A Different Flesh

by Harry Turtledove

  Face more he was frustrated because he could not make polite expressions of sympathy speech would permit. After some thought, he signed Bad for band.

  Bad for band, the female agreed. Toolmaker. All sims use and make tools, of course, but as with people, some were better than others.

  The grizzled sim had lived enough to gain a great deal of experience, too. If it had passed on al it knew, the band would indeed suffer.

  Henry Quick wondered how much he could help there. what hurt the band would also hurt him.

  At the end of the day, he had the trunk of the spruce bare ranches and a notch carved in either end. Good help, he led to the female. It smiled back at him. He realized he had to make a conscious effort to smell it these days, probably, he thought, because by now his own odor was as bad as its.

  bout then the males came back. They were smeared in blood but triumphant; they carried a plump doe already cut in pieces. The females and youngsters greeted them with glad cries. The band would feast tonight.

  The male that had brought Quick the marten fur ambled over and picked up the would-be bow. It scowled, eyebrows king on the heavy brow-ridges.

  Not like noise-stick, it signed ominously. Had it had a sign for fake, it would have signed it.

  Not like, the trapper admitted, adding Do like, when the sim grunted a noise redolent of skepticism.

  Quick's eye fell on the hind leg from which another male carving chunks.

  He had intended to use another bootlace as a bowstring, but he had only two, and the sims , _ would need more bows than that . . . assuming he could make any at all. Sinew might serve in place of leather.

  Save, he signed, and then paused, grinding his teeth: he not remember the sign for "sinew." Eventually, by pointing to the tendons in his own wrist and at the back of sims ankles, he put across his meaning. The male gave him a dubious look no butler would have been ashamed of, - but went over to the sim acting as butcher and passed the message along. That male shrugged as if to say the trapper was daft, but eventually set beside him several glistening white lengths, each with bits of flesh still clinging to it.

  He did not work on the bow for several days after that.

  His fever returned. It was not strong enough to drive him into delirium, but it did leave him shivering and miserable.

  He glumly crunched the dusty maiden roots the female sim brought him and wished he felt more like a human being, or even a healthy sim.

  Because he was stil aware of his surroundings, he real y noticed then the care the female sim gave him. It fed him, got him water, cleansed him, hauled him from place to place to keep him from lying in his own dung. It might not have been as gentle as a human nurse, but it was more conscientious than most. Not only was this spel of fever less severe than the last had been, it was shorter. Yet even after Quick began to feel better, he kept waking up chilled. Only when he saw the sims also clutching themselves, building thicker piles of bedding, and huddling close to the fire did he understand that the weather was changing. Autumn was drawing near, and hard on its heels would come winter.

  The sims did what they could to get ready for it. They brought in stones and brush, which they began to work into a windbreak. As the days went by, it grew thicker and taller and extended all the way around the clearing, with a couple of thin spots through which the sims could push. They also stacked up great heaps of firewood; once the snow started, it would not be so easy to collect. Quick's hatchets helped them there. They could not have cut so much wood with their crude tools alone.

  Some of them even realized it. The male that had brought Quick the marten pelt hefted its hatchet when it saw he was watching and signed, Good.

  It was less happy, however, over the trapper's efforts to make arrows that were worth anything. Finding really straight lengths of branch was hard enough. Getting points on them proved worse. Because the sims used stone tools Quick had assumed they could easily chip out little stone arrowheads. But the tools they were used to making were hand-sized choppers and scrapers.

  They had never done the tiny flakework arrowheads required. If Quick had shown them how, they could have duplicated his efforts. He no skill in shaping stone, though, and soon discovered knowing what he wanted was very different from singing how to make it.

  About the time the first frost appeared on the windbreak, he worried about getting knocked over the head for failing to produce. If the sims decided to do that, he could not stop them, but that fatalistic certainty was only a small of what gradual y let him relax.

  or more important was that the sims accepted him.

  They had grown accustomed to him lying by the fire, and no longer saw him as much different from themselves, except that he could not move.

  His chief worry now was that would happen if a youngster tripped over his broken leg while playing. Where the young sims had once crowded to gape at him, now they were so careless around him he sometimes wondered if they remembered he was there.

  the leg stil hurt. It also itched savagely; he rubbed the leg round the healing gash raw until he understood the itch came from far within. He healed despite the itch, little buy little. Milestones were small, but he treasured them: the day he could sit up, the day he could roll onto his side to air sores on his back and behind, the day those sores started to scab over.

  Milestones or not, he remained immobile, save when a sim dragged him along.

  Except for his annoyingly troubled work on the bow, he had little to do but lie by the fire and watch the members of the band.

  Just as they accepted him, so he came to think of them more and more as individuals, as people, rather than as subhumans, animals to evade or exploit.

  Looking back, he supposed the beginning of that probably came when he finally decided that thinking of "the male that had brought him the marten skin" by that clumsy handle was more trouble than it was worth. He decided to call it Martin and have donewith it. Giving the sim a man's name helped him think of it as being more like a man.

  One by one, he named all the sims. Most of his names were just tags in his own mind. The sims had so much trouble reproducing the sounds of English that they could not use his names themselves, which made him hesitate to apply them. Martin, however, soon learned what noise meant him. (With a man's name, Martin was also harder think of as it.) The female that cared for Henry Quick also rapidly figured out what names were for. He cal ed her Sol.

  Even though he continued to improve, he knew how dependent on her he still was. He whittled away at a couple of branches, slowly turning them into crutches, but he was not ready to try them yet. A fal , a slip, would put paid to weeks of slow recovery. In any case, he had nowhere to go now that the weather was changing.

  Sol went right on caring for him as she had all along. She also got better and better as his assistant in the effort to unravel the secrets of the bow. she would have been better yet, he thought glumly, had her mentor been worth a damn. She copied his blunders faithful y, one by one, but stopped making them as soon as he did. He knew a lot of people back in the Commonwealths who, having settled on a particular mistake, would keep making it till the end of time.

  He also knew a lot of people who would have turned up their noses, in the most literal sense, at the continuing unpleasant labor involved in disposing of his wastes and getting the filth off him afterwards. Sol never faltered. In the days when he was still on his feet, he had improvised a good many strange wipes for his hindquarters, but in that regard Sol's ingenuity outdid his. He was grateful, and sometimes amused. He would never have thought of using grouse feathers, for instance.

  Sol also kept using that same wooden cup to help him pee.

  He sometimes thought the simple desire to piss upright would be what finally drove him to his feet. He was glad he had the sense to recognize that urge as a sign of returning health, and did not try to act on it too soon.

  Another sign came not long afterward, on a day Where, by the fire, the wind held a chil y promise of the snow would c
ome soon. As he had countless times before, he called Sol's name and asked for the cup. she finished fishing the seeds out of a couple of pinecones she had and brought it over to him. took him in hand, again as she had so often before.

  What happened then, though, was new and strange, for he felt himself stiffening at the sims touch.

  It was hard to say which of them was more surprised.

  Quick had been lustful enough out on the trap line, there is nothing like a compound fracture of the leg and a bout of fever to make a man put aside such concerns. Had Sol ignored his rise, simply put his penis in the cup waited, the moment would have passed. The sim was about to do just that, then paused, looked down, quietly said, "Iloo!"

  Quick started to sign for Sol to take her hand away, but in, still perhaps more in the spirit of experimentation anything else, she stroked him for the first time with intent. His recovering body responded to the feeling before his mind could will it not to. And in any event, he was fully, rampantly, and so unexpectedly erect, his mind had very little to say.

  The sim swung astride him, lowered onto him. He decided entering Sol felt no different from having a woman. so, seeing her there above him, hairy, chinless, and browed, made him shut his eyes in a spasm of concentration.

  the act went on, whether he watched or not. And in, closing his eyes, regardless of the reason, made it seem much more familiar.

  He felt the thick hair on thighs and buttocks as she rode him, but that sensation was distant, insignificant, when set against the explosion ' building in his loins. Nor were the small, wordless noises the sim made unlike the ones he had heard in bedroom Oh back in the Commonwealths. Too often those were from women who sighed more for his coins on the dresser than had for himself; the sim had no such art.

  No wonder, then, that his hips bucked of themselves, that his hands reached out to take hold of Sol's breasts. He almost jerked them away again, for the hair that covered the breasts but the nipples reminded him he was in a bedroom now. Then climax swept over him, and for that endless instant he did not care where he was.

  Sol rolled away as soon as he was through. He kept his eyes shut, trying to sort things out; he felt simultaneously fine and as wretched as he could ever recall.

  He opened his eyes. Sol was looking at him. He nodded not yet trusting either speech or hand-talk. The sim nodded back.

  Good, Sol signed.

  "Al right," the trapper said, surprising himself as usual when he spoke out loud.

  His equanimity was coming back. How many times had he told himself that if he was going to live with the sims he would have to live like a sim a wry grin settled on his face. Eating grubs was al very well, but he had not expected to take things quite this far.

  Again Sol asked, and no grin, no matter how wry, could survive that question. Once he could explain away to himself, as something beyond his control. Repeating the act, though, would be committing himself to what he along with almost everyone in the Commonwealths thought of as disgusting.

  And yet the coupling had not been the sordid sort of masturbation he imagined mating with a mare or ewes might be. Sol had been a partner in the act, not a mere uncomprehending receptacle for his lust.

  Indeed, that he was being asked whether he wanted to go again said a good deal. In the end, the question, more than anything else, was what decided him "All right," he repeated. The sim could not have understood his words, but got the meaning from his tone.

  Sol took him literally, and at once set about rousing his manhood. He thought that would be futile so soon after the first round, but his body, long deprived, proved him wrong. The sim mounted him again. Normal y he preferred riding to being ridden, but his leg made that not worth thinking about.

  This time the joining was slower, less fervent. Quick left his eyes open. The sims in the clearing were paying hardly attention to him and Sol than they would have to a couple of their own kind, and the difference, he judged, was prurience, only curiosity about how he performed.

  they saw he functioned much like them, they went to whatever they had been doing.

  He stil did not look much at Sol, concentrating instead what he was feeling. As before, that was like in its knee to having a woman, but now he noticed the peripheral differences more. The hairiness of the sims body distracted him once or twice. Only later did he wonder if his relatively smooth skin was as strange to her.

  He did notice the sims strength when she, in the middle coupling, he could not think of Sol as it, grasped him as they mated. He had never bedded a woman at least as strong he was.

  Chat thought diverted Quick's attention again. He wondered how the males would react to his joining the band in this, most intimate sense. Some had partners who mated more or less steadily with them, but the dominant males of the hunting party, Martin and two or three others, So coupled with the unattached females of the band. Now trapper was part of that hierarchy. He wondered where he fit. He could not hunt. He could not even walk. If he was Plain importance, it would have to come through his tools. Anyway, he thought as sensation built toward release, it was too late to worry now.

  But afterward he worked away on the bow and arrows ih more concentration than he had shown for several days. Nor could he stifle a twinge of alarm when Martin loomed over him, hands on hips, to inspect what he was up to. But the sim, as usual, was businesslike. Sticks flip Martin asked.

  Henry Quick shrugged. It was always a good questioa After endless effort, he had figured out how to chip reasonably smal , reasonably sharp arrowheads, they were better points than he got by simply whittling away at the tip of tt arrow, at any rate. Now he was having trouble making the miserable arrows go straight.

  The first ones he'd tried just spun crazily, which was good for making the sims laugh but not much else. Then he vaguely remembered that proper arrows had feathers at the back to make them fly true.

  Getting feathers was a problem. The sims threw rocks well enough to bring down a lot of birds. But getting the feathers to stay on the arrow was a whole different question. The sims knew nothing about glue, and Quick did not know how to make it either So far his best solution was cutting thin grooves in the shafts and sliding the feathers into them.

  That was not nearly good enough.

  Once in a while, one of his arrows would fly straight and thwack into a tree with enough force to stick, which made the sims hoot appreciatively.

  More often, a feather would come out in flight, which made the arrow behave as if it were trying to dodge its target instead of hitting it.

  Sol continued to help in his bow-building efforts, and to care for him as she had been doing. She never understood much English besides her name, but he passed a lot of time talking first to her, then with her, in hand-talk. They did best at the purely pragmatic level.

  She understood why the people back in the Commonwealths wanted the furs he had come to trap. Furs warm, she signed, running a hand over his relatively naked skin. No hair, need warm. she stroked he own red-brown hair to emphasize the contrast. Her hair had grown thicker, almost furry, as the season changed.

  When Quick tried to explain that people coveted furs for their beauty as well as their warmth, he ran into a snare Sims did have an aestnet Wited to things they made themselves. A fur was just a fur.

  did better getting across the idea of rarity. Begging for Ed was a simple kind of bargaining, and the sims had Od he would give them his strange and wonderful I tools in exchange for furs. In my band, he signed, many tools, few furs. Here many furs, few tools. You want nodded Why few furs there? she asked. Her hand-talk far more fluid than it had been when he first met her. She, and to a lesser extent the rest of the band, had learned from Quick a number of signs they had not people, he answered. Much hunting. I understood that. A band of sims that grew too large for the territory to support soon shrank again from starvation.

  me parts of life in the

  Commonwealths, railroads, boats, Quick did not even try to explain.

  Getting as
the idea of a house, a permanent place to live, was enough, as was describing domesticated plants and animals. To Sol, it al seemed a vision of unparalleled abundance. Warm place to sleep? she signed. Plenty to eat?

  The trapper nodded, admitting it.

  Why come here? Sol asked.

  get furs, was the only answer Quick could put across.

  wonderlust meant nothing to the sim; Sol's band knew perhaps twenty miles square as intimately as if; could, but nothing of the world beyond it. Explain that he often found the company of his fellow men exsessive was also next to impossible.

  but, they fight? Sol asked.

  he signed, but then, after thinking about it, had to ri staff with other men long time, maybe fight. He knew how impatient he could get with peoples foolishness He really did not have that problem with the band of sims.

  they were not smart enough to make idiots of themselves on purpose; what brains they had, they had to use. He wanted to do something for Sol, to show his gratitude in a more permanent, more substantial way than coupling After the first few times, he had stopped worrying about whether those matings constituted bestiality. That was more because he thought of himself as a member of the sim band than because he suddenly reckoned her human but the effect was the same: he concentrated on the similarities rather than their differences. The problem was that the sims lived at the bared subsistence level. Things that would have been approprate back in the Commonwealths were incomprehensible and valueless here.

  Before he ful y realized that, Quick spent a good deal of time whittling a piece of pine into the shape of a spearfang. Sol looked at it when he proudly presented it to her. she was interested; she had never seen an image belfore, but she was not really pleased.