's surprise was genuine, which in turn surplised Preen Chand. "Who better to work the railroads under, than someone long familiar with them as an elephant driver?

  Everything about them will be the same, except for what pulls the waggons."

  "And, Richard, with all respect, everything about iron and wood is the same, except when I need to start a fire. I've spent a lifetime learning to care for elephants; what good will that do me in dealing with your boiler there?"

  "A child could manage the throttle. And we have a whole new kind of boiler in the Iron Elephant, with tubes passing through it to heat the water more effectively. And the cylinders are almost horizontal; they work much betoer than the old vertical design did." Trevithick glowed with enthusiasm, and plainly wanted Preen Chand to catch fire too. "Why, on level ground, with the extra power the new system gives, we can do close to thirty miles an hour, practically flying along the ground!"

  Had Stephenson named the figure, Preen Chand would have cal ed him a liar on the spot. He did not think Trevithick a man given to exaggeration, though. Thirty miles an hour He tried to imagine what the wind would be like, whipping in his face: as if he were on a madly galloping racehorse, but for some long time, not just the few minutes the beast would take to tire.

  "How about that, Preen?" Stephenson put in, nudging him in the ribs.

  "Only way you'd get Caesar and Hannibal moving that fast'd be to drop

  'em off a roof."

  Preen Chand grunted. He thought of the stationmaster's boasts about how much he could cut back his operation. The elephant driver smiled sardonically at Trevithick's naivete. Everything would be the same, would it?

  "Thirty miles an hour is a marvelous speed, Richard; it is most marvelous indeed. But that is unloaded, I take it. What can your steam engine", he would not call it the Iron Elephant, not even for politeness' sake, "do pul ing a load of, say, fifty tons?"

  "Tel him, Mr. Trevithick." This time the engine handler was the recipient of Stephenson's conspiratorial elbow.

  He did not seem to notice. The gleam in his eyes turned inward as he calculated. At last he said, "That is a great deal of weight. Does your team real y pul so much?" For the first time, his voice held a trace of doubt.

  "They can, yes," Preen Chand said proudly.

  "Truth to tell, I hate to wonder if the machinery could stand it.

  But I think we should be able to do something on the order of three miles an hour, not counting stops for water or for any breakdowns that might happen."

  "Three miles an hour? Is that all?" George Stephenson sounded more betrayed than disappoinoed.

  "If that." Trevithick looked amused. "Now you see why I tend to put more stress on the engine's top speed."

  Preen Chand, though, was still impressed, and worried. His beloved elephants were faster, but they were only flesh and blood. They had to rest, where the steam engine could go on and on and on. And yet, he thought, if I can show everyone how the elephants outdo this stinking contraption"Richard, load your train up, and I will load mine, and I will race you from here to Carthage."

  "A race, eh?" Trevithick's bright eyes glowed. "How far is this Carthage place from here?"

  "Fifty-three miles, a-tiny bit south of west. The railroad ends soon after it."

  "Hmm." Preen Chand watched the engine handler go into that near-tranoe of conoentration again. When he emerged from it, he gave the elephant driver a respectful look. "That will be a very close thing, Preen. You know how embarrassing, and I mean financially as well as in the sense of a blow to my pride, it would be for me to lose?"

  Preen Chand returned a bland shrug. "You've come all this way from P
lymouth, Richard, to show off your ironmongery. How embarrassing would it be for word to get out that you refused a challenge from your competition?"

  Trevithick laughed out loud. "You misunderstand me. I have no intention of refusing. When shall we start?"

  "Tomorrow morning?"

  "What?" George Soephenson let out a howl. "You're eastbound for Cairo tomorrow morning, Preen! What about your precious schedule?"

  "Wel , what about it? If this steam engine comes in and replaces Caesar and Hannibal, then I will have to do as you suggested before and find other work, so it will not matter if the company fires me. But if elephants are better than machinery, the company should know that too.

  They will thank me more for finding that out than they will be angry with me for being late. And besides, George, why should you worry?

  Don't you own the town hotel?"

  Stephenson suddenly looked crafty. "Well, yes, now that you mention it, I do."

  "Here is a man who thinks of everything," Trevithick said admiringly. "I wonder if I ought to race against you after all, no, my friend, only a joke. But tomorrow morning will be too soon. We will have to load up waggons so both our trains carry equal weight....

  George, you live i here, unlike either Preen or myself. Can you hire some sims from the locals to help the ones at the station here with that work?"

  "Reckon so." Stephenson gave Trevithick a sidelong glanoe. "So long as I ain't payin' for it, that is."

  Preen Chand gulped; he was never going to be rich on an elephant driver's salary. But Trevithick said, "I'll cover it, never fear.

  What I don't make up on bets will come back in the long run through the ballyhoo this race will cause."

  "Whatever you say. All I know is, you can't put no bal yhoo in the bank. Them folks are partial to gold."

  "Who isn't?" Trevithick chuckled.

  Preen Chand went back to the other side of the station to stop the unloading of his train, the less that came off, the less that would have to be put back tomorrow. The straw boss who oversaw Stephenson's gang of sims looked at him as if he were crazy. "First you was in a hurry to unload and now you want them put back. Can't you make up your fool mind?"

  "Truly I am sorry, Mr. Dubois." Preen Chand had always thought the straw boss more capable than Stephenson, and treated him accordingly.

  Dubois only grunted in disgust, then turned and shouted to the dozen sims that were unloading sacks of grain from the waggons. He gave hand signals to back his oral instructions. Sims could fol ow human speech, but had trouble imitating it. They much preferred to use gestures, and many overseers gave orders both ways, taking no chances on being misunderstood.

  That care paid off now. One of the sims gaped in disbelief at the overseer. Its long, chinless jaw fell open to reveal yellow teeth bigger and stouoer than any man's. It ran a hand over what would have been a human's forehead, but was in the sim only a smooth slope behind bony browridges.

  Back, it signed, adding the little gesture that turned the word to a question. Preen Chand usual y had some trouble following hand-talk, but the sim made the sign so emphatic, the way a man might shout an objection, that he understood it with ease.

  Back, Dubois signed firmly. Put bags back.

  The sim scratched its hairy cheek, let out a wordless hoot of protest.

  It signed, Bad. Very bad. Work all gar e. From its point of view, Preen Chand supposed it had a point. But under Dubois's uncompromising eye, it and its comrades began putting the produce back aboard the train.

  "What are they doing, Preen?" Paul Tilak demanded. "That should go in the warehouses here, look at the bill of lading. And why were they so slow getting here in the first place? Where was everyone, and why is everyone so excited?"

  Very much the same set of questions, Preen Chand thought wryly, that he had thrown at George Stephenson. They had the same answer, too: "Steam engine."

  "Damnation!" Tilak shouted, so loudly that Hannibal let out an alarmed snort and swung its shaggy head to see what was wrong with its driver.

  "It is all right, real y it is," Tilak reassured him. The elephant snorted again, doubt ful y, but subsided.

  "These accursed engines will be the ruination of us," Tilak said.

  "I hope not."

  "Of course they will." Tilak was gloomier by nature than Preen Chand. He noticed Dubois's gang of sims again.

  "What are they doing, Preen?"

  Preen Chand told him. Tilak's jaw dropped. He frowned.

  "I do not know if we can beat this Trevithick, Preen, if his machine performs as he says it will."

  "He does not know if he can beat us, either, which makes for a fair trial. Cheer up, Paul. Even if we lose, how are we worse off?

  What will happen? The company will buy engines, just as it would without any race at all. But if we win, perhaps they will not."

  Tilak looked unconvinced. Before the argument could go further, the passenger who had bothered Preen Chand from the coach window now grabbed him by the arm. "See here, sir Do I understand you to mean that this train will not proceed to Cairo, but rather is returning to Carthage?"

  "I am afraid that is correct, sir." As gently as he could, Preen Chand shook free of the man's grasp. "I am so very sorry for any inconvenience this may, "

  "Inconvenience?" the man exclaimed.

  His face was al most as red as his waistcoat. "Do you know, sir, that I stand to lose out on a very profitable investment opportunity if I am delayed here?"

  That was too much for Preen Chand. The deference that was part of his railroading persona went by the board. He stuck his face an inch from the pasnger's nose and bel owed, "God damn you to hel , do you know that I stand to lose out on a job I have loved for twenty-five years and that my father and grandfather held before me. I piss on your investment opportunity, and for a copper sester I'd black your eye, tool" Tilak quickly stepped between them before they could start a fight. The passenger stamped away, still yelling threats.

  Preen Chand looked toward his beloved elephants. The ostlers had set out big wooden tubs of water for them.

  "Derrl" he shouoed to Caesar "Splash!" He thrust out his arm, pointing to the obnoxious fellow with whom he'd been quarreling. Caesar snorted up a big trunkful of water and let it go in s a sudden shower, that drenched Preen Chand. Tilak and Dubois got wet too, and hopped back swearing. The fellow the elephant driver had intended to soak got off unscathed.

  "It has been that kind of day," Preen Chand sighed. "Fetch me a towel, please, someone."

  Instead of starting the next morning, as Preen Chand had proposed, the race did not begin until three days later. Part of the delay was from loading waggons so that the elephants and the steam engine would pul about the same amount of weight. The rest came from dickering over conditions.

  Since the flesh-and-blood elephants were ready at once, while the Iron Elephant had to build up steam, Trevithick wanted Preen Chand not to start until the engine could move. This the elephant driver indignantly refused, on the grounds that the start-up delay was an inherent part of the mechanical device's function. Public opinion in Spring field backed him, and Trevithick gave way.

  But Preen Chand had to yield in turn on the load the Iron Elephant would have to haul. He wanted the weight of the waggons added on to that of the engine and coal-waggon.

  Trevithick, though, neatly turned the tables on him, pointing out that the Iron Elephant natural y got lighter as it traveled and consumed its fuel. The coal, he said, should count as part of its initial burden. He won his point.

  Most of Springfield was there to see the race begin. The Iron Elephant was on the regular westbound track; Caesar and Hannibal took the track usually reserved for eastbound trains. Trevithick doffed his dapper cap to Preen Ghand.

  The elephant driver returned a curt nod. Trevithick was not a bad sort.

  If anything, that made matters worse.

  The mayor of Springfield cried, "Are all you gentlemen ready?" He held a pistol in the air. It would h
ave taken more pul than a steam engine or a couple of hairy elephants put out to keep His Honor away.

  Hearing no objections, he fired the starting gun. Caesar's ears flapped at the report. "Mal -mall!" Preen Chand shouted. Behind him, he heard Paul Tilak give Hannibal the same command, and emphasize it with a whack of the elephant goad.

  The hairy elephants surged forward as far as their harness would al ow.

  Then, grunting with effort, they lowered their heads, dug in their big round feet, and pulled for al they were worth. Fifty tons of dead weight was a lot even for such powerful beasts to overcome.

  From the other track, Preen Chand heard the clatter of coal being shoveled into the Iron Elephant's firebox. He did not look over. He knew his train would get rol ing first, and inoended to wring every inch out of his advantage.

  "Mall-mal !" he shouted again.

  The spectators started to slide out of his field of vision.

  "We're moving!"" he and Tilak shouted in the same breath.

  "Mall-mal !" In his urgency, Preen Chand used the anhus on Caesar.

  The elephant shook his head reproachfully.

  Each step Caesar and Hannibal took came more easily than the one before.

  Horses paral eled the twaek, as riders came along to watch the race.

  Preen Chand kin d back over his shoulder. The Iron Elephant stil had not moved "We may do this yet" he called to Paul Tilak. He hoped so. He had bet as many big silver denaires as he could afford, and perhaps a few more, on the great animal straining beneath him.

  "We shall see," was all Tilak said. As far as Preen Chand knew, he had not made any bets for the elephants. Hie had - not made any against them, either. Had he done so, Preen Chand would have kicked him off Hannibal even if it meant putting an unschooled oxherd aboard the beast.

  He had already filed one brakeman, he wanted no one with him who had a stake in losing.

  Buildings hid the Iron Elephant as Caesar and Hannibal pul ed their train round a curve. They had made a good quarter of a mile and were approaching the outskirts of town when Tilak said, "The machine is coming after us."