A Different Flesh

by Harry Turtledove

  Inspiration struck when the trapper saw how the hunting party of males behaved when they came into the clearing on a day after the snow had begun to fal . The sims threw down the carcasses they had brought into the clearing, then, as one, rushed to put their feet as close to the fIre in as they could.

  Quick smelled singeing hair, but did not blame the sim’s a bit.

  For him, even healthy, going out into the snow barefoot would have meant at the very least losing toes to frostbite. The sims' feet were hairy above and had thickly - cal used soles, so that risk was less for them. Nothin however, could make such shoeless travel anything but it pain. The females, Sol among them, also had to brave the winter to forage and to cut firewood. Henry Quick suddenly realized that, while his boots did not have laces anymore they were much better than nothing.

  Before Sol went out the next time, he showed her how to put them on her feet.

  She did not like them; they must have felt strange and confining. But when she came back, her broad grin gleamed like the snow that still clung to the load of fir branches she was carrying.

  Warm, she signed unbelievingly, pointing down. feet.Warm. She went to Quick to hug him and plant exuberant kisses on his nd shoulders. Warm, she signed again. Feet warm. Quick felt warm himself, no easy trick that winter.

  He had found a gift that made her happy. The boots also made the other sims jealous. Quick tried that as fast as he could; he did not want Sol to suffer he'd only meant to help. The only solution he came with involved sacrificing his trousers, which he could not wear anyhow. They made several pairs of improvised shoes, not as good as real boots but far superior to bare yet hairy, leathery bare feet. makeshift cordwainery let Sol keep the boots that had been his.

  That relieved him a great deal.

  Once he as convinced they did some good, he signed, All hunters sther gone, Quick answered. Martin gave a dissatisfied grunt. The trapper hoped the sim would not demand the shirt off his back. He needed it.

  Also fearing the big male would take his boots away from Sol, the trapper suggested, foot things from skins of animals you kil . Skins stink fast, Martin signed. Quick remembered promising to show the grizzled sim to snake leather. Now, in a way, he could keep that promise. Rub skins with bark from spruce, he signed. Then slow, maybe not stink. Martin grunted again. Do, he signed. Before long, Quick doing as much skinning, scraping, and curing as he had working the trap line. He had been a lot of things before, but never a cobbler for sims. cold, wet weather made his leg hurt worse, but with Brent kind of pain, one he suspected would be with the rest of his life: he knew several men with healed in bones who were the best prophets of rain for miles. Now at last he felt himself definitely on the mend.

  successive triumphs were small but satisfying: he treasured the day he sat up by himself, the day he rol ed over,the day he coupled with Sol with him on top.

  The sticks were stil awkward, and so was she. That was not a posture sims often used.

  Neither, come to that, was female atop male; most often they mated from behind, like any other beasts, Quick realized he would have thought before his enforced sojourn here. yet they treat far more than beasts.

  That applied to other things seeing the utility of boots.

  Every so often, around the camp the trapper would notice the subhumans joining as he Sol did. He smiled every time. That was not one of the things he had intended to teach them.

  Still Without the fire and the windbreak, the band of sims could not have survived. In the worst storms none of them went out, except to gather more wood. They huddled in their bedding close by the fire, hugging one another for extra warmth. Often they went a couple of days without food. They were used to going hungry.

  Quick was not. His bel y began to preoccupy him more than his leg. Whenever the hunting party came back with game, his stomach heralded their arrival with growl a wolf would have been proud of.

  Thanks in no small part to his hatchets, the fire the never went out, nor did the sims have to sacrifice the windbreak or rob it so it became threadbare. Indeed, the females a youngsters cut so much more wood than they had before that the band often used the piles of of branches to thicken and restore their beds before using it to feed the fire. Quick had done that himself on the trapping line; fir branches made a fine mattress on which to lay a blanket.

  Being now without a blanket, the trapper happily join the sims in burrowing among the branches and using the group to hold his body warmth.

  His nose grew so used to the thick, resinous smell of fir that he had to make a conscious effort to notice it. He found that the sap that oozed from the branches was easier to clean from his relatively smooth skin than to get out of the sims' hair.

  The sims spent a fair amount of time grooming one another under any circumstances; it was as much a part of social lives as back-fence chatter was back in the Commonwealths. Quick did not mind taking part.

  Getting lair smooth and neat pleased him. He made an absent note to carve out a comb when he had the chance.

  as he cleaned from her hair left his hands constantly and spit did not take it off.

  after a while he accepted that as just another nuisance.

  his whoop made sims all over the clearing jump. If it not dissolve the resin, neither would water. Now his feathers would stay where he put them.

  He had a couple of dozen shafts finished by the time they came into the clearing, staggering under the weight of a fawn in his arms. Quick was no archer, and was hampered by having to shoot sitting down. Nevertheless, he sent several arrows close to a treetrunk that stood further away than anyone could throw a stone.

  Hiss wrist raw and red from being lashed by the sinew string, he handed the bow to Martin. The sim had used it a couple of times before, but already showed signs of being a better marksman than Quick. Martin grunted the first two arrows went where he aimed them, then 'Hoo!"

  as a third followed.

  He shot again, as if to reassure himself it was no fluke, thrust the bow back at the trapper. Make more, he signed. Quick had won over the skeptic.

  with Sol's help, Quick went from cobbler to bowyer and Per. He had finished a handful of crude bows and close to a hundred arrows before he paused to wonder about what he was doing. Men had always pushed forward across Pica as they pleased, not least because sims lacked the brains to fight back. A bow was nowhere near as potent as a gun, but it was vastly better than anything the subhumans had before. Not only that, it was simple enough for them to make and care for themselves, which was not true of firearms.

  After some thought, he decided it did not matter. For one thing, ideas did not move quickly from one band of sims to the next: how recently this band had acquired sign showed that. For another, even with bows the sims could hardly become more than a nuisance. And final y, staying.

  alive now counted far more than any hypothetical trouble in the future.

  In such matters, the trapper was a practical man.

  He grinned from ear to ear when the hunting party began coming back with more game than they ever before. Not need close, one signed, holding a rabbit, blood on its white fur in front of Quick's face.

  He kissed the trapper's cheek, then patted his own belly.

  from far, eat good.

  Save for a single infant, not a sim had died this winter though it was the desperate time of year for the wild sim’s Quick was amazed at the difference the extra fuel and the extra food made.

  But winter was also the desperate time of year for other predators that roamed the woods. One morning a female started to push aside a chunk of the windbreak, She shoved back the piled branches with a shriek of fright as a wolf bayed in anger and frustration and hunger. Around[ the windbreak, the rest of the pack took up the chorus.

  The sims were besieged.

  Sol shivered, next to Quick. Cold had nothing to do with it.

  Wolves stay, she signed. Stay, stay, stay. We him hungry. We go out, they eat. They eat enough, then go - The rest of the si
ms seemed sunk in the same fit of depression. None showed any sign of trying to drive wolves away, nor did they reach for the bows that lay by fire.

  Their wits were slower than humans' after al , Quick saw: they had trouble grasping that what served so well on the hunt would also defend them.

  He was sure they would eventually have worked through for themselves, but lacked the patience to wait.

  He shouted till he had Martin's attention. His voice also roused the devil's choir outside the windbreak, but he did not care about that. Take bows, arrows, he signed. Shoot wolves. He red that by pantomiming drawing a bow back to his shoulder to shoot wolves, those you not shoot run away. The big male rubbed his long, chinless jaw as he led with the idea. He sprang to his feet with a wordless run for the weapons. He dashed to the windbreak, I through. Quick heard a snarl from the far side. The was not afraid of a sim, especially not with a barrier between them.

  Martin aimed the bow through a gap in the branches. The wolf's fierce growls turned to a yowl of agony that went on and on. The howls from the rest of the pack stopped abruptly.

  Quick feared and hated wolves: after sims, they were the most dangerous creatures in the woods. A bear or a spearfang, of course, was more than a match for a wolf, but pack of wolves would run even a spearfang off its prey.

  Had the trapper been able to stand, he would have gone to windbreak to fire his rifle and pistol at the beasts.

  The sims proved able to deal with things on their own.

  Martin dashed to another hole in the windbreak. He shot . A wounded wolf ki-yied in pain. That was enough more males rushing up to grab the rest of the bows and arrows. In minutes, several more wolves had been hit, the rest of the pack was in full retreat. The male sims with clubs and spears went outside the windbreak to finish off the animals they had wounded.

  Roast wolf tasted much better than Quick had thought it would. Afew days later, the weather turned clear and unseasonly warm. The trapper, with the aid of Sol and of the crutches he had fashioned weeks before, stood up for the first time since the sims had brought him into the clearing.

  The effort of even a couple of steps required left him weak. His left leg was, from lack of use, almost as feeble as the right.

  The feeling walking brought was intoxicating. He leaned over and kissed Sol the lips. He had never done that before. The motion almost made him fall. Sol steadied him. They both laughed he kissed her again.

  This time they did slide to the ground carefully, still laughing, and ended up coupling.

  Afterward Sol got up to gather wood, leaving Quick to himself; she took pleasure in the act, but knew nothing like lazing in the afterglow. A smile still on his lips, Quick watched her retreating form.

  There, he thought, goes a hell of a woman. Hearing word in his own mind brought him up short. It had be I while since he took a real look at how he felt about Sol . That her body pleased him had been a surprise, but l no longer. Now he noticed her hairiness, her feet, hardly more than had she been black or had very blue eyes He was used to her, as one person grows used to another. What did surprise him was how much he liked her. He knew that had grown from her caring for him, but there was more to it now. Her happiness mattered to him why else had he given her his boots, and worried so much whether Martin would take them away. And if he desired her, and at the same time wanted to gladden her in other ways, He startled himself by speaking out loud. "If that's not love, I don't know what the devil is. The summer before, using that word in connection I a sim would have seemed as ridiculous as thinking a female sim as a woman. He shrugged, not so disturbed as he expected to be. Living as part of the band had this perspective.

  Sims weren't human, he thought, but they were people. He nodded slowly, pleased with the distinction. The sim had been living in these woods for who knew how many years. For the first time, Quick felt guilty over the people who were supplanting wild sims all across the continent.

  Even tame sims depended on their masters' whim’s for security. The trapper had trouble finding that right, be the same time did not know what else could have happened.

  more the sims hunted with bows, the deadlier of the males brought in such an unending stream of food that the clearing constantly smelled of cooking meat. The whole band began to lose the gauntness that went with most of them, though, was fat, to Quick, a fat wild sim contradiction in terms. So he thought, at any rate, he noticed Sol's belly beginning to protrude. Yet she d no extra flesh on her limbs or in her face. The trapper scratched his head and kept on trying to get about on his crutches.

  His right leg was never going to be the same. There was famous knot of bone where the leg had been broken ad not healed straight, which made it a little shorter its mate. Quick stumped patiently back and forth, as much weight on it as he could. Day by day it bore but he knew he had made his last trapping run. He would need a stick for the rest of his life.

  He was exercising, his mind, he would have sworn, Where far away, when the reason Sol was putting on Fat dawned on him. He sat down heavily. No matter often his body had joined with hers, he had never thought issue might spring from it. In hindsight, that was stupid. In hindsight, of course, a lot of things were stupid.

  He stayed on his haunches, lost in his own thoughts.

  When Sol came back from a foraging trip, she gave him a bachful look. Not wash she asked.

  No. Henry Quick pointed at her. Baby in you?

  She glanced down at herself. The bulge was obvious, so obvious that Quick again kicked himself for not figuring what it meant before.

  She signed, Baby in me.

  She did not say anything about him being the father, but since that first time she had rarely coupled with anyone but him. After a moment, he realized he had never seen any sim in the band use the sign for father.

  They viewed mating for its own sake, not for the sake of children, and had never made the connection between the two.

  He wondered what to do, and wished he were callous enough for her pregnancy to make no difference to him. He had intended to head back toward the Commonwealths soon as the snow melted. Now . . . it would not be so easy You want me stay here? he signed.

  Where go? Sol asked.

  To men like me.

  Sol frowned. One of him was strange enough; visual ing many of his kind took more imagination than she h At last she signed, winter not gone.

  "Only too right it's not," Quick said aloud. Even or mild day like this one, the breeze made his teeth chatter. first he thought Sol had changed the subject, but arte moment he realized such subtlety was beyond her. Sh simply pointed out that, whatever he decided to do wasn't going to do it tomorrow, or the day after either.

  He thought about what staying with the sims and the going back to the Commonwealths would be like. He ca for Sol as he had for no woman on the other side of Rockies, and she was carrying his child. That counted something, but he was not sure in which direction it swt the balance.

  Son of a sim was a bad enough thing to call a man, but father of a sim . .

  . ? Still, he could be like a god if he chose to stay. There was so much the sims did know. He laughed at himself. Like a god, was it? A god who huddled naked, cold, and stinking in fir branches, who ate whatever was alive (or had been lately) and was glad to get it, who could not even use his own speech but had to content himself with a clumsy, limited makeshifts Anyone who bought godhood on those terms deserved to think he had it.

  That the trapper lived hardly better than the sims while in the field did not enter into the equation. He deliberatly chose those hardships to escape from his fellow men for time, and to earn the money to live high when he got back to civilization. Until now, he had never imagined staying west of the mountains. Without Sol, he would have had no doubts.

  Without Sol, he would have been dead months before, and would not be in this quandary.

  Male sims were not normally quiet and reflective. Sol had accepted that Henry Quick sometimes was, but had also come to know him well enough
to tell when his thoughts troubled him. you good? She asked.

  Even after trading signs with him for so long, she could not come closer than that to probing his feelings. He spread his palms, a gesture that meant neither yes nor no. She rummaged about, offered him some half-frozen roots she had found.

  Eat, she signed, as if food could cure mental as well as physical distress.

  He sighed and ate. Sol made another gesture. He acted on that one, afterward, no matter how sated his body was, his mind did not rest.

  could it be love, he wondered, when he could not express the idea to Sol? But what else was it? He had no idea, not even for himself. He turned to Sol. You want me he asked.

  It was her turn to hesitate. Finally she signed, you good. He tugged at his beard, frowning; sometimes sims' statements were oracular in their obscurity. At last he decided she was telling him that the most important thing was his own happiness, a curious mirroring of his own feelings toward her. And if that wasn't love, what else was at even if it was, was it worth abandoning the Commonwealths for good? He knew a fair number of men who had given up the lives they had known to stay with one whom they had fal en in love. Once the first lust faded, most came to regret it.

  something else occurred to the trapper. He was the first to enter this part of the wilderness, but he would not be last. He did not have to wonder what the newcomers would think of him: just what he would have thought before the bear wrecked his leg. Tales of Quick the sim-lover would get him remembered forever, but not in a way he wanted. What else he, thought he did not even think of taking Sol back to the Commonwealths with him. He knew the ostracism that would bring, the more so as she carried his child. She did not deserve to face that.

  Apart from it, too, he doubted she could adapt to life east of the Rockies. She was a creature of wilds, no less than the marten or the spearfang. If he had to live with her, it would have to be here.

  He bit down on his lip till he tasted blood, then slowly made himself relax. As Sol had reminded him, winter was long way from over.